Mu YiLin

The name Mu Yilin is well known to people. He has been active in painting circles for almost 30 years and had ever won National Second Award, National Excellent Award, Shanghai First Award and others, over ten in total in various contests. He had been to Japan to give lectures, and held personal painting exhibitions. His works had been spread to everywhere and met with great favor in the world. People are eagerly watching and awaiting him.

So far, Mu Yilin has attached importance to the research and heritage of the traditions of Chinese art. When he was learning art Shanghai Fine Arts School, he had been immersed in the sea of traditional arts while solidly doing the basic skill training such as color and sketch portrait and others. He worked very hard on the study of Chinese traditional paintings and calligraphy. He spent a whole summer vocation in copying the typical works of all ages of masters in Shanghai Museum. He made a careful analysis, research and copy painting to Yang Shao Culture, the patterns on bronze ware in Shang and Zhou Dynasties, mirrors in Han Dynasty, paintings on bricks, jade carving, pottery figures, silk paintings, wall paintings, China in Song Dynasty, incising decorations, paper cut, eaves tiles and embroidery in Qing Dynasty with several years' efforts. His high performance won favorable comments from teachers and classmates for him and was awarded an honor by higher authorities and the school in 1964. The distance between the shining points of traditional arts and the demand of modern times made him realize that to innovate with times is the essence of Chinese traditions, which positioned where his art practices should go. He is an earnest student before masters' works, but when creating his own works, he would see them as friends and competitors. He knows to defeat his competitors with his own advantages and then widen the distance in terms of concept, sensation and art language, trying to find a new path to art. These are exactly the qualities all ages of masters owned! His paintings are impressive, because he always embraces life with his sincerity of artist and his inner depth of poet. He changes all of his sensations and inspirations into paintings to share with people, so his paintings full of poetic aesthetics can always resonate widely among people. In his paintings there are a lot of different functional art languages. Different artistic conceptions reveal themselves in different formats, and you may feel that all domestic and overseas masters of all ages have come to his favor. His noticeable personality, sense of the times and the strong sense of life, however, come out vividly from his typical style formed by his unique feelings, unique artistic concepts and unique art languages. Therefore the connotation, lasting appeal and original decorative forms of his works are shocking and fascinating to people. International friends also speak highly of his uniqueness.

Mu Yilin’s paintings belong to both of the Chinese nation and the whole world. He is in a good time when he is middle-aged, full of confidence, with deep accumulation of culture and art and a spirit of pioneering and constant innovation. And the more important is that he is in a good time of art development, so he will surely fully display his capacities in the world painting realm and achieved greater success. As his teacher, I will be happy to hear that sort of news about him.

On silk of traditional Chinese painting

Silk painting, generally refers to the painting which artists draw on silk, textiles, yarn and crepe. The silk scroll painting is one of them. The silk painting from Chu and Western Han Dynasty are known by the world. Some of the ancient silk paintings from China have been collected by many famous museums around the world. Silk painting is a treasure of China!

Chinese ancient silk painting is the origin of Chinese ink painting. The 3,000-year history of Chinese painting is occupied about 1600 years by silk painting. Until the rice paper was invented in the Tang Dynasty, Chinese artists transferred the technique, patterns and standard of silk painting to rice paper painting. From then on, two tributaries of Chinese painting were developed. Artists from Tang and Song dynasty mainly chose to draw on silk. After Yuan dynasty, artists generally chose the Rice paper to draw. Because of the unique characteristic of the rice paper which has penetration and good blur features, the performance of the Rice paper is very impressive and it has attracted lots of artists. With the development of the ancient society, the ink painting rapidly developed and the silk painting was ignored. Several decades later, the Chinese painting has to face the situation that the black and white ink painting is highly developed and the colorful silk painting is weak.

However, it is no doubt that the silk painting is an independent branch of traditional Chinese painting. It is unique and irreplaceable. The unique characteristics of the material make silk painting have a different aesthetic effects and incomparable for other types of art. Currently, the old silk painting is revived and shining in the art circles on behalf of Chinese painting together with the ink painting.