Au Takes
Painting Out of the Clouds
Au
Ho-nien, master of Chinese painting, felt too hungry to go on after
lecturing for two hours without having had his breakfast at the
University of Chinese Culture in Taipei.
So he decided
to draw something edible.
With ink,
water and paper he created in one hour a cute, short, whiskered man
selling freshly baked shao bing (a special kind of Chinese pancake).
Beside the
man, in graceful calligraphy, Au wrote a poem describing his "hunger,
coldness and yearning for a hot cake."
Like this
painting, titled "Wu Dalang selling pancakes," Au's works now on show at
the National Art Museum of China (NAMOC) reveal to visitors a wise,
cheerful and easily accessible artist, not at all like the ink paintings
of some other artists which seem too lofty to comprehend.
The review
exhibition at NAMOC in Beijing, which Au launched to celebrate his 70th
birthday, includes 112 representational landscapes, flower and bird
paintings, figure paintings and calligraphy that he created over a span
of 50 years.
Au enjoys his
life-long flirtation with ink and water. The delicate patterns and
balances between light and shade convey a liveliness, elegance and
sublimity, remarked Yang Lizhou, curator of the museum.
Yang said it
is the tradition of Lingnan School artists (including Au) to embrace the
contemporary in aesthetic taste and to shuck off hackneyed styles and
subject matter that have fettered Chinese painting for centuries.
The exhibition
is the second major showing of Lingnan School art at the museum since
re-opening after its refurbishment last year.
The first,
held last November, featured works of the school's master painter Fang
Kending (1901-75).
Fang,
a student of the school's founder Gao Jianfu (1879-1951), is
internationally known as the leader in the reform of Chinese figure
painting, which started in the 1930s, ahead of even Xu Beihong
(1895-1953) and Jiang Zhaohe (1904-86).
Born in 1935
in south China's
Guangdong Province, Au is the representative of a later generation
of Lingnan School artists than Fang.
The school, as
the name implies (Lingnan means "south of the mountains"), has its roots
in the south of the country, in Guangdong, especially in the provincial
capital Guangzhou.
It established
itself as one of the three major schools in the tide of reform in
Chinese painting at the beginning of the 20th century, the other two
being the Beijing-Tianjin School and the Shanghai School.
At a time when
traditional Chinese painting had almost been driven into a dead end by
its 800-year-old emphasis on an aloofness towards worldly affairs, Gao
Jianfu (1879-1951), Gao Qifeng (1889-1933) and Chen Shuren (1884-1948),
co-founded the Lingnan School.
Since the
three masters, generations of the school's artists, with a youthful
passion and boldness, have been "experimenting with the problem of
finding an East-West synthesis in painting and developing a consistent
solution," remarked renowned artist Fu Baoshi (1904-65).
"Whatever
makes a moving, effective picture, we will adopt. We seek to renovate,
to create and recreate constantly. We hope that the day will come when
people will understand the true nature of the Lingnan School," said Au.
"A school
should never be defined by certain fixed techniques. Our school is
defined by an idea for which the founders were constantly criticized by
their contemporaries, and by which their followers have been endowed
with the courage to create," he added.
Au has been
widely recognized as the leader of his generation of the school's
artists. He was student of artist Zhao Shao'ang (1905-98), and is the
Huagang Chair Professor of Art at the University of Chinese Culture in
Taipei.
His works have
been prized since the 1950s by public and private collectors around the
world, including the British Museum, the San Diego Museum of Art in
California, the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco and the Musee
Cernuschi in Paris. He has also held solo shows at more than 10 art
museums of world importance.
Easily
recognizable elements of Au's style include broken textural strokes and
the dry rubbing effect of a partially dry brush, which are harmonized
with the techniques of water and pigment infusion.
Au likes to
apply ink tones and color washes directly while sparing the use of
outline, thus achieving an emphasis on dimension and distance.
He says,
painting is "just one of the pleasures that one seeks from life."
He is also a
poet in both Chinese and English, and a calligrapher and connoisseur of
Chinese arts.
A piece on
show titled "Yuping Peak of Huangshan Mountain" illustrates how Au takes
pleasure in his art.
It snowed in
2000 on the mountain where Au had gone on a sketching tour, and he set
down the scene on a fan he had with him.
"Snowflakes
fell onto the fan and diffused the fresh ink, creating a delicate scent.
It was one of the most lovely and memorable moments of my life," he
said.
Once a week
for the past 30 years Au has driven to Yangming Mountain in Taipei,
where his university lies.
"At dusk I
drive down the mountain towards the Danshui River at its foot. I have
drawn this familiar scene more than 20 times, but it seems to be
impossible to capture the spirit of the scene on paper," he said.
(China Daily
March 22, 2004)
http://www.china.org.cn/english/index.htm
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