Controversial artist is not just a pretty face

Some years ago when I watched a TV documentary about Chen Danqing, an iconic Chinese artist, many of his friends and schoolmates interviewed mentioned his good looks.

I was skeptical, until I saw him in person a few days ago at the opening of his solo exhibition 10 Years after Return, a retrospective of his oil paintings created after coming back from New York in 2000.

Dressed in all black and smoking with perfect gestures, the 57-year-old artist is like the eye of a tornado, as his manly beauty freezes still the air around him and automatically distinguishes him from the crowd.

Yes, he is indeed physically attractive.

This makes quite convincing the rumor that when Chen gives public speeches, there’re always women barking out that they want to have sex with him. His increasing age hasn’t diminished his charms; on the contrary, it makes him edgier and sexier.

It doesn’t hurt to have physical beauty as an artist. We all know that it can actually benefit one’s popularity, a lot.

But in Chen’s case, good looks contributed very little. Being real and outspoken is the very key factor that has cemented his charisma to the public and continues to win him more fans.

At the opening of his exhibition, the presence of several government officials, including three vice ministers from the Ministry of Culture, proved the exhibition to be a big deal. Those bigwigs, along with Chen’s former teachers and schoolmates, who have become the most authoritative professionals in China’s fine art world, spent an hour praising Chen’s outstanding art and social achievements and how he became a greater artist in recent years.

Chen is used to playing the role of wet blanket on such harmonious and warm occasions, I guess. He deflected all the official flattery by insisting his painting skills have regressed and he will never paint as well as he did at 15.

Moreover, he didn’t forget to criticize the Chinese art education system, which he has been doing for the past 10 years, in front of those powerful players within the system. He called the occasion “a temporary compromise” between him and the officials, and didn’t care about creating an awkward atmosphere among his honored guests.

The realistic and classical painting style follower also treated himself with cruel straightforwardness. He hung several exquisitely carved empty frames in the most eye-catching spot of the exhibit hall, claiming that his paintings are not good enough to deserve such frames.

The guy seems never to be smart enough to learn how to act tactful. He could’ve been enjoying his accomplished fame – like many other celebrities in his stratum have – taken full advantage of his charm and always come out with something fair sounding and harmless, or at least kept his mouth shut. But he just hasn’t and wouldn’t.

Chen probably didn’t expect the 10 years following his homecoming would turn into, in his own words, “a decade of fury attack on the Chinese art education system,” which he “will continue to persist for sure.”

He came back to accept the invitation to be an inspiring teacher at Tsinghua University, until he found it insane that many talented young artists were deprived of the chance at further education by their failed score in the so-called “cultural” course examination, which only contains the subjects of English and Politics, which are totally irrelevant to oil painting.

Chen then expressed his anger by resigning, and more than that, sacrificing a majority of his time over 10 years to writing and speaking out on social and cultural phenomena he believed unjust. His public image has gradually transformed from an elegant artist to an active artillery that fires now and then with spoken and written words as his cannonballs.

“Chen’s expression may be a little off-scale and strongly worded, but what Chen has brought up is definitely worth thinking and re-examination,” says Shao Dazhen, renowned art theorist and professor at the Central Academy of Fine Arts.

Chen has paid his price, however. During the 10 years that he described as “cloven,” he – just as he admitted – achieved little as an artist, which Yang Feiyun, dean of the Chinese National Academy of Arts, said was “harrowing and a big loss for the Chinese art world.”

So Yang “coerced” Chen by lending him a studio with a skylight but refusing to accept rent. Finally, Chen was persuaded to give the solo exhibition in return.

Although Chen commented on his works of the exhibition as cruelly as he did on social and cultural issues such as the Chinese art education system, his natural boldness and realness have applied as well to helping retrieve his prime passion over art as a self-taught teenager, and the true color of an artist.

“Now fame has nothing to do with me. All I know is I love painting, and that’s it.”

Seeing numerous emerging and established artists examine every detail of Chen’s paintings with a subconscious gasp of admiration, trying to copy his brush tracks and figure out the mystery of his color toning, I bet the good-looking and straightforward artist was really gratified. Born in Shanghai, dispatched to a rural village, getting into college, going overseas and coming back, Chen’s life seems to have jumped back and forth under varied cultural shocks. But being real is what Chen has always been persisting in and not changing, whether as an artist, a writer, a public figure, or just human. “I’m just telling the truth,” he said.