The mission of the competition—the sixth of its kind since the inaugural event in 2008—is to promote the pure beauty, kindness, and truth of traditional oil painting. The competition is inviting realist artists worldwide to submit figure paintings that convey traditional values and positive ideals such as beauty, compassion, and righteousness.
Professor Zhang Kunlun, the head judge of the competition, says that realist oil painting is a form of art gifted to humanity and is based on the concept of pure beauty passed down by the divine. In his view, many current artists and viewers have lost their understanding of the true beauty of art, as a result of the overall moral decline of human beings. He said the competition aims to lead people back to the divinely inspired culture and tradition.
Zhang told The Epoch TImes about the special features and artistic direction of the competition.
Under such circumstances, NTD has been holding the competition based on the theme of pure truth, pure goodness, and pure beauty since 2008. It endeavors to lead art back to the right path, which offers hope for the artists, for art, and for the future of mankind.
The artistic creation is not to show off an artist’s personal ability, nor is it merely to maintain human morality. More importantly, artistic creation is to enhance morality and glorify the divinity and the Creator, using the art gifted to man by the divine. However, due to the universal law of formation, stasis, degeneration, and destruction, the morality of human beings, including artists nowadays, has been reduced to a very low level, even to the extent of anti-divinity. Human beings are therefore in danger of being destroyed at any time. If you look at the chaos in contemporary society, anyone with a heart can see that I am definitely not sounding alarmist.
NTD’s International Figure Painting Competition has really helped artists to return to the divine tradition. In the previous competitions, some artists had returned from the deviated path to the right path of divine inspiration, practiced orthodox art, and achieved outstanding results in their artistic creations through their participation in the contest. In fact, the creation of almost every prize-winning work in the previous competitions was a painful but blissful journey, during which the artists discarded their egoistic and selfish attachments and improved their morality.
However, due to the gradual decline of human morality, people today hardly recognize the true meaning of those works to our humanity. Some people measure them with a monetary price tag, and many even treat them as taboo and cast them out as moral preaching. In fact, the phrase “moral preaching" is a prejudice against morality and it reveals that people now despise morality and indulge in demonic nature.
I’d also like to mention that, in China, the Chinese Communist Party has always used art as a tool to serve its political purposes. Hence, the things it produces are superficial in both meaning and form, thus dampening people’s interest in art.
In fact, true art is a divinely inspired culture that transcends politics. Its profound connotation, subtle expression, and unique artistic language can unconsciously purify people’s spirits and enhance their morality, which no moral preaching can achieve.
However, an artist who is willing to participate in this competition and follow the theme of pure truth, pure kindness, and pure beauty will walk along the traditional path passed down to us by divine beings, and will be paving his or her way back to heaven.
Firstly, I hope all those artists who share the same values will participate in the competition and return to the path gifted to us by the divine.
As an artist who participated in a previous competition said, “As long as one participates in NTD’s International Figure Painting Competition, he/she is a winner, whether he/she wins the prize or not.”
In fact, what one wins is the opportunity to pave his/her way back to heaven.