肖谷《东庄图—续古堂》2008年作

　　《东庄图》像一条命运的纽带。

　　500年前，它把一代“文人画”巨匠沈周、与“庄主”吴宽的情谊留在丹青笔墨间;500年后，它让肖谷与沈周隔空相见，并激荡出令世人震惊的《寻找东庄》。

　　去年的某一日，我拜会肖谷先生，谈到《东庄图》。他说，现在知道沈周《东庄图》的人不多了。我说，我知道，我很小的时候就看过东庄图画册。

　　彼时，沈周的东庄，山涯曲水，花木奇石，桑果蔬麦、修竹亭榭。俨然世外仙境，拥抱着那些看尽世态炎凉、参透官场是非的士绅隐者。他们隐逸乡居，寄情山水。沈周以《东庄图》寄意为官的吴宽“如不知有官，可退居乡里，筑园修圃，莳花植木，二五雅客，徜徉其间，吟讽啸咏，逍遥自得。”温柔恭谨后面，有一种隐而未发不屈的“刚”。

　　肖谷作《东庄图》，是“力图在寻找文脉气象上的传承关系，并接上民族传统文化的气脉”，是 “想画出一种境界，一种文化境界。让人看了就会觉得一个字：静。”他也希望艺术家更多的能在创作中“沉下心来”。它文化寓言一般的气息，在当代新的美学高度寻找到依傍和归宿。

　　物象有无穷的奥妙，心灵有无边的玄悟，言语常常无法传达其妙。而无论是沈周的“逍遥自得”，还是肖先生的“静”，都源于民族的传统文化精神，显现出艺术家所置身的时代人文精神和审美情趣。

　　500年过去，沈周与肖谷一见如故，心灵相通，促膝而谈，在他们中间静卧着一个东庄，它隐逸在 500年前的山林深处，等待着被重新发现重新审视重新解读重新追寻。

　　那似乎是我们梦中曾到达过的故园，或者是我们心向往之而无法进入的地方。百转千回，终于了悟，东庄，早已印映在我们心灵的底片，须冲洗掉岁月尘封，才能渐渐显影。唯其纯真，唯其纯粹，成就我们的精神家园。月光泻地，天地静谧，万物归真，终于永恒，

　　感谢肖谷先生，他以《东庄图》，连接了我们通向精神故园的路，又让东庄，以新的形态长久地活在我们心中。

　　罗浮紫艺术典藏 毛文采

　　The Living Dongzhuang

　　Dongzhuang Drawings plays an important role in inheriting the culture from generation to generation.

　　500 years ago, it witnessed the friendship between the Literati Art Master Shen Zhou and the owner of Dongzhuang Wu Kuan. Now the amazing piece brings Xiao Gu and Shen Zhou together across the time and space, thus the remarkable Looking for Dongzhuang series came into being.

　　One day last year, I visited Mr. Xiao Gu and talked with him about the Dongzhuang Drawings. He said that there’re few people knowing about Shen Zhou’s Dongzhuang nowadays. But I told him that I had read the catalogue of Dongzhuang Drawings long time before.

　　With Shen Zhou’s master techniques and artistic conception, everything in Dongzhuang came alive. The trees, flowers, fields, streams and different buildings constituted a paradise of idyllic beauty, in which the then hermits enjoyed their life and abandoned themselves in the nature.  Shen Zhou finished the collection and gave it to Wu Kuan as a gift, trying to suggest him that he can also enjoy his life in art and nature. The man who concealed himself in the chaotic world actually processed an unyielding spirit.

　　The reason why Xiao Gu created this Dongzhuang Drawings lies in his pursuit of “the inheritance of traditional culture and the continuation of the cultural context”. He tries to show us “an artistic world where we can find peacefulness in it.” In the end, Xiao Gu and his art language found a homeland in the contemporary aesthetics.

　　There’s a mystery world hidden behind the images and our mind, where words cannot tell all the essence. Both “the free spirit” of Shen Zhou and the “peacefulness” of Xiao Gu all came out of the traditional Chinese cultural spirit, showing us the literati belief and the aesthetic taste of their own time.

　　Regardless the 500 years between them, Xiao Gu and Shen Zhou are spiritually connected. And the Dongzhuang, which both of them place their feelings for, is looking forward to be rediscovered and reinterpreted in the new era.

　　Dongzhuang may be a paradise that we reached many times in our dreams, or a place we yearned for a long time but had no chance to enter ever. Yet ultimately we realize that Dongzhuang lies in the bottom of our heart. It is a world of purity and sincerity; it forms our spiritual homeland.

　　Let’s give our gratefulness to Xiao Gu, who links us with our spiritual home with Dongzhuang Drawings and gives Dongzhuang a new life.

　　d te�cs�@ � piritual hermit rather than the physical hermit in traditional way, which means once you cultivate your nature and comprehend the essence and seclusion, you can live a hermit life anywhere. Shen Zhou was one of the representatives of Jiangnan (lit. regions south of the Yangtze River) hermit in the middle of Ming dynasty. As the famous scholar of Ming dynasty Lu Can said, “Suzhou has been famous for its profound culture and active literati, not only because those famous scholars who have great political career, but also for there’re hermit scholars in different times.” Among them, Shen Zhou was rated highly by posterity for his noble character and personal cultivation.

　　Here in this collection, Xiao Gu is trying to explore the spiritual core of Shen Zhou’s art and find out the literati nature hidden behind his hermit ideology. Piles of evidence indicate that it was the particular history background that led to Shen Zhou’s final decision. Back to the early Ming Dynasty, lots of Suzhou intellectuals were persecuted by the Ming Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang. According to the then scholar Lu Rong’s recall, “most of the officials at that time served the imperial government wholeheartedly, but in return many of them were cruelly punished for tiny mistakes. Only few of them could get a peaceful life in the end.” The severe political environment frightened most of Jiangnan scholars in the early Ming dynasty, and the shadow remained until Shen Zhou’s time.

　　As a result, Shen Zhou never started his official career in his whole life. He regarded himself as a hermit. Although he had many official friends, he always kept a safe distance from the imperial government. In this way he was “concealing in the crowd” and abandoned himself to poems, paintings and the nature.  The owner of Dongzhuang, Wu Kuan, was one of Shen Zhou’s official friends. Shen Zhou finished the Dongzhuang collection and gave it to Wu Kuan as a gift, trying to suggest him that he can also enjoy his life in art and nature. It seems that Shen Zhou was a “coward” who is concealing himself in the chaotic times, yet actually he was very brave and processed an unyielding spirit.

　　Xiao Gu has been working for Dongzhuang Drawings series for six years, during which time, he sticks to his unique pursuit of art and tries to utilize the deep but characterized cultural text to display his national heroism and aesthetic appreciation. In general, we define traditional Chinese art as “artistic expression” and western art as “artistic representation”, but it’s not the whole story. Chinese art pays great attention to the spirit and artistic conception, so does western art. Xiao Gu’s extraordinary understanding of traditional Chinese cultural spirit and incredible master of oil painting helps him transform the traditional Chinese art into a contemporary form.

　　Xiao Gu has always been working on art in his own way. With profound realism skills and his unique two-and-a-half-dimension structure, he innovatively creates the Chinese style paintings in an expressionist way. Those paintings are full of vivid Chinese art spirit and contain a transformed visual space.  Figural still, but his art represents a combination of different colors and meanings.

　　Xiao Gu’s interests and thoughts in traditional culture leads to his success in combining the tradition with contemporary. To him, painting works just as a tool to express his spirit and thoughts. That is also why when you watch closely at his pieces, you will be strongly touched by the culture behind, and it definitely comes from the continuation of Chinese traditional spirit.