Exhibition showcases past and present of city's parks
Xu Xufeng, a painter and curator born in the 1980s, recalls his childhood visits to the West Suburb Park (1954), now Shanghai Zoo in Changning District, as a delightful outdoors family reunion.
Although he had mixed feelings for the stone zebra sculptures.
“As a little boy then, I was both attracted to them for their height and size, and terrified when my parents saddled me on their backs for a photo,” said Xu.
“The post-80s generation in Shanghai were a lucky group with their rich park-going experience.”
The painting "Shanghai Zoo" by Xi Wenyuan
As curator of the “Park+” tour exhibition, which is on display at Zhang Yuan Art Museum in Minhang District through March 13, Xu on behalf of Shanghai Painting and Calligraphy Academy, invited about 100 artists to create works on parks of Shanghai.
More than 80 calligraphy, painting and seal-cutting artworks were completed.
They portray the classic gardens of Shanghai, those built after the city was forced to open its port in 1843, parks of the socialist progressive and modernity era, parks for natural and cultural heritage preservation, forest parks, pocket parks and a novel and tiny branch of those ecological parks where children are invited to observe insects, watch birds or engage in greenhouse fruit-picking.
From classic to modern
Parks are a microcosm for history and social progress of Shanghai.
“The ‘Oriental Paris’ city of Shanghai, in its brief hundreds of years of rapid progress toward prosperity and through social changes after its port opening in November 1843, has seen the rise of the earliest embryo of a modern park in China,” Zhou Xiangpin and Chen Zhehua, scholars from Tongji University, wrote.
"The city itself is also morphing into a metropolis celebrated for its parks and greenery.”
Before 1840 temple courtyards and private gardens accounted for the majority of classic gardens in Shanghai.
The outbreak of the Opium War forced the city to open its port for international trading, followed by the intrusion of the imperialists and the appearance of the first modern park – the Public Park (1868), now Huangpu Park in Huangpu District – in the International Settlement.
"Huangpu Park" by Qi Tiexie
Huangpu Park
A result of retrospection on industrialism and its damage to nature and ecology, modern urban parks and greenbelts also play the role of a mental harbor for a squeezed humanity in densely-populated urban areas.
The introduction of Western-style parks featuring gently sloping lawns, lakes, hedges and flower beds was a challenge after the war on classic Chinese gardens noted for their winding paths that lead to secluded and quiet scenery.
After the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, the city both made renovations to its former parks, opened private gardens for the public, as well as built more parks.
By the end of 2024 Shanghai will have built 120 new parks, while its greenways will extend another 200 kilometers.
Parks, especially for the traditional Chinese painting artists in the country, are also a place for life drawing.
This was taken up by pioneers in the art circle in the 1950s, Zhang Hengyan, a calligraphy and seal-cutting artist and scholar on art, noted.
In the 1950s and 1960s, painters of figures, landscape and flowers and birds walked out of their studios and tried outdoor sketching to pave the way for their final creation.
Among them was Li Keran (1907-1989) who believed “nature can bestow a painter a brand-new perspective on new rules and through thinking and practice he or she is able to generate new artistic expressions and even styles."
Also, Fu Baoshi (1904-1965) led the Jinling School of Painting artists to trek 25,000 miles to create works.
The Chang’an School of Painting artists represented by Zhao Wangyun (1906-1977), Shi Lu (1919-1982) and He Haixia (1908-1998), called for respect for both tradition and real life.
The Shanghai Traditional Chinese Painting Academy, with its bountiful talented artists, had also arranged life drawing events since its founding date in places like Wuxi, Suzhou, Guangzhou, Zhoushan and Hangzhou.
Embracing the outdoors
In April 1959, its flowers-and-birds painting group led by artists Wang Geyi (1897-1988), Zhang Dazhuang (1903-1980), Jiang Hanting (1903-1963) and Lai Chusheng (1903-1975) visited both Longhua Nursery (1952), now Shanghai Botanical Garden, and the West Suburb Park for sketching.
"Shanghai Botanical Garden" by Wang Xi
A lake scene at the Shanghai Botanical Garden
In November of the same year other members of the group, including Chen Peiqiu (1923-2020), Zhu Wenhou (1895-1961), Deng Huainong (1894-1986), Ye Luyuan (1907-1994), Hou Biyi (1900-2003), Yu Wenhua (1921-2014) and Zhang Shoucheng (1918-2013), paid a visit to the People’s Park (1952) of Shanghai.
Their frequent visits were a preparation for paintings as a tribute for the 10th anniversary of the founding of their motherland on October 1.
"People's Park" by Wang Xiaoyan
“We had prepared a list of parks for them to choose this time," said Xu. "The painters chose a park near their dwellings or one that had impressed them the most."
“Madame Zhang Yuan, whose hometown was in the ‘Old Minhang,’ now Jiangchuan Road Subdistrict, chose the Red Park (1960) of Minhang District as the subject of her painting.”
"Red Park" by Zhang Yuan
An elegant bridge in Red Park
When the project was released, the flowers-and-birds painting artist was undergoing rehabilitation, with mobility impairments on her right hand.
Yet the artist still expressed her willingness to join the project in spite of her physical pain.
The Red Park in her portrayal is less frequented now by residents in Minhang, yet it was delicately built. The park was originally an orchard, and later also used as a kindergarten.
“I was glad that Madame decided to paint," Xu said. "It was an August with scorching heat. She went to the Red Park on her wheelchair to do some sketching, accompanied by her student. She later texted me, ‘I am carefully doing my assignment, you see I had finished some sketching’."
Later Zhang lacked the strength to hold a brush for some postscript calligraphy. She waited for about one month to finish the task.
“I said, ‘Madame, your calligraphy characters are shaking as the style of Lu Yanshao (1909-1993),’ and she beamed,” said Xu.
There were also a pair of father and daughter artists.
Xue Sui, the father, painted the Qiuxiapu Park (1520) in Jiading District and his daughter Xue Yiqun recreated the Tank Shanghai (2019) in Xuhui riverfront.
"Qiuxiapu Park" by Xue Sui
"Tank Shanghai" by Xue Yiqun
The father is in his 90s and the oldest of the participating artists.
In spite of that a stroke has left his left hand paralyzed, the artist still chose a four-whole-sheet paper to do the work. He occasionally rested on his handrail frame to restore energy.
The daughter later visited Tank Shanghai, a park renovated from five desolate oil tanks from the former Longhua Airport. A highlight of her painting of the park is some skater boys.
“The white tanks on the greenbelt of the West Bund appeared vibrant under the sunshine," the artist summed up in a journal on her painting.
"They have answered a curtain call after playing their former roles as an airport industrial facility, and have been reborn into contemporary art themed cultural park.
"I was enthralled by both the bustling traffic outside the park and the quietness inside it. And the pink muhly grass looked marvelous in front of the white tanks."
The Park+ tour exhibition will finish with a closing ceremony on March 10.
On that day a lecture on painting Taihu Lake stones, an essential component of the classic Chinese gardens, will be given.
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