[游记]吴冠中长江万里图油画长卷

《长江万里图》总长509、高22.5公分，纸上油画，卷首有吴冠中的补题：“一九七一年至七二年间，偕小彭、运甫、大年、永玉诸兄，为北京饭店合作《长江万里图》巨幅壁画。初稿成，正值批黑画，计划流产，仅留此综合性成稿，小彭兄冒批判之风险，珍藏此稿，今日重睹手迹，亦惊喜、亦感叹！一九九0年七月八日 北京红庙北里六号楼 吴冠中识。”

经美术家、美术史家细致鉴识，发现《1974?长江》遗有炭笔痕迹，表明此画应该是底稿或初稿。《万里长江图》纯以油彩绘画，不见炭笔遗痕，景色描绘与色彩，细润精雅，盎然而自然地充满了不求形似求生韵的词心和逸气，显然是吴冠中卷首所题的“综合性成稿”。

《长江万里图》的选材、绘画语言、风格和形象，在吴冠中此后绘画创作中，成熟丰富地落定为重要题材和基本笔墨形式，所以《长江万里图》是吴冠中绘画风格的奠基作，也是吴冠中的画魂。

Wu Guanzhong -Ten Thousand Kilometers of Yangtze River - Oil Painting Roll
In 1973, returning from the countryside, Wu Guanzhong participated in the creation of Ten Thousand Kilometers of Yangtze River, large fresco in Beijing Hotel. In his book, What I Owe to Painting, Wu Guanzhong said, “I was so fortunate. Beijing Hotel asked Huang Yongyu, Yuan Yunpu, Zhu Danian and I to paint the large fresco Ten Thousand Kilometers of Yangtze River... designer Xi Xiaopeng was in charge of the whole project. Yuan Yunpu, Zhu Danian, Huang Yongyu and I painted it. Yuan Yunpu was responsible for contacting the different parties. We had studied the drawing for a long time and needed to travel to the Yangtze River and see the scenery for ourselves. We went on a sketching trip from Shanghai to Chongqing, along the river. What a nice esthetical errand!”

Recalling the past, we can sense the artist’s happiness through his writing. Fortune or misfortune, both cannot be controlled by human. During the two decades, things changed rapidly. The artist does not want to be confined by the representation, nor be fettered by the abstract. He looks for a route where East and West fuse, where tradition and epoch merge. Now, they traveled along the river, lived on the bank, painted the grand landscape, and captured the spirit of the mountain and the river. How could the artist not feel happy?

In What I Owe to Painting, Wu Guanzhong excitedly describes his months’ of sketching experience, “We have lived on Huangshan for a long time. Tanned by the sun and blown by the wind, we just focus on our painting. Dirty and poorly dressed, we looked like beggars coming down from the mountain. Wan County faces the Yangtze River. There are many boats and people on the dock, full of the life spirit, which is a most touching scene for the artists.”

When Wu Guanzhong mentioned the creation of Ten Thousand Kilometers of Yangtze River, he said, “When I painted the Yangtze River, I set the image as a whole, and painted the details from the images. This is also the basic creation technique I employed in the 1970s. The river flows into the painting and flows out of it. It is the area of Yangtze River, is the land of China, which is not limited to the landscape along the river. So it also displays the basic elements of composition in plastic arts, which is not just the simple combination of scenes along the river.”