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Sunday 16 February

He Jiaying: The Renaissance of Gongbi

Published on: 30 January 2025

By: Hervé Lancelin

Category: Art review

Reading time: 6 minutes

He Jiaying (何家英) transcends the boundaries of traditional gongbi with his exceptional mastery of line and unique artistic vision. His works, born from a slow and meditative creative process, embody a remarkable fusion of Chinese cultural heritage and contemporary sensitivity.

Listen to me carefully, you bunch of snobs. He Jiaying, born in 1957 in Tianjin, embodies that rare alchemy between millennia-old tradition and dazzling modernity that characterizes contemporary China. Here is an artist who, for over four decades, has been redefining the boundaries of possibility in the art of gongbi, this ancestral painting technique that demands almost surgical precision.

In his studio at the Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts, where he has been teaching since 1980, He Jiaying sometimes dedicates up to four months to a single work, working twelve hours a day with monastic patience. This deliberate slowness, almost provocative in our age of instant art and digital creation, is not a pose. It is the very expression of his artistic philosophy, deeply rooted in Taoist thought and its fundamental concept of Wu Wei – action through non-action.

Take Autumn Twilight, that masterful work completed in 1991, which marked a turning point in the history of contemporary Chinese painting. A young woman sits, knees drawn up to her chest, her gaze lost in deep meditation. The purple sky surrounding her, structured like a dome, is reminiscent of compositions found in Western religious paintings. This reference is no coincidence – He Jiaying consciously engages in a dialogue with Western art history, creating unexpected bridges between Eastern and Western pictorial traditions. This painting perfectly illustrates what Hegel called dialectical synthesis: the resolution of apparent contradictions between tradition and innovation, between East and West, between technique and emotion.

The melancholy permeating his works is not the superficial, commercial kind seen in calendar painters who have done so much to devalue Chinese art in the twentieth century. It stems from a profound reflection on the human condition, aligning with the concerns of great existentialist philosophers. His female figures, which he paints with an almost obsessive dedication, are not mere objects of aesthetic contemplation. They embody the constant tension between being and appearance, between action and contemplation, which Sartre so brilliantly analyzed in Being and Nothingness.

Nineteen Autumns, created in 1982, perfectly illustrates this philosophical dimension of his art. A young woman stands in a persimmon grove, her bare foot sinking into the soft earth. The title references a poem about Su Wu, the Han Dynasty diplomat who spent nineteen autumns in captivity among the Xiongnu. The symbolism is dizzyingly profound: those nineteen autumns mark the transition from adolescence to adulthood, that pivotal period where hope mingles with hesitation. He Jiaying captures this precise moment when innocence wavers but has not yet fallen, when self-awareness emerges without having fully erased childhood’s spontaneity.

What fundamentally distinguishes He Jiaying from his contemporaries is his categorical refusal of ease. In an increasingly market-driven Chinese art world, he maintains an artistic integrity that commands respect. His relentless pursuit of technical perfection is not an end in itself, but a means of reaching a deeper truth about the human condition. As Walter Benjamin wrote in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, an artwork’s authenticity lies in its “here and now”, in its irreducible uniqueness. He Jiaying’s paintings, the fruit of a slow and meditative creative process, possess that aura Benjamin saw threatened by mechanical reproduction.

In The Spirit of Mawei, completed in 2005, He Jiaying pushes this quest for authenticity even further. The composition, surprisingly bold, breaks with traditional gongbi conventions while respecting its spirit. The willow branches framing the central figure create a sense of depth reminiscent of the spatial innovations of the Italian Renaissance, while maintaining the characteristic flatness of Chinese painting. This tension between depth and surface, between Western representation and Eastern abstraction, creates a fascinating visual dynamic that transcends traditional categories.

Under his brush, the gongbi technique becomes a language capable of expressing the subtlest nuances of human experience. Each stroke is the result of prolonged meditation, each shade of color the outcome of deep reflection on the very nature of perception. This approach recalls Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology, for whom perception was not merely the passive reception of sensory data but a creative activity involving our entire being.

In Red Apple, He Jiaying explores the limits of traditional technique. His use of lifen, a method involving the accumulation of thick pigments to create a relief effect—traditionally reserved for depicting flower stamens and pistils—is here applied to the wool sweater of the young girl. This technical innovation, which took him a week of work for this single detail, illustrates his ability to push the boundaries of possibility while remaining faithful to the spirit of tradition.

His exceptional mastery of line allows him to create works that are both deeply rooted in Chinese tradition and resolutely contemporary. Variations in line density, their fluidity, their strength—combined with his control of speed and pressure—highlight the abstract, expressive, and decorative qualities of Chinese technique while vividly capturing the subject’s attitude and psychology. This fusion of traditional technique and modern sensibility echoes the theory of art historian Ernst Gombrich on artistic evolution: every innovation builds upon past achievements while transforming them.

The women he paints are never reduced to mere objects of beauty. Whether urban young women lost in thought or rural workers in action, each of his female figures possesses a unique presence, an intrinsic dignity that transcends stereotypes. This approach echoes Simone de Beauvoir’s reflections on the social construction of femininity and the necessity of recognizing women as autonomous subjects rather than mere objects of the male gaze.

In Korean Exchange Student, He Jiaying captures the complexity of contemporary female identity. The young woman depicted embodies this new generation navigating between Asian traditions and Western influences. Her pensive expression suggests a rich inner life, while her posture conveys modern self-confidence. This work perfectly illustrates what sociologist Stuart Hall called the “hybrid identities” characteristic of our globalized era.

He Jiaying’s ability to merge Eastern and Western influences extends beyond the technical aspects of his painting. It reflects a deep understanding of the universal principles of art, transcending artificial cultural divisions. As philosopher François Jullien wrote, the true encounter between East and West does not occur in the mere juxtaposition of differences but in the discovery of the “productive gaps” that allow us to rethink our own assumptions.

He Jiaying masterfully uses pictorial space. In works like Dancing, he creates a subtle balance between areas of meticulous detail and deliberately empty spaces. This approach recalls the Japanese concept of ma—the meaningful interval—while echoing Western modernists’ explorations of emptiness in composition. This synthesis of Eastern and Western spatial approaches creates a visual tension that keeps the viewer’s gaze in constant motion.

The temporal dimension of his work is also striking. His paintings seem to suspend time, creating what philosopher Henri Bergson called “pure duration”—a qualitative, lived time distinct from the measurable time of clocks. This temporal suspension is particularly evident in Autumn Ghost, where the young girl with closed eyes seems to float in an indeterminate space-time, between dream and reality.

He Jiaying’s influence on contemporary Chinese art is considerable. He has not only revitalized the gongbi technique but also demonstrated that it is possible to create art deeply rooted in tradition while remaining resolutely contemporary. His approach recalls what T.S. Eliot wrote about tradition and individual talent: true originality does not consist in rejecting the past but in integrating it creatively into a new vision.

Art critic Wang Hongjian aptly described Autumn Twilight as a milestone in the history of modern Chinese art. This work, like He Jiaying’s entire oeuvre, represents much more than a mere bridge between tradition and modernity. It embodies the fundamental truth that authentic art transcends eras precisely because it delves into the deepest aspects of our shared humanity.

In an art world increasingly dominated by the ephemeral and the spectacular, He Jiaying reminds us that true innovation can only emerge from a deep understanding of tradition. His monastic patience, his refusal to compromise, his relentless pursuit of technical perfection in the service of emotional expression make him a truly universal artist, capable of speaking to all sensibilities while remaining profoundly faithful to his cultural roots.

Reference(s)

HE Jiaying (1957)
First name: Jiaying
Last name: HE
Other name(s):

  • 何家英 (Simplified Chinese)

Gender: Male
Nationalitie(s):

  • China

Age: 68 years old (2025)

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