Chapter 12 With Li Keran, China has a lot of brilliance

From the party secretary, deputy secretary, party committee members, to professors, associate professors, lecturers, and some imaginable people in the academy of fine arts, plus one or two corrupt criminals, they all became ghosts and monsters.Among them, the corrupt criminal is the most arrogant among them, he is a person to rely on, just like a half-revolutionary teenager.Our daily "performance" is all reported to the "revolutionary masses" by him. The long alley of the Printmaking Department of the Academy of Fine Arts is blocked at both ends, and wooden gates are installed. It is a natural prison.

Mr. Keran and Mr. Kuchan, we can be regarded as suffering brothers and sisters.There is always time to get along day and night for five or six years.A list of all the persons was written, so far as my present memory seems to be able to be done.But it's not necessary. Mr. Kuchan can be regarded as a hero, and with the foundation of practicing kung fu, no insult can overwhelm him, and he can take any burden.The 70-year-old man raised his hand and dumped hundreds of catties of garbage into the garbage pit.As if nothing had happened. Mr. Keran can't.He had never experienced such great turmoil and such ferocious persecution.A large family is waiting for him to take care of him. He is indeed a "bookish" person, as Comrade Mao Zedong said.He didn't recruit anyone or provoke anyone.Both Mr. Kuchan and I like to write and say some witty things.Mr. Keran never has.Although he has not reached the level of listening to the party wholeheartedly, at least two-thirds of the level is qualified, but he cannot escape this "doom".

Lu Xun said some similar words: "Workers who become foremen are worse than the former foremen!" This is absolutely true. The revolutionary masses are the students, and the students are the kings of Hades who govern us.There is a student of mine who looks like a stinky peanut. He can't even wear his trousers properly. It hangs on his skinny legs and jingles like he's wet. But he's extremely vicious and cruel. pump us.His body was slapped, and he laughed in his heart: "Such a bastard, on normal days, one hand can hang him on a tree!" It is this kind of Zhongshan wolf that makes Mr. Keran, who has never experienced fear and deceit, frightened.He has had high blood pressure for many years.Even his arms and lips trembled when he was ordered to stand up and say something, let alone to be able to speak.I turned to him in my heart, and I called out to him in my heart: "Hold on, old man! It's the same whether you're afraid or not, don't fall down!" But I didn't dare to make a sound.I also have a wife and children waiting for me at home!

In the "cowshed", one person takes turns to go to the big kitchen to prepare meals for everyone every day.Ghosts and snakes are not allowed to eat good food, but rice and steamed buns are the same.Steamed buns are two taels each, and those who eat three taels are one and a half.For the half of the steamed bun, the person on duty is responsible for breaking a two-liang steamed bun into two halves.Li Keran has never been able to do this, and his trembling hands always make the two halves of the steamed bun one big and one small, and the disparity is to such an extent that it was scary at the time and now it is absurd.Of course scolded.For the first time in my life, I heard students scolding Mr. to such a height:

"You can't even say a word; a stupid donkey can break steamed buns better than you! You trash!" Two or three days later, Mr. Keran asked me if I could use a broken saw blade to make him a knife for cutting steamed buns, because he knew that I would have the opportunity to participate in the work of repairing broken washbasins and broken tin pots.Those college workers are very close to me.of course can.That afternoon, Mr. Keran had a small knife made of a saw blade with a beautiful bamboo handle in his hand.Many years later, he still mentioned this matter to me with a smile, and I became sad when I heard it.In Mr. Wu Zuoren's wallet, there is still an "ear pick" I made for him back then, which is pale yellow and old, and it is a souvenir of "classmates".

At the end of the "Cultural Revolution", several old gentlemen such as Li Keran and Xu Xingzhi were designated as honorable households who went to the countryside forever to settle down in the rural areas of Hubei.There are small beatings of gongs and drums at the school gate.These old painters looked pale, and carried a revolutionary burden on their shoulders. They stood in a row in front of the plaster statue of the great leader Chairman Mao and raised their right hands to swear, to the effect that they would never return to Beijing. ! So I let the little bit of insincere gongs and drums go away.

Parting emotion was equal to dust at that time.Even if life and death are like this, what is parting? The decisive battle of one's own destiny is imminent, and who can judge the better and worse ending? People in Xinjiang butchered sheep and bled them one after another. Dozens of sheep were gathered in a sheep pen. Seeing that the first sheep was slaughtered, the second sheep would obediently go to the front of the people and lie down. down... What's the point of resisting and fleeing when being slaughtered has become natural? We are human! Li Keran is a painter worthy of our suffering China.With him, China will be much more glorious.

For the Chinese painters in front of us, it is often too extravagant to use beautiful adjectives on them, which disturbs the appreciation value. The achievements of Li Keran's paintings are real.One is the quality of his paintings, and the other is his achievements in opening up new situations. Years of hard work in art, bold use of thick ink in Chinese paintings, the possibility of using light and layers has been proved, and a new concept of beauty has been inspired and developed. (In our era, there are two such important people, and the other is Mr. Fu Baoshi. Mr. Fu combined the relationship between the abstract and the concrete so harmoniously and smoothly, so that we can get a glimpse of the so-called The palace of "artistic conception".)

In fact, Mr. Keran has the intelligence and simplicity of a farmer's character, and hard work is his nature.Therefore, the works show a thick national soul.Therefore, when faced with his works, one cannot refuse the moral infection that hits head-on.Bada Shanren is like this, Shi Tao is like this, so is Fu Shan? When I first arrived at No. 1 Dayabao Hutong, Beijing in 1953, Mr. Keran and his wife were the first neighbors we met.His first southern sketching exhibition was published on the "New Observation" magazine, and I was honored to write the first article to comment on his artistic creativity.Unexpectedly, after returning to Hong Kong for more than 30 years, I got the sad news of his death.His friendship to me and my respect for him made me write some past events as a memorial when it is inconvenient to go back to pay homage to him.

This is what he wanted me to do several times before his death.Mrs. Peizhu will remember.