It is a great honor for us to have the opportunity to invite Mr.Leng Jun to visit our university again! Leng Jun was the president of Wuhan Academy of Fine Arts and vice-chairman of Hubei Provincial Federation of Literary and Art Circles. His works won the Silver Award of the 1993 China Oil Painting Annual Exhibition, the Artwork Award of the 2nd China Oil Painting Exhibition in 1994, the Gold Award of the 3rd China Oil Painting Annual Exhibition in 1995, and the Gold Award of the 9th National Art Exhibition in 1999. Leng Jun's oil paintings are unique in today's Chinese painting circles with their unique ideas and extraordinary artistic skills. His cutting-in of contemporary themes and content creates a comprehensive spiritual tension for the viewers, and their hearts are strongly shaken. He is known as the number one master of Chinese hyper-realism. At the request of the audience, I recorded the perception of Leng Jun's oil painting sketch demonstration as a first-hand information for your reference.
——Cong Zhiyuan, Professor and Director of the Center for Chinese Art at William Paterson University.
On March 6th, Chinese super-realist artist Leng Jun's oil painting demonstration was held at William Paterson University (WP) as scheduled. The event is co-hosted by Center for Chinese Art, Department of Arts at William Paterson University and Rodin International Artists Foundation. In addition to the teachers and students at the school, the audience also included "Leng Jun fans" from communities in Manhattan, Long Island, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia and New Jersey, as well as teachers and students from Glen Ridge High School specially organized to come. Many spectators have been waiting in the building since 9:00 a.m., and some "Iron fans" participated in the 7-hour demonstration and observation. The 60 seats in the studio were full, and the six demonstrations were full. At most, there were more than 30 seats, and the audience exceeded 400 person-times.
When we entered at 9:30 am, the models and audience were already waiting. When I saw Nadine's outfit, I felt at ease: a pink-green sweater, a gray coat, a dark green velvet dress, and dark brown leather boots. Tasteful, harmonious and very professional. With his rich experience, Mr.Leng Jun can get the pose, color and light of the model in a few minutes.
At 10:00, everyone took their seats, and I gave a brief introduction on the schedule and requirements of the demonstration. The demonstration was divided into 6 sessions, 3 hours in the morning and 3 hours in the afternoon, with a 15-minute break every 45 minutes, and a one-hour lunch break. After the demonstration in the afternoon, the artist and the audience interacted with each other for Q&A. Due to the large number of registrants, we required that the queuing be re-entered during each break to ensure that the audience could participate in the observation. I neither made any more introductions about Mr.Leng Jun, nor did I invite the school leaders to give a speech. Everything is low-key, Keep it simple. Our purpose is to create a better space-time atmosphere for artists, so that artists can perform normally, and let the audience see a demonstration of a real Master of Art, and then the demonstration of Leng Jun's oil painting begins.
Watching Mr. Leng Jun's demonstration is like enjoying a feast of art, rich and hearty. Before you sit still, the big brush has already covered a whole piece, you must write, and the brush is useful; his color matching is like picking something out of a bag, without thinking, and harmoniously in place. What you think of, he has done. When you think about how to paint, he has already painted. It is always unexpected and amazing. This reminds me of Zhuangzi's Paodingjieniu, all techniques, art, and principles are all integrated together, which can be described as "the law of the impossible, but the ultimate law." The time for the first demonstration is coming soon, not only the models have to rest, the first batch of students will withdraw, and the second batch of students will come in. I saw that Mr. Leng was in full swing, so he stopped reluctantly. He only spent 40 minutes to lay out the composition of the picture, the main color blocks and the background. He spent 45 minutes in the second scene, which was the most critical and concentrated stage. He took the upper end of an oil paintbrush that looked slightly larger than ordinary zero, and swiped a small with a small head portrait, the audience was silent. Everyone held their breaths and watched him deeply portray the characters' faces. At this time, he had completely entered the state of ecstasy. When the second round ended, his confident and successful smile had faintly surfaced on his face. Of course, during the break, I was also worried that his excessive interaction with fans would distract him, so I asked my assistant Lily to do some proper control. In the third scene, Mr. Leng Jun completed the further deepening of the character image, especially the pink and green turtleneck on the hair and neck, as well as the gray coat and clothing pattern. People feel the joy and inner rhythm in his paintings. When it was time for lunch break, I saw Mr. Leng dipped in the adjusted color and was about to paint, so I decided to procrastinate for 5 minutes. Unbelievably, in 5 minutes, he painted a large area on the right sleeve of the gray coat. This is not what people call photo-realism, but it is clearly expressive and pictorial.
The fourth session after lunch started at 2:10. Within 40 minutes, Mr. Leng Jun completed the drawing from the neck down to the knees. These include a pink and green sweater, a gray coat, a dark green velvet dress, and hair on the hands and related parts. The fifth scene started at 3:00, and he finished the dark green velvet dress and the background color for the lower body. At 3:35, Mr. Leng stopped writing and rested. At this time, he was already in sight of victory. He said there was still the bottom half of the gray coat on the right, which would be done in another 30 minutes. From 3:50 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. in the sixth session, Mr. Leng Jun finished the lower half of the gray coat, adjusted the color of the face, head, and the overall picture until it was completed.What is admirable is that just a few minutes before the end, he was decisively adding and modifying the face with a pen. I watched the few strokes he added with concern. Now he stood with a pen in his hand, full of ambition, and said easily that the painting was finished. The painting took a total of 4 hours and 10 minutes.
Then began nearly 30 minutes of questions. The audience raised a lot of questions, such as Mr. Leng Jun’s control in sketching, when he thinks the work is completed, the size of the work he generally likes, the length of creation time, the size and shape of the pen, whether he particularly favors Green and so on. Leng Jun told everyone that he has a special emotion and love for models. This kind of love is not about the beauty, ugliness, gender and age of the models, but the inspiration and passion given to him by the models to refine the expression language of his paintings. He does not pursue the similarity with the model but uses this oil painting language to express his feelings. He has no specific requirements for the size of the work, and the length of time depends on the scale of the work and the specific circumstances. For example, his representative work "Portrait-Xiao Jiang" is relatively large and took 9 months to paint. He is sure that he has complete control over his works, which include his refinement of shapes, grasp of composition, composition of colors, and use of materials. He has a complete sense of color, but he has no special preference for a certain color or green. As for people being familiar with the pink- green in "Portrait – Xiao Jiang" and the pink-green collar of the model today, this is entirely a coincidence and a natural fit of the model's dress.
I specifically asked him for his opinion on the title that people give him as the "representative of hyperrealist painters". He does not quite agree with this formulation, but there is nothing he can do about it. Critics always need to classify him into a certain doctrine and painting school. Hyperrealism and photorealism are high-level imitations pursued by using photos and fixed plane information, but he can draw inspiration from the vitality of life and refine his own oil painting language to express his feelings. How can these be equated? Leng Jun often said that "good fortune is the life of nature, and the source of the heart is the display of oneself". Isn't this the same as Zhang Zao's "learn from nature outside, and get the source of heart" in the Tang Dynasty? He said that the language of oil painting is equivalent to the brush and ink of Chinese painting, and his role models are Qi Baishi, and Wu Changshuo. In fact, Leng Jun used the theory of Chinese painting and Chinese traditional heritage to guide his oil painting path. With decades of perseverance, he explores and refines his painting style, creation composition, color composition and oil painting language of brushwork texture. He expresses his own soul at the height of aesthetic accumulation of common human genes, create your own style. This is the "Chinese Leng Jun Painting" that has so many Chinese and foreign fans and has received such wide recognition.
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