向塞尚致敬:一个展览如何呈现中国绘画的现代性?

曹吉冈 《白色U形》 175×250cm 亞麻布坦培拉 2023

陈峰 《正午时分》 170×170cm 亚麻布 2012

关晶晶 《借象·烟江叠嶂图-18》 100×140cm 布面丙烯 2024

井士剑 《西湖汲水》 150×150cm 布面油画

邱世华 《无题》 24×55cm 纸上油画 1998

王非 《消夏图》 123×265cm 纸本水墨 2024

王曜 《老小》 188×250cm 布面丙烯 2025

王长明 《阿波罗计划-千里江山图》 53×220cm

Why hold a contemporary painting exhibition related to Cézanne at Ningbo Museum of Art? The reasons are twofold:

Firstly, there's the "immediate reason," the direct inspiration—Ningbo Museum of Art possesses two works by Cézanne—a remarkable achievement, possibly unique to public art museums in China, which requires an academic response as a tribute to the museum and a display to the public. Secondly, there's the "remote reason," as Cézanne is the father of modern art. Every new development in painting resonates with him from afar. If contemporary Chinese painting aspires to gain proper global recognition, it must, while intrinsically connecting with its own great tradition, also draw upon Cézanne's work to unlock potential resources for a new narrative of modernity.

The principles and value of this new narrative lie in: firstly, analyzing the history of Western modern painting related to Cézanne to uncover unresolved dilemmas in his work; secondly, tracing the process of learning from Cézanne in the history of modern Chinese painting, discussing its gains and losses; and thirdly, using the works in this exhibition as examples, demonstrating how Chinese painters can engage in direct or indirect dialogue with Cézanne, thereby discussing the potential contributions of Chinese painting. If the works in this exhibition can simultaneously embody these three academic values, they will leave an epoch-making mark and possess future inspiration.

For contemporary Chinese painting to achieve a global presence, it must establish an intrinsic relationship with Cézanne. If we begin anew with Cézanne, then where exactly does the connection between contemporary Chinese art and Cézanne lie? Since Cézanne is the starting point of modern painting, if contemporary Chinese painting is to establish a new lineage, or even to begin anew, where exactly is the point of intersection, the starting point for this renewed beginning, between Chinese painting and Cézanne's work? What are the specific points of connection? This is a crucial question that art criticism and cross-cultural dialogue must confront and clarify! Therefore, the core issue of this academic exhibition is: to confront the "unfinished Cézanne" and discover his other possibilities! We attempt to examine, starting with various explorations in Cézanne's later paintings, whether Chinese painters, situated within the context of modernity, have responded to those untapped possibilities.

This exhibition, through the curator's selection of representative contemporary Chinese artists and their works, engages in a dialogue with Cézanne's late period on several fronts: for example, the relationship between Cézanne's transitions between oil and watercolor in his later years; how, while gaining a sense of abstraction through repeated sketches of natural landscapes, it is possible to return to the richness of nature's own changes, and even to the secrets hidden within nature itself; and how to address the most fundamental aesthetic question of modernity: how to simultaneously convey "eternity within impermanence" and "the poetry of history"—a dual relationship that remains unresolved in Western modern painting. Chinese painting, however, combines seemingly opposing forces from Western culture—such as the fusion of water and oil textures, the interplay of solidity and void, the subtle convergence of abstraction and nature, the delicate transformation between sketching and creation, the paradoxical combination of concept and touch, and the mutual permeation of technique and nature—to achieve a parallel yet subtle synthesis of nature and art. Through the abstract traces, it rediscovers the historical poetry of its cultural matrix, endowing it with eternal stillness and endless allusions.

The value of modern aesthetics embodied in Chinese painting lies in its ability to activate the iconographic memory and ethereal poetic realm of its cultural matrix through the fusion of oil and water techniques, reconstructing a new "distant" perspective to accommodate Western spatial geometric thinking, preserving a spiritual connection with nature, constructing historical depth within the painting, and witnessing how painting's salvation of memory stems from a love of nature.

We gain the correct perspective on art from Cézanne, who in turn gained poetic historical depth from the East. The mystery of nature is protected and opened up, and natural beauty is elegantly safeguarded in the AI era.

Xia Kejun

（Philosopher, Critic, Curator）