郎君承文，书上落款，多属“阿文”，“阿文”其名，随口出之，通俗顺口，得来不费功夫，似乎俗的很。然细细品味，既俗又雅，，雅就雅在一个“文”字。多半用“阿”字者，跟之而来的便是“毛、土、谷、根”之类，“文”者，则非同凡响，一下子雅了起来，“阿文阿文”可谓大俗又大雅也。

　　读阿文的画，似曾相识又不曾相见，熟耶生耶，俗耶雅耶，如同其名，大俗而大雅。反复读之，得知其中奥理：能熟中返生，熟中寓雅。阿文之画，有一个雅化传统的历程，从而使他赢得了一个不落俗套的成功。

　　传统的中国画，不模仿自然，是以表现心灵抒发情性为主题的意象主义艺术。书中意象与书法中的文字一样，是一种适于抒情的极度概括抽象的象征符号，伴随着意象符号的是传统的程式表现技巧。古代的大师们创造着独自心中的意象及其程式，风格迥异，生机勃勃——中国画本是极其高雅的艺术。后来，多数人惯于对古人程式的模仿，把大师的高雅艺术模式化，“家家一峰，人人大痴”，不是吴昌硕派头，就是黄宾虹式子，千人一面。这样的书作已泛滥，雅的不再雅，俗的则更俗。近代中国画任然在庸俗没落的模式旋流中进退两难。阿文与当今有识的同行一样，有志标新立异，寻找自我，建立起现代的属于自己的新意象，新格局，新式子。且一直背靠着这高雅的传统。

　　有人说画山水的阿文却画起人物来了。依我看，阿文原先的画并非纯山水：民居、小路、水村、庙会、门神、廊檐、小姑应有尽有;现在的人物画，其中船只，红木家私、花窗、古玩、猫儿、鱼缸儿、梳妆台、流水、青山不满了整个画面，一两个未画完脑门儿的裸女错落其间，成为十分有机的契合。那人物画已不是纯肖像、纯故事人物或文人仕女画，而是不尚时俗的现代风俗画。确切地说，阿文早就在脱化中国画陈旧古老的程式套子，轻松自如地画着他熟悉和想画的——袒露着艺术家纯真的心。他的眼一直专注着传统，注视着故土的民俗乡情，在优雅地诉说那里悠闲的生活，坦荡的思绪，想和的氛围：梳洗、闲望、冥想、购物、纳凉、弹奏、游湖、看书、下棋、荡秋千、放风筝、观金鱼……凡此生活俗事，在阿文笔下，却显得那么悠然自得雅兴四起。书中刻画精美的布景实物是具有吴越文化色彩的田园居室、民间剪纸、绣花荷包、风车泥人、帐幔图案……简直是民间艺术品云集的民俗博物馆。

　　阿文的画内容是民俗的、日常的、熟知的。艺术手法也采用中锋勾勒，单线平涂的传统，使画面有强烈的平面装饰效果和东方风味;其布局构图，往往只几块象征性景片或道具，演员则可进入角色，戏也就开场了，活像中国的地方戏曲，十分洗练别致，明白易晓;至于用色，明显地吸取了民间艺术的设色方法，大红大绿，大黑大白的色块处理，是的画面清新明快，单纯强烈，一目了然。从内容到形式，阿文之画乃中国之画，乃似曾相识之画。

　　然这是全新式子的中国之画。在这似曾相识的深层却是不曾相见，传统的固有模式已被化解，现代的艺术语汇比比皆是。画中物象大胆地变了形，不可思议的省略，神奇的重叠和错位。通幅画面以现代构成的法则不断对物象作出解构、切割和新的组合：一概不画完脑门的裸女，扭动着她的脸，时儿另一个乳房从腋下挤出;打浆的少女整个身子几乎已经倾倒在水中央;那房内似是郊外，那墙外却像院子;浴室与旷野只是一片陋屏之隔;这家的窗户同是邻屋的壁;裸女的脚站在楼下，身子却依在二楼的栏杆;厅堂一排古色古香的雕花门，上头并没有横梁，可以看穿里屋的红漆大圆桌;裸女休闲的阳棚，只是 几条笔线，连同草坪一起飘摇在高空……然而这一切不合理，不稳定因素，在阿文的画里却变得十分贴切，看似荒诞又很真实。没有脑门的裸女显得十分可爱，思绪万千，她与不完整的背景合在一起，是那么的完整和一致：裸女的圆型弧线，与背景的方形直线，裸女的素色与背景的五彩七色，在于构造成一种现代的氛围，一种民俗的消闲的文化气息。阿文用现代的意识去支配调遣和组合图中的人或物，使之成为构成某种特殊氛围的不可抽去或变更的象态，而这些象态能颠倒、复合或裂变，全从属于整体氛围的需求，以达到艺术的合理，显现出既渊奥莫测又明白真切的新图式。这就是阿文对传统的中国画频频雅化的历程。

　　有意思的是这个历程往往不易被察觉，而这又正是阿文成功之所在。他将现代艺术的语汇深深潜入传统而又隐隐乎散发出来，使他的画看似十分传统或通俗，又十分现代或高压，这种属于阿文的新意象式子大俗也大雅，用一个名词来称呼，不妨叫作“新传统主义”。

董也山1994年3月10日于杭州了然堂

Popular But Rafind

　——Lang Chengwen’s New Traditional Paintings

Dong yeshan

　　Mr.Lang Chengwen,more often than not,affixes”Ah Wen”ashissignature to his paintings.The name of Ah Wen is so common and popular that it comes out of the mouth very easily.Though seemingly commonplace,the name becomes at once popular and elegant on careful reading;the elegance lies in the character”Wen”(refined). Usually,What follows”Ah”foraperson's nickname would be something like“earth,”"grain,”and“root,”and the character,"Wen"is really out of the common run.When“Ah”is followed by”Wen,”the name“Ah Wen”constitutes a combination of popularity and refinement.

　　Looking at Ah Wen's paintings,one gets the feeling that they seem to be familiar and yet they have never been seen before.Familiar or unfamiliar? popular or refined? Just like the name of the artist,the paintings are both popular and refined.Studying them over and over again. one realizes the subtlety Of his paintings：novelty grows out of familiarty,and elegance is embodied in popularity.Ah Wen's works of art have gone through a process of refining the traditional,which has brought him success in breaking away from the beaten track.

　　The traditional Chinese painting is an art of imagery which focuses on revealing the artist's inner heart and expressing his rational leanings instead of imitating nature.Like the characters in Chinese calligraphy,the imagery in the painting is a symbol suited for expounding extreme generality and abstractness.accompanying the symbol of imagery is the traditional formula of expression technique.Masters of ancient times created imagery in their hearts along With their own formulas,which differ from one another and are full of vitality.The traditional Chinese painting has alwayS been a refined art since its advent.Most of the later painters were accustomed to copying the formulas of ancient master and turned the latters’refined art into a set pattern.”Every painter draws mountain peaks in the same manner;all of them bacome infatuated with the formulas.”They either imitated Wu Changshuo’s style or copied Huang Binhong’s formula;their paintings were stereotyped and very much alike.When such paintings ran rampant,the elegant type no longer had any elegance,and the vulgar type bacame all the more vulgar.Ecen traditional Chinese paintings of madern times were caught in the whirpool of vulgar and declining formulas without making any headway in pyrsuing either pursuing either popularity or elegance.Like contemporary artists of insight,Ah Wen aspires to create something new and original and achieve his own identity ao as to build up a new imagery,new style and new formula of his own based on the heritage of the refined art.

　　Some people have said that Ah Wen used to paint landscape but has now taken to figure painting.To my knowledge,what Ah Wen painted befor was confined to pure landscape:his earlier paintings included dwellings,narrow paths,villages on the river,temple fairs,door-gods,veranda eaves,young ladies,and what not while his figure paintings of today also abound in boats,mahogany furnture,windows decorated with papercut,antiques and curios,cats,fish thanks,dressing table,flowing water,and green hills.Against this backdrop dot one or two nude women whose foreheads remain unpainted,which form an organic part of his paintings.Those figures are no longer mere portraits,mere characters in a story,or beautiful women in the style of the traditional Chinese painting;they are modern genre paintings which do not adhere to the fad,To put it precisely,Ah Wen,having broken away from the obsoleta convention and formulas of the traditional Chinese painting long ago,paints what he is familiar with and what he wants to create with ease:to lay bare the pure and sincere heart of an artist.Focusing his attention all the time on tradition and on the folk customs and habits of his native land,he relates in an elegant manner the leisurely life,magnanimous feeling,and harmonious atmoaphere there:women washing and dressing up,watchingat leisure,lost in deep thought,shpping,enjoying the cool in the open air,playing a stringed musical instrument,going boating on the lake,reading,playing chess,playing ona swing,flying a kite,watching goldfish,and so on.These trivialities of life appear to be so enjoyable and tasteful under Ah Wen’s painting brush.In his paintings,the exquisitely executed scenes and objests include countryside dwellings,folk papercut,embroidered pouches,windmills,clay figurines,and curtain and canopy patterns characteristic of the cultural flavor of Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces.His paintings are just like a folk custom museum packed with folk arts and crafts.

　　The content of Ah Wen’s paintings is familiar daily life of folk custom .Artistically,he adopts the traditional technique of sketching the contours by middle stroke and painting plainly in single line,thus giving his creation astrong plane decorative effect and oriental flavor,The layout and compositon usually consist of several symbolic scenes and pieces of stage property.When the actress enters into the spirit of a character,the drama begins.This is very much like Chinese local peras,concise and novel,and easy to understand.He has obviously absorbed folk art coloring in his use of colors.The arrangement of big patches of red and green,black and white gives his paintings a clear atmosphere of freshness and liveliness,simpleness and strong appeal.Ah Wen’s paintings are chinese paintings both in content and form,which seem to be familiar to the audience.

　　But Ah Wen’s paintings constitute an entirely new genre of Chinese paintings.In theae seemingly familiar paintings,one has not yet met with such uniqueness in the depth.The traditional intrinsic patterns are dissolved,and modern artistic techniques can be found everywhere in his paintings.they abound in boldly distorted objects,unthinkable omission,and mystical overlapping and misplacement.Throughout the paintings laws of modern composition are applied to dissect and divide objects to form new combinations:the foreheads of nude women are invariably unfinished,who turn round their face,squeezing one of her breasts out of the armpit;a young girl who is oaring a boat almost leans her whole body to the cencter of the water;the interior of a house looks like an outskirt,while the scene outsideoutside the wall seems to be a courtyard;the bathroom and the open air are separated by a mere simple and crude screen;the windoe of this house is the wall of the neighboring house;standing on her feet on the ground floor,a nude woman leans her body on the railing of the next floor;a row of carved antique doors of the hall,which have no crossbeam on the top,open to a view of a big red-painted round table;the sunny shelter where nude women spend their leisure are but a few lines,which is floating in the high sky together with the lawn;etc.However,all these unreasonable and unstable factors appear to be in place in Ah Wen’s paintings;the seemingly absurd is actually real.The nude woman without forehead looks lovely and is absorbed in a train od though.Against the incomplete background,she is so complete and in confomity:the round arclike line of the nude woman integrated with the square straight line of the background and the plain colcr of the nude woman mixed with the rich colors of the background are harmonized in mutual setting out.Art is not storytelling nor plot unfolding.The structure of Ah Wen ‘s art is to create a modern atmosphere,a cutural flavor of folk leisure.He used modern ideas to manipulate,to manipulate, deploy and group the figures and objects in his paintings,so that they become indispensable and unalterable images for forming a specific atmosphere.The transposition,combination and fission of these images are necessary for the overall atmosphere,so as to rationalize the art and reveal the new patterns which are at once abstruse and understandable.This is the course that Ah Wen has taken to constantly refine Chinese paintings of the teaditongal style.

　　Interestingly,this course is often not easily discernable;this is precisely where Ah Wen’ssuccess lies.He instils the vocabulary of modern art deep into the tradition and lets it manifest itself indistinctly,which makes his paintings seemingly traditonal or popular but actually very modern or refined.This is Ah Wen’s new formula of imagery,both popular and refined.To put his style in one word,I might call it”Neotraditionalism.”

Written in Discerning Hall,Hangzhou March 10,1994