Zhai Jing

Breakfast, 2020, oil on canvas, 135 × 180 cm

A painter’s daily life involves years of studying art history—both traditional and contemporary—but mere study may not be enough. One’s spiritual inheritance needs to be integrated into the blood, into perceptual understanding. Perhaps the best way is to “ingest” it: consume Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe (Manet), consume The Airplane Flying (Malevich). Only in this way can that knowledge be absorbed into the body, fully taken in—though, inevitably, it will also be expelled in the end.