文：靳之林

贺丹，1960年生于中国陕西西安,1983年毕业于西安美术学院油画系并留校任教。其北方人彪悍的文化视觉感，经他的创作实践。走出了一条风格鲜明的艺术之路。因此在那一代青年画家中他代表着一种新的文化特征。

众多人物大场面的表现一直是贺丹的创作主题。农贸集市的喧闹、大漠黄沙的尘烟、雪夜土塬的静谧、欢庆锣鼓的激情澎湃，一如黄河般延绵不绝，组成了贺丹式的《黄河大合唱》，但是这些只是贺丹式艺术的外表特征，他在艺术创作中，立意揭示的是社会族群中人与人的关系，人与物的关系。这类关系，且是人们所熟悉，却未从本质上梳理的现象。

1994年首次赴法国巴黎访问时，他还只是隐略感觉到“越是民族的艺术，越是有世界性”的意义。而1995年首次在巴黎举办他的个人画展，并相继应邀赴意大利、比利时、奥地利和美国举办个人画展，赢得了西方社会的极高赞誉，此时，反到让贺丹在喜悦中多了一分思考。中、西文化的差异性是明显的。在文化形态上的不同视觉固然会产生不同的震憾，但如果视觉形态只是外表的绚丽而缺乏内在精神的支撑，缺乏视觉艺术规律的把握和表达，民族的艺术形态是难免不会在“世界性”这一耀眼的光环中褪去其精神力量而成为“花拳绣腿”。他开始思索被日本京都千代田美术馆收藏的作品《白雪》以及被法国梅斯市政府收藏的《回家》、《午尘》，英国皇室英之杰财团收藏的《驴市》等作品之所以被国外文化机构收藏的原因。他认识到“越是民族的艺术”实指民族精神的当代性意义，是指艺术家在文化本质和呈现当代表达手段上的高度统一下的结果。他的《安寒腰鼓》、《过黄河》、《回娘家》、《滑冰》、《儿戏》等作品之所以给人深刻印象，除却作品中生活味十足的人物情节、散点式的人物安排和渐行渐远的西式空间观的结合，是构成东西方社会观众在视觉上形成共鸣的内在因素。聚散有致的艺术处理和多中心的群体组合，以及他独特的夸张造型因素等关系的自由应用，使再现生活中人与人之间的自由关系，这种艺术格式在新的文化品格上与艺术家生活想象天衣无缝的接合，众多人物中国式的散点组合，使贺丹的艺术迥然有别于国内许多以民俗为题材创作的作品，这是贺丹的艺术被西方社会当做文化交流的对象,而不是“中国艺术赶大集”的原因之一。

贺丹创造性地运用了中国民间传统的创作手法和艺术语言，他的作品大多根据生活的回忆，有的则是根据创造性的想象形成的独特意境创作。他不喜欢在创作前画大量草稿的创作模式，而喜欢随想随画，画到哪里便完成到哪里，哪里少什么东西就随加什么东西。很显然，贺丹的人物形象如此众多而又不依赖写生和生活速写，生活场景是如此变化多端又无法找到实地实景。我们不禁要探究他的素材来源和内心成像的秘密。然而，惟一的根源是从陕西汉代陶俑艺术的创作脉络上找到的解释：中国先民在制作泥塑陶俑之时，工匠艺人们莫不是在画得好玩和捏得有意味中实现的。汉代艺术大气磅礴，能横扫物质与精神间的块垒，令后人唏嘘不已，正得益于创作者心态的自然和表现手法的自然。贺丹艺术暗合了先辈们的文化血脉，我想这才是其艺术别具一格的内在原因。

1995年-2001年，贺丹以艺术家身份侨居法国巴黎，加入了法国美术家联盟，有了更多地亲身介入欧洲当代艺术活动的机会，同时，在完成他攻读美术学博士学位的余暇，开始了他在艺术形式上的思考和实验性探索阶段。这个过程贺丹走得很辛苦。面对西方主流艺术的冲击，在一个更为广阔的文化背景中，怎样在坚持本身文化特质之时，在视觉艺术前沿争得一席发言的地位，他开始画变体稿，实验新的油画材料，在人类普遍的情感和视觉待征上寻找突破口。他的系列作品《大树》，暗喻着传统与现代的冲突，他的《回忆》直接指向人类的集体无意识的顽疾，然而却又是天地人的场景，抑或是身份不同的人们在各揣心思地面对盲目。而《舞蹈》虽在形式上复归了贺丹原本躁动的情怀.却在形式上走出一条新路。这条新路是一个标志，是贺丹在外求学的中西文化碰撞后的尘埃落定，是生命感召力在文化主题上的深度辐射。面对他以生活回忆创作的大幅油画《回忆》，我们看到的是黄土塬上无数人向中心奔跑的力量，达种力量在日常生活中无所不在，在让人感动的同时，也激发了人们面对存在的深层思考。而《大树》那熟悉的树形，让树下的人们惊恐地奔命而逃，某种深刻的生命命题在动荡不安中得到了提纯，实际上，我们从他过去的艺术创作中，诸如黄土飞扬的 《八路军冲锋》和黄土飞扬的《安塞腰鼓》中，就已经看到过贺丹独特的生活想像力。他对非具体事件性的描绘，以及以极强的地域性场景为借题的个人抒情方式，戏剧性人格的把握和对现实道具化的模拟创作手法是他个人风格显得额外突出的原因。但是，2000年～2001年间创作的《大树》、《回忆》、《舞蹈》这类标题简洁，内涵更深的作品，则正预示着贺丹在生命主题的哲学层面上，以及在视觉形式的美学精神上所发生的深层变化。他的作品尺寸变大了，他的艺术关怀更趋向触摸人性本质内容了，当然.他更加成熟了。

中央美术学院教授 靳之林

2001年11月11日  北京

He Dan，was born in Xi'an, Shanxi Province, China in 1960. He graduated from the Oil Painting Department of Xi'an Academy of Fine Arts in 1983 and became a teacher at the university after graduation. The art vision of this northwesterner is practiced by his creation and found a way belonging to himself. He represented a new culture identity among his generation of young artists.

To draw the big scenes of the crowd has always been the topic of He Dan's painting. The clamor of the country fair, the yellow dust of the desert, the quietness of the snowy night on the vast expanse of loess plateau, and the passion of celebrating from the gongs and drums. All these are like the Yellow River, formed the He Dan’s "Yellow River Chorus". But these are only the surface characteristics of He Dan’s artwork. He expresses the relationship between the different social groups and people and natural. This kind of relationship of phenomenon between the people are familiar, but its essence has not been combed and revealed.

When he first visited Paris in France in 1994, He Dan only implicitly felt the meaning of the phrase "The pride of a nation is also the pride of the world ". In 1995, he held his solo exhibition in Paris for the first time. Subsequently, he was invited to Italy, Belgium, Austria and the United States to hold his solo exhibition and won the high praise of Western society. At this time, in addition to the joy, He Dan began to systematically reflect. After all, the differences between Chinese and Western cultures are obvious. And different visual experiences in cultural forms will have different impacts, but if the visual form is only the appearance of beauty and lack of inner spiritual, in particular lacking the grasp and expression of the rules of visual art, the national art form is inevitably not in the world. "Sexual" is a dazzling aura that fades away from its spiritual power and becomes a „powder-puff." He began to think about the work "White Snow" which collected by the Chiyoda Art Museum in Kyoto, Japan, and "Going Home" and "Morning Dust" collected by the French city-Metz, and the works of the British royal family Inchcape plc. The reasons for the collection of foreign cultural institutions. He realized that "the pure national art" refers to the contemporary spirit of nation as well as to the result of the artist's high degree of unity in the essence of expression of contemporary culture and art. His works such as "Ansai waist Drum", "Across the Yellow River", "Back to the House", "Skating", “Children’s Play" etc…are impressive. Besides meaningful life story and characters in his artworks, the combination of plots and the scattered arrangement of concept of western-style space that gradually drifting away is an intrinsic factor that constitutes a visual resonance between the East and West audiences. The free application of the combination of artistic processing and multi-centered group composition, as well as his unique exaggerated modeling factors, reproduces the natural relationship between people in life. This artistic format is in the new cultural character. The artist's life imagination is seamlessly combined, and the Chinese-style scatter combination of many characters makes He Dan's art different from many domestic genre painting works. This is the reason why He Dan's art treated as a contemporary art and a bridge between the west and east, not the "vulgar Chinese genre painting".

He Dan creatively uses the traditional Chinese folk artistic painting methodology and language. His works are mostly based on the memories of his own life. Many works are created according to his unique artistic and exuberant imagination. He doesn't like to draw a lot of drafts before the painting, but likes drawing wherever and whenever he wants, and add something and finish whenever or whenever he believes. Obviously, the characters in his drawing are so numerous and does not rely on sketching. The genre life is so varied and so interesting to express the real scene. We can't help to want to explore the source of his material and the secrets of its historical sources. However, the only roots cause may be the explanation found in the creative context of the pottery figurine art in the Han Dynasty of Shaanxi: when the Chinese ancestors made clay pottery, the craftsmen were realized in the fun and pinch. The art of the Han Dynasty was so majestic that it swept the block between material and spiritual, which made future generations stunned and benefited from the nature of the creator's mentality and the nature of the expression. The art of He Dan coincides with the cultural blood of the ancestors. I think this is the inherent reason for his unique art.

From 1995 to 2001, He Dan lived as an artist in Paris, France, joined the French Artists Union, and had more opportunities to personally intervene in European contemporary art activities. At the same time, he completed his study of the doctorate of art and began his stage of thinking and experimental exploration in art form. This process He Dan went very hard through. Facing the impact of Western mainstream art, in a broader cultural background, how to strive for a position in the advance of visual art while insisting on its own cultural belonging. He began to draw variants and experiment works with new oil painting materials. Find a breakthrough in the general emotional and visual aspirations of human beings. His series "Big Tree" is a metaphor for the conflict between tradition and modernity. The "memory" directly points to the ills of collective unconscious of human beings, but it is also a scene between heaven and earth and people with different identities to recognition each other. Although the painting "Dance" has reverted to the original feeling of He Dan's early incitement and it has taken a new path in form. This new road is a sign that the dust settled after the collision of Chinese and Western cultures that He Dan studied abroad is the deep radiation of the appeal of life on the cultural theme. In the face of his large-scale oil painting "Reminiscence" created by life memories, we see the power of countless people running on the loess to the center point. The power of the species is omnipresent in daily life and it is also exciting when people are touched by art and cause deep thinking about the existence. The tree shape in the painting "Big Tree" makes the people under the tree run away in horror and some profound life propositions are purified in turmoil. In fact, we are from his past artistic creations, such as loess. He Dan’s unique artistic imagination has been seen in the “Eighth Route Army assault” and the “flying Ansai waist Drum”. His description of non-specific incidents as well as the personal lyrics that are based on extremely strong regional scenes, the grasp of dramatic personality and the simulation of realistic props are the reasons for his personal style. However, the titles such as “Big Tree”, “Reminiscence” and “Dance”, which were painted between 2000 and 2001, are concise and deeper in his works. They are indicative of He Dan’s philosophical level of life theme and visual form. The deep changes that have taken place in the aesthetic spirit. His work has become larger in size and his artistic concerning has become more and more touching the essence of human nature. Undoubtly, he is becoming more mature.

Professor of Central Academy of Fine Arts of China

Jin Zhilin

November 11, 2001 Beijing