“云”是中国文化当中是极富传统韵味、独具人文气质的风物、兼具古典、浪漫气息，同时它也作为一个美学符号，一个无限循环的精神投射物而存在。在我们日常所见的图像范畴，诸如被广泛装饰在古代建筑、雕刻、服饰、器具上象征吉祥与崇高的云纹，在文学范畴，关于“云”的古体诗、现代诗、小说更是不可胜数。再没有什么形态比“云”更变幻莫测，比“云”更能显示“世事无常”。“云”带有聚合游散、一期一会的性质，指向生活的虚处。

　　单一的题材往往最难传达，其难度与在熟悉的景观中发现陌生感约同。从艺经年，王牧羽未曾有浅尝辄止、畏难取巧的心态，亦少有直抒胸臆、率性而为的作品。或与他的性格有关，只要是他认定的类型，必然是经过深思熟虑过的。王牧羽的理性源于文学感知力的先行。酷爱文学、早年写诗的他看到云，在想到“取云为象”之前，或许最先投射于心的是“浮云游子意”、“白云千载空悠悠”吧。然而他并不满足于它的文学联想，他要将它从生活中区分开来，并回赠给生活一个形式、一个意义。他强调画面的布局、章法，并将“人格化”灌注其中，呈现给我们一个更富意味、更加厚重、更具文化感的视觉图像，深藏于心的敏感得以安置、有所依凭。“云”是他对传统文化的致敬之作，同样也是他个人艺术语言之于图式的全新探索与尝试。

　　钱钟书在《谈艺录》中有提及文艺创作“心手合一”的重要性：“夫艺也者，执心物两端而用厥中。兴象意境，心之事也；所资以驱遣而抒写兴象意境者，物之事也。”艺术是个人的分泌，带有独一无二的基因属性，不仅来自于与生俱来的卓越天赋，更来自于后天的所思所学、所悟所感。独特的生命体验是烙上作品的最具辨识力的标签。

　　2014年4月23日于望京融科

　　Implicit Artistic Flavor: Illusory Life

　　—a Commentary on Wang Muyu’s Clouds

　　Thinking it over, I have known Mr. Wang Muyu for 17 years so far. He is a post-70s generation painter, and I address him “teacher” respectfully for the reason that he was my enlightenment teacher of fine art theory during my senior high school years. He, act as an elder brother as well as a teacher, is the person who led me into the art world. His persistent spirit of pursuing for knowledge encourages and enlightens me to go forward. He has been trying to convince his students that the way for pursuing art is endless and everlasting. He always says: “I am proud of you”. The fact is, we are all proud of him.

　　I have discarded the opening part of this article for many times for not knowing the right way to start it. To comment and criticize my own teacher’s work might be beyond my ability and biased with emotion. Undoubtedly, my sincere gratitude would emerge out of mind unconsciously, but I will try my best to forget temporarily in the following lines that they are my teacher’s works and maintain the due reason and objectivity of a critic. By doing this, hopefully I can slightly express my gratitude and salute for Mr. Wang Muyu’s helping for my career.

　　I

　　Wang Muyu’s Clouds (Painting Series, 2013) was gradually developed from his two painting series containing elements of water, trees and houses— fringe and Breakthrough, but also looked like a gush naturally. The painting series Clouds had two characteristics. The first is the extraction of visual aesthetics, from macro to micro, from bottom to top, the in-depth observation on selected local details from the whole scenery in the way like “pan” frequently used in film making, in order to switch main elements in it; the second is the spiritual sublimation on the substance aspect, the breath of any creature in the planet will turn into part of “cloud”, so to some extent, “cloud” is a ultimate form of living creatures, also a icon of them.

　　Wang Muyu is never a person who is predominated by details even when he chooses the local parts to express the whole scenery, because the chosen details was “unlimited details”—the dreamy, misty and indescribable Clouds. He speaks for the transient image; he lets you to joint past with future in the moment of watching clouds in the sky, and reproduces the classic refined savor of temperate.

　　Wang Muyu differs from the poet Francois Ponge despite that they both describe mundane things in the point that Francois Ponge showed his extraordinary emotional overlook in writing his crate—“In every street corner leading to bazaar, it shines in coarse wood bright, so humble”. Wang Muyu showed total reverence to his painting, although things may different when described in paper or finally in exhibition hall. To some degree, poet Francois Ponge’s poetry perfectly interpreted the postmodernism scholar Lyotard’s aesthetic theory: “Art is a momentary flash of everyday life embers”, his artistic vision discovered a sparkling crate in the mundane world, even with the same kind of vision to find more. Ponge used to feel those slightly humble objects with epical narratives, even aparting from himself, penetrating into another object to get experience, as Morandi had been expressed himself repeatedly with those jars and bottles.

　　Wang Muyu’s Clouds was not always the case. Chanted in the art world from home and abroad, the cloud was a relative eternal existence in nature for its poetic association by itself, never lacking of description or lyric to it. This creative theme will never bring people humble or have ordinary feelings, it stretches elegantly, sometimes introverts sternly, sometimes angers agitatedly, presents ever-changing moods in different atmospheres. Watching deeply through its appearance, there is always more to say. Wang Muyu can see many things, tangible or intangible, in the wider world through the homogeneous but in different state of “cloud”. Clouds may be a song “A Music From Guangling”, its ink brush movement on paper coincided casually and freely the tune’s ups and downs, accomplishing the visual transformation of the melody, also as if a singer is singing freely in the cloud.

　　Clouds can also be a fantasy city in mirage—city in cloud, and cloud is city, the city is liberated from exhausted servitude to the wide universe, representing a romantic mood beyond the impetuous, wandering surface of the industrial era, via a fleeting phantom; Clouds can also denote one of twenty-four solar terms—the Waking of Insects, the Summer Solstice or the Beginning of Winter, solar terms is one of a manifestation of the laws of culture, more like a prehistoric cyclic memorizing knot. The selection of “cloud” as an icon bears hidden poetic meaning. Clouds might also refer to one of “The Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove”—Ji Kang, Liu Ling or Shan Tao. Clouds bears the characterization of “personification” of poetry, ink and brush become refreshed with characters, this dynamic “anthropomorphic” is no longer poetic, but the poem itself.