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)
