Élan Vital Present Inspiration to Calligraphy
　　Dr. Melanie Frank, Art Historian

　　Out of his sincerely adoration to Marx Beckman, a European Modernist artist, Leu Yonggang came to Germany as a Chinese artist. The two artists are closely interlaced via their distinctive and symbolic expressionism forms. Marx Beckman starts out from his initial point of Christian icons. He aspires to translate the reality into the arts world in emblems and signs, and he employs these formats to depict life codes. His works are impressive with the depressive mood of mental hangover and tragic catastrophes of the War. He devotes great efforts and passions into his progress of transplantation the facts in a holy aura of religion. The ambiances become true through all signals he picks, and mainly depend on his special ways of painting. These figures on canvas are so grimly stepping out since they are manifested by dark black lines in pencil or charcoal. Black is good for them to indicate power and impact. All lines are the links helping the great Modernist master involved with Leu Yonggang. Because the lines get independent autonomies from Calligraphy and extend out to extreme space unstoppably, the forms are easy to find their own natures. It will be explained further.

　　The works of two artists are representational and abstract. Although Beckman captures the spirits of narrative manner in his series of exceptional works, he still keeps the aesthetical distance between his paintings and the actuality instead of totally embracing. The pictures created by Leu Yonggang are same. But certain discrimination between them exists. It is that Leu Yonggang searched out the symbols of Love of Life, which are Dragon and Phoenix. The logos of two patterns can be used to imply M and F, Yin and Yang.

　　He uses the signs to insinuate the primitive dualism philosophy of China carried on for thousands of years. Yin and Yang is a couple of primordial conceptions embodying types of contradictions. For example, Yang signifies M, soul, warmth and light, while Yin denotes F, cereal, coldness, and shadow. But those counter poles incarnate rather the complement among than the confliction between each other. The both sides provide the forces of action and inter-action. The figures generated by Leu Yonggang are just like that. The oppositional pair of correspondences is absolute indispensable for his works though they come to be a set of antagonistic forces on facial layer. He elucidates the annotations of Tian and Di, Yin and Yang, Spirit and Body. His series of works under the title of Love-in-Arm are extraordinary samples for him to prove the commitment fulfilled, which is to inosculate opposite powers in complete harmony. Unique shapes and forms of Yin and Yang come to be a whole. They may seem to repel each other apparently, while they work in common endeavor to create perfect visual effect. It is actual a coordinate duo of existences hugging in arm. The artist finds the representative forms in Calligraphy to image his activities and intellectual pursuit. What is the exact content be intuited in his works? And what do they feature in front of audiences charmingly and attractively? 

　　Calligraphy is the lettering art in China. It is the zenith of all forms of arts and even goes beyond the realm of painting. As Calligraphy and Chinese Painting are regarded as sister-arts, they utilize the same tools of brushes. Whether the lines depicted or various types of versions, all marks are just imitating activities and posts of human beings. Brushes in hands can achieve all imaginations and all alternations. There are many methods of holding brushes and copious of ways for them to leave trails on paper. A range of modes of points and manners of motions are so important. The different ways and directions of brushes moving on paper are determinative, as well as the power and the speed, for the abundant images occurring and emerging. All images are active as the lines are changeable and the shapes are movable. When we stare into, we have to follow the violent movements of figures. Elements of pictures are the sources of those powers and effects.

　　The primeval custom of Calligraphy is the straight framework of all signs that are main medium carrying meanings, as it is a kind of complicated originality of characters. A divergent target of Leu Yonggang’s works is that they cannot be Read. They are some synthetic units of conventional letters and collections of shapes and lines. There are superficial layouts hit-and-miss to symbolize the primitive powers of Yin and Yang in codes of Dragon and Phoenix. The deep-rooted feelings of his expressions are relied on all forms of lines not the transcendental principles acquired through logical relation. It is an instant prize of Calligraphy shapes from shapes. The restless forms are engendered out of pure and direct perception. The processes of writing and painting are really happening. And the activities are the chief targets in observation. Leu’s works turn the phenomena existence of Time into the motif of his paintings. It comes to be the floating forms of lettering and the perpetual hylic forms (marble), for instance, brittle ceramic.

　　I need to mention Henri Bergson, from his stand of view, as there are irreversible consequences of all cases, Time brings the same fruit when it flows away and goes ahead. Every moment is one and only. It is unrepeatable. When he said about élan vital, I think the idea of the concept can help us to understand the works of Leu Yonggang. Élan vital is Life. It is a force hiding behind all substances, which makes them motile. It reveals the general libido in progress of developing. Bergson thought Life is not from Matter but influences Matter. It has an antipodal force against inertia and decadence. Since that, élan vital can lead us towards the ambit of freedom and insight. Based on the thought, it is right to treat paintings as vestiges of actions, living and instantaneous. Recording élan vital, Calligraphy and realistic Painting are doing the same with all efforts to accomplish life expressions of vivid lines and aeonian annals of momentary beings.

　　The artist, Willi Baumeister has ever demonstrated that naive viability is a birth of miracle. According to his words, artists are presetting their aims. Merely, the aim is untouchable in mind. It is an illusory goal. Because there are many unidentified factors interrupting into during the period of growing and leading them towards hazardous ends diverted from the original intent. Baumeister don’t think it is a lost when the deviation happens, but he considers it to be a valuable chance for artists to run after to a potential corner of creativity. Being engrossed in mystic power may cause elusion from rational consciousness. The better manner is to take the unconscious acts as a starting line and to show the ways of creation. It comes from the Surrealism. Under the condition of instinctively doing things, artists can ensconce themselves behind their works to restrain their influential movements, which leaves room to other forces. Andre Breton, initiating a theory of Ecriture Automatiqu, once illuminated his viewpoint in words: the most important discovery is that, when brushes are moving or pencils are painting, there is no any domination of subjective volition to control the glide. It is the best moment for precious thoughts coming forth…… Leu Yonggang is not only to write a picture when he introduces forms of Calligraphy, but also to write down what appears automatically if it could be said so to a certain extent. He adopts the method with many different materials, especially figures in marble, to show the collision when the Perpetuity meets the Temporality, only if the material can abide for ever. The different Weltanschauung and Aesthetics of Europe and China crash into élan vital at the moment. It is embodied in the collection of Leu Yonggang.