Qi Baishi
Painter of smaller things
By Parveen Ahmed
Have you ever heard of anyone who draws insects in fine details and that too, from memory? The artist then goes on to add flowers, fruits or plants around his life-size insect sketches years later.
Qi Baishi was such an artist. Afraid that his eyesight would fail him someday, he started drawing bugs _ which he had meticulously studied at his village in Chinas southern Hunan province _ when he moved to the capital.
Of course, he continued to draw insects he saw in Beijing and other parts of China, too, but they were of different varieties than the ones he had known in his sub-tropical homeland. Thus, you could say, the insects also chronicle his life as an artist.
He was no Darwin. He just loved nature and he knew he would not be able to draw little insects as time goes by, so he drew them from memory while his eye sight was still good, when he moved from his village home to the big city. He later added life to them, said Wang Jia, an associate of Beijing Fine Art Academy (BFAA), while showing invited guests around Qi Baishi Memorial Museum recently.
Born in 1863 to a peasant family in Xiangtan, Hunan, Qi trained as a carpenter but got interested in painting in his forties. He then travelled around China for inspiration, finally settling down in Beijing around 1917.
One of the most respected contemporary Chinese painters, Qi lived during changing times, from the last imperial Qing dynasty to the Peoples Republic of China. But rather than portraying those turbulent days of Chinas modern history, his paintings reflect nature and everyday objects. Instead of drawing large-scale landscapes, he focused on the smaller things of the world.
Applying bright water colours and vigorous, yet delicate strokes, Qi painted lively vegetables, fruits, flowers, plants, insects, birds, fish, even mice. Nothing was too small or mundane for his brush _ cabbages, peaches, grass, shrimps, butterflies, bees were among his favourite subjects that expressed his love of life and nature.
Influenced by Qing masters, Qi developed a unique, modern style of his own, while keeping to the traditions that preached subjective expression, or painting ones feelings and mood, rather than realistically.
A painting of discarded crab shells strewn around a single cup seems to portray mans isolation in an urban society, for it is unconceivable that one would eat and drink alone in a rustic setting.
Qi did his finest works in his fifties and sixties, painting more than 30,000 pieces, many of which are now in galleries in Eastern Europe. Through his own efforts, Qi also mastered calligraphy and seal-carving, as well as poetry.
After his death in 1957 at the age of 94, his family handed 2,000 of his paintings and hand-carved seals, along with furniture and painting materials used by him, to the art museum of BFAA, where they are permanently displayed in galleries covering two floors.
Qi Baishi used to say that paintings must be something between likeness and unlikeness. His works do express human emotions that we can all understand, without any language.
PHOTOS: Writer
