Yang Feiyun: Art’s Real Power Flows from Deep Life

Yang Feiyun: Art’s Real Power Flows from Deep Life

Yang Feiyun, one of China’s leading oil painters, delivered a striking reminder at the opening of his recent exhibition “Abundant Life” (*Feng Sheng Sheng Ming*) at the Suzhou Museum: amid today’s obsession with novelty and style, the true power of art flows from the artist’s life — from sincerity, quality, and depth of feeling. His words, excerpted here, are a quiet manifesto for serious painting.

Oil Painting: A Language Still Young in China

Painting is one of humanity’s oldest acts, and oil painting has six hundred years of history — a “full-factor” art of inexhaustible depth that has never been replaced. In China, a country of painters by nature, oil has accumulated for only about a century. In Chinese hands, Yang argues, this world language is releasing a youthful vitality; within the lineage of Chinese culture, its creative potential is only beginning. “Everything seems to have just started.”

The Old Masters on Every Road

Whether abstract or figurative, he notes, every path in painting is already walked by masters of high quality. “We cannot start a new kitchen,” he says — we inherit the road. Even if we set aside their emotions and aesthetics, we cannot bypass the sheer expressive level of oil painting’s own language. “The road of painting is very long, its charm infinite, while the road of life is short.” In total absorption — forgetting the self, losing the boundary between subject and object — a painter finds a rare fullness and happiness. “Once creation is tied to quality, one lifetime is not enough.”

Distraction and the Scarcity of Sincerity

Yang has long admired Leonardo da Vinci’s line: “Art is the action of the soul.” Today’s artists look free and active, yet inwardly they are deeply disturbed; “pure enthusiasm and undivided focus have become scarce goods.” The professional world cares more about what is new than about what is good, more about the look of style than the truth of practice. Modern people anxiously discuss modernity while losing confidence in sincere observation and honest feeling. “The real power of art flows joyfully from the depths of the artist’s life.” When style is prized over honest practice, when innovation replaces quality, when modernity outranks the eternal value of the classics — the practicing painter should wake up.

The Painter’s Foundation

Yang’s conclusion is simple and demanding: to express the aesthetic feelings and spiritual interests of the Chinese people with quality oil painting language and genuine cultural cultivation remains the very foundation of a painter’s vocation today. His own canvases — such as the 2015 portrait *Young Woman of Zhagana* — show what that looks like: quiet, luminous, built on observation and empathy rather than effect.

For collectors, Yang Feiyun’s words are a reminder of what to look for: not the loudest signature, but the work in which a life has been invested. (Based on Yang Feiyun’s speech at the “Abundant Life” exhibition opening; title added by the editor.)

If you’re considering commissioning a painting, Badou Art’s specialists are happy to guide you.

Source: https://www.cntizi.com/18745.html