ILLUSTRATED:

In "Charm of Autumn", simple brushwork and tone reveal the grand demeanor of autumn by color and structure and exhibit the heavy and the loose and the expansive and the wild. Xu Jiang has found out the poetic imagination about the "charm of autumn" with bold, vivid image. As a matter of fact, where the poet starts to ponder history and artists' discussion on the layout do not share the same viewpoint. In this work, no matter the dusk of autumn and cold, miserable swamp or ield with snow discloses the ordinary, tenacious poetic feeling full of tragic atmosphere. Xu Jiang, artist, thinks like critic. A scholar, he writes with pen. However, he paints more with brush. According to him, an artist shall "reveal the completion of existence of creation by the completion of his being". "Charm of Autumn" still describes a story of time. The brushworks are forceful like swift wind and quick lightning. The tension of time built up by brushes penetrates through canvas, blowing on the face. What Xu Jiang is following in his painting is the solemnity of Qu Yuan, an ancient, traditional literati in China. This kind of grandiose demeanor and gloomy character come from property of the artist. And this property originates from his rational sense of history.

Xu Jiang studied painting at the Department of Free Art, Hamburg Institute of Fine Arts, West Germany, in 1980s. Germany is an important place of the art of expressionism, emphasizing always individuality of artist, spirit and emotional expressions and highlighting vitality of color. At the early stage of his stay in Germany, Xu Jiang was shocked by the atmosphere of "listening under ruins" in the artistic circle in Germany. He was also surprised by the new media art, giving up easel painting and changing to creation of conceptual art for a while. However, alongside smoothing feelings, he has returned to easel and his works have been converging from grandness. He started poetic presentation of things with historical significance. His sense of history echoes to Anselm Kiefer, a German painter. What Kiefer pays attention is to history and legend, but Xu Jiang combines individual emotion with the recall of history, thus entering the dialog with history. In a speech, Xu Jiang once said: "We are like ferrymen on the river of modernity. All the concepts and issues have two banks for the dialog. We look are both banks and this constitute the trans-cultural environment of the modern culture in China."