As an oil painting artist, Liu Yun gained fame in the mid-80s of last century. It is not limited to the selection and getting awards in the national exhibition. From the academic perspective, what is more important is that he forms a kind of personal characteristic which comes from his own disposition and returns to the times. It is rather difficult to achieve this fruit. Yet it is still Liu Yun who immerses himself into the ink painting, and has an uncommon beginning. He reaches a high level soon and gains the admission and attention of the ink painting world, so he can take part in some important exhibitions of Chinese painting.
　　As for Liu Yun’s transfer from the oil painting to the ink painting, and the marvelous fruits he gains, I, as his new friend and colleague, have some thoughts on it besides the great admiration.
One
　　On how to choose the way of expressing, for us Chinese, there are only two ways: Western or Chinese. There is no need to tell which one is better, or choose one and then abandon the other. Somebody says, oil painting is the worldwide language, and ink painting is the oriental language. It is reasonable. But it is an abstract viewpoint, which deviates from the existing artists and artistic works. When we talk about art we always mention the concrete production and the artist, so the degree of grasp and creative use of the expressive way and the expressive language are the first standard of assessing an artist and his artistic creation.
　　When assessing Liu Yun’s ink painting, the first thing we want to require is that what inner motive makes him transfer from the world language to the oriental language (of course Liu Yun doesn’t mean to give up the oil painting, at least not yet). Perhaps some reviewers think that Liu has returned to the tradition, but according to my understanding of Liu and my comprehension of his ink painting creations, I conclude that first it is a free choice of the expressive way, and second it is a kind of inner cultural consciousness, and this consciousness has nothing to do with nationalism or ideology.
　　The best aesthetic value of Chinese ink painting art (with literati painting as its orthodox type) which thrived after Song and Yuan Dynasty lies in the integration of its vivid and changeable structure with the Xuan paper (the rice paper). It’s the most precious legacy of the traditional Chinese painting. Its expressive system should be the common wealth of the human being. It is such an artistic language which corresponds to the western painting language yet has its own independent meaning. Its expressive force and unique charm are irreplaceable to the western painting language.
　　The charm of the ink painting first lies in its expressive process. It is the blending of the anima and mental state of the expressive main body (the artist) and the expression itself. The form of ink painting bears many factors of life and spirit. On the other hand, the ink painting is the kind of art which can enable the artist to gain the most freedom of form and spirit in the process of expression. The obtainment of this kind of freedom is insisted on and strengthened by the artist under the pressure of rationalism (Schiller calls it as rational tyranny). It can be said that this plane painting form best manifests the artistic proposition of “the meaningful form”.
　　When facing the large charge of freedom and processing of the ink painting, many oil painting artists will have a kind of envious feeling, and naturally they will feel some obstruction in the expression of the oil painting.
　　As for its spiritual and cultural aspects, ink painting well displays the soul of Chinese classical philosophy as “chaos”, “complementary union of Yin and Yang”, “correspondence between Heaven and Human”, and so on. From this, ink painting contains the color of oriental occultism, and also deepens its artistic charm.
　　In many of my talks with Liu Yun, we often refer to the above points, so I have no astonishment but sigh with emotion on his exploration of ink painting and his achievement.
Two
　　The difficulties, depth, and height of the ink painting mainly lie in the use of brush and ink.
　　Only by this, there was the heated reencounter of the value of brush and ink between Wu Guanzhong and Zhang Ding in their own domains several years ago.
　　Observing the painting history after the Song and the Yuan Dynasty, appreciating the masterpieces, ‘the issue of brush and ink’ can be taken as the most important measure of artistic appreciation and criticism. And too much commentary takes the standard of the tradition and the masters. By doing so, there will be some unexpected ‘set rules’ in brush and ink. Undoubtedly it is a distortion of artistic history and artistic criticism, and it is an overflow of conservatism in Chinese cultural history (some commenters satirize it as fundamentalism).
　　In fact, there always exist the dual methods in the way of ink painting, or how to adopt brush and ink: the one is “the traditional method”, and the other is “individual method”. Where does this “individual method” derive? It is mainly from “imitating the nature”. Most of the initiating masters in the artistic history will break the tradition and turn to the nature. Here is a Chinese saying “seeking integrity from the outside after the corruption of courtesy”. The outside here refers to the nature. There is a close and convincing example of Qi Baishi. The determining reason why he can become an initiator of Chinese expressive painting of the twentieth century doesn’t lie in brush and ink (certainly he has the first class ink wash ability) but in his imitating of nature, that is, putting his emotional resources into the artistic creation. Therefore the old-fashioned people of that time would scold him as a “wild fox”.
　　Obviously the main body of Liu Yun’s ink wash is not from the tradition. Although he has digestion and consultation of the tradition, his structure of ink wash mainly comes from two ways: the one is nature and sensibility (imitating the nature), the other is the manifestation of the individual life (The style is the man). As for “nature and sensibility”, Liu’s ink wash may come from his feeling of oil painting. In other words, it is the logical result of his lasting artistic practice (of oil painting). From the philosophical sense, human being’s feeling is comprised of functional feeling, experiential feeling and spiritual feeling. The authentic artistic focus, no matter occidental or oriental, comes from these three levels of feelings. But the difference of the focus of occidental and oriental arts lies in the sequence of the three feelings. The oriental focus is spiritual feelingśexperiential feelingśfunctional feeling, while the occidental focus is just the opposite, that is, functional feelingśexperiential feelingśspiritual feeling. The different feeling styles determine a sequence of ideology and rules of oriental and occidental arts. And the crises of these two arts are exactly caused by the unbalance of the focus style.
　　Liu Yun who starts as an oil painting artist integrates the two feeling styles of the orient and the occident so as to make his feeling quality (feelism is a close relative of Aesthetik) reach the state of conformity, and so the focus of “nature and sensibility” will deeply determine the ideology of the main body artist. By externalizing this kind of ideology, the brush and ink will have very strong life force.
　　As an artist, Liu Yun is quite true to himself and shows his own disposition. He has such aptitude as to blend his personality and human nature naturally into his expressive language, and it can be seen from his oil painting. This is the second point of the source of Liu’s brush and ink, that is, the externalization of individual life (The style is the man).
　　This is how Liu Yun’s brush and ink come into being. The main academic characteristic of his brush and ink is of ‘personal style’, but this personal style also abides by some principles of ink painting, so from this aspect, Liu’s brush and ink also have something to do with the tradition.
　　However, from the academic classification, Liu’s ink painting should be labelled as modern ink painting.
Three
　　In Wang Wei’s “Landscape Rhyme”, he says “in the painting styles, ink painting is the best; starts from the natural disposition, and makes achievement from nature.” Here what Wang refers to is landscape ink painting. He thinks the landscape painting is of very high aesthetic level. Undoubtedly, in the Chinese painting history, landscape painting reaches the highest level.
　　Although, as an oil painting artist, he mainly deals with humans, yet in his figure painting, the scenery is also very outstanding, and even it can be said that the realization of the theme of his figure mainly attributes to his construction of the landscape. Especially when representing the Dongting Lake, it seems that the figures in his picture only exist for the scenery, and humans are the spirit of nature. When pointing out his nature complex in his artistic spirit, we can find the unconscious root of his landscape ink painting, that is, the nature motif.
　　The nature motif is always the deepest root of Liu Yun’s artistic inspiration. No matter it is the Dongting Lake theme of his oil painting or nowadays landscape ink painting, the nature motif is always his close background. Because of the existence of this motif, Liu’s landscape painting has a kind of latent divine and spiritual existence, so it has a unique aesthetic quality—quiet and mysterious.
　　It will definitely make Liu Yun’s theme cross with the modern spiritual culture. Liu’s landscape ink painting doesn’t bring the common aesthetic sentiment as beauty and goodliness, but it will produce aesthetic contemplation and spiritual transcendence. He tries to lead people to adjust the relationship of human and nature during the aesthetic process. It enables people to transcend the phenomenon and get back the intimacy with nature—the root of feeling.
　　There are still more to talk about on the issues of painting style, symbol, and structure of Liu Yun’s ink painting, but they belong to the category of form. The main purpose of this article is to illustrate the spiritual rules of Liu Yun’s art so as to enable the painter notice his spiritual pivot clearly and then make he himself stand on a higher exploring and developing level.
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　(Beijing, August, 2005)
　　Deng Pingxiang: Vice-chairman of Hunan Artists’ Association, Director of the Theoretical Study Department of the Calligraphy and Painting Academy of Hunan Province