Foreword

Clive Bell, a famous British formalist aesthetician, put forward the famous "meaningful form" in his representative work Art in the last century. He believed that beauty is "a form in which colors and lines combined in a special way move viewers and arouse people's aesthetic emotions". According to Bell, the aesthetic value of artistic creation can only be reflected when the work of art has a "meaningful form".

Throughout the Celadon Porcelain painting works of Lu Xiaoni, a teacher in the Academy of Fine Arts of Ceramic University, we can find this "meaningful form". From the early twigs to the recent swan collections, we can see the elements of formal beauty: How do points, lines, planes and colors harmoniously unify in Lu Xiaoni's works?  Those huge blue and white ink blocks like ink halo, blue and white superposition of the halo point layer upon layer, water dense, vivid and natural ink, curved twisted branches and flower lines and these playful blue and white ink points together constitute a harmonious and "meaningful form".

Lu Xiaoni's Celadon Porcelain paintings have both traditional Chinese artistic elements and modernist artistic elements. His works have a strong sense of form and vivid color changes, which are full of the author's creative rationality in the vivid sensibility. He put the composition in the form of western modernism and the integration of Oriental clever artistically in traditional ink painting, the traditional ink painting pen, the pen in rhyme into a blue and white water breaks through the traditional technique of water, land and small mud with concise words, full of water, in blue and white rhythm and beat, let us feel the simple and profound beauty, blue and white as its composition area of big and small. The whole and broken; The roughness and delicacy of painting, the simplicity and elegance together constitute a new picture that is pleasing to the eye.

This kind of new blue and white is inseparable from the cultivation of Lu Xiaoni. Lu Xiaoni grew up in Jingdezhen, the porcelain capital of thousands of years, surrounded by blue and white flowers, and studied abroad for a long time where avant-garde art was prevailing. He has not only the foundation of four years' traditional Chinese painting training, but also the long-term influence of overseas avant-garde art, as well as the advantaged family background, together with his own talent and hard work, so that we see today these delightful, moving and new features of the works. In today's world of advocating artistic diversity, Lu Xiaoni can fully combine blue and white techniques with modern composition, and gradually begin to form his own appearance, which is especially valuable for a young artist. The vivid and relaxed brushwork and the rigorous structure of the painting show that Lu Xiaoni has found his way to dialogue with nature and art, and has truly created "meaningful forms".

In the fickle present, how can our ceramic painting keep the local traditional cultural characteristics, and at the same time can make the works have the contemporary characteristics, and thus explore the new ceramic technology and expression techniques. I believe that after seeing this "green and white impression -- Lu Xiaoni blue and white ceramic painting exhibition", we may have the answer to this question!

Zhao Lantao, professor of Fine Arts at Jingdezhen Ceramic University

May 28, 2021 at Hutian Letao Garden

Works