He Haixia Art Research

From an apprentice to a disciple, from an artist to a Master, from imitating the ancients to imitating his teachers, He Haixia eventually transferred from painting life to painting his inner world. Based on the stages of Master He's artistic career, the thesis lays the research focus on the relations between his artistic exploration spirit, and the inheritance, innovation, development and the modern transformation in Chinese paintings. The paper analyzes his life, learning and creative process in different periods and explicitly presents the formation and the evolution of Master He's painting style. In addition, the study makes comparisons between Master He's typical landscape painting works in the period of Chang'an painting school and his works in the transformation period of his late years. Displaying great momentum, profound artistic conception, overflowing joy and passion, Master He's painting works not only reveal his unique ideas, emotion and aesthetic standards, but also reflect his spiritual quest for beauty, brightness, kindness, strength and striving. This paper, from the perspectives of sociology and culturology, explores the spiritual essence of Master He's arts and reveals his courage in humanistic spirit pursuit. By exploring Master He's artistic career, the present paper explicitly states the true essence to develop Chinese painting is to respect, understand, inherit and innovate the tradition. Moreover, the paper suggests healthy development by understanding traditions, absorbing the quintessence, observing life for profound insights and creating new approaches in the artistic reforms, which is also the basic principle to retain the contemporaneity and nationality in the modern transformations of Chinese painting. This thesis concludes that artists should learn from He Haixia's artistic spirit and valuable painting experience and never give up or follow like sheep. Artists should seek breakthrough in their own artistic life and in tradition, and explore the integrations between traditional and modern Chinese paintings and between the oriental and the western paintings, which will make great contribution to the development of Chinese painting and further promote its prosperity. This is the significance of our research on Master He Haixia.