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Among the Chinese contemporary artists, Wang Huaiqing is unique in painting style with classic elegance and frankness. He has inherited classical aesthetic concept of Chinese culture, at the same time, he often introspects the time and background, as well as art environment, he involved. His continuous innovation in the form of recycling classic has created worthwhile value. For more than 30 years, his persistence in refusing to follow the trend, together with his innate delicate sensation, has made him deliberately pursuit of the truth and honest after eliminating flourishing Chinese nation, and reproduce the prosperous history.

He discovered the beauty of art structure from the residential houses in the South of Yangtze River, which is the peculiar architecture in China. The wooden color of the beam and pillars that reflected by the plain white wall and the dark shadow under the architectural space have formed a black-and-white abstract drawing. This is the depiction of "Hometown" (collection of Shanghai Art Museum) regarding to Shaoxing old houses. And a seemingly ordinary old-style chair conveys the atmosphere of the Orient, through the eyes and hands of Wang Huaiqing, who captured the aesthetic civilization with heavy black structure. This is the work, "The Great Ming Manner", which was highly rewarded and got gold medal of First Annual Exhibition of Chinese Oil Painting in 1991. These two paintings of Wang Huaiqing have marked his beginning and turning point in choice of the theme.

From exploration of the construction to dismantle of the furniture, Wang Huaiqing has discovered the great wisdom and aesthetic heritage of Chinese people. Though he has changed the object of concern, in fact, the essential of the concern is the same. In the artist's view, they are same in respect of shape and structure. Wang Huaiqing once said, "The reason for I transferred from the description of 'residential houses' to 'furniture' is that in my eyes they are 'all the same'. Furniture is the movable building, in terms of form and structure, there is no distinction. For an ideological and emotional carrier, it can be people, mountain, earth, heaven, construction, furniture, river, cloud, moon, flower, house, wind, etc. but everything is the same. It is up to you for selecting the carrier you affectionate." (Extracted from Answer to the Riddle of the Great Ming Manner, written by Wang Huaiqing)

Though the lifeless object has been selected, whether it is construction or furniture, actually the selfhood thinking of the artist, as well as the cultural trace and aroma, has been deeply embedded in it. Graduated from the decorating and painting department of Central Academy of Fine Arts and Crafts, and Arts and Crafts Institute, he is an expert in allocation and distribution, giving out a theatrical association with a stage space after people leave the arena. The made up beauty and the brilliant story could only leave a memory for the audience to recall. He once said, "I particularly like to paint a picture with a living object and a lifeless object, but converting the protagonist with deuteragonist. Sometimes, I feel that the life whatever how brilliant and extravagant it is, it is relatively fragile. To some extent, it is not so eternal and long lasting as the furniture. The material is very close, but people are very remote. This is what we called an emotional vicissitudes."

Wu Guanzhong, the teacher of Wang Huaiqing, believes that the beauty of abstraction is abundantly existed in nature. He advised people not to fear of abstraction, especially the abstraction in the culture created by Chinese people. Wu Guanzhong has found the beauty of white wall and black tiles in the construction at the South of Yangtze River, and he is in favor of peculiar black-and-white expression at the South of Yangtze River, with pure abstract formation developed from massive black. Black and white colors are most important in the heritage of Chinese ink painting, and they reveal the sentimental feeling of the ancestors. Black is beyond the scope of colors and indicates the intrinsic links in Chinese traditional art. Wu Guanzhong extradited the black-and-white to form abstraction, inspiring Wang Huaiqing to choose the counterparts of black and white. He deliberately blackened all the furniture and changed the nature of living utensils into a form of art, showing the retrospection and linkage of the cultural origins pursued by the artist.

Wang Huaiqing has summed up three creative statements in his article, Answer to the Riddle of the Great Ming Manner. The first one has already been mentioned above, which is to "blacken all the furniture appeared in the picture". The second one is to "put the furniture in an empty background, and changed the traditional inevitable position – 'ground', which is the normal location for all furniture in the world". The third is to "make three- dimensional scene into plain". He humorously described these three statements as the magic words, which should not be disclosed. However, they could make the audience to understand the intention of the artist more easily. The large scale oil painting, "Lute Table", created by Wang Huaiqing in 2003, could be taken as a good example to illustrate three conversion features adopted by the artist. An extremely simplified elongated and distorted "Lute Table", the color of the wood has been turned to black, and the structure has been converted into a "gate" shaped in black lines and blocks. Large area of background left blank, making the "Lute Table" float in the airy space. There is no perspective in space and the original three- dimensional structure has been transformed into a planar configuration.

In recent years, Wang Huaiqing has preferred to add collage on the canvas to enrich presentation of the original space. Sometimes, the old window tracery, and other times, the dilapidated furniture pieces were adopted. The large area of blank space in "Lute Table" has been treated with effective texture by the painter, who is good at this treatment. The gray wall, which mottled and crimpled, has left traces of makeup in ancient history. The upper left was added with brown cloth collage, showing simple and harmonious texture. It reflects his heightened ingenuity to make the picture with more changeable layers. Even if the colors and the models of the object are simplified, it is not monotonous at all.

The slender quaint lute table is expressed with a vigorous and simple black structure. The horizontal black shows rigidity and significant, and the vertical black appears elegant and beautiful. In the composition of black, the handwriting of traditional calligraphy has visualized symbols of western abstraction. After careful presentation of the transformation by the artist, a crystallization of Chinese and Western painting has been formed. "Lute Table" is lonely floating in the picture, without strings to accompany, nor master to play. It seemed to have lost its attachment and attribution, constituting a certain relationship of fracture. The artist intended to expose the fracture between history and culture, just as today the environmental change we are facing.

It is worth noticing that Wang Huaiqing has summarized the lute table into a planar image, which recalls people's memory of the stage setting for traditional Peking opera. Under this meticulous arrangement, the artist pursues the features of the plane and ornamental, as well as the distinctive contrast between black and white. The two-dimensional space was focused, making elegant "Lute Table" heightened and prominent in extreme planar layout, and producing an excellent artistic effect. For the stage art and folk paper-cut art in China, the complanation is the classic expression. Undoubtedly, Wang Huaiqing has profoundly realized his artistic pursuit. Through his works, he has expressed his sentiment and concern for humanity, his consideration and expectation for the epoch. At the same time, he has hailed the aesthetic value of folk art and demonstrated the heritage spirit of the new era, which is rare among the contemporary artists.