Opening Remarks for the Launch of the NTD Renaissance Art Gallery
Painting has long been an essential pillar of divinely inspired culture. At its highest form, its purpose is to express the goodness and beauty that humanity should uphold—qualities like reverence, righteous faith, and a deep yearning for the divine.
For artists, traditional painting represents an unending pursuit of excellence. The earliest classical artworks in human history were created in sacred spaces—temples, cathedrals, and palaces—meant to depict the divine. In the process of rendering the divine through their art, artists are uplifted by the greatness and compassion of higher realms. This journey refines their hearts, elevates their moral character, and hones their skills.
A truly great painting is more than technique—it is a complete reflection of the artist’s inner world: their morality, personality, life experience, artistic vision, and technical mastery. Such a work conveys noble human values: kindness, compassion, loyalty, righteousness, courage, and tolerance. At its highest, art expresses both the majesty and mercy of the divine.
Artworks that embody pure truth, pure kindness, and pure beauty do more than delight the eye—they inspire virtue, cleanse the soul, elevate moral character, awaken the divine within, and bring blessings from the heavens.
Yet, as the cosmic cycle moves through formation, stasis, degeneration, and destruction, ideologies like atheism and evolutionism have gained dominance. Humanity has increasingly turned away from belief in the divine and toward materialism and self-interest. As morality declines, so too has art strayed from its traditional path. Today, artists who strive to uphold truth, kindness, and beauty often struggle to find their place in the mainstream art world. Instead, works that celebrate ugliness, chaos, darkness, distortion, and moral decay are being elevated—praised on the grand stages of contemporary art. These vulgar and degenerate trends are not only disheartening but also harmful, as they dull our moral compass and trap people in spiritual emptiness, selfishness, and confusion.
To help reverse this decline, New Tang Dynasty Television (NTD), with vision and moral courage, has partnered with dedicated artists around the world to launch a series of international cultural and art competitions. Among them is the NTD International Figure Painting Competition, a global platform that champions the revival of traditional, realistic oil painting. The competition invites artists to uphold the principles of pure truth, pure kindness, and pure beauty, using classical realist techniques to create figurative works that embody righteousness, justice, benevolence, and grandeur.
Artists who have participated in this competition and its related exhibitions in New York consistently describe the atmosphere as pure, peaceful, and uplifting. Many feel they are part of a meaningful mission—a mission to revive traditional art and uphold timeless values—and that they bear a profound historical responsibility.
In this noble pursuit, the support of collectors and art lovers is just as vital as that of the artists.
The NTD Renaissance Art Gallery was created as a platform to showcase and offer for sale the works of finalists from past International Figure Painting Competitions, along with select artists committed to classical realism. Every piece has been thoughtfully chosen by artists of exceptional caliber. These artworks offer not only aesthetic beauty but also bring warmth, harmony, and moral clarity into our homes and hearts.
Today, we invite you to celebrate this meaningful occasion with us—to join in the revival of traditional arts, and in the restoration of faith, beauty, and morality in our world.
—Organizing Committee of the NTD Renaissance Art Gallery