Art Educational Ideals Of Lv Sibai And Wu Zuoren

Wu Zuoren and Lv Sibai,assistants of Xu Beihong during his teaching in National Central University,are also two important figures in Xu Beihong-Painting school.Much like Xu,they identify not only as an artist but also a teacher.They even share similar education and teaching experiences in their early ages.They inherited Xu's realism in art and his actualism in teaching,but developed their own taste of beauty,style of art,as well as idea of teaching.This paperfollows the time tail,combined with history background,to divide their life into three parts:Learning period in their early lifes,teaching period in National Central University,and teaching period when separated;and accordingly,the 20s to the late 30s,between the two Great Wars,and the after the establishment of the People's Republic of China.In the correspondent history background and society changes,those three periods can be seen as three different stages of their artistic growth and teaching philosophy:infant stage,developing stage and mature stage.This paper discusses conscerning history background,analyzes their life experience,and gives considerations of their artistic and writing works,all to summate the artistic and teaching idea of three stages.On the artistic aspect,Wu believes to live an artistic life and make his own artistic rules.He insists to add all Chinese and western artistic merits into his realism painting.Though Lv is a member of Xu Beihong-painting school,but he showed great interest in impressionism.He favored scenery and still life than grand narrative themes,adored realism in emotions than that in skills.Different from typical followers of Xu beihong-painting school,he pursues "pure art" which means art should be deprived of any political,religious,and social development influences.Their idea shows progress in Xu Beihong's realism.They valued basic training for art,but opposes Chistiakov's excessive attention to skills.In this way,they salvages students' creativity.In his teaching experience,Lv insists on oil painting without a touch of traditional Chinese painting.He also included calligraphy into art,an attempt nobody else did before,and absorbs calligraphy's lineal technique into oil-painting teaching.As to Lv,he tried to improve techniques for Chinese traditional painting by introducing western realism skills into the freehand brushwork in Chinese traditional painting.Though they learned from the same teacher and worked a similar career,but they share quite different fates.Wu became a dean of a school and a president of an art association while Lv didn't survive the trauma he endured in the Cultural Revolution and committed suicide at the end.The surprising outcomes are indeed the results of their similar but different art and teaching experience.It's their different pursues in art that give them different ideas in art and teaching.Wu's people skill and moderate personality endorses him an easy life in social changes.On the other hand,Lv is a representative of literati culture.He holds his idea for art through his whole life.He stood up for his teaching idea even in the most turbulent times.He never let himself stoop into functionism of art,and never swerved into formalism for his belief in Xu Beihong's realism.If Wu's art life is "discovering" and "developing",then Lv is 6"persistent" and "comprise".