"The reason why we love Chang Yu is not only his unparalleled talent, but also his unparalleled life. What can we do with these two things!"
This article is reproduced from: Recommended Aesthetics
ID: JianjianArts
Original: Jianshu
Original title: Recommended | His "naked woman" has just been sold for 200 million! Why do we all love Chang Yu?
Once the auction season comes, Chang Yu must often watch the circle of friends. Whether you can understand modern art or not, or whether you know the past of the generation of French artists, you can understand Chang Yu and think he understands you. The "Naked Girl in Curved Legs" which was released at Sotheby's Hong Kong for 198 million yuan, breaking Chang Yu's personal auction record. It is quite "Chang Yu" and very unlucky.
said that this "most expensive thigh" is very "chang Yu" and his symbol as always: women are fat, potted flowers are thin, and animals are small. Very simple, easy to understand, and good to look. You can tell at a glance.
said it was very "unpretentious". It was different from the beautiful naked women he was young who were called "cosmic thighs" by Xu Zhimo . This painting lacked more oncoming desires, and the lines were no longer as elegant as calligraphy. In "The Naked Girl with Curved Legs", the lines with a sense of gold and stone are like a knife, both hard and decisive, both human body and landscape, and are fate. It is a confession after a lifetime.
There are really a lot of information about Chang Yu on the Internet. But I still used this somewhat long article to retell what I understood Chang Yu. If you have time, welcome to enter Chang Yu's world with me.
01
Yes, this is Chang Yu in his later years. It is the largest painting of a woman he passed down from generation to generation, and it is also the last work of a naked woman in his life.
At this time, Chang Yu was already penniless. It's impossible to pay for the model at all. His nude paintings of nude women in his later years were often cut photos of beautiful women from fashion magazines for reference.
For those who have experienced spending money when they were young, such a gap is unimaginable. Chang Yu is therefore called "Jia Baoyu".
When I was in Paris, Xu Zhimo once visited Chang Yu's studio and joked that his sofa was too worn. The gentle nobleman replied: "Don't look down on my sofa that has been memorialized. There have been at least one or two hundred women who can afford the word "beauty" on it!" At that time, Chang Yu had a lot of money and spent it quickly. No matter how much money you have on hand, you have to hire female models. He said, "I can't live without a brilliant woman in front of me to support, comfort and feed my 'eye lust'."
"Rofu's Hong Kong 2011 Spring Auction" Chang Yu's "Five Naked Women" was sold for HK$128.32 million, setting the highest price of Chinese oil paintings at that time
1965, when 65-year-old Chang Yu painted this "Naked Girl with Curved Legs" in his leaking Paris residence, it was more like facing the female body in his memory. This naked woman who lies horizontally, with her legs folded horizontally and vertically, rarely uses a bottom-up view from bottom to top. It seems that a few strokes seem to be using all your strength to look back on the past of your life.
Chang Yu, who died alone a year later, passed away. When the burial was buried, there was no relative. The person who paid for the cemetery was a Vietnamese member named Jean Toan from the French-China Community Service Association. Jean Toan opened a local restaurant, and Chang Yu worked for him when he was not covered in food.
looks like Chang Yu's life is typically open high and close low. Not long before his death, he said in a letter to a friend, "After a lifetime of painting exploration, I finally know how to draw."
02
Ten years after Chang Yu's death, his paintings were still ignored. It is said that they appeared in bundles at the auction market in Paris, selling for only hundreds of francs. His Sichuan fellow villager and Lin Fengmian student Xi Dejin mentioned Chang Yu in an article published in the Taiwanese art magazine "Lion Art", saying that he was a "lifelong failure painter" and was destroyed by women and sex.
To put it this way, Chang Yu is too evaluating him with a worldly perspective and value orientation. Chang Yucha is difficult to be classified. He is too unworldly.
When he was young, he had a good family background. His father Chang Shufang was a local painter. His elder brother Chang Junmin founded the largest silk factory in Sichuan. His family was rich and known as "Chang Baiwan".The Chang family later opened China's first toothbrush factory in Shanghai. Money comes too easily, and Young Master Chang Yu doesn't take it seriously. Once you receive the remittance from your home, you will immediately squander all your money. If you accidentally sell a painting, you will also have to immediately have a banquet or give gifts to your friends. He dresses himself well and likes to play tennis. He often drinks coffee in a cafe while watching " Dream of Red Mansions " or playing the violin while painting. I have no idea how difficult the world is.
Chang Yu and his elder brother Chang Junmin (left)
Chang Yu (front row right) who just arrived in Paris in 1925 (right) and his friend
Many poor students studying in Paris have received help from Chang Yu. He is also willing to be generous and often invites others to eat authentic Chinese dishes and drink vodka .
The golden age of Paris, Chang Yu's friend Wang Jigang recalled Chang Yu, "He is beautiful and elegant, dressed well, played violin, played tennis, and was better at billiards. In addition, he had no chance to smoke and drink, did not dance, and did not gamble. His lifelong hobbies were natural, and he was also a handsome young man."
But when Chang Yu was in his early 30s, such a good day came to an abrupt end. His eldest brother Chang Junmin died of liver disease, and the silk factory soon went bankrupt due to foreign investment. The pillars of the Chang family fell overnight. Even so, Chang Yu, who had never been worried about money, was suddenly lonely overseas and was not too panicked. He just has no idea about things like "money". Still didn't take the money seriously. What's even more outrageous is that after six or seven years of miserable life in Paris, he returned to his hometown to inherit his elder brother's inheritance and received a considerable amount of money. The money was spent quickly after he returned to Paris.
The Dehe Silk Factory of Chang's family was photographed by Chang's nephew Chang Zesen in 1999 at the former site
He really doesn't care. He didn't even care much about his age, life and death. In October 1963, three officials of the Kuomintang, Huang Jilu, Chen Yuan and Fu Weixin, visited France. Huang Jilu, a Sichuan fellow villager of Chang Yu, went to visit Chang Yu's studio in France. Fu Weixin once recalled the scene of this meeting: Huang Jilu asked Chang Yu at that time, how old are you this year? Chang Yu replied: I don’t remember, I’m about 60 years old... As long as I’m in good health and live a happy life, I don’t think I’m old.
963 Huang Jilu, Fu Weixin and other three visited Chang Yu's Paris studio Chang Yu is such a "prodigal son" who can live like a scum, but in his heart, he is pure in his eyes, the world only has black, white, and pink colors; he is such a person who has done many things and is very "miscuous", but you can't bear to call him a scumbag. When you see his painting, the sorrow like a dream in the painting will be so pure that your heart will be transformed.
Chang Yu paints women's bodies and animals. After painting, he will carefully and symmetrically draw many ancient Chinese symbols of blessing, wealth and longevity on the background of the work. When painting flowers in still life, you will write some ancient poems in detail on the flower pot, such as the famous quote by Cheng Yong, a Neo-Confucianist of the Song Dynasty: "All things are content to observe quietly, and the prosperity of the four seasons is the same as others."
is the same for women. Although Chang Yu said it nakedly, he was full of praise and admiration for female beauty in his heart. At the beginning, most of his women's bodies were hooked with Chinese brushes and rendered with watercolor paint, which gave him a sense of improvisational sketching. When writing, the woman's thighs were unreasonably exaggerated, and the body's volume was as strong as a mountain, with the temperature of eruption. He used the Oriental writing method to show the secretly secretive subjects of the Oriental.
Slowly, Chang Yu's woman's body became a combination of more and more lines and dots. They are boundaries and constitute content. In fact, it is the product of sincere communication with his heart and desires. Friend Pang Xunqian recalled Chang Yu: "The most interesting thing is that he painted the people around him, whether they are men or women, young or middle-aged, as naked women."
Chang Yu does not have the ability to live in the world, but he is born with the ability to eliminate the world. This ability is useless to him and his relatives, but in his paintings, it becomes the kind of unique and extraordinary cleanliness.
In Xu Zhimo's "The Claws of Paris", he recorded what Chang Yu saw when he faced the naked girl all day long?
"The beauty of the human body is like this. Some are beautiful in the chest, some waist, some lower part, some hair, some hands, some ankles, the incomprehensible bones, muscles, , the convergence of the texture, forming different lines, changes in color, the fluctuation of the skin, the distribution of capillaries, the natural posture, and the unstoppable expressions - you must not be afraid of trouble and carefully understand and find out. God does not have such a cheap thing, he will never give it to you. If you have a specific absolute beauty, all our artistic efforts will be meaningless... Speaking of the artist's aesthetic instinct, I really have to close my eyes and thank God - if it weren't for it, wouldn't all the beauty of the human body, to say a little narrower, have become the tombs of emperors of all dynasties on the ancient Chang'an Road, all of which are buried with one or several thin layers of clothes! "
03
From a secular perspective, Chang Yu may succeed at any time. His talent could not be hidden.
When Chang Yu was 29 years old, he didn't have much effort to come to Paris, and he was noticed by the great collector of Paris H.P. Hou Xie. Hou Xie was very surprised to see such a fresh Eastern Confucius. He praised Chang Yu in his diary, "It's really amazing, and he's just starting out." I also remember the unique oriental signature: when the paint is not dry, quickly scrape out the lines with a pen. The upper part is the character "jade" and the outer part is framed, which is like a seal in Chinese painting, and it also looks like a Chinese character "四" with the lower part.
The first to discover Chang Yu's collector and agent, writer Henri-Pierre Roche (Henri-Pierre Roche)
What does this praise mean? Just like the ace agent Chai Zhiping , he fell in love with F4 of that year. "Fire" is so close. Hou Xie is the agent of Picasso , Duchamp and others, and he is also an excellent writer himself. Another big boss in Paris, Stein , said that the biggest ability of a wide range of communication is to "introduce anyone to anyone."
is appreciated by Hou Xie, which means that the door to mainstream Paris society has been opened to this Oriental Young Master. Hou Xie did play his magical powers and helped Chang Yu meet a group of artists such as Picasso, Matisse , and Picasso also painted oil painting portraits for Chang Yu. It is so easy to favor fate! The art students in Paris are as diligent as Xu Beihong and as talent as Lin Fengmian, and they are still not even seen by the "edge" of this mainstream society.
Chang Yu was in his spring breeze in 1930. In his Paris apartment, Hou Xie often recorded his social activities with Chang Yu in his diary, such as April 7, 1930: "Eat at Chang Yu's house. He started with the preparation of the ingredients and carefully cooked a table of Chinese dishes with all colors and flavors, which was really charming. He showed several new works with patterns scratched out on canvases covered with colors, and I bought two small pieces." Hou Xie's collection and the platform for Chang Yu allowed Chang Yu to participate in autumn salons and independent salon exhibitions many times, especially the French Dulery salon, which has a high status in Europe.
is so annoying. Xu Beihong, who is five years older than Chang Yu, probably gritted his teeth and recited silently in a rented house in Paris at that time, "My life is up to me, not to God."
is so annoying. Everything Chang Yu got after favoring God was still: I don’t care! He spent all his money with big hands and then didn't see him at all, and regarded Hou Xie as his elder brother. Chang Yu wrote in a letter to Hou Xie: "Now there are less than ten francs left in my pocket." He felt that everything Hou Xie gave him was taken for granted. Some cooperative publishers are often released by Chang Yu.
The relationship between the two began to deteriorate like this. Hou Xie wrote in his letter to Chang Yu: "It seems that we both have to take advantage of each other." In 1932, the two parted ways.
"Because of his laissez-faire and his poor use of opportunities, he ended up in a lifetime of misfortune." Wu Guanzhong once wrote about Chang Yu in a memory article like this.
But in Chang Yu's dictionary, there is no word "time" at all, so there is no way to talk about "use". The less sensitive Chang Yu is to money, the less concerned about the market.During the years when Hou Xie opened the door to Paris for him, a lot of art dealers in Paris showed great interest in Chang Yu's works, but Chang Yu refused to raise his head: he refused to cooperate. In his opinion, what the hell is the market!
Later, Pang Xunqin, the initiator of the "Jiolan Society" movement, received two advice from Chang Yu, the mentor and friends: First, do not accept academic art education; second, do not trust art merchants.
Pang Xunqin saw Chang Yu surrounded by others many times and wanted to buy the line drawings he drew. Chang Yu gave the painting to others and refused the money people gave him. A painting dealer came to buy his paintings, but Chang Yu also refused one by one, but did not refuse others to invite him to dinner. Pang Xunqin said:
"People ask Chang Yu to paint a portrait. He made three rules: First, pay first, don't look at the painting when the second, take the painting after the third, and leave without any suggestions. If you agree to these conditions, draw, otherwise you will never draw."
Like his father's elder brother Chang Junmin left. Hou Xie, a partner who could have helped Chang Yu gain fame and fortune in the French art world, left. Those who want to do business with Chang Yu and buy paintings and sell paintings cannot enter his world at all.
So, Chang Yu's life is basically an important person who keeps away from him. In 1927, he fell in love with Marsu, the daughter of a French baron and his student, and got married in 1929. On the day of the wedding, Masu wore a red dress according to Chinese customs. Chang Yu loves horses and often nicknames his wife Masu as "Ma". This marriage lasted only two years, and the details were vague. We can only know from Xu Zhimo's letter that Chang Yu, who was poor and expensive, even once took the jewelry given to her by Masu's mother to pawn. The reason for the divorce is probably because Chang Yu's attitude towards women is too "fraternal".
left: Chang Yu, "Masu Poem", 1928, pencil paper
right: Masu Xia Greenta Hazuni, about 1925
Masu should have loved Chang Yu later, and he still retained the jade jewelry that Chang Yu brought to her from China until his later years, but she could not turn back to her marriage with Chang Yu. A few years later, I went to , Morocco to marry someone else.
Chang Yu never remarries in his life. But no matter when you are rich or poor, Chang Yu has a feminine relationship throughout his life. He fell in love with a young woman around 1945, and then he had several model lovers. In 1956, Zhang Daqian went to Paris to hold a solo exhibition. Chang Yu also specially introduced his young blonde girlfriend as a model for him. Zhang Daqian drew a portrait of Chang Yu's girlfriend.
Zhang Daqian's girlfriend
He has a work called "Dark Horse, White Horse" and the back is "Leopard". He wrote a line of words on the front hoof of the leopard: "This painting was completed only in two eras. The painting started in 1930. The black horse was regarded as a white horse but it was not fulfilled. It was achieved in 1945. In this era, I fell in love with a young woman, and this painting was created because of her. This painting belonged to her later. This painting is still the same, Jade Record." At the age of 50, Chang Yu lived with his 19-year-old German female model, but broke up soon.
In fact, when he was in his early 30s, God gave Chang Yu everything that everyone in the world wanted, but Chang Yu didn't want it. God took them all away.
1932, the world that "secular" believed that Chang Yu should adopt and embrace was far away from him.
04
1932, the young master Chang Yu became Chang Yu, but he was still a young master in his heart.
Two years later, Chang Yu's life was unsustainable and he had to find a restaurant to work in order to solve his livelihood problem. The salary is not even a thousand francs. He became a waiter in the restaurant several times. I have also worked as a ceramics and cement. Around the 1950s, Chang Yu, who was forced to make a living, found a Chinese antique furniture factory to work. His daily work was to draw colored screens and utensils, which finally had something to do with his craftsmanship.
At such a down-and-out moment, he really didn't care at all and still didn't care. What was the young master thinking at that time? Based on his experience in playing tennis, he conceived a sport called "Table Tennis": rules and tennis, but using a racket similar to badminton to hit a ball slightly larger than a table tennis ball, the court area is smaller than the squash court, the whole court is painted red, surrounded by white lines, and can be performed indoors and outdoors.Chang Yu once wanted to promote this unreliable sport to the whole world. In the photos of this period, Chang Yu couldn't tell at all that he was a loser who had to work everywhere to make a living. It is still the "Pianpian Young Master" that has always been there.
956 Chang Yu 0s Chang Yu and his friend When he was not covered in food, he was thinking about how art transcends the times. He wrote an article "A Chinese Painter's Thoughts on Picasso", and the issues discussed are out of date until now:
"If Rembrandt lives in modern times, I can guarantee that his style of painting will never be the same as before. Painting must keep pace with the times, and the same is true for fashion. When you enter the tailor shop, you probably won't tell the tailor that you want to customize the dress of Rembrandt's era. The deformation in Picasso's paintings is just the first step. Our race is too old, our body is too fragile, and our life is too short."
"We must find a new God. It will give us eternal youth and strength God of measure... We can create human appearance as we wish, and we need four eyes, one pair of eyes in front and one pair of eyes in the back, or four arms or four legs. We can also create humans as huge as King Kong. "Hiddenly the Liberation Daily in the late 440s," written by Chang Yu, an article titled "A Chinese Painter's Views on Picasso" by Chang Yu, a few days ago, saw the masterpiece of Miss Tian Pujun "Three Generations of People Can Cultivate a Noble". Seeing my uncle was so surprised that his chin could not fit: It turned out that the nobles were trained by Miss Tian's "Chengli Academy"! In addition to cooking braised pork well, Miss Tian also learned the etiquette of the nobles of the Empire and wanted to use it to benefit the rich people in China.
suggests that this wife Wang Shixin does not have to travel thousands of miles to seek legal etiquette from Daying. To know what aristocrat is, you can first learn about Chang Yu in China.
turned around and continued to talk about Chang Yu. But it is really difficult. After the German army occupied Paris, important materials were rationed, and Chang Yu could not afford to buy painting materials. He thought of a solution, and used paint instead of pigments and used cheap fiberboard or polymer board instead of high-cost oil canvas. The poor quality of painting materials has therefore become a feature of his late paintings. Therefore, the picture often peels off over time. This is Chang Yu's "black period".
But compared with the tenderness of his works when he was young, his works have more life weight. Wu Guanzhong once said that the lines of Chang Yu's late works were "black iron-like lines" and "no longer a dream, but a painful whip and a trace." In this context, if you watch "Naked Girl with Curved Legs" again, you will have a completely different experience.
The bonsai painted by Chang Yu in the late period have extremely dense branches and leaves and are extremely stretched, but the flower pots are disproportionately small. "The more material he lacks, the more full the scenery he draws, with dense branches and leaves and gorgeous flowers. All the folk totems were painted, and all the food was painted, chakra , grapes, loquats, and magpies. He no longer limited to using only black, white and pink. Each color he used was bright, full and beautiful."
48. At the age of 48, Chang Yu met another noble man in his life: Robert Frank . Photographer Frank and Chang Yu have shared the studio with him for two years. He also truly appreciates Chang Yu and does his best to help Chang Yu sell his works. But Chang Yu, who has lost the market, is already difficult to return to the market. In 1950, Frank held a solo exhibition for Chang Yu at the Basado Gallery in Manhattan, New York, showing the 29 paintings Chang Yu brought from Paris. None of the works in this exhibition can be sold.
Frank once tried to convince his cousin, a French businessman, to buy a small painting by Chang Yu. The French don't want to pay money, they just want to exchange it with a small printer. Chang Yu refused, saying, "I don't need a printer."
In 1997, it was this Frank who found Chang Yu's nameless cemetery - a cement board numbered TR/1296/1966. He invested in the refurbishment, giving the name "Chang Yu" again on the tombstone.
The earliest nameless cement board tombstone in Chang Yu's cemetery, and a photo with Robert Frank and Yi Shufan after renovation in 1998. Although Chang Yu, who is over 60, often walks around with his friends, he is really lonely inside. He still painted women's bodies, plants, and began to draw small animals. He sometimes talks to plants and plays music for them. In winter, the window on the roof was broken and it was leaking. He leaned the ladder against the table and climbed up to paste the window. But he accidentally fell down and was unconscious. The doorman downstairs was worried when he heard the sound, so he came up to check and sent him to the doctor.
In the winter of 1965, a few friends in the circle held their last art exhibition for Chang Yu to be happy. Zhao Wuji, Zhu Dequn, Pan Yuliang and Xi Dejin all went there. That was their last meeting. A few months later, Chang Yu died in his apartment. When he was discovered, a book was placed on his chest, and the room was filled with the smell of gas. He even made a box with thick cardboard to cover his ankle that was injured not long ago to prevent the wound from being tender when sleeping.
According to the recollection of his neighbor and artist Mrs. Pachico, Chang Yu had a jasper ring that never leaves her body. She was brought from her hometown and followed him for many years. After his death, this beautiful jade actually disappeared mysteriously. It reminds people of Jia Baoyu's "spiritual jade".
Not long before Chang Yu passed away, he kept in frequent phone calls with his friend Da Ang, and he told Da Ang: I started drawing a picture. Da'ang: What kind of painting is it? Chang Yu: You will see it! Da'ang: How long will it take to wait? Chang Yu: After a few days... I draw it first, then simplify it... simplify it...
A few days later, Chang Yu invited Da Ang to watch it. "It was a very small elephant, galloping in the endless desert. He pointed at the animal with his finger and said, "This is me. Then he laughed at himself." Da Ang said.
This painting is called "The Running Elephant", which is Chang Yu's last painting.
Finally, the little elephant's painting and the story about this painting have been told by too many people, but every time we see it, it still moves us.
Isn’t that baby elephant each of us?
The reason why we love Chang Yu is not only his unparalleled talent, but also his unparalleled life. We can't do anything about these two things!
