View the catalogue

Ink
The Art
of China
MICHAEL
GOEDHUIS
INK: THE ART OF CHINA
Ink
The Art of China
MICHAEL GOEDHUIS
at the
S A AT C H I G A L L E RY
Duke of York’s HQ | King’s Road
London SW3 4RY
Contents
Foreword by Michael Goedhuis7
Valerie C. Doran
Red Bamboo (and Other Ruminations)
11
­D ominique Nahas
The Poetic Imagination in Contemporary
Chinese Ink Painting
15
Wang Tao
The Archaeological Inspiration for
Contemporary Chinese Art
17
Edward Lucie-Smith
Ink Painting, Politics and Technology
21
Eugene Wang
Ink Painting and its Modern Discontents
23
Jason Kuo
Ink26
Ink: The Art of China30
Contributor Biographies
182
Artist Biographies
185
Index of Artists
197
Bibliography198
Foreword
Ink painting, with its links to calligraphy, is one of the foundation stones
of Chinese civilisation. Its contemporary manifestations, diverse as they
are, therefore draw freely from the classical canon. The constituency for
appreciation of the New Ink Art, as it has now become, is a fresh generation of
connoisseurs which has begun to develop a broad interest in China’s history in
order to better understand the vitality of its contemporary culture.
Contemporary Chinese artists working predominantly in, or with, ink and
associated media, are much aware of the elitist connotations of this aesthetic.
The early cognoscenti and practitioners were the literati, the gentlemen-scholars of the past 600 years, whose gatherings in elegant pavilions or studios were
dedicated to the art of living – relishing the fragrance of nature, the conversational intercourse between intellects of similar power and tastes, the connoisseurship of wine and tea, the study of antiquities and painting and the satisfying mutual recognition of their own superiority. These ‘salons’ were indeed not
far removed in purpose from the drawing-rooms of 18th century France where
the douceur de vivre reached its peak under the civilised direction of the great
hostesses of the era.
This heritage of a certain lofty detachment from material concerns and, in
particular, the judgment of the outside world, has released the contemporary
Liu Dan
Old Cypress from the
Forbidden City (detail),
2007 (p. 74)
6
ink artist from the pressure to ‘perform’ for the new art-world consumer. Quite
to the contrary, he feels free to try to confront his central challenge – how to
7
render this traditional medium relevant and meaningful to the modern world –
without too great a concern for the demands of the market.
So this first comprehensive study of the New Ink Art in an institution of
international stature is exceptionally timely. It coincides not only with the
growing awareness of this vital contribution to contemporary Chinese culture
in general but in particular to the current revival of interest in artistic fundamentals after the excesses of the last years. A new generation of art lovers has
become aware of the paradox that the ink artists, who return to the wellspring
of Chinese culture as a source of inspiration and creative refreshment are actually, in Britta Erickson’s words: ‘the most idealistic and intellectually daring of
China’s artists’.
And the consistent rhythm of experimentation that is in evidence in the
wide range of works in this exhibition, from the cultural sensitivity of Liu Dan
to the ground-breaking video works of Qiu Anxiong, describes a diverse output
that provides a cultivated audience with the opportunity to enjoy not only the
subtle connections with the literati past but also the artists’ engagement with
the realities of contemporary life.
It is then the theme of this exhibition to define just how innovative and
audacious the best of these exponents are. Just as Cézanne and Picasso assimilated the work of Raphael, Poussin, Velazquez and other old masters to develop
their own revolutionary language, so the ink artists are grappling with the
same challenge – how to express the transformation of their society into works
that are meaningful precisely because they take account of the past in order to
make sense of the present.
We are deeply grateful to the many lenders who have so generously parted
with their works for so long, to the distinguished scholars who have contributed so generously to the value of the catalogue accompanying the exhibition,
and finally to the Saatchi Gallery and to its director Nigel Hurst for opening its
doors to us and to Ink: The Art of China.
Michael Goedhuis
Li Jin
Spring in the
Garden (detail),
2012 (p. 130)
9
Valerie C. Doran
Red Bamboo (and Other Ruminations)
Chen KeZhan
Red – Autumn
(detail), 2011 (p. 50)
10
The first time I visited the National Palace
Museum in Taipei – which houses many of the
greatest extant masterpieces of the Chinese ink
painting tradition – it was in the company of
an artist just beginning to make his reputation
as an experimental ink painter. ‘Before you
look at anything else,’ he said, ‘You’ve got to
see this.’ He led me to an ink painting by the
Song-dynasty scholar-artist Su Shi (1037-1101),
featuring a bamboo tree deftly brushed in tones
of vermilion red, rather than in the traditional
black. With great relish my friend proceeded to
relate an anecdote concerning a conversation
that allegedly took place between Su Shi and one
of his critics. ‘Why did you paint the bamboo in
red instead of black ink! Have you ever seen such
a thing as a red bamboo in nature?’ the critic
asked indignantly. ‘Well’, Su retorted, ‘have you
ever seen such a thing as an ink bamboo?’
From my perspective at the edge of the 21st
century, Su Shi’s alleged riposte struck a phenomenological chord that reverberated across
time and place, buzzing certain keys in the
discourse of contemporary art. I thought most
particularly of the conceptual artist Joseph
Kosuth’s seminal 1965 work One and Three Chairs,
which presents different existential possibilities
for the concept of a chair: a real chair, a life-sized
photograph of the same chair, and the enlarged
text of the dictionary definition of a chair. At
least to my relatively innocent mind, Kosuth
seemed to be asking a question whose implications were similar to that of Su Shi’s: Is ‘chair’ as
a fundamental concept altered by the different
ways in which it can be depicted (whether constructed, photographed or reduced to text)? And
as for Su Shi, I would frame it like this: while his
critic was concerned with bamboo, Su Shi was
concerned with the idea of bamboo.
In the same spirit, the present exhibition
is concerned less with the phenomenon of ‘ink’
in the Chinese artistic tradition as with the
‘idea of ink’ in that tradition. And the ‘idea of
ink’ here is recognized as an aesthetic arena
in which contemporary artists can freely
negotiate with the tradition, in whatever way
that is meaningful or necessary to them, and on
whatever level – whether material, structural,
historical, spiritual or cultural. The range of
artists featured in the show describes the way
this discourse has expanded in the last twenty
years, attracting an increasing number of artists
with diverse backgrounds and with differing –
even diametrically opposed – concerns.
The ‘end of art’ and ‘end of painting’ arguments that took hold in the West in the 1980s
with critics like Arthur Danto and Douglas
Crimp had a strong resonance in contemporary
China, where the end of literati art and traditional ink painting had already been advocated
more than fifty years earlier by reformists and
continued to be advocated by revolutionaries,
11
Wenda Gu
The Mythos of Lost
Dynasties, C Series
No. 6: Cloud &
Water, 1996-1997
(p. 176)
interchange and mix them so as to challenge and destabilize the ideas of boundaries and traditions.
made his reputation in the 1980s in his subversive/nonsensical ‘error-word’ calligraphies,
describes a childhood memory that opened an
early portal in his mind through which a connection to Chinese painting would eventually
be formed:
In 1961, I was six years old. My grandmother took me by train to my hometown
of Shangyu in Zhejiang province. When we
were passing the mountains near Hangzhou, I asked her what exactly they were.
She said that they were mountains. It was
my first time to see mountains. I have
remembered this dialogue with my grandmother until this day.
for different purposes, for fifty years after that.
But as has happened on many levels throughout
the discourse between the traditional and the
contemporary in Asia, traditional art forms have
taken on the quality of archeological sites which
artists, critics and curators alike have been
(re)discovering and (re)examining from the giant
dig of the 21st century. But at the same time, just
because these artistic traditions constitute part
of the substrata on which their culture is built,
there is also another level of engagement, which
many Chinese contemporary artists themselves
have recognized (and described ) as visceral,
subconscious and intuitive. Wenda Gu, who first
12
Gu says that throughout his years of studying
and teaching Chinese landscape painting at the
Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts in Guangzhou in
the early to late 1980s, to his creation of ‘concept
ink painting’ after 1987, and his subsequent years
as an installation and performance artist, his
connection to the world of mountains and nature
– a connection at the heart of literati art – ‘can
be seen everywhere . . . this is a way of living, a
subtle influence in my blood, and a subconscious
experience.’
Some artists, such as Li Huayi, Pan Gongkai
and Li Xubai, engage through landscape painting
and calligraphy in contemporary explorations of
the tradition within the parameters of its motifs
and materials: this is a conscious and necessary
choice for them. For Qin Feng, whose paintings
and installations draw on metaphysical elements
of Chinese calligraphy, experimentation came
first and foremost on a material level, through
the deliberate choice to expand the scope of his
painting beyond the boundaries of ‘Eastern’ or
‘Western’:
Brush, ink and paper are only mediums;
they should not be viewed as definitional
marks that separate/differentiate Eastern
art forms from their Western counterparts.
My approach to such conventional Eastern
and Western expressive languages and
media as ink, paper, oil, and canvas is to
All quotations
from artists come
from private
correspondence
between the
author and the
artists undertaken
in November and
December 2011
Qin Feng
Civilisation
Landscape I, 2007
(p. 96)
Others, such as Wilson Shieh and Qiu Zhijie, play
with the idea of juxtaposition, on a level related
to but also extending beyond the Surrealist
concept of this approach. Pierre Reverdy, the
French Surrealist poet, wrote that:
The image is a pure creation of the mind.
It cannot be born from a comparison but
from a juxtaposition of two more or less
distant realities. The more the relationship
between the two juxtaposed realities is distant and true, the stronger the image will
be – the greater its emotional power and
poetic reality. (Nord-Sud, March 1918)
The juxtaposition of two realities also lies at the
core of Shieh and Qiu’s work, but rather than on
the level of image, their ‘poetic power’ comes
from the juxtaposition of the physical, material
and semantic demands of traditional technique
and contemporary content. Shieh uses a highly
refined gongbi (fine-line) technique to create
figurative works whose delicately drawn subjects
exist within a beguiling, and unsettling pastiche
of fragmented references to contemporary and
traditional architecture, fashion, craft, high
and low society and idealizations of beauty. Qiu
Zhijie, a Hangzhou-based conceptual artist and
theorist whose formal academy training in ink
painting and calligraphy sometimes comes as a
surprise, adopts the form of seal-style calligraphy
associated with ancient inscriptions to write
texts comprised of ‘everyday’ revolutionary
slogans, creating multiple levels of resonance
through a deceptively simple device.
The Taiwanese artist and curator Yao Juichung, known primarily for his conceptual
photography and action art, describes how his
first ‘engagement’ with the Chinese landscape
tradition occurred when he was bored and
restless during an artist’s residency in a small
town in Scotland:
Sitting at the desk [of my studio] in front of
a blank piece of drawing paper and look-
ing over the endless green fields, memories
of climbing mountains in Taiwan during
my college days drifted before my mind’s
eye, and this perfect bucolic landscape
was exactly the same. Having free time to
explore, I thought I would just make some
ink paintings, which is a tradition I had
always avoided . . . After thinking for some
time but not coming up with any answers,
I looked out the window at the endless
green hills and thought even if I have never
13
Wilson Shieh
The Queen, 2007
(p. 39)
identified with traditional painting styles,
I should make some landscape paintings.
I went to the Internet to collect some
information about late Ming painting,
whose intentionally distorted or mannerist style has been much admired. Having
selected some paintings from a web page,
I printed them together on A4 paper and
started looking for similarities between
14
the work and my own experiences. Details
in the images were often indistinct due to
low resolution. Since traditional brushes
and xuan paper were not available in this
out of the way area of Scotland (I couldn’t
see any [texture-stroke] brush work in the
paintings anyway), I just used a drafting
pen, which I was accustomed to and had
on hand. With dense pen strokes on coarse
handmade Indian paper, I outlined the
landscape to reflect whatever impressions
came to mind, from hot springs, tea tasting, mountain climbing, flower appreciation, chess or the sound of breaking waves.
Figures in the paintings were composed
of cynics and monsters and were meant
to allude to the societal chaos in Taiwan
at the time. I was constructing narratives
relating to ancient scholars being banished
to the hinterlands, often combining several
classical works to outline a hybridized narrative of my own ideal of living in seclusion
amongst nature.
At the end of the day, metaphorically and
ontologically, it all begins with the meditation
on a red bamboo.
­D ominique Nahas
The Poetic Imagination in
Contemporary Chinese Ink Painting
Contemporary Chinese ink painting,
however ancient and prestigious its historical
and theoretical DNA, is perfectly suited to
address or reflect the twenty-first century’s
dilemmas and contradictions. While a quality of
timelessness unveils itself through ink painting
so too does timeliness reveal itself through the
hands of this form’s contemporary masters.
What goes around comes around; the Book
of Change, the Yijing, informs the structure
of all Chinese ink painting, old and new, as a
cosmological key. All image-making is formmaking. It is ontological in essence. All formmaking is constitutive of description and as
description at both general and specific levels
of potentiality and heterogeneity. The play of
texture and linearity, the core of ink painting,
is indicative of the phenomenon of energy, of
arterial pulsation, of life itself. Through such play
the theme of internal contrast and reciprocal
becoming is made manifest in all ink painting.
Such is the world of ink-painting, old and new.
The Michael Goedhuis exhibition INK at the
Saatchi Gallery brings to the public a selection
of works created by virtuosi of the hand. The
process and technique of ink painting is arguably
one of the most difficult of the visual arts to
master; intractable in terms of the conditions
it imposes on the artist; no erasures or changes
are possible. Grace, suppleness, and vitality
must exist in order for the viewer to connect
with the work. No matter what the imagery,
ink painting contains a dynamic that few other
types of artworks can sustain: that of becoming
and of simultaneity. This sensation of passing
through engenders feelings of transience,
tenuousness and loss. And yet if there is a cast
of melancholy to ink painting, it is more than
balanced by ink painting’s undeniable capacity
to elicit wonderment. While an essential
principle of the complementariness of opposites
(light/dark, open/closed, empty/full, East/West)
pervades many of the works in INK as in Liu
Dan’s Tinkling of Jade-Pendants, Liu Kuo-sung’s
Universe is My Heart #4, Lo Ch’ing’s Ten Thousand
Peaks of Red Leaves, Pan Hsin-hua’s One Day
other works privilege juxtaposed rather than
integrated clusters of changing elements that
resist reduction to a common denominator. Lu
Hao’s Landscape Series No. 23, Chun-yi Lee’s Mao
Triptych, Xu Lei’s Tree of Blue Underglaze, Wilson
Shieh’s Ladyland Series and Qiu Jie’s Mao in the
Cotton Field, for example, are works that have a
deconstructive element provoking the viewer to
become aware of the logic of binary oppositions.
Sensations of corporealisation and decorporealisation are part of the experience of viewing an
art form that doesn’t tolerate mistakes or reit15
Wang Tao
Gao Xingjian
Dream Mountain
(La montagne de
rêve), 2005 (p. 120)
The Archaeological Inspiration
for Contemporary Chinese Art
erations. There is often a sensation of gossamer
translucency, an otherworldliness that pervades
such work as in Wenda Gu’s Ink Valley and White
Water, Jia Youfu’s Work 1, Liu Kuo-sung’s The Universe is My Heart No. 4, and Yang Jiechang’s Tomorrow Cloudy Sky series. Rapture suffuses Zhang
Yu’s Divine Light Series and Zhu Daoping’s Delicate
Fragrance while change and continuity wrestle with each other in Wucius Wong’s Sky Land
Expression 1, Qui Deshu’s 5-Panel Mountainscapes,
and in Yang Jiechang’s Tomorrow Cloudy Sky where
a suggestion of apocalyptic doom pervades.
Feelings of dreamy sensuousness are evoked by
Yang Yanping’ s Autumn Song and Gao Xingjian’s
La montagne de rêve in contrast to the tension
between the natural environment and the manmade, seen in Qui Anxiong’s Flying South, Nostalgia, and New Book of Mountains and Seas. Finally,
several works in INK recall classical ink painting’s relation to calligraphy and thus reassert calligraphy’s corporeal and physiological dimension
in updated and often quirkily irreverent ways as
in the paintings of Xu Bing, Qin Feng, Qiu Zhijie,
Wang Dongling, and Wei Ligang.
16
Contemporary Chinese ink painting takes
many forms. In INK, panoramic variations
co-exist within the genre in terms of approach,
subject and content, yet each difference comes
with its own visual and psychic attributes, its
own emotional affinities and registers.
Ink painting brings us into contact with
an immersive intimacy in which humanistic
themes of man’s relation to himself, to nature
and to the other are played out against the great
backdrop of constancy and change. What has
moved me more than anything in the viewing
and the assessing of such diverse image making
in INK, large and small, is a quality of deep
interiority that pervades all the work. John
Berger in his essay ‘The Place of Painting’ (in
The Sense of Sight, 1985) refers to the condition of
revelation in measured and thoughtful ways.
He writes: ‘. . . At the moment of revelation when
appearance and meaning become identical,
the space of physics and the seer’s inner space
coincide: momentarily and exceptionally she or
he achieves an equality with the visible. To lose all
sense of exclusion; to be at the centre.’
There seems to be a paradox in contemporary Chinese art. On the one hand, many
artists have taken an avant-garde stand that
differs profoundly from the classical tradition
in Chinese art history. On the other hand, a
number of artists, including the most radical
ones, claim that they are the true representatives
of China’s grand tradition, and that their ‘postmodern’ art is the only way that upholds and
continues that tradition. In the deconstruction
and re-construction of the theocratic discourse,
as well as in practical terms, archaeology plays a
significant role. My article sets out to explore the
interesting relationship between contemporary
art and archaeology.
Looking first at the phenomenon known
as ‘Calligraphy-ism’ (shufazhuyi), we see that
many Chinese artists have tried to use Chinese
writing, in particular ancient manuscripts, in
their works. The classical tradition of calligraphy
is based on writing with a brush and ink on
paper, and these are thought of as soft materials.
But, before the invention and widespread use of
paper in the 1st century CE, most inscriptions
were written on a wide variety of materials, such
as animal bone, metal, stone, silk and bamboo.
In fact, most of the early calligraphic works that
have survived are on materials other than paper.
Although the main writing implement at that
time was the soft hair brush, many other tools
were also used, such as sharp-pointed knives.
The phenomenal archaeological discoveries of
the past century or so, have revealed a wealth of
ancient inscriptions on metal, wood, bamboo,
stone and silk. These exciting new sources have
enhanced the con­temporary calligrapher’s
familiarity and ease with different styles of
calligraphy. The concept of ‘tradition’ has
inevitably become more fluid, as calligraphers
are able to draw on much wider sources to
develop their own technique and style. This
parallels the development of the ‘Stele School’
of calligraphy (beixue pai) in the Qing dynasty
which was inspired by the study of ancient
inscriptions on bronze and stone (jinshixue).
Some time later, at the end of the 19th century,
the discovery of oracle bone inscriptions (carved
on turtle plastra and ox scapulae) revealed for
the first time the earliest writing of the Shang
dynasty. The discovery of bamboo slips and
silk manuscripts with inscriptions from the
Warring States and Qin-Han periods have also
increased the reservoir of ancient calligraphic
styles. It is clear that many contemporary pieces
of calligraphy have these ancient sources as
their inspiration: the Shang dynasty oracle bone
inscriptions, inscriptions on ancient bronzes,
bamboo slips, silk and stone stele, and the
17
decorative styles such as ‘bird script’. We can see
that archaeology has become a major source of
inspiration for new artistic experimentation, as
modern artists find stylistic models in the newly
unearthed archaeological material.
For many contemporary artists, archaeology
not only provides a stylistic model, but also
a conceptual framework. It has enabled an
extension of the territory of Chinese modern
art in a very fundamental way. In spite of the
adoption of Western ‘modernist’ and ‘post­
modernist’ language and methods of expression
in China, the fact is that contempo­rary Chinese
art, including calligraphic art, has grown up,
quite distinctively, against a Chinese cultural
backdrop. Even in Xu Bing’s Heavenly Script
Xu Bing
At the Temple to
the First Ruler of
Shu, Poem by Liu
Yuxi, Square Word
Calligraphy, 2005
(p. 44)
For a brief discussion on the ‘magic
script’, see Tseng
Yuho, A History of
Chinese Calligraphy
(Hong Kong, 1993),
pp. 75-96.
there is a conceptual, as well as a stylistic link,
with the ‘magic script’ of ancient Daoism. The
tradition of the ‘magic script’ can be traced back
to the late Han period, in the 2nd century CE,
and the ‘heavenly script’ of the Daoist canon
which was supposed to have been written in red
pigment by spirits of the other world. In Daoist
practice, secret codes and talismans were often
written in a script that was unreadable except
to the initiated. Mysterious and powerful, this
writing was decipherable only by an accom­
plished Daoist master. Although the model for
18
Xu Bing’s style is not derived directly from the
canon of the classical calligraphic tradition, it
nonetheless borrows Daoist art and reinterprets
it in a new social context. It is interesting to
see how contemporary artists are inspired by
ancient popular religious practices that had, and
still have today, a strong influence on ordinary
members of society.
It is the deep obsession with China’s
‘past’ that has led the way for the success of
contemporary calligraphy both in China and
abroad. For some artists, this has meant a
deconstruction and subversion of the traditional
art. Wenda Gu has done interesting work in this
respect, and has taken Chinese calligraphy into
modern art installations. But, for many other
artists, the attraction of looking to the past lies
in finding a conceptual and stylistic model, and
in recreating the cultural spirit of the original
writing. We can see this in the works of Gu
Gan, Wei Ligang and Qiu Zhijie, who are at the
forefront of the modern calligraphy movement.
In Gu Gan’s work we see examples of how the
artist employs and transforms different types
of archaic scripts in order to achieve special
pictorial effects in the composition. In Wei
Ligang’s recent work, he has turned towards
the experiment of a ‘line-movement’; his
work may look at glance like a close relative of
western abstract art, but is clearly inspired by
the simplicity of the use of line in traditional
Chinese calligraphy. Qiu Zhijie, on the other
hand, seeks the direct correspondence with
the ancient inscriptions found on early ritual
bronzes and stone stele. The motivation of these
artists is to re-invent the essence of old tradition
in the process of transition. With the help of
archaeology, they have found modernity in
archaism. As the sinologist F. W. Mote pointed
out, ‘recovering the past’ (fugu) is not just a
revival of ancient styles, but a more general
expression relating to one’s consciousness of
past models (‘The arts and the “theorizing mode”
of civilization’, in C. F. Murck (ed.) Artists and
Traditions; Princeton, 1976). The contemporary
Li Xubai
Heart of Zen
Inspired through
Cloud and Water,
2012
artist may consciously create a new model, yet
the past lives on in his or her works.
Is it right to talk about ‘neoclassicism’ in contemporary Chinese art? It is clear that we cannot
avoid the question of tradition. For almost two
decades, Chinese artists and critics, in particular
the younger generation, have moved away from
the heated debates of ‘is the tradition of Chinese
art dead?’ to how can an artist ‘bring life to the
tradition’. Of course, in a new social context, the
tradition cannot be maintained indefinitely. In
order to put contemporary Chinese art into perspective, there needs to be some adjustment to
the rigidly defined boundaries of the tradition of
Chinese art. It would seem that T. S. Eliot’s words
are finding resonance with young artists in
China today. He wrote that ‘tradition is a matter
of much wider significance. It cannot be inherited, and if you want it you must obtain it by
great labour’ (T. S. Eliot, ‘Tradition and Individual
Talent’ in Selected Essays; New York, 1932).
19
Edward Lucie-Smith
Ink Painting, Politics and Technology
Liu Kuo-sung
Red Soil Plateau (detail), 2007
20
Mao Zedong is officially rated in
China as one of its great calligraphers, and
examples of his work are prominently displayed
in spaces both public and private. Up through the
late 1950s and early 1960s, Mao actively supported
this traditional art form, even facilitating the
foundation of calligraphy research institutions
in Beijing and Shanghai. It is thus an ironic
point of history that during the Cultural
Revolution (1966-76) Mao condemned traditional
forms of calligraphy and ink painting as being
synonymous with elitist and reactionary
traditions. As a consequence, among those
artists who suffered particularly during this
period of upheaval were some of China’s leading
ink painters and calligraphers. One prominent
victim was Pan Tianshou (1897-1971), now
regarded as one of the most significant Chinese
artists of the 20th century, as well as one of the
most important teachers of Chinese ink painting
and aesthetics. When the Cultural Revolution
was launched in 1976, Pan was serving as
President of the Zheijiang Academy of Fine Arts
in Hangzhou (now the China Art Academy), and
he subsequently was singled out for particularly
vicious persecution – publicly humiliated,
beaten, and paraded through the streets of
Hangzhou and other cities as a ‘Guomindang
cultural spy’. He died broken-hearted in 1971,
before the Cultural Revolution reached its close,
yet continued to be vilified even in the aftermath
of his death.
Today matters have come full circle. There is
now a museum in China solely devoted to Pan
Tianshou’s work. It forms part of the lakeside
campus of the China Art Academy in Hangzhou,
over which Pan used to preside – the lake itself
being one of China’s most famous beauty spots,
celebrated not least for the misty views that are
evocative of Chinese ink paintings. There is also
a bronze statue of Pan Tianshou by the waterside
and Pan Tianshou’s son, Pan Gongkai, has
followed in his father’s footsteps and today is a
distinguished painter. Like his father, he served
as President of the China Art Academy and he
was later appointed as Director of the Central
Academy of Fine Art in Beijing – these being the
two most important art academies in China. Pan
Gongkai’s powerful, boldly experimental work is
represented in the current exhibition.
Whether living and working in China,
Taiwan, Hong Kong, or as part of the
Chinese diaspora in the West, many Chinese
contemporary artists cannot wholly abandon,
nor do they wish to abandon, the long, uniquely
continuous heritage of Chinese artistic culture
in which the media of ink and brush play such
a significant role. At the same time, they do,
however, wish to confront the nature of the
extremely globalised world in which they live
21
Qiu Zhijie
Ten Poems
by Su Shi (video),
2004 (p. 124)
and the new aesthetic contexts in which they
practice their art. In some significant cases,
artists seek to adapt and exploit the latest
technological possibilities within the borders
of tradition. These paradoxical elements, within
a known technical framework, are linked,
in this exhibition, to experiments with new
22
technologies that nevertheless remain neatly
in step with basic, long established Chinese
attitudes towards the visual arts and how they
operate. I have space to give just one example.
Some of the grandest and most impressive of the
Chinese paintings inherited from the past are
scrolls, which unroll laterally. As this unfolding
takes place, parts of the composition are always
concealed. The artists’ intention was that the
compositions should never be immediately
visible as a totality. Modern museum displays,
which show landscape scrolls flat and completely
unrolled, contradict this, and spoil the intended
effect. The videos offered here by two brilliant
younger artists, Qiu Zhijie and Qiu Anxiong,
restore this element of progression in time. It is
no accident that what is shown, in each case, is
essentially the movement of the brush – in one
case, how the strokes of the brush disappear; in
the other how they accumulate, modulate and
become something different. One can perhaps
see this as a metaphor for the exhibition as a
whole. It reveals, but also sometimes conceals.
What it offers cannot be grasped all at once.
Eugene Wang
Ink Painting and its Modern Discontents
Chinese ink painting remains an embarrassment for critics looking for its ‘contemporaneity.’ Its abstract disposition carries a perennial
up-to-date ‘with-it’ air. However, unlike usual
forms of avant-gardism, it is steeped in a venerable past, thereby repeatedly fuelling radical and
conservative arguments in equal measure.
The sticking point is often the question
of what is Chinese ink painting? Its medium
specificity is assumed: brushstrokes and ink
gradations produce a combined effect nonreplicable in other mediums. However, medium
specificity, once hyped, is likely to reify an
essentialist ink-painting lore harking back to a
priori moment in the past; subsequent carnations
are mere recapitulations, often paler ones.
The essentialist medium is itself a construct.
At some point in history, an ink painting
essentialism took shape. The ink painting, so
it goes, essentially comes down to brush-andink interplay. The brush spells out contours
and texturing strokes; the ink wash supplies
contour-less tonal gradations. The brush
expressivity derives from its wrist-controlled
modes of applications with variable movements
and speeds: centred, slanted, tipping, stippling,
trailing, slashing, halting, dashing, etc. If the
brush provides the plot line, the ink wash is the
chorus. With its variable qualities—ranging from
heavy soot-like smudge to diluted pale semidiaphanous sheen—ink wash sings in various
tonalities, or signals modes of enunciation:
spurting or choking. A combination of these
formal qualities results in an orchestrated
theatre, albeit abstract in tenor: painting attains
the condition of music.
This baseline dynamic changes over time.
In fact, its iterations and inflections over time
speak to various moments and contexts. The
thirteenth century, for instance, evinced a taste
for liberal ink-wash. In contrast, the fourteenth
century favoured the austerity of dry and sparse
brush-textured landscapes with a hushed disposition shunning liberal vocalization. Its chastened dryness enacts an abhorrence of material
opulence, thereby speaking to eremitic stances
and spiritual autonomy.
If the fourteenth century is remembered as
a definitive moment in shaping values and taste
accrued to ink painting, canonization in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries provided
its master storyline. Competition with Western
painting media in the twentieth century
further ossified the notion of the medium as a
set of distinguished formal properties. Often
overlooked is the new complexion the medium
took on in the twentieth century owing to
various cultural pressures and forces.
One notable episode is the ‘modernization’ of
Chinese ink painting in the twentieth century.
It began as a debate in the first decades of the
last century over the status of Chinese painting:
23
is it a moribund medium too entrenched in the
past, an Eastern resource that stood up against
Western fashions, or a spiritual forerunner or
distant twin of European modernism? Advocates
of various ideological persuasions apparently
cherry-picked facets from the evolving tradition
of ink painting to fit their arguments. Schooled
in Western drawing, reformists such as Xu
Beihong (1895-1953) and his followers brought
to ink painting an observational empiricism
at the expense of traditional abstract quality.
Ink-brushed simulations of Western charcoal
drawing took ink painting to a different
dimension – often with mixed results. It is
painters such as Qi Baishi (1864-1957), largely
unscathed by Western drawing, whose bold and
liberal swaths of ink tonalities breathed new life
into ink painting.
The 1980s was another formative moment.
The dismantling of the Maoist-era ideological
orthodox and visual idiom unleashed
waves of experimentation. New paradigms
were established:
Wu Guanzhong (1919-2010), a Paris-trained
painter with a modernist sensibility, advocated
‘formalism’ to liberate painting from the
decades’ yoke of servitude to political ideological
apparatus. Meanwhile, he also sought vigorously
to wrest ink painting from the long-reigning
tyranny of the brush-and-ink absolutism. There
is, so Wu argued, more to ink painting than just
the brush-and-ink interplay; dots, lines, and
planarity are equally, if not more, viable qualities
and organizing principles. Wu deflated the
essentialism of the ink painting lore.
Qiu Deshu’s (1948-) cracked-painting
series in the early 1980s was among the most
radical innovations in ink painting. Qiu traced
water-saturated brushes on sheets of rice paper,
causing its surface to crack. Layers of cracked
sheets were then mounted on ink-primed or
painted canvas so that they faintly manifest the
base colour or ink underneath. Qiu’s new method
dispensed with the obligatory ‘brush,’ and made
the contingency of cracked paper surface the
24
Qiu Deshu
Five-panel
Mountainscape
(detail), 2005
(p. 170)
Wenda Gu
Ink Valley and
White Water, 1986
(p. 174)
coupled with Western- and Japanese-mediated
rediscovery of ‘Eastern’ mystic tradition (Chan/
Zen, etc.) prompted a search for a formal model
that could anchor this metaphysical angst. Liu’s
cosmic ink landscape answered this need. Gu
was among the first to turn this model into a
mystic transcendent landscape, as exemplified by his Ink Valley and White Water (1986), that
embodied the metaphysical turn in the mid1980s Zhang Yu’s Divine Light series (1999) recapitulates this impulse.
Gu’s cosmic ink painting was meteoric in its
surge in the mid-1980s. Ink painting in general
was not part of the avant-garde of the late 1980s.
Feeling snubbed, ink painters launched the
New Literati paintings to stake their claim on
avant-gardism. While their irreverent ink-play
recalls their pre-modern forerunners, they went
even further: applying deliberately untutored
brush strokes, they affect anti-elitist stances to
distance themselves from literati tradition. Li
Jin’s Feast (2007) continues this streak.
New episodes of ink painting are being
written, as the present exhibition demonstrates.
So, stay tuned.
primary mode of making images. So radical
was it that critics defined it as ‘modern ink
painting’ to distinguish it from the traditional
ink painting.
The inadvertent alignment of Liu Kuo-sung
(1932-) and Wenda Gu (1955-) made a big splash.
Liu, a Taiwan-based oil-painter-turned-inkpainter, experimented with the ink-painting
medium in the 1960s. Like Wu Guanzhong, he
slighted the brush-and-ink protocols and boldly
refashioned the medium by physically re-texturing the rice paper and found ways of deploying
un-brush-worthy brushes. He also made cosmic
stratosphere and moonscape the subject of ink
painting. Exhibitions of Liu’s ink paintings in
mainland China in the 1980s were timely. The
reform-minded artists were experiencing a
‘spiritual turn’: deepening soul-searching in the
post-Mao era led to a metaphysical reflexivity.
Feverish reading of modern Western philosophy
25
Jason Kuo
Liu Kuo-sung
Rhythm of the
Moon, 2005 (p. 110)
Ink
Introduction
Looking at the diverse styles, themes,
intellectual contexts and artistic careers of the
artists represented in this exhibition and the
accompanying catalogue, the viewer and the
reader will immediately become aware of, and
possibly be overcome by, the sheer range and
complexity of the works on display. But they
will also be rewarded by a deeper understanding
of contemporary Chinese art in particular and
Chinese society in general.
At first glance indeed, the exhibition seems
to encompass such a great variety of styles
that the identification of a central thesis might
appear an elusive target. Let me however suggest several possible approaches to elucidate
the concept that the curator, Michael Goedhuis,
has tried to present – the vitality and relevance
of ink art to the world today, both for China
and beyond.
A good way to begin developing a grasp of the
big picture may be by dividing the artists in the
exhibition into the following broad categories:
Neo-Traditionalists
These artists rely on brushwork and ink or colour
washes and include: Fang Jun, Gao Xingjian,
Jia Youfu, Li Huayi, Li Jin, Tong Yang-tze, Li
Xiaoxuan, Li Xubai, Liu Dan, Liu Qinghe, Lo
Ch’ing, Wu Yi, Xu Lei, Yang Yanping, Yuan Jai,
26
Zeng Shanqing, Zeng Xiaojun, and Zhu Daoping.
Synthesizers
These artists use ink and other media and
combine Chinese and non-Chinese styles.
Artists in this category include: Huang Yong
Ping, Chun-yi Lee, Leung Kui Ting, Li Jun, Liu
Kuo-sung, Liu Wei, Lu Hao, Pan Hsin-hua, Qin
Feng, Qiu Deshu, Qiu Jie, Wang Dongling, Wang
Jinsong, Wei Ligang, Wucius Wong, Hong Chun
Zhang, and Zhang Yu.
Interrogators
Artists in whose works the historical and
cultural relevance of the medium of ink is
questioned and the physical and chemical
properties of ink are explored. They include:
Chen Guangwu, Gu Gan, Wenda Gu, Qiu
Zhijie, Wang Tiande, Wei Qingji, Xu Bing,
and Yang Jiechang.
Another possible way to begin our journey is
perhaps to further divide contemporary Chinese
ink painting (including but not limited to works
featured in this exhibition) into the following
stylistic or thematic categories, keeping in
mind that some artists belong to more than one
category, as indicated in the list:
1 Reconstruction of the Traditional
Aesthetics of Bimo (Brush and Ink)
6 Regeneration of the Decorative &
Blue-and-Green Traditions
Fang Jun, Ho Huai-shuo, Leung Kui Ting,
Li Huayi, Li Xubai, Liu Dan, Liu Kuo-sung, Lo
Ch’ing, Tong Yang-tze, Wang Dongling, Wang
Jinsong, Wucius Wong, Zeng Shanqing, Zeng
Xiaojun, Yang Yanping, and Hong Chun Zhang.
Yuan Jai, Pan Hsing-hua, Xu Lei
2 Abstraction
8 Social Commentaries
Liu Kuo-sung, Gao Xingjian, Gu Gan, Qin Feng,
Wang Tiande, Wei Ligang, and Xu Bing.
Huang Zhiyang, Chun-yi Lee, Li Jin, Lu Hao,
Miao Xiaochun, Qiu Zhijie, Qiu Jie, Wei Qingji,
Wu Yi, Xu Bing, Hong Chung Zhang.
3 New Expressionism
Gu Gan, Li Jin, Li Jun, Liu Qinghe, Li
Xiaoxuan, Wang Dongling, Wang Jinsong, and
Zhu Daoping.
4 Constructed Cosmos
Liu Kuo-sung, Qiu Deshu, Yang Jiechang,
Zhang Yu.
5 Monumental Landscape
Jia Youfu, Liu Kuo-sung, Wenda Gu, Zhang Yu.
7 Investigation of Ink as a Medium
Chen Guangwu, Wenda Gu, Qin Feng, Qiu Zhijie,
Wang Tiande, Yang Jiechang
Perhaps the most salient feature of contemporary
Chinese ink painting is the audacity and
radicalism inherent in the artists’ analysis,
not only of the very nature of ink painting, but
also its theoretical parameters (explored in Xu
Bing’s ‘An Email on Modern Art and Education’
first published in the proceedings of the 2009
Beijing International Conference on Art Theory
and Criticism, pages 375–383). Several artists in
this exhibition have been included in a series
27
Qiu Zhijie
Ten Poems
by Su Shi, 2004
(p. 124)
Li Huayi
Autumn Mountains,
2008 (p. 32)
of shows, both inside and beyond the Chinesespeaking world, which address the role of ink in
contemporary culture. As clarified by Pi Daojian,
curator with Huang Huansheng of the exhibition
China: 20 Years of Ink Experiment, 1980 – 2001 held at
the Guangdong Museum in 2001, the term ‘Ink
Experiment’ was intended to highlight the fact
that the experiments of contemporary Chinese
artists go far beyond simple ink painting and now
extend to expressive ink art, abstract ink art,
conceptual ink art and installation ink art.
Traditionally, the ink used by Chinese artists for calligraphy and painting was made in
the form of dry ink sticks – chiefly pine soot and
water-soluble animal adhesive – that were ground
with water on an ink stone to produce liquid ink.
Contemporary artists also now use commercially
prepared liquid ink for convenience. Artists
control the density, texture and quality of their
ink and, by extension, its tonal variations and it
is this ability by which the quality of their work
has traditionally been evaluated. Ink’s liquidity
of course poses tremendous challenges for the
practitioner in addition to the demands placed on
them by using a pliant brush made from animal
hairs. The Neo-Traditionalists in the exhibition are particular heirs of this grand tradition
of Chinese ink painting which goes back, as an
elite art-form, more than a thousand years. Liu
Dan, Li Huayi, and Zeng Xiaojun are all painters
who trace their cultural lineage back to the great
master­pieces of the Song dynasty, while at the
same time responding to the pictorial imperatives of the contemporary world.
For a related but different interpretation
28
of this tradition take the work of Gao Xingjian
for example. Gao received the Nobel Prize for
literature in 2000 and now lives in Paris in
semi self-exile. His style of painting can be
characterised as belonging to the great literati
tradition of Xieyi (literally ‘writing of the idea’)
which allows him to create subtle, intuitive
settings that hover between figurative and
abstract art in a way that has been done by many
of the great masters in Chinese art history. His
paintings explore the expressive possibilities of
ink and wash, advanced chiaroscuro shadings
and subtle textures.
On the other hand, other artists are
challenging this traditional use of the medium
of ink, using video documentation and
installation in conjunction with ink on paper as
in Qiu Zhijie’e Ten Poems by Su Shi.
Wenda Gu, who is here represented by two
of the monumental paintings that exemplify
the intense investigation he has conducted into
the nature of art and language since 1984, also
deploys other materials in complex installations.
At Bates College in 2004 for example, his Ink
Alchemy presented glass vials of ink created from
human hair where his intention was to unify
biological ink (from hair) with the materials of
subject (the common denominator of humanity)
and the medium (ink for painting).
Reflecting on the development of ink
painting since the early 1990s, the artist Zhang
Yu has written: ‘Experimental ink painting
grows out of the root of Chinese art and culture.
At the same time, experimental ink painting
differs from the formal language of traditional
Chinese painting . . . it opens a new path outside
the traditional system of ink paintings and takes
the resources of Chinese and foreign art as the
starting point of exploration . . . so, it transcends
not only the physical and metaphysical, but also
the Eastern and Western. What it possesses is
new concepts, new ways of understanding the
world, new modes of speaking and new views of
cultural value’.
The exhibition certainly provides a great
opportunity for the public to examine these
artists in order to explore the extent to which
this work can be seen as a bold and relevant
embodiment of the zeitgeist of a new generation
of Chinese people in the Chinese-speaking world
as well as in the diaspora. It also describes the
enrichment of an essentially Chinese aesthetic
through the incorporation of Euro-American
stylistic and ideological innovations that have
value in newly defining Chinese ideas about
beauty, the diaspora, trans-nationalism and
global culture.
But it also leaves us suspended with
questions, the answers to which, in the dramatic
transformation of modern China, have yet to
be formulated: how extensively can tradition
be re-invented before it is subverted? At what
point is creative re-invention an act of betrayal?
And finally, how has selective borrowing from
the Chinese classical canon and from Western
cultures enabled contemporary Chinese artists to
make work that is relevant and meaningful not
only for their own society, vital as it now is, but
for an increasingly globalized world?
In the following pages, the relative width of the
artwork is indicated by a line placed on a standard
ruler whose full length is 8 metres (261/4 feet)
0
2
4
6
8
29
I N K: T H E A RT OF C H I NA
Li Huayi
李华弋
Autumn Mountains, 2008
Ink on paper
89 × 152.4 cm (35 × 60")
32
Li Huayi
李华弋
Rock and Pine, 2008
Ink on paper with gold ground, two fold screen
170 × 185 cm (6615/16 × 725/16")
34
Wilson Shieh
石家豪
Mother, 2012
Ink and gouache on silk
180 × 90 cm (707/8 × 357/16")
36
Wilson Shieh
石家豪
L: Family Ride, 2008
R: The Queen, 2007
L: Ink and gouache on silk
90 × 75 cm (357/16 × 291/2")
R: Ink and gouache on silk
90 × 75 cm (357/16 × 291/2")
38
Chun-yi Lee
李君毅
Mao Triptych: Wan Sui,
Wan Shui, Wan Wan Sui, 2008
Ink on paper
3 panels, large panel 244 × 122 cm (96 × 48")
2 smaller panels, 182.5 × 76 cm (72 × 30") each
Total size: 244 × 274 cm (96 × 108")
40
Xu Bing
徐冰
Spring Dawn (Poem by Meng
Haoran), 2003
Ink on paper
3 panels, 136 × 68 cm (531/2 × 263/4") each
Total size: 136 × 204 cm (531/2 × 801/4")
42
Xu Bing
徐冰
At the Temple to the First Ruler of
Shu, Poem by Liu Yuxi, Square Word
Calligraphy, 2005
Ink on paper
2 panels, 134.6 × 68.6 cm (53 × 27") each
Total size: 134.6 × 137.2 cm (53 × 54")
44
Qiu Anxiong
邱黯雄
Minguo Landscape, 2007
Minguo Landscape, 2007
Ink Animation, 14'33", 4:3, Shanghai, China
46
Chen KeZhan
陈克湛
L: Rockscape – Autumn, 2011
R: Mekong Blue, 2006
L: Ink and mineral colours on paper
222 × 49 cm (873/8 × 195/16")
R: Ink and mineral colours on paper
188 × 41 cm (74 × 16")
48
Chen KeZhan
陈克湛
Red – Autumn, 2011
Ink and mineral colours on paper
149 × 369 cm (5811/16 × 1451/4")
50
Liu Qinghe
刘庆和
L: Bathing in Wind, 2006
R: Late Autumn, 2006
L: Ink and colour on paper
300 × 90 cm (1181/8 × 353/8")
R: Ink and colour on paper
300 × 90 cm (1181/8 × 353/8")
52
Liu Qinghe
刘庆和
Portrait of Li Ming, 2010
Ink and colour on paper
200 × 90 cm (783/4 × 353/8")
54
Yuan Jai
袁旃
Little Dragon Playing Ball, 2001
Mineral colour on silk
84 × 179 cm (331/16 × 701/2")
56
Zhang Yu
张羽
Divine Light Series No. 61:
The Floating Incomplete Circle, 1999
Ink on bamboo paper
200 × 200 cm (783/4 × 783/4")
58
Zhu Daoping
朱道平
Delicate Fragrance, 2006
Ink and colour on paper
65 × 130 cm (259/16 × 513/16")
60
Zeng Shanqing
曾善庆
Full Gallop, 2005
Ink and colour on paper
96.5 × 157.5 cm (38 × 62")
62
Xu Lei
徐累
Tree of Blue Underglaze, 2008
Ink and colour on paper
213 × 125 cm (837/8 × 493/16")
64
Miao Xiaochun
缪晓春
Carrying the Cross, 2008
Pen and ink on paper
18 panels, 76.6 × 56.6 cm (305/32 × 229/32") each
Total size: 229.8 × 339.6 cm (901/2 × 1333/4")
66
Liu Wei
刘炜
Untitled, 2006
Acrylic on paper
94 × 57.2 cm (37 × 221/2")
68
Wu Yi
武艺
Xin Mapo Series III, 2004
Ink and colour on paper
200 × 200 cm (783/4 × 783/4")
70
Wu Yi
武艺
Holiday I, 2007
Ink and colour on paper
68 × 94 cm (263/4 × 37")
72
Liu Dan
刘丹
Old Cypress from the
Forbidden City, 2007
Ink on paper
259.1 × 137.2 cm (102 × 54")
74
Liu Dan
刘丹
Tinkling of Jade-Pendants, 2008
Ink on paper
215 × 150 cm (845/8 × 59")
76
Liu Dan
刘丹
Poppy, 2008
Ink on paper
215 × 150 cm (845/8 × 59")
78
Lo Ch’ing
罗青
China, All of a Sudden, China!, 2012
Ink and colour on paper
Two panels, 137 × 69 cm (537/8 × 271/4") each
Total size: 137 × 138 cm (537/8 × 543/8")
80
Lo Ch’ing
罗青
Ten Thousand Peaks of
Red Leaves, 1996
Ink and colour on paper
212 × 90.5 cm (837/16 × 355/8")
82
Wang Dongling
王冬龄
Untitled, 2006
Ink on paper
140 × 310 cm (551/8 × 122")
84
Wang Dongling
王冬龄
Confrontation of Yin and Yang, 2005
Ink on paper
216 × 144.8 cm (85 × 57")
86
Qiu Jie
邱节
Mao in the Cotton Field, 2007
Pencil on paper
150 × 168 cm (591/16 × 661/8")
88
Qiu Jie
邱节
Lijiang, 2011
Pencil on paper
120 × 140 cm (473/16 × 551/8")
90
Gu Gan
古干
Deer Crying, 1990
Ink and colour on paper
93 × 98 cm (361/2 × 381/2")
92
Qin Feng
秦风
West Wind East Water 0604, 2006
Ink, coffee and tea on silk-and-cotton paper
190.2 × 94 cm (747/8 × 37")
94
Qin Feng
秦风
Civilisation Landscape I, 2007
Coffee and ink on silk-and-cotton paper
300 × 125 cm (1181/8 × 491/4")
96
Qin Feng
秦风
Song of God 3, 2007
Silk, ink and glass
250 × 150 cm (987/16 × 591/16")
98
Wang Tiande
王天德
Digital No. 08-ML07, 2008
Ink and burn marks on paper
35 × 967.5 cm (1313/16 × 38015/16")
100
Lu Hao
卢昊
True Landscape, 2012
Ink and colour on paper
150 × 200 cm (591/16 × 783/4")
102
Lu Hao
卢昊
Landscape Series No. 24, 2008
Ink and colour on silk
110 × 138 cm (435/16 × 545/16")
104
Liu Kuo-sung
刘国松
The Universe is My Heart No. 4,
1998
Ink on paper
4 panels, 181.5 × 87.6cm (711/2 × 341/2") each
Total size: 181.5 × 350.5 cm (711/2 × 138")
106
Liu Kuo-sung
刘国松
Snow-capped Mountain,
Tibet Series (No. 99), 2008
Ink on paper
185.5 × 92.5 cm (731/16 × 367/16")
108
Liu Kuo-sung
刘国松
Rhythm of the Moon, 2005
Ink and colour on paper
198 × 273 cm (7715/16 × 1071/2")
110
Zeng Xiaojun
曾小俊
Connected Trees from the
Forbidden City No. 1, 2004
Ink on paper
220 × 138.5 cm (86½ × 54½")
112
Zeng Xiaojun
曾小俊
‘Qing’, ‘Qi’, ‘Gu’, ‘Guai’, 2004
Ink on paper
199 × 467 cm (78½ × 183¾")
114
Wucius Wong
王无邪
Sky-Land Expression 1, 2007
Ink and colour on cotton
2 panels, 198.1 × 99.1 cm (78 × 39") each
Total size: 198.1 × 198.2 cm (78 × 781/32")
116
Fay Ku
顧詠惠
Women Warriors, 2008
Graphite, watercolour, gouache
and ink on paper
106.7 × 487.7 cm (42 × 192")
118
Gao Xingjian
高行建
Dream Mountain
(La montagne de rêve), 2005
Ink on paper
146 × 207 cm (571/2 × 811/2")
120
qiu zhijie
邱志杰
Monument 1: Revolutionary Slogans
on Economic Issues (set of 16), 2007
Chromogenic print and ink on paper
16 panels, 95.3 × 95.3 cm (371/2 × 371/2") each
Total size: 381.2 × 381.2 cm (1501/16 × 1501/16")
122
Qiu Zhijie
邱志杰
Ten Poems by Su Shi, 2004
10 hanging scrolls & video; ink on paper, DVD
Each scroll: 208 × 66 cm (82 × 26")
Video transferred to DVD, single channel,
colour, 30 minutes
124
qiu zhijie
邱志杰
30 Letters to Qiu Jiawa No. 22:
Beyond sky there is sky, within
the sea there is sea
30 Letters to Qiu Jiawa No. 23:
An exit from a tunnel is not always
only where the light is
30 Letters to Qiu Jiawa No. 24:
In their contests, you do not have
to become a winner, 2009
Ink on paper
3 panels, 510 × 190 cm (20013/16 × 7413/16") each
Total size: 510 × 570 cm (20013/16 × 2243/8")
126
Li Jin
李津
Feast, 2007
Ink and colour on paper
5 panels, 230 × 53 cm (909/16 × 207/8") each
Total size: 230 × 265 cm (909/16 × 1045/16)
128
Li Jin
李津
Spring in the Garden, 2012
Ink and colour on paper
138 × 69 cm (545/16 × 273/16")
130
Jia Youfu
贾又福
Work 1, 2007
Ink and colour on paper
75 × 82 cm (291/2 × 321/4")
132
Jia Youfu
贾又福
Landscape, 1985
Ink and colour on paper
48.5 × 326 cm (191/8 × 1285/16")
134
Wang Jinsong
王劲松
Landscape No. 10, 2008
Ink on paper
90 × 72 cm (357/16 × 283/8")
136
Wang Jinsong
王劲松
The Deluge No. 1, 2012
Ink on paper
5 panels, 137 × 68 cm (5315/16 × 263/4") each
Total size: 137 × 340 cm (5315/16 × 1337/8")
138
Li Xubai
李虚白
A Spring Mountain
Dream Voyage, 2008
Ink and colour on paper
125 × 246 cm (493/16 × 967/8")
140
Zheng Chongbin
鄭重賓
Four definitions 001, 2011
Ink and acrylic on paper
177.8 × 190.5 cm (70 × 75")
142
Pan Gongkai
潘公凯
Rhythm, 2009
Ink on paper
180 × 97.5 cm (71 × 381/4")
144
Wei Ligang
魏立刚
L: Frozen River, 2007
R: Fragrant Thornbush Near
Streamhead and Butterflies on
the Bank, 2007
L: Ink and acrylic on paper
360 × 145 cm (1413/4 × 571/8")
R: Ink and acrylic on paper
360 × 145 cm (1413/4 × 571/8”)
146
Wei Ligang
魏立刚
Shi Gu (Ten Partridges), 2010
Ink and acrylic on paper
180 × 96 cm (707/8 × 3713/16")
148
Leung Kui Ting
梁巨廷
Zan Zak Zen – 09, 2007
Ink on silk
84 × 208 cm (331/8 × 817/8")
150
Pan Hsin-hua
潘信华
One Day, 2000
Ink and colour on paper
36 × 810 cm (143/16 × 3187/8")
152
Tong Yang-tze
董阳孜
Knowing is not Difficult,
Doing is Difficult (Zhi zhi fei jian,
xing zhi wei jian), 1997
Ink on paper
138 × 254 cm (543/8 × 100")
154
Yang Jiechang
杨诘苍
Tomorrow Cloud Sky-Purple, 2005
Ink and colour on silk
141 × 218 cm (551/2 × 8513/16")
156
Yang Jiechang
杨诘苍
L: Tomorrow Cloudy Sky I, 2006
R: Tomorrow Cloudy Sky II, 2006
l: Ink and colour on paper
96 × 99 cm (3713/16 × 39")
r: Ink and colour on paper
96 × 99 cm (3713/16 × 39")
158
Huang Zhiyang
黄致阳
Zoon – Beijing Creature No. 7-17, 2007
Ink on silk
2 panels, 475 × 140 cm (187 × 551/8") each
Total Size: 475 × 280 cm (187 × 1101/4")
160
Yao Jui-chung
姚瑞中
Honeymoon: Love Me Little,
Love Me Long, 2011
Ink with gold leaf on handmade paper
200 × 160 cm (783/4 × 63")
162
Wei Qingji
魏青吉
L: Thing-Form 0611, 2006
R: Stand Higher See Farther, 2007
L: Ink and mixed media on paper
90 × 95 cm (357/16 × 373/8")
R: Ink and mixed media on paper
190 × 252 cm (7413/16 × 993/16")
164
Yang Yanping
杨燕屏
Autumn Aria, 2009
Ink and colour on paper
90.5 × 141.5 cm (355/8 × 5511/16")
166
Qiu Deshu
仇德树
Self-Portrait (Spirit), 1997-1998
Ink and acrylic on paper and canvas
180 × 360 cm (703/4 × 1411/2")
168
Qiu Deshu
仇德树
Five-Panel Mountainscape, 2005
Ink and acrylic on paper and canvas
5 panels, 210 × 125.5 cm (8211/16 × 497/16") each
Total size: 210 × 627.5 cm (8211/16 × 247")
170
Wenda Gu
谷文达
Alchemy Studio, 1999-2002
TOP: Ink Alchemy
Bottom: Tea Alchemy
top: Created in Shanghai Cao Su Gong Ink
Factory, China, 1999–2001. Bottle of original
human hair, bottle of human hair in semicharcoal state, bottle of human hair pigment.
Genetic ink pigment (made of human hair) in
test tube & wood box. Genetic ink stick (made
of human hair) in wood & glass box.
bottom: Created in Anhui Jing County Red
Leaves Rice Paper Factory, China, 2001-2002.
Copy of classical accordion painting book (in
glass box) and sheet of rice paper, made of
green tea leaves (80% green tea).
172
Wenda Gu
谷文达
Ink Valley and White Water, 1986
Ink on paper
279.5 × 176.5 cm (110 × 691/2")
174
Wenda Gu
谷文达
The Mythos of Lost Dynasties,
C Series No. 6 Cloud & Water,
1996-1997
Ink on paper, scroll with silk-border
mounting
335.3 × 149.9 cm (132 × 59")
176
Zhang Chun Hong
张春红
Twin Strands, 2008
Ink on paper
2 panels, 270 × 75 cm (1065/16 × 291/2") each
Total size; 270 × 150 cm (1065/16 × 59")
178
R E F E R E NC E
Contributor
Biographies
Ms Valerie C. Doran
Independent Curator, Critic and Translator
in the field of Chinese contemporary art
Valerie C. Doran is an independent curator,
critic and translator in the field of Chinese
contemporary art with a special interest in
cultural cross-currents and comparative art
theory. A contributing editor of Orientations
magazine, Valerie publishes frequently on
Asian and international contemporary art;
she has also translated a number of works
by major Chinese art theorists and critics,
including Li Xianting, Gao Minglu and Gao
Xingjian. She has lectured in art theory
and curatorial practice at the Academy of
Visual Arts of Hong Kong Baptist University,
the School of Creative Media of the City
University of Hong Kong and the Para/Site
Curatorial Programme. From 2010 to 2011 she
was Honorary Lecturer in the Centre for the
Humanities and Medicine at the University of
Hong Kong and helped to initiate the Project
Arts Programme. Valerie is also an academic
advisor of the Asia Art Archive, a member of
the Gallery Advisory Committee of The Asia
Society Hong Kong, and a member of the
International Art Critics Association Hong
Kong chapter, of which she was past vicepresident. In 2009 Valerie was awarded the
Certificate of Commendation from the Hong
Kong Home Affairs Bureau for contributions to
arts and cultural activities in Hong Kong.
Dr Jason C. Kuo
Professor of Art History at the University of Maryland
Previous page:
l: Liu Qinghe
Growth II, 2005
Ink and colour on paper
65 x 55 cm (25½ x 21½" )
r: Liu Qinghe
Growth I, 2005
Ink and colour on paper
65 x 55 cm (25½ x 21½")
182
Jason C. Kuo has taught at the National
Taiwan University, Williams College, and
Yale University. He is the professor of art
history at the University of Maryland, College
Park. He is the editor of numerous exhibition
catalogues and anthologies on Chinese art and
art history; his awards include Mellon, John
D. Rockefeller III Fund, Luce and Fulbright
fellowships for research and teaching.
Professor Kuo has authored a long list of
publications on Chinese art ranging from
Wang Yuanqi de shanshuihua yishu (Wang Yuanqi’s
Art of Landscape Painting) (1981) to Transforming
Traditions in Modern Chinese Painting: Huang
Pin-hung’s Late Work (2004).
Mr Edward Lucie-Smith
Art Critic and Historian
Edward Lucie-Smith is an internationally
known art critic and historian, who is
also a published poet, an anthologist and
a practising photographer. He is generally
regarded as the most prolific and the most
widely published writer on art, with sales
for some titles totalling over 250,000 copies.
A number of his art books, among them
Movements in Art since 1945, Visual Arts of the
20th Century, A Dictionary of Art Terms and Art
Today are used as standard texts throughout
the world. In Britain he was for many years a
well-known broadcaster, appearing regularly
on the BBC arts discussion programme The
Critics and its successor Critics’ Forum. His
appearances on these programmes spanned
a period of twenty years. He has written
for many leading British newspapers and
periodicals, among them The Times of London
(where at one time he had a regular column),
the London Evening Standard (whose critic he
was for two years), the New Statesman, the
Spectator, the London Magazine and Encounter.
He currently writes regularly for Art Review,
and also for Index on Censorship. He also writes
for La Vanguardia in Barcelona.
Mr Dominique Nahas
Independent Curator and Critic
Dominique Nahas is an independent curator and critic based in Manhattan. He is
Associate Professor at Pratt Institute where
he teaches critical studies. Mr. Nahas has
curated and co-curated many gallery and
museum exhibitions over the years. He has
been a seminar and critique faculty and visiting artist coordinator of the New York Studio
Residency Program since 1998. Mr. Nahas has
written hundreds of articles and reviews for
a wide variety of art publications such as ArtNews, Flash Art, Art On Paper, New Art Examiner,
Artnet Worldwide, Art Asia-Pacific, New Observations, C, Chelsea Arts, d’Art International, and
TRANS among many other periodicals. He
has been referred to and quoted as an expert
in contemporary art in The New York Times
three times in 2001 in conjunction with his
curatorial efforts.
Dr Wang Tao
Senior Lecturer in Chinese Archaeology at
The School of Oriental and African Studies,
University of London
Wang Tao studied at the Yunnan Teachers’
University, Kunming and the Postgraduate
School of the Chinese Academy of Arts,
Beijing, before coming to London in 1986. He
obtained his PhD from SOAS in 1993 and has
been teaching there ever since. His research
interests and publications have focused on
traditional and contemporary archaeological
practice in China, oracle bone inscriptions
and Chinese calligraphy.
Dr Eugene Wang
Professor of Asian Art at Harvard University
A native of Jiangsu, China, Eugene
Yuejin Wang studied at Fudan University
in Shanghai (BA 1983; MA 1986), and
subsequently at Harvard University (AM
1990; PhD 1997). His teaching appointment
at Harvard University began in 1997, and
he became the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller
Professor of Asian Art in 2005. His book,
Shaping the Lotus Sutra: Buddhist Visual Culture
in Medieval China (2005) has received the
Academic Achievement Award. He is the art
history associate editor of the Encyclopedia
of Buddhism (New York, 2004). His thirty
or so articles published in The Art Bulletin,
Art History, Critical Inquiry, Res: Journal of
Anthropology and Aesthetics, Public Culture, and
elsewhere, cover a wide range of subjects,
including ancient bronze mirrors, Buddhist
murals and sculptures, reliquaries, scroll
paintings, calligraphy, woodblock prints,
architecture, photography, and films. He has
also translated Roland Barthes’ Fragments
d’un discours amoureux into Chinese, and wrote
the screenplay for a short film, Stony Touch,
selected for screening in the 9th Hawaii
International Film Festival.
183
Artist Biographies
Chen KeZhan
b. 1959, Singapore
Chen KeZhan is
recognised as the
country’s foremost
abstract ink and wash painter. He studied Chinese
traditional painting under Fan Chang Tien from
1975 to 1979 and then left for Hong Kong where he
studied the Lingnan style with Chen Shao-an and
calligraphy with Fung Kang-ho. His subsequent
years in Paris at the Ecole des Beaux Arts from
1983 to 1985 enriched his exposure to western
modernism. He was selected as one of the artists
included in Singapore’s first entry to the Venice
Biennale in 2001. Chen KeZhan’s painting presents
a convincing example of how successful the fusion
between western abstraction and contemporary
Chinese ink painting can be, as well as the further
connection between Chinese classical aesthetics
and modern variations.
Chun-yi Lee
b. 1965, Taiwan
Chun-yi Lee moved
to Hong Kong in 1970
and graduated from
the Chinese University
there, where he was
deeply influenced by his
teacher Liu Kuo-sung. Lee obtained his MFA from
the Graduate Program of Fine Arts of Tunghai
University in Taiwan, and he recently was awarded
his PhD in Chinese art history at the Arizona
State University. The artist is clearly aware of his
hybrid and transcultural experience, both in his
art-critical outlook and in his art. Inspired by the
184
ancient technique of Chinese ink-rubbing, he uses
a small cork block to stamp the paper with variable
pressure and in different directions; this creates
seemingly traditional yet deconstructed landscapes.
Mao Triptych: Wan Sui, Wan Shui, Wan Wan Sui
is a beautiful example of Lee’s idiosyncratic visual
language. Centered between a pair of traditionalist/
modernistic landscapes is a huge portrait of
Chairman Mao.
Fay Ku
b. 1974, Taipei
Fay Ku immigrated
to the United
States at the age of
three. After graduating from Bennington College,
Bennington, VT, with a dual BA in literature
and visual arts, she moved to New York City; in
2006 she graduated from Pratt Institute with a
MS in art history and MFA in studio art. Ku is
one of the brilliant younger generation of Asian
American women whose artistic vision – and in
her case, accomplished drawing – is directed at
examining the tension between gender issues and
undercurrents of violence and sexual exploitation.
Her seductive yet disturbing depiction of children,
young girls, and animals is her way of exploring
feelings of alienation from both China and America.
Gao Xingjian
b. 1940, Ganzhou, Jiangxi
Gao Xingjian was
awarded the Nobel Prize
for Literature in 2000.
During the 1960s and
the 1970s, Gao worked as
185
a translator while writing novels and painting.
During the Cultural Revolution he was sent to
the countryside for reeducation and burned some
of his manuscripts. In the 1980s, he published
experimental literature as well as nonfiction,
but after one of his plays was banned in 1986,
Gao retreated to nature and spent ten months in
the mountains of Sichuan. In 1987, Gao Xingjian
moved to Paris where he still lives. The expressive
paintings that spring from Gao’s introspection
are characterized by a spontaneity of touch, and
their ink tones that range from subtle grays to jet
blacks can either absorb or emit light. His style
can be characterized as that of ‘writing of the idea’
(literally, xieyi), which allows him to create subtle,
intuitive works that move between figurative and
abstract art.
Gu Gan
b. 1942, Changsha, Hunan
Gu Gan is internationally
recognized as a key pioneer
of the modernist movement
in calligraphic painting
in China. Gu turned to
calligraphy during the 1960s.
Interested in modern art, especially Wassily
Kandinsky, Paul Klee, and Joan Miró, Gu Gan
started to experiment with radical approaches
to calligraphy in the late 1970s. Excited at the
prospect of reinvigorating Chinese calligraphy,
together with Huang Miaozi and others, Gu staged
a group exhibition of modernist calligraphy at
the China National Art Gallery in Beijing in 1985,
which earned him the position of chairman of the
Society of Modern Calligraphy and Painting. In
most of his works, Gu Gan combines traditional
Chinese characters with abstract painting. He has
created a new pictorial language that reverses the
traditional relationship between calligraphic form
and content, and his writings and lectures have
had an important impact on the development of
modernist calligraphy.
Huang Zhiyang
b. 1965, Taipei, Taiwan
Huang Zhiyang studied traditional
Chinese ink painting in Taiwan. When
installation art became a popular
art form in Taiwan during the 1990s,
Huang used all kinds of media, such as
phone cords, oyster shells, fabrics, and
186
ceramics, to make installation works. He returned
to ink painting in the late 1990s and experimented
with traditional texture-stroke techniques (cun)
to create a new visual language inspired by the
imagery of nature. He moved to Beijing in 2006,
and was immediately both attracted to and
dismayed by this burgeoning city. The series of
Zoon – Beijing Creatures is a record of his mixed
feelings for the city, which led him to create a
pictorial space with various forms of insects, plants,
and even microorganisms. For him, the living
space of human beings is replete with bacteria
and sickness, and these continue to contaminate
our environment.
synthesize classical ink painting with modern
art. However, the rocks, trees, and mountains that
have been the subject of the literati painters over
the past 600 years have remained his principal
interest. In his series of paintings entitled Zan
Zak Zen, he portrays the fantastically shaped
Chinese scholar’s rocks as if they were cliffs and
mountains. In another series entitled Words
from Stones, magically floating mountains, again
evoking scholar’s rocks, are juxtaposed with finely
drawn diagrams and graphs, thus creating a world
of tension, as well as resolution, between old
and new.
Jia Youfu graduated
from the Central
Academy of Fine
Arts, Beijing, in 1965
where he is currently
teaching. In 1992, Jia
was awarded the title of ‘Master Artist’ by the PRC
State Council. Deeply influenced by his teacher,
the ink painting master Li Keran (1907–1989), Jia
deploys a rich variety of brushstrokes in black
and red to create a dark and mysterious landscape
world. During his study at the Central Academy,
he traveled nineteen times to the Taihang
Mountain Range in northwestern China for closer
observation of the landscape. Ever since, the grand
landscape of Taihang Mountains has been the
major subject in his paintings. Most of Jia Youfu’s
works have been contemporary interpretations of
the traditional monumental landscapes of the late
10th and early 11th centuries. His paintings depict
dark and ominous mises-en-scènes which, in the
classic Chinese manner, dwarf any animals and
humans below.
Leung
Kui Ting
b. 1945, Guangzhou,
Guangdong
Leung Kui Ting
moved to Hong Kong in 1948 and has held various
teaching positions. In the 1990s he exhibited on
the mainland and widely traveled there. A figure
in Hong Kong’s New Ink Painting movement
that grew up around Lui Shou-kwan, Leung has
experimented with many different styles that
Li Xubai
Li Huayi
Jia Youfu
b. 1942, Suning, Hebei
mastery of pattern and color. Li Jin gradually
formed his uniquely playful style in the early
1990s, and is now famous for his seductive
depictions of the good life. In contrast to the
formality and stereotyped subjects of historical
literati painting—often derived from famous texts,
pictures by earlier masters, or both—food and
wine and the simple things in today’s life are Li’s
subject matter. The Falstaffian figure that appears
repeatedly in his work is modelled on himself,
and the flirtatious, enticing young women are the
artist’s ideal of female beauty.
b. 1948, Shanghai
Li Huayi began
studying as a child
and has become
one of the most
distinguished and
internationally recognized Chinese artists of his
generation. From a wealthy family, he was able to
study both the techniques and styles of Chinese
classical paintings as well as European drawing
and painting. In 1982, Li moved to San Francisco
where he earned an MFA at the San Francisco Art
Institute. The expatriate experience reawakened
his interest in the classical Chinese tradition of
landscape painting and his best-known subjects
are misty mountains. Li Huayi creates landscape
paintings that are reminiscent of masterworks
from the Song period (960–1279). However, instead
of planning the composition beforehand, Li
applies ink on the paper first, and then allows
the composition to take shape in response to
the density of the ink. This element of chance
brings his work close to late- or post-modernist
imperatives, combined with superlative aesthetic
similarities to traditional landscape painting.
Li Jin
b. 1958, Tianjin
Li Jin is one of the
best-known and most
unorthodox ink painters
in the so-called New
Literati group of ink painters. Before his study in
the Painting Department at the Tianjin Academy
of Fine Arts, where he now teaches, Li studied
dyeing and weaving at the Tianjin Academy
of Arts and Crafts, which partly explains his
b. 1940, Fuzhou, Fujian
Li moved to Hong
Kong in 1979,
where he has been
the editor for art
magazines such as The World of Collectors and
Dragon Roots Art Magazine and went to Canada in
1996, where he now lives. Although he first taught
himself western-derived painting, Li began to
study Chinese classical literature, poetry, and
landscape painting in the 1960s. His paintings
are constructions of landscape elements without
a specific relationship to any one geographical
site. Li Xubai maintains his connection with the
contemporary world by creating a seemingly flat
pictorial space and a pixilated effect reminiscent
of digital media. By choosing to paint in a classically derived style, Li Xubai asserts his cultural
identity while working in a foreign land. The
poems he inscribes on his paintings in traditional
literatus fashion usually mention his foreign residence, echoing numerous inscriptions by painterly predecessors who wistfully invoked their own
political exile.
Liu Dan
b. 1953, Nanjing, Jiangsu
Liu Dan has emerged as the
most gifted of a particularly
talented generation. He studied
the Confucian classics, poetry,
painting, and calligraphy from
his grandfather at an early age.
He moved to Hawaii when he
married an American woman in 1981. There, he
studied western art and matured as a painter. Liu
Dan moved to New York in 1992, and after fourteen
years he returned to China in 2006. Both his
187
training in traditional Chinese art and philosophy
and his experience in the United States have
greatly contributed to his sophisticated and very
personal style. Liu Dan’s ink paintings, whether
of landscapes, scholar’s rocks, or cypress trees, are
all fastidiously conceived, complex works which
highlight his concern to emphasize underlying
compositional structure over virtuoso expressions
of showy brushwork.
Liu Kuo-sung
b.1932, Bangbu, Anhui
Liu Kuo-sung is universally
recognized as one of the earliest
and most important advocates
and practitioners of modernist
Chinese painting. He moved to
Taiwan from China in 1949 and
in 1956 graduated from the Fine
Arts Department of the National
Taiwan Normal University,
in which he studied both
traditional brush-and-ink and
western-style painting techniques. As one of the
cofounders of the Taiwan’s Fifth Moon Painting
Society (Wuyue huahui) in 1957, Liu Kuo-sung
sought a new approach to art, which was inspired
by both traditional Chinese painting as well as
modern styles and techniques, such as Abstract
Expressionism. By the mid-1960s, Liu gradually
developed his own pictorial formulae, in which he
combines ink painting with collage and applies
ink and colour on special paper.
Liu Qinghe
b. 1961, Tianjin
Liu Qinghe graduated from
the Tianjin Academy of Arts
and Crafts in 1976, and later
received graduate training
from both the Folk Art
Department and the Chinese
Painting Department at the
Central Academy of Fine
Arts. Over the years, Liu
has sought to find ways to
make ink painting relevant
to contemporary life and has
created a series of paintings
that focus on fleeting moments in people’s
daily lives. His broad brushstrokes and vivid
draftsmanship, derived from the long tradition
188
of the conceptual sketch (xieyi) style, are used to
enhance his depiction of the reality of individual
human beings grappling with the hard realities of
industrializing China. Water is a frequent subject
in Liu Qinghe’s paintings. Depicting the isolation
and helplessness of the swimmers in the water,
Liu evokes the crisis and pressure that people
undergo in contemporary society.
Liu Wei
b. 1965, Beijing
Liu Wei, one of the most
audacious avant-garde artists
of his generation, graduated
from the Printmaking
Department at the Central
Academy of Fine Arts in
1989, and he continues to
live and work in Beijing.
Liu was one of the first
three Chinese artists to be
included in the main exhibition of a Venice
Biennale, in 1995. His versatility as an artist is
remarkable. Liu Wei’s early paintings, from the
first half of the 1990s, have been characterized
as Cynical Realism, an outgrowth of disillusion
in the post-1989 era; most of these works are
satires of political leaders, military cadres, and
bureaucrats and are accomplished through free
brushstrokes and distorted effects of trompe l’oeil.
By contrast, since the second half of the 1990s, his
works use splashing and spattering techniques,
including painting wet into wet emphasizing
the messy physicality and impulsive action of
contemporary life.
Lo Ch’ing
b. 1948, Qingdao, Shandong
Lo Ch’ing is a poet, painter, and
calligrapher. He moved to Taiwan
in 1949. At an early age, Lo learned
classical ink painting of the court
tradition and subsequently he
studied in the English Department
of Fu Jen University, and received
an MA degree in Comparative
Literature from the University of
Washington, Seattle, in 1974. He has
been both a professor of literature
and a professor of fine arts in universities in
Taiwan, the United States, the United Kingdom,
Prague, and mainland China. His poems have
been published and translated into many
languages, and Lo Ch’ing is regarded as one of the
pioneers of post-modern poetry in Taiwan. He
has also been a major innovator in ink painting,
for which he has created a new visual vocabulary
that deconstructs the classical forms of Chinese
landscape by introducing into his compositions
abstract and geometric elements as well as
unexpected contemporary motifs.
Lu Hao
b. 1969, Beijing
Scion of an old Beijing
family of Manchu bannermen, Lu Hao is one of the
brilliant new generation
of artists in today’s globalizing Chinese art world.
He was appointed curator of the Chinese Pavilion
for the 53rd Venice Biennale in 2009. Lu is deeply
concerned about the brutal urban redevelopment
of his native city and the loss of everything connected with the life of his childhood courtyard
home. Although he studied Chinese ink painting
at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, Lu
is best known for his works with modern materials such as Plexiglas, used to create models of
major public buildings inhabited with live creatures. He also utilizes his academic training in ink
painting in an alternative approach to express his
interest in architecture and current realities.
Miao Xiaochun
b. 1964, Wuxi, Jiangsu
Miao Xiaochun is
recognized as one of
the most creative and
technically sophisticated
photographers in China
today. After attending Nanjing University from
1986 to 1989 he completed a master’s degree at the
Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, and in 1995
he went to study at the Kunsthochschule Kassel,
Germany. In 1999 Miao returned to live in Beijing,
where he teaches in the Photography and Digital
Media Department at the Central Academy of Fine
Arts. His sojourn in Germany increased Miao’s
awareness of the fragmentation of contemporary
Chinese society as well as imposing a recognition
that neither the recent past of his own youth nor
the classical past of China’s high antiquity can
ever be retrieved. While using modern technology
to create highly detailed mural-sized photographs
of cityscapes and landscapes, often depicted in
a European art-historical context, Miao is also
engaged in issues of cultural exchange. The
meticulously executed drawing here, Carrying the
Cross, 2008, is a rare work by Miao that reaches
deep into European art history and delineates the
historical background to the permanent status of
conflict in religious and cultural life.
Pan Gongkai
b. 1947, Ninghai, Zhejiang
The painter and art historian Pan
Gongkai is the son of painter Pan
Tianshou. He studied at the Zhejiang
Academy of Art (now China Academy
of Art). From November 1979 to
November 1984 Pan was a lecturer in
the Department of Chinese Painting,
China Academy of Art, before
becoming the head of the department in 1987.
From 1992 to 1994 he was a visiting researcher
at the University of California. In 1991 Pan
was hailed by critics as “Literati with Special
Contribution”. From April 1996 to May 2001 he was
the president of the China Academy of Art and
was appointed president of the Central Academy of
Fine Arts (CAFA) in June 2001.
Pan Hsin-hua
b. 1966, Taitung, Taiwan
Pan Hsin-hua’s brushand-ink style is firmly
rooted in the Chinese
painting tradition. Currently living and teaching
in Hualien, Taiwan, he graduated from Taipei
National University of the Arts, and his works
have been exhibited extensively in Taiwan. Pan
skilfully blends both the past and the present in
paintings that examine the relevance of tradition
in contemporary culture. His archaism echoes the
‘blue-and-green style’ that uses opaque mineral
pigments in a mode traditionally thought most
appropriate for depicting idealized and utopian
world. This follows in the mould of the masters of
the late Song and early Yuan dynasties as well as
those of the late Ming period who in turn evoked
them. At the same time, Pan introduces an ironic
and irreverent flavour into his work by integrating
unconventional pictorial elements, often from
other cultures, and usually of an explicitly
contemporary and playful nature.
189
Qin Feng
b. 1961, Xinjiang Uyghur
Autonomous Region
Qin Feng is an iconoclastic artist
who is actively involved in China’s
avant-garde art movement. He
studied mural painting at the
Shandong University of Art and
was one of the only two people in
Shandong Province who radically
experimented with imported styles
of contemporary art during that period. From 1996
to 1999, Qin Feng taught at the Berlin University
of Art while further exploring the possibilities of
synthesizing modernism and the ink-painting
tradition. In 1999, he moved to Boston where
he currently resides. Before brushing ink on
numerous layers of xuan paper, Qin often dyes it
with tea and coffee as a metaphorical gesture of
two cultures blending together. His fluid ink and
dynamic brush technique has developed into a
style that is related to Abstract Expressionism in
its openness to chance and emphasis on gesture.
His works are a persuasive manifestation of the
vitality of the calligraphic tradition.
Qiu Anxiong
b. 1972, Chengdu, China
Qiu Anxiong was born in
Chengdu in the southwest
of China. Chengdu was
one of the few cities in
China during the 1980s
to host a vibrant and experimental art-scene
pioneered by two avant-garde artists who were
later to become famous – Zhang Xiaogung and Ye
Yongqing. In this fertile atmosphere Qiu opened a
bar which became the hub for blossoming underground music and art circles in Sichuan and where
much of the groundwork for the internationally
recognised Chinese avant-garde of the 1990s was
laid. By 2003 Qiu had spent some years in Germany graduating from the Fine Arts Department
of the University of Kassel where he absorbed the
stylistic and conceptual innovations of western
modernism at the same time as he pursued his
study of Chinese traditional culture. He returned
to Shanghai in 2004 and began teaching at Shanghai Normal University which he continues to do
so. Qiu Anxiong’s work ranges widely across a
broad spectrum of painting, animation and video
installation. The roots of his aesthetic remain
190
in the ink painting tradition bolstered by a deep
reading in the Chinese classics. He is therefore
able to highlight the creative interaction between
past and present in works which evoke a dreamy,
other-world quality of ancient mythology in
acutely contemporary terms thus highlighting the
contradiction and absurdity of the world around
us. The central themes defined by these works and
his dismay at the consequences of the new China’s
emergence – social disintegration, brutal urbanisation and uncontained environmental degradation.
Qiu Deshu
b. 1948, Shanghai
Qiu Deshu, one of the
few Chinese artists
to have received
international recognition since the 1980s, studied
traditional ink painting and seal carving when
he was a child. However, the Great Proletarian
Cultural Revolution interrupted his career in art,
and he was sent to work at a plastics factory. In
the late 1970s, Qiu picked up ink painting again
and cofounded the Grass Painting Society (Caocao
huashe), one of China’s first experimental art
groups of the post-Mao period. In the early 1980s,
he developed his signature style of works called
‘fissuring’ (liebian). This is a metaphor for the
artist’s life and artistic career, both of which have
experienced dramatic disruptions and setbacks. In
these works, he applies vivid colours to xuan paper,
which he tears up; Qiu mounts the fragments to a
base layer, often leaving space between, to create
a pictorial field with the ‘cracks’ that he feels are
symbolic of life’s journey.
Qiu Jie
b. 1961, Shanghai
Qiu Jie started to learn
painting by copying
illustrations of the Red
Guards in newspapers at
the age of ten. In 1981, he
graduated from the School of Decorative Arts in
Shanghai and began to work as an art designer
in the Shanghai Instrument Factory. In 1989,
recommended by two Swiss artists, Qiu Jie
studied multimedia art at the School of Fine
Arts in Geneva. Currently living and working
in China, France, and Switzerland, Qiu uses the
simplest tools – graphite pencil and paper – to
express his concern about the life experience of
the generation in China who went through the
Cultural Revolution. Signing with the sobriquet
‘The Mountain Man Who Lives Outside His
Hometown’ (Taxiang shanren), Qiu Jie’s works
connect his accomplished draftsmanship to the
style of the propaganda posters from the Cultural
Revolution era.
Qiu Zhijie
b. 1969, Zhangzhou, Fujian
Qiu Zhijie is one of the most talented and
versatile artists in contemporary China.
He studied printmaking at the Zhejiang
Academy of Fine Arts, Hangzhou, and
graduated in 1992; teaching there now, he
is one of the most influential exponents
of new media in China. Qiu’s oftenconceptual works come in photography,
video, performance, stone-carving,
painting, or calligraphy; he is also an influential
curator, critic, and teacher. Many of his works
deeply explore the nature and meaning of the
cultural tradition he has inherited. For Monument I:
Revolutionary Slogans on Economic Issues, 2007, Qiu
utilized one of the most traditional techniques –
ink rubbing – to convey slogans exploring public
involvement in economic development. The ironic
mixture of an ancient method of transmitting
texts with contemporary content provokes people
to rethink the relationship between tradition and
today’s society. He is currently the curator for the
2012 Shanghai Biennale.
Tong Yang-tze
b. 1942, Shanghai
Tong Yang-tze studied
calligraphy with her
father when she was
a child. She received her BFA from the National
Taiwan Normal University, and later studied
oil painting and ceramics at the University of
Massachusetts, where she received an MFA degree
in 1970. Tong, who currently lives and works
in Taiwan, has gradually developed her own
visual language that benefits from her previous
training in different media and art-forms. Tong
creates powerful calligraphic works in cursive
style (caoshu) that reach toward the extremes of
abstraction. Characters are dramatically distorted
but usually remain decipherable so that there is
a sustained dialogue between content and style,
meaning and autonomous gesture. Variations in
the width and character of the lines/strokes serve
to sustain the effect of movement generated in
the execution of each character and contribute to
dramatic overall visual effects.
Wang Dongling
b. 1945, Jiangsu Province
Wang Dongling is one of the most
successful and gifted of the modernist
calligraphers in China and one of the
few who has for many years enjoyed
an international reputation. At 17, he
was admitted into the Department of
Fine Arts at Nanjing Normal University and studied calligraphy. During the Cultural Revolution,
Wang survived by writing big-character posters,
a job that ironically provided him with an artistic freedom not available at the university. After
the Cultural Revolution he attended the Zhejiang
Academy of Fine Arts in Hangzhou, where he is
currently vice-chair of the Calligraphy Department. Wang began developing a new form of
composition that synthesizes traditional Chinese
aesthetics with modernist art. Usually there are
no decipherable Chinese characters in his works,
which have become closer to abstract painting
than to calligraphy. Wang Dongling has been
enormously influential on the whole development
of contemporary calligraphy and ink painting.
Wang Jinsong
b. 1963, Heilongjiang Province
Wang Jinsong acquired a reputation in the early 1980s as one of the
most interesting in the avant-garde
movement that sprang up during a
period of opening and reform. Wang
graduated from the Chinese Painting Department
of the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts in 1987, but
he first became known for his edgy oil paintings
in a mode dubbed Cynical Realism, which acutely
and wittily commented on the malaise in contemporary Chinese society. He also examined the
issues of contemporary Chinese society through
a series of photographs that are juxtaposed
repetitively. His current interest in traditional ink
painting may seem surprising after his emphatically avant-garde work of previous years. But these
beautiful and spontaneous paintings, free of any
explicit social content, reveal the breadth of Wang
Jinsong’s cultural interests and the connection he
feels with the rich legacy of China’s past.
191
Wang Tiande
b. 1960, Shanghai
Wang Tiande is one of the
most innovative calligraphers
in China: he recently created
calligraphic works by the
planting of new grass or by
having sheep eat grass away
in the shape of characters. A
graduate of the Chinese Painting
Department at the Zhejiang Academy of Fine
Arts in 1988, he is now dean and professor at the
Art and Design Department at Fudan University
in Shanghai. Wang’s art is a serious meditation
on the precarious relation between permanence
and fleeting efflorescence, between the material
and the immaterial, between past and present,
between tradition and contemporaneity. He
started to create his Digital series when he was on
an artist’s residency in Paris in 2002. His direct
encounter with contemporary art, especially
conceptual art, in Paris not only inspired him to
new approaches in his own work but also further
convinced him of his love for the language of ink.
Wei Ligang
b. 1964, Datong, Shanxi
Wei Ligang has been at the forefront
of contemporary ink painting’s
development from its beginning,
and he was one of the organizers
of the June 1999 ‘Bashu Parade’
exhibition. Wei studied mathematics
at the Nankai University in Tianjin
and he became the president of the
calligraphy society at the university.
After graduating in 1985, Wei was
assigned to teach mathematics at
the Teachers’ Training School in the industrial
city of Taiyuan, but he succeeded in persuading
the school to allow him to teach calligraphy
in 1988. His training in mathematics has
contributed to his abstract form of calligraphy.
Wei Ligang constantly deconstructs and re-forms
the characters in his paintings while hinting at
traditional script-forms (such as formal, running,
or ‘grass’ script), thus declaring his deep roots
in Chinese culture. His works were included in
the pioneering exhibition organized by Gordon
Barrass at the British Museum in 2002.
192
Wei Qingji
b. 1971, Qingdao, Shandong
Wei Qingji studied Chinese
painting at Nankai University
in Tianjin. In 2003, he
graduated from the Mural
Department of the Central
Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing. His immediate
move back to Guangzhou plays an important role
in his art as Guangzhou (Canton) was the city in
China most exposed to European and later New
World influences. Wei has utilized his profound
knowledge of traditional brush-and-ink painting
to develop a new and personal aesthetic based on
the dramatic incorporation of iconic brand images
from the West into a starkly pristine pictorial
field. He often mixes several techniques, such
as splashing of ink, writing, rubbing, tearing,
collage, scratching, spraying, and so on, and lets
intentional and accidental visual effects work
out an aesthetic among themselves. Reminiscent
of Anglo/American Pop art, Wei’s works have
disrupted the long-established cultural connection
between Chinese civilization and ink painting.
Wenda Gu
b. 1955, Shanghai
Wenda Gu moved to New York
in 1987, and has become one of
the highest-profile members of
the Chinese diaspora. Although
studying traditional Chinese
painting, Gu became one of
the leading figures in the New
Wave art movement of the mid1980s, when he utilized the technical skills he
acquired in school for his iconoclastic painting
and calligraphy projects. Ink Valley and White
Water, 1986, exemplifies Gu’s revolt against the
tyranny of the traditional aesthetics of brush
and ink (bimo) by subverting it. The large-scale
and unconventional composition of the painting
has created a spiritual and surreal world, which
reflects the mentality of the Chinese society and
idealist art of the 1980s, when huge social changes
took place. By combining different character
components, Gu has invented unreadable
characters to investigate the power of the written
word. In most of these works, he places these
powerfully symbolic pseudo-characters in vast
surreal spaces.
Wilson Shieh
b. 1970, Hong Kong
Wilson Shieh currently lives in
Hong Kong. His family are third
generation traders and his hometown – Kennedy Town – is a melting-pot of Chinese, Portuguese,
British, and South Asian cultures.
He studied traditional (gonbi) ink
painting at the Chinese University
of Hong Kong where he later, in
2002, received an MFA. His choice
of the meticulous ‘fine-line’ drawing technique
and pure palette of gongbi - a style that reached its
height of perfection and popularity during the 8th
century Tang dynasty - highlights the aesthetic
tension between his deep study of the past and
the ironic, and often touching examination of the
present. Wilson Shieh was a 19 year-old student in
1989 at the time of Tiananmen Square and there is
no doubt that his vision of the world, and of China,
has been profoundly marked by the spontaneous
violence of the massacre. It is perhaps not surprising therefore that his work, so ostensibly playful
and charming, carries the disturbingly contemporary charge which defines him as one of the most
thoughtful and original artists working today.
Wu Yi
b. 1966, Changchun, Jilin
Wu Yi studied traditional
Chinese painting under
Lu Chen at the Central
Academy of Fine Arts,
Beijing, and received his MFA degree in 1993;
he currently is teaching in the Mural Painting
Department at the Central Academy. Wu’s early
works are charged with heavy philosophical or
religious implications, as if they are requests
for people to reexamine themselves. Despite
his mastery of ink painting, Wu Yi’s later work
has become simpler and rigorously economical.
Many of his paintings are cartoon-like depictions
of the Chinese ‘establishment,’ whether the
military or the government bureaucracy, which
he mocks with merciless humour. The placement
of the protagonists against an engulfing blank
background also hints at the insignificance of
their puny efforts seen in the larger context
of history.
Wucius Wong
b. 1936, Taiping, Guangdong
Wong moved to Hong Kong in 1938
and he started to study ink painting
at the age of fourteen. He received a
BFA and an MFA from the Maryland
Institute College of Art in Baltimore,
where he studied art and design.
Wong returned to Hong Kong for
teaching and curatorial work after
graduation, but has travelled frequently between Hong Kong and the United
States. Wong explores the synthesis of traditional Chinese aesthetics, western culture, and
contemporary design. His dense and mysterious
landscapes, often in panorama or bird’s-eye view,
have succeeded in recapturing the grandeur of the
Chinese monumental landscape of the 10th and
11th centuries. At the same time, his subtle and
complex sense of design and resourceful lighting
produce works of striking originality and contemporary relevance. He is an inspired teacher whose
influence is apparent in much of the experimental
work being produced in Hong Kong to this day.
Xu Bing
b. 1955, Chongqing
One of the most inventive
and internationally famous
of Chinese artists, Xu Bing
grew up in a scholarly family
on a university campus in
Beijing. From 1975 to 1977,
he was relocated by the government to the
countryside to work on farms and other rural
institutions and this experience has had a strong
impact on his art. He subsequently enrolled in the
printmaking program at the Central Academy of
Fine Arts in Beijing, receiving his BA in 1981 and
his MFA in 1987. In 1990, invited by the University
of Wisconsin-Madison, he moved to the United
States. He then lived in New York before returning,
in 2003, to Beijing, where he currently is vice
president of the Central Academy of Fine Arts. The
thrust of all Xu Bing’s work, from installation to
calligraphy, is to express his deep skepticism about
the integrity of language as well as the complexity
of national and cultural intercourse.
193
Xu Lei
b. 1963, Nantong, Jiangsu
Xu Lei studied Chinese ink
painting at the Department of
Fine Arts of the Nanjing Art
Academy and was a professional
painter affiliated with the Jiangsu
Institute of Chinese Painting.
Based in Bejing, he now works at
the Graduate School of the China
Art Academy, serves as the art
director of the Today Art Museum, and is editorin-chief of the magazine Classics. Xu was an active
participant in the innovative art movements
in China in the late 1980s. He returned to
ink painting in the 1990s. Well-versed in the
classic fine-line (gongbi, detailed and elaborate)
style of painting and influenced by traditional
art, principally Song painting and woodcut
illustrations from the Ming period, as well as by
Surrealism and conceptual art, Xu Lei’s beautiful
paintings rarely incorporate human figures. His
work was included in the major 1998 exhibition
A Century in Crisis: Modernity and Tradition in the
Art of Twentieth-Century China organized by Julia
F. Andrews and Kuiyi Shen at the Guggenheim
Museum in New York.
Yang Jiechang
b. 1956, Foshan, Guangdong
Yang Jiechang
graduated from the
Chinese Painting
Department of that
province’s Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts in
1982. Afterwards he spent two years formally
studying Daoism under the Master Huangtao at
Mount Luofu, which had a profound influence
on his art. Upon his marriage to the writer and
critic Martina Köppel-Yang, he moved to Paris
in 1988. Yang’s extensive training in Chinese
and European artistic traditions has given Yang
Jiechang uncommon versatility: his works
range from painting, collage, and sculpture to
multimedia installation, site-specific works,
and performance. Yang gained international
recognition through the exhibition of his large
monochrome ink paintings in Les Magiciens de
la Terre at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris
in 1989. He also exhibited in the landmark China
Avant/Garde exhibition at Beijing’s China National
Art Gallery that year.
194
Yang Yanping
b. 1934, Nanjing, Jiangsu
Yang Yanping is one of
the most distinguished
contemporary ink
painters from China.
She studied architecture at Tsinghua University,
where she married one of her painting teachers, Zeng Shanqing. After she graduated in 1958,
and a brief spell of teaching factory design, Yang
decided to study art at the Oil Painting Department of the Beijing Art Academy. At the same
time she studied traditional Chinese painting on
her own. In 1986, both Yang and her husband were
awarded fellowships from the State University of
New York at Stony Brook, and they have remained
in America ever since. Yang is well versed in
many traditional styles but has excelled in depicting the lotus flower, a symbol of purity, transience, the fragility of nature, and the potential for
regeneration. Yang’s ideals of high visual quality
and an artistic autonomy allows her to embrace
modernism without jettisoning the lessons from
the classical Chinese world of high culture.
Yao Jui-chung
b. 1969, Taipei, Taiwan
Yao Jui-chung is now
recognised as one of the most
innovative Chinese artists
of his generation. His work
runs against the current of
much of the mainstream
avant-garde in its unabashed
delight in producing a visual experience for the
viewer that is beautiful as well as intellectually
provocative. He is well-known for his works on
paper, as well as his versatile experiments in
photography, installation, performance, video and
sculpture. He is also a curator, art-critic and art
historian and has been dedicated to evaluating
and promoting Taiwanese contemporary art both
in Taiwan and internationally. He graduated
from Taipei National University of the Arts and
continues to teach at the University. He also
represented Taiwan at the Venice Biennale in 1997.
Yuan Jai
b. 1941, Chongqing,
Sichuan
Yuan Jai studied
Chinese painting
at the National
Taiwan Normal University and received her MA
degree from the Catholic University of Leuven in
1966. In 1968 she received her doctorate from the
Royal Institute for the Preservation of Cultural
Artifacts. Yuan’s early interest in Art Deco, Art
Nouveau, Cubism and Surrealism were fundamental to her later stylistic development. Upon
returning to Taiwan, Yuan Jai worked for decades
in the Department of Antiquities at the National
Palace Museum in Taipei. Her own paintings were
originally inspired by landscapes in thick mineral pigments and often with primitive-looking or
archaistic compositions, in the so-called blue-andgreen style, which were often on display at the
museum. The main pictorial source for her work
has been examples of the master paintings in the
museum, but Yuan Jai has integrated her own very
contemporary structure to create artworks that
have been streamlined into geometric elements of
vibrant colour.
Zeng Shanqing
b. 1932, Beijing
Zeng Shanqing
graduated from the
Central Academy of Fine
Arts, where he studied
under the distinguished painter Xu Beihong
(1896–1953), whose ideal of combining Chinese ink
painting with European styles of realistic drawing
has deeply influenced Zeng. After finishing his
graduate school in 1952, Zeng taught at the Central
Academy. From that time, Zeng also lectured
in the Department of Architecture at Tsinghua
University; there he met and married his wife, the
painter Yang Yanping. Zeng’s career was disrupted
by the Cultural Revolution in the mid-1960s, and
he was not able to resume teaching and painting
until 1976. In 1986, both Zeng and his wife went as
fellows to the State University of New York at Stony
Brook, and they have remained on Long Island
ever since. Like his teacher, Xu Beihong, Zeng
Shanqing’s best-known subject is the horse. His
powerful brushwork and dynamic compositional
rhythms embody his profound sympathy for the
values of political liberty.
Zeng Xiaojun
b. 1954, Beijing
Zeng Xiaojun graduated from the
Central Academy of Fine Arts
in 1981. He moved to the United
States in 1983 and lived for the next
fourteen years in Boston, where
he exhibited and taught until 1997.
Drawing inspiration from the
literati landscape painting tradition, especially
works by Shen Zhou (1427–1509) and Wen Zhengming (1470–1559) of the Ming period, Zeng extracts
rocks and trees from the context of landscape and
depicts them as isolated objects. Employing a delicate balance between dry and wet, lines and dots,
his meticulously executed paintings remind us of
the Chinese intellectuals’ fascination with these
subjects as embodiments of their own spiritual
perseverance in times of difficulty and turbulence.
Together the work of Liu Dan, Zeng Xiaojun’s ink
paintings are a powerful example of how the high
culture of traditional China can be reinvigorated
for contemporary society.
Zhang Chun Hong
b. 1971, Shenyang, Liaoning
Zhang Chun Hong grew up
in an artistic family. Hong
displayed her gift at an early
age, and she was admitted into
the high school affiliated to
Beijing’s prestigious Central
Academy of Fine Arts at the age
of 15, when she won a national
competition. She continued her
study at the Chinese Painting Department at the
Central Academy until 1994, where she focused on
meticulous figurative painting. In 1996, Hong came
to the United States. Hong received an MFA degree
from California State University, Sacramento, in
2002 and another from the University of California,
Davis, in 2004. Currently teaching at the University
of Kansas, Hong has made art about intercultural
and gender issues, and is meticulously portraying
long hair as a way of examining a woman’s
complete life cycle.
195
Zhang Yu
b. 1959, Tianjin
Zhang Yu has been a
key figure in the field
of experimental ink
painting since the 1990s.
He graduated from Tianjin
Academy of Arts and Crafts
in 1988 and is now associate professor and
dean of the Artistic Design Department at
Tianjin Traffic Vocational College. Zhang took
up printmaking in his early years and later
changed to ink painting. He has pushed the
boundaries of ink to an area close to imported
modern abstraction. In his Divine Light Series,
Zhang shifts the traditional emphasis of
brush to the material of ink itself in his use of
rubbing/frottage, collage, and paper tearing.
In this way, the painter’s control has been
challenged, and the work emerges from the
natural variations created by the ink itself. In
his role as publisher and exhibition organizer,
Zhang Yu has been profoundly influential on
the evolution of modernist ink painting in
China over the past twenty years.
Zheng Chongbin
b. 1961, Shanghai
Zheng Chongbin studied
in China before traveling
to the United States
where he received an
MFA from the San
Francisco Art Institute
in 1991. He received his BFA from the Chinese
Painting Department, Zhejiang Academy of
Fine Arts (now China Academy of Fine Arts),
Hangzhou in 1984 and subsequently taught at
the China Academy of Fine Arts from 1984 to
1988. Like many other contemporary Chinese
artists, he is bi-cultural, spending his time
between China and the US. His work reflects
influences from both cultures, and his richly
textured ink surface confronts issues of form
as well as a loftier metaphysical dimension.
His recent projects include a commission
for The Sand’s Corporation at Marina Bay
Sands Integrated Resort in Singapore and
a commission for the San Francisco Asian
Art Museum.
196
Zhu Daoping
b. 1949, Huangyan,
Zhejiang
Zhu Daoping
graduated from
the Fine Arts Department of Nanjing Art
Academy in 1977. In 1973, Zhu’s paintings
were first exhibited in the annual national
art exhibition, and since 1998 he has been
the Nanjing Institute of Calligraphy and
Painting’s president. In 2004, he received the
first prestigious Huang Binhong Award, named
for the leading literati painter of the early
20th century. Having grown up near Nanjing,
Zhu’s art is closely related to the New Jinling
(Nanjing) School, painters deeply influenced by
Fu Baoshi (1904–1965), who revivified the local
landscape tradition of southern China and the
Yangtze River. While the dotted surfaces in his
paintings are reminiscent of the style of earlier
Nanjing masters such as Mei Qing (1623–1697)
and Shitao (1642–c. 1707), Zhu goes further by
rediscovering and emphasizing the relationship
between dots, lines, and the pictorial surface:
he has created a modern aesthetic that is still
rooted in the long Chinese tradition of painting.
Index of Artists
Chen KeZhan 陈克湛
48, 50
Chun-yi Lee (Li Junyi) 李君毅40
Fay Ku (Gu Yonghui) 顧詠惠118
Gao Xingjian 高行建
120
Gu Gan 古干92
Huang Zhiyang 黄致阳160
Jia Youfu 贾又福
132, 134
Leung Kui Ting
梁巨廷
150
(Liang Juting) Li Huayi 李华弋
32, 34
Li Jin 李津
128, 130
Li Xubai 李虚白
140
Liu Dan 刘丹
74, 76, 78
Liu Kuo-sung
刘国松
106, 108, 110
(Liu Guosong) Liu Qinghe 刘庆和
52, 54
Liu Wei 刘炜
68
Lo Ch’ing (Luo Qing)
罗青
80, 82
Lu Hao 卢昊
102, 104
Miao Xiaochun
缪晓春
66
Pan Gongkai 潘公凯
144
Pan Hsin-hua
潘信华
152
(Pan Xinhua) Qin Feng 秦风
94, 96, 98
Qiu Anxiong 邱黯雄
46
Qiu Deshu 仇德树
168, 170
Qiu Jie 邱节
Qiu Zhijie 邱志杰
Tong Yang-tze
董阳孜
(Dong Yangzi) Wang Dongling 王冬龄
Wang Jinsong 王劲松
Wang Tiande 王天德
Wei Ligang 魏立刚
Wei Qingji 魏青吉
Wenda Gu 谷文达
Wilson Shieh 石家豪
Wu Yi 武艺
Wucius Wong
王无邪
(Wang Wuxie) Xu Bing 徐冰
Xu Lei 徐累
Yang Jiechang 杨诘苍
Yang Yanping 杨燕屏
Yao Jui-chung 姚瑞中
Yuan Jai (Yuan Zhan) 袁旃
Zeng Shanqing 曾善庆
Zeng Xiaojun 曾小俊
Zhang Chun Hong
张春红
Zhang Yu 张羽
Zheng Chongbin 鄭重賓
Zhu Daoping 朱道平
88, 90
122, 124, 126
154
84, 86
136, 138
100
146, 148
164
172, 174, 176
36, 38
70, 72
116
42, 44
64
156, 158
166
162
56
62
112, 114
178
58
142
60
197
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
For their kind permission to loan works in their collections:
Paul and Annette Beyle, Paris; Qiu Anxiong,
Shanghai; Eskenazi Ltd, London; Michael Goedhuis,
London; Wenda Gu, Shanghai; John Hindemith,
London; Kuni Ishida, Toyko; Chen KeZhan, Singapore;
Elizabeth Ku, Shanghai; Nanshun Shanfang Collection,
Singapore; Olenska Collection, Geneva; Origo
Foundation, Zurich; Private Collection; Wilson Shieh,
Hong Kong; Mr & Mrs Wilbur Ross, New York
We thank our generous sponsors:
Anonymous
Hashem Khosrovani
Mr & Mrs Wilbur Ross
Official Contractors for
Ink: The Art of China: Aubury & Associates
This catalogue was produced for the exhibition
Ink: The Art of China at the Saatchi Gallery
from 19 June to 5 July 2012.
Saatchi Gallery, Duke of York’s HQ, King’s Road
London SW3 4RY
Ink is Chinese ink unless otherwise noted;
most works are on xuan paper.
In the preceding pages, the relative width of the artwork is indicated by a line placed on a standard ruler
whose full length is 8 metres (261/4 feet).
Frontispiece: Qiu Jie, Mao in the Cotton Field, 2007
Page 30-31: Pan Hsin-hua, One Day, 2000
Editor: Michael Goedhuis
assistant editor: Larissa Lopez
Design: Ornan Rotem
Print and binding: Graphicom SRL, Verona
© Michael Goedhuis, 2012. No part of this publication
may be reproduced in any form whatsoever without
the prior permission of the publisher.
All images reproduced with permission
ISBN: 978-0-904221-19-0
MICHAEL GOEDHUIS PUBLISHING
London 2012
www.michaelgoedhuis.com