On August 26th, 2020, sponsored by Beijing Fine Art Academy, co-organized by Guangxi Normal University Press Group Co., Ltd., and organized by the Art Museum of Beijing Fine Art Academy, a series of exhibitions featuring Chinese art masters in the 20th
century: Engraving Wood: Huang Yongyu Printmaking Exhibition was held in Beijing. The exhibition takes “Engraving Wood” as the title and Huang Yongyu’s handwritten notes as its clues. Nearly 200 of his prints were selected from the 1940s to the 1990s in this exhibition in efforts to completely outline this master’s narrative and creation in printmaking developments.
“Eighty Years in Engraving Wood”—Narrative Notes by Huang Yongyu
“Woodcutting is a tiring job, and I cannot get back from being addicted to it. I have just carved over half of my life like this. My attitude towards art is the same as that of literature, relying on the inexhaustible hometown thinking.”
—Huang Yongyu in 2020
In the 1930s, the emerging Chinese printmaking movement initiated by Lu Xun flourished in China. Huang Yongyu started his own printmaking creation from his early days with the book “How to Study Woodcut” by Yefu, a woodcut artist. He has not received any professional training, but he has a keen understanding and internalized feelings that are faithful to life. With a deep love for his hometown Fenghuang, Huang Yongyu wrote infinite romantic poems. Starting from illustrations for literary works, newspapers and magazines, he created a large number of prints. This true emotion is rooted deeply in his heart so that every knife and every stroke engraved in the subsequent creations burst with fresh and continuous strength.
The exhibition was started by Huang Yongyu’s first-person narrative, combined with his “experiences” written in his memories of eighty-year printmaking career, and he connected all the works in the three-story exhibition hall. The first floor of the exhibition hall revolves around Huang Yongyu’s creations in the early 1940s, including classic works such as “The Windmill and My Sleep”, “Goose City”, “My Life on the Sea” and “Miao Dance”. Among them, Huang Yongyu’s two woodcut illustrations “Flute” and “Anadem” created for his cousin Shen Congwen’s novel The Border Town was also presented in this section.
“With Love into the Wood”—Engraving Stroke by Stroke
“I have little abilities in my life, and I have not had any formal education. I have never dared to be lazy, I am afraid it is a habit formed by carving wood. While engraving stroke by stroke, I am afraid of making mistakes.”
—Huang Yongyu in 2020
In 1936, Huang Yongyu left his hometown Fenghuang and traveled to many places including Fujian, Shanghai, Taiwan, Hong Kong...Until the early 1950s, Huang Yongyu was invited back to Beijing to participate in the preparation of the Printmaking Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts. At the transition between the old and the new, Huang Yongyu tried to find a deeper expressive language in the creation and teaching of emerging printmaking: he went deep into the forest of Xiaoxing’anling, and he created a lot of woodcuts on forest themes; he was sent to Rongbaozhai to study traditional Chinese woodblock techniques, and he met Qi Baishi, who was also living in Beijing then and he carved a colored woodblock portrait for Qi. He also lived in Eshaoyi Village, Lunan County, Yunnan for two months, with the Yi nationality in the village. With the Sani woman Puzhiwei as a model, he created the classic “Ashima” image... The second floor of the exhibition hall showcases Huang Yongyu’s woodcut works during this period, including “Stepping in the Forest for the First Time”, “New Voice”, and “Forest Primary School”, and the “Ashima” in the center of the exhibition hall.
In addition, Huang Yongyu is very good at illustrations of various literary stories, especially with children’s literature, such as fairy tales, fables, etc., creating a large number of illustrations. On the third floor of the exhibition hall, the audience can admire the humorous presentation of children or animals under Huang Yongyu’s carving knife: the cunning fox, the frog at the bottom of the well, the exiled duckling... alive, interesting, but not equivalent to the innocent personification in the children’s world. This contradictory combination of innocent taste and satirical reality has endowed Huang Yongyu’s fairy tale illustrations with deeper forms and meanings.
“Historical Skeletons”—Comparisons of the Original Woodcut
“How did I survive? If I didn’t see these wooden boards, I would almost forget. Alas, what about the mountains and rivers sticking to the flesh, stick to the bones of the flesh! This pile of bones! "
—Huang Yongyu on December 19th, 2019
In the 1960s, Huang Yongyu continued to broaden the aesthetics and dimensions of China’s emerging woodcuts, creating representative works such as “Spring Tide”, “City of Flowers” and “Gourd Letter”. His printmaking style gradually tended to return to a romantic aesthetic paradigm, which not only perfected and deepened the form and connotation of China’s emerging woodcuts, but also brought a new style to the printmaking world at that time. The exhibition set up an “Original Edition Contrast” area on the third floor of the exhibition hall, presenting a batch of original woodcuts spanning decades for the audience and comparing them with prints. In Huang Yongyu’s view, these woodcut boards, full of the traces of time, are like his “bones with flesh”. Having experienced a lifetime of upheaval and displacement with the artist, they have been preserved for the present and they are very precious.
Although Huang Yongyu stopped printmaking creations in his later years, the carving knife in his hand prompted him to develop the habit of never stopping creations, and he tried to explore more possibilities with artistic language. Today, the 96-year-old artist has experienced the sufferings of old society, the separation of the beacon era, the birth of a new world, and a tortuous but practical journey. Like wood carving, Huang Yongyu has practiced his unique aesthetic and creative practice step by step.
