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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 © Distilled Desires — On Love and A cartoonist and curator fromLonging Hong Kong, who co-curated “Honin Hon Chi-fun: Chi-fun’s A Story of Light” at Works Asia Society Hong Kong Center during her tenure (2017–2019) as assistant curator. Kaitlin Chan 227 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 e es in h Hon Chi-fun (1922–2019), a pioneering modernist of Hong Kong art, was best known for his C otherworldly airbrush paintings that marked a dramatic shift from representational to abstract e imagery in the city’s painting scene. However, the passionate undercurrents of desire underlying h his works, and how his work intersects with sexuality and personal expression, are under-explored T in the scholarly realm. This paper will explore how Hon’s abstractions of human bodies lay the , foundations for the corporeal form to be further explored in Hong Kong art, and deconstructed s notions of propriety and respectability. rt A e n Hon’s Early Life (1922–1960) Fi f Hon was born in Pok Fu Lam in 1922, the eldest of his family’s eight children. His father worked o as one of Hong Kong’s first taxi-cab drivers, his mother a homemaker. His parents did not allow nt limited finances to dissuade Hon’s interest in culture, initially enrolling him in traditional Chinese e private school and even amassing a small amateur antiquities collection. From his early familiarity m with classic Confucian texts, to his cross-cultural, bi-lingual education at the prestigious Wah rt Yan College, Hon was a self-initiated artist, eager to build on his career despite not having had a the opportunity to attend university. He excelled academically and had grand plans to attend the p University of Hong Kong. Unfortunately, Hon’s graduation from secondary school coincided with e the Japanese Imperial Army’s invasion of Hong Kong in 1941. He subsequently spent his twenties D and early thirties working on Shanghai and Guangdong in the export/import trade, where his 0 family had sought refuge from the war. In a personal essay, he refers to this decade of his life as “a 2 period of loss and ambiguity.” 20 Hon returned to Hong Kong in 1956, joining the Post Office and getting married that same year. © He began painting as an escape from the routines of everyday life. His first paintings reflected what was in vogue in Hong Kong at the time: plein air landscapes capturing the craggy shoreline of Sai Kung and quaint village homes at the foot of Lion’s Rock. (Plates 1.1 and 1.2) During his day job as a postal inspector, he sped around on his motorcycle, searching for the next scenic vista. A “Sunday painter,” he honed his artistic skills by painting from observation on nights and weekends, alongside a group of fellow emerging artists. Not long after, his works were 1 included in group exhibitions at spaces such as St. Joseph’s Cathedral. After all, this was before any purpose-built institution for art even existed in Hong Kong. Hon and his peers would soon be part 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. 228 1 Hon Chi-fun, “My Own Story,” in 2000): 20. Space and Passion: The Art of Hon Chi-fun (Hong Kong: Choi Yan-chi, Kaitlin Chan g. on K g on f H o ity rs ve ni U se ne hi C e h Hong Kong was then a Crown Colony of the British Empire, and it was up to Hon and his peers T 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” ts (1964–1972), the latter of which encouraged and inspired him to question representation and r begin creating work with more opaque modes of signification. These groups were formed out of a desire to produce publications and exhibitions that enlivened the city’s cultural scene. Their A e regular meetings were lively and passionate, filled with debates on trends and styles in writing in and art. Being around like-minded peers emboldened Hon to expand his repertoire and sources of F inspiration. Hon’s generation, in the words of his partner Choi Yan-chi, “was underprivileged and f lacking in opportunities. They tried their best, to make the impossible happen.” o Wong, no one in the Circle Art Group was trained in art at the university level. They referred to nt themselves as amateur painters, as they all maintained full-time jobs outside their art practice. Due e to their pioneering practices in abstraction and their connections to the rise of formal institutions in Hong Kong, the Circle Art Group is considered to be first modernist avant-garde art group in tm Hong Kong. ar p The Circle Art Group’s self-education was high-spirited and executed collectively. They ordered e Artforum D Expressionist artists like Franz Kline and Robert Motherwell. Frequenting the only art bookstore 0 in town, 02 Chu’s words, “breaking in the the mail, books’ poring staples” over the obvious influence of East Asian calligraphy on Abstract 2 few newspapers or magazines in Hong Kong wrote about art extensively. Everything felt possible as Hon and his peersZi pioneered Yun Shu aPo culture of organizing exhibitions and discussing art on a critical © and professional level. in Tsim Sha Tsui, they would read voraciously (in art journalist Chloe Swinging Sixties and Hong Kong Modernism (1960s) After five years of painting landscapes, Hon’s artistic career took a marked shift. Inspired by the New Ink movement led by Lu Shoukun (Lui Shou-kwan), as well as the bright Pop aesthetic of Andy Warhol, he began painting large, mixed-media ink works, before moving into silkscreen on canvas. Overlaying Buddhist sutras with personal photographs, news headlines and images of 3 go-go dancers, his works were bold exercises in configuring an individual at the nexus of various 2 ) until they were kicked out. In the 1950s, there were convergences: Hong Kong, China and the British Empire, Abstract Expressionism, Calligraphy and Besides Wucius 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 at the City Museum and Art Gallery, which later became the Hong Kong Museum of Art 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. Hong Kong Art Today 229 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 e es in h 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 C to participate in exhibitions together, with their works reaching as far as São Paulo he T Hon and his peers in the Circle Art Group continually questioned their Chinese heritage with , regards to their Hong Kong context, engaging in heated discussions how cultural influences and ts iconography played out in their work. Some of Hon’s darker compositions from the beginning r of the 1960s, which utilized large brushstrokes in Chinese ink and found stone objects (Plate 2), reflect this alienation. As Man Kit-wah Eva writes, “The painter’s work opens up a ‘distantiating’ A e act of meditation and functions as the poetry of an alienated and displaced subject.” in to configuring their cultural identities amidst British colonization, members of the Circle Art F Group, including Hon, also sought to challenge another taboo in art at the time: the expression f of sexual desire and depictions of human bodies. t o en m Sexual Liberation, New York City and Post-Fellowship Life (1970s) rt a The last year that the Circle Art Group exhibited together was in 1972. Hon was back in Hong p Kong after his John D. Rockefeller III Cultural Fellowship in New York City in 1970. This e fellowship was one of several opportunities that changed Hon’s life forever. At age forty-six in D the year 1969, Hon travelled to London and Berlin upon the invitation of the British Council to 0 visit museums and exhibit his own paintings. This journey marked Hon’s first time seeing classical 02 and modern Western paintings in person, and it inspired him to push the material parameters of 2 his work and the picture plane. Then came the JDR III Fellowship, which named Hon as the first artist from Hong Kong to receive the prestigious opportunity to study in New York City. Having a © sustained interest in silkscreen-printing, he decided to enroll in Pratt Institute to study lithography 4 and etching. In New York, he participated in several group exhibitions, and even hosted a solo and Manila. presentation of his prints at Willard Gallery, founded by Marian Willard Johnson. Hon finally felt included in the international circuits of art-making which he had long-admired from his home base in Hong Kong.

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