路易斯·布罗恩基金会致力于研究和推广国际间文化艺术的交流。通过举办重大联展，我们不断探寻世界各地艺术文化的独特品性。随着交通和通信发展的日趋成熟，国家间的边界愈发模糊，而在这样一个国界日益疏松、人口加速流动和融合的环境下，我们该怎样保护和尊重那些塑造了我们集体历史的、丰富的文化身份？答案在于审视和阐明每个不同文化体通过其艺术创造而表现出的特点。中国的案例在这项事业中尤具启发意义。
“溪山清远”大展纵览过去十年在最有才华的中国当代艺术家中盛行的各种思潮，并就全球化对这个处在空前经济和社会政治扩张进程中的文明古国产生的影响提出了非凡见解。进入 21 世纪以来，虽然中国一直以世界大国的姿态自信地大踏步前进，但这个国家的许多艺术家纷纷回观，对本国文化传统产生兴趣，却并不令人感到意外。
20 世纪的最后几十年见证了中国艺术的伟大复兴。这一时期，很多大艺术家崭露头角，他们进入刚刚复课的大学接受训练，将本土文化与一时间纷纷涌入的西方意象、图式和符号相结合。在过去十年中，一种新趋势浮出水面：预示着艺术家转而探寻传统的中国意象、符号和方法论。我对他们深感兴趣：究竟有多少参加了“溪山清远”大展的艺术家在探究创作方法——借用传统卷轴画的技术，咏颂山水、灵性、记忆和时光之流逝——的同时，深入到了极具怀旧情思的领地呢？这种挽歌似的基调昭示了一条对中国传统特质的重新发现之路。
“溪山清远”展示了 80 余幅画作，它们代表着当今中国艺术家的重要核心理念，并阐明了这一伟大国度在传统、视觉语言和审美上的独特性。通过邀请吕澎教授偕这一非凡的展览来到伦敦路易斯•布罗恩基金会，我衷心地希望这一合作项目能够引发关于语言、历史、符号、姿态和语汇差异的对话，同时，也在前来参观的观众当中产生共鸣、促进跨文化了解。
如果我们失去个体文化语言、传统和符号，那么就将面临缺乏精神和行为活力而沦入同质的危机。我们可以选择抛弃我们丰富的多元文化背景，或是拥抱它。路易斯•布罗恩基金会的一贯精神是，接受、理解、支持那些让我们的世界变得多彩的各种本土文化语言。
路易斯•布罗恩
创始人兼主席
路易斯•布罗恩基金会
Pure Views: Trends in Contemporary Chinese Painting
Reflecting Vital Lessons for a Global Community
The Louise Blouin Foundation is committed to investigating and celebrating the arts and culture of our global community. Through major, collaborative exhibitions, we continue to explore the unique qualities of particular artistic cultures from around the world. As national boundaries fade as a result of ever more sophisticated forms of communication and travel, as borders become ever more porous and populations migrate and blend–how do we preserve and respect the rich fabric of cultural identities that have shaped our collective history? The answer lies in examining and articulating that which is singular about individual cultures as expressed through their art. Such a project is especially enlightening in the case of China.
“Pure Views” surveys a wide range of trends that are prevalent among the most talented contemporary Chinese painters over the past decade. This exhibition also offers remarkable insights into the impact of globalization on one of the great historic cultures of the world during a period of unprecedented economic and socio-political expansion. As China moves headlong and confidently through the 21st century as a global power, it hardly seems surprising that many of the country’s artists have developed a backward-glancing fascination with its cultural tradition.
The last decades of the 20th century witnessed a remarkable renaissance in Chinese art. The great artists to emerge in the period, trained in the recently reopened universities, mixed their own culture with imagery, icons, and symbols from the West that were suddenly accessible. Over the past decade a new trend has emerged that signifies a turning towards traditional Chinese imagery, symbols, and methodologies. I am struck by how many of the artists represented in “Pure Views” have delved into places of great nostalgia as they explore the creative process, borrowing traditional techniques of scroll painting, and celebrating landscape, spirituality, memory, and the passage of time. This elegiac tone speaks of a path towards rediscovery of what it means to be Chinese.
“Pure Views” showcases more than 80 paintings that represent important ideas that are central to Chinese artists today, and elucidates that which is unique about this great nation’s traditions, visual dialects, and aesthetics. By inviting Professor Lü Peng to bring this remarkable exhibition to the Louise Blouin Foundation in London, my sincere hope is that this collaborative project will generate a dialogue about these differences of language, history, symbols, gestures, and vocabulary, and at the same time create resonance and cross-cultural understanding for visitors to the Foundation.
If we lose our individual cultural dialects, traditions, and symbols, we risk a homogeneity that lacks dynamism of spirit and deed. We can choose to either turn away from our rich cultural eclecticism, or embrace it. The ethos of the Louise Blouin Foundation is to celebrate, understand, and uphold the many cultural vernaculars that make up our world.
Louise Blouin
Founder and Chairman
Louise Blouin Foundation
【编辑：霍春常】
