Li Jin, Simple Pleasures at the Ashmolean, Oxford.
Li Jin, a prominent ink artist active from the 1980s, is best known for his playful and witty depictions of the sensory pleasure of the ordinaries, in contrast to the ideal and elegant life presented in traditional Chinese literati painting. The time he spent in Tibet after graduating from the Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts has left a lasting mark in his art, relaying the artist's contemplation of the pleasures and desires in life in relation to its impermanence.
This painting was made in Tibet. Li Jin's sojourn in Tibet profoundly impacted his art, transforming both his pictorial vocabulary and his ideas about self-existence and the material world, which have continued to inform his works.
Picture of a Beauty, 2001, (ink and colour on paper)
This looks like a traditional Chinese painting of a gentlewoman, consisting of an inscription and seals. Even the red lines and circles marking the inscription and the title resemble the traditional annotations used in Chinese classics. However, the inscription compares the figure's face with a flower in the rain and her waist with a willow in the wind. This is an expression of sexuality and seduction, an element that Li Jin and his fellow 'New Literati' artists do not shy away from in their paintings.
Painting the Flower from its Reflection, 2002, (ink and colour on paper)
The most established imagery of geese in Chinese culture is associated with the calligraphy master Wang Xizhi (303-361), whose wrist movements were said to have been inspired by the graceful goose neck. However, a delicate female body in water is depicted here instead of a literati figure that represents Wang, dissolving a traditional literati imagery closely associated with geese.
Water is an important element in Li Jin's works. He once claimed to have 'a special sensitivity towards wetness and moisture'. Here the water is murky and overwhelming, only gradually becoming clearer towards the lilies, seemingly echoing the pure and noble quality of the flower in Buddhism and Chinese literature.
Nude Figure Diving, 2001, (ink and colour on paper)
Instead of the western style bathtub as in this painting, what appears more often in Li Jin's works is the Chinese wooden bath barrel placed in a lush garden scene. For many in China, bathing and splashing in the courtyard in the summer is probably one of their fondest childhood memories.
Mundane activities, such as bathing, eating or sleeping, are not typical subjects in Chinese ink painting but a signature theme of Li Jin, who renders the under-appreciated pleasures in these activities in life in an extraordinary way. Both the title and the warm tones here evoke the cosiness of being lost in a dream world, leaving one to wonder what the open book is about.
Beauties, 2002, (ink and colour on paper)
Both men and women in Li Jin's paintings are imperfect. Men are usually pot-bellied, and women come in all shapes and sizes. Their expressions do not clearly display any stereotypical masculinity or femiminity either and there is a characteristic absence of theatrical stances. Whether nude or clothes they often look as if they are solitary and no one is looking at them, or they simply do not care.
Monk (from the back), 2001, (ink and colour on paper)
Despite the inscription 'Enjoying the changing colours of the autumn mountains', there are no mountains at all in this painting, and the depicted figure is only showing his back. However, through the pose of the figure, whose hands clasp behind him, the artist has expressed an open and calm attitude towards the passage of time implied in the inscription.
In stark contrast to the secular man (probably the artist himself) and man in the painting, the inscription that fills up the space is taken from Buddhist scriptures, a common element in Li Jin's work. The lasting concern for and interest in Buddhist throught in his works demonstrates the significant impact of his sojourns in Tibet in his art, while alighing with his chosen approach and subjects, which emphasise the significance of 'being present' even in the most 'insignificant' day practices.
Fang Lijun, Portrait of Li Jin, 1963, (ink on paper)
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