我们的时代充斥着“视网膜”的艺术，电影、电视、摄影及广告图片。绘画正在这机械手段发展的后面做种种削弱自我的适应。
而“视网膜”的艺术在绘画上的起点在文艺复兴之后，它意味着对瞬间场景的捕捉与描写，从卡拉瓦乔到维米尔，最后终于发明了照相机。在当代艺术中，对“影像”的适应实际上削弱了绘画的特性。自卡拉瓦乔开始意味着人类眼睛的“表面化”，与此同时油画的发展也意味着人类精神世俗化的开始。
我认为伟大造型艺术存在于文艺复兴之前，古埃及和希腊艺术早期。
目前艺术界的危机已经不在于创造性本身，而在于艺术的人类品质本身。
时代的飞速变化是艺术在追逐之中击碎了艺术家对永恒价值的追求，这种永恒价值是存在的，并与现实有深刻的关系。
在古代艺术中绘画的本质孕育在对自然的态度之中，但这种绘画并不屈从于自然。
持久的绘画应该为伟大的精神生活而存在。
我的艺术充分地介入了这个世界中心价值的紧张状态和强烈的人格反应。
一个艺术家是否对当代具有敏感性，是一个大问题，这与能够采用当代的表现手法与方式不是一回事。
绘画的本质价值在于持久。
我在绘画中所作的努力在于使具象写实绘画具有强烈的精神理想价值，人性的崇敬感和对人类人文历史普遍价值最具敬意的回顾。
伟大的艺术总是产生于光明的人格，这是艺术与思想给阴暗的历史逻辑的否定意义，是黑暗中的光明。
我珍视自己的存在并充分地审视自己，因为我对光明和阴暗均有强烈的感知，这是强烈的思想价值与艺术想象的根源。
我的人生巨大的挑战在于面对这迅速世俗化的现实时，寻求强烈的精神真理，并为这永存的价值努力前行。
我的画初看是令人茫然的，当我久久注视之后已有某种深度的意识与本质存在于其中。
我在用新的手法使绘画有我需要的对视觉的吸收性，这是我长久以来希求的某种质朴品质，这种视觉感受在最简单的形态中包含了光、空间与精神的存在。
我在构图方式中把人安排在最尊贵的位置上。
我所寻求的是视觉的艺术，但我不寻求视网膜的艺术，我认为最接近原型的艺术亦不是高级的艺术，我追求的是心灵的艺术，好的艺术具有对现实的巨大空间和高远之感。
我的所有形体都经过了一种我认为高级的艺术处理，它们具有物象的最重要因素，但最终独立与自然。
我在追求永恒，不仅是空间形式的永恒，还是精神存在的永恒。
我在赋予这些看似单纯的人物画一种独特的具有经验性的东西。
如果当代现实对人提出什么希求的话，人对永恒理念的寻求，才能保持人的价值感，我希望绘画重新给人以崇敬感。
在绘画语汇上我对油滑的近代语汇并无敬意，这是人类趋于世俗化的意识在语汇上的表现，只有那远古的质朴语汇才能激起人格感怀与力度。
中国人对油画的理解还停留在一点技巧、一点感觉之中，尚不能了解油画中深层的理念。
我的画面以最单纯的形象传达人的心灵感觉，而尽可能去掉绘画叙事的那一面。
我在色彩方面的努力，力图使色彩具有光的特性、精神特性和某种难言的本质的东西。
我轻视当代艺术中的极端行为，这意味着人们失去了从容的价值判断与趣味，而依赖于惊人之举。
我也轻视欧洲古典艺术中的享乐主义，这是人类精华思想感情转化为情欲的滑落。
艺术创作是漫长的心智活动，我一直不愿意把它与现实功利联系起来，在我的生活中的地位甚至远远高于才华的展现，它承载着心灵活动在有形世界的价值与可能，在整个艺术历程中我是在充满荆棘的路上从艺术与人的艰难存在，与人的价值内省中，获得一种真正的意义。
在这个时代，人类价值所受到的巨大挑战在于人的一些根本价值——爱，正直、未来感和存在的意义受到了前所未有的冲击，我一直努力去做的是使绘画与人性的中心价值统一起来，使绘画成为重要的存在。
我曾经对人性有过充满崇高价值感的期待，并为此建筑一个艺术精神与理念世界，如果这种价值被摧毁的话，那也应该是一部悲剧的英雄史诗。
A short essay on art
Chao Ge
Our time has been stuffed with the “Retina” art, such as movies, TV programs, photographs and advertisement pictures. The art of painting is making various types of self-adaptation under the background of the development of mechanical instruments.
The starting point of “Retina” art that was applied to painting was after the Renaissance Period. It means to capture and depict instant scenes, from Caravaggio to Vermeer, and finally to the invention of camera. In contemporary art, the adaptation toward “Image” has in fact weakened the characteristics of painting itself. Caravaggio’s art indicates the visualization of what human beings see with eyes, and at the same time, the development of oil painting indicates the start of secularization of human spirits.
From my point of view, the great plastic arts had been in existence during the early period of Ancient Egyptian art and the Greek art, which was before the Renaissance Period.
At present, the danger of art field does not lie in creativeness itself, but lies in the human characteristics of art.
The rapid changes in our time means that among the chases, art has crashed artists’ pursuit of perpetual value, which is in existence and has close relations with the reality.
In ancient art, the essence of painting was nurtured in the attitudes to nature. However, this kind of painting does not mean to bend over to nature.
The durable and long lasting painting should be in existence for the purpose of great spiritual life.
My art has fully involved the intensive status of the central value of the world and the strong responses of personality.
It is a major issue whether an artist is sensitive to the contemporary time, which is not the same thing as the available contemporary representation methods and means.
The intrinsic value of painting is long lasting.
The aim of my efforts in painting is to endow the realistic painting of a concrete scene with strong spiritual ideal value, great respectfulness for humanity as well as most respectful review of the universal value of the human history of mankind.
Great art is usually created from a bright personality, which is the negative meaning given by art and though to the darksome historical logics, and which is the bright in the darkness.
I treasure my own existence and often examine myself adequately, because I am very sensitive to bright and dark, which are the roots of my strong value and my artistic imaginations.
The huge challenge in my life is to seek the strong spiritual truth in the fast secularized reality and to improve myself and to make progress on this kind of perpetual value.
At the first glance, my painting works may seem confused and absentminded; however, after a long time of focus, I can feel the existence of a certain kind of in-depth consciousness and essence.
I adopted new technique so that my painting has the feature of attraction of visual attention, which is what I wanted and which has the simple quality that I pursued for a long period time. This kind of visual feeling has contained the existence of light, space, and spirit in the simplest form.
In the composition of my painting works, I put human being at the most distinguished position.
What I seek for is the art of vision, but I do not seek for the art of retina. In my opinion, what is most near to the original is not the best art. What I pursue is the art of heart. Good art can give people the sense of huge space and the feeling of highness and distance.
All the objects in my paintings have been processed, which I think is a kind of advanced art process. Those processed objects own the most important factors of the objects or scene, but at the same time, they look independent and natural.
The perpetuity that I pursue is not only the perpetuity of the form of space but also the perpetuity in spiritual existence.
I am endowing these figure paintings, which look simple, with a kind of unique and empirical thing.
If there is any request proposed by the contemporary reality on human being, only the seeking of the perpetual ideals by human beings can maintain the value sense of mankind. I hope that painting can give people a sense of respectfulness again.
In terms of painting language, I have no respect on the oily modern language, which can be seen as the demonstration of secularism on language. Only the remote ancient simple language can evoke the humanity and strength of the characters.
Chinese people understand oil painting at the level of technique and feeling, yet they are not able to understand the in-depth idea in oil painting.
My paintings can deliver the feelings inside the character with the simplest vision, and can delete the aspect of describing things in the paintings as much as possible.
With regard to my efforts on colors, I try my best to make the colors have the characteristics of light, spirit and some intrinsic things that is hard to express.
I look down on the extreme behaviors in contemporary art, which, from my point of view, means that people have lost calm and interest in value judgments and they merely rely on astonishing behaviors.
I also look down upon the hedonism in the European classic art, which, in my opinion, is the degradation of mankind’s essential thoughts and feeling to desires.
Art creation is a long process of intellective behavior. I am not willing to connect it with material gains in the reality at any time. In my life, I regard art creation even much more important than showing of artistic talents as it is loaded with the value and possibility of the mental behaviors in the physical world. Through my entire art career, I have been trying to obtain a real significance from the hard existence of art and human being and from the self introspection of value of human being on the road full of thorns.
At present, the huge challenge on the value of human being lies in certain elemental value of mankind love, honesty, sense of future and significance of existence are suffering unprecedented impacts. What I always endeavor to do is to unify painting with central value of humanity so as to make painting a significant existence.
I had expected with full respect on the value of humanity, and had built up a kind of art spirit and ideal world for this kind of expectation. If this kind of value is destroyed, it should be regarded as a tragic heroic poem.