At the age of 40s, temperament and character never made me aware of the shortness and impermanence of life. Instead, I've long been reveled in "young cynic", a vigorous appellation, living heatedly with full of passion.

One day, all of a sudden, a schoolmate and sister was diagnosed with advanced cancer. First off, I was stunned, since the death concept is always strange, far away and none of my business. Afterwards, during the SMS interaction with her, my mind was weighted down: the mood, the tone, the sigh with emotions to the world and the love for life expressed in her words made me suffer stimulation. To adjust her state of mind, I tried to persuade: we are both artists. The way we regard and understand life is the painting, which can adjust our moods and pacify our souls. Just pick up your brush and express your understanding and inspiration of life.

Half a year later, she told me in a tone with relief and joy: the torture from the illness gradually disappeared during the process of painting as she will forget everything when entering into the creation state, departing the world of intensity, rush and struggling, coming back to her long-lost realm of spirit and feeling peaceful and happy...

Then, there was a text message from her daughter: Mon has just passed away, bravely and peacefully... A lump came into my throat with tears blurred my eyes at once.

Later, I've read her final work for mourning as her emotions during her last hours burst out incisively: there's a kind of peace and hush under the towering and vast mountain; upright pines stand aloof and proudly through winds and rains; the color, withered and yellow but full of hope, is the expectation for a wonderful life. Some folk houses located front and back among the mountain indicate the land of idyllic beauty in her minds... In such a dignified space, with the inner feeling of sorrow and sigh as well as uncontrollable heart flutter, I can feel a kind of silent impact from the work in an inexpressible space under interaction and narration... In a obscure sight, the sister smiles, fading out gradually to the distant place.

What is life? What is art? 

"Boundless grasses over the plain, Come and go with every season"...

Recalling the initial stage of learning painting, I practiced calligraphy and seal cutting, and copied the paintings, following the teacher's principles of "clearing away the heart-fire to wash the vulgar ponders, reading to know black from white, refusing the honor to go further and being graceful for a perfect posture" and the old maxims under the education of my first teacher. I've learned the painting style of Song Dynasty, researched and experienced famous paintings through the ages, pursuing painting in bold and vigorous strokes and astute style, young and experienced! It is always heard that: the use of ink can be divided into five levels, but multiple colors will cause the disorder. During my adolescence, I tried to control the inner agitation and passion, continuously imitating the works by the predecessors from the perspectives of painting presentation and techniques of expression day by day, time after time...

Someday, I questioned, "for the ancients chasing after the restraining, reserved and moderate ink paintings, why is there only with black and white? Where are the colors? Why can't we show the world freely with bright colors? Why can't we show our lives with passion and righteous ardor?" Everyone was stunned. "Punk! You are young and know nothing, extremely frivolous, and have never learning nor skills with nonsense! You are uneducated and without fear!" I was frightened to shut up with such doubt, engaged in the black and white world of traditional ink without proposing any challenges.

Go southward of the drum-tower, through the Skewed Tobacco Pouch Street, pass the Silver Ingot Bridge and bypass the south bank of Houhai to Prince Gong Mansion-where Chinese National Academy of Arts was located at twenty years ago. In my memories, the sky of my campus life was always dusky. Some scenes under my impression will never be taken away: During gloomy and cold winter days without any sunshine, there were often cooing of the pigeon whistling over the lowery sky, while I covered my head inside the collar, walking along the deep alley accompanied with withered and yellow leaves and snow residual. Sometimes I put on a backpack and rode a used bicycle, wandering aimlessly in deep alleys. For other times, I would stop and look up at the sky, watching the plastic bags being picked up by the wind and drifting far away gradually to the distant sky; lonely without the warmth from friends or family and an empty and cold stomach without warm food, always mixed with inner loneliness and helplessness, which for me, was a very long day; Without sufficient food, I was occasionally encouraged and comforted by several confidants, and the only delight may be the academic progress. Anyway, as a young man, still possessing the innocence of childhood, I attended school northward and insisted on a happy life of seeking joy amidst sorrow, seeking for the art and life in my mind on one hand while on the other hand thinking all the time that: There will always be the place ahead with hope for strugglers in loneliness.

However, the learning and research on both painting and theories of fine arts may not be as easy as you think. The transformation of the way of thinking and the renewal of ideas are extremely painful. Therefore, I have to repeatedly read and study numerous corresponding books for making up the shortage and loss. Failing to build the knowledge frame during college time, I have deeply realized my pale and ignorance to the extent of doubting my learning capacity. Boundless knowledge has discouraged me in the process of attending school, and seeking, questioning and learning is really a torment of spirit and will to me. It is so hard to be a sensible person of art as the simple world has become more and more complicated!

By accident, I've found out a brochure of my art exhibition in National Art Museum of China with a young image during school time: childish, thin, elegant and sentimental but with bright eyes. I gazed at the photo wonderingly as if a lifetime has passed: Is this me? Have I ever been so young? What happens to me now? Is art still my specialty?

In Ding You year, the end of winter with snow remaining, Feng Qiyong, my respected teacher, passed away. Day after day, every time I missed him, I will unavoidably think about his inculcation, still vivid in my mind, just like his insistence under rigorous scholarship, indifference to wealth and fame and diligence for his whole life, which is a bright mirror reflecting and calling me-I'm so stupid, without any enhancement but trapped in the trifles, feeling guilty to his expectation. 

With anxiety at nights and tossing about in bed, dull pain of the strained muscles was very precarious, which seemed like a remind to me. In the past, I thought about life as endless with full of time. Yet as I grow older, I feel my body stiff and progressively sinking while sensitive tactile, fresh memory and soft body becoming blunt, vague and stiff, which reeks a smell of "rot", as if the vulgar extravagance and haze in the flourishing age while obscuring, enervating and obstructing the spirit shapes, meaningful in the origin. Same to others, when reaching middle age without feeling about "the life path getting narrower", I shall inevitably ask as follows: Is that the way life should be? Is this life? What 's the meaning of life? Although I cannot figure out whether I've entered into a male "climacteric", it is so "meaningless!" The word I've often said out is in fact an indignation and resistance to my life: being associated with vulgarity, dealing with things in the society and living in the crack, I turn back to the paintings, seeking for attachments and comforting my mind in a reverie and a curious coincidence at the time of struggling with absence, disorder and anxiety. Day after day and year after year, I've got a bit of philosophy of life with entanglement for decades of years. I reckon that the reality affirms the universal requirements and potentialities for intellectual aristocrat by negating the spirit. Whoever you are and however you earn a living are nonsense. To refuse the differentiation of our hearts in an immoral and materialistic history prospect is to refuse aging, as well as appreciating the great nature and spirit of art. Such spirit is a remained true nature of those who had "a dream of youth, filled with student enthusiasm" instead of professional exclusive. In other words, all the normal with lofty ideas and moral integrity shall undertake such art responsibilities beyond the age, the occupation and the death. Time passes quickly like a white pony's shadow across a crevice and waits for no one. Facing the haze and the commonplace, gentlemen shall make self-improvements and struggle! All are about sincerity, and sincerity is the only way. Art bearing sincerity is the true expectation of life, the life exploration with sincerity is the exploration with true art, namely, this is a self-atonement, resisting sinking, drifting along and numb. I used to think whether we can break all the traditional taboos and the mind dictation to create and experience the new human-nature realm and the joyous odes while against the corruption and degeneration of life?

Let's speak all with art!

In such haze age, confusing right and wrong with rare conscience, we are not only lack of "art", and even "what important is not art". It is speculation for such valueless works frequently agitated as hundreds millions! In specific contexts, the value of the most expensive works of art will be no more than constructing a Hope Primary School or poor college students! "Formal art" may be brilliant but its real power is frail, neither changing the course of human history nor tipping the balance in history of human civilization. No matter as the "side drum" of "accomplishing indoctrination and human relations" or as the "purpose of existence", they cannot be afforded by some certain forms of art. It should be mentioned that from the perspective of Chinese practical significance, the greatness of art is the greatness of "art spirit", rather than the poses of "art". The absence of personality, liberty and art spirit of creative criticism has led to the omission of its social value and delaying of a modern dawn. I guess that the real art value must be the incarnation of such art spirit with transcendence.

In a fake-art age of seeking quickens success and fishing for fame and credit, numerous painters outside the system are wrapping themselves for biological desires; Moreover, the painters with vested interest in the system, fed by the masses, have also proclaimed themselves as great masters and academic leaders. Those who keep on claiming their strong ability and deep emotions in their paintings which are so-called rare art treasures are actually slaves of benefits and selfish maggots.

In terms of art morphology, it is the representation of human and the spirit outcome from the total upbringing and various social relationships on basis of its aggregation. In addition to the technique, the skill becoming the art spirit itself by receiving and turning into the meaning have been emphasized. As for me, ancient Chinese literati paintings, ones of my favorites, shall accept the viewing and trail of such rule, even if they are intoxicatingly charming with high profession in composition, in determining of the situation, in the use of colors, in the expression of the use of brushes, in the vivid artistic conception of the whole picture and in the establishment of painting style. Beyond doubt, it is hard to control without cultivation and experience for decades. However, the creations with practical significance and spirit of the time are not so simple as "painting an orchid with pleasure while painting a bamboo with anger". Because there are spirit eyes and an intangible hand of value judgment playing a role whether up and down or inside and outside in order to release the works from limitations of consideration to the meaning and the shape, even expressing the meaning beyond the shape. In such meaning, tools including languages, forms and techniques as well as approaches such as expressing emotions through describing the scenery and holding things to speech will are the minds and thought as well as constant creatures under the immortal art spirit rather than the shackles and chains of life.

Art is the self creation of uniqueness. In spite of that, the ink of ancient Chinese literati paintings is precise and highly stylized as even a bit of self-expression may break the forbidden ground of tradition. To the literati paintings, restrictions from traditional forms, combined with the modern life and individuals featured with utilitarianism and fragmentation, make it difficult for perception, feeling and understanding to well integrate with life. So, in what ways, how can we talk about the overall perception to the spirit of the time and the expression of the independent will? Considering stiff mode, obsolete themes, monotonous skills, with the addition of little learning, a narrow world and rigid consciousness, how shall we build independent will and real feelings by following suit of the ancients? This obviously kills the faith of art!

I know that the repeated temper of traditional ink is a necessary skill to recognize and master traditional paintings while the ink language itself may reach a splendid and wonderful realm. Nevertheless, no data can prove an inevitable connection between mastering traditional paintings and inheriting the great traditions. For "tradition", it can also be divided into "skill" or "tool" Metaphysics can be referred as skill, while physics can only be referred to as "tool". I'm not sure whether we shall pay attention to "skill" or "tool" in nt in inheriting and carrying forward Chinese cultural spirit of multiple nations, absorption and tolerance and acculturation development. Whereas, after thousands of years of inheritance, there are only more stylized, stereotyped doctrine, and Han Confucianism (the Han culture, the Confucianism and Taoism culture) left. Many ink paintings, in the absence of the guidance of the great transcendent spirit, "absorption and tolerance and acculturation development", were finally "replication by transferring" with insipid feelings from the form to the content. In other words, as to the thoughts and feelings of art creation, if the emotions only follow the ink style while the ideology gets used to conventional thinking, the work is just like the deception of soul.

The art is significantly related to the cultural accomplishment in full dimensions and the cultivation of transcendence in life.

For years, I've considered Chinese traditional paintings as an art without characters. While under the effect of family-country ethics, Chinese cultural tradition is featured with an inward power of pacifying the interior, while the freedom of spirit and independent will have been weakly expressed in the philosophy of preserving the wealth and self-ease. The pictures presented by literati paintings are obscure and implicit. There are the timidness, softness, gentleness and delicateness, helplessness and forbearance embodied by it to avoid reality and the oldness, magnificence and profoundness pursued in picture, which is the contradiction itself. Due to different world views and historical sense, someone holds that the humanistic tradition of China is a profound "beauty of implicitness", but some people see more the "heaviness and helplessness" of history and life. Since the world has stepped to the phase of "modern history", when the "beauty of implicitness" concept is used for the whole world, it may gain the new definition of "conservative" and "poor thought". It can even be said that such ostrich-style and cynic-style attitude may be the spiritual reflection of avoiding reality, being indifferent and selfless. Are there any similarities with the great spiritual tradition of people with lofty ideals that "my loyalty may leave a page in the annals" in our history from the ancient times to the present? And there are the significant different and even opposite roads out of displacement of will and thinking even in terms of the "consensus overlap" or "overlap recognition" concerning "man is an integral part of the nature". And for the so-called "cultivation of one's original nature" by "getting rid of the desire and cultivates moral and expressing the viewpoints", if it is not the superficially high-key, it is actually to be worldly wise and make oneself safe, which is the vagueness and constraint of humanity. Looking around the whole China, it can be said that even the normal reactions of the metaphor of Zhu Da and Xu Wei have been lost. It can be said to enter the stage of cultural abnormality, spiritual degeneration, knowing and doing difference and personality split.

Art is the spiritualism and symbol of individual. Penetrating force lacking emotions and passion will become the mediocrity without insight and creative ideas, as well as the mixed stew.

In my opinion, the sage that once created Quiet Orchid to express the ambition and the ancient qin techniques that he likes are also the case: Despite the limit of "nine morals", the rebellious and struggling inimitable art like A Music From Guangling is not excluded. Similarly, the emotional expression in Chinese ink painting art in the painting has not only the weak goodness, restrained beauty, but also has the irrigated passion, reflecting profoundness and strong sublimation. I love the vivid integrity of art and I desire the heroicness in painting. This is a kind of mettle of small and big art in life unity, as well as the magnificence of "autumn wind, handsome horse and beyond the Great Wall". Such traditions and realms are not only the spiritual inheritance and cultural progress, but also the sublimation and boldness in personality.

Art is the transcending cultivation of mind. To pursue art is the process of soul purification and idea sublimation of perfecting the techniques and cultivating the morals in setting up honesty, credit and ambition. In the process of pursuing moral and art, the personality of artists should keep being perfected so as to reach independent thinking and unique individuality. The real art, the formal creation and the language novelty actually derive from the internal feelings, the responsibility of morals and the breakthrough of world outlook! Its utmost effort, lifelong dedication, sacrifice to save the world and pursuit of permanent spirit are rare and hard to catch. Ask yourself: do you really own the mind of setting up your determination for the heaven and earth, sacrifice for the masses, learning for the past knowledge and pursuit of happiness for the world in your own cultural complex. The history tells us that the pity and responsibility are accompanied by conscience and morality. Only with feelings and responsibilities can we defend against depravity and randomness. And the loft dedication is often out of terror of being dwarfed. The artistic life is no more than a kind of lowering of people's property, in order to keep improving and saving from property attribute to personality, from small ego to big ego. In essence, under the history value, world outlook and even the universe opinion with cultivating persons as the tenet and making people with the foundation, to pursue the real art and be a truly wise person is the way of living in the world and the true life attitude--even if we are like a meteor in the world, its sense of loftiness and enlightenment and value are much more than the community imagination of leaving the reputation in the history.

Children around me are chasing and playing with each other. The air in the morning is mixed with the remaining fragrance of yesterday's ink. I feel the peacefulness in my inner mind. Life goes on and the beautiful life just starts. The sunshine spreads on the painting desk paved with ink and paper. The colorful books and albums shine with golden colors. A sense of happiness is thus born: Life is so beauty. Art is so holy! I walk in front of the window with smiles on my face. Facing the colorful sunset, I look to the distant place-maybe art can really enlighten life, comfort soul and inspire freedom so as to make people regard death as life...

The road ahead will be long and our climb will be steep.

Written by Zhang Tao in the early spring of Ding You Year

On Wanghai Building, Tongzhou, Beijing