Charles Burton

previous Canadian Cultural Consul in Beijing

 

The Life, Times and Art of Mr. Zhang Dichen

 

I first came to appreciate Mr. Zhang Dichen's artworks more than 30 years ago when I was a student at Fudan University in Shanghai.  What first brought his name to my attention was Mr. Zhang's Ethnic Dolls (民族娃娃) series.  These paintings were much published in popular magazines of the day.  The ethnic dolls paintings depicted women in stylized ethnic costume with disproportionately large heads and no feet (and often no arms or hands). They all had distinctive extra-large oval solid black eyes with a tiny point of white in each.  The eyes gave them a poignant expression but the dolls depicted in this series were also joyous in the use of colour.  The paintings celebrated diversity both in subject matter and artistic style.  They spoke sharply against the imposed uniformity of the 10 years of Cultural Revolution that China was starting to emerge from in those years.  It was the era in China when Deng Xiaoping called on the people to "emancipate thought" and liberate themselves from the stultification of severe ideological strictures.  Mr. Zhang's contribution was to break through the barriers of the enforced artistic orthodoxy and "emancipate art."  His work transcended both "revolutionary romanticism" and "socialist realism" to produce an expression that was appealing as popular art and had no pedantic message beyond the painting itself.  His ethnic dolls work was among the first rushes of fresh air of openness and reform in the Chinese artistic establishment after 1978.  His later series of lap dogs was also very well received (their appeal enhanced perhaps as private pet ownership was still banned at the time).  Mr. Zhang's little dogs were cute enthusiastic, fun and very appealing on their own terms.  The painter even managed to convey on paper their happy panting and yapping, No one could look at Mr. Zhang's idealized but very convincingly "real" depiction of the furry Shih Tzu, and not feel a surge of delight.

Zhang Dichen was born in 1935 in rural Jilin.  As a child growing up in the Japanese occupation period there he showed great talent for drawing his own family's dogs and other small animals and all the things around him in his family home.  By the time he became a young adult in the 1950s, China had been swept up by the "high tide of socialism."  There was great optimistic enthusiasm throughout the land for the ideals of building the new People's China.  Part of the spirit of this time was a turning away from high culture of traditional Chinese elite arts to development of folk arts and handicrafts.  Mr. Zhang's career turned to teaching and researching in the area of textile design.  The influence of his close association with the aesthetic of textiles very much informs his painting, particularly his more recent work, in his use of bands of colour combining Chinese techniques with Western watercolour washes.  Many of his most striking recent paintings include a striking single metallic colour woven in the watercolour wash that gives a super-realistic electrifying excitement to his depictions of natural landscape.

In 1995 at age 60, Mr. Zhang immigrated to Canada.  While there is a significant Chinese community in North America, for the most part Chinese arts are little understood and very much under-appreciated in North America.  Perhaps this is because Chinese people who have a strong identity with Chinese culture are less likely to seek a new life in a far off land and re-make themselves and their families in a foreign language and cultural environment.  Moreover Mr. Zhang necessarily became isolated from his fellow artists and the rapid developments in the art scene back in Beijing throughout the 1990s and beyond.  But evidently the pain of separation from his native land ironically has led to a period of great productivity and creativity for Mr. Zhang's work.  And this in senior year when most artists slow down into retirement and rest in the memories of their past accomplishments.  Mr. Zhang has not only innovatively developed his best work in Canada, but in addition to drawing Canadian scenes has produced his most powerful new work in depictions of distinctively Chinese landscapes.  Moreover his pen and ink depictions of the canal towns of Zhejiang and Jiangsu in eastern China are exquisitely evocative to the extent that the natives of this area of China are particularly moved by these works.  It seems that in the case of Mr. Zhang Dichen, absence has not only made his heart grow fonder for the distinctive cultures and history of his native land but made his artistic perceptions deeper and more acute as well.  There is  a poignancy in them as these towns are rapidly modernizing and the canals being filled in to make space for roads and concrete and steel high-rises. Shaoxing, once known as  the "Venice of East China" but no more, being a prominent example.  But the essential spirit of their traditional aesthetic as water towns lives on with enhanced profundity thanks to Mr. Zhang Dichen's superb work.

Finally, Mr. Zhang's mastery of calligraphy in various styles reveals in the purest form the soul of Mr. Zhang and his life and times.  His artistic expression has followed the ebb and flow of recent Chinese history and his magnificent calligraphy reflects his complex past and the tempering of his life in exile.

Now 75 years old, remarkably, Mr. Zhang Dichen is unexpectedly at the peak of his career.  And his best work is evidently the work he is conceiving today!  The longevity and continuing development of his creative artistry into his old age is a tribute to the human spirit of this great painter, Zhang Dichen.

He expresses his real feeling through his artworks. He is good at creating the sense of beauty by properly applying the harmony and comparison of colours. His works are colourful in range, and delicate in the changing of hue. He is good at controlling the amount of water applying in his black ink paintings, colour paintings and watercolour paintings. The unique controls of the water and ink in his works create a kind of music like rhythm.

Zhang respects the beauty of nature. All of his landscape paintings are derived from natural world, and are the reflection of his real feelings as well. Some of his abstract paintings are evolutions from the inspiration of the nature world, too. He often mentions "Painting in my ways and expressing my real feelings". Emphasizing "my" in his words clearly tells people that he has a good understanding in the art creation. Great landscape paintings are not only the drawing of natural beauties, but also expressions of the artist's inner world. The profundity of art is the direct reflection of the artist's perspectives, vision and accomplishments. From the appreciation of Zhang's landscape paintings, we understand that he loves the water and mountains, and he learns from the nature. At the same time, he always takes considerations of the people. He is communicating with people through his paintings. The reasons why his works are often popular are simple---since those paintings may cater for different tastes of people in some ways.

With rich life and art experiences, Mr. Zhang is going forward to his own goals. We believe that Mr. Zhang will achieve more and more good results in his art creation road in the future.