It is very difficult for a Chinese artist to readjust the traditional Chinese landscape painting with realistic technique of western-style oil painting. Rooted in the traditional culture which evolved and deposited for several thousands of years, many Chinese landscape painters have been showing their own profound artistic taste and ingenuity in the typical ink-and-wash works. Some people may think such painting makes little progress just like a stagnant pool of water, but they cannot doubt its connotative meaning in art and humanism. With accomplishments in painting, Jiang Zhixin showed us that Chinese ink-and-wash landscape painting can still represent what happens in modern times although such technique has a history of nearly 2,000 years. The traditional workmanship is still vigorous to create and express aesthetics with a gush of enthusiasm.

A question that few people ask about
    Chinese traditional painting is done with a soft brush, absorbent Xuan paper, and ink, which is why it is sometimes called ink-and-wash painting. An ancient art, Chinese painting falls into three categories---portrait, landscape, flower-and-bird; and two styles, meticulous and freehand. From the viewpoint of some historians, Chinese ink-and-wash landscape paintings have been full of inspiration and elegance, which are well-known for displaying moral integrity of mountain crests and rivulets as well as the idea of vigor appeal of cottages near some small bridges at an ancient town. Obviously, such scenes can be seen in southern part of China. In fact, the verve of Chinese painting can only be nourished in the natural geographical surroundings in southern China with warm and humid climate. Until 100 years ago, painters from South and Central China seldom had an opportunity to take a trip to West China region with continuous mountains and plateaus. That is an eternal pity for them as they could never face the completely different mountains and rivers while trying to rub an ink stick on an ink-slab for making a new painting roll. If those famous painters in history had a chance to trek in the western part of our country, how they could do with the brush in their hands when they were suddenly shocked by the endless chain of mountain ranges and vast expanse of plateau stretching to the infinity. Nobody has asked such a question! What kind of new technique of drawing did they use for different painting? How could the traditional Chinese ink-and-wash painting change?

Over one century ago, that was an unanswerable question. But the situation is very different now. Modern and fast transportation helps today’s painters to go everywhere very easily. It is a piece of cake for them to travel across many famous mountains and rivers which their ancestors had never seen in their whole life. The mountains and rivers in western regions have such different magnificence and spirit from that of tiny bridges over elegant streamlets in their hometown in South China that they certainly readjust their way to draw pictures with various styles.
    At present, it seems that among many Chinese painters, it is Jiang Zhixin who has mixed new geographical eyeshot with traditional Chinese painting. The artist has been exploring the new kind of Chinese painting language with 20-year efforts and glowing sensibility.

He reflects essence of Chinese culture in some ways
   

Having been invited to France three times for artistic study and exchange tour, Jiang was presented a gold medal and a silver medal of Art, Science and Letters respectively by the Ministry of Culture and the Institute of Education during his stay. In 1998, Jiang’s works was awarded the Prize of Elina Vahala while he attending the Autumn Salon Show in France for the fifth time.
    Many celebrities turn up the thumbs to the Chinese artist. Jacques Aulde, 91, former French minister of media, wrote in a story: “The very sublime thing in Jiang Zhixin’s art is his well-rounded pictures, endless artistic conception, vigorous colours and convulsion impression full of power and grandeur. Jiang uses all these elements to connect both remote antiquity and modern time concerning Chinese culture, which foretells a brighter future. He deserves a high praise and honor as he is not a passing traveller unknown to public on the bank of River Seine.”
    Madam Bruno, president of International Art Town, praised Jiang for reflecting essence of Chinese culture in some ways from very deep bottom of heart.
    Arno Woodley, president of Museum of Claude Monet, thought that “What I saw with my own eyes during my visit in China, including supernatural mountains, rivers and underwoods,” were “displayed wonderfully by the impressible artist.”
    Jiang has distinguished himself as a rugged painter specialized in depicting landscapes and abstract paintings characterized with western traces such as straight lines, open scenes and wilderness. .In fact, Jiang has been at the peak of art with his Chinese ink-and-wash landscape paintings after 20-year’s effort, challenge and contemplation.

Difference in painting of China and the West: mental inside and physical outside
   Chinese landscape painting began to thrive since literati and their works became popular in Tang Dynasty (618-907). Such special painting has been ripe as an artistic way to annotate ancient Chinese philosophical conception with a starched or style-like paradigm or mode. As a peculiar mode to express Chinese scholars’ emotion, ink-and-wash painting has be come an artistic language with a feminine and mellow characteristic. With very different cultural conception from the Western-style painting, it tries hard to manifest lyricism in an implicit and internal way. Western-style classical painting followed the principle of depicting the real world, stressing an exact and scientific representation. It has a preference for a way to describe the outside world or paint realistically. Chinese painting, however, influenced by Chinese traditional thinking, focused on revealing the painter’s inner feelings instead of out objects and did not adhere rigidly to time and space. The painters like to indulge their passion in the self-complacent art.
    In other words, Chinese painting tries hard to show some aesthetic poetry in the works by guiding viewers’ light of sight while Western-style painting pays attention to the story itself and its process by merging time ingredient into the space. While making aesthetic invention and enjoying the works, Chinese people try to reveal the main body’s “psychological harmoniousness” by art so as to lick the unearthly personality into shape and help the interior exchange between man and nature. And the Western people hope to realize their grasp on the objective world in “formal harmoniousness” by art, that is, they can have something to repose their trust in the grasp of the objective world in a vision format for perfect aesthetic feeling. In other words, the aesthetic harmoniousness in Chinese mind leans toward internal or psychological side while that in Western’s mind leans toward external or physical side. Such gap is derived from the dualistic contradiction in philosophy between the East and the West.
    As for Taoist thought in China, its aesthetic conception focuses on the unification between human intention and substance in nature, or it is called “harmony between human and nature.” According to Taoist theory, human being countless inherent ties with everything in nature as man’s genius can feel and apperceive the nature. Everyone yearns towards mountain, river and forest from the bottom of heart although he or she spends years in official circles marketplaces. It is the greatest wish for Chinese literati including painters to hobnob with and even blend with nature. While portraying natural scenery, Chinese painters usually give voice to such feeling and pursuit. That is an aesthetic state of mind which transcends natural physical world, or makes man’s spirit disentangle from some fetters, such as bread-and-butter, interests, logic cause and effect, in the experience of harmoniousness of human intention and substance. A man can reach an aesthetic ambit of “emptiness”, “tranquility” and “understanding” in Taoist thought. Thus it can be seen that Confucianism and Taoism are mutual complementary in composing of the whole structure of Chinese classical aesthetic conception.
    Let us turn to Western Pythagorean School, which was the earliest big school in the history of philosophy of ancient Greece. The philosophy of Pythagoras and his school has impacted the very fiber of mathematics and physics, even the western tradition of liberal education no matter what the discipline. The dictum of the Pythagorean school was All is number. What this meant was that all things of the universe had a numerical attribute that uniquely described them. Beauty does not consist in the elements, but in the harmonious proportion of the parts. The ancient Western philosophers directly embodied the harmonious pursuit for beauty into harmonious invention in vision. The Pythagorean view is that beauty consists in mathematical perfection. They thought that a ball is the most beautiful in all three-dimensional figures and a circle is the most beautiful in all plane figures. They also found the “golden ratio” for the harmonious proportion in rectangle, the ratio for length width of rectangles of 1.6180339887... has been considered the most pleasing to the eye. Similarly, the beauty of human body is also built with each part in a definite Golden Proportion to all the other parts. Pythagoras' discoveries of the proportions of the human figure had a tremendous effect on every student in the world who tries to learn the plastic arts. From their own viewpoint about understanding the universe, ancient Greek ideologists and artists made certain the principle of seeking for and revealing beauty in art, that is, what is the most sapiential? It is number. And what is the most beautiful? It is harmony.
    Although traditional Chinese painting makes little progress, but its connotative meaning in art and humanism cannot be doubted
    Obviously, it is very difficult for a Chinese artist to readjust the traditional Chinese landscape painting with realistic technique of western-style oil painting. Rooted in the traditional culture which evolved and deposited for several thousands of years, many Chinese landscape painters have been showing their own profound artistic taste and ingenuity in the typical ink-and-wash works. Some people may think such painting makes little progress just like a stagnant pool of water, but they cannot doubt its connotative meaning in art and humanism. However, under the background of “fine points of Western art interwoven with traditional Chinese style”, the realistic technique of western-style oil painting runs into and even blends with the image expression forms of Chinese landscape painting several times so as to re-understand the tradition.
    During the course of Chinese painting’s transformation, the so-called “creating something new in place of the old” became the main ideology as the “new” has some uncommon attraction for nearly every painter in China. Nobody is willing to be regarded as a conservative person. But, the “new” is merely a word, and it is not easy to give a correct interpretation about its essence as there are various choices and countless possibilities about the “new.” In the past several years, some Chinese painters’ superficial knowledge on the “new” and blind following the Western style turned the pluralism in art into an image. By the end of last century, there was still a blank space in many Chinese painters after deducting various Western conceptions and painting schools as a fashion without limit. Generally, it is not possible to establish a new kind of art if someone is impatient for success or anxious to get quick results and instant profits, on the contrary, such mental attitude should constitute an obstacle to the development of art. In fact, some painters tried in every way to imitate the Western style and split with Chinese classical tradition without any pondering in mutual compare or study. The result is that Chinese culture nearly lost its integration function in facing the foreign art. That is a great fault in the process of transformation.

However, Jiang Zhixin opened up an artistic path in the opposite direction.
    People may prefer feasting their eyes on the line drawing of Chinese painting to real-life image -- that is the reason why Chinese painting is unique in the world His living space and experience made Jiang to be the painter who neither destroyed the normal art order nor went long with out-of-date idea. Jiang has been successful in art as he used realistic technique of Western-style painting for reference while drawing Chinese landscape painting. With an impersonal and rational attitude, Jiang did not forget to limit himself while bringing into play his art talent freely. Facing the multi-school in art, he always trekked on the way of art in a placid mood and sought for the genuine meanings of art from the bottom of his heart. He did not only cast away tradition but also surmount modern vogue, especially reluctant to throw over those talents on observation, emersion and displaying in painting which were obtained with great efforts. Jiang thinks that those talents are the groundwork for free invention instead of fetter.
    As for some connoisseurs, Jiang’s painting is actually “write” down as his basic training in “calligraphy” helps him to consummate the artistic design. Another important aspect of Chinese traditional painting was the perfect coordination of picture, poem, calligraphy and seal. It is a peculiar contribution of Chinese painters to the art for using the simple ink-and-wash procedure and skillful handwriting design to describe landscape with image expression forms, which is very helpful to set free the feeling of art and show peradventure. Beginning from the age of cave painting and cliff carving of primitive man, there were visible gap between the East and West although both Chinese painting and Western-style painting had the similar way to watch the object. We have not understood or given a clear explanation about the reason why the two schools were separated apart at the original source. But we have found that such gap had been becoming larger and lager when characters and letters were invented and human being produced various tools for writing and painting.
    In China, local people used the same tools for writing and painting, while the Western people had different tools for different function. So there was a unique cultural phenomenon of “calligraphy and painting are of the same origin”, which was very strange in the Western countries. Ancient Chinese people used “brush” directly to define the tool’s culture and formed a special analysis and appraisal system. In Chinese painters’ hand, brush is not merely a tool to note simple signs. It is something above the heads of the Western people, which has become a track of culture and mental mood. So that is the reason why some scholars to name Chinese art as the art of “calligraphy and painting being of the same origin.”
    In western art, the brush is a tool, which is used to illustrate the object's volume, texture, structure, light and darkness, and shadows. The Chinese brush, on the other hand, has a unique tip that can produce pointy, round, flat and bold strokes, and it is developed to suit the different needs for both calligraphy and painting. During the creative process, the Chinese brush is not seen merely as a tool for producing lines; the use of it is meant as a unique way to express the artist's individual style, because "calligraphy and painting are of the same origin".
    Usually, people regard calligraphy or line in ink (in Chinese language, it is called “bimo”, means brush and ink) as a part of Chinese painting. A good Chinese ink-and-wash painting has many elements, but the most basic one is calligraphy or line in ink. Because of “bimo”, Chinese people have not lost discrimination and standard in appreciating good works or even can select the better from a heap of paper. While enjoying the Chinese painting, they can taste the “temperament of brush” – the internal beauty among the various lines produced by brush and ink -- independently instead of merely regarding the lines as a formative way for design.
    Such “temperament of brush” can be found in Jiang’s ink-and-wash paintings -- the unique internal beauty. But, meanwhile, Jiang did another important thing. He re-estimated and assembled the denotation of “bimo” with independent aesthetic value and highly recapitulation, and endowed the denotation with new meaning and abstracted new technique from it. Therefore, as the main characteristic of Chinese painting, the “bimo” technique has displayed modern aesthetic value in Jiang’s paintings.
    The light-shadow representation technique of Western-style oil painting can be found in Jiang’s painting as he studied it for several years. He directly used what he has learned in oil landscape sketching while making his ink-and-wash painting. Jiang brought lines to bear in painting self-consciously, and such rough-and-tumble lines in his works stimulate viewers with fresh taste. Compare with some other Chinese painters, Jiang displayed his talents more random in his works, with more lingering charm of abstract.

Black-white landscape on West China painting
    Jiang was very successful in the landscape painting about West China, to great extent, profited from that he has found very suitable colours – black and white.
    There is some abstruse learning in the study of colours. The strength and rich connotation produced by seemingly simple contrast between black and white cannot be replaced by other colours. White is regarded as the mother of all colours and black as the king of all colours. Black and white make up of the keynote or framework for Chinese painting’s colour, techniques of dried-up-ink and splash-ink cause some interfluves in vision while wielding black and white. It seems that the painting of dried-up-ink like striking silver bell in a symphony to give an effect of prominence, which has some feeling of sturdiness and power. Splash-ink looks like lento in playing violin, which diffuses intoxicating tone, tender and comfortable. During the drawing, Jiang took a deep breath reinforced the dried-up-ink on the paper as if a matador prepare in a bullfight, a gambling for life. In fact, the dried-up-ink character includes dry, thick, black and astringent on the paper. The painting technique depends totally upon one’s control of wrist and professional skills, without any trick or review.
    With limited trait of coloring matter, Chinese painting put more strict trial for painters. It requires them to have robust personality, excelsior attainments, abundant emotion, superhuman willpower and endurance. They have to dance with bonds on their feet while working hard on their painting with balance between unrestrained sentiments and dominated senses.
    In order to make black-white landscape drawing reach the artistic impression of multi-colour painting, Jiang settled the puzzle for the unity of vigorousness and embellishment in the process of making traditional Chinese painting high-level simplification. His art upgraded from floweriness back to quietude.

Dreamy experience: wandering between smartness and tradition
    West China is a region with a strong tragic element because its proud days have been the history. It used to be one of the cradles of Chinese culture and naturally left a kind of desolate beauty after several hundreds of splendid years. Jiang found a lofty spirit of local people while delineating the tragic landscape in West China.
    Jiang seems to have inherent predilection for the West scenery which looks bleak and has experienced many vicissitudes of fortune ages and ages. His brush has always been describing the scenery, including snow-capped mountains and loess with fine-grained, calcareous silt or clay, which became a symbol of time. From the very beginning, Jiang’s painting presented a solemn eruption of life’s epic. His sketching on landscape displayed symbolism and expressionism more or less instead of realism in a general sense. Nearly all his works came from nature and true recording of daily life, and that way especially added more melancholy somewhat to the painting. He showed great interest in the details with historical trace and memory as those heroic and tragic stories on how local people challenge destiny often moved him and lured his impulsion to paint and invent something.
    It is not Jiang who break a path for blending elements of epic, tragedy and heroism into the Chinese ink-and-wash painting. But we can sure that Jiang has stepped up all this into an aesthetic ambit and opened a new visual field for Chinese ink-and-wash painting.
    Chinese painting began to be short of the works with some manful Northern style since the cultural centre moved to southern part of China in Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279). With his artistic practice and effort, Jiang actually promoted the revival of Northern-style landscape painting and urged the return of intrepid artistic tradition. What he has done is helpful for the development of Chinese painting in terms of strategy.
    Enjoying Jiang’s paintings, people will usually be touched off by the vast and seclusion or easily be moved by both infinite classicism and modern sentiment. His works outpoured his apperception about his mother tongue, permeating a switchover —— covering amalgamation of both ancient time and today, East and West, as well as the faint interlock of both intention and image, void and true. People may feel something of the soul of the well-known mountains and rivers although there are no any mountains and rivers on the painting; they also may taste the poetry of tiny bridge over streamlet although there is no such scenery on the paper. During that dreamy experience, the gap of “external” and “internal” in Jiang’s landscape paintings gradually becomes out of focus. No doubt, such experience should be enthralling because it guides people to transcend the traditional aesthetic experiences.
   Usually, there are two kinds of people on the pages of the history of art, those who epitomized the thought of various schools and those who pioneered a school. Surely, Jiang and his painting belong to the second one. But, his Western-style expression also contains somewhat Eastern-style deep connotation, we have to list him as the first one.