当今我国的绘画创作，不论题材内容还是形式语言，均愈来愈显示出多元和多样的面貌。题材内容的不断扩大和形式语言的不断拓展，都基于艺术家对自己独立人格的自觉和对自我艺术个性的自信，表明他们艺术视野的开阔和修养的提高。从另一个角度看，也反映社会的开放和进步，人们的审美需求的宽度与深度在增长，艺术家们的视觉经验和表现手段也相应地日益丰富。例如，在近十多年的中国画山水画和油画风景画的创作中，除了表现祖国美好山河和田园风光外，出现了不少新的题材内容，突出的有中国画领域的“城市山水”和油画创作中的“城市风景”、“工业风景”等。我们这里讨论的张新权君，便是在“城市风景”和“工业风景”的创作中有杰出成就的油画家。
张新权1983年毕业于曲阜师范大学美术系，后深造于中国美术学院油画研究班。他最初以表现自然风景、追求田园诗意的作品步入画坛，但在这些农村的写生作品中，却不时出现一些工业产品如摩托车、油桶和汽车瓶等，传达出画家内心对现代工业文明关注的信息。稍后，他这方面的视野又有所扩大，渔船码头、工厂的一角、拖拉机等图像，陆续出现在他的风景画中。假如，这一切还是出于他潜意识偏好的话，那么，2002年他的一幅上海外滩风景油画《十里洋场》，于翌年参加在中国美术馆举办的“第三届中国油画展精选作品展”获得成功后，他对表现与工业发展有关的城市景观题材的兴趣，便日益浓厚了。颇有意思的是，早在二十年前，即上世纪80年代初，张新权便创作了一批描写上海万国建筑群的钢笔速写。《十里洋场》的创作，算是一种偶然的机会，但是却成了他艺术历程的转折点。他曾说：“对我而言，《十里洋场》的出现或许是一个里程碑，它分割了我的过去和未来，修正了我的探寻和格局；对城市景观，尤其是工业化对人的生活和情感带来的变化，我更感兴趣。”
张新权的另一幅以旧上海城市风景为题材的《信号台》2004年获得“第十届全国美术作品展”铜奖并被中国美术馆收藏之后，他再一次受到鼓舞，也巩固了他对未来艺术走向的自觉性。描写旧上海景观的《河道》、《海滩》、《风云十六铺》、《码头》、《有轨电车》、《十字街头》和《黄浦江畔》等作品在2005至2006年的出现，便充分说明这一点。久违了的上海街道上的有轨电车、早己停用的蒸汽轮船……这些中国开始走向工业化的象征，出现在他的作品中。工业化伴随着列強对中国的欺凌和压迫来到华夏大地，打乱了这里农业文明的“安定”与“平静”，也催动了国人的觉醒和振奋了国人的精神。这是中国近现代史上兼有悲伤、心酸与兴奋、欣喜的一个片断，也是中国社会前进中无法绕开的一段路程。用艺术形象语言呈现这段历史，绝不是为了满足人们对它的好奇心，而是让人们感受中国开始走向现代的社会图像，引发人们对中国历史的思考和从中获得应有的思想启迪。
对艺术创作来说，山水画或风景画的创作当然以表现祖国山河的力与美为主旨，但的题材应该不断拓展，形式语言也应该不断地变化。把那些繫动着人们思想感情的历史和现实景观纳入在艺术表现的范围之中，并选用与其相适应的绘画语言，从而赋予现代风景创作以多样的面貌，这也是山水、风景画创新的应有之义。在艺术领域，人们的视觉经验和欣赏心理既有相对的恒定性，又有不断求新求异的驱动力。艺术家的创造需要在恒定性与求异两者之间寻找适度的平衡，做出创新的努力。而艺术家在求异求新中如何找到恰当的切入点，则需要艺术家对自己的个性、气质有清晰的认识。正如前文所述，张新权之所以对工业风景、城市风景产生热情并经久不衰，固然与他的作品受到绘画界与社会大众的赞赏有关，同时也与他从青年时代起，就对工业文明图像有浓厚兴趣有密切的联系。
张新权的创作重点转向工业化题材后，他原有的明快鲜丽的色彩便发生了变化。他用较平和、沉着的色调表现旧上海城市景观的历史沧桑感，用鲜亮的色点、色块调节画面，但保持了早期笔触的潇洒与爽利。虽然“为工业文明造像”可能是张新权的创作初衷，但实际上他越来越不拘泥于真实景观的再现，而是在原型的基础上放笔自由发挥，大胆利用线、形与色组合的虚实关系，营造气氛，表达某种境界。这种带有相当主观色彩的图式，也强化了他作品的陌生感即新鲜感，这也是他的作品受到人们肯定，屡屡入选全国性油画展并获奖的原因。
2008年以来，张新权的油画创作又转向了反映姑苏古城和我国早期的战舰题材，代表性的作品有《苏州河》、《陆巷码头》、《巡洋舰》、《海魂系列》、《致远舰》和苏州园林系列等。其作品的语言图式也随之变化，画面早期的满构图往往被特写的“镜头”所取代，色彩也更趋向单纯，多用原色，空白的面积加大，在看似随意性的动静、虚实组合中，掺入了构成因素。不用说，这些作品充分表明，张新权在看似自由、随性随兴的涂抹中，善于呈现他匠心独运的构思，展示出他对油画艺术的当代性敏锐而独到的理解和认知。
用何种名称来概括了张新权的油画风格，意象性，还是写意性？看来，这些都不够确切。虽然无可置疑，中国传统艺术的意象性或者写意性，都有形无形地对他的油画产生了影响，但他在运用这些技巧时，即使在平面性的描写中，也始终没有忘记油画语言的特性：形的结构、色彩的美感和“调性”，以及空间形态等。这是油画语言的魅力所在。油画在中国这块土壤中茁壮成长，不可避免地要承载中国文化的精神和渗入中国画的表现技巧，可是它不会也不应该被中国民族绘画的形式语言所同化和取代，而要保持和发挥它自身的基本特色。这样说来，张新权油画创作的价值，远不在“为工业文明造像”，而是用自己的智慧和才能赋予油画语言以具有独立个性的表达方式。艺术之所以为人们所需要，正是因为它运用具有独特品格的形象语言在提供人们审美享受、唤醒人们对真善美追求的同时，加强对自我个性的自信。
——邵大箴
Unique Perspective and Individual Artistic Language - On Zhang Xinquan’s Art
The contemporary paintings in our country appear to be with diversity and variety both in the sense of subjects and forms. The expansion of artistic territory and the improvement of artistic forms are all based on artists’ independent consciousness and their assuredness of artistic individuality, as well as their broadened horizon and improved personality. Seen from another angle, it also reflects the openness and development of the society, people’s widened and deepened aesthetic desire, as well as artists’ enriched visual experience and expression. For instance, in the traditional Chinese paintings or oil paintings of landscape in the past ten years, new themes emerged apart from those praising the beauty of the land and rurality, such as the outstanding “city landscape” in traditional Chinese painting and “cityscape” and “industrial sight” in oil painting and so on. Zhang Xinquan, the artist we will talk about, is an excellent painter in “cityscape” and “industrial sight”.
Zhang graduated from the Department of Fine Arts in Qufu Normal University, and then attended the post-graduates class in China Academy of Art. He sets out painting natural landscapes and pastoral prospect, but in his stretches to display rural life, industrial products like motorbikes and jerricans often appear, passing on the message that the artist is concerned about modern industrial civilization. Later on, his horizon is broadened to the images of fishing wharf, a corner of a factory and tractors and so on. If those are just out of his subconciousness, his work “The Metropolis Old Shanghai” about the Bund painted in 2002, which won him a great success after its appearance in the 3rd “Selected Artworks Chinese Paintings” Exhibition held in the National Art Museum of China in 2003, showed his great interest in the themes concerning cityscapes of industrial development. It’s quite interesting that 20 years ago, that is in the 1980s, Zhang has already sketched the Worldwide Building Complex in Shanghai with a pen. The painting of “The Metropolis Old Shanghai” seems hazardous, but actually it’s the turning point of his art course. Once he said, “The Metropolis Old Shanghai might be a milestone in my art course, which divided my past and future, to revise my exploration course and pattern. I’m more appealed to cityscape, especially the changes brought to people’s life and emotions by industrialization.”
Zhang was once again inspired after his another painting “The Signal Tower” produced in 2004 won the Bronze Prize of “the 10th National Exhibition of Artworks” and was collected by the National Art Museum of China, which also strengthened his confidence of his art in the future. The paintings that depict the old Shanghai, such as “The Watercourse”, “The Beach”, “The Shiliupu Wharf”, “The Wharf”, “The Tram”, “The Crossroad” and “Beside the Huangpu River”, appeared one after another in 2005 and 2006 in that context. The long deserted tram in the street of Shanghai, and the disused steamship ..., which symbolize the industrialization of China, were seen in his paintings. Industrialization comes together with the repression of western powers to China, harassing the stability and tranquility of the agricultural civilization, and waking up and inspiring the Chinese nation as well. It’s a chapter of interlaced sorrow, grief, inspiration and delight in modern Chinese history, as well as a course that can’t be detoured. His artistic depiction of this period, never aims to satisfy people’s curiosity, but to present the images demonstrating the modernization of china, so as to guide people to ponder Chinese history.
Landscape is definitely the best art form to portray the beauty and strength of our great land, but the themes should be expanded and the language should be updated. It’s the task of landscapes to express the history and reality filled with human emotions in an appropriate way. Therefore contemporary landscape could be endowed with variety. In the realm of art, people’s visual experience and appreciation are relatively immutable while there is still a desire for novelty and difference. How to find the proper breakthrough point in the process of innovation relies on the artist’s knowledge of his own individuality and personality. As it is mentioned above, Zhang’s lingering enthusiasm of industrial sight and cityscape, partly results from the praise he received from the art circles and the audience, and partly from his interest in the images of industrial civilization since his youthhood.
After his conversion to the industrial topics, his use of bright color changes accordingly. He uses mild and placid tone to present the weathered cityscape of Shanghai, and then embellishes it with shining color spots and lumps, together with his earlier free and neat strokes. It’s his original intention to create images for the industrial civilization, but actually he is increasingly less confined to the representation of real sights. Instead, he creates the atmosphere and conveys the artistic conception with the true and false relationship between the lines, shapes and colors, on the basis of prototype. The subjective schemas strengthen the strangeness or the novelty of his works, which might be the season why his works are widely accepted and constantly win national prizes.
Since 2008, Zhang has turned to the topics on the old town of Gusu and the vessels in the earlier times, with “The Suzhou River”, “The Luxiang Wharf”, “The Patrol Vessel”, “Sea Soul” series, “Zhiyuan Vessel” and “The Traditional Gardens in Suzhou” series as the representatives. His artistic language changes accordingly – the full layout is replaced by featured “scenes”, the colors become purer or even primitive, more blankness appears and structure is added to the dilemma of true and false. These works fully prove, without any doubt, that between his seemingly free and random strokes, Zhang has his own original conceptive to demonstrate his keen and unique knowledge and cognition of the contemporaneity of oil painting.
Which name should we use to describe Zhang’s painting style? Expressionism? Or impressionism? None of these seem to be precise enough. But obviously, both impressionism and expressionism in traditional Chinese painting have an influence on his works. When he uses these techniques, he never ignores the characteristics, spell as well, of oil painting – the structure, the aesthetics and tones of colors, and dimensional relationship -- even in planar portrayal. When oil painting thrives in the soil of Chinese culture, it inevitably bears the spirit of Chinese culture and influenced by the Chinese painting techniques, but it should keep its own characteristics instead of being assimilated and replaced by Chinese painting. In this sense, the value of Zhang’s works is anything but “creating images for industrial civilization”. It lies in the unique expression with his wisdom and talent for oil painting. Art is strongly desired because it has the unique visual language to satisfy people’s aesthetic needs, to provoke people’s pursuit of the goodness, and to gain more self confidence in personality as well.
By Shao Dazhen