Renaissance of Chinese Ink Painting by Grandmaster Tan Oe Pang

What is traditional Chinese painting like? Why is Chinese painting not as precise as Western painting, but more like and less like? What is the difference between the two? How should we appreciate a painting of Chinese painting? We interviewed Chen Youbing, a Chinese master born in Singapore. He was invited to give a lecture by Li Keran, the president of Beijing Chinese Studies Institute in 1987. This institute is considered to be the top institution in the field of Chinese painting in China. It is said that after Li Keran saw Chen Youbing's painting, he exclaimed, Dongfang Jibai, that is, Dongfang Yaoliang, to praise his work. The brush and ink of Chinese painting, most people mistakenly think it is a work of art. They went to a bookstore to buy a brush, ink, and paper to paint and call it Chinese painting. This is a big joke. This is a big misunderstanding. Because the brush and ink of Chinese painting, let's not talk about it too seriously today. It is a culture. That is to say, the word brush represents yang. The word ink represents yin. There is also yin and yang in painting. When you use a brush, a little dry is yang. When you use a brush with a little more ink, it is yin. If the yin and yang are not balanced, there is no life in this line. How does it show life? It has to blend in. When you use it, you have to compare it. In practice, people who draw often make suggestions. As long as you use a brush, you have to wet it first. Then you look at the tip of the brush, the root of the brush, or which part of the brush you want to wet. Then you go to sketch. Once you draw it, there must be dragon eggs in it. It is different from western painting. Western painting has five colors. If you divide it into five colors, it will die. They thought it was art. Think about it. When you divide ink into five colors, you limit the amount of ink to five colors. It's like when you go to school, you draw a thousand strokes. There are two strokes, three strokes, four strokes, five strokes. Think about it. These strokes are used to draw a picture. Is it a picture? It can't be a picture that has life in it. So the brush can't be zero. If the brush is zero, it means you are not a painter. You can't see it. Outsiders can see it. They don't know it. Love is art. It's wrong. You know, in our lives, in everything, if you sum it up, it's science, philosophy, and art. There are three. When you talk about science, it's logical. It still exists. It's still a thought. When you talk about philosophy, it exists. It's still a thought. When you talk about art, it's an image. It's still a thought. So the thought part is the brush. The image part is the structure. But how do you say it? These two are two and one. One and two are two sides of a wall. Is it a little more difficult to say that it's the structure? In the structure, there's the brush, and there's the thought. The thought is aesthetic. It's not the thought that ordinary people calculate. The aesthetic thought includes color, texture, brightness, image, and sense of art. I think our school has never, since our history, never talked about the true essence of art. That's why we're talking about it today. When we talk about color, we don't talk about color. We talk about the beauty of color. When we talk about text, we don't talk about text either. We talk about the beauty of text. The richness in it changes. It's close to each other. It's like a network of heaven and earth. It's like the five elements are close to each other. It's incredibly complicated. In fact, it's the reason why we can balance it and create artworks.