Liu Haisu Art Museum

The Liu Haisu Art Museum is located at 1609 West Yan'an Road, Changning District, Shanghai, with a total floor area of 12,540 square meters. According to the official introduction, the museum's collection is primarily based on artworks donated by Liu Haisu himself, comprising 913 pieces — including historical calligraphy and paintings by masters of various dynasties that Liu collected throughout his lifetime, as well as his own oil paintings, traditional Chinese paintings, and calligraphy masterpieces. The collection has since been supplemented with modern works. The museum has four floors with six exhibition halls in total.

When I visited today, only Hall 6 on the fourth floor had an art exhibition. Additionally, the third-floor hall featured an exhibition on Liu Haisu's life. The theme of the Hall 6 exhibition was "Following the Fragrance — A Research Exhibition of Liu Haisu's Bird-and-Flower Works from the Liu Haisu Art Museum Collection." Since the works on display are mostly from the museum's permanent collection, this exhibition is essentially one of the standing exhibitions.

Here, I must briefly introduce Liu Haisu. Liu Haisu (March 16, 1896 – August 7, 1994) was a modern Chinese painter, art educator, calligrapher, and poet. He loved painting and calligraphy from childhood, began studying Western oil painting at 14, and took up traditional Chinese painting at 16. He was a master who truly traversed both Eastern and Western painting traditions. Liu Haisu was one of the founders of the Chinese流 (Liu) Art School, a pioneer of China's New Art Movement, and the founding figure of modern Chinese art education. He was a distinguished art educator celebrated both at home and abroad in China's art world, and he made significant contributions to the New Culture enlightenment movement.

Today's exhibition presented Mr. Liu's collection and his own paintings under three themes: "Copying and Inheritance," "Sketching from Life and Observation," and "Creative Expression." Truly worthy of his title as the founder of modern art education — these three sections likely represent what Mr. Liu considered the essential stages of learning to paint. In the "Copying and Inheritance" section, traditional Chinese bird-and-flower paintings from the Tang and Song through the Ming and Qing dynasties were displayed, primarily in the gongbi (meticulous) and small xieyi (freehand) styles. Though few in number, they included authentic works by masters such as Shen Zhou and Yun Shouping. Among them, a painting of peonies by Shen Zhou particularly amazed me — perhaps because I had previously seen so many of Shen Zhou's landscape paintings, known for their "spiritual resonance and grand magnificence," in various art books. Seeing the master's bird-and-flower work for once was quite exciting. It was a pure ink-wash painting, yet the graceful charm and unrestrained blooming "spirit" of the peonies were rendered with complete mastery under the master's brush. Liu Haisu believed that copying paintings is a means of studying the works of the ancients, and through the process of copying, one can deeply appreciate the mysteries of their techniques. I quite agree. It is perhaps art educators holding this very view who laid the foundation of art education — students formally trained in traditional Chinese painting still begin their studies with copying. Certain skills and experiences truly need to be learned and absorbed from masters, grasped through the practice of copying. Nowadays, many Chinese painting educators advocate for "New Chinese Painting Education," having children learn Western composition or even sketching, and then paint with Chinese painting materials on that basis. Their reasoning is simple: no matter how you paint, you can never surpass the ancients. However, the core concept of traditional Chinese painting is precisely this approach of not pursuing formal likeness, not using single-point perspective, but instead employing "shifting perspectives with each step." Innovation and improvement are good things, but abandoning the core traditions of Chinese painting simply because one feels it's impossible to surpass the achievements of ancient literati painters is not necessarily advisable. Perhaps many people find repeatedly practicing to master techniques tedious, and it is indeed difficult for modern people accustomed to a fast-paced lifestyle. But doing anything well requires crossing a "threshold" — a craft with no threshold at all neither exists nor has value. Fearing difficulty and taking shortcuts are certainly not good attitudes toward learning.

This was supposed to be an introduction to the exhibition, and I have always tried to remain objective and neutral in my exhibition diary, avoiding too many personal opinions. This entry is truly a bit of an exception.

The second and third sections of the exhibition displayed some of the Western art history booklets compiled by Liu Haisu, precious materials such as his art lesson plans from those years, as well as Mr. Liu's oil paintings of birds and flowers, and Chinese paintings by him, his students, and his friends. I feel that Mr. Liu's oil painting works greatly influenced his Chinese painting style — the heavy colors of oil painting also influenced the color combinations in his Chinese paintings, making his use of color bolder than in traditional Chinese painting. Among these, a collaborative Chinese painting by five artists caught my attention. It was "Pine, Eagle, and Rising Sun," completed by Liu Haisu and four other painters, with Mr. Liu responsible for painting the pine tree. Having visited so many exhibitions, this was the first time I had seen a Chinese painting completed jointly by so many people. This was truly a product of "yaji" — the cultural sensibility and artistic state of gatherings among literati in ancient China.

In the middle of the exhibition hall, several display panels were erected, listing the evolutionary history of Chinese bird-and-flower painting through the ages, the characteristics of each period, and representative figures and their works. It was essentially an ultra-condensed history of Chinese bird-and-flower painting.

The entire exhibition was well-organized in layout, with substantial exhibits. Most importantly, the exhibition labels were extremely detailed — truly befitting a research exhibition — presenting the characteristics, history, and related knowledge of each work in a thorough yet concise manner for visitors to read and learn from.

All current exhibitions at the Liu Haisu Art Museum are free of charge. The bird-and-flower painting exhibition takes approximately one hour to view.