The Enviable Zhang Lanjun

　　professor, China Central Academy of Fine Arts 

　　Last year Zhang Lanjun invited me to his home to enjoy his new works----oil and watercolor paintings. They didn strike me as "entirely new"; perhaps my familiarity with his copperplate engravings gave me such a dj-vu experience and a feeling of closeness. Whoever sees his engravings feels on the tableau the rich flavor permeating, a "flavor" akin to the one in traditional Chinese landscape paintings, a pure "flavor". Though pure in "flavor", they are distinctive in vocabulary from the traditional Chinese landscape paintings. Only can he who is emotionally attached to and intellectually conscious of the Chinese culture understand aesthetically the subtle implication of "flavor". Whatever the genre, he paints out of his heart, so "pregnant" that he has to employ different genres to express himself. 

　　All things in the universe are eventually subject to balance, and he is a good hand at acquiring balance: to seek imbalance out of balance and balance out of imbalance. This may have something to do with his probing mind: he is always inquiring, always searching for an answer. 

　　Brought up at a "place of rivers and bridges"----the riverside land south of the Yangtze, he shows an equal love for "the sunset on the Yellow River" and "solitary beacon above the boundless desert"----the vast area beyond the Great Wall. This is the natural coexistence of "conflict (the gentle and the bold)" in his mind: he pushes away the gentler part of his self and unfetters his bold part through high mountains and long rivers; he retains a "deep valley (a serene state of mind)" inside in the clamor of city life; there lurks in the lyrical lento the whistling wind. He is looking for various "elements" for artistic nourishment and character cultivation. Admiring ancient paintings and reciting classic poems naturally enable one to feel with such culturally loaded words as "will and spirit", "frame of mind", "artistic ambience", and "temperament" (those subtle words hard for us to interpret, harder to create or imitate). Still, one is far away from greater artistic attainments, if, unlike Zhang Lanjun, unable to go through an experience of "transposition". 

　　He has created a unique style of abstraction with Chinese characteristics as a vehicle for the expression of what he feels and anticipates. With such a "key" to unlock the mystery of nature and human soul, he has reached an enviable artistic height others strive for, namely, the great freedom of expression.