g. on K g on f H o ity rs ve ni U se ne hi C e Th s, rt A e in f F t o en tm ar ep D Distilled Desires — On Love and 20 Longing in Hon Chi-fun’s Works 20 © Kaitlin Chan

A cartoonist and curator from , who co-curated “Hon Chi-fun: A Story of Light” at Asia Society Hong Kong Center during her tenure (2017–2019) as assistant curator.

227 Distilled Desires — On Love and Longing in Hon Chi-fun’s Works

Hon Chi-fun (1922–2019), a pioneering modernist of Hong Kong art, was best known for his otherworldly airbrush paintings that marked a dramatic shift from representational to abstract imagery in the city’s painting scene. However, the passionate undercurrents of desire underlying g. his works, and how his work intersects with sexuality and personal expression, are under-explored n in the scholarly realm. This paper will explore how Hon’s abstractions of human bodies lay the o K foundations for the corporeal form to be further explored in Hong Kong art, and deconstructedg notions of propriety and respectability. on f H o ty Hon’s Early Life (1922–1960) si er Hon was born in Pok Fu Lam in 1922, the eldest of his family’s eight children.iv His father worked as one of Hong Kong’s first taxi-cab drivers, his mother a homemaker. Hisn parents did not allow U limited finances to dissuade Hon’s interest in culture, initially enrollinge him in traditional Chinese private school and even amassing a small amateur antiquities collection.es From his early familiarity with classic Confucian texts, to his cross-cultural, bi-lingualn education at the prestigious Wah hi Yan College, Hon was a self-initiated artist, eager to buildC on his career despite not having had the opportunity to attend university. He excelled academicallye and had grand plans to attend the . Unfortunately, Hon’s graduationTh from secondary school coincided with the Japanese Imperial Army’s invasion of Hongs Kong, in 1941. He subsequently spent his twenties and early thirties working on andr tGuangdong in the export/import trade, where his family had sought refuge from the war. In Aa personal essay, he refers to this decade of his life as “a period of loss and ambiguity.”1 e in F Hon returned to Hong Kong ino 1956,f joining the Post Office and getting married that same year. He began painting as an escapet from the routines of everyday life. His first paintings reflected what was in vogue in Hongen Kong at the time: plein air landscapes capturing the craggy shoreline of Sai Kung and quainttm village homes at the foot of Lion’s Rock. (Plates 1.1 and 1.2) During his day job as a postalar inspector, he sped around on his motorcycle, searching for the next scenic vista. A “Sundayep painter,” he honed his artistic skills by painting from observation on nights and weekends, D alongside a group of fellow emerging artists. Not long after, his works were included0 in group exhibitions at spaces such as St. Joseph’s Cathedral. After all, this was before any purpose-built02 institution for art even existed in Hong Kong. Hon and his peers would soon be 2part of the generation that opened possibilities for professional exhibitions and tertiary art education© in the city. Each presentation of Hon’s work buoyed his ambitions to develop his creative voice.

1 Hon Chi-fun, “My Own Story,” in Space and Passion: The Art of Hon Chi-fun (Hong Kong: Choi Yan-chi, 2000): 20.

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Hong Kong was then a Crown Colony of the British Empire, and it was up to Hon and his peers to begin dialogues about the purpose and necessity of art and culture. Hon joined the “Modern Literature and Art Association” (1958–1964) and then the modernist collective “Circle Art Group”g . (1964–1972), the latter of which encouraged and inspired him to question representation andn begin creating work with more opaque modes of signification. These groups were formed outo of K a desire to produce publications and exhibitions that enlivened the city’s cultural scene.g Their regular meetings were lively and passionate, filled with debates on trends and styleson in writing and art. Being around like-minded peers emboldened Hon to expand his repertoireH and sources of inspiration. Hon’s generation, in the words of his partner Choi Yan-chi, “was underprivilegedf and o 2 lacking in opportunities. They tried their best, to make the impossible happen.”y Besides Wucius Wong, no one in the Circle Art Group was trained in art at the universitysit level. They referred to themselves as amateur painters, as they all maintained full-time jobse outsider their art practice. Due to their pioneering practices in abstraction and their connectionsi tov the rise of formal institutions in Hong Kong, the Circle Art Group is considered to be first modernistn avant-garde art group in U Hong Kong. e es The Circle Art Group’s self-education was high-spiritedin and executed collectively. They ordered Artforum in the mail, poring over the obvious influenceh of East Asian calligraphy on Abstract C Expressionist artists like Franz Kline and Roberte Motherwell. Frequenting the only art bookstore in town, Zi Yun Shu Po in Tsim Sha Tsui,h they would read voraciously (in art journalist Chloe T 3 Chu’s words, “breaking the books’ staples”s, ) until they were kicked out. In the 1950s, there were few newspapers or magazines in Hongrt Kong wrote about art extensively. Everything felt possible as Hon and his peers pioneered aA culture of organizing exhibitions and discussing art on a critical and professional level. e in f F t o Swinging Sixtiesen and Hong Kong Modernism (1960s) tm After fivear years of painting landscapes, Hon’s artistic career took a marked shift. Inspired by the Newe pInk movement led by Lu Shoukun (Lui Shou-kwan), as well as the bright Pop aesthetic of Andy D Warhol, he began painting large, mixed-media ink works, before moving into silkscreen 0on canvas. Overlaying Buddhist sutras with personal photographs, news headlines and images of 02 go-go dancers, his works were bold exercises in configuring an individual at the nexus of various 2 convergences: Hong Kong, China and the British Empire, Abstract Expressionism, Calligraphy and © American Pop. Hon’s experimentations were well-received, with his art career flourishing in the swinging sixties. In 1962, He participated in the inaugural group exhibition Hong Kong Art Today at the City Museum and Art Gallery, which later became the in 1965.

2 Choi Yan-chi, interview by writer, Hong Kong, January 4, 2020. 3 Chloe Chu, “Full Circle: Hon Chi Fun,” in ArtAsiaPacific (May/June 2018): 63.

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He was invited to hold his first solo exhibition at Chatham Galleries, the first gallery in Hong Kong, opened by American-born teacher Dorothy Swan in 1962. The Circle Art Group continued to participate in exhibitions together, with their works reaching as far as São Paulo4 and .5 . ng Hon and his peers in the Circle Art Group continually questioned their Chinese heritage with o K regards to their Hong Kong context, engaging in heated discussions how cultural influences andg iconography played out in their work. Some of Hon’s darker compositions from the beginningon of the 1960s, which utilized large brushstrokes in Chinese ink and found stone objects (PlateH 2), reflect this alienation. As Man Kit-wah Eva writes, “The painter’s work opens up a ‘distantiating’f 6 o act of meditation and functions as the poetry of an alienated and displaced subject.”y In addition to configuring their cultural identities amidst British colonization, members ofsi tthe Circle Art Group, including Hon, also sought to challenge another taboo in art at the time:er the expression of sexual desire and depictions of human bodies. v ni U e es Sexual Liberation, New York City and Post-Fellowship Lifen (1970s) hi C The last year that the Circle Art Group exhibited togethere was in 1972. Hon was back in Hong Kong after his John D. Rockefeller III Cultural TFellowshiph in New York City in 1970. This fellowship was one of several opportunities thats, changed Hon’s life forever. At age forty-six in the year 1969, Hon travelled to andr Berlint upon the invitation of the British Council to visit museums and exhibit his own paintings. A This journey marked Hon’s first time seeing classical and modern Western paintings in person,e and it inspired him to push the material parameters of in his work and the picture plane. Then F came the JDR III Fellowship, which named Hon as the first artist from Hong Kong to receiveof the prestigious opportunity to study in New York City. Having a sustained interest in silkscreen-printing,t he decided to enroll in Pratt Institute to study lithography and etching. In New York,en he participated in several group exhibitions, and even hosted a solo presentation of his printstm at Willard Gallery, founded by Marian Willard Johnson. Hon finally felt included in the internationalar circuits of art-making which he had long-admired from his home base in Hong Kong.ep D After his20 studies at Pratt had concluded, Hon sought to extend his travels before his return. Making trips2 0to Europe, South America and South Asia in 1972 allowed him to meet influential artists such © 4 Wucius Wong was a member of the Taiwanese delegation in the 1961 São Paulo Biennale. Michelle Wong, “In Focus: Circle Art Group,” in Ocula, March 23, 2018. https://ocula.com/magazine/reports/in-focus- circle-art-group/. 5 The Luz Gallery hosted exhibitions of Circle Art Group’s work in 1966 and 1967. Wong, “In Focus.” 6 Man Kit-wah Eva, “The Notion of ‘Orientalism’ in the Modernization Movement of of Hong Kong Artists in 1960s: The Case of Hon Chi-fun,” in Filozofski vestnik XXII, no. 2 (2001): 164.

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as the famed British sculptor Henry Moore and celebrated Chinese painter Zao Wuki in Paris. He also admired the ruins of Buddhist temples in India, Nepal and Kashmir, which resonated with his desires for spiritual and emotional nourishment. With renewed vigor and inspiration fromg . having lived abroad for the first time, he began his next chapter in Hong Kong painting with nair brush (spray paint). He had grown his close-cropped hair long, and started wearing flared jeanso K everywhere. When attending Pratt Institute in New York, he became fascinated with theg graffiti adorning subway cars and buildings. Bringing this technique back to Asia, he soughton to define a new mode of art-making while personally dealing with the fallout from the H end of his first marriage and the disbandment of the Circle Art Group. of y It was during this moment of loss that Choi Yan-chi (1949–) entereds iHon’st life. Choi had just held her first solo exhibition at the Hong Kong USIS Gallery, whiche awardedr her a scholarship to further her studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.i Anv ambitious, inquisitive young artist, she had studied under Lu Shoukun (Lui Shou-kwan) as npart of the Hong Kong University U Extramural Short Courses, and became enthralled with ethe world of artists, who all seemed to lead fascinating lives. Encouraged by her family, she devouredes issues of New Currents7 and The Cape of Good Hope,8 magazines published by the Modernin Literature and Art Association featuring criticism and poetry. Despite the challenges of maintainingh a long-distance relationship, Choi and Hon began a mutually supportive partnership thatC would last the rest of Hon’s days on earth. he T 9 Hon had visited the world’s first Erotics ,Art exhibition in the summer of 1969, the year of the moon landing and the infamous Woodstockrt music festival. Drawing upon the raw sexual energy expressed in the artworks he saw in Hamburg, A as well as the Federico Fellini films he watched with Choi such as Blow Up and 8½ at Studioe One, in the seventies Hon began painting works with allusions to female genitalia; some subtle,in others more explicit. He was also inspired by the Buddhist temple F carvings during his opost-fellowshipf travels, which for him proved that the spiritual and sexual selves could be intertwined.t Far from simply titillating, Hon’s erotic airbrush paintings read as explorations intoen the origins of life. For example, in Chasm Forever (1971) (Plate 3) Hon depicts a round andtm corporeal bodily opening in cool tones of blue, floating in an orb at the center of the composition.ar Combining the 1970s-zeitgeist bohemian spirit with a surreal, biomorphic approach, Hon’sep ethereal airbrush strokes render the human body as if it is beyond the earthly realm. D 20 20 © 7 New Currents was published by the “Modern Literature and Art Association Hong Kong” from 1959-1960 (six issues in total). For more information, see: https://aaa.org.hk/en/collection/search/archive/hong-kong- art-history-research-project-1958-64-the-modern-literature-and-art-association 8 The Cape of Good Hope ran for thirteen issues in total in the early 1960s. 9 Leung Po-shan Anthony and Bernard Luk, eds., Modern Art in a Colony: Narrated by Hon Chi-fun at the Millennium (York, Toronto: York Centre for Asian Research, York University, 2008): 114.

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It is important to consider how Hon and his peers were influenced at this time by calls to disregard moral doctrines and liberate oneself. Hippie culture had arrived in Hong Kong in full-force, with The Beatles playing in every club and mini-skirts and bell-bottoms galore. Hon watched Luchino g. Visconti’s The Stranger (1967), which featured a protagonist thinking both about his father’s n death, and of sexual desire. The movie expressed an unpredictable, passionate current of emotions o K that Hon and his peers, including Choi, identified with strongly. Hong Kong artists became eagerg to explore sexuality and desire in their artworks, with Cheung Yee(1936-2019) sculpting vulva-n like forms in white granite10 and Irene Chou (1924–2011) depicting biomorphic forms in detailedo H 11 and expressive ink paintings that some scholars relate to imagery of the uterus or theof womb. Despite international currents of sexual freedom, Hong Kong could still be describedy at the time as puritanical, with the vast majority of schools being overseen by Catholicsi tand Protestant missionaries, resulting in a lack of sexual education, plus cultural norms arounder sexuality being rarely-discussed in Cantonese and Chinese households. Within this context,iv Hon and his peers’ forays into art examining sexuality were not only taboo, but largely unprecedented.n U e Like the protagonist of The Stranger, Hon was struggling with inheritinges his parents’ traditional values of purity and self-restraint, and seeking to express himselfin in ways that were at odds with what he had been taught. In many ways, his paintings exploringh sexual desire and expression stem C 12 from his suppressed emotions, as releases of agony and eecstasy that he usually kept hidden. While most scholarship about Hon has been devoted to Tphilosophical,h spiritual and cultural questions embedded in his paintings, some critics have referenceds, how passion, and love, were central themes for Hon. In his essay for Hon’s 2007 retrospectivert at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Professor Pei-kai Cheng highlights the erotic A undertones to Hon’s circles. “Hon’s roundness is not a circle of geometric definition norn ethe simplest form in mathematics. The painter lives a life that is full of worldly love and lust…Fi Therefore, we can see the roundness of condensed lust and compressed lust; full of strength,f full of tension.”13 t o In “Star Gazer,” an essaye forn Hon’s 1987 exhibition “Over and Yonder” at The University of Hong Kong, scholar and galleristtm Chang Tsong-zung (Johnson Chang) writes, “For Hon, the sixties were a decade of awakeningar as well as intense anxiety. He plunged into all kinds of experiments with the mind: existentialism,ep mysticism, rebellion against social and sexual codes and so forth… A suppressed Dsexual implication lies underneath many of Hon’s paintings. Sexual energy, as potential chaos, 2suppressed0 by an impersonal icon that is perfectly cool in its geometric sanity, gives Hon’s 20 10© Here, I am referring to Cheung’s artwork COLUMN (1973), an over meter tall white granite pillar with yonic folds and clitoral imagery. 11 Man Kit-wah Eva, “The Universe Is My Body,” in A World Within: The Art and Inspiration of Irene Chou, eds. Katherine Don and Joyce Hei-ting Wong, (Hong Kong: Asia Society Hong Kong Center, 2019): 60–75. 12 Choi Yan-chi, interview by author, Hong Kong, January 4, 2020. 13 Cheng Pei-kai, “Aesthetic Chinese-ness in Hon Chi-fun’s Paintings,” in Space and Passion (Hong Kong: Choi Yan-chi, 2000): 159.

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pictures internal strength.”14 Hon himself was opaque about these themes. In discussion with Shum Long-tin as part of Asia Artg . Archive and the Hong Kong Museum of Art’s “Hong Kong Art History Research Pilot Project,”n Hon noted that while some of his works are undeniably charged with sexual energy, producingo 15 K erotic works “was not his intention.” Now that Hon’s life and artworks have been introducedg and contextualized, it is time to turn towards the works themselves for further analysis.on f H o ty The Origins of Life in Hon’s Chasm Imagery si er Circles became a major motif in Hon’s artworks towards the end ofiv the 1960s. With his iconic red- and-green triptych Bath of Fire (1968), (Plate 4) he cemented circlesn as a device through which he U could layer and combine streams of visual and textual imagerye ranging from the personal (diaries) through to the philosophical (Confucian edicts). In thees 1970s, he began splitting the geometric circle into two halves, as well as painting round spheresn with dark, corporeal recesses down the hi middle. Charting Hon’s transition from flat circlesC to bodily orbs reveals a development in the ideas he was seeking to excavate in his artworks.e Th The silkscreen print Time Untold (1974)s, depicts a blurred grey circle, filling the square composition of the work. The circle is fracturedr talong its vertical axis with a shocking strip of red, with Hon leaving the white paper unmarked A in the center, a central absence. Time Untold reads as a celestial, philosophical collision of planetse and universes, in which a bodily presence emerges from Hon’s in cool, abstract circles. Juxtaposed F with the earlier air brush work Sulptured Silence (1971)(Plate 5), a similar compositiono fwhich features a three-dimensional orb with a grey gradient splitting open to reveal a floating,t smaller blue sphere, Hon could be said to be peeling back the metallic surfaces of his circles toe lookn more inward, towards the body and desire. tm The seventiesar mark Hon’s inclusion of dark, bleeding chasm-like marks, in stark contrast to the sharplyep masked edges of his split circles. The paintings Black Flame (1970) and E is the Name (1971) (Plates D 6.1 and 6.2) are most representative of this turn. Both paintings combine deep shades of 20crimson, blood red and magenta with dark, blooming V-shaped stains. In Black Flame, the canvas 20 is awash with color, the edges of the circle subtly delineated with shadow-like wisps of darker © paint. The dark mark in the center of the circle bleeds profusely outward, spilling into the red form

14 Chang Tsong-zung (Johnson Chang), “Star Gazer,” in Over and Yonder (Hong Kong: Fung Ping Shan Museum, The University of Hong Kong, 1988). 15 Interview with Hon Chi-fun, artist, conducted by Shum Long-tin, Hong Kong Art History Research Project, Asia Art Archive and Hong Kong Museum of Art, 2013. https://cdn.aaa.org.hk/_source/digital_collection/fedora_extracted/35794.pdf.

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and creating an appearance of a deep recess of chasm. The central split draws viewers inward with its utter blackness, which sharply contrasts with the overwhelming warm, embodied palette of the work. E is the Name employs a similar form but with a drastically different compositional style, as g. the red circle with the black chasm is being mirrored and split into concentric vertical strips, giving n a collage-like impression of the sphere growing larger and more out of focus as it escalates in scale. o K Both works conjure yonic imagery in abstract, surprising ways, which transcend the limitationsg of the body and enter a realm of psychedelic, cosmic sexuality. These paintings highlight Hon’son framing of sexual desire within broad concerns of existence, by combining his planet imagery H (which is most often interpreted as a depiction of a person’s lonely soul in the universe)o withf that of a vagina, the origins of life. y sit In contrast to his warmer-toned works, Hon’s darker chasm paintings sucher as Wet Enigma (1972) (Plate 7) are more representative of his oeuvre, with their somber paletteiv and ambiguous approach to imagery. Wet Enigma is awash in navy, with two round formsn emerging towards the U brighter left center of the composition. A blurred, horizontal slit ecuts across the composition, fading and receding into a blue-black shadow which appears ine smany of his works. While the title and out-of-focus marks of the work suggest sensuality iandn desire, Hon’s choice of colors is decidedly somber, more reminiscent of a night sky than ha human body. In this way, he could C be said to challenge what we come to expect from imagese about sex, and how we construe and imagine the parameters around the body. The bodyT hbecomes a galaxy, with sex being mapped as a process to become one with the universe. In sthe, later painting Here and Beyond, Hon’s chasm is rendered even more abstractly, as an orificert between smooth, endless swathes of black and green, tinged with bright yellow. The painting A features a dynamic interplay between blackness and colors, illumination and darkness,ne painted marks and blurred halos. Hon appears to be interested in overlaying sexual motifsFi with abstract beams of light and halos, suggesting that desire and transcendence may bef concurrent modes of being for him. t o en tm Depictions of Breastsar and the Question of Objectification ep In addition Dto yonic imagery, a number of Hon’s works from the early 1970s feature a single breast as the focal0 point. Some are depicted in faint shadows and subtle traces, as in the pastel blues of White02 Karma (1972), a work rendered completely in airbrush. Other paintings, such as the gradient-splattered2 Known Enigma (1971) and the deep-wine toned Karma Focus (1971)(Plates 8.1© and 8.2), feature more delineated forms, with the nipple and weight of the breast articulated with layers of color and shadow. At first glance, a contemporary feminist reading may reduce these works to objectifying fantasies. Indeed, it is worth noting that every member of the Circle Art Group was a man (except for their secretary, Ching Kit-yu), and that Hon was not the only member of the collective to depict women’s body parts in their art.

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That being said, these works cannot be separated from their context, and as highlighted previously, there was a culture of sexual liberation spreading worldwide at the time. When presenting the question of objectification to Choi Yan-chi, she responds with further background. She reiteratesg . how these works broke many taboos about what was acceptable or permissible to depict nin art in Hong Kong. Another point involves how the abstraction of the breast to fill these entireo K compositions (all of which measure more than a meter wide and tall) can be read as ga state of worship, or of celebration: a glorification of women’s bodies as monumental ando powerful,n on the same scale as the planets and floating orbs that populate the rest of Hon’s works.H In keeping with the heady 1970s atmosphere of re-writing sex without shame and as an ecstaticof process, these paintings may serve as reminders to continually challenge our city’s unwillingnessy to acknowledge or address sex and the body in not only our galleries, but in our society.it rs ve ni U The Rise of Biomorphic Art in Hong Kong e es When considering Hon’s work in relation to representationsn of the body in Hong Kong Art, one hi must also acknowledge biomorphic art. ComingC to prominence in the 1930s and beyond, the term biomorphic “comes from combining the Greeke words ‘bios,’ meaning life, and ‘morphe,’ meaning form. Biomorphic forms or images are ones hthat while abstract nevertheless refer to, or evoke, living T 16 forms such as plants and the human body.”s, The British sculptor Henry Moore (1898–1986) was a leading figure in this movement, andrt his landmark 1970 exhibition at the Hong Kong Museum of Art17 sent ripples through local visualA art communities. The exhibition was not only the first large- scale sculpture exhibition in nthee city, but also piqued the interest of Hon and his peers, who sought to incorporate abstract meditationsFi of the body into their work. This connection was evident not only in Hon’s recollections off meeting Moore,18 but additionally through study trips such as the one Hon’s o 19 20 peer Ha Bik Chuen(1925-2009)t took his students to. New Birth II (1992) by fellow Circle Art Group membere Vann Lau (1933–) is one of the representative works of biomorphic art in Hong Kong. In this bronzetm sculpture, Van Lau combined polished and rough strips as a yonic symbol of creation and newa rlife. Irene Chou, another one of Hon’s contemporaries, transformed the landscape of ink paintingep with her surreal and finely-detailed abstractions of corporeal and reproductive imagery. D 0 02 16 “Biomorphic,” Art Terms, Tate, n.d., https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/b/biomorphic. 2 17 Hong Kong Museum of Art. 2012. “50 stories tell the tale of Hong Kong Museum of Art over the past 50 © years (with photos)”. https://www.info.gov.hk/gia/general/201210/11/P201210110304.htm. 18 Choi Yan-chi, interview by author, Hong Kong, January 4, 2020. 19 Ha took his students to a later exhibition of Moore, also at the HKMA, in 1986. For more information, see:https://aaa.org.hk/en/collection/search/archive/ha-bik-chuen-archive-1986-my-impression-the-art-of- henry-moore-in-hong-kong-an-exhibition-of-pupils-pictures. 20 Van Lau, New Birth II, Hong Kong Art Archive, The Faculty of Arts, The University of Hong Kong, January 18, 2018, https://finearts.hku.hk/hkaa/revamp2011/work.php?id=931.

235 Distilled Desires — On Love and Longing in Hon Chi-fun’s Works

While biomorphic art is more closely linked to depictions of cellular/biology related imagery than to sexual organs, the style relates Hon’s erotic works to contemporaneous trends in re-imagining bodies in local art circles at the time. . ng Some of Hon’s artworks share thematic and visual similarities with biomorphic artworks. Between o K Heaven and Dust (1975) utilizes cellular-like imagery that for some may read as a fertilized humang egg. The silkscreen print depicts a glowing red orb floats in the center of a pink and gray sphere.o nA high-contrast black shadow adds dimension to the red orb, while the sphere is very subtly rendered H in soft, glowing strokes of pink that give a luminous, glowing effect. The work’s colorof palette is undeniably bodily, with tones that harken scientific diagrams of organs and layersy of skin. Another screen-print, Hon’s Last Paradise (1973), is entirely awash in red and magenta,sit with subtle gradations giving shape to a glowing blood-red circle within a bigger halo eshape.r While Hon’s circular forms can be read in numerous ways, when considered alongsidei vBetween Heaven and Dust, the deep layers of blood-red in Last Paradise begin to tell a story aboutn an internal passion U flaring up within the body. The works can be configured as abstract,e mysterious interpretations of the bodily processes that create the miracle of life. s ne hi C e Locating the Body and Sex in Contemporary HongTh Kong Art s, Since Hon was creating erotically chargedrt airbrush paintings in the 1970s, many socio- technological changes have impacted howA Hong Kong artists consider sex in art. The proliferation and accessibility of audio-visuale technologies, the dissolution between bodies and in machines, and the city’s ascent to F Asia’s leading hyper-capitalist free-market economy, have all influenced artistic trends. Amidstof today’s hyper-connected landscape, Hon’s paintings appear ever-more corporeal and embodiedt in their analogue grandeur, their scale evidence of Hon’s embodied physicality in ethen creation process (much has been made of the elaborate structures he built to create suchtm large-scale paintings, as airbrushing requires repetitive physical actions over hours at a time).ar Nevertheless, one may draw linkages between Hon’s abstracted forms to key contemporaryep artworks which also employ representations of the body as metaphors for sexuality. InD pioneering new media artist Ellen Pau’s Song of the Goddess (1992), Pau slices distorted0 footage of the beloved Cantonese Opera duo Yam Kim-fai and Pak Suet-sin with footage of two02 women bathing together. The bathing footage is filmed with a hand-held camera, in a domestic2 setting with minimal lighting, the image crops tight around their intimate actions. The juxtaposition© of popular Cantonese operas with lovers in the bath surfaces queer subtexts that position the love between two women not as a spectacle, but simply a reality, as articulated not only in grand operatic stories but also everyday gestures. In this way, Pau’s work can be said to continue Hon’s legacy of creating unflinching artworks that do not apologize for, or skirt around, sex and sexuality. That being said, it is worth noting that Hon’s expression of sexual desire as a heterosexual man has different social stakes than Pau’s work exploring queer desire between two

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women. The sexual desires and sexual identities of women have long been suppressed in society and culture by patriarchal notions of women as property/subservient subjects to men. g. The contemporary research-based artist Angela Su also employs abstractions of the body in hern reflections on the sexual self in society. Informed by her academic background in biochemistry,o her K meticulous and layered visual artworks often depict maligned or transformed versions ofg genitalia and women’s body parts. Her 2014 embroidery work Armillaria mellea, which was commissionedn o 21 by Para Site for an exhibition which also included works by Hon Chi-fun and H Irene Chou, depicts a honey fungus plant combined with an ejaculating phallus, sewno withf hair on sheer fabric reminiscent of the curtains outside Hong Kong’s ubiquitous massagey parlors. In addition to highlighting the omnipresence of various sex-work related businesses sinit Hong Kong’s cityscape, Su’s poetic meditation on sexual pleasure challenges visitor’s discomforter about explicit genitalia and body hair.22 Challenging what is and isn’t labelled obscene, Su’siv work asks profound questions about how our bodies are sexualized in contemporary culture.n Her depiction of a sewn vagina U in Whip Stitch (2019), from her series titled “Sewing togethere my split mind,” activates the rich political history of sewing one’s body as a form of critiquinges social norms about whose bodies deserve care or pleasure. Su’s works illuminate how anin awareness of the social conditioning around women’s bodies has developed since the days of Hon’sh burgeoning artistic practice. The subtlety C and layered imagery of her embroidered piecese extend the conversations that Hon and his peers were having about how to depict sex amidstTh Hong Kong’s conservative visual culture. s, rt A Conclusion: On Respectability,e Propriety and Sexual Attitudes in Hong Kong in F Given that Hon’s eroticof artworks emerged from a specific period of international sexual liberation, it is crucialt to consider how much sexual attitudes in Hong Kong have or have not been transformeden since Hon’s generation came-of-age. When compiling a book of over ten years of researcht mabout sexuality in Hong Kong, Professors Ho Sik-ying and Tsang Ka-tat found “a discursivear reality which systemically relegates sexuality to the marginal space of the unspoken, unnamedep and unarticulated.”23 Referring to the ways in which sexual education and surveys were clinical D and unhelpful, Ho and Tsang were disappointed to discover that the majority of young 20women they surveyed were un-equipped to discuss or approach sexuality in their own lives. The 20 understanding of sex as taboo is also mapped onto spatial and economic constraints in the city. © 21 “Ten Million Rooms of Yearning: Sex in Hong Kong,” May 10 to Aug 10, 2014, Para Site. https://www. para-site.art/exhibitions/ten-million-rooms-of-yearning-sex-in-hong-kong/. 22 “Works,” Angela Su, Blindspot Gallery, n.d., https://blindspotgallery.com/artist/angela-su/. 23 Ho Sik-ying and Tsang Ka-tat, “The Things Girls Shouldn’t See: Relocating the Penis in Sex Education in Hong Kong,” in Gendering Hong Kong eds. Chan Anita Kit-wah, Wong Wai-ling (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004): 690.

237 Distilled Desires — On Love and Longing in Hon Chi-fun’s Works

Given the astronomic rise in Hong Kong property prices since the 1980s, it is not a surprise that young people struggle to find private places to develop their sexuality and sexual relationships. As the then-twenty-five-year old lawmaker Yau Wai-ching declared in 2016 at a forum at The Hong . 24 g Kong Polytechnic University, “If we want to look for a room to bang in, we fail.” Thus, no matter n how much values of sexual freedom25 and expression26 have strengthened in Hong Kong youth, o K the city’s education system and housing market pose major ongoing challenges to people’s sexualg development and wellbeing. Sexual issues are also not exclusively problematic for young people.n As issues of social respectability and propriety continue to hinder everyone from housewiveso27 to 28 H everyday workers from addressing or managing their sexual problems and insecurities,of perhaps there are still lessons to be learned from Hon’s paintings of genitalia from over half-a-centuryy ago. sit The fact that relatively few Hong Kong artists have taken up sexual desire ine theirr artwork since may speak to how much still needs to be changed in our society. The incidentsiv and studies cited above suggest that there are prevailing taboos around the expression andn discussion of sexual U desire in contemporary Hong Kong. Even in settings such as sexuale education seminars and in homes between sexual partners, there exists a widely-held set eofs social beliefs that one’s body and sexual desires are to be contained or controlled. Hon’s ilarge-scalen paintings of body parts still have the capacity to surprise viewers today. His printsh and paintings which revel in the free C expression of carnal desire and his admiration of bodiese remain relevant to our current moment. His work asserts that bodies are not meant to existT ash vessels of shame, but as agents of freedom: freedom to acknowledge and express sexual desiress, and the full spectrum of human sexuality, in art and in life. rt A e Editor’s note: Hon Chi-fun passed awayin on February 24, 2019. He was 96 years old. f F t o en tm 24 Her original statementsar were in Cantonese. Nash Jenkins, “A 25-Year-Old Hong Kong Lawmaker Wants More Space eforp Sex” in Time Magazine, October 5, 2016. https://time.com/4519215/yau-wai-ching-bang- hong-kong-sex/.D 25 Kung Cho-yee,0 Alan Lee (trans.), “Sexual freedom and why it matters to our youth,” in EJ Insight, February 8, 02018.2 http://www.ejinsight.com/20180208-sexual-freedom-and-why-it-matters-to-our-youth/. 26 Wong2 Yuen-kwan, “Young people have more liberal views on sex than a decade ago,” Varsity (The Chinese ©University of Hong Kong), January 1997. http://varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk/varsity/9701/sexual.htm. 27 “FPAHK Studies found prevalence of sexual problems, low sexual intimacy and coital frequency among Hong Kong Chinese Women,” Family Planning Association of Hong Kong, September 24, 2014, https://www.famplan.org.hk/en/media-centre/press-releases/detail/fpahk-studies-found-preva lence-of-sexual-problems-low-sexual-intimacy-and-coital-frequency-among-hong-kong-chinese-women. 28 Ray Kwong, “Sex experts alarmed over Hong Kong ‘wasteland’,” in EJ Insight, May 23, 2016. http://www. ejinsight.com/20160323-hongkongers-have-fewer-orgasms-than-everyone-on-the-planet/.

238 Distilled Desires — On Love and Longing in Hon Chi-fun’s Works

g. on K g on f H o ity rs ve ni U se ne hi C he , T 圖一之一 ts 圖一之 二 韓 志 勳 《 西 貢 》， 木 板 本 油 彩 ， 31 x 41 釐 米，藝 術 家 藏。圖r 片由 蔡 仞 韓 志 勳 《 獅 子 山 腳 》， 1959，木 板 本 油 彩，31 x 41 釐 米， 姿 提 供。 A 藝 術 家 藏。圖 片由 蔡 仞 姿 提 供。 e Plate 1.1 in Plate 1.2 Hon Chi-fun, Sai Kung, oil on board,f 31F x 41 cm, collection of the Hon Chi-fun, Lion’s Rock, 1959, oil on board, 31 x 41 cm, artist. Image courtesy of Choi Yan-chi.t o collection of the artist. Image courtesy of Choi Yan-chi. en tm ar ep D 20 20 ©

239 意欲淵渟— 韓志勳作品中的愛情與慾望

g. on K g on f H o ity rs ve ni U se ne hi C e Th s, rt A e in f F t o en tm ar ep D 20 20 © 圖二 韓 志 勳 《 速 餘 》， 1966，布 本 油 彩 及 鐵 板，102 x 102.2 釐 米， 藝 術 家 藏。圖 片由 蔡 仞 姿 提 供。

Plate 2 Hon Chi-fun, Speedy Past, 1966, oil on canvas and iron plate, 102 x 102.2 cm, collection of the artist. Image courtesy of Choi Yan-chi.

240 Distilled Desires — On Love and Longing in Hon Chi-fun’s Works

g. on K g on f H o ity rs ve ni U se ne hi C e Th s, rt A e in f F t o en tm ar ep D 20 20 ©

241 意欲淵渟— 韓志勳作品中的愛情與慾望

g. on K g on f H o ity rs ve ni U se ne hi C e Th s, rt A e in f F t o en tm ar ep D 20 20 圖三 © 韓志勳《恆淵》 1971，塑 膠 彩 布 本， 整 體：188 × 188 × 4.7 釐 米，M+，香 港 。［ 2017.324］。 © Hon Chi-fun.

Plate 3 Hon Chi-fun. Chasm Forever, 1971, acrylic on canvas, overall: 188 × 188 × 4.7 cm. M+, Hong Kong. [2017.324]. © Hon Chi-fun.

242 Distilled Desires — On Love and Longing in Hon Chi-fun’s Works

g. on K g on f H o ity rs ve ni U se ne hi C e Th s, rt A e in f F t o en tm ar ep D 20 20 ©

243 意欲淵渟— 韓志勳作品中的愛情與慾望

g. on K g on f H o ity rs ve ni U se ne hi C e Th s, rt A e in f F t o en tm ar ep D 0 02 圖四 2 韓 志 勳 《© 火 浴 》， 1968，布本油彩，塑膠彩及絲印，三聯畫， 132.1 x 396.3 釐 米。 由香港藝術館收藏及提供圖片（AC1968.0009）。

Plate 4 Hon Chi-fun, Bath of Fire, 1968, oil, acrylic and silkscreen on canvas, triptych, 132.1 x 396.3 cm. Collection of and image courtesy of Hong Kong Museum of Art (AC1968.0009).

244 Distilled Desires — On Love and Longing in Hon Chi-fun’s Works

g. on K g on f H o ity rs ve ni U se ne hi C e Th s, rt A e in f F t o en tm ar ep D 20 20 ©

245 意欲淵渟— 韓志勳作品中的愛情與慾望

g. on K g on f H o ity rs ve ni U se ne hi C e Th s, rt A e in f F t o en tm ar ep D 20 20 ©

圖五 韓 志 勳 《 鑄 默 》， 1971，布 本 油 彩，124 x 123 釐 米， 藝 術 家 藏。圖 片由 蔡 仞 姿 提 供。

Plate 5 Hon Chi-fun, Sulptured Silence, 1971, oil on canvas, 124 x 123cm, collection of the artist. Image courtesy of Choi Yan-chi.

246 Distilled Desires — On Love and Longing in Hon Chi-fun’s Works

g. on K g on f H o ity rs ve ni U se ne hi C e Th s, rt A e in f F t o en tm ar ep D 20 20 ©

247 意欲淵渟— 韓志勳作品中的愛情與慾望

g. on K g on f H o ity rs ve ni U se ne hi C e Th s, rt A e in f F t o en tm ar ep D 20 20 © 圖六之一 韓志勳《黑燄》，1970，布 本 塑 膠 彩，132 x 132 釐 米， 米蘭Dr. Paolo Marinotti藏。圖 片由 蔡 仞 姿 提 供。

Plate 6.1 Hon Chi-fun, Black Flame, 1970, acrylic on canvas, 132 x 132 cm, collection of Dr. Paolo Marinotti, Milan. Image courtesy of Choi Yan-chi.

248 Distilled Desires — On Love and Longing in Hon Chi-fun’s Works

g. on K g on f H o ity rs ve ni U se ne hi C e Th s, rt A e in f F t o en tm ar ep D 20 20 © 圖六之二 韓 志 勳 《 人 未 》， 1971，布 本 塑 膠 彩，183 x 183 釐 米。 圖片由蔡仞姿提供。由香港藝術館收藏（AC2006.0011）。

Plate 6.2 Hon Chi-fun, E is the Name, 1971, acrylic on canvas, 183 x 183 cm. Image courtesy of Choi Yan-chi. Collection of Hong Kong Museum of Art (AC 2006.0011).

249 意欲淵渟— 韓志勳作品中的愛情與慾望

g. on K g on f H o ity rs ve ni U se ne hi C e Th s, rt A e in f F t o en tm ar ep D 20 20 ©

250 Distilled Desires — On Love and Longing in Hon Chi-fun’s Works

g. on K g on f H o ity rs ve ni U se ne hi C e Th s, rt A e in f F t o en tm ar ep D 20 20 © 圖七 韓志勳《濡偈》，1972，布 本 塑 膠 彩，132 x 132 釐 米， 由香港藝術館收藏及提供圖片（AC1972.0025）。

Plate 7 Hon Chi-fun, Wet Enigma, 1972, acrylic on canvas, 132 x 132 cm. Collection of and image courtesy of Hong Kong Museum of Art (AC1972.0025).

251 意欲淵渟— 韓志勳作品中的愛情與慾望

g. on K g on f H o ity rs ve ni U se ne hi C e Th s, rt A e in f F t o en tm ar ep D 20 20 ©

圖八 之一 韓 志 勳 《 知 靈 》， 1971，布 本 塑 膠 彩，132 x 132 釐 米， 藝 術 家 藏。圖 片由 蔡 仞 姿 提 供。

Plate 8.1 Hon Chi-fun, Known Enigma, 1971, acrylic on canvas, 132 x 132 cm, collection of the artist. Image courtesy of Choi Yan-chi.

252 Distilled Desires — On Love and Longing in Hon Chi-fun’s Works

g. on K g on f H o ity rs ve ni U se ne hi C e Th s, rt A e in f F t o en tm ar ep D 20 20 ©

圖八之二 韓 志 勳 《 通 靈 》， 1971，布 本 塑 膠 彩，132 x 132 釐 米， 藝 術 家 藏。圖 片由 蔡 仞 姿 提 供。

Plate 8.2 Hon Chi-fun, Karma Focus, 1971, acrylic on canvas, 132 x 132 cm, collection of the artist. Image courtesy of Choi Yan-chi.

253