With his works concerning about human beings and expressing human’s appearances as the most obvious features, Pang Maokun, in portrayal painting, focuses on human’s mental world, which is the one that the artist experiences when communicating with the painting subjects. It is in this way that the characters in his works are not only of independent existence, but also those perceived, idealized and affected by the artist.  

Advocating the rule of creation in classicism, Pang Maokun believes that while describing the various aspects of nature, the painter should draw closer of their relations through rearranging the disorders into order and integrating the mental unity into the variety of nature. With this rule, he makes the choice on details and rearranges the natural environment around the human beings. As to the portrayal of the characters, he takes the principle of restraint in classicism, solemn and quiet with sublimity as well as some kind of indifference, which is the majestic essence of the classical rather than the superficial classical looks.  

Echoing with the northern classical style, Pang Maokun’s southern style, with a sense of depression, is more meaningful philosophically, which means that Pang Maokun’s works, full of metaphysical subjects, pay much attention to some kind of concept in the combination of object and subject. We could observe from his portraits the characters and atmosphere in peace and solemnity, coming out with a certain inexplicable distress and grief.  

To Pang Maokun, his language of art is classical, yet the thought contemporary. 

Selected from Both Classical and Contemporary – On Pang Maokun’s Oil Painting’s Language,

By Shao Dazhen