Mai Hongjun’s New Landscape Painting Art (by Vice-President of China National Academy of Painting Zhang Xiaoling)

In some critics’ opinion, present Chinese painting has got into unprecedented flouring stage. Factors are various, like favorable market, diverse styles, and globalization. Such comments sound good in general. However, from a different perspective, we can also see the so-called “flourishing” is mostly a result of market utilitarianism. In other words, the flourish of Chinese painting grows up in the dirt of desire of fame and fortune in the market rather than in the fertile field of  academy. This can be verified by that many academic problems of Chinese painting have been set side and no longer arouse the interest of artists and theorists in recent years. Only from spiritual index, I have plenty of reasons to refer the whole situation of present Chinese painting as “barren in flourish”.