CHINESE ARTISTS OF THE 20th CENTURY

XU BEIHONG:

• Xu Beihong (July 19, 1895 – September 26, 1953), a member of the Han nationality, originally
named Xu Shoukang, came from Qiting Town, Yixing County, Jiangsu Province.
• He is a modern Chinese painter, art educator and member of Jingxing Society.
• In 1917, Xu Beihong became the tutor of the Painting Research Institute of Peking University.
The top university has successively succeeded Xu Beihong, a painting master, and Shen Yinmo
and Li Zhimin, two masters of Peking University’s calligraphy history.
• He once studied Western painting in France. After returning to China, he has been engaged in
fine art education for a long time, successively teaching in the Art Department of National
Central University, the Art School of Beiping University and the Art College of Beiping
University. He also co-founded the Sino-Italian Cultural Association with Li Linxu and others.
• In 1949, he became the president of the Central Academy of Fine Arts. He is good at sketch, oil
painting, Chinese painting.
• He was one of the pioneers who introduced Western realistic painting concepts and methods
into China, the founder of modern Chinese art, and one of the important figures who influenced
Chinese painting in the 20th century.
• And especially advocates Ren Bonian in tradition. He emphasizes the integration of Western
painting techniques into the reform of Chinese painting, advocates light and modeling, stresses
the accurate grasp of the anatomical structure and bone of the object, and emphasizes the
ideological connotation of the works. He had a great influence on the Chinese painting circle at
that time, and Zhang Shuqi and Liu Zigu were called the “three masters of Jinling” in the
painting circle.
• The color ink of the Chinese painting, especially to enjoy the name of the horse. Xu Beihong is
honored as the founder of modern Chinese art education.
• He advocated the development of the improvement of “traditional Chinese painting”, based on
the modern realistic Chinese art, put forward the “Chinese Painting Improvement” under the
decadent background of modern Chinese painting. On September 26, 1953, Xu Beihong died of
cerebral hemorrhage at the age of 58.
• According to Xu Beihong’s will, his wife Ms. Liao Jingwen donated more than 1200 pieces of his
works, more than 1200 pieces of works of Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming, Qing and modern famous
painters and calligraphers, more than 10,000 pieces of books, picture albums and steles to the
country.
• Born in poverty, Xu Beihong learned poetry, calligraphy and painting from his father Xu
Dazhang (at the age of 6, he followed his father to read the Four books and Five Classics, and
later learned painting). Born in a common family in Yingqiao Town, Xu Beihong’s original name
was Shou Kang. After old age, he changed his name to “Qi Hong”. His father, Xu Dazhang, is a
private school teacher.
• He is good at poetry and calligraphy. He learns painting by himself. Her mother, Lu Shi, was a
simple working woman.
• Xu Beihong began to learn painting from his father when he was 9 years old. Every day after
lunch, he copied a painting by Wu Youru, a famous painter in the late Qing Dynasty, and
learned painting skills such as color mixing and color setting.
• At the age of 10, he was able to help his father fill in the secondary part of the picture with
color, but also for the villagers to write “Shi He Shi Tai, Renshou Nianfeng” and other Spring
Festival couplets.

Travel abroad

• At the age of 13, he moved around the village with his father, selling paintings for a living and
supporting the family. Although living away from home was hard, it enriched Xu Beihong’s
experience and broadened his artistic vision.
• At the age of 17, Xu Beihong went to Shanghai, the most commercially developed city at that
time, to make a living by selling paintings and wanted to learn Western painting. However, he
had to return home a few months later because his father was seriously ill. He studied briefly in
Shanghai Art College, the predecessor of Nanjing University of the Arts.

Establish an idea

• At the age of 20, he came to Shanghai again. With the help of his friends, he was admitted
to Sinian University (now the French Department of Fudan University in Shanghai), which
was sponsored by the French Catholic Church, laying a solid foundation for his future study
in France.
• During this period, I got to know the famous oil painter Zhou Xiang, Gao Qifeng and Gao
Jianfu, representatives of the Lingnan School of Painting, and got their praise and advice on
the paintings, which enhanced my confidence in painting creation. He also got acquainted
with Kang Youwei, the leader of the Reformist movement, under whose influence he
established his own creative ideas.
 • Under the influence of the Kang’s artistic concept of “disdain the Four Kings and
recommend the Song method”, he disparages the “Four Kings” which only emphasize ink
and ink and do not ask for new ideas, believing that only the realistic painting talent of Wu
Daozi in the Tang Dynasty, Yan Liben-quan, Li Cheng, Fan Kuan in the Northern Song
Dynasty and so on is profound and wonderful.
• With the support of Kang Youwei, he observes various famous monument ancient
expansion, focusing on copying “Jing Shi Yu” “Cuan Longyan Monument” “Zhang
Chonglong Monument” “Stone Door Ming”, deep north monument true essence,
calligraphy to grow.
• After returning from Japan, Xu Beihong was hired as the tutor of the Painting Research Institute
of Peking University. During his stay in Beijing, he got to know CAI Yuanpei, Chen Shizeng, Mei
Lanfang and Lu Xun and other famous people successively.
• Deeply influenced by the trend of thought of the New Culture Movement, he established the
thought of democracy and science.

During Study Abroad

• In 1919, he went to France to study and was admitted to the National School of Fine Arts in Paris
to learn oil painting and drawing.
• He also traveled to Western European countries to observe and study Western art.
• Funded by the Beiyang government, Xu Beihong, 24, went to France to study painting. At the
beginning of his visit to Europe, he visited the British Museum, the National Gallery, the
exhibition of the Royal Academy in the United Kingdom and the Louvre Museum in France,
where he saw a large number of outstanding works from the Renaissance period.
• Xu Beihong felt that his past Chinese paintings were “not fine but lost, unable to move the rope,
like a runaway horse difficult to control.” Therefore, he studied painting assiduously, and was
admitted to the Paris School of Fine Arts, taught by Monsieur Flamenger, began to receive
formal Western painting education.
• Flamenger was good at historical figure painting, and his paintings paid more attention to the
harmonious matching and mutual contrast of colors than the depiction of details, which had a
huge influence on the formation of Xu Beihong's oil painting style in the future.
• Xu Beihong never gets tired of training in the basic skills of western painting.
• He studies in the School of Fine Arts in Paris in the morning, and goes to the Institute of Lyon in
Syria in the afternoon to draw models. Sometimes he also finds time to attend various
exhibitions.
• During this period, he had the honor to know the famous painter Coro’s disciple art master Da
Yang. Every Sunday, he brought his paintings to Da Yang’s studio for advice. Da Yang’s artistic
thoughts of “don’t admire fashion, don’t be satisfied with being young” and focusing on silent
painting had a great influence on him, which made him not follow the increasingly prosperous
modern painting style in France at that time, but firmly study the academic art since the
Renaissance in Europe. While inheriting the rigorous modeling characteristics of classical art, he
mastered the skilled painting skills.
• After studying abroad for four years, Xu Beihong’s painting level has reached the level of
European artists of the same period, his oil painting “Old Woman” was selected for the French
National Art Exhibition (Salon).
Return of technology integration

• Xu Beihong returned to China at the age of 32 and began to devote himself to art education in
China to develop his art career.
• He participated in the “Southern Society” organized by Tian Han and Ouyang Yuqian and actively
advocated the “Southern spirit of seeking truth before seeking beauty and goodness”.
• One after another, he created large paintings based on history or ancient fables. These paintings
use the past as a metaphor for the present, from which the viewer can strongly feel the artist’s
sincere love for the motherland and the people.
• In 1931, when the Japanese invasion intensified and the nation was in danger, Xu Beihong
created the traditional Chinese painting “Jiufang Gao”, which hoped the country would attach
importance to and recruit talents. In 1939, he created Portrait of Miss Jenny, one of Xu
Beihong’s most famous oil portraits, to support the war of resistance in China.
• In 1940, he completed the traditional Chinese painting “Yu Gong Removing Mountains”, which
praised the Chinese people for their perseverance and indomitancy in winning the final victory
against Japanese aggression.
• In addition, he also created realistic themes such as Ba People Collecting Water, Poor Women of
Ba, landscape themes such as Li Jiang Chunyu and Tianhui Mountain, as well as a large number
of portraits of people and animal themes.
•
• After the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, Xu Beihong was in charge of
government affairs and administrative work at the same time, he still kept on writing,
enthusiastically describing the new people in the construction of new China, new things, new
look.
• He painted portraits of battle heroes, experienced life in Shandong Dao Shu Whole Yishui
Project site, painted portraits of model workers and migrant workers, and collected every bit of
material reflecting the construction of New China. Unfortunately, all this artistic activity came to
an abrupt end when the artist died prematurely.
Running horses :

According to the preface and postscript of “Running Horses”, it was made in the autumn of 1941 during
the second Battle of Changsha. At that time, the war of Resistance against Japan was in the phase of
power stalemate between the enemy and us. The Japanese wanted to completely defeat China before
the Pacific War and make the Kuomintang government subjugate itself, so they tried their best to
repeatedly launch the Changsha battle in an attempt to break through Chongqing. The Chinese were
defeated in the second battle and Changsha was occupied by the Japanese. Is Malaysia Penang Island
held art exhibition fundraising Xu Beihong heard the national disaster, anxious, he painted the night
“running horse map” to express their feelings of worry. With a few strokes of the pen, the author has
built the horse into shape and strength. The author uses thick ink to show the thickness of the mane,
and uses light ink brush to sweep it out of the sky. In terms of techniques, the painter takes Chinese ink
painting as the main expression technique, and uses Western perspective and anatomy methods. With
vigorous and powerful brush and vivid ink, he vividly depicts the valiant and heroic posture of the horse.
According to the shape and structure of the horse, the author carried out the dye, the color of the ink is
fine, which not only shows the shape of the horse, but also does not affect the charm of the ink.
“Running Horse” adopts the Western painting of body and surface, light and dark block modeling
method, while absorbing the traditional boneless method, combined with line drawing techniques. Xu
Beihong sketched the horse’s head, neck, chest, legs and other big turning points with deep ink, and
swept out the mane and tail with a dry brush, so that the changes of shade and wetness were natural.
The horse’s head, chest, hooves and buttocks are left blank, with a strong light and shadow effect. In the
shadow of the abdomen, the ink is light, showing a soft and elastic texture.
The portrait of Miss Jenny :

The portrait of Miss Jenny is Xu Beihong in order to support the domestic Anti-Japanese War in
the Nanyang charity sale fundraising works. The woman in the painting, Miss Jenny, was
originally from Guangdong and was a socialite of Sin Chew (Singapore) at that time. The portrait
was commissioned by Xu Beihong by her boyfriend, the then Belgian vice consul in Singapore,
Brangard. After the painting was completed, it was praised by the public. Branka was so
impressed by Xu Beihong’s artistic talent that he held a grand unveiling ceremony for the
painting. Miss Jennie herself was also a fan of the painting, and she generously donated money
to save the country after the painting was completed, which was also known at the time. The
painting was paid S $40,000, which was the most paid painting in the Nanyang collection at that
time (a total of more than S $111,000). Xu Beihong himself was also very satisfied with the
painting, and specially asked the photographer to take a photo of him with the painting, leaving
it as a precious memorial, which later became the cover of the book “Beihong in Sin Zhou”.

The field horizontal five hundred men:

The field horizontal five hundred men depicted is shi-ji field during the biographies of the
peasant uprising leader in field horizontal after liu bang proclaimed himself, will go to luoyang,
his loyal 500 soldiers to see him off.

The scene in which Yokohiro bids farewell to 500 strong men is chosen to highlight the
unyielding passion. Dressed in a red robe, Yokohiro stood tall and upright, his face solemnly bid
farewell to the island’s strong men. His eyes shone with solemn, resolute, confident and deadly
light. The elderly with white hair are silent and the elderly are crying with their faces hidden.
More warriors in the distance were angry and opposed to his departure. ZhuZhang a lame old
man, the right hand, left hand stretch, corners of the mouth nie ru, eye midstream shows
coming, like to field to the final cross. The strong man with the sword seems to grab the sword
with both hands, and the helpless and sad eyes look out of the picture. They seem to feel that
this is the last departure. In the lower right corner of Yokohiro’s profile picture, a young woman
and an old woman hold a young child and gaze at Yokohiro.
The Wounded Lion

It was created in 1938, when the Japanese invaders occupied more than half of China, and the
land was lost and the lives were destroyed. Xu Beihong was bitterly resentful. His picture of a
wounded lion, looking back, has infinite meaning. He inscribed on the painting: “The country is
sad for Kong Keung and Mr. Linruo, who were visiting Chongqing for Yi, wrote this story to
express their feelings.” It shows the author’s thoughts when he is worried about patriotism.
This painting is a combination of realism and romanticism. China is known as the “sleeping lion”
of the East. Since the Japanese imperialists occupied most of the land in northeast China, the
“sleeping lion” has become a wounded lion. The glowering wounded lion, ready to fight and
struggle in his unbearable look, contains strength and strength.
“Yu Gong Moving Mountains”

When dealing with this painting, Xu Beihong focuses on conveying the determination and
perseverance of an ancient nation with grand momentum and breathtaking strength. In terms
of space layout, he made dozens of sketches and repeated revisions, finally opening the picture
from right to left, front to back. At the right end of the picture are several tall, burly men in the
prime of life, with rakes in hand, pounding the black earth. Its posture and expression are
different, or the eyes, or Shouting, or squatting, or the abdomen, but the dynamic are all stored
up and ready to unleash, with the potential of thunder and lightning. This group of curved
figures occupy most of the space of the picture. The figures stand up above the sky and have a
sense of breaking the picture. According to the need of composition, the figures on the left side
of the picture are arranged loosely. The figures may be high or low, and the trees are placed in
the middle. A basket of big men and old men facing away from the audience to strengthen the
depth of space, and to open the distance between the right half of the tension and the writer,
so that the right half is the front line and the left half is the rear feeling. The old man seems to
be expressing his wishes and confidence to the next generation and painting a beautiful picture
of the future. This group of characters appear natural and lifelike, the posture is vivid and free.
LIN FENGMIAN:

Born in a poor peasant family. My father Bourne, also a stonemason, works on song style
inscriptions.

• Fengmian young, that is, love painting, middle school, its work is often praised by the
teacher. After graduating from Meizhou Middle School in 1917, he was admitted to the
Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts. In 1918, he went to France for a work-study program.
• In 1920, he entered the National Academy of Fine Arts in DIJON, France. Soon he
transferred to the National Academy of Fine Arts in Paris and studied fine art in the
major museums in Paris.
• In 1925, he participated in the International Art Deco Exhibition in Paris. That winter, he
returned to China and served as president, dean and director of Western Painting
Department of National Peiping Art Academy.
• In the spring of 1926, he held a solo exhibition in Beijing Art College. In 1927, he
became chairman of the National Committee for Art Education.
• In 1928, he founded Hangzhou Xihu National Academy of Arts and served as its
president. The following year, the organization of “Apollos”, the publication of
“Apollos” magazine. 1931 Art education investigation group went to Japan
• . During the Anti-Japanese War, he taught in Chongqing National Art School. After the
victory of the Anti-Japanese War, he taught at the West Lake National Art Institute in
Hangzhou.
• After the founding of the People’s Republic of China, he was the vice chairman of the
Shanghai Artists Association and a member of the Shanghai Political Consultative
Conference.
• He settled in Hong Kong in 1977. He has held individual exhibitions in Paris, France,
Japan and Taipei, China.
• In 1989, when Meizhou Hakka Association was founded, more than 80 of its works
since the 1970s were exhibited in Meizhou Great Hall.
• Mr. Lin Fengmian is a great master of Chinese art circle in the 20th century and an
important founder of Chinese modern art education.
• He is known as the pioneer of Chinese modern art. He is the advocate, pioneer and
most important representative of the artistic ideal of “integration of Chinese and
Western” and advocates the educational thought of “inclusiveness and academic
freedom”.
• When he was the first president of the National Academy of Art (the predecessor of
the China Academy of Art), he cultivated a large number of famous artists, such as Li
Keran, Wu Guanzhong, Wang Chaowen, Ai Qing, Zhao Wuji, Zhao Chunxiang and Zhu
Dequn.
• At the same time, he was also one of the first painters to carry out the reform of
Chinese painting, exploring the advantages and beauty of oil painting and Chinese
painting.
• His works have a great influence on modern Chinese painting art, known as the “father
of modern Chinese painting art”. He has published a collection of essays “On Art” and a
picture album “Complete Works of Lin Fengmian”.
• Lin Fengmian devoted his life to art education and painting. During his stay in France,
he studied Western painting carefully and integrated into Chinese culture. He created
many oil paintings with anti-feudal themes.
• The acclaimed works Humanity and Pain are representative works of this period. After
returning to China, he also studied traditional Chinese paintings, such as water in
Tangshan, Sui, Dunhuang grotto murals, Song Dynasty porcelain, Han Dynasty stone
carvings, Warring States lacquer, Republic of China New Year wood-block paintings,
shadow puppets and so on. In addition, he studied Chinese literature, poetry and music
to enrich his artistic quality.
• In creation, he respected the excellent tradition of Chinese and foreign painting and
folk art, but strongly opposed to following the tradition of predecessors. It is advocated
that Eastern and Western art should communicate with each other, learn from each
other and develop new Chinese art based on their own national culture. His works
pursue artistic conception, pay attention to charm, skills, and emphasize the unity of
authenticity and decoration.
• The composition is often airtight, but not cramped. The use of bright colors, strong
shows soft, simple contains rich, both opposite and unified, forming its own unique
style. Wen Wei Po, a Hong Kong newspaper, reported on August 14, 1991 that Lin
Fengmian’s works “combine Chinese and Western cultural traditions and create his own
unique style of painting, which is well-known in the international art circle.” His
representative works include Heron.
• Died in Hong Kong on 12 August 1991 at the age of 91. His works such as A New Theory
of Chinese Painting and Lin Fengmian’s Collection of Paintings have been handed down
to the world.

• “Lotus Lamp” is also known as “saving Mother by chopping mountains”

• Three Mother to lotus lamp drive bad miasma, withdraw poison fog, rescue creatures,
and Caoze doctor Liu Yanchang like-minded, mutual admiration, became a couple, son
aloes. Erlang Shen, the elder brother of the Holy Mother, was angry with her sister Sifan
for her misbehaving.
• On the occasion of celebrating the one hundred days of Agarwood, he ordered the dog
to steal the lotus lamp and put the Holy Mother under the Mangdang Mountain. A real
person rescued Aloes, brought her up, taught her martial arts, and gave her a magic
axe. Fifteen years later, Aloes went to Mount Mangdang to save his mother as a priest
on the temple of Erang. As a result, Aloes was defeated by the goddess Erdang, and
forced the Mother to be rescued by slicing Mount Mangdang.
• Lin liked to paint the scene of aloes saving his mother, which may have something to do
with his mother’s misfortune when he was young and his desire to save her.
• About her mother, Lin Fengmian in his 1987 book “Memories of the mother’s
handwriting” introduced: “The mother is far from the White House city of mountain
people, surname Que (lack), name sub belt, medium stature, solid and durable
character, probably honest and naive, because some people said she was stupid. She
has a beautiful face and double eyelids. My grandfather and father both have single
eyelids, like the orthodox Han people in the north. My mother is probably a mixed
offspring of the Han people living in the mountains and the local Miaoyao people…”
• When Lin Fengmian was just born, he was thin and small due to malnutrition.
• The family members suggested throwing the child away, thinking that even if he stayed,
he could not be raised alive. But the mother was reluctant to bear the child and insisted
on keeping Lin Fengmian to raise. His mother gave Lin Fengmian a second life.
• In his childhood memories, his mother was gentle, kind and hardworking. However,
Lin's father and grandmother were not kind to Lin's mother. They always made her
work all day long and did not give her half a moment to rest. In this unhappy loveless
marriage, the mother had an affair with a young man who dyed cloth in the village,
which was known by the clansmen and was severely punished by the rules of the clan.
The mother was paraded around the village with ropes, beaten with sticks, bitten by
ants, and even poured fire water (gasoline) on her body to burn her.
• Later, Lin Fengmian wrote in his memoir: "I was locked in the house and not allowed to
come out. I didn't know anything at that time and I didn't see these tragedies. I
suddenly had a feeling at home and became angry and crazy. I saw the image of my
mother dropping her head in the distance.
• A lot of people held me up, grabbed my knife and kept me away from my mother. I
cried and screamed and they carried me home." Since then, only seven years old Lin
Fengmian and mother never meet.
Humanity (1927)

Folk (1926)
Pain, 1929

In the trilogy, “Humanity” is earlier in the era, and it is natural for Lin Fengmian to create critical works
at that time when people were killing everywhere. However, Lin Fengmian did not criticize from the
standpoint of communist revolution, but more humanitarianism. Lin Fengmian also talked about this
memory, “The motive of this painting is that when I went from Beijing to Nanjing, I kept seeing and
hearing the news of murder. As a young man of 26 or 17, my thoughts at that time were mainly: What
should China do?” He also fiercely criticized warlord politics in his 1927 book “Informing the National Art
Community” : “Poor Chinese! After the imperialists extended their hands on our territory, the warlords
took their poison from the imperialists. They exchanged the blood of their compatriots for the poison
guns of the imperialists, and attacked our small people with their cruel and selfish poison ambitions…” It
can be seen that Lin Fengmian made “Humanity” with an artist’s conscience and sense of justice to
stand up and protest against the “murderers” of the authorities.

In the horizontal composition of “Humanity,” there are victims lying on the floor. The whole picture is
shrouded in shadow, the only female body shining bright, her face beautiful, but permanently asleep.
Lin Wenzheng once wrote an introduction, “Humanity is not about the pain of being destroyed by
nature, but directly about the vicious killing of human beings.”

Later he created Pain, similar to Humanity in subject matter, theme and expression, but larger in size
and with more characters. The horizontal composition, packed with suffering human body, “from the
front, back, standing, leaning, leaning, side, according to various angles, showing a variety of intense
inner pain. The color is mainly gray and black, and some women’s bodies are green.” Apparently, he
became more and more sympathetic to the tyranny of China at that time, until the death of his fellow
countryman and friend Xiong Junrui, a martyr, completely triggered the “switch” of pain in Lin
Fengmian’s heart. “I felt so much pain that I painted ‘Pain,’ which is a scene of killing people.” In Pain,
there is not only the shadow of Xiong Junrui, but also the shadow of his mother. Lin Fengmian in this
painting to vent the heart accumulated deep painful feelings. If “Humanity” is only about the anger and
disclosure of the inhuman events seen, “The Pain of Human” is a further disclosure of the artist’s pain
and complaint from the bottom of his heart.
Sorrow. (1934)

After Chiang Kai-shek’s face to face criticism of Pain in 1932, Lin Fengmian did not dare to paint this kind
of subject. However, we can find that his Sorrow was created in 1934, which roughly continues the spirit
and style of Pain. But the general trend is to gradually turn to color ink painting, to explore the form
with the color of escapism. This shows that although Lin Fengmian was warned by the highest
authorities, but the heart is still angered by such events, only can not stop the strong desire to create.

On the left of the painting is a man in the prime of life, holding a dead, scrawny teenager in his hands,
while on the right are two grieving men carrying the corpse of a naked woman on their shoulders. The
tone is heavy, and the figure is drawn out with the thick outline. The sense of the stagnant force makes
people feel that the painter has a kind of anger in the sadness.

• In terms of artistic theory and practice, Xu Beihong and Lin Fengmian have completely different
artistic views and practices. When we go to see his works of art, we will also feel completely
different styles and appearances.
• Xu Beihong’s art works are always related to The Times and the nation. It is a grand narrative. In
his art works, we can often see a wave of compassion, striving and even some passionate
national emotions.
• His painting themes were often based on current facts, and he was able to make bold creation
and innovation according to current affairs and social needs at that time, so his works were
recognized by the mainstream society at that time.
• However, Lin Fengmian is a maverick. He is almost free from the interference of external politics
and the discourse power of the mainstream society. He believes that art and politics should be
completely separated, not necessarily combined together, and that personal subjective political
 emotions and emotions should not be mixed in the process of artistic creation. For example, his
paintings during the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression are completely the aesthetic
taste of some literati. The subject matter is also taken from the traditional mountain flowers,
vegetables and fruits, ladies in ancient costumes, representing a model of joy, harmony and
beauty. It is hard for you to imagine that these paintings were made by him hiding from guns
and looking at the devastation during the war. It is like an arcadian, depicting a wonderful
fairyland for people and representing the pursuit of the best values in human nature.
• It can be said that Lin Fengmian and Xu Beihong have their own artistic creations, but Lin
Fengmian’s artistic creations are obviously superior to Xu Beihong’s in terms of modernity.
• In terms of ethnic tradition, Lin Fengmian also has unique advantages. His aesthetic is a kind of
traditional Oriental elegance, at the same time with Western realistic spirit, it can be said that
Lin Fengmian’s art can surpass Xu Beihong and become the mainstream of artistic aesthetic
trend of thought
• . However, in the context of the discourse in modern times where salvation prevails over
enlightenment, the artistic practice of inheriting the aesthetic paradigm of traditional Chinese
culture represented by Lin Fengmian, as well as the artistic practice of integrating the eastern
aesthetic taste with the strengths of Western painting, inevitably gives way to the realistic
creation that reflects social reality and caters to the mainstream discourse power.