Wu Guanzhong | The Dahuo Stream
“I travel near and far, wearing down the metal soles of my shoes, in search of ordinary and quotidian scenes and things, scenes and things that do not attract attention. But they contain within themselves an eternal vitality that strikes like thunder in silence.”
Wu Guanzhong’s personal circumstances became the most dire in the 1960s and gradually improved from the 1970s onwards. Although he always led a frugal existence, he was able to travel around China freely and sketch its scenery to his heart’s content. His foundational training at the Hangzhou National College of Art, his later studies in Paris, and the vicissitudes of his life upon his return to China unfolded with the ups and downs of a drama but ultimately culminated in success. Towards the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1972, Wu Guanzhong was released from a six-year ban from painting and allowed to paint on holidays. In March of the same year, he was assigned by the People’s Liberation Army to serve as a teacher in an oil painting course in a certain division in Xingtai, Hebei. There Wu painted several paintings of the local scenery, including The Dahuo Stream (Lot 1027) (1972). Demonstrating Wu Guanzhong’s tireless efforts in the “nationalization” of oil painting, the rich layers of pigment on this canvas channel the subtle and metaphysical aesthetics of the ink tradition, Impressionist play of light and shadows, and the fusion of image and poetry essential to traditional Chinese landscape painting at the same time. The Dahuo Stream is a testament to Wu Guanzhong’s maturation as an artist and thorough mastery of his craft and medium in the 1970s.
For Wu, painting was an endless journey of discovery. The Dahuo Stream marks the beginning of Wu’s two-decade-long Guilin series and his most productive period, during which he painted purely from inspiration and passion. This painting is an exception among the Guilin-themed works and suggests that Wu was in an unusual state of mind at the time.
According to gazaetteers of Xingtai county of the Ming, Qing, and Republican periods, the city of Xingtai boasted the Eight Views of Xingtai. Among these was the Dahuo Stream, known for its crystalline water and the dazzling hydraulics and gurgling of its main spring, which gave it the name of Dahuo, or “Coming to Life.” According to the Gazeteer of the Shunde Prefecture, in ancient times the Dahuo Stream was known as Liaoshui, or “Buckwheat Stream,” for the resemblance of its effervescent springs to a buckwheat field. A Tang-dynasty biography of the Jin-period Buddhist monk Fotucheng records that when the Dahuo Stream dried up, Fotucheng performed rites and incantations to command the dragon residing in it to release its water. The stream again began to run dry in 1072, but was revived after a six-year repair. Such a vital and richly storied site resonated with Wu Guanzhong as he rediscovered the joys of life and the beauty of nature in the 1970s. The exuberance of the stream energised the painter, who in turn translated it into the serene composition on canvas.
The Dahuo Stream reflected Wu Guanzhong’s search for inspiration, and elements of its composition would recur in works from his later periods, including the Group of Geese in Tai Lake painted in 1974 (currently in the collection of the National Museum of Art of China) and the series of life sketches of white birch forests in oil that Wu began in the early 1980s. Wu discusses Geese on Lake Tai in his book The Eye of Painting, “Facing the geese on Lake Tai—white shapes jumping energetically in the water…I strove to capture the dynamic changes of the colour white and to render the movements and poses of the geese at the same time. Although I had to forego details, I had to capture the comminglings, clashes, and abstract rhythms of the white shapes upon the silvery surface of the lake… The red dots were the crucial step in making the white shapes legible as geese. Although applied quickly, every of these dots required tremendous strength.”Likewise in the present work, we recognise the care with which Wu has rendered the flock of geese, with orange dots applied on white passages. The painting demonstrates Wu’s experimental spirit while corroborating his self-description quoted above. The flock of geese extends from the background on the right towards the centre of the composition, leading the viewer’s eye to the white birches on the shore. Wu’s White Birch Forest in Xinjiang, the most representative work of the series, appeared at Sotheby’s 2019 spring auctions, where it sold for 19,855,000 HKD, three times the estimate. The birches occupy the entire height and width of the composition to form a forest that envelops the viewer. Such immersive compositions became rare in Wu’s works after the late 1980s. The Dahuo Stream demonstrates that already in the early 1970s Wu was already thinking about and experimenting with composing white birches. He embellishes the plain tree trunks with dots of green, orange, and yellow and allows the eye to rest in a pavilion partly concealed in their midst, creating a welcoming and serene scene.
Wu Guanzhong was trained initially in Western oil painting at the National College of Art. Impressionism was the first Western art movement to which he was exposed, and Wu’s painting manner reflects the Impressionists’ rendition of optical experience and the colour theory derived from it. Although the notion of “a stream beneath reflecting the entire scenery” existed in classical Chinese landscape painting, in practice still bodies of water in tended to be represented by negative space. In The Dahuo Stream, Wu Guanzhong renders the reflection of the white birch forest in rich detail, evoking the dance of light and reflections on water surfaces in Monet. Wu’s composition has a classical elegance and harmony, with the foreground shore serving as a horizontal axis and the sky and white birches aligned with the vertical direction.
The Dahuo Stream dates from the same time as Wu’s much sought-after Guilin series. At the 2020 autumn auctions of Sotheby’s Hong Kong, his Scenery of Guilin sold for 4,343,000 HKD. Uniquely among the Guilin series, Scenery of Guilin emphasises mountain over water, with the two mountains in the middle of the composition occupying over two thirds of its area. Similarly, the white birch forest occupies the majority of the composition of The Dahuo Stream, suggesting that this painting served as an important prototype and inspiration for Wu Guanzhong later in his career.
「踏破鐵鞋，我追尋的是樸實單純的平常景物，是既不引人注意的景物，但期間蘊藏永恆的生命，於無聲處聽驚雷。」
吳冠中的個人際遇，在六〇年代走進低谷，自七〇年起漸入佳境，儘管生活條件依舊樸素，卻足以讓他走遍神州大地，盡情抒寫眼前風光，杭州藝專的基礎、巴黎留學的深造、歸國以來的困頓，恰似戲劇的起點、承接和轉折，始終迎來豐碩的成果。1972年，吳冠中渡過人生低谷，他在文革期間所經歷長達6年的繪畫禁令，終於局部解封，僅被允許在節假日作畫。同年三月，吳冠中接受部隊安排，到河北邢台某師油畫學習班輔導美術創作。其時藝術家在邢台創作多幅風景畫，本畫《達活泉》（拍品編號1027）亦於同年誕生。作品展現藝術家在油畫民族化之路上不懈探求的足印，畫面在油彩豐厚的層次之上，融入水墨溫潤悠遠的意境美，印象派的光影美學，與傳統山水畫中有詩的東方氣韻相輔相成，印證藝術家在七〇年代踏入風景油畫創作臻至成熟的里程碑。
對於吳冠中而言，繪畫是一門終身不斷的研究，《達活泉》的誕生時值吳冠中藝術生涯中長達二十年的桂林系列之宏大開端，此時的吳冠中創意旺盛，繪畫出於純粹的熱情和靈感，本畫在芸芸同期創作的桂林主題油畫中尤是罕有，足見此情此景於藝術家心中有著不一樣的地位。
「達活泉，在城西北五里處，東流為河，即古蓼水也。」
據明、清以及民國時期的《邢台縣志》記載，河北省邢台轄區內的八處著名景觀，堪稱「邢台八景」，「達活名泉」為其中之一，其泉水晶瑩碧透，水量大時，主泉似開鍋之水，翻華鬥艷，滾流不息，故有「達活泉」之美名。達活泉在《順德府志》亦有以下記載：「達活泉，在城西北五里處，東流為河，即古蓼水也。」其古名蓼水，又名「再來泉」，取名自早年泉水時伏時湧之象。撰於唐代的《晉書·佛圖澄傳》記述了達活泉乾涸後，高僧佛圖澄燃香念咒、敕龍取水的故事；後至宋熙寧五年（公元1072年），泉水驟伏，時隔六年，經治理後泉水復出。如此富有生命力之地，與藝術家於七〇年代重新發掘生活之趣，發現自然之美而豁然開朗的心情相得益彰；映入眼簾的盎然生意，化成藝術家澎湃不息的創作靈感，凝於本作愜意舒心的畫面之上。
《達活泉》展現吳冠中在創作靈感上的探索，畫面元素可見於藝術家後來不同時期的作品之創作主題，其中包括繪於1974年，現為中國美術館藏的《太湖鵝群》以及創作於一九八〇年代初，以白樺林為主題的寫生油畫系列。吳冠中在《畫眼》的自述中曾對《太湖鵝群》有此一說：「面對太湖鵝群，生命的白塊在水上活蹦活跳...我歇力追捕白色的變換，又勾勒出鵝之神態，雖顧不得細節，卻須牢牢把握銀亮湖面上白塊的聚散、碰撞、期間的抽象韻致...紅點更是點白成鵝的關鍵之筆，雖點時匆匆，實落筆千鈞。」，從本作即可見藝術家在繪畫鵝群時，作出別具匠心的細緻處理，皚白的筆觸上可見蜜橙色的點染，既展現藝術家的實驗精神，亦與其自述有所相合；鵝群從畫面右方遠景延伸至畫中，引領觀者視線回到岸邊的白樺林。
吳冠中以白樺林為主題的代表之作，當數亮相於2019年香港蘇富比春拍，以超越拍前估價逾三倍的港幣19,855,000成交的《新疆白樺林》：畫中白樺以「頂天立地」之姿擴滿畫面，著意營造「林」的整體形象，此構圖在八〇年代後期的同類創作中已不復多見，而《達活泉》則展現藝術家早於七〇年代年代初，已開始思考繪畫白樺的構圖處理，並付諸試驗實踐：林間木葉以青、橙、黃色點染，點襯托樹幹的素白，從白樺隙罅間更隱隱可見在涼亭下歇息的人們，營造一片淡雅溫潤之氣。
克勞德·莫內《塞納河清晨》油畫畫布，89.2 x 92.4 cm，一八九六年作。2018年5月14日 紐約蘇富比印象派及現代藝術晚拍晚間拍賣，成交價20,550,000 美元。
吳冠中在國立藝專時期最早主修西方油畫，而印象主義則是他最早接觸的西方流派，其油畫創作的技巧，充分反映印象派對於光學描繪的研究，及從中發展而來的色彩理論。中國傳統山水畫縱早有「下為澗，物景皆倒」的倒影畫法之說，然而對於靜水的表現，仍多以留白處理為主。吳冠中在《達活泉》一作中，透過水面倒影岸邊白樺林以豐富畫面的處理，與西方印象派大師莫內，運用水面倒影描繪光影舞動的表現技法，有著異曲同工之妙。畫面採用經典的曲尺形構圖，巧妙地以近景的岸線作為橫軸，遠景的天空及白樺林作為縱軸，使整體畫面達至平衡和諧。
《達活泉》的創作年期與吳冠中深受藏家追捧的桂林系列重疊，2020年香港蘇富比秋拍的《桂林景色》，即以4,343萬港元成交。《桂林景色》的構圖以山為重，水為輔，立於正中的兩座山頭佔卻畫面三分之二，如此以山為主角的思路在藝術家桂林系列當中，可屬獨一無二的構圖處理；並觀本作，則可見藝術家將白樺林置於中心，同樣佔據畫幅大片部分，可證《達活泉》作為吳冠中往後創作之靈感藍圖，具有承前啟後的重要地位。
