Landscape Painting Renovation Of Li Keran

After the founding of the PRC, Mao Zedong thought became the dominant guidance in the field of literature and art, and it hence presented the issue of "renovating the old literature and art" in terms of new cultural construction. Given the political reality, as one of the "old artisic forms", Chinese painting was faced with the problem of how to serve the mass of workers, peasants and PLA, which made the circle of beauty art and Chinese painting artists put forward the proposal of renavtingthe traditional Chinese painting. Therefore, under the guidance of the new idea, the art theorists and painters beagan to launch a Chinese painting renovation movement in the1950s, which had a profound influence on the later development of Chinese painting. However, for the lack of prevoius experience, solutions on how to renovate Chinese painting varied from person to person at that time..Li Keran is a positive responser and practitioners in the renovation movement of Chinese painting. He put forward the reform scheme of Chinese painting on the condition of full acceptance of Mao Zedong Thought, which advates that literature and art care for soial reality, cater topeople’s life and critically adopt traditional elements. On the premises of identifying with a "scientific, popular and national" artistic ideal of Mao Zedong, he criticized the traditional literati paintings and expressed his view on accepting both Chinese and foreign art heritage, proposing two basic methods of renovatiing Chinese painting by going deep into life and inheriting legacy. Then he achieved a historic achievement after hard exploration and practice in the field of landscape painting.Li Keran introduced sketch into his landscape painting in his renovation, foucsing on manifesting the infinite complexity and beauty of nature, so as to continue the realism tradition of "learning from nature" in Chinese painting. Sketch serves as a tool of communication between the real natural scenery description and the spiritual convey of traditional ink and fun, and furthermore it can be employed to seek the schema and language suitable for landscape painting innovation. Li Keran absorbed the western drawing realistic techniques and borrowed metaphor and symbolism from the western landscape painting performance means. He succeeded in finding conveying patriotism implied with political feature through the images of mountains and waters and concentrating on the balance and integration of traditional painting style and the inherent tension between elements of western landscape painting. By these means, Li Keran managed to create an unprecedented close-to-reality artistic conception of landscape painting, accomplishing the transformation from traditional landscape painting to modern paradigm. But compared with the traditional landscape painting, the new landscape painting has such problem as the opposition between reality and imagination, the lack of elite consciousness and the spirit of freedom, which is the historical experience we should learn from.