live for a while every year created more opportunities for me to communicate with Du Yongqiao that enabled me to appreciate all his works from the 1990s, including some unfinished ones which he felt not worthy being publicized, and also to listen to his ideas surging in the process of the artistic creation. I had a feeling that he was then in a period of confusion, a phase no artist would skip on the way of exploration. Du Yongqiao, no expert in theoretical thinking, showed a strong desire to seek the theoretical solutions to those confusing problems. Many theoretical or practical problems pertaining to the ontological language of art were the spotlights in our discussions. An important reason for Du Yongqiao to comprehend the significance of the ontological language of art relies on his complicated feelings of colors and intrinsic experience while painting after he developed some knowledge about impressionism. The western history of modern art verifies the fact that all those modernist masters, such as Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cezanne, Matisse, Derain, Braque, Picasso, Kandinsky, Munch, Marc and Soutine, achieved the modern art after experiencing and surpassing impressionism (most of the realistic painters in China can hardly manage to leap into the phase of modernism, because they classify their works into the type of academic realism without any influence of impressionism), which is because impressionism provides the most direct and resourceful evidence in the study of colors and brushstrokes for modern expressionism to sublate the shaping system of realistic oil paintings and finally materialize their own two major systems of language forms in colors and lines.

　　Hegel presaged early in the eighteenth century when he criticized the “mimetic theory” that paintings would finally free themselves from the bounds of forms when the expression of colors developed into the “magic of colors”, and the substantiality of the object would seem to evaporate in this process. Apparently, colors in this condition are not attached to the object any more, but are sublimated into spirit. From the perspective of the western history of art, we realize that the awakening of the expression of colors during the self-constrained development of art will usher in the history of realistic patterns being challenged. In the light of brushstrokes, “indirect techniques of drawing”, a painting skill employed in most of the oil paintings in Renaissance, conducted shading layer after layer by spreading the colors, just like “cosmetology” which is exquisite without any trace of cuts. In fact, Rubens and Rembrandt in the Baroque period already paid heed to the techniques of strokes. But despite a certain degree of shaping power development of strokes in the subsequent two hundred odd years, the function of strokes only lied in shaping the form and structure without any independent aesthetic values. To project a quick feeling of colors, impressionism has no choice but utilize strokes at a fast pace, so that the strokes look more lively and such aesthetic features as rhythm, strength and vitality can all be emancipated from the fetters of the form and structure and thus achieve distinctive expressions. Other brushstrokes, developing towards the morphological direction of linear image in the works of Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec, especially in the works of Monet in his declining years, were upgraded from a mere descriptive skill to an expressive language as they were more dynamic and emotion-oriented. So the significance of impressionism is that it leads to the disintegration of the classical shaping systems of realistic oil paintings and paves a way for modern artistic language to take shape.

　　The “shaping system” is a “technical system” pertaining to reproduction. Colors and strokes only serve as a descriptive method in classical realistic art, while the “language system” acts as an “expressive system” about emotions. In modern art, both colors and strokes are symbols to convey the spirit. Therefore, the concept of “artistic language” is another modern concept concerning art ontology.

　　The strokes and colors in western oil paintings, similar to the brushstrokes and water-ink in traditional Chinese paintings, have their entire value only on techniques when attached to the object or becoming the stylized routine approaches. Without the object, all colors, strokes, as well as water-ink will be reduced to nothing; but if displayed as an artistic language, they will carry a cultural feature and intrinsic spirit, in which condition, the language itself possesses its own aesthetical value and meanwhile, the colors, strokes and water-ink serve as the pillar of all the factors of art. As C. Bell put it, “Without it (the artistic language), the artistic works can never exist as real artistic works.” On the one hand, the great power of artistic language is to directly show the form and tension of colors, lines, and ink and to present the feelings and emotions of man by means of the skillful managing of color tint, the exact handling of strength and speed in wielding brush, and the ingenious using of techniques, such as dotting, finger-brushing and ink-splashing. On the other hand, the power possesses a more subtle structure that appeals the soul more than the eye and can reflect the complicated and changing emotions of human, called the “Versteckte Konstruktion” by Kandinsky. In structuralism, since the factors hidden in art play a significant role, the multi-layered structural relations between the explicitness and implicitness of artistic language will make it possible to “create a new motif”. In this way, we can enrich the profound meanings of the relations between strokes and colors and between strokes and ink set by the artist. These “profound meanings”, called the “artistic spirit” or “inner sound” in western modern art, are referred to as “realm” in Chinese art.

　　The language enchantment of colors, strokes and ink Du Yongqiao realized right from both impressionism and traditional Chinese paintings enabled him to sublimate and elevate his techniques and to put an end to his perplexities in regard to the “state of aphasia” or “monologue” of some “contemporary art”. In 1997, he accomplished two great pieces of works named Blue Brush Verve and Narrow Lane, a landmark of his transformation from lingering between the natural expression and self-expression to pushing ahead with the search for the symbolic expression. In this century, Du Yongqiao produced several series of works, such as The Series of Old Town and Cockscomb Series, which blend subjectivity of the painter perfectly with the ontology of art. And the pure artistic quality, the strength of the existential consciousness, the charm of the artistic realm and the Chinese cultural spirit mirrored in the integration are all the results yielded by a subtle understanding and thorough comprehension of the multi-layered relations between the explicit pattern and the complicated implicit structure of the artistic language. I am well aware that such works can highlight its contemporary values with its own unique characteristics in any conditions in the current world of art.

　　Since 1980s, the Chinese oil painting has begun to stride forward to modernization by leaps and bounds just like the Chinese economy by pluralistic economic means, such as material processing, BTO production, OEM production, transit trade and international agency, that may be counted as a “shortcut” for Chinese art to make its voice heard in the world. Certainly, some artists have, ahead of others, accomplished the primitive accumulation of modern art, taken the lead in registering famous brands for their products and dwarfed Beaux Arts which once dominated the painting world in China. From the angle of the art history, we should admit that the leapfrog development of Chinese oil paintings is inevitable and even necessary for us to apprehend modernism, seek after new trends and understand the world. At the same time, some other artists keep asking about the original point, source point and meta-point of art and also endeavor to explore self-creation while figuring out their own cultural features. Without a shadow of doubt, Mr. Du Yongqiao was an extraordinary artist among the latter ones.

Lion Mountain in Chengdu,

August 2009