To use a metaphor: I would say that "Zao Wou-Ki is like the owner of a pawnshop", "Zeng Fanzhi is like the CEO of an advertising planning company", while "I am like a farmer".
On my small piece of land, I sow grains, oils, millet, melons, fruits, and vegetables according to the seasons. The seasons are like the movement of my present flow-state; the soil is like xuan paper—China, after all, is rooted in an agrarian civilization. The hoe and plow are my tools and brushes; ink and Chinese painting pigments are my seeds.
Zao Wou-Ki came from a good family, had learning and cultivation, received the finest education from childhood, and later studied in France. Of course, he also possessed great talent. But to me, he is like someone who runs a pawnshop. He was always changing; every painting of his changed. He kept insisting on originality. To an outsider, each painting may indeed look different. In fact, he was pursuing originality, yet he could never fully escape the influence of traditional Chinese culture. At the same time, Western art had a powerful, even shocking impact on his earliest painting.
So the oil paintings he created were, in essence, a kind of "Chinese-painting-style oil painting". Of course, every work was different. He kept changing. He did not lock himself into a fixed formula. That is why I say he is like the owner of a pawnshop: inside the pawnshop, one finds all kinds of rare and strange treasures.
Works of Zao Wou-Ki
Zeng Fanzhi is a favored figure of his era. Of course, he has technical foundation. Anyone who has spent time in an academy of fine arts naturally possesses a strong capacity for artistic production. But what makes him different is that he was able to grasp the pulse of the contemporary age very tightly. He is highly sensitive to political color and historical atmosphere. As for what the international art world favored during the 1960s,70s, and 80s, there is no need for us to analyze that in detail here. But when art becomes connected to political structures, it is not unusual, because at certain moments art does serve politics. Once the system chooses him, his paintings can be transformed into financial assets. This is very normal. That is why I say he is like the CEO of an advertising planning company: his sensitivity and instinct are extremely sharp, and therefore he is very capable of promoting and elevating himself within the market.
Works of Zeng Fanzhi
Zao Wou-Ki is like encountering, overseas, a conservative gatekeeper of an old lineage—clearly Chinese at first glance, an elegant and refined overseas Chinese gentleman. Zeng Fanzhi, by contrast, is like meeting a nouveau riche figure on the Bund in Shanghai: a man of sudden wealth, entirely wrapped in modern packaging. It is as if someone steps out of a luxury car on the Bund wearing sunglasses—polished, dazzling, glamorous, with not the slightest trace of rustic origin still visible. The only remaining mark is that he is closely attached to the political labels of his time. He has little connection with traditional culture. And I am like a village farmer, holding on to the simplest truth of the fields. I continue to take up the hoe and cultivate the land, adding new variations and my own creative ideas, hoping that this landscape inherited from our ancestors may still be passed down, seen, and appreciated in this age.
I believe that anyone who has truly and carefully seen works of **Senxiangism** can easily recognize how different they are from the works of Zao Wou-Ki and Zeng Fanzhi. If one lacks even this basic power of discernment, then it is indeed not worth entering into verbal dispute.
In fact, when we classify artists of the past into different categories, it is for the sake of academic study. Such classification serves a summarizing function. But many people fail to understand this. They catch the fish and forget the trap. That is not right.
True art is always in exploration. What has passed in the past has already passed, yet mutual inspiration and illumination between artists are inevitable. The achievements of later generations are certainly built upon the foundations laid by those before them. The originality of later artists may be only a great stroke, or perhaps a small stroke, within the history of art. But the whole history of art is formed precisely through the addition of stroke after stroke.
Therefore, someone who truly understands art history would not make the crude judgment that “this work has already been painted by this person or that person.” Such a person has not observed carefully, has not paid real attention.
A truly wise artist, an artist with cultivation, must contain something comprehensive within himself. He must “gather all strange peaks to make his draft,” and then find his own point of breakthrough. When he pushes that breakthrough to its extreme, it becomes his unique artistic style.
As for technique, there is not much fundamental difference. What differs is sensitivity. The techniques of all artists are interconnected; only their manifestations are different.
It is like musical notes: the notes may be the same, but the compositions they form are different. The instruments chosen are different. When directed toward each individual, the results become vastly varied; when placed within the secular world, they appear in countless strange and diverse forms, each taking what it needs.
The essence of art should be to break deadlocks, constantly negate the past, and ceaselessly explore renewal. This is where its vitality and spiritual core reside. If one insists on fixing every artist into a type and attaching a label to him, then those labels are no more than pavilions and waystations encountered during the climb of a mountain.
For an artist, it is better to speak than to remain silent. Regardless of the value of his views, if he is able to express them freely, then they must have been considered deeply in ordinary times. Perhaps they are not entirely complete, but they should be sufficient to answer this question.