The art of painting has always been a creation of human wisdom and social development.
In mid 18th century Watt of Great Britain invented the steam engine and then in 19th century Edison of the United States invented electrical light, telephone and telegraph, leading the West into the industrial revolution from an agricultural civilization. As industrial productivity of the West rapidly developed the plastic arts of Europe, namely, sculpture and oil painting resurrected from the shackles of medieval religion. Going from grandeur of the ancient Greek arts of sculpture to the Renaissance in Italy, plastic arts in Europe had developed to an era of prosperity. A group of outstanding masters of Arts cropped up on the European Continent. Industrial revolution of the West was a great impetus to the development of arts and prosperity of art market.
Metropolitan cities are a product of industrial civilization. Industrial revolution gave birth to the bourgeoisie and at the same time expanded the ranks of the working class. Cities had become centers where the bourgeoisie reigned supreme and the flourishing of finance, commerce and trade added up their prosperity. Thanks to the invention of electrical power and steam engine construction of cities experienced an unprecedented glorious boom. With the value created by countless workers the bourgeoisie built up all kinds of commercial buildings, banks and places of entertainment. Their way of living, in a sense, were much more enlightened than that of landlords and serf owners. The bourgeoisie smashed all regional shackles imposed by the feudal lords and advocated sexual freedom and democracy under bourgeois rule. Industrial revolution rendered the cities a myriad of colors spotted with countless bars and brothels. Large numbers of peasants came to cities, some became factory workers and others became small vendors. Prosperous cities also attracted artists in the countryside. The then Paris thus became the center where artists of Europe thronged, made their artistic creations and exhibited their achievements.
French painter Courbet, who was from a working class family background, held high the banners of realism and painters Monet, Renior discovered effects of light on colors, which led them to great efforts to use such effects on images, thereby giving rise to Impressionism.
Rodin, great French master of sculpture brought the European plastic arts of human body to a new peak of development, his master pieces “Thinker”, “Kiss” and “Honore de Balzac” would make viewers think each sinew and muscle of the images is so alive with deep feeling and emotion. It was said that Lenin, after viewing the “thinker”, commented: “this is thinker’s head with working class hands”. He wrote to his comrades, strongly urging them to see the sculpture once they were in Paris.
Working class movements in France made the realistic arts the main-stream of European painting. Since 19th century many genres have loomed up in European art circles. The exaggerated deformation of Cezanne，the subjective symbolism of Gauguin and smoothly flowing lines of Matisse, all the way down to the efforts by Picasso of dismembering human bodies just to combine them anew, presenting all aspects of the human body directly to the viewer.
The surrealist art works are even more shocking. The artists with their gravers and brushes, created images that have not the slightest difference with real human beings and some cases even created illusions confusing with real people. Such ultra high painting techniques are doubtlessly resulted from the scientific anatomy, clairvoyance and excellent drawing techniques of the West.
Creations by artists are inseparable from the numerous aspects of city life. They not only painted lights and colors from nature, but also included in their creations large chunks of city life. Plastic arts provided the cities with aesthetic views from multiple angles. Up to now Paris remains the city where greatest quantities of objects of art are exhibited.
European masters’ excellence of expression of human body in plastic arts either in sculpture or oil painting was unmatchable at that time.
In late 19th century a group of young Parisian painters organized a collective art exhibition to challenge the official saloon. This act on their part broke the conservative and stale status that had prevailed in European arts. Though the average viewers and commentators of the time could not understand their doings. This young artist group included Monet，Renior, Pissarro, Degas, Cezanne among others. They had their respective personalities and talents as well as different aspirations and aptitudes. Some of the then magazines raised a collective attack on them, calling them sardonically “impressionist artists”, which name, however, they did not mind at all. They held eight exhibitions within ten years, forcefully snagging the academism, classicism and the official saloons of that time. With their talents and new concepts they made their big strides into the visual arts. The fauvism, abstractionism and cubism that followed their steps joined in the hot competitions in Paris, the European metropolis of arts.
In China, who is famous for her long history in the east, the agricultural civilization prevailed for more than two thousand years since prehistoric times to the 19th century. With the background of prolonged manual workshop production the traditional Chinese painting art slowly evolved on a narrow premises.
Up to Tang dynasty the Chinese painting had been murals with Buddhist themes done by workmen, which later became one painting genre. After Tang dynasty painting was taken over by scholars. This period witnessed the maturing of departmentalization and perfection of the painting art. Starting Tang dynasty through Qing dynasty scholars’ painting had been always the representative of painting art of paper and ink, which is the way of Oriental painting. In the medieval Song dynasty the emperor was himself very good at painting and had great fascination with the art. He not only loved painting himself but also set up a royal painting academy in the palace. Since then painting had become an official aesthetic activity and a fashionable hobby by the rich civilians like wealthy merchants and businessmen.
Scholar- painters admired nature and sought freedom, trying to escape conventionality and that is why they had great fascinations for floating clouds and wild cranes, pastoral scenes, flowers and insects, birds and fish and wild life in general. They expressed their feelings in metaphors and composed poems for these subjects, which helped to develop the scholar painting to a higher stage.
Depiction of images by the Chinese scholar painters is entirely different from that of the West. Main difference in painting between East and West lies in that fact that the former aims at the expression of inner most spirit while the latter excels in setting image with colors. The different aspirations and aesthetic habits of East and West are determined by their respective social lives and environmental factors. Traditionally Chinese water and ink painting have their basic tones with diffused light, aimed at harmony while oil paintings of the West devote to visual images by means of light and colors. In a certain sense Chinese paintings are more abstract in nature, presenting with ink the inner spirit of all objects in nature instead of making a graphic depiction of them. Making images with lines is a technique in which the Chinese traditional painting excels. This technique is recognized both in East and West as the most difficult to master, because lines are extracted from the actual objects and visual spectral images in the three dimensional space. Picasso once said to a Chinese painter studying Western painting in Europe: “ The East has the best means of expression, the technique with lines. Why are you in Europe to learn painting?” Obviously Picasso the great master of modern genre of painting had firm belief of charms of lines in Eastern painting.
China is a large country of agriculture, who entered industrial civilization 200 years later that the West. It would be honest to say that China entered industrial civilization—in real terms only in mid 80’s of 20th century. Guided by government policy of reform and opening up and economic development the entire Chinese society launched large scale economic buildup, introducing in advanced technology from abroad and implementing market economy at home and setting up dozens of special zones in coastal cities in order to attract foreign investment. Drastic changes have been witnessed over the past twenty years. Especially worth mentioning is the urban construction. People’s living becomes colorful and quite a number of Chinese cities are almost on a par with those of advanced Western nations. With that background artistic intercourse between China and West are getting more frequent every day. “85” campaign of Chinese fine arts circles is an attempt on the parts of Art circles in China to break the practicality nature of Art serving politics only, which had prevailed before. As original artistic works and information of West came to China in big quantities the Chinese water and ink paintings have been finding their way abroad too.
Painters’ groups rapidly spread out to cities both sides of the Yangtze River like mushrooms and as art schools and institutes are mostly based in provincial capitals group after group of young painters plus matured painters both middle aged and old came in clusters to big cities, livening the painting circles to an unprecedented extent. Over the past twenty years or so many young painters have thrown away the established procedures and opened up many a new genre language in painting, implanting urban life and metropolitan feelings in depiction of themes and creations of art forms. Among the ones with fresh ideas of expression of modern concepts and city themes are Lu Cheng , Tian Liming, Yao Minjing and Liu Qinghe of Beijing, Lu Yushen of Harbin, Liu Jinan, Lian Zhanyian Ji Jingning of Shijiazhuang, Zhang Peicheng of Shanghai,Zhou Jingxin of Nanjing, Liu Guohui, Zhuo Hejun, Jiang Baolin of Hangzhou, Zhu Zhenggeng and Zheng Qiang of Hubei and Lin Tianhang and Wang Shouqing of Hong Kong. They have all created water and ink paintings with metropolitan sentiments. In Shengzheng the frontier of reform and opening-up, talented painters from all over the nation have come to stay over the past dozen years, continuously adding up new forces to the special zone art and culture. Inspired by the times, these young special-zone painters are depicting urban scenes with great verve. Since early 90’s to now, Dong Xiaoming, director of Shengzheng Painting Institute, the first to grasp metropolitan themes, has sponsored three national- level forums on the urban landscape paintings and two international biannual exhibitions of water and ink paintings. Thanks to a series of art activities such as the above Chinese art of water and ink painting is marching to modern times.
Western scholars enthusiastic about oriental arts have been coming to the major Art schools and institutes for studies of Chinese water and ink painting. Over recent years quite a number of painters from Germany and UK and other countries and make friends with Chinese painters, frequently getting together for creative activities and holding joint art exhibitions of different scales, with mass media both Chinese and foreign taking part in planning and organizing all sorts of joint art exhibitions. All this shows that the Chinese water and ink painting is gradually becoming an international painting language. We are quite confident that thanks to the high-speed development of the information era arts have no more boundaries, that different painting languages created by different nations of the world are bound to be shared by all peoples alike and that the Chinese paper-based water and ink painting art will be shedding even greater brilliance along with the development of our times.
Painting a Picture for Ma Boshen
(为画家马波生造像评论文――何家林撰)Commentator’s article　By He Jialin
Speaking of friends, everyone would have lots of them. Ma Bosheng is actually a non-conventional one among those of my acquaintance. In this article the title of mister is removed because twenty years senior as he is to me, we have no generation gap in between us.
When I first got acquainted with Ma Bosheng it was through introduction by my colleague. What impressed me however, was not his works but rather his style: long hair, clarion voice, somewhat accented, from which one could detect straight-forwardness, lenience and simple honesty so characteristic of northerners. Later when I organized together with Gu Man and Ban Bai our “ Threesome painting exhibition” I worked in cooperation with Ma on matters of publishing works in the Journal of Chinese Paining. He struck me as a social activist more than a painting artist. Though he was student of Lu Cheng’s Studio and painted a lot of pictures I did not appreciate very much.
Ma was born in Shaanxi, where I used to live. And my communication with him was not much but we had privities with each other. Each time he visited Hangzhou he would come to meet me and when we met we would talk little of painting but life chores mostly instead and of course about women, which seems to be indispensable. Maybe our acquaintance belongs to the category of true gentlemen’s, being flatter than plain water.
Then all of a sudden (actually not exactly a sudden) he came to Hangzhou and presented me with a copy of “Bosheng’s water and ink paintings” which was lately published. At that meeting we broke our routine by talking a great deal about the painting profession, which had been rarely touched upon before. After I finished reading the picture book what interested me was not the metropolitan themes themselves (which had been topics many people rushed to depict more than ten years back anyway) but instead his unique language with which he gave expression to the metropolitan themes. Ma is a typical northerner. Opening up of Shengzheng gave him the opportunity to come down south to find his fortune. For an artist who finds himself in an environment where classics and modernity go hand in hand, techniques and cultivation would look so pale. It is personality that accounts, which Ma does not lack.
Ma Bosheng used to cherish fine aspirations in his water and ink world. He had tried to defend his idealistic castle with classical ink and brush. He would run back and forth between classics and modern yet he lacked that lazy exquisiteness typical of scholars south of Yangtze River. Could be his very name “Ma Bosheng” destined him to run incessantly for art (translator’s note: Ma means horse in Chinese and Boshen could be explained as “ born to run for all life” ). The classic water and ink world would hardly contain an untamed wild horse such as he was and he just had no way to hitch himself to the root in this idealistic castle of dream. He, therefore, came back to the world of modern water and ink filled with tension from out of the classic water and ink of great sentimental depth; back to the prosperous and crowded cities with their high rises from out of the natural landscapes so full of touching emotions and sentiments. Is this so just because he happens to have that name? No. More likely it is because of his personality.
Metropolitan landscape is a theme hard to get rid of for today’s Chinese painting. People are wont to live in one place but have their hearts elsewhere, they would quite neglect the actual space in which they live but aspire to the far away so-called pastoral life. Danner said long ago: “we have reasons for admiring the wilderness just like they do for detesting it. To people of 17th century, nothing could be more evil-looking than the mountains. Mountains would rouse their most unpleasant imaginations. They were tired of savageness the way we do civilization. Real mountains make it possible for us to rid ourselves of the pavements, offices and shops and have a rest and that is the only reason why we like the wilderness.” But then it cannot become the reason why we can fail to be concerned with our cities. If we had successfully grasped the language of metropolitan landscape water- and- ink, we could say that. As it is, our water- and- ink remains so helpless when facing our metropolitan cities. Therefore, it would be an excuse for “metropolitan laziness syndrome” if we should go on saying that.
Ma has no excuse. In the days at Shengzheng he had always been concerned with changes and developments around him, by hearing and seeing things. And he tried to depict the city with classic water and ink but without much success. It was a mere chance when he was sketching Huizhou civilian residential house that he found the neat and orderly comparisons and changes of green tiles, white walls and black windows. He started to draw with simple lines and blocks, with almost geometric images. The effects were striking. After painting numerous Huizhou civilian houses a language almost bordering on cold abstraction noiselessly slipped into his world, and when he was depicting the urban residence series in this style this language had loomed large. That is life. Sometimes you could spend your life seeking after your targets without success and more often than not light would shed on you when you least expect it. Ma is a lucky painter. When he was doing his series of city frames he had already unleashed his new exploration of metropolitan themes with modern water and ink. And his unique language has at least the following potential features and characteristics:
1. Image characteristic: it is the most direct and also most difficult. Too much truthfulness would kill all taste; while too much abstraction renders it no different from a superficial touch of scenery. Many a city landscape painting show Shengzheng has held had works just like that. Ma’s series of metropolitan frames however, have striking image characteristics but free of problems mentioned above, giving viewers the feelings of difference in the heights of various buildings and independent structural aesthetical beauty and having ample free room for expression and imagination.
2. Ink-brush characteristic: this is a hurdle very hard to overcome for classic water and ink when trying to depict modern metropolitan themes. Many a classic painter devoted to metropolitan landscape had stopped short here. Ma Bosheng however, thanks to his breakthrough in image characteristic, has simplified his ink and brush characteristics. By combining structure and quality of ink and brush he managed to show a very strong changeability in dry- and- wet and in light- and- dark. That, plus his choice of subjects and broad space shows that he has greater potential yet.
3. Emotional characteristic: ( the term could have been spiritual characteristic, scrapped for fear of vulgarity) In my report made recently on topic-selection I raised an issue of concern for the modern humanities as regards landscape paintings. One paragraph runs like this: “the modern humanity landscape which I am studying has the main aim of catching through artistic images the spiritual expression of man toward the space around him. It is based on the individual feeling and tries to convey the loneliness, suppression, impacts, pains, contradictions, joys, zest, leisure, thoughtfulness, broadness of mind and nobleness among other emotions experienced by the modern artists in the actual space. I think for metropolitan subjects emotional characteristic is the most important. When depicting metropolitan themes many painters have in mind only “depiction”, and there is hardly any feeling for people/viewers to experience. Whatever emotion there is, is but is false and pseudo. Ma’s metropolitan landscape on the contrary, depict through experiencing, so that through the frames, one could feel the liveliness, feel the flesh and blood.
That Ma’s metropolitan series are valuable is because he has explored into areas that classic water and ink would have no access to, thereby developing the classic water and ink. In traditional water and ink aesthetic criteria tend to have common grounds, which are very rigid when it comes to evaluating art works. As recognition and approval are hard to get new works would more often than not fail to meet requirements from all quarters. Aesthetics of modern water and ink however, often tend to have individuality ascompared with that of traditional water and ink while aesthetic criteria for art works are quite lenient and loose. It is this room of freedom that has made the birth of Ma’s metropolitan water and ink works possible.
Ma’s metropolitan water and ink has a kind of aesthetic feeling characterized by vacant-ness, solemnity, sunshine and a somewhat western flavor. Try to feel it with your heart and you will appreciate the space of sudden stillness in life amidst the metropolitan fairy tales he has fabricated and you will also find that crowded and noisy as the metropolis around you is, there still is a certain peacefulness, purity and lightness in it, which is actually a kind of feeling. Ma Bosheng is lucky and happy because success has come to him all too quickly. And that is why I am worried that after his metropolitan water and ink has formed its procedures its emotional characteristic may be replaced by an established concept, in which case metropolitan water and ink would truly become a monotonous frame. This is what I will say to a friend by way of advice.
I like Ma’s metropolitan water and ink and just as I like his style I do it on a platform of IQ and hence there needn’t be any explanation nor conventional formality. I hope my friend will hitch his horse and take off his cowboy hat and settle down because the metropolis is his home and metropolis is right under his feet.
My Love Knot for Metropolis
(我的都市情结 Oct 18th 2002　Haiyue building――马波生) Shengzheng University　By Ma Bosheng
I would recall that eight years ago a certain journalist wrote an article on my “ Metropolitan Landscape”, entitled “Metropolitan Walker”. As of now big cities have become meeting places for scholars and those of arts and culture. Up to the 90’s of last century however, painters based in metropolitan cities had rarely chosen to depict metropolitan themes with water and ink, the art form of traditional Chinese painting. Metropolitan landscape had become a forbidden area without anyone openly saying so. People would hang on their old habits of enjoying the remote and quiet natural scenes far away from noisy cities and city-based painters were neglecting the surging happenings around them and would not give them any expression with their ink and brush. Wouldn’t you say it is something to be sorry for?
1992 I moved to Shengzheng and did my share of sketching in urban areas unnoticeably and attempted to depict city themes with water and ink. I have virtually spent the past twenty years in Beijing and Shengzheng, occasionally visiting Shanghai. My sentimental attachment to cities can be dated far back. Thirty years ago I was a youth fascinated by Lu Xun’s works and stories about Shanghai. My admirations of cities started since then. When later I had my own place in the society I would always visit Shanghai and Beijing when possible, to see customs there, cultural antiques and famous classic paintings. Thinking back to those times I have been a true city walker.
What is so good about the cities? Some people would scoff. Some of my friends, in their idle talk, would often let go their fond feelings toward, and fascinations of the quiet pastoral life, the remote countryside far away from urban areas. For me, the cities as they are, are a concentrated form of expression of achievements of modern industrial civilization, are places where talents of hi-tech live and work and also the centers where the fastest propagation for hi-tech and all kinds of information is going on.
Metropolitan cities are the most efficient bases for developing advanced productivity, are providing the best environment for modern men to enjoy material and spiritual life. Living and working in a metropolitan city now is to be considered lucky. Each metropolis has its high level museum, fine arts institute, and library and such cultural facilities should give us ample chances to study , absorb and appreciate all kinds of knowledge. Schools and universities and institute of arts hold shows and exhibitions of fine works by artists of both home and abroad and academic forums of various disciplines are organized. As a devotee to fine arts, one surely would care about all these.
Metropolitan cities are where cultural works and all sorts of books are published and international cultural exchanges take place; for a scholar a big city always offers best chances in terms of buying books or getting books published.
Metropolitan cities have everything the modern man would need in his life including concert hall, theatre, piano bar, star hotel, high- level ball room, quiet tea house and high fashion clothing. Having lived in Shengzheng for ten years I have grown a deep attachment to this newly emerging city. I have kept trying to depict city themes with water and ink and enjoyed doing so for past ten years and more. Everybody knows that right now such paintings do not fetch money. I have painted some city scenes like “ A Shengzheng Villa”, “Nanshan New Street”, and “ Shengzheng Industrial Estate”, which belong to the first phase in the period of 1992 through 1996 when I first explored into the realm of metropolitan landscape. Judging these works now, they are short of depth and somewhat superficial though they have transformed gradually from the traditional Chinese painting. Unsatisfied with them, I tried with water and ink, some of the city residence and road junctions and basement parking lot. My means of expression had somewhat developed as compared with phase- I- works and they were fairly modern, and were basically free from the traditional Chinese painting formalities.
Early this spring I had a sudden inspiration in my studio and painted a series of frames. After repeated experiments I came to an abstract picture, which is quite different both from traditional water and ink and from the actual true images. I believed that my abstract frame series was a breakthrough not only in terms of image characteristics, but what is more important, a breakthrough from my old creative concept. So a series constructed with cold abstract water and ink was going to open the door to a new painting language.
Just as Dr. He Jialin of landscape painting of China Academy of Fine Arts said in his commentary on this series of frames, “this is a hurdle very hard to overcome for classic water and ink when trying to depict modern metropolitan themes. Many a classic painter devoted to metropolitan landscape had stopped short here. Ma Bosheng however, thanks to his breakthrough in image characteristic, has simplified his ink and brush characteristics. By combining structure and quality of ink and brush he managed to show a very strong changeability in dry and wet and in light and dark. That plus his choice of subjects and expansive space he has greater potential yet.”
This comment of his is of course, an encouragement to me but at the same time also an expectation. I will keep walking non-stop in the metropolitan cities, experiencing the rich resources provided by modern metropolitan civilization. Since I love the metropolis, my love will have to produce results. Tirelessly creating water and ink works that live up to our great times will remain the unchanging goal of my life.
From Idiographic to Semi-abstract ( 从具体到半抽象―― 关于马波生的近作 作者鲁虹)About Ma Bosheng’s Recent WorksBy Lu Hong
Metropolitan themes have now become a new topic in the recent reform in Chinese water and ink painting. Just having metropolitan themes would not necessarily generate fresh vitality for the water and ink painting. Efforts on the part of some water and ink painters in this regard have proved that by painting high rises, elevated bridges and glass curtain walls etc, one could only depict the outer image of a metropolitan city and could not reach the essence. Conversely, if from a greater height, i.e. observing from the sociological and cultural angles, a water and ink painter could make his approach to the modern cities and his studies of the relevant issues of arts, and he shhould have a chance to lead his creative work to a new realm. I think one example of the latter is Mr. Ma Bosheng, a painter based in Shengzheng, with his recent artistic practice. On the one hand Mr. Ma has been experiencing various kinds of stimuli brought about by the incessant changes in the metropolitan scenes and on the other hand he has been all the time thinking how to answer these stimuli with new means of expression by water and ink. I would say his choice fully reflects his personality and his artistic accomplishments.
Ma’s exploration in the world of arts could be roughly divided into three periods: 1992 through 1996, phase 1 since he got into metropolitan water and ink painting; 1996 through 2001 is phase 2 of further exploration while phase 3 starting 2001 to now, has been a period of reforms and working out new things. In Ma’s early works of city landscape he used on many occasions the techniques of “Jingling School of Painters” and certain veteran painters’ techniques in painting modern cities, (like Li Keran, Shi Lu and Guan Shanyue). That is, combining in a subtle and clever way the dry/wet and dark/light brush skills with expressive ways of line drawing, resulting in a strengthened characteristic of modern city landscape. As regards artistic conception he focused on an atmosphere of peace and quiet, leisure and serenity in contrast with the city’s noisiness, fracas and restlessness, subtly presenting his ideals of life, which is free from pollution, public nuisance, poverty and war, and reflecting his inheritance of traditional world outlook of “integration of heaven and man”. In the mid period of exploration Ma Bosheng did, on top of what he had already achieved, consciously use the structural method of Western modernism, i.e. emphasizing consciously the comparison of line with area, density with sparseness, stillness with dynamics on the basis of complanation. His works of this period are more pronounced in individuality. Besides, harmonious handling of large clusters of woods and houses serves to throw into strong relief the “poetic residence”, a realm of modern philosophy.
Ma Boshen could have very well furthered his original exploration and ensured his place in the territory of metropolitan landscape. But he, who would not rest with what’s already achieved, has again explored into a newer creative formula based on his new experience. As we have all seen, in his latest work he made a drastic change from the thousands- of-years tradition of painting brush to broad brush. In terms of artistic effects using broad brush not only increases width of ink lines and their power of expression but also help to emphasize the inner structure and artistic conception. And in relation to that, his newer works no longer depict details in metropolitan scenery but instead abstracts its frame structure and then turn the three-dimensional space to two-dimension by using the complanational structural method. I believe that why his series of metropolitan frames are valuable works is because he has entered areas which traditional water and ink would have hardly any access to, thereby leading it to a new stage of development. What is more, in his newer works one gets an aesthetic feeling of vacant-ness and solemnity, which is really hard to come by.
In the artistic transformation of Ma Bosheng we see his drastic turn from painting city scenery to painting metropolitan water and ink. Admittedly, both city landscape and metropolitan water and ink are based on the subtle grasp of contemporary life and recognition of transition of water and ink to modern times, yet city landscape only raises the modern “concrete forests” to a place on the same level with natural landscape, in which traditional scholars and poets have placed their high and genteel ideals and so, actually it does no more than expresses a fuzzy aspiration to the modern way of life, and would easily limit the artists to a mere expression of the outer look of the metropolitan cities. The metropolitan water and ink, on the other hand, clearly puts an emphasis on the relationship between water/ink expression and the concept of modern metropolis, leading the artist to focus more on the essence of modern metropolis. Here the one-word difference as between city and metropolis implies different artistic pursuits. Starting from such an angle I believe the artistic explorations by Ma Bosheng the artist are worth all his fellow artists’ reference and consideration.