East and West in the Art of Hsiao Chin and Chuang

Home , Lin Fengmian, Liu Guosong, Mark Rothko Art centre

Corso di Laurea Magistrale in Lingue e civiltà dell'Asia e dell'Africa mediterranea

Tesi di Laurea

East and West in the Art

of Hsiao Chin and Chuang Che

Relatrice Ch.ma Prof.ssa Sabrina Rastelli

Correlatore Ch. Prof. Attilio Andreini

Laureando Filippo Grassi 856795

Anno Accademico 2019 / 2020

Alla mia famiglia.

前言

本論文旨在分析蕭勤（1935-）及莊喆（1934-）於藝術上的共同點和差異。這兩位畫家的生命軌道有相似處：他們都出生於中國大陸，並於 1949 年逃到台灣。之後，他們成為領導台灣自五○年代末至六○年代中「現代繪畫運動」的兩個畫家協會的關鍵人物。蕭勤是「東方畫會」的主要推動者之一，而莊喆則是「五月畫會」的重要成員。為了追求新的藝術生涯發展機會，蕭勤於 1956 年離開台灣，在意大利定居了四十多年；莊喆則於 1973 年移居美國至今。中國繪畫的現代化是蕭勤和莊喆的共同理想，在藝術中，他們也都希望能通過抽象繪畫的視覺語言來實現「東方」和「西方」的融合。即使他們長期在西方的環境中生活，但兩位藝術家的靈感在整個職業生涯中始終來自自己「東方」的文化淵源。與西方抽象畫家不同，這兩位畫家選擇擁抱抽象的決定並非取決於打破傳統的意願，而是取決於保存及延續傳統的「本質」。蕭勤和莊喆放棄傳統主題和媒體，並不是因為他們想拒絕自己的過去，而是因為他們想尋找讓傳統精神繼續延續並存在的新方法。儘管兩位畫家有上述的共同點，我們仍可以發現蕭勤與莊喆作品的表現方式是截然不同的。蕭勤沉著（有時幾何）的構圖，加上鮮明色彩，與莊喆的動感「山水」及微妙的色調似乎是相反的。因此，我們不得不去思考，這兩位從相同的「東方」傳統發起的畫家，是如何創造如此不同的結果。在 1997 年的一次小組討論中，莊喆說：「藝術評論家總是說『在莊喆的畫作中，東方與西方相遇』，僅此而已。他們沒提到任何定義：什麼是東方，什麼是西方？」（莊喆，1997：57）。本論文的研究的目的，是從莊喆於討論會中所言，分析兩位畫家不同的理論立場，並探討這些立場在他們的畫中如何體現。本論文也特別探討蕭勤和莊喆對於「東方」概念的不同理解，並研究他們為何根據這些理解，讚賞某些西方藝術的模式。

本論文分為三章。第一章旨在探究蕭勤和莊喆在台灣的藝術起源。首先概述二十世紀上半葉西方現代藝術傳入中國大陸的時期，以及台灣藝術從日本殖民統治開始的 1895 年到現代繪畫運動的興起與發展。此後, 第一文章探究「東方畫會」與「五月畫會」的成立，著重強調兩者對「現代中國繪畫」的創建的問題的態度。此項研究希望能證明，這兩個協會不同的立場貫穿了蕭勤和莊喆的整個藝術生涯。兩位藝術家於台灣度過的歲月，他們接受了現代藝術創作的「洗禮」，這項洗禮也直接影響了蕭勤和莊喆與中國繪畫傳統和西方前衛潮流的關係。第二章及第三章描述的是蕭勤和莊喆的「散居」，闡述他們在意大利及美國的藝術發展。內容旨在敘述兩位畫家從「五月畫會」與「東方畫會」所承繼的主張，在西方是如何成長的；再者，他們又是如何將「西方」藝術融入自己對中國藝術進行現代化的決心中。第二、三章首先介紹兩位藝術家的生平，談談他們職業生涯的不同階段以及風格的成熟過程。生平介紹後則涵蓋了對於藝術家思想批判性的分析與研究。此兩種分析研究都遵循相同的結構，著重指出在蕭勤和莊喆的藝術中「東方」和「西方」兩個概念如何形成。各章之後附帶精選圖片，論文結論後附帶參考文獻及中日文詞彙。雖然研究這個題目的歐美學者較少，但為了解所謂「大中華」在二十世紀與西方文化的複雜關係，最初創立於台灣現代繪畫運動的畫家的藝術創作，是一項饒富趣味的研究。蕭勤和莊喆的藝術都建立在牢固的哲學和理論基礎上，而且他們對西方藝術的態度並不否認自己源自於中華文化的血統。二十世紀初，中國大陸的知識分子曾激烈地討論過中國傳統的價值及其與西方文化的關係。蕭勤和莊喆的作品即代表了此項議論唯一而深刻的貢獻。這項研究關注這兩位藝術家思想的獨特性，概述其「台灣」的來歷，並闡述其於「意大利」及「美國」的發展。此外，本論文並說明何以解釋蕭勤和莊喆作品的精巧性，就需要定義「東方」與「西方」這兩個

模糊的概念。本論文也嘗試闡明為何兩位秉持著相同的理念 ˴ 並同樣受到西方抽象藝術的刺激的「東方」藝術家，能夠創作出如此不同的藝術畫作。本論文所引用的資料多為展覽目錄。目錄通常包括學者和評論家發人深省的文章，以及展覽介紹的藝術家所書寫的稿件。由於蕭勤和莊喆在藝術生涯之初便已移居國外，後來獲得了國際聲譽，因此引起許多非台籍的藝術評論家對他們的畫作的興趣。故此，本論文的參考文獻是包括了「中華」和「西方」觀點對於這兩位藝術家作品的評論結合而成的。除了展覽目錄之外，本論文的參考書目也包含相關的原始資料和學術文章。蕭瓊瑞教授的文章為其一，從文章的數量和質量方面來看都特別寶貴。蕭瓊瑞教授是台灣現代繪畫著名的專家之一。除了蕭瓊瑞教授的著作外， Andrews and Shen （ 2012 ）、陳樹升（2007 ）、Celli （ 2010 ）、Dodd （2020a,b,c）、Pola（2017）、Jason Kuo（2000）、劉永仁（2015）、馬唯中（2016）、彭昌明（2016）、Schiffer（1988）、Tagliaferri（2009）、陶文岳（2019a,b）、蔡昭儀（2015）、Vazieux（2017）、Wechsler（1997、 2007、2016）、吳素琴（2017、2018）和葉維廉（1985、1995）等人的論文和著作，以及書目中的其他學者的相關著作，皆對本研究有特別的價值。為瞭解蕭勤和莊喆藝術創作的方向和他們作品的抽象意義，兩位畫家所發表的文章和訪談也對本研究非常有助益。因此，論文也大量引用了此類原始材料的原文。劉國松（1959、1963）和余光中（1961、1964）的文章為構成第一章內容重要的歷史文獻資料，而蕭勤國際文化藝術基金會於 2017 年出版了《與藝術的歷史對話》兩冊，書中的文章也為本論文第二章的起草提供了極大的協助。

Table of contents

Introduction...... 8

Chapter 1 – To every age its art: the introduction of abstract art in Taiwan ...... 12

1. Tradition and modernity, East and West – The debate on the modernization of Chinese art in the early 20th century ...... 12 2. Art in Taiwan before 1956 ...... 19 2.1 The Japanese colonial period ...... 20 2.2 The return to China ...... 26 2.3 Setting the stage: the 1950s ...... 32

3. The modernist art movement ...... 36 3.1 The relation with Abstract Expressionism ...... 36 3.2 The Eastern Painting Association ...... 39 3.2.1 Li Chun-shan ...... 39 3.2.2 The establishment of the association and the first exhibition ...... 48 3.2.3 The manifesto: “Our Words” ...... 51 3.2.4 The first years ...... 55 3.3 The Fifth Moon Group ...... 57 3.3.1 The early period ...... 57 3.3.2 Different styles, shared aesthetic ...... 61 3.3.3 The spirit of “Clairvoyancism” ...... 64 3.4 The “association period” and the end of the modernist art movement ...... 68

Figures ...... 75

Chapter 2 – Hsiao Chin or On the spiritual in art ...... 119

1. Introduction ...... 119 2. Biography and artistic development ...... 123 3. Critical analysis ...... 140 3.1 A modern approach ...... 141 3.2 The Eastern spirit ...... 146 6

3.2.1 The Spirit of Punto ...... 151 3.2.2 Intuitiveness and Chan ...... 153 3.3 The relationship with Western Art ...... 157 3.3.1 The reflection on space: Mark Rothko and Lucio Fontana ...... 159 3.3.2 Artistic vocabulary and media ...... 163 Figures ...... 170

Chapter 3 – Chuang Che or On nature and tradition ...... 218

1. Introduction ...... 218 2. Biography and artistic development ...... 221 3. Critical analysis ...... 241

3.1 The East: Tradition and Nature ...... 242

3.1.1 The reference to China’s painting tradition ...... 243 3.1.2 Nature...... 246

3.2 The relationship with Western Art ...... 253 3.3 Artistic vocabulary and media ...... 258

Figures ...... 265

Conclusions ...... 303

Bibliography ...... 311

Glossary of Chinese and Japanese names and terms ...... 320

Appendix I - “Our Words” ...... 331

Introduction

The present work aims to analyze the commonalities and the differences in the art of Hsiao Chin (1935-) and Chuang Che (1934-). The life trajectories of the two painters appear to be similar: they were both born in Mainland China and both fled to Taiwan in 1949. They later became fundamental protagonists of the two associations leading the modernist art movement on the island in the late 1950s and early 1960s: while Hsiao Chin was one of the main promoters of the Eastern Painting

Association, Chuang Che was a key member of the Fifth Moon Group. In order to pursue new career opportunities, Hsiao Chin left Taiwan in 1956 and settled in Italy for more than four decades, while in 1973 Chuang Che decided to transfer to the

United States, where he still lives. Hsiao and Chuang do not only share a set of biographical details: the common ideal of the modernization of Chinese painting lies at the basis of their endeavors, and in their art they both want to reach a synthesis of “East” and “West” through the visual language of abstraction. Despite their prolonged stay in a “Western” environment, the two artists referred to their

“Eastern” cultural roots throughout their whole career. Their choice to embrace abstraction, unlike that of their Western counterparts, was thus not determined by their will to break with tradition, but by the resolution to preserve it and transmit its “essence”. The abandoning of traditional subject matters and media was not a symptom of the will of these artists to reject what had come before them, but rather to find new ways to let the spirit of tradition continue living.

In spite of all these commonalities, even at first glance it is possible to notice that the artworks by Hsiao Chin are extremely different from those by Chuang Che.

As a matter of fact, the calm (sometimes even geometric) compositions of Hsiao

Chin, along with his flamboyant colors, seem to be almost diametrically opposed to the dynamic “landscapes” and the subtle hues of Chuang Che’s canvases, so much so that the viewer cannot help but wonder how the same “Eastern” tradition, to which they both claim to refer, could have inspired such dissimilar outcomes. In a

8 panel discussion in 1997, Chuang Che declared: “Art critics always say [that in my paintings] ‘East meets West’—and that's it. They don't make any definitions: what is East, what is West?” (Chuang Che, 1997: 57). This research aims to fill in the gap highlighted by Chuang Che’s provocation, analyzing the different theoretical standpoints on which the two painters ground their artistic production and probing how these standpoints are reflected in their paintings. In particular, it explores how a different understanding of the notion of “East” took shape in Hsiao and Chuang’s works, and proceeds to investigate why, according to said understanding, they referred to certain Western models.

The first chapter of this work examines the genesis of Hsiao Chin and

Chuang Che’s art in Taiwan. After a broad overview of the introduction of Western modern art in Mainland China in the first half of the twentieth century, the chapter explores the development of Taiwanese art from the beginning of Japanese colonial rule in 1895 to the emergence of the modernist art movement in the late 1950s. It then proceeds to trace the origins of the Eastern Painting Association and the Fifth

Moon Group, highlighting the similarities and the differences between the two in their approach to the issue of the creation of a “modern Chinese painting”. As the research will demonstrate, the distinct stances of the two associations resonated throughout the careers of Hsiao Chin and Chuang Che: the years the two artists spent in Taiwan served as their fundamental “baptism” to modern artistic creation and had a fundamental role in shaping their relationship both with the long- standing tradition of Chinese painting and Western avant-garde trends.

The second and the third chapter follow the “diaspora” of Hsiao Chin and

Chuang Che, expounding their artistic careers in Italy and the USA respectively, and reconstructing how the embryonic propositions of their first Taiwan years developed when they reached “the West”, and how they have been able to integrate

“the West” into their determination to modernize Chinese art. The chapters first trace the biography of the two artists, taking into consideration the different phases of their careers and the maturation of their styles. In each of the two chapters, the

9 biographical framework is accompanied by a critical analysis of the artist’s production. The two analyses follow the same structure, focusing on how the works of the painters interpret the concepts of “East” and “West”. Each chapter is followed by a selection of figures.

The artistic endeavors of the painters that first founded the modernist art movement in Taiwan, however still underrepresented in European and American academic researches, constitute an extremely interesting case study to understand the complex and dramatic relationship that so-called “Greater China” established with Western culture in the twentieth century. Hsiao Chin and Chuang Che, who both grounded their production on strong philosophical and theoretical foundations, proposed an approach to Western art that did not entail the denial of their Chinese origin, and their works represent an original and profound contribution to the heated discussion that had begun in Mainland China at the beginning of the twentieth century on the value of Chinese tradition and its relationship with the West. This research calls attention to the uniqueness of the reflection of these two artists, outlining the Taiwanese context in which it originated and expounding its “Italian” or “American” development. Furthermore, the essay illustrates the necessity to give substance to the two vague categories of “East” and

“West” in order to explain the complexity of Hsiao Chin and Chuang Che’s creations and clarify how two “Eastern” artists, both believing in the same ideals and both moved by the “stimulus” of Western abstract art, have been able to create such dissimilar artworks.

The majority of the sources that have been consulted for the present essay are exhibition catalogs, which usually include thought-provoking essays by scholars and critics and a contribution by the artist the exhibition presents. Since Hsiao Chin and Chuang Che moved abroad at the very outset of their career and later gained international fame, several non-Taiwanese critics also took interest in their production. The bibliography for this thesis is thus constituted by an interesting combination of “Chinese” and “Western” perspectives on the works of these two

10 artists. Catalogs have been integrated by a number of primary sources and academic essays. A scholar whose contributions revealed particularly precious in both quantity and quality is Professor Hsiao Chong-ray, one of the most renowned experts of Taiwan’s modern painting. Besides Hsiao Chong-ray’s fundamental writings, the essays and the books by Andrews and Shen (2012), Chen Shuh-sheng

(2007), Celli (2010), Dodd (2020a, b, and c), Pola (2017), Jason Kuo (2000), Liu Yong- ren (2015), Lesley Ma (2016), Peng Chang-Ming (2016), Schiffer (1988), Tagliaferri

(2009), Tao Wen-yuan (2019 a and b), Tsai Chao-yi (2015), Vazieux (2017), Wechsler

(1997, 2007 and 2016), Maggie Wu (2017 and 2018) and Wai-Lim Yip (1985 and 1995) have been especially valuable, along with those of all the other scholars reported in the bibliography. Articles and interviews released by Hsiao Chin and Chuang Che have proved to be extremely useful to understand the direction of their creativity and the intentions of their production, and numerous quotes from these sources have hence been reported within the essay. The articles by Liu Kuo-song (1959 and

1963) and Yu Kwang-chung (1961 and 1964) have constituted essential historical sources for the first chapter, while the articles by Hsiao Chin contained in A

Historical Dialogue with Art, published in two volumes in 2017 by the Hsiao Chin

International Foundation, have greatly helped the elaboration of the second chapter.

A note about transliteration In the text, Taiwanese artists and art associations are identified by the romanized transliteration most often seen in English-language writings, followed on first occurrence by the transliteration in pinyin and the corresponding Chinese characters.

Chapter 1 – To every age its art: the introduction of abstract art in Taiwan

“The beard and eyebrows of the ancients may not grow on my face, nor could their lungs and bowels be placed in my torso.” – Shitao1

“I often think that each important work of art is a museum of style, and every artist of consequence a walking incarnation of a host of ghosts of ancient masters plus his own soul. Earth-shaking creative events look important because they crown the pinnacles of a long collective effort. At the right time, and the right place, an artist becomes great because he has done the right thing. The right thing, considered alone, may seem a small ripple in the historical currents. But the ripple could be the crest of a surging river that breaks the dike and changes the course of the waterway.” – Nelson Ikon Wu2

“It’s very confusing, because in China we have a great culture and history, but a totally different aesthetic. I always think “What am I? What is my culture?” I seek identity - how to use the artist’s identity to say or do something. It’s about individual language using paint and brushes. Calligraphy is not in any way similar to painting. When I work, I am always writing - “body writing.” But this is completely different from the work of Jackson Pollock; it’s very important to make this distinction between Eastern and Western approaches, though the resulting form may look similar. The foundation is different.” – Huang Zhiyang3

1. Tradition and modernity, East and West – The debate on the modernization of Chinese art in the early 20th century

The years between 1957 and the mid-1960s were a shocking season for

Taiwanese art. In that period, the quiet and conservative art system the

1 Original Chinese text: 古之須眉，不能生在我之面目;古之肺腑，不能安入我之腹腸, reported in Kuo, 2000: 100. 2 Quoted in Kuo, 2000: 103. 3 Original Chinese text: 這非常令人困惑，因為中國有著偉大的文化和歷史，而審美標準則完全不同。我一直在思考：“我是誰？我的文化是什麼？”我探索的是身份——如何通過藝術家的身份去表達，去行動。這關乎通過畫筆與顏料表達的個體語言。書法與繪畫完全不同。在我工作的時候，我一直在寫作——“肢體寫作”。然而，這與傑克遜·波洛克的作品完全不同；儘管作品形式表面相似，區分東西方的創作方式非常重要。作品基礎是不一樣的。In Huang Zhiyang. 2014. “Life for Huang Zhiyang”. Randian. Retrieved from www.randian-online.com/np_feature/life-for-huang-zhiyang/

Guomindang4 had established after its flight from the Mainland in 1949 was shaken by the revolutionary abstract style of the so-called modernist art movement (xiandai huihua yundong 現代繪畫運動). Such movement was driven by a series of recently- born art associations, mainly comprised of young ethnically Chinese artists who had moved to Taiwan after the KMT’s defeat. The three groups leading the movement were the Dongfang huahui 東方畫會 (Eastern Painting Association, also known as Ton-Fan Group), the Wuyue huahui 五月畫會 (Fifth Moon Group or May

Art Society) 5 , and the Xiandai banhuahui 現代版畫會 (Modern Printmaking

Association). The present chapter will expound the cultural milieu in which the modernist art movement originated, and will offer a special insight on the Eastern

Painting Association, to which Hsiao Chin (Xiao Qin 蕭勤, 1935-) belonged, and the

Fifth Moon Group, of which Chuang Che (Zhuang Zhe 莊喆, 1934-) was an active member. The rebellious spirit and burning passion of the two groups baptized the two artists to abstract art, thus putting them on the journey of continuous exploration they have not abandoned to this day.

As Kuo (2000: 84) makes clear, the Taiwanese modernist art movement did not originate independently. On the contrary, it “was the continuation of an on- going debate over the possibility of reforming Chinese tradition, having begun almost at the same time that Chinese national and cultural identity had been called into question as a result of the decline of the Qing dynasty in the late nineteenth century”. While this is true, the main protagonists of such debate in Mainland China did not move to Taiwan after the end of the Civil War, and Taiwanese young artists were to some extent “cut off” from the legacy of their predecessors. The modernist art movement in Taiwan was hence characterized by the need of answering to the same questions of the debate started in Mainland China, but also “exemplified the island's unique cultural, educational, and socio-political conditions under the

KMT’s quasi-Leninist party-state” (Kuo, 2000:84).

4 Guomindang 國民黨, or Kuomintang (KMT), Chinese Nationalist Party. 5 Wuyue can be translated both as “May” and “Fifth Moon”.

The two fundamental questions Chinese artists and intellectuals started to ask themselves at the end of the 19th century were: how should China deal with its tradition? And what relationship should it establish with the “West”? For Chinese intellectuals, the survival of the nation depended on the answer to these two questions, and they were aware that the stakes were high. Art and literature were not conceived as simple creative productions, but were rather imbued with a profound sense of cultural mission. As it will be shown, the advocates of the modernist movement in Taiwan, however conscious of the social implications of their art and still driven by the ideal of the modernization of Chinese painting, produced abstract art primarily to respond to their personal need of “spiritual expression” (Hsiao Chong-ray, 2013: 8) and to react to the deadening art environment by which they were surrounded. In the 1950s, World War II had just finished, the new spectrum of the Cold War was starting to loom over the world, and Taiwan’s historical, political and social circumstances were completely different from those of the Mainland at the beginning of the century. However, the two questions on tradition and the West kept being asked, and were again to be the protagonists of a new season of cultural exploration and artistic vitality. According to Hsiao Chin (1984a: 35-37),

It will be much easier to talk about the modernization of Chinese art once we understand the overarching trend. There are only two paths: one, to merge the essence of traditional Chinese art and philosophical thinking with the techniques and spirit of modern art to create a Chinese modern art that belongs to the world; and two, to study Western modern art and its spirit from its foundation upwards, in order to let it flourish in China.6

It might be argued that, while artists in Mainland China in the first half of the 20th century took the second path, artists in Taiwan opted for the first. Even though the

Chinese intellectuals who supported the New Culture Movement were spurred by profound nationalistic sentiments, especially after the Versailles Treaty of 1919, they

6 Original Chinese text: 看清楚這個大趨向以後, 再來談中國藝術的現代化問題, 就容易得多。其途徑不外乎以下兩種: 一˴採取中國傳統藝術及哲學思想的精華, 融合現代藝術的技法及精省,發展為一種有世界性的中國現代藝術; 二˴ 全盤從基礎去研究西方的現代藝術及其精神, 使其能在中國生根發展。

14 blamed Confucianism for the backwardness of China and wanted to embrace wholesale westernization (Andrews & Shen, 2012: 43-45; Del Lago, 2009: 766-767).

This position, as figures like Lu Xun 鲁迅 (1881-1936) or Xu Beihong 徐悲鴻 (1895-

1953) demonstrate, was extremely problematic, but such was the general orientation within the Movement. On the other hand, Taiwanese artists, especially in the case of Fifth Moon members, were opposing the conservative art environment, but they were also moved by a profound attachment and sacred respect for Chinese tradition.

As we will see, this was also related to the fact that they had been forced to leave their motherland, and holding on to tradition was for them the personal expression of an unsolved nostalgia for their native home, rather than the fulfillment of a cultural mission.

Given all these premises, it is undoubtedly useful for this research to briefly look at how artists in Mainland China assessed the issues of tradition and the West in the first half of the 20th century. The history of China’s modern relationships with the “West” starts in 1842, at the end of the First Opium War, when China was forced to open five of its ports to European powers by reason of its defeat. This first period of imposed mutual contacts with the West did not shake China’s belief in its indisputable superiority until 1895, when China was defeated in a war with Japan, a nation that had always been considered but a cultural vassal of the Chinese empire.

Unlike China, Japan had been able to welcome Western technology and scientific knowledge and to modernize (Del Lago, 763; Andrews & Shen, 27-28). Chinese intellectuals understood it was time to reform the nation’s retrograde system and catch up with the technological and scientific knowledge of foreign powers. For a large part of the intelligentsia, the responsibility of the nation’s backwardness rested with the Confucian ideology that had dominated China’s political and social systems for two thousand years, and it was time to abandon it (Andrews & Shen,

2012: 43-45). It was in this context that the relationship with the West started to be at the center of the discussion on the future of China. This discussion did not only interest the political realm, but involved every sphere of Chinese society, including

15 cultural production. In 1917, Cai Yuanpei 蔡元培 (1868-1940), one of the fathers of this season of artistic modernization, pronounced his famous discourse on

“replacing religion with aesthetic education”. According to him (and to the Kantian conception of art with which he had come into contact while he was studying in

Germany), art had an ethical value, and it was capable of “liberating the minds of

China’s citizenry from selfishness and hatred” (Andrews & Shen, 2012: 31). Thanks to the boost of Cai Yuanpei and other fundamental scholars, at the beginning of the

20th century China’s art system started developing: the very first modern academies of the nation were established, and artists began to gather in hundreds of painting societies.7

In art, as much as in science, all parts agreed that China had to raise its head and change direction, but the opinions on how to do this were varied. For the artists following the so-called “New Culture Movement” (Xinwenhua yundong 新文化運

動 ), it was necessary to abandon traditional culture (and painting) and adopt

Western artistic canons (Andrews & Shen, 2012: 43-45). While some of these artists looked at French academicism as the model to adopt, others wanted to embrace the latest trends of Western avant-garde. The former tendency was embodied in the person of Xu Beihong, a problematic figure who, at least from a theoretical point of view, advocated the necessity of realism (the French academic realism of the late

19th century) for Chinese painting. In some of his works, he also tried to combine

Western composition conventions with Chinese subject matters, media, and typical contour line, as in his renowned Yugong yishan 愚公移山 (Yu Gong Removes the

Mountain) [fig. 1] (Andrews & Shen, 2012: 122-123; Sullivan, 1996: 68-72). The representative figure of the second tendency was Lin Fengmian 林風眠 (1900-91), who, after six years of study in France and Germany between 1920 and 1926, was able to integrate fauvist and cubist influences into his paintings, thus becoming one of the first avant-garde Chinese painters of all time [fig. 2] (Andrews & Shen, 2012:

7 A detailed description of this complex season of Chinese art can be found in Chapters 2-5 of Andrews & Shen, 2012: 27-113.

61-62; Sullivan, 1996: 76-77). In the 1930s, the modernist tendency of Lin Fengmian was espoused and taken to the extreme by Pang Xunqin 龐薰琹 (1906-85) and Ni

Yide 倪貽德 (1901-70), the founders of the Juelanshe 決欄社 (Storm Society), and by the members of the Zhonghua duli meishu xuehui 中華獨立美術學會 (Chinese

Independent Art Association), established respectively in 1931 and 1934. The affiliates of the two societies, due to their study experiences abroad, were familiar with the newest European art trends, such as Fauvism, Surrealism, Expressionism or Cubism, and strived to introduce them in Chinese art circles, advocating a total reject of traditional art (Andrews & Shen, 2012: 73-81) [figs. 3-4]. The production of modernist art came to an abrupt halt in 1937 with the outbreak of the second Sino-

Japanese war, when the artists decided to give up the individual creative exigencies that pushed them towards modern art in order to serve the more public concern for the “survival of [Chinese] culture and nation” (Andrews & Shen, 2012:116).

In opposition to the New Culture Movement, the intellectuals of the Guocui yundong 國粹運動 (National Essence Movement) believed that Chinese art should have continued its course, while wholesale westernization would have meant the death of Chinese rich cultural heritage (Andrews & Shen, 2012: 47-51). However, the traditionalists were also divided: while some of them believed it was possible to integrate (ronghe 融合) Western techniques with China’s traditional media and aesthetics, on the model of Japanese nihonga8, others believed that the West should by no means interfere with Chinese art. The strongest proponents of the former position were Gao Jianfu 高劍父 (1879-1951), his brother Gao Qifeng 高奇峰 (1889-

1933) and Chen Shuren 陳樹人 (1884–1948), the initiators of the Lingnan huapai 嶺

8 The term nihonga was “invented” in Japan at the end of the 19th century after the encounter with Western artistic tradition. The great cultural sway of Meiji’s reforms over Japanese traditional art propelled the reaction of key figures such as Ernest Fenollosa and Okakuro Kakuzō, who encouraged Japanese artists to try a new approach to traditional painting. Fenollosa, in particular, advocated a new style that could “combine elements of Western Painting, like perspective and shading, with traditional Japanese techniques, such as the use of water-based pigments on silk” (Mason,2004:184). Nihonga thus combined traditional Japanese media with Western painting and drawing techniques, giving rise to a new original artistic style [figs.5-6].

南畫派 (Lingnan school) [figs.7-8]. This school sought to integrate certain Western painting techniques, such as chiaroscuro or a tridimensional rendition of volumes, with Chinese traditional media (ink on paper or silk), composition conventions, and painting techniques (Dal Lago, 2009: 766). The other tendency, refusing any contamination between the two traditions, was also able to produce extraordinary artists, especially in the 1930s, the golden age of guohua9, such as Huang Binhong 黃

賓虹 (1865-1955), Feng Chaoran 馮超然 (1882-1954), Wu Hufan 吳湖帆 (1894-1968) and, later, Fu Baoshi 傅抱石 (1904-1965) and Pan Tianshou 潘天壽 (1897-1971)

[figs.9-12] (Andrews & Shen, 2012: 93-105, 124, 134). The discussion on Chinese tradition, prompted by the opening to the public of the Imperial Palace Collection in 1925, also stimulated Chinese intellectuals to study and reassess the history of

Chinese painting, which, far from being static, had witnessed profound changes in the course of its development. The famous intellectual Kang Youwei 康有為 (1858-

1927), for example, longed for a return to the realism of Tang and Song painting traditions, and despised so-called literati painting:

If we can correct the false painting doctrine of the past five hundred years [the rejection of Song Dynasty realism in favor of the 'abstraction' of the literary painting of Yuan, Ming, and Qing] then Chinese painting will recover and even develop further. Today, industry, commerce and everything else are related to art. Without art reform those fields cannot develop…Chinese painting has declined terribly because its theory is ridiculous (quoted in Sullivan, 1996:28).

On the other side of the spectrum, in 1921 Chen Shizeng 陳師曾 (1876-1923) had published an article about the value of literati painting (wenrenhua zhi jiazhi 文人畫

之價值), where he maintained that the tradition modern Chinese artists should refer to was exactly that of the literati and its “philosophical, self-expressive and modern qualities” (Andrews & Shen, 2012: 48), that made it conceptually similar to modern

European painting.

9 The term guohua 國畫 (national painting) was coined at the end of the 19th century to distinguish traditional Chinese painting in ink on paper/silk from Western painting (xihua 西畫), which mainly comprehended oils and watercolors.

One of the peculiarities of this lively period of artistic reform, especially in the 1930s, was that in most occasions the two “opposing” factions (modernists vs traditionalists) did not battle each other, but rather collaborated for the common goal of promoting the best art in their nation. The National West Lake Academy, founded in 1928 in Hangzhou, for example, merged its xihua and guohua curricula to give its students a comprehensive outlook on all artistic trends. The National

Painting Exhibitions organized in 1929 and 1937, as well as those organized by the

Tianmahui 天馬會 (Heavenly Horse Society) between 1919 and 1928, all showed examples both of guohua and xihua, serving as venues for mutual influence and exchange of ideas (Andrews & Shen, 2012: 56-58, 62-66, 116). The animated artistic milieu of the 1920s and the 1930s in China thus stimulated an energetic debate on the topics of East vs. West and tradition vs. modernity, and was also able to produce lucid theoretical formalizations (exemplified by Cheng Shizeng’s essay on the value of literati painting) that were not to be attained in the near future neither in China nor in Taiwan. The long years of war that separated this period from the new formulation of these issues in post-war Taiwan, the limited number of artists who decided to follow the KMT in its exile, and the dictatorial political climate on the island disconnected young painters in Taiwan from the heights of the debate on the reform of Chinese art in the 1930s, but the two fundamental questions on the West and on Chinese tradition, under different historical circumstances, still demanded an answer.

2. Art in Taiwan before 1956

In order to understand how and in what context the modernist art movement of the late 1950s took shape, it might prove useful to look at the history of Taiwanese art before the founding of the Fifth Moon Group and the Eastern Painting Society in 1956. In fact, the energy that characterized these two associations, as well as their rapid extinction, can be explained in some measure by the tense political environment and the difficult historical circumstances in which they grew, and by

19 the development of art in the previous decades. Taiwanese modern art (i.e. art in

Taiwan between the 1920s and the 1990s) developed along two main tracks, the first one constituted by officially sanctioned art exhibitions, the second by unofficial art groups and associations (Lin, 2017)10. This “dual” system of art exhibition reflected that of Japan, which in turn was inspired by the French model of the “Salon” of the late 19th century (Huang, 2002: 11). Carol Duncan, as quoted by Kuo, maintains that official art exhibitions "can be powerful identity-defining machines”, and that controlling them

means precisely to control the representation of a community and some of its highest, most authoritative truths. It also means the power to define and rank people, to declare some as having a greater share than others in the community's common heritage - its very identity. Those who are in the greatest accord with the museum's [or exhibition's] version of what is beautiful and good may partake of this greater identity (Duncan, 1977, quoted in Kuo, 2000: 39).

This acute analysis undoubtedly describes the role of governmental art exhibitions in Taiwan from the beginning of the 20th century until the lifting of the

Martial Law in 1987, and to some extent even after that date. Between the 1920s and the 1990s, however, almost four hundred independent art associations were established (Lin, 2017: 5). Some of these groups closely followed the styles and the techniques of official exhibitions, while others wanted to break away from them, but undoubtedly they all provided platforms for knowledge exchange and art exhibition alternative to the restrictive government-imposed channels, thus contributing immensely to the development of Taiwanese art.

2.1 The Japanese colonial period

The history of modern art in Taiwan starts with the Japanese colonial period.

In 1895, after China’s defeat in the First Sino-Japanese War, the Treaty of

Shimonoseki imposed the transfer of the island of Formosa under Japan’s

10 The essay by Lin, Ming-hsien “Aggregation and Blooming: Artists Groups and the Development of Fine Arts in Taiwan” (2017) provides a thorough explanation of the role of artistic associations in the development of Taiwanese art.

20 sovereignty. Japan’s colonization was due to last until the end of the Second World

War in 1945. However complex it might be to assess what Japanese rule has meant for Taiwan and Taiwanese people in those 50 years11, it is certain that this period profoundly marked the history of the island as well as the development of its art.

From 1895 to 1920, Japan adopted an “accommodating” cultural policy: Japanese painting (nihonga) remained largely unknown in the island, and the Taiwanese gentry, mainly composed of Han Chinese people emigrated from Fujian and other coastal parts of Mainland China during the late-Ming and Qing Dynasties, continued the practice of Chinese calligraphy and the composition of classical

Chinese literature (Kuo, 2000: 32-33). This alleged “liberty” was also due to the fact that Chinese residents of Taiwan were much less discriminated than aboriginal people during the colonial period and could enjoy greater freedom (Andrews and

Shen, 2012: 241). In the 1920s however, when Japan’s rule had been more firmly established on the island and its unruly and rebellious populace had been subdued, a real policy of acculturation (kyōka 教化) began, and grew even harsher after the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937 (Kuo, 2000: 33)12. In order to transform the Taiwanese into loyal subjects of the empire, Japanese culture had to be imposed at the expense of local traditions. As far as education was concerned, for example, the system established in Taiwan “was entirely based on [Japan’s] educational, cultural and linguistic norms” (Andrews & Shen, 2012: 241). The world of art also

11 Japan’s colonial empire over other Asian nations constitutes a unique example from a historical point of view. The country’s determination to found colonies was inspired by the European models Japan was looking up to at the time. Consequently, Japan’s rule over its colonies was not less despotic than that of European powers (Andrews & Shen, 2012: 243). However, in the case of Taiwan, even though Japan was merely motivated by a logic of self-interest, colonial rule contributed greatly to the economic and infrastructure development of the island, laying the foundations for its industrial development (Lin, 2017:45). Japanese colonizers tried to dismantle all the Chinese imperial legacies and to “Japanize” Taiwan, but by doing so they also established the first effective island-wide administration and a relatively modern education system (Kuo,2000: 4) and revitalized Taiwan’s cultural production (Lin, 2003:45). 12 After 1937, the study of Japanese language became almost compulsory, and the objective of cultural and education policies explicitly became transforming Taiwanese people into Japanese “imperial subjects” (komin 皇民) (Kuo, 2000: 82-83)

21 reflected this policy shift, and in 1927 the Taiwan bijutsu tenrankai 台湾美術展覧会

(Taiwan Fine Arts Exhibition, abbreviated as Taiten 台展) was established. It was modeled on the example of the Teiten (帝展, Imperial Fine Arts Exhibitions) and the

Bunten (文展, Ministry of Education Fine Arts exhibition), the two most important art exhibitions in Japan. These exhibitions were characterized by the presence of an award-granting jury, which virtually constituted the indisputable arbiter of taste.

The Taiten was held ten times between 1927 and 1936. In 1938, after the establishment of military rule on the island, it was replaced by the Futen13, (府展), which lasted until 1943 (Andrews & Shen, 2012: 242-245; Kuo, 2000: 33-36). Even though these exhibitions were not officially sponsored by the government, they were evidently aimed at “glorifying Japanese culture and educating the [less developed] Taiwanese” (Kuo, 2000: 36), as stated by Japanese authorities at the opening ceremony of the first Taiten. For almost twenty years, these were the only channels through which Taiwanese artists could emerge, just as the Bunten and the

Teiten were the only way Japanese artists could establish a reputation at home. For the sake of cultural assimilation, Chinese traditional painting was completely excluded from official exhibitions: in order for Taiwanese artists to succeed, they had to withstand the artistic conventions imposed by their colonizers and had to renounce almost entirely to their cultural identity (Andrews & Shen, 2012: 242).

Furthermore, in this period no fine arts magazines were published in Taiwan, and

Chinese ink painting disappeared from all school curricula. Even though Taiwan had a well-established tradition of calligraphy and portrayals of the Four

Gentlemen14 since the Ming Dynasty (Kuo, 2000: 37-38), the only accepted categories in the Taiten were the so-called seyōga (西洋画, Western painting) and toyōga (東画,

Eastern painting). What in Taiwan and Korea’s 15 governmental exhibitions was

13 Short for Taiwansōtokufu bijutsu tenrankai 台湾総督府美術展覧会 (Taiwan Government-General Art Exhibition). 14 Si Junzi 四君子 refers to the portrayals of four species of plant (bamboo, orchid, plum blossom, and chrysanthemum) with ink and wash. 15 Between 1910 and 1945, Korea also was a colony of Japan.

22 categorized as toyōga indicated what in Japan was simply known as nihonga 日本画,

“Japanese painting” (Kuo, 2000: 35-37). The choice of introducing in the colonies a different term from the one used in Japan is justified by two different purposes.

Firstly, calling Japanese painting “Eastern” was aimed at accommodating and including local painters, that would have otherwise felt a style defined as “Japanese” as an external imposition. The use of the term toyōga, however, was also clearly instrumental to instill in the mind of the colonized the idea of Japan as a true representative of the East and Eastern traditions in general, in a period when

Japanese nationalism was at its height (Kuo, 2000: 35-36). It is curious to notice that one of the artistic groups leading the modernist art movement in Taiwan in the

1960s decided to call itself “Eastern”, thus assuming the existence of an all- encompassing “Eastern” artistic tradition (rooted, this time, in China) opposed to that of the West.

Since the jurors of both the Taiten and the Futen were almost exclusively

Japanese, Taiwanese artists who wanted to see their paintings exhibited could do nothing but conform to the style imposed by the colonizers. The most important

Taiwanese toyōga painters of the period were Chen Chin (Chen Jin 陳進, 1907-1998),

Kuo Hsue-hu (Guo Xuehu 郭雪湖, 1908-2012) and Lin Yushan 林玉山 (1907-2004), who also were the only three Taiwanese artists whose paintings had been included in the first Taiten in October 1927 (Kuo, 2000: 41) [figs.13-16]. Their strictly academic style, characterized by an attention to detail and a richness in color, reflected that of the Japanese nihonga artists and jurors Kinoshita Seigai 木下靜涯 (1889-1988), and

Gōhara Kotō 郷原古統 (1887–1965) (Kuo, 2000: 39-61; Andrews & Shen, 2012: 242).

One of the distinctive features of the toyōga (and seyōga) masterpieces produced in

Taiwan was their peculiar subject matter, or, as Andrews and Shen (2012: 243) define it, their “focus on local color”. In fact, Taiwanese artists were invited to depict the local scenery and the folk custom of their island in order to respond to the craving for “exoticisms” of the Japanese colonizers, who wanted to see something different from what they would have seen in Japan. This detail also proves that

Japan’s rule over its colonies was not so dissimilar from that of European colonial powers and their obsession with orientalism (Andrews & Shen, 2012: 243).

Curiously, the nativist movement that swept Taiwan in the 1970s, when Taiwan started to lose importance on the international political stage and entered a profound identity crisis, looked nostalgically back at these “local” paintings as a source of inspiration (Andrews & Shen, 2012: 250-251).

A few notable Taiwanese artists also emerged in the Western-style painting category (seyōga). Seyōga paintings of the period mainly present either a realist or an impressionist style: these were the only modes accepted by Japanese and, consequently, Taiwanese official exhibitions. Despite the fact that by the early 20th century most European Avant-gardes had been introduced into Japan by local artists who had traveled abroad, the jurors of Japan’s official exhibitions still valued the impressionist or realist style instituted by the very first pioneers of Western painting in Japan, such as Antonio Fontanesi (1818-1882), Asai Chū 浅井忠 (1856-

1907) or Kuroda Seiki 黒田清輝 (1866-1924) (Mason, 2004: 370-376) [figs. 17-18]. The most representative seyōga artists in Taiwan were Chen Cheng-po (Chen Chengbo

陳澄波, 1895-1947), Liao Chi-chun (Liao Jichun 廖繼春, 1902-1976), Li Meishu 李梅

樹 (1902-1983), Yang Sanlang 楊三郎 (1907-1995) and Lee Shih-chiao (Li Shiqiao 李

石樵, 1908-1995) [figs. 19-24] (Andrews & Shen, 2012: 243-245). All Japanese- educated, their importance for the history of Taiwanese art under colonial rule is not much linked to the Taiten, where they also exhibited their works, but to the artistic group that they established in 1934 along with other Taiwanese artists who studied abroad, the Taiyang meishu xiehui 台陽美術協會 (Taiyang Art Association).

The goal of the group was “permit[ting] progressive artists to freely exhibit their work and to promote a Chinese cultural spirit” (Andrews & Shen, 2012: 244).

Between 1934 and 1944, the group held ten exhibitions in central and southern

Taiwan, featuring a vast majority of oil paintings, along with Chinese-style ink paintings, watercolors, nihonga paintings, prints, and sculptures. The Taiyang Art

Association was not only instrumental for the development of Taiwanese art, but it

24 was also one of the first non-governmental modern artistic associations in Taiwan16, and certainly the most important, so much so that it became a venue of artistic display alternative to the government-sponsored exhibitions. In 1940, Liao Chi- chun felt compelled to publish an article declining all accusations to the Taiyang of having an anti-colonial agenda:

[We established this group] only because we saw that the Taiwan Fine Arts Exhibition is already adorning the island of Taiwan in the season of fall, so we wanted to do something to embellish it in the spring. This was how the Taiyang Art Exhibition came to be. Its direction and philosophy are completely in synch with the Taiwan Fine Art Exhibition [Taiten]. We have no desire to compete side-by-side with the Taiwan Fine Arts Exhibition…We hold no natural prejudices. Our only aim is to elevate art and culture and to have amicable members, that’s all (Liao Chi-chun, 1940, quoted in Lin, 2017: 47).

As previously stated, the creation of artistic groups in Taiwan during the

Japanese colonial period was inspired by Japan’s art system, characterized by a fair number of independent art associations. The new educational apparatus, the presence of Japanese teachers, and the government-organized art exhibitions certainly propelled the institution of numerous artistic groups in Taiwan. This tendency to aggregate constituted one of the most important legacies of the

Japanese colonial period after Taiwan’s return to China. The Taiyang Art

Association launched a trend that was to go on for decades and play a fundamental role throughout Taiwan’s modern art history from the beginning of the 20th century until the end of the 1980s. Independent artistic associations also were the key actors of the modernist art movement of the 1960s (Lin, 2017: 44-52).

However clearly problematic, Japan’s policy of acculturation marked the first wave of modernization of Taiwanese painting. Both toyōga/nihonga and seyōga

Japanese painters introduced to Taiwanese artists techniques and trends from the

West that were previously completely unknown. Nihonga, which also influenced the

16 Before 1920, all artistic groups were led by Japanese nationals (Lin, 2017:49). Contemporary associations similar to the Taiyang included the Seven Star Painting Society, formed in 1926, or the Red Island Painting Society, formed in 1929. The latter was the forerunner of the Taiyang Art Society (Lin, 2017:45-49).

25 development of the Lingnan school in Mainland China, was indeed a highly modern style of painting because of its synthesis of typically Asian (and originally

Chinese) and Western representational conventions, such as chiaroscuro, perspective or sketching from nature (Kuo, 2000:39). While in Mainland China the debate on Western art vis-à-vis guohua found its acme in the 1930s, the renovation of traditional art in Taiwan was brought about by the Japanese colonizers and the

Taiwanese artists abiding by their “rules”. Moreover, Japanese colonizers were able to establish a modern system for art exhibition. Kuo acutely observes that

Taiwanese painters were “modern in the limited, but critical, sense that [they] did not have to be obsessed by how [they] might continue the heritage of a discredited and restrictive past, as was the art of their counterparts in the Mainland” (Kuo,

2000:64). As we shall see later in the chapter, the great question of the relationship with Chinese artistic tradition was only introduced in Taiwan by Mainland artists after their flight to the island in 1949. Local Taiwanese artists, who had to give up their cultural identity almost completely in order to be able to display their works at official exhibitions, after the end of Japanese colonial rule felt completely disconnected from Chinese tradition, and did not regard its continuation as an issue.

This factor marked the most fundamental difference between Mainland and local artists after 1945.

2.2 The return to China

After Taiwan’s return to China in 1945 due to Japan’s defeat in the Second

World War, the island’s situation was radically transformed, while paradoxically remaining very similar. Since 1895, China had drastically changed. It was no longer an empire, but a Republic under the rule of the Nationalist Party guided by Chiang

Kai-shek (Jiang Zhongzheng 蔣中正). During the Japanese colonial period, and especially since the shift from civilian to military rule in 1937, the cultural ties between Taiwan and the Mainland had grown weak, and most Taiwanese were unable to recognize themselves in a culture from which they had been abruptly

26 divided fifty years earlier (Andrews & Shen, 2012: 244-245). However, one of the first moves of the newly established Nationalist government was banning public speaking of Japanese and Taiwanese language and establishing a National

Language (guoyu 國語, i.e. Mandarin) Commission to promote Mandarin Chinese

(Kuo, 2000: 65). The northern dialect Chinese rulers wanted to impose to substitute

Japanese in all official and formal communications was unintelligible to the vast majority of Taiwanese people, who mostly came from southern China (Andrews &

Shen, 2012: 245; Kuo, 2000: 32-33). The historical event that made it clear to

Taiwanese people that, while old colonizers were gone, freedom had not yet been restored, was the 28/2 incident in 1947, when the KMT, in an attempt to suppress a popular uprising, slaughtered in a matter of weeks between 10000 and 20000

Taiwanese, including most of the members of the island’s intelligentsia. The famous seyōga painter Chen Cheng-po also lost his life in the bloodshed (Andrews & Shen,

2012: 245; Kuo, 2005: 5). It was the beginning of the White Terror period. In 1949,

Martial Law was established on the island: it was due to last until 1987. In the eyes of the KMT, a new policy of acculturation was necessary: this time, however, it was traditional Chinese culture that needed to be imposed in order to “re-Sinicize”

Taiwanese people (Kuo, 2000: 65).

The KMT wanted to “subordinate art and literature to its own national and political causes and inculcate a spirit of patriotism” (Lin, 2011: 21): in order to do so, the only two types of art the KMT could tolerate were anti-communist art and traditional Chinese ink painting. To impose these two trends, the “propaganda” method used by the new rulers followed slavishly that of the previous colonizers, i.e. official art exhibitions. The Taiwansheng meishu zhanlanhui 台灣省美術展覽會

(Provincial Fine Arts Exhibition), commonly known as Shengzhan 省展, based on the model of Taiten and Futen, was thus first held in Taipei in 1946, organized by the

Taiyang member Yang Sanlang and the toyōga painter Kuo Hsueh-hu, along with the Taiwan Governor Chen Yi (Lin, 2011:22). It continued until 1959, when it became a touring exhibition. Along with the shengzhan, the main channels for art exhibition

27 in Taiwan in this decade were the Quanxing xuesheng meizhan 全省學生美展 (Taiwan

Students’ Fine Art Exhibition), founded in 1951, and the Quanxing jiaoyuan meizhan

全省教員美展 (Taiwan Teachers’ Fine Art Exhibition), established in 1952 (Huang,

2002: 10). Moreover, in September 1957, Taipei hosted the fourth edition of the

National Fine Arts Exhibition17. These venues, besides becoming the main ambition for emerging artists in Taiwan, also served as the stage for the dispute on the

“orthodoxy of Chinese painting” between the advocates of traditional Chinese ink painting and the promoters of nihonga/toyōga 18 . Along with the periodic, government-sponsored exhibitions, the KMT also organized single, highly politicized artistic events, such as the Oppose Communism, Resist the Soviet Union Fine

Arts Exhibition in 1951, or the National Army Anti-Communist and Anti-Soviet

Calligraphy and Painting Exhibition in 1952 (Lin, 2017: 49). One of the favorite media used to denounce Communism were woodblock prints, a legacy of the Woodblock

Print Movement initiated by Lu Xun since the late 1920s and flourished during the years of the war with Japan (Lin, 2017: 44). The early 1950s, during which the KMT government championed “cleansed culture” and “combative art and literature”

(Hsiao Chong-ray, 2013: 60), were thus not so dissimilar from the heavily

“militarized” cultural climate of Mainland China between 1937 and 1945. The official cultural policy was supervised by the Zhongguo wenyi xiehui 中國文藝協

會 (Chinese Arts and Culture Association), established on May 4th, 1950 and comprising a “Fine Arts Committee”, and by the Zhongguo meishu xiehui 中國美

術協會 (Chinese Fine Arts Association). Even though artists in Taiwan certainly enjoyed far greater creative freedom than their Mainland counterparts and were able to travel abroad and freely access Western sources (Lü, 2017: 249), it is evident that the heavy political climate in which they had to operate did not make imagining

17 The first ROC National Fine Arts exhibition was held in Shanghai in 1929. The second exhibition took place in Nanjing in 1937, and the third in Chongqing in 1942. The fifth edition, held in Taiwan in 1965 (eleven years after the fourth) was the only government-organized exhibition accepting works from the Fifth Moon Group and the Eastern Painting Association (Lin Chiao-pi, 2011: 27). 18 The dispute will be further expounded later in the chapter, see p.29-30.

28 new paths for the development of Taiwan art less of a challenge. Taiwan has not always been the democratic country it is today, and even though it never went through the terrible economic and social hardships caused by the mad and utopic plans of Mao Zedong (1893-1976 毛澤東), it is fundamental never to forget that the flourishing Chinese art world of the 1930s could never resume its free activities and unrestrained development after the end of the Civil War neither in China nor in

Taiwan.

Besides the openly anti-Communist discourse, the main narrative the KMT wanted to impose in Taiwan after its retreat from the Mainland was the revival of traditional Chinese culture. This can partly be explained by the fact that, as said, the

KMT wanted to re-sinicize Taiwan and thus direct Taiwanese art on the single path of guohua, dismissing all other forms of painting. Most importantly, however, the

Nationalist Party, especially after the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution in the

Mainland in 1966, wanted to present itself as the only preserver of China’s rich cultural tradition. In the KMT’s narrative, while the Communist Party was destroying all the remaining vestiges of the history of the country, it was Taiwan’s duty to restore the classical culture of the glorious Middle Kingdom. Chinese painting was thus adopted as a “de facto cultural symbol of the Nationalist government” (Andrews & Shen, 2012: 245). This strongly nationalistic cultural policy had a twofold effect. On the one hand, since the 1950s a great confusion arose within the Shengzhan on what could be considered “orthodox” (zhengtong 正統)

Chinese Painting 19, on the other hand, Chinese traditional ink-and-brush painting found in Taiwan a good terrain for its growth. In the first years after the establishment of the Shengzhan, what was known as toyōga under Japanese occupation was simply renamed guohua. However, as soon as Mainland traditional painters (such as Huang Junbi, Puru, or Ma Shou-hua20) replaced Taiwanese-born

19 A detailed exposition of the controversy on the orthodoxy of Chinese Painting can be found in Kuo, 2000: 68-80. 20 黄君壁, 1898-1991; 溥儒, also known as Pu Xinyu 溥心畬, 1896-1963; 馬壽華, 1893-1977

29 artists (such as Ch’en Chin, Lin Yu-shan or Kuo Hsueh-hu) as jurors of the shengzhan, they started criticizing the nihonga style as non-orthodox (Kuo, 2000: 72)21. Liu Shi

劉獅 (1910-97), a modernist artist from the Mainland, laconically commented:

Nowadays, many people mistake Japanese painting as the national painting, and there are artists who clearly painted in the Japanese style while calling themselves Chinese painters. This is really pitiable and laughable…to worship others’ ancestors is absurdity (Lin, 2011:22).

The number of paintings in the manner of toyōga exhibited at the Shengzhan thus started to gradually decline. Until 1959, ink painting scrolls and framed gouache (the paint typically used in nihonga) paintings were both judged under the

“Chinese Painting” category: two distinct categories were created only the following year, and between 1974 and 1979 gouache paintings were completely excluded from the Provincial Fine Arts Exhibition. In 1983, the jiaocaihua 膠彩畫

(gouache painting) category was finally introduced to exhibit toyōga paintings (Kuo,

2000: 79-80). The controversy on the orthodoxy of Chinese Painting had come to an end, but in that same year, with the establishment of the Taipei Fine Arts Museum,

Taiwanese art was about to venture on a completely new path. The controversy on the orthodoxy of Chinese Painting also engaged the protagonists of the modernist art movement. Even though most of them did not formally participate in the debate that was taking place in the official artistic circles 22, the “unorthodox” art they promoted also raised the fundamental question of what makes a painting truly

“Chinese”. Whether Chinese painting is a matter of style, spirit, technique or medium is in fact, to a certain extent, the central question of Taiwan’s modernist art movement.

The governmental endorsement of Chinese traditional painting gave the very few ink-and-brush artists who had moved to Taiwan from the Mainland the

21 Nihonga combined Western painting and drawing techniques with traditional Japanese media and representational conventions. Such conventions had been borrowed by traditional Chinese painting in the first place. 22 Liu Kuo-sung participated actively in the debate and expressed his disdain towards nihonga being called “Chinese painting” on multiple occasions (Kuo, 2000: 75).

30 opportunity to enjoy greater creative freedom than all other painters in Taiwan. The three most influential figures, collectively known as the duhai sanjia 渡海三家 (three masters crossing the sea), were Huang Junbi, Puru and Zhang Daqian 張大千 (1899-

1983) [figs. 25-28], all of whom already had a well-established reputation in the

Mainland (Kuo, 2000: 85-90; Andrews & Shen, 2012: 245-248). While the former two did not considerably innovate their style during their Taiwan years, Zhang Daqian, who only reached the island in 1976 after living in Hong Kong, the USA and Brazil for more than 20 years, shook the guohua art world with his unconventional pocai 潑

彩 (splashed color) technique, supposedly influenced by American Abstract

Expressionism, and his bold use of green and blue pigments (Andrews & Shen, 2012:

248; Kuo, 2000: 88-89) 23 . The works produced in Taiwan by these three artists certainly deserve great scholarly attention. In fact, all of them inherited the legacy left by the Mainland artists of the 1930s, the golden age of guohua, and contributed to the development of art practices that in the course of the 20th century seemed many times to be doomed. The KMT propaganda proudly presented them as the valorous guardians of China’s artistic tradition: to what extent did they contribute to keeping such tradition alive should be the object of further study.

The seyōga section of the Shengzhan, contrarily to the troubled toyōga/guohua, could continue its activities almost seamlessly. This was in part due to the KMT’s necessity to maintain a pro-Western stance due to its strong political ties with the

USA. Most importantly, the majority of the Shengzhan jurors in the seyōga section were Japanese-trained Taiwanese artists. The conservative impressionist style dominating the Taiten and the Futen could thus continue its course even in the

Shengzhan with no great obstacles (Kuo, 2000: 80-81).

23 Interestingly, some of the artists of the Fifth Moon Group also claimed that they took inspiration from the same technique invented by the Tang Dynasty painter Wang Mo 王墨 (c.734-805).

2.3 Setting the stage: the 1950s

Huang Tsai-lang, in his preface to the exhibition “From the ground up –

Artist Associations in 1950s Taiwan” (2002:2), defines the 1950s as a “transitional decade”, where “cultural policy permitted only unison in service of consolidating political power”. While the Cold War climate, the widespread material scarcity and the general uncertainty caused by the White Terror surely determined a certain cultural conservatism, the 1950s also proved to be a period of complexity within the art world: it was during this decade that the seeds for the development of the modernist art movement of the 1960s were planted. In fact, two important historical factors leading to the establishment of the Fifth Moon Painting Society and the

Eastern Painting Society in 1956 can be retraced in the common tendency to form art groups in the 1950s, and in the promotion of modern Western art carried out by

Mainland artists who had moved to Taiwan after the end of the Civil War (Huang,

2002: 11-14; Chen, 2007: 48-49).

Conservative official art exhibitions somehow restrained creativity, but the frustration they caused resulted in the foundation of many artistic groups to serve as alternative platforms for Taiwanese Western-style painters who wanted to display their works. Some of these groups responded to governmental policies, others centered around single artists, and almost all of them were locally rooted and had a stronger regional attachment compared to the art associations established in the 1960s (Huang, 2002: 9-14). These art groups were characterized by a fair degree of diversity in terms of organization and objectives, and they had the merit of spreading art activities around the entire island and of offering a channel for art display parallel to governmental exhibitions, as was the case with the Taiyang Art

Association24 during the colonial period. Huang Tsai Lang (2002:12) points out that

“These groups were able to organize an uninterrupted stream of annual exhibitions, offering members extensive opportunities to learn from one another and pursue

24 The Taiyang had resumed its activities in 1948 (Lin, 2017: 49). Under the new Nationalist government, however, the Tayang almost became synonymous with the official art establishment.

32 excellence together”. They followed the model of official art exhibitions, holding open call for entries and establishing jury systems. Unfortunately, all participating artists were also in line with the impressionist style of the seyōga section of officially- sanctioned exhibitions. This style, which had led the first wave of modernization of

Taiwanese art between the 1920s and the 1940s, had already become old-fashioned, and the teachings of senior local painters had “turned into canonical and dogmatized shackles on the younger generation in the post-war era” (Tao, 2019a:

16). Examples of Western-style artistic groups established in this period include the

Xinzhu meishu yanjiuhui 新竹美術研究會 (Hsinchu Art Research Association), the

Gaoxiong meishu yanjiuhui 高雄美術研究會 (Kaohsiung Art Research Association), the Tainan meishu yanjiuhui 台南美術研究會 (Tainan Fine Arts Research

Association), the Zhongbu meishu yanjiuhui 中部美術研究會 (Central Art

Association), the Jiyuan meishuhui 紀元美術會 (Era Art Association), and the Lüshe meishu yanjiuhui 綠舍美術研究會 (Greenhouse Fine Arts Research Association)

(Huang, 2002: 12-13). The formation of certain minor groups was also propelled by the other driving force of Taiwanese art in the 1950s, i.e. the Mainland artists promoting traditional Chinese ink painting. Examples include the Qiyou huahui 七

友畫會 (Seven Friends Painting Association) and the Shiren shuhui 十人書會 (Ten

People Calligraphy Society) (Lin, 2017: 49-52; Huang, 2002: 11-14).

This lively, and yet stylistically static art environment constitutes the background against which the Eastern Painting Association and the Fifth Moon

Group emerged. Even though the members of these two associations (and the many others established in the 1960s) followed the tendency to aggregate initiated in the

1950s, they never aimed at participating in government-sponsored exhibitions, whose stagnant conservatism prevented them from freely express and explore new styles and techniques. Instead, they wanted to criticize local traditions, react to the conservative art establishment, dominated by the senior Taiwanese artists who had worked under Japanese rule and the mainland Chinese artists who had migrated to

Taiwan after 1949, and create new art ideals for their time (Chen, 2007: 49; Lin, 2017:

52; Hsiao Chong-ray, 2004: 51).

The “reaction” to the establishment was also made possible by the activism of the modernist artists who had moved to Taiwan from the Mainland between the mid-1940s and 1950. Their fame might not have been comparable to that of traditional ink painters such as Pu Xinyu or Zhang Daqian, but their influence on the later developments of Taiwan’s art history is nevertheless remarkable. The protagonists of this usually little-considered season of modern art in Taiwan include

Huang Rung-tsan (Huang Rongcan 黃榮燦 1916-1952), He Tiehua 何鐵華 (1910-82),

Chu Te-chun (Zhu Dequn 朱德群, 1920-2014), Liu Shi 劉獅 (1910-97), Lin Sheng- yang 林聖楊 (1917-), Chao Chung-hsiang (Zhao Chunxiang 趙春翔, 1910-91) and Li

Chun-shan (Li Zhongsheng 李仲生 , 1912-84). Huang Rung-tsan served as the

Director of Educational Administration at the Meishu Yanjiuban 美術研究班 (Fine

Arts Class) sponsored by the Chinese Fine Arts Association (Chen, 2007:46). This class, instituted in 1951, was conceived by Huang to be the very first educational institution aimed at the promotion of avant-garde art in Taiwan. Unfortunately, it shut down after just three months of activities because of a shortage of students. Wu

Hao (吳昊, 1932-) and Hsia Yan (Xia Yang 夏陽, 1932-), who later founded the

Eastern Painting Association, were among the few lucky students who were able to enroll (Hsiao Chong-ray, 2004: 49). On March 14, 1951, Huang Rung-tsan and other lecturers of the Fine Arts Class (including Li Chun-Shan and Chu Te-chun) organized the first modern art exhibition in Taiwan at the Zhongshan Hall in Taipei, mainly featuring post-impressionist works (Chen, 2007: 46). He Tiehua, on his part, also planned a whole range of activities to promote avant-garde art: the most important was probably the publication of the magazine Xin yishu 新藝術 (New Art), which had an instrumental role in introducing different art trends from the West to young art lovers in Taiwan. He Tiehua was also a key organizer of the anti- communist and anti-Soviet exhibitions promoted by the KMT: by investing time

34 and energy in the promotion of avant-garde as well as on government-sponsored activities, he was able to save the hardly-intelligible modern art from political accusations (Hsiao Chong-ray, 2013: 7). The real protagonist of this period, however, was Li Chun-shan, whose figure will be further analyzed later in the present chapter.

His impact as an essayist and especially as an educator changed the course of

Taiwan history. The first attempts to introduce modern art, overshadowed by the overarching cultural policy of the KMT government, ended abruptly around the mid-1950s. Huang Rung-tsan was accused of being a communist spy and was executed in November 1952. In 1955, Chu Te-Chun moved to France (where he was due to have an extraordinary success), and Lee Chun-shan left Taipei for Changhua, in the central part of the island. In 1959, He Tiehua moved to the United States (Chen,

2007: 47). Their legacy was to be collected by the Eastern Painting Association and the Fifth Moon Group. These artists and educators had the merit of posing again the “two great questions” recalled in the first paragraph of this chapter: how to deal with China’s past? And what relationship should the nation establish with the West?

The connection with the great Chinese season of modern art of the 1930s was very feeble, and in more than a decade of war (against Japan first and then against the

Communists), non-realist art had been almost completely abandoned, but the two questions had survived, and had found a new terrain to thrive in Taiwan.

The Guoli lishi bowuguan 國立歷史博物館 (National Museum of History) and the Guoli yishuguan 國立藝術館 (National Center of the Arts, now National

Taiwan Arts Education Center) opened in March 1956 and April 1957 respectively.

In 1957, the fortnightly Bihui 筆匯 and the magazine Wenxing 文星 published their first issue, and the old Lianheban 聯合版 took the name Lianhebao 聯合報 (United

Daily News) (Hsiao Chong-ray, 2013:79): these journals were to be the three key supporters of the modernist art movement within the press. The stage was ready for something new to happen.

3. The modernist art movement

3.1 The relation with Abstract Expressionism

Besides the historical circumstances presented above, many scholars directly link the founding of the Fifth Moon Group and the Eastern Painting Association to the strong political, economic, and cultural ties Taiwan had with the USA since the early 1950s. Pedro Tseng (2012: 42-43), for example, argues that:

Following World War II, the United States supported Taiwan in military, economic and other concerns, and thus American culture had an enormous impact on Taiwanese society, in everything from blue jeans to cultural and artistic thought. […] To one extent or another, [these artists] were all influenced by the New York art scene. Liu Kuo-sung, for example, was clearly under the sway of Jackson Pollock, while Chuang Che may have been influenced by Willem De Kooning. The works of Chen Ting-Shih and Ho Kan reveal the influence of color field painting (Tseng, 2012:42-43).

Other scholars endorsing this thesis include Lin Hsing-yueh (1993: 46) or

Jiang Hsun (1993: 63). In the 1950s, thanks to the Sino-American Mutual Defense

Treaty signed in 1954 after the end of the Korean War, the ties between Taiwan and the USA had in fact become stronger. The treaty, which proved its effectiveness after the 1958 Taiwan Strait Crisis, helped lay the foundation for Taiwan’s economic and social development, and allowed what was considered to be a “doomed nation” not only to survive, but to thrive (Hsiao Chong-ray, 2013: 58). In the West, the late 1940s and the 1950s had seen the emergence of the first American-born artistic movement,

Abstract Expressionism, which was to dominate the Western post-war artistic scene for a little more than a decade along with its European counterpart, Informal Art.

Undoubtedly, in the same period in which the USA exerted a significant influence on Taiwan in almost every facet of life, from politics to economy, and even to cultural production (Lin, 2017: 48), Western art almost coincided with abstract art.

Moreover, it is impossible not to notice that some of the key beliefs underlying the

Abstract Expressionist movement resonate with certain traditional techniques and aesthetics belonging to the tradition of Chinese painting and calligraphy (Vazieux,

2017: 19). However, the present work argues that the influence of such movement

36 on the Eastern Painting Association had been almost non-existent, while its ascendancy on the Fifth Moon Group was only slightly more explicit. In order to thoroughly analyze the matter, it is absolutely necessary to highlight the differences between the Ton-Fan and the Fifth Moon. Curiously, these differences are also reflected in the directions the members of the two associations decided to take after they left Taiwan: while some of the Fifth Moon members chose to settle in the

United States, Ton-Fan participants preferred Europe, even though some of them, such as Hsia Yan, later transferred to the US (but also abandoned abstract art).

Hsiao Chong-ray (2013: 82) reports that the 1960s’ modernist art movement in Taiwan has been described by some researchers as the “American culture period”.

According to the scholar, such definition, while not completely wrong, is certainly incomplete. As far as the Eastern Painting Association is concerned, the strongest influences informing its early years were Li Chun-shan’s thought, which was in turn inspired by Foujita’s artistic theories25, and the reports on European art sent by

Hsiao Chin from Spain starting from December 1956, which had the merit of sparking the debate on abstract (and post-abstract) art in Taiwan (Hsiao Chong-ray,

2017:23-24). Later on, the original ideas of the Punto International Art Movement founded by Hsiao Chin in Milan in 1961 also shaped the development of the Ton-

Fan. All these factors lead Hsiao Chong-ray (2017: 23) to comment that “the development of abstract painting in Taiwan had, to some extent, a more historical and closer link with Europe [than the United States]” and that “later critics […] consider[ing] American Abstract Expressionism [as] the sole impact [on Taiwan’s modernist art movement] […] obviously [reached] an incorrect conclusion. The systematic influences upon Taiwan’s art society, especially upon Eastern Art

Association, by the European avant-garde concepts and ideas which Hsiao Chin promoted deserve to be researched in detail and depth” (Hsiao Chong-ray, 2006).

25 The figure of Foujita Tsuguharu (藤田嗣治, 1886-1968) will be better introduced later in the chapter. In his memories, Hsiao Chin repeatedly brings up Foujita as a key figure for the development of modern art in the East. Examples can be found in Hsiao Chin 1983a: 45, and Hsiao Chin 1984a: 37.

As for the Fifth Moon, the present chapter argues that the contribution of

Abstract Expressionism was only limited to a visual “suggestion”, a formal inspiration which did not affect the theoretical premises of the association and, as

Sullivan (1996: 182) contends, only “helped these artists discover in their own traditional art the essence of form and the vital line, and to fuse these with a feeling for nature that is also intensely Chinese”. Vazieux (2017: 19) agrees that, given

Abstract Expressionism’s similarities with certain concept of traditional ink painting, Western abstraction was a vaguely familiar language to these painters, and thus it was also “the ideal approach for expressing their deep roots”. Lu (1993:

57) acutely observes that, given Chuang Che’s high concern for “composition” and

“reason”, even though his works distinctly present some similarities with Abstract

Expressionism, he could not be “a great fan of Pollock”, whose technique of splattering ink was “devoid of any thought of composition”. Pan (2011: 18-19) also maintains that the abstract tendencies of Western art developed under extremely different circumstances than those of Taiwan, and that for this reason new forms and concepts in Western Art, while becoming objects of study and reference, never were the object of a horizontal “transplantation”, but rather of an original reinterpretation. The role of Abstract Expressionism in the development of abstract art in Taiwan will be further discussed in the present chapter, but it can be synthesized by this observation by Michael Sullivan (1989: 261):

Sometimes in the West we hear painters such as Liu Kuo-sung or Saito Yoshishige— to take two names at random - being criticized for 'copying' Pollock, Kline or Soulages. But this is quite wrong. On the contrary, many Far Eastern painters, after a brief flirtation with Western realism, are now firmly back on their own ground. That they have to some extent been inspired by the New York School, and all that led up to it from Kandinsky onwards, to achieve a rediscovery of the Abstract Expressionist roots of their own tradition, cannot be doubted, but for this very reason their involvement in it may be deeper and more lasting than that of the Western painters, many of whom have already moved on, before they even began to explore the expressive possibilities of calligraphic abstraction. We should speak not of Western influence on Liu Kuo-sung and Saito Yohishige but rather of stimulus, or even of provocation (Sullivan, 1996: 261).

3.2 The Eastern Painting Association

3.2.1 Li Chun-shan

It is not possible to understand the formation of the Eastern Painting

Association and the introduction of abstract art in Taiwan without considering the pivotal figure of Li Chun-Shan. Li Chun-shan served as a fundamental trait d’union between Western modern artistic trends, which had already developed in China and Japan in the first half of the 20th century, and the young Mainland-born artists eager to find new expressions in the conservative artistic scene of post-war Taiwan.

Through his writings and his efforts as an art instructor, he spread his enthusiasm for modern art in Taiwan, where avant-garde art was almost completely unknown, and formed dozens of artists who were later to gain international fame.

Li Chun-shan was born in Shaoguan 韶關 (Guangdong province, Mainland

China) in 191226. He received training from his family in ink-and-wash painting and calligraphy from a very early age, until in 1929 he enrolled in the Guangzhou

Academy of Fine Arts. Dissatisfied with traditional teaching methods, he decided to transfer to the Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts in 1931, hoping to find a livelier artistic environment in the de facto Chinese cultural capital. Shanghai was indeed the location for his first encounter with modernist art: in 1932, he joined the Storm

Society founded by Pang Xunqin and Ni Yide, at the time one of the most Avant- garde groups in China. Li, in constant search of new routes of creative development, was extremely curious towards these original, contemporary modernist movements.

His artistic maturation, however, was to take place in Japan. In 1931, he was flabbergasted by the encounter with two Japanese artists he met at the West Lake, who told Li about the dynamic Japanese modern art environment and encouraged him to pursue advanced studies in Japan. In March 1933, Li was enrolling in the

Department of Fine Arts at Nihon University in Tokyo. He chose to major in

Western painting under the guidance of the famous oil painter Nakamura Ken’ichi

26 All biographical information about Li Chun-shan has been taken from Tao, 2019a: 16-25.

(中村研一, 1895-1967) (Lin, 2019: 3), but his unsuitability for formal artistic training soon resurfaced, and Li, while never dropping out, started to look for new artistic inspirations. After visiting the Original Avant-garde Paintings from Paris and Tokyo exhibition at the Tokyo Prefectural Art Museum in 1933, where he first admired masterpieces of Western modern art in person, he started taking extracurricular evening classes at the Institute of Avant-garde in Tokyo, organized by famous modernist artists, such as Seiji Tōgō 東郷青児 (1897-1978) and Foujita Tsuguharu

藤田嗣治 (1886-1968). The latter became one of Li’s most important mentors:

Foujita’s free, unconventional and anti-academic teaching methods and his emphasis on individual expression and innovation profoundly influenced Li, and were to be re-proposed by him to his own students in Taiwan (Tao, 2019a: 18-19;

Tao, 2019b: 8). Li’s five years in Japan (from 1933 to 1937) were extremely rich: he published more than ten works, participated in the events of important Japanese avant-garde groups, such as the Kuroiro Yōga-kai 黑色洋画会 (Black Western

Painting Society) or the Nikakai 二科会, and formed the Zhonghua duli meishu xiehui 中華獨立美術協會 (Chinese Independent Art Association) along with other

Chinese artists, including the well-known surrealist painter Zhao Shou 趙獸 (1912-

2003) (Tao, 2019b:8). In Japan, Li Chun-shan came into contact with the latest

Western art theories, and developed his very personal surrealist-abstract style, namely an abstract style rooted in Freud’s theory of the unconscious mind. This synthesis of surrealism and abstractionism proposed by Li Chun-shan will be tackled later in this section.

After the outbreak of the second Sino-Japanese War, Li had to go back to

China. In 1943, he started teaching at the National Hangzhou School of Art

(relocated in Chongqing), where he got to know important figures of the art world of the time, such as Li Keran 李可染 (1907-1989) or Guan Liang 關良 (1900-1986)

(Lin, 2019: 59). He took part in the few “modernist” artistic events organized in

Chongqing, such as the Xiandai huihua lianzhan 現代繪畫聯展 (Modern Painting

Exhibition) in 1945 or the Duli meizhan 獨立美展 (Independent Fine Arts Exhibition) in 1946 (Hsiao Chong-ray, 1991a: 55; Hsiao Chong-ray, 2013: 59). His style was very different from that of the other participating artists: while the paintings submitted by Zao Wou-ki (Zhao Wuji 趙無極 1921-2013) for the Independent Fine Arts Exhibition still presented clear fauvist influences, Li “already incorporated Wassilly

Kandinsky’s surrealist abstraction into his works, wandering in the spaces constructed with abstract lines of passion” (Tao, 2019a: 19).

In 1949, Li moved to Taiwan with the Nationalist Government. He started teaching fine arts at the Taipei Second Girls’ High School and the Political Warfare

Cadres Academy. Besides these “official” jobs, Li ardently took part in the efforts made by painters of Western art from the Mainland to promote modernist art. He wrote extensively for the Xin yishu journal founded by He Tiehua, as well as for other newspapers such as Lianhebao and the Xinshengbao 新生報 (Hsin Sheng Daily

News). He also taught the module “Introduction to fine arts” at the Fine Arts Class founded by Huang Rung-tsan, Liu Shi, and Chu The-Chun. However, the activity that Li treasured most, and the one that was due to have the most profound influence on the later development of Taiwan’s modern art, were the private classes he held at his studio in Andong Street, Taipei City. This small, dim and humid space, chosen by Li as a personal painting studio in 1951 after the closure of the Fine Arts

Class, served as the cradle for the Eastern Art Association. Li wanted to take advantage of this informal, anti-academic environment to prosecute the teaching methods and aesthetic ideals that he believed were at the basis of modern art education. The great peculiarity of Li Chun Shan’s understanding of avant-garde was that he believed that modern artistic trends were not the “product[s] of

European and American standards, […] [but] expression[s] of personal artistic creativity” (Lin, 2019: 62-63). In other words, avant-gardes for Li were not artistic styles, new “Western” ways to organize the elements of a painting, but rather an artistic mood, a creative habit that transcended geographical boundaries, could be adopted by artists in the East as much as by those in the West and basically

41 coincided with complete artistic and creative freedom. Li wanted his students to get to know the latest trends in art not to get inspiration or, worse, to imitate them, but so that they could absorb new theories and techniques and develop their own individual styles, thus fully becoming “avant-garde” artists.

In Li’s Andong Street studio, copying was prohibited. Li believed that if students had copied from their master, from each other or from traditional artworks, they would never have been able to develop their personal creative style. During classes, Li never allowed his pupils to see his works, and discouraged them from looking at each other’s. For this reason, despite being a very prolific creator, Li held his first and only personal exhibition in 1979, five years before his death. This contrariety to copying was an absolute upheaval for traditional teaching institutions, where, according to Hsiao Chin (2015a: 61), “the students just repeated what the teacher painted, without any creative input whatsoever”. Li’s teaching can be summarized in this simple formulation: artists have to look for their own individual artistic expression. He said:

How does one advance on the path [of modern artistic expression]? The primary method entails picking up a paintbrush, and then, without excessive thinking and forgetting about what one wishes to achieve from the painting, the painter must paint in utmost freedom. In other words, this initial stage achieves without anticipating results; it is about constructing the inner landscape, entering the spiritual world of modern art, and exploring authenticity in the depths of the mind (Li Chun-shan, quoted in Lin, 2019: 60).

In Li’s view, theory was fundamental, and teaching was conducted by conversation. Li thought that students should not only learn from the artworks, but primarily from the theories of their predecessors and contemporaries. Viewing artworks was instrumental for the comprehension of the theory, and only by constantly absorbing new ideas would artists have been able to find their own creative path. This is also the reason why, from 1953 onward, Li started bringing his classes even out of his studio, and often individually met his students in a coffeehouse, where they admired famous paintings and became acquainted with international fine art trends, but skipped any actual “training” in painting

42 techniques (Hsiao Chong-ray, 1991a: 31). This unorthodox teaching location got him the reputation of “coffeehouse preacher”, but perfectly represents his convictions about art education: every pupil has his/her own individual exigencies, and conversation and language are the primary vehicles for art education, because art is firstly a spiritual matter, and the main duty of artworks is to emphasize innerness,

“avoiding explanatory or ornamental illustrations” (Hsiao Chong-ray, 1991a: 30).

According to Li, his students needed to be experienced in sketching, because sketching was the foundation of modern art. By looking at some of Li’s own sketches, it is possible to better understand the influence of surrealism on his art and teaching. When Li was sketching, the pen roamed freely on the paper and just followed the artist’s intuition and the “flow of [his] subconscious” (Hsiao Chong- ray, 2019: 49) very much like the “automatic drawing” proposed by surrealists

[figs.29-30]. Surrealist painting is, in Li’s view, “a subjective escape from the rational, objective reality postulated by realism”, and thus moves in the direction of “pure”,

“non-literary”, “non-narrative”, “unthematic” painting (Tsuei, 2011: 44-45).

Modernist art thus entirely lies in this complete freedom of expression, in the liberation from the heavy burdens of traditional art teaching, naturalism, and academicism in order to discover the self. Many of his students recall sketching as one of the most important parts of Li’s teaching. Lu Ching-fu (1993:52) reports the words of one of Li’s students: “For each class, I brought upwards of a thousand automatic sketches. The café was chock full of my sketches. The professor would look at each one of them, arrange them by category, and proceed with analysis”.

While Li encouraged his students to create with the utmost liberty, he was also aware of the importance of a good technical foundation. In 1954, he wrote:

“Composition and construction are not only extremely necessary, but must continue to be developed in a purer direction. A correct canvas technique and use of materials is always a requirement, particularly brush technique” (reported in

Hsiao Chong-ray,1991a: 48). In his memories, Hsiao Chin often brings up his formative years in the Andong Street studio (Hsiao Chin, 1983a). He recalls the fact

43 that Li Chun-shan never modified the sketches on paper of his students in order to avoid influencing them with his own style. In Li’s studio, the painters who later founded the Eastern Painting Association sketched from plasters and practiced figure studies but, because they were all poor and finding models was not easy, they took turns to serve as half-naked models. Nor did they limit their sketching practice to the studio: “whether in the classroom, the exercise grounds, the streets, the parks, the railway stations or other public areas, we could practice figure studies anywhere.

Looking back now, we were running all over Taipei, drawing day and night” (Hsiao

Chin, 1983a: 43).

Another key principle Li wanted to teach his students was that practicing avant-garde art did not mean rejecting Eastern cultural identity, but rather embracing its spiritual essence. Hsiao Chin (2015a: 65) recalls that “Li reminded us that we should seek out a confluence between the expressions of modern art and the essence of Chinese traditional art, which we should digest and absorb to integrate with our own characteristics, to form our own unique creative appearance”27. Li insisted on this point in many of his writings, and also affirmed that modernist art in Europe first originated because of the influence of “the East”, a conviction that was also at the base of the Eastern Painting Association’s ideology.

What Li Chun-shan meant by Eastern spiritual essence is not extremely clear but can be inferred by his definition of “Latin spirit” (Lading jingshen 拉丁精神).

According to Li, Latin spirit defines the paradigm that guided Western art from the

Renaissance up to the revolution initiated by the “three post-impressionist masters”

(Cézanne, Gauguin and Van Gogh) (Hsiao Chong-ray, 1991b: 86): it is the spirit of measurability, rationality, naturalism, control, consistency, hierarchy, factuality, which rejects intuition and seeks mathematical coherence. Oriental spirit, on the other hand, is “highly imaginative and symbolic” (Tsuei: 2011: 45-46). According to

Li, pre-20th century Western art was only concerned with the description of the

27 Original Chinese text: 李先生更常圖形我們要從中國各種傳統藝術的精華中找出與現代藝術表現的砌合點, 經消化, 再吸收然後融合自己的特色, 做出自己獨特之創作樣貌。

“visual space”, and it was thus very easy to understand, while Chinese cultural productions (like opera, inscriptions, calligraphy, painting, and other traditional arts) focused on “mental space”. In order to explain the difference between the two,

Li compared the “visual space” promoted by Western art (i.e. the Latin spirit) to

Western play, and Eastern art to Chinese opera, which “isn’t even the slightest bit realistic [and is characterized by] a high degree of simplicity, suggestion and symbolism” (Hsiao Chong-ray, 1991b: 85). For Li, Chinese painting “is never realistic in the first place and is strengthened by the expression of subjective thought" (quoted in Lu, 1993:53), and while the “visual space” of the “natural- science school of Leonardo da Vinci” at the basis of the whole post-Renaissance

Western tradition could be expressed through words, the “mental space” could only be “spontaneously perceived” (Hsiao Chong-ray, 1991b: 88). These statements are very problematic because, even though Chinese painting tradition never utilized scientific expedients such as precise ratios and perspective, a part of it was in fact very much concerned about a realistic depiction of reality (Celli, 2010: 819-820), as also underlined by some Mainland intellectuals at the beginning of the 20th century28.

Li Chun-shan instructed his students on the value of conveying an “Eastern Spirit” in their works, but also gave them complete freedom on both methods of expression and techniques, thus simultaneously advocating a rejection of tradition and worrying about how to preserve, embrace, and express the spirit of such tradition through modern art.

The artists of the modernist movement held that “only by transcending media and technique could the substance shine through” (Huang, 2002: 13).

Proclaiming that Western media and techniques could fully express Eastern qualities and the essence of the Chinese nation was in fact a revolutionary statement in post-war Taiwan and the Chinese world in general, even though such statement might faintly echo Zhang Zhidong’s zhongti xiyong 中體西用 principle (“Chinese

28 See p.18 of the present work (Sullivan, 1996:28).

45 learning as basis, Western learning as instrument”) (Cheng, 2000: 658)29. At the time, the controversy on the orthodoxy of Chinese painting was raging in official art circles, while western-style painting was thought to be at most able to transmit

“local color”. This emphasis on the “Chinese spirit” that modern artistic creation should possess is probably the most characterizing feature of the modernist art movement in Taiwan: for these artists, rejecting traditionalism was the only way to save tradition. It is no coincidence that the propulsive force of Taiwan’s modernist art movement was constituted of young Chinese nationals uprooted from the

Mainland: unlike their peers born in Taiwan, Chinese tradition was so profoundly embedded in them that rejecting it would have meant rejecting their own identity.

As it will be shown, identity was also the key issue some of these artists had to face when they moved abroad and had to present their art to the Western world.

Besides his occupation as an educator, Li Chun-shan was also an extremely prolific writer 30 . In his articles, Li mostly discussed European and American painters and artistic schools and presented Japan’s art exhibition system. After his study experiences, Li was very familiar with the advanced system Japan had implemented for art display, and probably wanted Taiwan to develop in the same fashion. Li’s activity as a writer also allowed all the artists and art lovers who did not frequent his Andong Street studio to approach his theories on art, thus further expanding his influence in Taiwan’s art circles. His writings also proved some of the limits of Li’s artistic thought: they were “not systematic, nor were they the most avant-garde in terms of art trends” (they mainly introduced pre-abstract artists), but they still provided “a clear, definite direction and concrete, feasible methods for the promotion of the movement for the modernization of Chinese art” (Hsiao Chong-

29 Zhang Zhidong (張之洞, 1837-1909) was Chinese scholar and reformer of the late 19th and early 20th century, renowned for his re-elaboration of the theory proclaiming the necessity to use “Chinese learning as basis, Western learning as instrument” for China’s modernization (more on Zhang Zhidong: www.britannica.com/biography/Zhang-Zhidong) 30 A complete list of the articles Li Chun-shan published between 1953 and 1957 can be found in Hsiao Chong-ray’s “Li Chun Shan: His Early Years in Taiwan” (1991a: 38-41).

46 ray, 1991a: 49) in Taiwan’s almost stagnant art system. The list of Li’s articles, as well as his artistic theories, make it clear that Li Chun-shan’s art was not inspired by American Abstract Expressionism, nor did he particularly admire said school.

The choice taken by the Eastern Painting Association’s artists to adopt abstraction was thus almost completely independent from this specific American art movement.

In 1955, shortly before the establishment of the Eastern Painting Society by his disciples, Li abruptly left Taipei and his Andong Street studio to move to

Changhua, in the central part of the island. The reasons that led to this sudden decisions are still unclear: while he said his rheumatism was getting worse and he needed a warmer climate, he might also have been worried about the heavier political climate determined by the White Terror that was causing many Western modernist artists to leave Taiwan (Tao, 2019a:22), and was afraid that his students’ determination to form an art group was to be followed by a reprimand from the government (Hsiao Chin, 2015a: 67). He took a post as a fine arts educator at

Changhua Girls’ Senior High School, where he taught art until his retirement in

1979. After his departure from Taipei, Li did not become a recluse, but perpetuated his “coffeehouse-based one-on-one teaching method”, and many students from

Taipei still went to look for him and ask for advice (Tao, 2019a: 22). Li Chun-shan also continued publishing articles on Western art theories. Important artists mentored by Li Chun-shan in his Changhua years include Chu Tehi-I (Qu Deyi 曲

德義, 1952-), who later formed the Free Painting Association, Hsu Yu-jen (Xu Yuren

許雨仁, 1951-), who formed the Tao Tie Painting Association, Kuo Jen-chang (Guo

Zhenchang 郭振昌, 1949-), and many members of the Xiandaiyan huahui 現代眼畫

會 (Modern Eye Group) (Hsiao Chong-ray, 1991b: 78-79; Hsiao Chong-ray, 2019: 45-

48).

After his retirement from Changhua Girls’ Senior High School in 1979, when the styles of his students had already reached maturity, Li Chun-shan held his first and only personal exhibitions at the Printmaker Art Gallery and the Longmen

Gallery in Taipei (Tao, 2019a: 24). Even though Li kickstarted Taiwan’s modernist

47 art movement through his teaching activities and his writings, it should not be forgotten that he also was an extremely talented and prolific artist, and probably the first Chinese painter ever to “go abstract” in the modern sense of the term, even before Zao Wou-ki or Chu Teh-chun. However, since he did not date his artworks for most of his career and between the exhibition organized in 1951 with Huang

Rung-tsan and the beginning of the 1970s he exhibited almost none of his works in

Taiwan, assessing his artistic development is not an easy task 31. Tao (2019a:17) synthesizes his vast production with these words: “Li’s oeuvre wielded together surrealist ideas, automatism, abstract painting and Sigmund Freud’s account of the unconscious mind, channeling his personal super-consciousness to create engrossing compositions characterized by unpretentious lines and intricated layers of colors” [figs.31-32]. He died in 1984 from illness (Tao, 2019a:24).

3.2.2 The establishment of the association and the first exhibition

Li’s revolutionary ideas were collected and put into practice by the artists of

The Eastern Painting Association. The first disciples of the atelier (and the founders of the Associations) included Ou-yang Wenyuan 歐陽文苑 (1929-), Wu Hao, Hsia

Yan, Li Yuan-chia (Li Yuanjia 李元佳, 1929-1994), Tommy Chen (Chen Daoming 陳

道明, 1931-), Ho Kan ( 霍剛, 1932-), Hsiao Chin and Hsiao Ming-hsien (Xiao

Mingxian, 蕭明賢, 1936-) [fig.33]. While the former three were cadets of the Air

Force, the others were students of National Taipei Teacher’s College (Taiwan shengli Taibei shifan daxue 臺灣省立臺北師範學校, now National Taipei University of Education). These young painters, fascinated by the rousing charisma of their master and dissatisfied with the conservative art establishment, had set their mind to forming an art association since 1955. Aggregating was the most natural action to take for artists with limited economic resources and keen on opposing the immobile artistic system of a dictatorial regime. Their aspiration of forming a group became reality in November 1956, when their beloved master had already left Taipei,

31 For more on Li’s art, see Hsiao Chong-ray, 1991a:51-56

48 and the Eastern Painting Association held its first exhibition from November 9-12,

1957 at Taipei’s Hsin Sheng News Building. The name “Eastern” was suggested by

Ho Kan. According to him, “Dong Fang [East] evokes the imagery of the rising sun, implying vitality and dynamism of new art. [Moreover], coming of age in the

Eastern world, the members’ tend to create their works by putting a premium on the Oriental spirit” (Tao, 2019a: 21). This name indeed perfectly mirrors the philosophy and the objectives of the association: the members wanted the new sun of the avant-garde to rise on Chinese art so that a new day of life and energy could begin. At the same time, they all came from the “East”, and because of this the novelty that they wanted to introduce had to be animated by an “Eastern spirit” and had to possess the vision, the creativity, and the penetration characterizing

“Eastern culture”.

The history of the first years of the Ton-Fan Group (or Eastern Painting

Association), which were also the most lively and important years, are intimately related to Hsiao Chin’s transfer to Europe. In 1956, Hsiao had won a scholarship offered by the Spanish government to pursue his studies in Spain. He committed to the development of avant-garde art in Taiwan and the success of the Eastern

Painting Association in two fundamental ways. Firstly, he started writing a column for the United Daily News called “European Newsletter” (Ouzhou tongxun 歐洲通訊).

With his letters from Europe, Hsiao wanted to introduce the latest Western art trends to Taiwan’s art lovers. Some of these trends, such as Spatialism or so-called art autre, were almost completely unknown on the island. Secondly, he organized a huge number of Taiwanese and European artists’ joint exhibitions both in Taiwan and abroad, thus giving people in Taiwan the opportunity to admire European works in person and promoting the Eastern Painting Association’s activities both in

Europe and the United States (Hsiao Chong-ray, 1991c: 413).

As said, the first Eastern Painting Association’s Exhibition was staged in

November 1957 under the title The First Ton-Fan Painting Exhibition by Chinese and

Spanish Modern Painters (第一屆東方畫展 - 中國、西班牙現代畫家聯合展出) [fig.34].

The decision of including Spanish painters was not only dictated by purely artistic reasons. The Ton-Fan members were perfectly aware of the unintelligibility of their art to most people and, since it did not adhere to any of the officially accepted styles, namely traditional ink painting and realism/impressionism, they were afraid that such a novelty could be identified by the White Terror regime as a Communist- leaning artistic form. By exhibiting the paintings of artists coming from an openly anti-Communist country, such as Spain, they wanted to disperse every doubt about their political stance. The Spanish artists who sent their works for the first exhibition included Juan José Tharrats (1918-2001), Will Faber (1901-1987), and Eduardo Alcoy

(1930-1987) (Hsiao Chong-ray, 2013: 60) [figs.35-36]. The Ton-Fan first exhibition, subverting the Impressionist and Chinese traditional styles dominating Taiwan’s officially sanctioned exhibitions, caused a huge sensation among the island’s art circles and got the members of the group the press nickname of bada xiangma 八大

響馬 (eight outlaws). Hsiao Chin (1983b: 87) so recalls those days:

The first Ton-Fan Art Exhibition was held in Taipei on Heng-yang Street at the Taiwan Shin Sheng Daily News Headquarters. According to the letters I received from friends, it was "unprecedented." […] Mr. Ho Fan, writing in the United Daily News, wrote a feature entitled "The Eight Bandits" to showcase the exhibition […] The reaction of the audience was rather different, as many people were vocal about not understanding and being deceived. Some even threw the exhibition's introductory text on the exhibition floor. Others were even more fierce and spat on and defaced the paintings, which made the atmosphere quite "lively." They did not realize that we were all either poor teachers or poor soldiers. The exhibition, for all of us, was put together on a shoe-string budget, and we had to tighten our belts and invest hard work in order to raise money to make this ideal into a reality. It's always better to have some reaction than to not be acknowledged at all (Hsiao Chin, 1983b: 87).32

32 Original Chinese text: 第一屆東方畫展是在臺北市衡陽街新生報新聞大樓舉行：據朋友們來信告訴我，是「盛況空前」。首先，我們八個展出者：夏陽、李元佳、霍剛、陳道明、蕭明賢、吳昊、歐陽文苑和我, 被聯合報專欄作家何凡先生以「八大響馬 J 為題，介紹出來：[…] 踴躍的觀眾們的反應就不同了，許多人大呼看不懂，大叫蝙子，而把畫展簡介擲在地上，另一些激烈的則向畫作肚口水及用筆把畫塗汙等等，相當「熱鬧」。但他們不知道，我們當時不是窮教員就是窮軍人，那個畫展是我們大家省吃儉用，勒緊褲帶, 為了理想湊出錢來，辛苦辦成的。然而，有反應總比麻木不仁好。

3.2.3 The manifesto: “Our Words”

The first exhibition of the group was accompanied by the publication of Ton-

Fan’s manifesto, “Women de hua” 我們的話 (Our words), whose complete translation can be found in appendix one 33 . One of the most important characteristics of the Eastern Painting Associations was that, differently from the

Fifth Moon Group, since its very foundation it possessed a very clear objective. As a matter of fact, according to Hsiao Chong-ray’s periodization, the years between

1957 and 1960 were those of the group’s most compelling influence, and the period in which the Ton-Fan completely revolutionized the course of Taiwanese art, while after the turn of the decade the association lost some of its energy (Hsiao Chong- ray, 1991c: 414). As will be explained later, in the early 1960s the role of leader of the modernist art movement was to be taken by the Fifth Moon Group, even though the

Ton-Fan kept attracting new members and exhibiting its works until 1971. The words of the manifesto in 1957 perfectly synthesize and mirror the artistic beliefs that moved the Eastern Painting Association in its thriving years, and they are hence worthy of close consideration. The manifesto also shows the great influence Li

Chun-shan’s teachings had on his students.

Time never stopped its course, and everything in the world is engrossed in the course of time, forever changing […] Only by constantly absorbing new notions will it be possible to develop creativity. If we look at art, by clinging to the old forms we suffocated the development of Chinese art, not only forever preventing the spirit and the vigor of tradition from expressing themselves, but also putting them onto a path of constant and inexorable decline.34

Paradoxically, Ton-Fan painters open their avant-garde, revolutionary manifesto by expressing their concern for tradition. According to them (and to Li Chun-shan), the duty of modern artists is not that of rejecting their past, but imagining new paths of development to preserve its “spirit”. The description of Chinese cultural past as a

33 To the best of the author’s knowledge, no complete English translation of the text has ever been published. 34 The original Chinese text is also reported in appendix one.

51 living being, possessing a burning spirit that must continue living, also reveals the sense of “cultural mission” these artists felt towards their nation.

Western art from the Renaissance to the 19th century has rooted in and developed through the research of nature itself, but the stimulus from Eastern art at the end of the 19th century has given rise to an abrupt change. The traditional, narrow path of naturalism was abandoned, Western art ventured on the large road of conceptualism and started researching the essence of painting itself, hence gaining universality to the utmost reach, embracing the peculiar expressions and the intrinsic shapes of every nation and region up to the present. Due to mutual exchanges, local cultures inevitably perish little by little, but their spirit always remains the strongest foundation for new creativity. China’s traditional notion of painting, at its root, is absolutely identical to this modern, cosmopolitan notion of painting; they only show little differences from the point of view of expressive forms and shapes. If we could let modern painting develop in China, then the innumerable artistic treasures of our country would inevitably appear in today’s international trends with a new attitude, marching on the great highway of constant progress.

This section of the manifesto reveals one of the most problematic aspects of Li Chun- shan’s thinking and Ton-Fan’s theories. Both the master and the disciples held the firm belief that the avant-garde and pre-avant-garde movements in Europe had brought naturalism to an end, and by doing so they had embraced an artistic vision that was much closer to that of the “East”. However, no explanation of what “East” or “China’s traditional notion of painting” actually are is given. It is certainly true that China’s immense painting tradition features numerous highly “modern” and

“conceptual” works of art, but the manifesto does not explicitly indicate any of them, as, for example, some of the essays produced by Fifth Moon members and supporters do: Li Chun-shan only describes the Eastern spirit as simple, imaginative and symbolic. Moreover, the first half of the 20th century was a period of great complexity for art in the “Western” world and, even though it is true that the road of realism was abandoned, the different movements born in those years were sometimes based on very different theoretical premises. This synthetic manifesto thus leaves some questions unanswered, but effectively points out that western modern art, by leaving naturalism behind, has somehow moved closer to that part of China’s artistic tradition that never had lifelikeness as a primary concern. In spite

52 of these unclear elements, it is also evident that the document did not want to promote wholesale “westernization” to modernize Chinese art, but rather suggested a confluence between the philosophical bases of Chinese art and Western avant-gardes.35

Li Chun-shan did not only define modern art as “Eastern”, but also as “global”

(Hsiao Chong-ray, 1991b: 88). As the reported excerpt demonstrates, his disciples re-proposed these two characteristics in the manifesto of the Eastern Painting

Association: at the end of the 19th century eurocentrism had come to an end, and modern art had transcended all regional boundaries to become “cosmopolitan”.

According to these artists, this cosmopolitan view coincided with Chinese

“traditional notion of painting” and only differed in “expressive forms and shapes”.

This definition of “global art” by the Ton-Fan somehow demonstrates a kind of naiveté by these artists, but at the same time interestingly anticipates the post- modern and post-colonial trends and the globalized nature of contemporary art.

These words also reveal the most characterizing trait of the Ton-Fan: the young painters thought that adopting avant-garde did not mean westernize, but rather

35 Two excerpts from Hsiao Chin’s articles better explain the two notions of “stimulus from Eastern Art” and “embrace of the peculiar expressions of every nation”: “Have you not seen, since the latter part of the nineteenth century, the forms and aesthetics of Chinese art affecting the West? In the 1930s, West Coast American painter Mark Tobey traveled to China. He was inspired by the structural beauty of Chinese cursive calligraphy to create White Writing. This went on to influence American action painting in the 1940s and 1950s, where Jackson Pollock drew inspiration from Chinese ink splash painting. Yves Klein’s black and white works were also influenced by Chinese calligraphy. In 1930s Europe, the structures of Chinese characters found their way into the illusory realm of Swiss painter Paul Klee. The German art group Zen49 […] applied the spirit of Zen to artistic creation. French Surrealist painter A. Masson and the 1950s French Art Informel painters such as G. Mathieu, P.Soulages, Decotex, and poet and painter H. Michaux were affected by Chinese Calligraphy. In recent years, the Spanish painter Antoni Tàpies is doing Zen painting” (Hsiao Chin, 1984a:35). “In the nineteenth century, Van Gogh discovered and was influenced by Japanese print art. In order to escape from Western civilization, Gauguin found and absorbed Pacific indigenous culture. Europe's Neo-Plasticism, Symbolism and Vienna Secessionists gave their attention to the formal beauty of Eastern art. In the twentieth century, the Cubists and their peers discovered African art. Leonard Tsuguharu Foujita, the first artist to fuse Eastern and Western art, established himself as a member of Ecole de Paris' All of these examples demonstrate that in the creative Western modern and contemporary art, European and Western Imperialism and cultural chauvinism have been declining, replaced by the globalization of regional culture” (Hsiao Chin, 1991: 49).

“globalize”, become part of the international and cosmopolitan modern artistic movement without renouncing to their own cultural identity. By doing so, Chinese

“local culture” would have become part of the greater “international culture”, but would nevertheless have been “the strongest foundation for new creativity”.

In the last part of the manifesto, the artists (necessarily) distance themselves from the “Communist clique”, thus witnessing the need for them to “justify” their art at the eyes of the government in the extremely tense political environment in which they were living:

We oppose the false theory of the “massification of art” promoted by the Communist clique, because that would mean ignoring the diverse aesthetic needs of people, cordoning off their aesthetic capability and oppressing their soul. On the contrary, we believe that the “artisticization of the masses” is freedom, and that such artisticization would allow the soul to enjoy unlimited expansion […] Contrary to the Communists then, who impose on people the styles of art they must appreciate, our belief will without a doubt lead to an expansion and a broadening of the scope of art, as this is the tendency of art in the free world.

It is very important to notice that not once in the manifesto can we find the word “abstract”. This is a key difference between the Eastern Painting Association and the Fifth Moon Group: while the latter theorized abstraction as the direction to follow for the modernization of Chinese art, this was never the case for the former, which was characterized by “an anti-academic stance, the pursuit of avant-garde

[…], theory as the foundation for artistic expression […] [and the raising of] the banner of ‘the East’”, but never formally adopted any specific artistic style or mode

(Huang, 2002: 13). It must not be forgotten that Li Chun-shan, despite being an abstract artist himself, left almost complete independence to his disciples, so much so that not all of them became full-blown abstract painters, even though the majority did, or at least experimented with abstract shapes for a period of time. Hsiao Chin in 2015 described the turn to abstract art as “the only safe choice” (2015, 67) artists could take under the heavy political atmosphere of the White Terror. The equality between “modern” and “abstract” that drove the modernist art movement of the

1960s was mainly due to the influence of the works and the theoretical essays by the

54 members of the Fifth Moon Group (Hsiao Chong-ray 2013: 75; Hsiao Chong-ray,

1991c: 413-414). The “core” members of the Eastern Art Association (the first disciples of Li Chun-shan’s atelier), while undoubtedly bending towards abstraction, never theorized it as a shared mode between all members, and thus showed a greater range of artistic approaches than the painters of the Fifth Moon.

In fact, Hsiao Chin (1983a:45) describes the turn they made towards abstraction as a totally natural, intuitive passage, and not as a formal imposition: one night, while sketching at Taipei Railway Station, “Chen Daoming […] suddenly turned [a human form] into an abstract shape. This was in 1953, so he could be considered the first Chinese modern abstract artist”.

3.2.4 The first years

The halcyon days of the Eastern Painting Association between 1957 and the early 1960s can be defined as a period of experimentation. Ho Kan, for example, who was to become a champion of geometric abstraction after his transfer to Italy in 1964, in his Taiwan years first embraced a surrealist style, and then experimented with ink sketches and oils [figs.37-40]. Before his departure for Spain, Hsiao Chin produced a series of fauvist-leaning paintings about Chinese opera characters. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, he experimented with oil, acrylic, and ink, first flooding the pictorial surface with color, and later arranging very few elements on a completely neutral background36 [figs.41-44]. Li Yuan-chia was one of the very first Taiwanese artists to move towards conceptual art [figs.45-47]. Hsiao Ming- hsien produced some very outstanding works in ink, where apparently casual blotches of ink produce rhythmic compositions [figs.48-50]. Wu Hao, after venturing into a cubist-surrealist style, excelled in the production of woodblock prints [figs.51-52]. This experimental tendency can be identified in all the early members of the Eastern Painting Society [figs.53-56] (Hsiao Chong-ray, 2013: 59-67;

Hsiao Chong-ray, 1991c: 213-229).

36 A detailed presentation of Hsiao Chin’s art can be found in Chapter 2, p.119.

The first passionate and roaring years of the Ton-Fan group reflected its

“international” vocation (Sullivan, 1996: 185-186) and can be synthesized in these words written in 1983 by Hsiao Chin:

After [the first] exhibition, the Ton-Fan Art Exhibition was presented in Taipei, Spain, Italy, West Germany, Austria, as well as in New York and other cities, leading to some forty or so exhibitions. For the exhibitions in Europe, as well as the invitation of artists from Spain, Italy, West Germany, Ecuador, and other countries to present their works in Taipei, I was responsible for planning, negotiation, working as a liaison, and arranging the handling and framing of the works. Friends in Taipei were very supportive, and the funds from the works that were sold in Europe went to support the events. […] At that time, because I was young, ambitious, and hot- headed, I felt first that working in this way could help promote Chinese modern art, which had been lagging behind; and second, I could give some of my painter friends in Taiwan some motivation to keep on fighting (Hsiao, 1983b: 89) [figs.57-58].37

Between 1957 and 1960, the Eastern Painting Association was at the lead of the modernist art movement that was shocking Taiwan’s art circles all over the island, and was astoundingly able to promote Chinese modern art in the “Western” world.

In this period, the former students of Li Chun-shan’s studio constituted the beating heart of the association, but they were also joined by many new members, such as

Chu Weibor (Zhu Weibai 朱為白, 1929-2018), Chin Sung (Qin Song 秦松, 1932-2007),

Lee Shi-chi (Li Xiqi 李錫奇, 1938-2019), or Shiy De-jinn (Xi Dejin 席德進, 1923-1981)

(Hsiao Chin, 1991: 55) [figs.59-60]. In the early 1960s, however, the articles by Hsiao

Chin or Ho Kan, which had constituted a fundamental theoretical source for the association, stopped being published, and joint exhibitions with European artists in

Taiwan became less frequent (Hsiao Chong-ray, 1991c: 413). Furthermore, the Fifth

Moon Group artists, strengthened by their unified abstract style and numerous theoretical essays, were emerging as the strongest force, and were thus able to replace the Ton-Fan group in the role of leaders of the modernist art movement. In

37 Original Chinese text: 從那次展出以後，東方書展在臺北、在西班牙, 義大利、西德、奧地利等許多城市及紐約，展出了四十次左右；那些在歐洲的展出，及後來又邀請西班牙、義大利、西德、厄瓜多爾等國際知名現代藝術家們的作品去臺北展出，都是由我責任討個籌畫, 交涉, 聯絡及搬運、裝框等等：臺北的朋友很支持我，在歐洲賣掉畫的錢一概用作活動經費，不夠則由我自己來補貼。[…] 在這裡, 我並沒有向任何人「報功」的意思, 祇是在那是因為年輕，勁兒很大，腦袋很熱，覺得這樣多做些，一則可以對內宣場已經落後的中國現代藝術，二則更可以給國內那批畫畫兄弟們打打氣。

1961, Hsiao Chin had already founded a new painting group in Italy called Punto, and in 1965 he stopped participating in the Eastern’s exhibitions. Starting from the

1967 exhibition, Ou-yang Wen-yuan, Ho Kan and Hsia Yan made the same choice

(Hsiao Chin, 1991: 57). By that date, however, the departure of many key abstract artists from Taiwan and the mutated historical circumstances had already started pushing the modernist movement towards its death, and in 1971, when the very last

Ton-Fan exhibition was held (Lin, 2017: 143), its original force was only a vague memory.

3.3 The Fifth Moon Group

3.3.1 The early period

The Fifth Moon Group was founded in May 1956 by a group of top-graduates of National Taiwan Normal University’s Arts Department 38 , who had been encouraged to form an association by their professor Liao Chi-chun after the “Four

People’s Exhibition” they held at National Taiwan Normal University39. The very first members included Guo Yu-lun (Guo Yulun 郭豫倫 1930-2001), Li Fangzhi (李

芳枝, 1933-), Liu Kuo-sung (Liu Guosong 劉國松, 1927-), Guo Dongrong 郭東榮

(1927-), Chen Jingrong 陳景容 (1934-) and Cheng Chung-chuan (Zheng Qiongjuan

鄭瓊娟, 1931-). Unlike the Ton-Fan members, all these artists, except for Liu Kuo- sung and Kuo Yu-lun, were born and raised in Taiwan (Hsiao Chong-ray, 2004: 51).

The name of the group was inspired by the Parisian Salon de Mai, the avant-garde art group founded in 1943 during the Nazi occupation of the city (Lin, 2017: 143).

At first, the founders of the Fifth Moon Group only wanted to react to the deadening conservatism of Taiwan’s official art exhibitions, and their aim for aggregating, on the model of the different exhibition opportunities artists had in France Liu Kuo- song, 1959), was to learn from each other, display their works, promote avant-garde

38 臺灣省立師範大學, Taiwan shengli shifan daxue 39 On said occasion, the four graduates Li Fang-zhi, Guo Yu-lun, Guo Dong-rong, and Liu Kuo-song exhibited some of their artworks at National Taiwan Normal University (Hsu, 2002: 132).

57 and creative diversity on the island and introduce a greater competition among

Taiwanese artists, so that “poor examples of art” could be “weeded out” (Hsiao

Chong-ray, 1991a: 44). In his “The wonders of the non-painted”40 (1963), Liu Kuo- sung compared contemporary art circles in Taiwan to a “pool of dead water”, where so-called “masters” either embraced the “dead bodies of ancient Chinese or Western men”, or “took pride in promoting Japanese art […] thus only putting makeup on a corpse”. In order to give new life to the dead body of Chinese art, “a breath of fresh air” and a “transfusion of blood” were necessary. Air meant complete freedom of expression for artists and liberation from the oppression of the “masters” of the art establishment. The “blood” that Taiwan art needed was that of the thriving, healthy body of Western art. These powerful images used by Liu Kuo-sung perfectly convey the discouragement these artists felt towards the local art environment. Until 1959, however, the painters of the Fifth Moon Group did not have a common style and a shared objective [figs.61-62]. Indeed, differently from the Eastern Painting

Association, the May Painting Society never wrote an inaugural manifesto or a declaration of intentions. However, it is possible to infer the aesthetic and theoretical premises underlying the actions of the group in the 1960s through the large number of writings produced by its members (especially Liu Kuo-song) and supporters. At first, thanks to the endorsement of the well-known artist Liao Chi- chun, the Fifth Moon Group did not need to “justify” the visual assault it was bringing to Taiwan art circles, even though, as we will see, starting from the 1960s it also received a great amount of political criticism, and did not have an official venue to exhibit its art as much as all the other painting associations (Hsiao Chong- ray, 2013: 74-75; Hsiao Chong-ray, 1991c: 413-415; Andrews & Shen, 2012: 237).

Starting from May 1957, when the Fifth Moon Group held its first public exhibition at Zhonsghan Hall in Taipei, the members of the group displayed their

40 Liu Kuo-sung, “Wuhuachu Jie Cheng Miaojing” 無畫處皆成妙境 , 1963, retrieved from: www.liukuosung.org/document-info1.php?lang=tw&Year=1956&p=11 The title of the article is a statement by the Ming-Qing Painter Da Zhongguang (笪重光 1623-1962): “Non-painted areas are full of wonder”.

58 works every May until 1972. Hsiao Chong-ray divides the Fifth Moon’s period of activity in three phases. Between 1957 and 1959 the artists were “looking for an objective”. The heyday of the association was the period between 1960 and 1964, while between 1965 and 1972 the styles of the artists began to differentiate, and the modernist art movement as a whole started losing its propelling force (Hsiao

Chong-ray, 1991c: 414). The decisive change that took place in 1960-1961 was determined by the large number of Mainland artists who joined in the ranks of the

Fifth Moon, including Chuang Che (Zhuang Zhe 莊喆, 1934-), Fong Chung-ray 馮

鍾睿 (1933-), Hu Chi-chung (Hu Qizhong 胡奇中, 1927-2012) or Han Hsiang-ning

(Han Xiangning 韓湘寧, 1939-), who were to constitute the very kernel of the group in the first part of the 1960s [figs.63-64] (Hsiao Chong-ray, 1991c: 414). Furthermore, while Liu Kuo-song, in his “Not a Statement: Prior to the Opening of the May

Painting Society” (1959), clearly stated that “the society shall provide graduates of the Department of Fine Arts of National Normal University chances to release their artworks and to express their artistic selves”, in 1961 the May Painting Society first allowed students who did not graduate from Taiwan’s Normal University to enter the group. This decision permitted more young art lovers to join the association, and Hu Chi-chung and Fong Chung-ray were two of the very first painters to enjoy such privilege (Hsiao Chong-ray, 1991c: 414). The inclusion of many Mainland artists caused a two-fold change in direction for the association: on the one hand, it consciously embraced abstract art as “the only form of art that could be considered modern” (Andrews & Shen, 2012: 248), on the other hand, it started focusing on the integration of traditional Chinese art and Western abstract art in order to create a new path for Chinese painting. As previously stated, such profoundly-rooted sensitivity towards tradition did not belong to local Taiwanese artists, who had been almost deprived of a sense of cultural identity during the Japanese colonial rule, but was one of the most characterizing features of Mainland artists who were forced to move to Taiwan. In June 1961, the famous poet Yu Kwang-chung (Yu

Guangzhong 余光中 1928-2017) 41 , a staunch supporter of the modernist art movement, was already able to identify the two keen characteristics of the group in

“absolute abstraction” (juedui chouxiang 絕對抽象) and “abstract expressionism”

(chouxiang de biaoxianzhuyi 抽象的表現主義), and praised the ability of these artists to combine “the sensitivity of modern Chinese intellectuals with the understanding of ancient Eastern spirit” (Yu, 1961). This reference to abstract expressionism is very interesting: with his definition, Yu does not mean that the members of the Fifth

Moon followed Jackson Pollock’s school, but simply that they used abstract art as their means of expression. At the same time, this choice of wording suggests a certain degree of similarity, a visual kinship between the two artistic movements, which, especially in the case of some of the Fifth Moon members, cannot be denied.

Liu Kuo-song, in 1963, was also able to affirm that, while the members of the group might not all see eye to eye on how to perform the “blood transfusion” mentioned above, namely what elements to take or to reject from Western art, they all agreed on two principles. To state the first one, Liu uses a very Daoist approach, which is also remindful of the Eastern Painting Association’s manifesto, “Our Words”: “The universe is always on motion, and all things follow this process of continuous change” (Liu Kuo-song, 1963). Art also follows this universal law of constant change, and opposing this would thus mean opposing a heavenly principle: “We firmly believe that change is a specific property of tradition. Constantly copying the ancients and believing to be the ‘masters of tradition’ means not understanding the real value of tradition, or utterly opposing tradition itself” (Liu, 1963). Such a statement by Liu Kuo-sung once again reveals the nature of the modernist art associations founded in Taiwan in the late 1950s, which were both revolutionary and profoundly rooted in tradition. The second principle on which, according to

41 Yu Kwang-chung is defined by Hsiao Chong-ray (2013:79) as “the most important supporter and critic of the ‘Fifth Moon”’. He commented on the works of these artists in a highly-poetic language, thus becoming an excellent guide for the audience of the time. Some of the articles he published, mostly on the magazine Wenxing, helped define the style and the direction of the group.

Liu Kuo-song, the members of the Fifth Moon all agreed was the direction Chinese art should take: art should become “independent”, and in order to do so “the physical image needs to grow smaller, and art needs to grow larger”. Liu explains that the final objective of the Fifth Moon members is to make art “pure”, i.e. making it abstract (Liu Kuo-song, 1963).

After this decisive turn toward abstraction thanks to the admission of new

Mainland members in the late 1950s/early 1960s, the Fifth Moon Group substituted the Eastern Painting Association as the front runner of Taiwan’s modernist art movement. The academic background of the members of the association, their common abstract style and their greater ability to write theoretical articles to support their artistic achievements, both by the members of the group (Liu Kuo- sung, Chuang Che and Fong Chung-ray primarily) and by key members of

Taiwan’s intelligentsia (such as Yu Kwang-chung or Zhang Longyan 張隆延, 1909-

2009), were all key elements determining the greater success of the Fifth Moon after

1960 (Hsiao Chong-ray, 2013: 74). Furthermore, Liu Kuo-sung’s personal charisma, brilliant mind, and brave nature allowed him to emerge as the leader both of the

Fifth Moon and the modernist art movement in general (Hsiao Chong-ray, 2013: 74).

It was due to the immense influence of Liu, and consequently of the whole Fifth

Moon Group, that in the 1960s, in Taiwan, “abstract” became a synonym of

“modern”, and “ink painting” of “Chineseness” (Hsiao Chong-ray, 1991c: 413-414;

Hsiao Chong-ray, 2013: 74). In 1960, the English translation of the group’s name also changed: the old denomination Salon de Mai was abandoned in favor of the more poetic Fifth Moon Group (Hsiao Chong-ray, 2013: 75).

3.3.2 Different styles, shared aesthetic

While the question on the future of Chinese tradition did push all of the Fifth

Moon artists of the “second phase” (1960-1964) to embrace abstraction, it did not entail a complete homogenization of styles. On the contrary, Sullivan (1996:182) explains that, while all Fifth Moon artists believed it was their duty “to create a new

Chinese painting responsive to the challenge of Western modernism”, at the same time

they were not restricted by medium or technique. They used oils, oils mixed with sand, collage, Chinese ink; they screwed up the paper or painted on both sides of it; they printed with fiber-board-any means was acceptable so long as it expressed the artists’ feeling and vision (Sullivan, 1996: 182).

Liu Kuo-song, for example, in 1961 decided to “abandon oils in favor of Chinese ink and brush” (Sullivan, 1996:183). Liu’s outstanding abstract oeuvres in ink brought him international fame and recognition, and also allowed him to later become one of the absolute protagonists of the New Ink Art Movement along with the Hong

Kong artists Lui Shou-kwan (Lü Shoukun 呂壽琨, 1919-1975) and Wucius Wong

(Wang Wuxie 王無邪, 1936-) (Andrews & Shen, 2012:236-237) [figs.65-68]. Chuang

Che embraced abstraction around 1960, but did not limit to experimentations with ink (which he very soon abandoned in his artistic career). He preferred imbuing

Western techniques, such as oils or even acrylic colors, with an entirely Chinese flavor. In his early period, Chuang Che also extensively utilized collage, thus introducing modern techniques that Chinese art had never witnessed before 42

[figs.69-72]. Fong Chung-ray, after experimenting with oils, also embraced the use of ink in his early period [figs.73-76]. Compared to the other Fifth Moon artists, Hu

Chi-chung utilized a wider palette and used almost exclusively oil colors, sometimes integrating sand to add texture to the painting [figs.77-78] (Hsiao Chong- ray, 2013: 76-77; Hsiao Chong-ray, 1991c; 275-286). These artists were able to develop highly personal styles, while at the same time all producing abstract art and adhering to traditional aesthetic principles. Indeed, one of the key features of the group is that abstract art gave the members of the Fifth Moon (and, to some extent, also to those of the Eastern Painting Society) the opportunity to merge this

Western modern art trend with some fundamental notions of traditional Chinese aesthetics (Hsiao Chong-ray,2013:8). These artists

42 A detailed presentation of Chuang Che’s art can be found in Chapter 3, p.218.

employed the ideals of ‘rhythmic vitality’ and ‘the properly organized placement of elements’ from the 6th century master Xie He’s ‘Six Principles’ of painting and the precept of ‘The One Stroke’ from Shitao (1641-1710): ‘There is but one stroke, the foundation of the many, the root of the myriad things…When the method of the one stroke is learned, the myriad things appear’. They expanded the tradition of brush and ink, with its rhythmic feel and inherent appeal, transforming it into the principal element of the picture. The unrestrained, spirited brushstrokes of cao calligraphy, the intentional inclusion of blank areas to accentuate darkness and an undelineated spatial arrangement became direct methods of expressing personal emotions, and the profound depths of ink provided the tone of abstruse Eastern mystery (Liao, Yu and Fang, 2003: 14-15).

In “The wonders of the non-painted” (1963), Liu Kuo-song made it very clear that the members of the Fifth Moon Group hold the traditional Chinese technique of leaving blank spaces on the pictorial surface in high esteem, as easily perceivable in the works produced by the Fifth Moon artists in that period. In his article, Liu reflected on the role Daoism had in Chinese philosophical history, and maintained that the balance between emptiness and substance (and between contrasts in general) permeates the culture of China. According to Liu, the deep metaphysical meaning of the blank space represents the Chinese weltanschauung, because in such blank space one can find the Dao that “cannot be seen, cannot be heard, cannot be touched” (Liu Kuo-song, 1963). Yu Kwang-chun, in his introduction to the Fifth

Moon Group exhibition of 1964, also highlighted this formal feature of the exhibited painting:

To paint in black so as to leave ample white unpainted has been a more and more manifest formal tendency of the recent works of the Fifth Moon painters. This may be interpreted […] as viewing the infinite from the finite and holding something in the presence of nothing. […] The Fifth Moon painters have been intuitively journeying towards the mysterious center of Chinese philosophy. Fully understanding that ‘the heavy is at the root of the light and the silent is the master of the noisy’, they paint where they leave unpainted, commit where they omit, and thus realize the ideal of Chinese artistic tradition in ‘reaching out beyond the reach of the brush’ (Yu, 1964).

No such theorized aesthetic connotations can be found in the works nor in the words of the Eastern Painting Association’s artists, even though some of their paintings also present typical features of Chinese traditional aesthetics. This lacking

63 of theoretical foundation, for at least a part of the members of the Ton-Fan, will be later provided by the Punto International Movement founded in Italy in 1961 by

Hsiao Chin. As the second and the third chapter will show, the Punto Movement exacerbated (or simply revealed) the differences between the aesthetic theories of the Eastern Painting Association and the Fifth Moon Group (Chen, 2010: 2). The

“Chinese” balance between full and empty spaces also allowed the Fifth Moon members to distance themselves from European and American abstract artists. Yu

Kwang-chung (1964) wrote:

The works of Pollock and Tobey are stuffed and blocked to the exclusion of any breathing space. Even on the canvases of Kline, Soulages and Hartung is the blank lacerated by weighty and violent black bars and masses and deprived of any possibility either to maintain a sense of the infinite or to have communion with, or response to, the positive space. For instance, where the abstract expression of Kline is a process of commission, that of Liu Kuo-sung is one of omission; where Kline is self-expressive, Fong Chung-ray is self-contained (Yu, 1964).

These precious words reveal that, while Western modern art (and Abstract

Expressionism in particular) served as a “visual” inspiration for these artists, the

Fifth Moon members also soon gained the awareness that their creations were not an imitation, but rather a unique, original and independent expression of their own cultural roots, and thus had very little to share with the works by Pollock, Kline, or

Hartung, even though their outward features looked similar.

3.3.3 The spirit of “Clairvoyancism”

The above-mentioned introduction to the Fifth Moon Group exhibition of

1964 written by the poet Yu Kwang-chung is a very useful document to understand the theoretical premises of the Fifth Moon Group’s art. In his essay, Yu identifies the Fifth Moon painters as the pioneers of a new “-ism”, different from all those originated in the West. He describes such movement with the neologism

“Clairvoyancism”, which translates the Chinese lingshi zhuyi 靈視主義. Lingshi literally means “soul’s vision” or “mind’s vision”, and clairvoyancism is described as “the act or the power of discerning objects not present to the senses but regarded

64 as having objective reality”: it is through the mind’s vision that it is possible to contemplate abstract art. To explain the concept, Yu quotes chapter 21 of the

Daodejing (道德經): “Dao is elusive and evasive. Evasive, elusive, it nevertheless contains an image. Elusive, evasive, it yet contains an object”43:

It is exactly this elusive and evasive image as well as object that abstractionism is trying to catch. Yet the image manifests no definite shape, and the object possesses no body; that is to say, they are not readily seen in the world of representational painting. It is true that abstract painting presents no image. It does not mirror external objects directly, yet it has its own images and visions. Thus, non- representational image, when presented on the canvas, turns out to be the irreducible form of forms, because it is expressed in terms of such fundamental pictorial elements as line, shape, color, and tone. We may say that abstractionism aims at the expression of the richest Dao by means of the purest nature. Thus, when external objects are removed from (or transformed on) the canvas of painting, both the artist and the spectator are left free to concentrate on intuitive activities and thus spared the distraction of any attempt at recognition (Yu, 1964).

This highly poetic formulation effectively describes the two distinctive characteristics of the paintings of the Fifth Moon Group: abstract and Chinese

(Hsiao Chong-ray, 1991c: 413). Yu Kwang-chung does not identify the Fifth Moon as a point of rupture within the millenary Chinese painting tradition, but as a perfect continuation: painting seems to be a medium to reach for and contemplate the Dao for Chuang Che as much as for Guo Xi 郭熙 (c.1020-c-1090). This “function” of

(landscape) painting had already been theorized around the 5th century CE: one of the first artists who wrote about the topic was Zong Bing 宗炳 (374–443), who claimed that by observing a landscape painting one could know the Dao, the universal cosmological principle (Celli, 2010: 772). Looking at the works by the Fifth

Moon Artists, especially Liu Kuo-song and Chang Che, it is in fact possible to detect their will to create “a new tradition of landscape painting (Lu, 1993:55). While in the

West avant-garde art oftentimes wanted to break with the past and build a new paradigm, this was not the case for the Taiwanese modernist art movement, for

43 Original Chinese text: 道之为物，惟恍惟惚。惚兮恍兮，其中有象；恍兮惚兮，其中有物 (Laozi, 21).

65 which the disruption of the forms and shapes of tradition was accompanied by the determination to let the spirit of such tradition thrive.

The Fifth Moon painters have freed themselves from the realistic aspects of Chinese painting and in so doing have come closer and closer, in a transcendental way, to the essence of Chinese tradition. Gradually they are drawn to abstract expression in black (at least in monochrome akin to black) and to defining the white space when they merely paint in black […] The point is fully realized by such painters as Mi Fei, Shih T’ao [sic!], Pa Ta Shan-jen [sic!] and Ch’I Pai-shih [sic!], who of all masters of Chinese painting have attained conciseness and simplicity of abstract expression […] It should be held as the supreme achievement of Chinese painting to be capable of reaching the most primordial of forms and at the same time contemplating the purest of the formless (Yu, 1964).

These words perfectly synthesize the core beliefs and objectives of the Fifth Moon and its differences with the Eastern Painting Society. In 1981, Hsiao Chin wrote:

“while the Fifth Moon specifically promoted the inherent abstract characteristics of

Chinese ink painting, and entrusted them with a modern feeling, the Ton-Fan wanted to research all the different possibilities offered by Chinese art and thought”.

For Fifth Moon artists, the points of reference were clear: the aesthetics and the abstract elements of traditional art had to be used to “criticize and reform traditional

Chinese painting and […] respond to abstract paintings in the West” (Chen, 2007:

49). On the other hand the Ton-Fan, from the very beginning, stressed absolute liberty in art creation and aimed to become part of the global movement of modern art, while also taking “national features” into consideration, which also (and especially) included the rich tradition of Chinese thought (Chen, 2007:49; Sullivan,

1996: 184-185).

The allusions to Mi Fei (best known as Mi Fu 米黻, 1052-1107), Shitao 石濤

(1642-1707), Bada Shanren 八大山人 (1626-1705) and Qi Baishi 齊白石 (1864-1957) are extremely precious. By referring to these artists as models, Yu Kwang-chung also clarifies the artistic and aesthetic ideals of the Fifth Moon artists. The four painters belong to different epochs. Mi Fu was a scholar-official of the late Northern

Song period and one of the pioneers of what was later to be called “literati painting”, which emphasized spontaneity and naturalness in artistic creation, opposing the

66 allegedly rigid and artificial artistic conventions of the academic school (which nevertheless was producing in the same period artworks of immense value). Literati paintings shied away from grand, monumental themes, preferring small details of nature and reality (Celli, 2010: 817-818). Mi Fu’s calligraphies and paintings, where the subject matter is described with few, extremely synthetic brushstrokes, always give an impression of velocity and unfinishedness (Fong, 1992: 156-160) [fig.79].

Such conciseness, as well as a very eccentric personality, also characterize Shitao and Bada Shanren, who lived the transition between the Ming and the Qing

Dynasties. These two painters are usually referred to as “individualists”: after the end of the Ming empire and the installation of a foreign dynasty on China’s imperial throne, a part of Chinese intellectuals assumed the status of yimin 遺民 (loyalists), opting for a life of poverty and vagrancy in despise of the Manchu. Zhuda 朱耷, better known under the alias Bada Shanren, was a descendant of the Ming imperial family and led an extremely tormented life, an aspect which is also reflected in his art, where the scarce number of elements and fragmentary settings, especially in his last period, perfectly convey a sense of discomfort and existential anguish (Thorp &

Vinograd, 2001: 331-332) [fig.80]. Shitao (pseudonym for Zhu Ruoji 朱若極) also was a Ming Dynasty heir and was a contemporary of Bada Shanren. His paintings once again reveal the artist’s ability to express his subjectivity in a semi-abstract style.

While Bada Shanren’s favorite subject matters are usually unconventional, Shitao also produced landscape paintings, but his non-realist and extremely plastic depictions of mountains are able to transmit the internal struggle of the painter

[fig.81] (Celli, 2010: 865). Lastly, Qi Baishi, who lived the traumatic end of the

Chinese empire and the first years of the Republic, is one of the great innovators of

Chinese ink painting in the first half of the 20th century. He did not consider the embrace of Western artistic styles as a viable option for Chinese art, but his attachment to tradition allowed him to innovate it from within. He usually selected minute and plain subject matters (small animals, insects, flowers, uncomplicated

67 objects) and excelled in depicting them through a simple and concise use of ink

(Andrews & Shen, 2012: 49-50) [fig.82].

These examples demonstrate Liu Kuo-song’s conviction that “abstraction already existed in ancient Chinese painting tradition, [and] it would be most appropriate for modern Chinese painters to combine the abstraction in Chinese tradition with that in Western tradition” (reported in Kuo, 2000: 96). While the painters of the Eastern Painting Association wanted to enter the global stage under the banner of the “Eastern spirit”, the Fifth Moon members turned to specific models within Chinese tradition and took to the extreme the “modern” premises of

Chinese traditional painting. Yu Kwang-chung thus explains the concept:

To re-evaluate Chinese tradition in painting and enhance it, a comprehensive orientation in Western art is an indispensable condition. Yet it must remain a condition only and not an end in itself. Our purpose is to carry on the Chinese tradition and anticipate future developments […] CLAIRVOYANCISM tries to continue the Chinese tradition on its return to the Orient after having had its schooling in modern Western art […] It is neither geometric abstractionism nor abstract expressionism […] Our ideal work is not a momentary outburst, but an eternal crystallization, and not a chaotic wild goose chase, but an orderly architecture […] Style of artistic expression, abstract or non-abstract, depends upon the intrinsic need of the artist and faithfully reflects his aesthetic belief. It is neither the perfume of Paris nor the coiffure of New York. It is forever ours so long as we adopt it honestly and successfully. So long as we live here and create, here is China, here is the Orient, here is the whole world (Yu, 1964).

3.4 The “association period” and the end of the modernist art movement

The establishment of the Eastern Painting Association and the Fifth Moon

Group shocked Taiwan’s art world, and their new, avant-garde art forms hit the conservative circles as a wave of unexpected violence. In the early 1960s, Taiwan was in the grip of an absolute frenzy for abstract art, and the multiple modernist art associations established in those years led to the definition of this brief season as the

“association period”. Along with the Ton-Fan and the Fifth Moon, the third main actor of the modernist art movement was the Xiandai banhuahui 現代版畫會

(Modern Printmaking Association), established in 1959 after the exhibition

“Chinese and American Prints” (Hsiao Chong-ray, 2004: 51). Its founding members

68 included artists who were to have an incredible success in the later years, such as

Yuyu Yang (Yang Yingfeng 楊英風, 1926-1997), Lee Shi-chi, Chen Ting-shih (Chen

Tingshi 陳庭詩, 1913-2002), Chiang Han-tung (Jiang Handong 江漢東, 1926-2009) or

Chin Sung. Some of them also joined the Ton-Fan or the Fifth Moon Group in the

1960s. The association was able to break away from the mainstream narrative of anti-communism, for the promotion of which woodblock prints were thought to be particularly appropriate, and to embrace abstract forms [figs.83-85] (Chen, 2007: 49).

Without any institutional support, the members of these associations started to look for validation abroad (Andrews & Shen, 2012:249), especially at the Sao

Paulo Biennial and the Paris Youth Biennial. In 1957, Hsiao Ming-hsien was the first

Taiwanese artists to receive an honorable mention at Sao Paulo Biennial, and was to be followed in the ensuing years by Qin Song (1959) and Gu Fu-sheng 顧福生

(1935-2017) (1961) (Lu, 1993:51).

Besides international venues, which were also the stages at which these artists aimed when they started moving abroad in the mid-1960s in search of recognition, modernist painters also tried to institutionalize their presence on the local scene. In 1959, Gu Xianliang 顧獻樑 (1914-1979), a critic who had recently returned to Taiwan from the US, and Yang Yuyu launched the project of the “China

Modern Art Center” (Zhongguo xiandai yishu zhongxin 中國現代藝術中心). The objective of the Center was to aggregate all modernist artists in Taiwan, and it almost succeeded: seventeen different paintings associations and more than one hundred and forty artists decided to join (Chen, 2007: 50-51). This ambitious program, however, never came to being: before the start of the first joint exhibition at the National Museum of History in March 1960, one of the works by Chin Sung,

Spring Lantern 春燈 [fig.86] was reported to contain the name of Chiang Kai-shek written upside down (Hsiao Chong-ray, 2013: 80). Because of this accusation, the exhibition could not take place, and the project of the China Modern Art Center also came to an end. This is one of the most representative episodes of the heavy political

69 climate in which modernist artists were forced to create and exhibit their works, and that eventually led to the end of the whole modernist movement.

Another episode casting a shadow on the modernist art movement was the article published in August 1961 in the Overseas Chinese Daily by the philosopher

Hsu Fu-kuan (Xu Fuguan 徐復觀, 1904-1982) under the title “The revision of modern art”. In his article, the scholar stated:

[These artists] believe that rationality is hypocritical. They do not recognize the rationality in humanity, nor do they recognize the value structures in tradition and reality; instead, they seek to usurp and vanquish. This is their Surrealism. In this sense, they have their similarities with the communists' dialectic materialism... assuming that the destructive work of modern Surrealists succeeds, where exactly will it lead us? In the end, they'll have nowhere to go except to pave the way for the communist world (Hsu Fu-kuan, reported in Lu, 1993: 56).

Under the White Terror regime, such an accusation was a deadly serious matter. Liu Kuo-song was the first one who had the courage to respond, affirming that, given the fact that in Mainland China abstract art was banned, such accusations were completely unfounded (Andrews & Shen, 2012: 250). This not-so-friendly exchange of opinions gave rise to a prolonged controversy in the press mainly centered on the issue of surrealism44, during which neither party was able to prevail over the other. Lu (1993: 55-58) bluntly concludes his chronicle of this series of mutual accusations stating that “[the modernist artists’] involvement in an ugly debate on Surrealism with Hsu Fu-Kuan was hardly worth the effort. […] The truth is that if the local art world’s fundamental research had been extensive enough, then this all-out war could have been avoided” (Lu, 1993:58). As we shall see later, the lack of extensive knowledge of Western art trends and theories of these artists was indeed an indisputable feature of the modernist art movement. Nevertheless, the frontal attacks to “surrealism” by this important representative of Taiwan’s intelligentsia once again proved the difficult circumstances under which abstract artists had to operate.

44 A detailed chronicle of the “surrealist debate” can be found in Lu, 1993: 55-58.

Despite these accusations, between 1957 and 1964, during the heyday of the modernist art movement, abstract art (which was considered a synonym of modern art) overwhelmed Taiwan’s art society and swept the entire island with its tremendous force, so much so that even government-sponsored art exhibitions and

Japanese-trained Taiwanese artists had to bend to its influence. The phenomenon that took place in Taiwan’s official art circles in the 1960s has been denominated by

Liao Tsun-ling, Yu Sharleen and Fang Mei-Ching (2003:16) as a “quiet revolution”, because both the older and the younger generation of local Taiwanese painters gradually started gravitating around new forms. The dominant “pan- impressionism” (Chen, 2007: 51) at the Provincial Exhibition and the Taiyang

Exhibition started moving towards an “image deformation” style informed by cubist techniques. Taiwanese-born artists proponent of this “new” style included

Hsiao Ju-sung (Xiao Rusong 蕭如松, 1922-1992), Chen Yin-huei (Chen Yinhui 陳銀

輝, 1931-), Lai Chuanjian 賴傳鑑 (1926-2016) or Ho Chao-chu (He Zhaoqu 何肇衢,

1931-) [figs.87-89] (Chen, 2007: 50-51). Liao Chi-chun, one of the founders of the

Taiyang Art Association during the Japanese colonial period and a fundamental supporter of the modernist art movement, also moved towards a cubist style in this period (Hsiao Chong-ray, 2013: 83) [fig.90]. Chen Shu-sheng (2007: 51) and Hsiao

Chong Ray (2013: 8) identify two main trends in Taiwan’s cultural production of the period: the “spiritual expression” 心象表現 xinxiang biaoxian (i.e. abstract art) through typical Chinese aesthetic conventions promoted by Mainland artists, and the “image deformation” 物象的變形 wuxiang de bianxing (i.e. cubist/fauvist styles) adopted by local Taiwanese oil painters.

Undoubtedly, the artists that dominated the modem painting movement in Taiwan in the 1960s mostly came from China. They spent their youth in wartime and viewed art as a way to demonstrate the meaning of life, belief, and values after coming to Taiwan. Their abstract art combined with the void of Chinese traditional aesthetics. The overwhelming trend of abstraction swept the painting circle in Taiwan and inspired local Western painters, young or senior as they may be. Almost every painter in Taiwan tried abstraction. Owing to the different cultural backgrounds, local Taiwanese painters returned to "image deformation". "Spiritual expression"

and "image deformation" are two representative styles for Chinese-born and Taiwanese-born artists during this period (Chen, 2007:51).

The decisive “Chinese” nature of the modernist movement can be explained by two factors. Firstly, the Japanese-educated Taiwanese painters did not feel part of China’s cultural tradition, and therefore did not feel the need to “modernize” or

“give new life” to forms and aesthetics that were almost completely foreign to them.

Secondly, the strong attachment Mainland artists felt towards Chinese tradition was to a large extent due to the fact that they had been uprooted and separated from their motherland. Moreover, as the KMT’s propaganda compulsively repeated, the force responsible for said separation, i.e. the Communist Party, wanted to destroy all the vestiges of China’s glorious past. As Hsiao Chong-ray (2011:12) acutely observes, “the era’s unease manifested itself as passion divorced from discipline, as innovation compromised by a nervous attachment to tradition”. Therefore, the

“obsession” with the modernization of Chinese painting and with the preservation of its spirit was not only moved by a sincere affection towards tradition, but was also a reflection of the bleeding wound of the “exile”, which found its outlet of expression in abstract art. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, when Taiwan and its people started questioning their national identity after the multiple traumas the island had to go through both on the international and domestic stage, the almost exclusively “Han-Chineseness” of the modernist movement of the 1960s also led to

heavy criticism by Taiwanese scholars:

The leading advocates of modernization through abstraction sought to reconcile traditional and modern to displace the conservatives and establish their own authority. Regrettably, their version of “modern” was limited to an obsession with abstraction, while their “traditional” merely picked up the lofty detachment from human reality as expressed in ancient Chinese ink paintings. The most prominent example of this is the “modern Chinese painting” which held sway for a time. This superficial tacking together of today and yesteryear not only reached new lows of dogmatism on the theoretical side, but on the practical side it repeated the same mistakes as the scholar-artists who arrived in Taiwan a century previous from China – that of cutting themselves off from the land in which they lived (Lin Hsing-yueh, 1993:46).

After 1965, the fast, ephemeral adventure of the Taiwanese modernist art movement came to an end. In the second half of the 1960s painting started losing its appeal, and new counter forces, informed by the latest Western art trends and opposing the monopoly of painting (and abstract painting in particular) within artistic circles began to emerge. The period between 1966 and 1970 has been defined by Hsiao Chong-ray (2004: 54) as “the meteoric rise of early complex art”, which combined “Dadaism with touches of Existential colors, mixed with the fun of Pop

Art and the wit of Happening Art” (Hsiao Chong-ray, 2004: 54). This time, it was a group of local Taiwanese artists “fed by the secularism of pre-industrialism and a society dominated by mass media” who took the lead of the movement (Hsiao

Chong-ray, 2004: 54). They were also influenced by the newspaper articles introducing the latest art currents, including Pop and Op Art, published by the artists Shiy De Jinn ( Xi Dejin 席德進, 1923-1981) during his travels in Europe and

North America between 1962 and 1966 (Liao, Yu and Fang, 2003: 13). The main proponents of these new trends in Taiwan were the Huawai huahui 畫外畫會

(Huawai Painting Association), which literally translates as “Beyond Painting

Painting Association”, founded in 1966, and the visionary figure of Huang

Huacheng (黃華成, 1935-1996), who was the first to bring installation art to Taiwan

(Liao, Yu and Fang, 2003:13) [fig.91]. The new anti-painting wave transformed what until just a few years before had been considered avant-garde works into

“conservative and regimented” art, as the Fifth Moon paintings at a 1967 exhibition were defined by some journalists (Lu, 1993: 57). The complex art period soon came to an end, swallowed by the nativist movement of the 1970s. The KMT government's retreat from the United Nations in 1971 and the rupture of diplomatic ties with a large part of the international community, including the US, Taiwan’s historical ally, caused a wave of nationalistic fervor in the island. Artists in turn moved towards a realistic, nostalgic, and naïve representation of Taiwan’s sceneries. After a thrilling season of innovation, during which painters reflected on “how to paint”, Taiwan art hence “went back to wondering ‘what to paint’" (Lu, 1993:59).

The second and most important factor that determined the end of the modernist movement was that Taiwan’s unsupportive, if not openly opposing cultural establishment, and the consequent lack of recognition the modernist painters faced at home, pushed many of them to leave Taiwan and go abroad. One of the last blows the Nationalist government stroke to the movement was the forced closure in 1965 of the magazine Wenxing and the homonymous gallery, two staunch supporters of the abstract movement (Andrews & Shen, 2012: 250). Between the mid-1960s and the early 1970s, most of the members of the Eastern Painting

Association and the Fifth Moon Group, including Li Yuan-chia, Hsia Yan, Ho Kan,

Hsiao Ming-hsien, Ouyang Wen-yuan, Chuang Che, Fong Chung-ray, and even Liu

Kuo-song, the very soul of the movement, left Taiwan (Hsiao Chin & Wu, 2017;

Andrews & Shen, 2012: 250). Wherever they went, these artists came into contact with environments that were completely alien to them, and could finally experience the thriving artistic milieus of the “West” first-hand. Hsiao Chong-ray (1991c: 415) sustains that while the participants of the modernist art movement were kindled by the fire of passion, and certainly succeeded in giving a real visual shock to Taiwan’s conservative art circles, they lacked a real, profound understanding of Western modern art. Even though movement was supported by eminent scholars, such as the above-mentioned poet Yu Kwang-chung, the artists themselves needed a leap of awareness (Hsiao, Chong-ray, 1991c: 415). The opportunity to take said leap was offered by their transfer abroad, which determined a decisive change in the styles of all these artists. Furthermore, in foreign countries, these artists also had to come to terms with their hybrid Chinese/Taiwanese identity and needed to find new ways to express it. The Taiwanese modernist art movement had come to a close, but the new season of its diaspora was just about to begin.

[1] Xu Beihong, Yu Gong removes the mountain (detail), 1940, 349x197 cm, Ink and color on paper

[2] Lin Fengmian, Composition. ca. 1934, Oil on canvas

[3] Pang Xunqin, Suchlike Paris, 1931, Watercolor on Paper, Lost in 1937

[4] Ni Yide, Summer, 1932, Oil on canvas, lost 76

[5] Hashimoto Gahō, White Couds, Red Leaves, 1890, 265x159 m, color on paper

[6] Uemura Shōen, Evening, 1941, 214.5x99 cm, Color on silk 77

[7] Gao Jianfu, Eagle, 1929, 167x83 cm, Ink and color on paper

[8] Gao Qifeng, Monkeys and Snowy Pine, 1916, 177x91.5 cm, Ink and color on paper

[9] Huang Binhong, Entertaining a Friend in a Mountain Dwelling, 1935, 152.2x82.2 cm, Ink and color on paper

[10] Wu Hufan, Observing a Waterfall in an Autumn Forest, 1938, 96.5×52 cm, Ink and color on paper

[11] Pan Tianshou, Black Chicken, 1948, 68x136.5 cm, Ink and color on paper

[12] Fu Baoshi, Rain at Dusk, 1945, 103x59 cm, Ink and color on paper

[13] Chen Chin, Instrumental Ensemble, 1934, 200x177 cm, folding screen, color on silk

[14] Kuo Hsueh-Hu, Scenery near Yuan-Shan, 1928, 94.5 × 188 cm, gouache on silk

[15] Kuo Hsueh-hu, Festival on South Street, 1930, 188 × 94.5 cm, gouache on silk

[16] Lin Yushan, Two Heads of Cattle, 1941, 134.7 × 174 cm, gouache on paper

[17] Antonio Fontanesi, Shinobazu Pond, 1876-8, 52x73.3 cm, Oil on canvas

[18] Kuroda Seiki, Morning Toilet, 1893, 178.5x98 cm, Oil on canvas (Destroyed)

[19] Chen Cheng-po, Outside of a Chiayi Street, 1927, 64x53cm, oil on canvas

[20] Li Meishu, Girl resting, 1935, 162x130 cm, Oil on canvas

[21] Liao Chi-chun, Scene with Coconut Trees, 1931, 78.5 × 98.4 cm, Oil on Canvas

[22] Liao Chi-Chun, Courtyard with Banana Trees, 1928, 129.2 × 95.8 cm

[23] Yang Sanlang, Mr. Dai’s Home, 1963, 72.7x91 cm, Oil on canvas

[24] Li Shih-chiao, Happy farmers, 1946, 157x146cm, Oil on canvas

[25] Pu Xinyu, Old Pines at West Mountain (detail), 1962, Ink on paper, 32 x 237 cm

[26] Zhang Daqian, Peach-Blossom Spring, 1983, 209x92.2 cm, Ink and color on paper 87

[27] Zhang Daqian, Mighty pine by autumn water, 1967, 86x147 cm, Ink and color on paper

[28] Huang Junbi, Viewing Pine Tree, 1960, 120 x 57 cm, Ink and color on paper 88

[29] Li Chun-shan, Work No. 632, Undated, 14.4×20.5 cm, Ball-point pen on paper

[30] Li Chun-shan, Work No. 691, Undated, 14.3×20.5 cm, Ball-point pen and ink on paper

[31] Li Chun-shan, Work No. 1212, Undated, 25.8 × 35.7 cm, Watercolor on paper

[32] Li Chun-shan, Work No. 041, 1971, 94.2×68.3 cm, Oil on canvas

[33] The “Eight Outlaws” of the Eastern Painting Society and their master. From right to left: Ouyang Wen-yuan, Li Chun-shan, Tommy Chen, Li Yuan-chia, Hsia Yan, Ho Kan, Wu Hao, Hsiao Chin, Hsiao Ming-hsien

[34] The Manifesto of the Ton-Fan Art Group Inaugural Painting Exhibition in 1957 91

[35] Will Faber, Colors, 1962, 32 x 25 cm, Mixed media on paper

[36] Joan-Josep Tharrats, Quien mira ..., 1961, 130 x 162, Oil on canvas

[37] Ho Kan, Untitled, 1955, 26.5x39 cm, Pastel on paper

[38] Ho Kan, Imagery 12, 1955, 19.2x27.1cm, Pencil on Paper

[39] Ho Kan, Old Dream, 1962, 52 × 72cm, Oil on canvas

[40] Ho Kan, Senza titolo, 1964, 34.5x52.5 cm, Mixed media on paper

[41] Hsiao Chin, Opera figures 5, 1956, 27x38cm, Pastel on paper

[42] Hsiao Chin, Crouch, 1961, 140x110 cm, Acrylic and ink on canvas

[43] Hsiao Chin, The Beginning of Dao-2, 1962, 70 x 50cm, Acrylic and ink on canvas

[44] Hsiao Chin, The Origin of Chi-3, 1962, 40x60cm, Ink on canvas

[45] Li Yuan-chia, Untitled, 1958, 38.8×108 cm, Ink and watercolor on paper

[46] Li Yuan-chia, Untitled, 1962, 150x150 cm, Oil on canvas

[47] Li Yuan-chia, 0+1=2, 1965, 31×78 cm, Wood and acrylic paint 97

[48] Hsiao Ming-hsien, Drawing 6016, c.1955-65, 10x40 cm, Ink on paper

[49] Hsiao Ming-hsien, Drawing 6004, c.1955-65, 10x40 cm, Ink on paper

[50] Hsiao Ming-hsien, Drawing 6020, c.1955-65, 40x10 cm, Ink on paper 98

[51] Wu Hao, Between Him and Her, 1955, 89.5 × 72 cm, Oil on Canvas

[52] Wu Hao, Puppet, 1971, 80x65 cm, Woodblock print 99

[53] Ouyang Wen-Yuan, PAINT, 1960, oil on canvas, 92.3x51 cm

[54] Ouyang Wen-yuan, Untitled, 1964, 54.3x78cm, Ink and color on paper

100

[55] Hsia Yan, Hanging, 1960, 138x70 cm, Oil on canvas

[56] Hsia Yan, Football Game, 1964, 72.5×72.5 cm, Gouache, acrylic, and oil on canvas

101

[57] Ton-Fan Art Group Painting Exhibition in Macerata, Italy, November 21-29, 1959

[58] Ton-Fan Art Group Exhibition at Mi Chou Gallery in New York, January 5-30, 1960 102

[59] Li Shi-Chi, Parachute series - 3, 1964, 77x52cm, Lithography

[60] Chu Weibor, The Sun in the Heart, 1969, 60.5×45.5 cm, Oil, plastic and glass plate 103

[61] Liu Kuo-sung, Memories of Childhood, 1957, 71.5x60 cm, Oil on Canvas

[62] Chen Jingrong, After dinner, 1959, 118x88 cm, Oil on canvas 104

[63] A group picture of the Fifth Moon Exhibition of 1960. From left to right: Han Hsiang Ning, Fong Chung-Ray, Liu Kuo Sung, Zhang Longyan, Hu Chi Chung, and Chuang Che

[64] Sixth edition of the Fifth Moon Exhibition, 1961. From right to left: Kuo Dong-rong, Liu Kuo- sung, Chuang Che, Gu Fusheng, Han Hsiang-ning, Hu Chi-chung, Fong Chung-ray 105

[65] Liu Kuo Sung, Abstract Landscape, 1963, 84.5x55.2 cm, Ink on paper

[66] Liu Kuo-sung, Dance of Spiritual Rhythm, 1964, 57x89 cm, Ink and color on paper 106

[67] Liu Kuo Sung, Untitled, 1965, 55.6x85.8 cm, Ink and color on paper

[68] Liu Kuo-sung, Landscape 5, 1967, 52.5 x 78.2 cm Ink and color on paper

107

[69] Chuang Che, As lofty as a mountain, 1960, 112×75.7cm, mixed media on canvas

[70] Chuang Che, Untitled , 1966, 59x233 cm, Watercolor on paper laid on scroll

108

[71] Chuang Che, The beginning, 1962, 84x60cm, Oil on canvas

[72] Chuang Che, Untitled, 1966, 60×91 cm, Ink on paper

109

[73] Fong Chung-ray, 64-52, 1964, 58.4×116.8 cm, Ink and Color on Paper

[74] Fong Chung-ray, 1966-23, 1966, 119×55 cm, Ink on Paper 110

[75] Fong Chung-ray, Untitled, 1964, 59x119cm, Ink on paper

[76] Fong Chung-Ray, 67-76, 1967, 94×53 cm, Ink and acrylic on paper 111

[77] Hu Chi-chung, Painting 6334, 1963, 88.9 × 137.2 cm, Oil on Canvas

[78] Hu Chi-chung, Painting 6527, 1965, 72.3x100.3 cm, Oil and sand on canvas 112

[79] Mi Fu, Mountains and pines in Spring, circa 1100, 35x44.1 cm, Ink and color on paper

[80] Bada Shanren, Fish and rocks (detail), 1699, 135.3x61 cm, Ink on paper 113

[81] Shitao, Man in a House beneath a Cliff, late 17th century, h22 cm, Ink and color on paper

[82] Qi Baishi, Lamp, 1944, Ink and color on paper

114

[83] Chiang Han-Tung, Still Life of Vegetables and Flowers, 1963, 58 × 44 cm, Woodcut print

[84] Yang Yuyu, Worship, 1959, 40 × 30 cm, Woodblock print

[85] Chen Ting-shi, Lust of life, 121×60 cm, Cane Fiber Board Print 115

[86] Chin Sung, Spring Lantern, 1960, 53.5 x 78.5 cm, Oil on Paper

[87] Lai Chuan-Chien, The Garden, 1962, 80 x 65 cm, Oil on panel

116

[88] Hsiao Ju-sung, Window side, 1966, 72.5x99cm, Watercolor

[89] Ho Chao-chu, Jiufen, 1966, 114.5×88 cm, Oil on canvas

117

[90] Liao Chi-chun, Bridge, 1963, 56x65 cm, Oil on canvas

[91] Huang Huacheng, Washing hands, 1966

118

Chapter 2 – Hsiao Chin or On the spiritual in art

“Looking back at the sixty years of my artistic endeavors, I feel that I could not possibly subscribe to the notion of "art for art's sake". It is because there is a bigger purpose which my art should serve — something that I did not create myself; all I did was to deliver it” – Hsiao Chin, 2015b45

“The great energy of the universe is the most important and endless inspiration in my creation. Although my creative thinking originated in Lao Zhuang, through the baptism of Tibetan mandala murals and based on the fusion concepts of Buddhism and Zen, this is the most indispensable part of my creative connotation” – Hsiao Chin, 201846

“Before the ancients established the laws, what laws did they follow? After they established the laws, does it mean the people of today cannot surpass them?" – Shitao47

1. Introduction

The artists belonging to the Fifth Moon and the Eastern Painting Societies shared a concern for the perpetuation of “the essence of Chinese art” (中國畫的精粹

Zhongguohua de jingcui, Hsiao Chin, 1980c: 235). As shown in Chapter 1, their different understanding of how this goal could be achieved was evident since the very first years of activity of the two associations in Taiwan. When many of the Fifth

Moon and Ton-Fan painters left their homeland to look for a freer and more suitable environment for their artistic development, these differences did not disappear, but, on the contrary, grew more distinct. As the Chinese/Taiwanese artists came into contact with the lively artistic environments of the West, they had the opportunity to understand and see first-hand the numerous artistic trends that until that moment they had only known “from outdated Japanese art magazines” (Hsiao Chin,

45 Original Chinese text: 從現在的年紀往回看，超過一甲子的時間我一直在藝術的領域裡耕耘著。我是不可能承認為藝術而藝術，我做藝術是為了更大的理想，這個更大的理想並非由我來創造，只是藉我來傳達，而選擇在八十歲的年紀說這一句話，是經過深深思考之後的結論。 46 Original Chinese text: 宇宙的大能量即是我創作中源源不絕最重要的靈感; 雖我的創作思想源自老莊，經過西藏曼陀羅壁畫的洗禮，並融合佛家和禪宗的理念為基礎；這是我創作意涵中最不容忽視的部分。 47 Original Chinese text: 古人未立法之先，不知古人法何法，古人既立法之後，便不容今人出古法。 (Quoted in Hsiao Chin, 1978: 117).

119

1983d: 71). At the same time, the encounter with a new world also made the issue of their cultural belonging and artistic identity more urgent. The core beliefs that the Fifth Moon and the Ton-Fan members held when they first promoted the

“modern art movement” in Taiwan set the participating artists on an exploration path they have not abandoned ever since. The second and the third chapter of this essay aim to follow two of the most representative members of these Taiwanese associations, Hsiao Chin for the Ton-Fan and Chuang Che for the Fifth Moon, in their artistic development in the West in order to reconstruct how the embryonic propositions of their first Taiwan years developed when they reached “the West”, and how they have been able to integrate “the West” into their determination to

“modernize” Chinese painting.

Despite the fact that both artists are credited to merge “East” and “West” through their art, the paintings they produced are extremely different in style, so much so that the viewer cannot help but wonder how the same “East” could have inspired such distinct outcomes. By analyzing the artistic careers and the ideologies underlying the production of Chuang Che and Hsiao Chin, the chapters will thus explore how a different understanding of the notion of “East” took shape in their works, while also analyzing how much they inherited from their experience as promoters of the modernist art movement in Taiwan and to what extent the outward features of their paintings share the theoretical and ideological foundation of the Western art trends by which they were inspired.

Assessing the work of Hsiao Chin is not an easy task. In the course of his

“never-ending journey of exploration” (Tsai, 2015: 27), the painter changed his style multiple times. These changes were determined by the numerous relocations of the artist (Mainland China, Taiwan, Spain, Italy, USA, Italy again, and lastly Taiwan), as well as by his personal experiences and the diverse intellectual stimuli he received from the study of Daoist and Chan Buddhist thought. In his painting,

Western artistic forms mingle with ancient Eastern philosophies, and personal experiences mix with the expression of the artists’ own cosmology (Tsai, 2015: 26-

120

27). His extensive production, both written and visual, discloses the profundity of his thought and the richness of his experience, while the considerable number of books, articles, and essays produced by Eastern and Western scholars and critics about his work does not only witness the great success of the artist, but also reveals the extreme complexity of his work.

Two elements distinguish Hsiao Chin’s long artistic career. Firstly, despite the fact that he lived abroad most of his life, he never failed to look back to his own cultural roots (Tsai, 2015: 20). As he maintains “In terms of living habits and ways of doing things, I got used to the Western style. However, in terms of art and culture,

I remain a Chinese and an Oriental” (quoted in Li, 2018: 16). As this research will show, Hsiao’s multiple transfers did not prevent him from remaining anchored to his cultural identity, which has become the very core of his creative spirit. The second element, which is intimately related to the first one, is the fact that Hsiao

“can surprise us all by suddenly veering off course, but in point of fact he never changes direction” (Tagliaferri, 2009). Despite the sometimes-radical stylistic changes that the chapter will briefly outline, Hsiao’s art preserves an incredible consistency. Such consistency, as will later be described, is given by Hsiao’s fundamental conception of art as a “spiritual matter” (Documentary In my beginning is my end, 2020), first formulated in the early 1960s in the city of Milan.

The meditative, calm and spiritual nature of Hsiao’s works is also shared by other Ton-fan members, namely Ho Kan and Li Yuan-chia, who also resided in Italy for a period of time after leaving Taiwan in the early 1960s. In the paintings by these three artists, it is possible to hear the echo of some of the fundamental teachings of their common master Li Chun-shan, who ceaselessly insisted on the concept of the

“depiction of spiritual space” and emphasized the role of the mind 腦 nao as a fundamental component of artistic creation along with hands 手 shou, eyes 眼 yan and heart 心 xin (Hsiao Chong-ray, 2006). The works by Hsiao Chin, as well as those by Ho and Li, are rooted in the teachings of Li Chun-shan and, thanks to the premises on which they are grounded, effectively convey the “Eastern spirit”

121 preached by Li, despite being very distant from the traditional aesthetics of Chinese ink painting. On the contrary, the works by Chuang Che and other Fifth Moon members, based on different premises, are more easily identifiable as a “modern” continuation of the ancient tradition of Chinese painting and calligraphy.

The European and Italian artistic environment in which Hsiao Chin was immersed also had an influence on his painting style. In Italy, even though informal art in its two main modes (gestural and materic painting) found some outstanding representatives, such as the Venetian Emilio Vedova, the artistic scene was mainly informed by the unique and peculiar experience of a few artists. Milan, the center where Hsiao decided to move to, is described by Pola (2017: 17) as “the critical hub of new European trajectories in art, and irreversibly influenced by the presence of

Lucio Fontana, his Spatialism, and the zero reset of art enacted by Azimuth artists such as Piero Manzoni and Enrico Castellani”. The extremely personal and distinctive journey of self-exploration enacted by Hsiao Chin, was therefore more closely related to these artists, even though Hsiao was also well acquainted with the champions of Europe’s informal art (Tàpies, Mathieu, Hartung, etc.), as well as with

American action painting. Hsiao’s style after his transfer to Italy revealed the uniqueness of his individual expression and the singularity of his cultural identity, but was also a manifestation of the zeitgeist of the time. Even better, the zeitgeist of

1960s Italy probably helped Hsiao to fully express in painting the theoretical beliefs he had inherited from Li Chun-shan about art as a spiritual matter. In Italy, and later in the USA, Hsiao “was able to sharply experience the time-specific spiritual rhythms of that period” (Chiang, 2015: 34) and “reacted to the same forces that engaged the [Western] masters [of the time]” (Hunter, 1997:16), while at the same time “reflect[ing] […] his personal thoughts in the pursuit of art” (Hsiao Chong-ray,

2006).

Hsiao Chin’s artworks accomplish the Ton-Fan ideal of a “modern painting

[that] grows from the soil of national culture, but appeals to global audiences” (Tsai,

2015: 20), and while preserving a marked “Eastern” spirit due to the “inspiration”

122 they take from the ancient philosophies of Daoism and Buddhism, they are capable to cross all boundaries and speak to an international public. In order to inspect how

Hsiao could attain this result, the chapter will first briefly retrace the highlights of the career of the artist, and will then propose a critical analysis to investigate how the ideological premises of the Eastern Painting Association and the teachings by Li

Chun-shan matured over the years in Hsiao’s work.

2. Biography and artistic development

The resources that can be consulted to examine Hsiao’s biography and artistic development are innumerous. Among them, two of the most complete are

Hsiao Chong-ray’s contribution for the catalog of the exhibition Glory to the Source,

Hsiao Chin 1955-2005, held at the National Art Museum of China in Beijing in 2006, and the essay by Tsai Chao-yi for the 2015 exhibition Eighty Years of Energy at the

National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts48.

Hsiao Chin was born in Shanghai in 1935. His father, Hsiao Yu-mei (Xiao

Youmei 蕭友梅, 1884-1940), was a distinguished and well-known musician. After studying music both in Japan and Germany, in 1927 he founded in Shanghai the very first music conservatory in the history of the country, with the support of Cai

Yuanpei (Wu, 2018: 31). Just five years after Hsiao’s birth, his father passed away, and he was left alone with his sister and mother, a devout Protestant who baptized both her children. Unfortunately, in 1945 she also passed away: the two siblings were entrusted to the care of two different aunts in Nanjing. Hsiao’s uncle, Wang

Shijie (1891-1981, 王世杰), was an important and wealthy member of the

Kuomintang, as well as a cultivated scholar and prolific artworks’ collector (Hsiao

Chong-ray, 2006). Wang Shijie’s collection “inspired [Hsiao] to appreciate the grace and elegance of the ancient literati works” (Wu, 2018: 37).

48 The contribution was published under the title Topology of Meaning of Life: Retrospect and Prospect of Hsiao Chin’s Art. Hsiao Chin himself described this text as “clear, concise and graceful” (Hsiao Chin & Wu, 2017: 255).

123

In 1949, after the KMT’s defeat, Hsiao’s already troubled life was to endure a new hardship: while he had to follow his aunt and uncle to Taiwan, due to Wang’s strong ties with the Nationalist Party, his little sister remained in Nanjing. He would only be able to see her many years later, on his first visit to Mainland China in 1980

(Wu, 2018: 249). In 1951, at the young age of sixteen, Hsiao enrolled at Taipei

Teacher’s College Art Department. The college, specialized in the formation of elementary school art teachers, was the only art school Hsiao could enter without a high school diploma (Hsiao Chin, 1983c: 23). In 1952, Hsiao, dissatisfied with the formal art education system he had found at Taipei Teacher’s College, entered Li

Chun-shan’s Andong Street Studio under the introduction of his schoolmate senior and friend Ho Kan (Hsiao Chong-ray, 2006). It was Li’s heuristic teaching method and his emphasis on the fundamental importance of individual creativity that first routed Hsiao Chin on his path of artistic self-discovery, which he has not abandoned to this day. In one of the most powerful statements describing the radicality of Li’s teachings and their influence on his disciples, Hsiao said:

At the time many people would say: ‘You want to run before you can even walk...’. However, this idea has absolutely nothing to do with it. This isn’t a question of ‘to walk’ and ‘to run’, the question is how to even ‘walk’ (Hsiao Chin, quoted in Hsiao Chong-ray, 2006).

The metaphor of walking and running is used by Hsiao to explain the total diversity he found in Li’s studio compared to the academic training he was used to.

Li did not teach the Ton-Fan artists how to paint, as a standard educator would have done, rather, he put them on a completely different path from what they had found at college: it was the path of modern creation. In the 1950s, Hsiao was thus initiated to painting: his works from this period document his enthusiasm for experimentation and “cover a wide range of genres, themes and styles including […] figurative portraiture, pictogram, Mandarin opera characters and abstract ink painting” (Tsai, 2015: 21). Even though Hsiao first ventured into abstractionism in

1955, inspired by Miro and Klee (Hsiao Chong-ray, 2006) [fig.1], his last series of paintings before leaving for Spain were fauvist-leaning paintings depicting Chinese

124 opera figures [fig.2]. These pieces are an early demonstration of Hsiao’s interest in the possibilities of color. As Hunter points out, in these years “Hsiao did not achieve a style he could call his own. But he did find his fundamental direction, as he sought to distill the best of the Chinese tradition, fuse it with universal modernist form and become the master of a singular voice” (Hunter, 1997: 16). The later part of the decade, however, was to bring about a huge change in the artist’s production and personal life.

Hsiao was not happy with the heavily politicized Taiwanese artistic environment and with the scarcity of available resources about modern art, which were only comprised of second-hand reports from Japanese art magazines or by rare books or catalogs (Wu, 2018: 55). He wanted to leave the country, and come into contact with the world of Western art that was eulogized by his master Li and that fascinated him so much. The opportunity finally arrived owing to a scholarship offered by the anti-communist Spanish government, with which the Republic of

China (Taiwan) had good relationships. Hsiao thus recalls his choice to go to Spain:

Most of the people around me, including my family, thought that if I was going abroad, the United States should be the first choice. America was the true "authentic" country for Chinese students to study abroad, because it would result in better opportunities when they returned. But I am an impetuous person. I couldn't wait, and grabbed the first chance I had to go abroad. It was Spain, which to most people was still a backward country (Hsiao Chin, 1983d: 71).49

Hsiao’s choice to pursue his studies in Spain was not dictated by a particular fascination with Europe’s artistic scene, even though Li Chun-shan was more acquainted with it rather than America’s, as shown in Chapter 1. At the same time, this choice also makes clear that Hsiao was not obsessed with the United States and

Abstract Expressionism, and that his main concern was to reach for the West, the birthplace of modern art. Hsiao’s decision to go to Spain was destined to profoundly influence not only his own artistic development, but also that of all the members of

49 Original Chinese text: 大部份國人和我家人，都認為若要出國，應以美國留學為上，美國是中國的「正宗」留學國，這樣回來才有出路云云：但我性子急躁，等不及，第一個抓到的機會，就出了國，那是個一般人都認為落後的西班牙。

125 the Ton-Fan group, who received his reports on the latest European art trends and, thanks to the network Hsiao was able to create abroad, were able to admire original works by European artists for the very first time during the Ton-Fan’s exhibitions.50

Hsiao’s reports and the original works he sent from Europe, along with Li Chun- shan’s influence, were the factors that determined the preference the Ton-Fan members had for Europe at the expense of America. It was because of Hsiao’s ascendancy that some of the Ton-fan artists also decided to reach him in the Old

Continent some years later (Wu, 2017: 9).

In 1956, Hsiao embarked on his long journey from Hong Kong to France by ship: after alighting in Marseille, he reached Madrid by train (Hsiao Chong-ray,

2006). Dissatisfied by the overly “academic” environments and teaching styles of the academies both in Madrid and Barcelona, he bravely renounced to his scholarship, and decided to pursue art on his own, visiting galleries and museums and reading extensively about modern art trends (Wu, 2018: 71). Li Chun-shan’s teachings about the necessity to find one’s own creative path were engraved in

Hsiao’s mind, and had to be pursued at all costs. In this period, it was the “European

Newsletter” column he wrote for the United Daily News that allowed him to cover his basic living expenses: little did he know his reports would be so influential for the members of the Eastern Painting Association51. Hsiao’s decision to abandon formal academic training is very significant: unlike the “first generation” of Chinese artists who went abroad at the beginning of the 20th century, the “second generation”

(after 1950) did not share the same focus on formal art education (Sotheby’s, 2019).

This difference may be explained not only by the mutated historical circumstances, but also by the different needs the two groups had, as shown in Chapter 1: while the first generation explored modern art because they felt the urge to save the

Chinese nation, the second was in quest of an outlet for personal expression.

50 See Chapter 1, p. 49-50. 51 A complete list of the articles written by Hsiao for the United Daily News can be found in Wu, 2018: 81.

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Hsiao wanted to get as many stimuli as he could: after moving from Madrid to Barcelona, then the center of Spanish modern art, he tried to “see as much as possible” (Hsiao Chin, 1983, quoted in Gong, 2020: 15), and also started participating in the activities of the Real Círculo Artístico and the Cercle Maillol at

Barcelona’s French institute, two important local artistic organizations (Gong, 2020:

13). In that period, he made acquaintance with some of the most important figures of Spain’s artistic scene, including Antonio Tàpies (1923-2012), Modest Cuixart

(1925-2017), Joan-Josep Tharrats (1918-2001) or Antonio Saura (1930-1998) (Hsiao

Chong-ray, 2006) [figs. 3-6]. The first paintings Hsiao produced in Spain were clearly influenced by the style of informal art that dominated the artistic circles he frequented in Barcelona. While during the time spent at Taipei Teacher’s College

Hsiao’s abstract works “emphasiz[ed] the division of the painted surface, the expression of symbolism, the calm character structure, [his style] now changed to the cursive running calligraphy style and the sense of rhythm […] [typical of] calligraphy” (Hsiao Chong-ray, 2006). Consistently with the local artistic climate, free emotional expression, delivered through the aid of Chinese calligraphic lines, thus became the protagonist of Hsiao’s first European experiments [figs.7-9].

However, Hsiao soon grew dissatisfied with this style, and around the end of 1958 understood that this almost unfiltered and impulsive delivery of emotions through gestural painting was not what he was looking for, and did not respond to his need of creating with “mind, heart, eyes and hands”, as he had been taught in the crucial years in Li’s Andong Studio.52 After this very brief and little-documented

52 “I felt that it was not enough to rely on intuition alone in my painting, that the works required deeper thinking to support them. In my shift from impulsive intuition to introspection, I realized the metaphysical aspects of the beauty of Chinese character compositions. This led me to create a series of works based on Chinese character compositions, though I applied symmetrical forms to emphasize their symbolic import” (Hsiao:1983j: 239). “It was only when I first arrived in Spain and really felt the cultural shock, that I realized the profundity and the richness of Chinese culture. At the time, it was the heyday of European informal art. In many respects, informal art gives great expressive freedom, and I believe it can be blended with some techniques of Chinese calligraphy. That’s what I tried to do when I first arrived in Europe. Of course, it was only a “formal experiment”, and it could not by any means satisfy my individual

127 season of “informalism”, Hsiao thus started shifting towards a more lyrical and contemplative approach in his painting, as he believed that, compared to his previous style, such an approach would best accomplish the teachings of Li Chun- shan about the depiction of the “spiritual space”. Influenced by the structure of

Chinese characters, Hsiao thus started utilizing geometrical forms and symmetrical compositions, abandoning the free vent of emotions typical of gestural informal art, to which Hsiao never went back. In fact, his works from this period first incorporated some of the elements which later characterized his whole production, such as “an emphasis on intuition and introspection, strong and vibrant colors, symmetric bilinear forms, use of varied lines, a strong sense of rhythm in the composition as well as uses of symbols and symbolism” (Tsai, 2015: 22). In the works of this period, such as Painting AO, Dive or Crouch [figs.10-12], Cork (2020) also observes Hsiao’s intention to “explore simplification and [to] search for essential form”, which would later bring him to the synthetic compositions of his

“Daoist” years. The symmetrical paintings produced in the late 1950s and early

1960s, both in oil on canvas and ink on paper, hence certainly set Hsiao on the path that then brought him to his artistic maturity, even though they still preserved some elements related to so-called “materic painting” that was later to be abandoned by

Hsiao. In fact, in the works from this period it is still possible to hear the faint echo of the canvases of contemporary Spanish painters (Tàpies, Cuixart, etc.), as the scratches and the thick application of color in Painting DK [fig.13] or the swift and inelegant lines in Untitled-16 [fig.14] demonstrate.

In 1958, Hsiao first visited Italy and Venice’s Biennale, about which he wrote an extensive and detailed report for the United Daily News. This event left a profound mark on the artist, mainly because he first had the opportunity to see original works by Mark Tobey (1890-1976) [fig.15] and Mark Rothko (1903-1970)

needs; form always needs a strong theoretical foundation to support it” (Hsiao Chong-ray, 1991c: 219).

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[fig.16], whose influence on Hsiao Chin will be discussed later in the chapter53. As soon as he “realized the art events in Italy were more engaging than in Spain”

(Hsiao Chin & Hui, 2019: 55), Hsiao set his heart on moving to Italy, and by the end of 1959 he was living in Milan. The city was one of the beating hearts of Italian contemporary art, as well as one of the most important centers for art, design, and architecture in Europe. In Italy, Hsiao got to know some of the most famous representatives of the local art scene, such as Lucio Fontana (1899-1968), Roberto

Crippa (1921-1972), Piero Manzoni (1933-1963) or Enrico Castellani (1930-2017)

(Hsiao Chong-ray, 2006). The transfer to Italy in 1959 constituted a major turning point in Hsiao’s art. What determined such change, besides the different environment, was Hsiao’s first exploration of Chinese philosophies, especially

Daoism, which he studied in depth thanks to the philosophy books he asked his friends to send him from Taiwan54. Italy and Europe’s alien artistic milieus did not only constitute an ideal environment to learn and understand new techniques and art theories, but also forced Hsiao Chin to look back and re-discover his own cultural roots, a phenomenon which Wai-lim Yip compares to what is known in literature as “crisis of identity” or “exile consciousness” (Yip, 1995: 50), where “up- rootedness” thrusts a person to look back at their original cultural identity. In

Hsiao’s words,

Paradoxically, living abroad intensified my sense of the richness and profundity of my country’s artistic culture and philosophical thinking. The idea of “spiritual

53 See p.159-161. 54 “When, during my overseas travels, I faced a major bottleneck in my artistic creations, I would write to my friends in Taiwan asking them to send books on Chuang-tzu [sic], Lao-tzu [sic] and Daoist thought, to seek new inspiration from traditional ideas. I rooted my own ideas in Daoism. Though I was living abroad, I had not forgotten the importance of ‘spiritual space’ Li Chun-shan had always emphasized. I knew that if my works were lacking in inner experience or failed to persist in creating a unique style, there would be no content of which to speak. Studying the philosophies of Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu inspired me to develop a new concept of artistic vocabulary” (Hsiao Chin, 2015a: 65). “When I first arrived in Europe from Taiwan, then a desert for modern culture, I naturally ‘overdosed’ on the various forms of European art and culture at first […] The impact of this inspired deeper interest in and reflection on ancient Chinese culture and art” (Hsiao Chin, 1993: 249).

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space”, which is there in the writing of Laozi and Zhuangzi, has not been forgotten by me to the present day (Hsiao Chin, 2020). 55

From this moment, Hsiao made the blending of abstract techniques and Chinese philosophies the core of his personal expression. With his transfer to Milan, Hsiao also forever discarded his attempt to imitate Western art forms, and firmly engaged on the path of spiritual art, following his master’s emphasis on the supremacy of the theory underlying art creation over outward appearances. The “rarefied and spiritual compositions” (Pola, 2017: 17) produced by Hsiao in the early 1960s are marvelous: the artist visually represents the duality of yin and yang, stillness and movement, earth and sky through flowing calligraphic lines opposed to still and monochrome geometrical shapes, or through cold tones opposed to warm colors.

In most of the paintings of the period, Hsiao also employs the traditional technique of feibai 飛白56 [figs.17-20] (Hsiao Chong-ray, 1991: 218). Despite the contrast between the different elements, the composition is perfectly united and harmonized, just as the eternal contrasts that form the Unity of the Dao. “The ethereal, serene realms” (Chiang, 2015: 35) and the “suspended dynamism” (Schiffer, 1988) that

Hsiao is able to create in these works enthrall and pacify the viewer. Large blank spaces appear on Hsiao’s canvases, not much as a tribute to the traditional Chinese painting practice known as liubai 留白 (also cherished by the members of the Fifth

Moon Group), but as a very personal interpretation of the rationale behind said technique: fullness and emptiness are yet another manifestation of the duality of the universe. The choice Hsiao made to abandon oil pigments, which he considered

“too thick and insufficiently reserved” (Wu, 2018: 95), and to embrace the use of water-based ink, serves as yet another confirmation of Hsiao’s attempt to reconnect with his Chinese cultural roots. Hsiao Chong-ray (1991: 218) also identifies the

55 Original Chinese text: 在國外生活反而使我更加理解本國藝術文化和哲學思想之豐富與深奧。直到今天，我從未忘記老子和莊子的著作中所提到的「靈性空間」。 56 A particular calligraphic technique that consists in leaving blank traces of white in the stroke instead of applying the ink uniformly, thus giving the appearance of using a dry brush. Definition retrieved from: www.zdic.net/hant/%E9%A3%9B%E7%99%BD

130 leaving of blank spaces and the presence of Chinese characters in very evident positions within the canvas as “Hsiao’s strenuous quest for ‘Eastern tradition’”

[fig.21]57. As Tsai (2015:22) recalls, “during this period, Hsiao Chin made the quest for Eastern spirituality and modern artistic expression his main artistic mission, and realized these ideals through establishing a strong personal style in his abstract paintings” [figs.22-26].

In 1961, Hsiao Chin was also one of the founders of the Punto International

Art Movement in Milan58. This event, even though it occurred in the early years of

Hsiao’s career when he was only twenty-six, formally put the “spirituality of art practice” (Tsai, 2015:22) at the center of Hsiao’s production. As a matter of fact, the

Punto art movement was born as a reaction to the “instinctivity” of informal art and

Abstract Expressionism and to promote a counter-movement of contemplative, spiritual art. Along with Hsiao Chin, the other founders of the movement were the

Japanese sculptor Azuma Kenjiro 吾妻兼治郎 (1926-2016), Hsiao’s fellow Ton-fan member Li Yuan-chia, who had reached his friend in Milan in 1962, and the Italian painter Antonio Calderera (1903-1978) [figs.27-28]. Hsiao had made the acquaintance of Calderara in Milan, since they were living on the very same street: as they got to know each other, they also discovered their common yearning to distance themselves from informal art, which according to them had lost its spiritual depth59, to embrace and promote a new way of art-making (Wu, 2018: 95-105).

57 The strokes of Chinese calligraphy and the presence of spaces intentionally left blank are two stylistic features that will later return in Hsiao’s production. 58 “Punto” means “point” in Italian. The name of the movement was translated by the curator Huang Chaohu (黃朝湖, 1939-) as Pangtu Guoji Yishu Yundong 龐圖國際藝術運動 for the Movement’s exhibition in Taipei in 1963. The Chinese translation attempts to reproduce the sound of the word “punto” but loses the original Italian meaning. “Pangtu” literally translates as “grand image” (Gong, 2020: 20). 59 “The 1950s was a time when non-representational art was in fashion in Europe, and action painting was in fashion in America. These once vibrant Western art movements, by the end of the 1950s, were trending towards uncontrolled releases of emotion or games of skill, losing their original spiritual depth and vitality. This of course also reflects the crisis of consumerist attitudes that were then sweeping Chinese and Western society. […] At the time, I was opposed to the flood of non- representational, emotional art, and pursued a deeper level of spirituality” (Hsiao Chin, 1983j: 239- 241).

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Punto was the first artistic movement founded by an Asian in the “West”.

Between 1962 and 1966, Punto held thirteen exhibitions in the cities of Milan,

Barcellona, Albissola, Florence, Taipei, Macerata, Bologna, Zurich, Roma, Mestre, and Ancona (Gong, 2020: 23-30). Many important artists participated in some of the

Punto exhibitions, such as Lucio Fontana, Dadamaino (1930-2004), Enrico Castellani,

Jan Schoonhoven (1914-1994), or Jesús Rafael Soto (1923-2005) (Gong, 2020: 23). In the Punto years, between 1963 and 1966, Hsiao also grew interested in Tibetan

Buddhism and Indian mandala60 paintings [fig.29]. In Tibetan Buddhism, known in

China as “Esoteric School” (密宗 mizong), believers can reach salvation through a series of ritual practices, namely mantra (the uninterrupted repetition of fixed formulas), mūdra (the positioning of the hands and the posture of the body apt to meditation) and mandala (Cheng, 2000: 422-423). Hsiao thus describes his interest in

Tibetan art:

[In that period] I discovered Tibetan Buddhist art, whose compositions and colors are unparalleled. In Tibet, many religious paintings are completely abstract and don’t represent any figure […] Oriental calligraphy and the geometric abstraction of Tibetan paintings have existed for centuries. They have influenced my work in a very subtle and yet profound way. I took inspiration from them to create a type of painting which is symmetric and geometrical, but less cold than that of Mondrian. (Documentary Interview of Hsiao Chin, French subtitles, 2015).

From a stylistic point of view, the “discovery” of mandala paintings determined Hsiao’s adoption of a brighter and wider palette, as well as a more decisive turn towards geometric abstraction (Hsiao Chong-ray, 2006) as opposed to the poetics of the “two contrasting and blending elements” of his previous years. In this period, many of Hsiao’s compositions go back to symmetry, and they are normally composed of a perfect circle (or multiple concentric circles), painted in

“contrasting primary colors” (Tsai, 2015: 22) and placed “in the middle of sharp

60 “Mandala, (Sanskrit: “circle”) in Hindu and Buddhist Tantrism, a symbolic diagram used in the performance of sacred rites and as an instrument of meditation. The mandala is basically a representation of the universe, a consecrated area that serves as a receptacle for the gods and as a collection point of universal forces. Man (the microcosm), by mentally ‘entering’ the mandala and ‘proceeding’ toward its center, is by analogy guided through the cosmic processes of disintegration and reintegration”. Retrieved from: https://www.britannica.com/topic/mandala-diagram

132 zigzags radiating from the center and usually dotted with white” (Hsiao Chong-ray,

2006) as an interpretation of the theme of the sun, which gives the title to many of the works from these years. Hsiao also started experimenting with acrylic pigments, whose brightness and intensity allowed him to reproduce the warm and luminescent colors of mandala by which he was inspired (Dodd, 2020a) [figs.30-34].

Hsiao’s interest in Tibetan and Indian Buddhism, however, did not only constitute a “visual influence” on his paintings. On the contrary, his mysterious and mystical paintings share the same vocation of mandalas: when looking at them, viewers detach from the material world and immerse in a spiritual dimension. As in the case of mandalas, while the gaze is attracted towards the center of the composition, the mind can elevate. This series of paintings inspired by the

“contemplative world of mandala” is not easily intelligible, as Hsiao draws on

Tibetan Buddhism to develop a very personal symbolic and metaphysical language

(Tsai, 2015: 22-23), but it also perfectly exemplifies the concentration of Hsiao’s art on Eastern spirituality, as well as his experimental spirit and his attempt to fuse

“East” and “West” in new, unconventional ways.

In 1967, Hsiao moved to the United States in search of new opportunities

(Documentary A historical dialogue with art, 2020). In New York, where he resided for three years, he continued his exploration of geometric abstraction initiated with the mandala-inspired paintings of the previous years: in pursuit of a state of absolute calmness and meditation, emotional expression was reduced to the bare minimum

(Tsai, 2015: 23). The exuberant colors of the last Punto years gave way to a narrower, however bright, palette. In many works, “immobile chromatic surfaces” (Schiffer,

1988) are separated by neat, sharp lines; in others, solitary geometric shapes float against monochrome backgrounds. In these works, however, Hsiao’s “primary focus of […] exploration remained in the ‘symmetrical opposition’ and ‘symmetrical balance’ of dual forces. The artist attempts to express the liquid sensation and

‘internally calm’ world gathered from seated meditation through nearly pure and motionless planes of color” (Hsiao Chong-ray, 2006).

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This change towards a more subdued style was also caused by Hsiao’s personal difficulty in adapting to the new environment. His American years were not easy from a professional and personal point of view: Hsiao himself admits that his works “derived from a sense of absolute solitude that has led to absolute resolution, which can be seen to reflect my challenging experience of living and making art in a place of little cultural or historical depth such as the US” (Hsiao

Chin, 2015: 10)61. Furthermore, the system of art exhibition and selling was different from that of Europe, and Hsiao struggled in adjusting to it (Documentary A historical dialogue with art, 2020).

The production of Hsiao’s American years has been labeled as “hard edge”.

In fact, Hsiao’s artworks from the period do remind the aesthetic features of a part of the coeval American artistic scene, stirred by movements (Hard Edge, Minimal

Art, etc.), whose birth was also in part explained by the will of some artists to react to the frantic “gestures” of action painting and the unconventionality of Pop Art, just like Punto. However, Quintavalle (2008: 25-26), Tsai Chao-yi (2015: 23), and

Hsiao Chin himself (1983k: 273), clearly explain the distance between Hsiao’s works and these currents:

[The] relations with American Hard Edge painting are non-existent, because what the Americans consider as formal research is seen by Hsiao as a complex symbolic operation where every shape has meaning […]. The absurdity of the references made by critics to the American Hard Edge has to be reiterated: Hsiao is inside various experiences, much more complex and culturally encompassed within philosophies which have nothing whatsoever to do with the American situation in the Sixties. […] What the critics failed to see in Hsiao’s research, which is evident even in the titles as well as in the structure of the work, is the highly symbolic charge introduced by the author. Hsiao doesn’t propose abstract forms to be considered as absolute, but proposes a relationship, a communication between these forms and a symbolic tradition, that of the Buddhist reflection on the world and particularly that of Dao, linking this research to a desire for identification between artist and cosmos, which is evident in numerous other compositions (Quintavalle, 2008, 25-26).

61 In another similar statement, Hsiao Chin admitted: “America imposes rhythms and standards, rules and styles. The American dream is utopia. My American experience was extremely hard, but important and complementary to my subsequent growth. It isn’t easy to live in a country where everyone has to pretend to be happy, young and beautiful” (Hsiao Chin, quoted in Vanni, 2009).

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As Quintavalle justly notices, even though the outward appearance of these works might remind the viewer of the works by contemporary Hard Edge artists, the titles themselves betray a profound spiritual reflection the artist wants to convey through the sharp forms he disposes on the canvas. Sublimation, The ego and the infinity, Nirvana, Rebirth [figs.35-38] all witness the fact that, while the artist’s modes of expression had changed, the “Eastern spirit” by which his works were informed had not altered.62 Tsai Chao-yi (2015: 23) wittily defines Hsiao’s style of the period as “intuitively minimal”63: the artist’s emphasis on the sharpness of forms and the precision of color certainly derived from the difficult experiences of the time and the environment by which Hsiao was surrounded, but this did not prevent his works to preserve their profoundly lyrical nature and spiritual inclination, representing “a self-contained world of living things” (Tsai, 2015: 23), and keeping their “always in movement, but inherently still” (Hsiao Chong-ray, 2006) appearance. Hsiao Chin (2015b: 10) also points out that in his hard edge series he

“tried to visualize a lifeworld, motionless yet spouting fountains of energy”. As the

Swiss aestheticist and art critic Günter Schönenberger comments, “[Hsiao’s] paintings are always supported by a solid religious-philosophical foundation which allows him to achieve more than a simple mathematical structure” (quoted in Tsai,

2015: 23) [figs.39-40].

In the second half of the 1970s, after Hsiao’s return to Italy, the artist’s production underwent another fundamental change. The sharpness of his hard edge series was forever abandoned, and Hsiao went back to the flowing calligraphic lines of his first Italian years. Hsiao’s return to his previous artistic vocabulary, however, does not look like a repetition or a “change of mind” after a decade of

62 The artist explains: “After 1972, I used sharp, dagger-like shapes to heighten the tension of the paintings. Even so, there were still fundamental differences from the purely rational minimalism of the West. The intervention of extremely simple shapes into large flat color fields was entirely ‘intuitive’, even ‘anti-rational’, rather than rational. Here, I gained deeper insight into the ‘essence of the Eastern man’. Anglo-Saxon rationality only influenced my expressive techniques. It could not change my ‘intuitive Eastern nature’” (Hsiao Chin, 1983k: 273). 63 More on the concept of intuitiveness at p.153

135 geometric abstraction, but rather represents the maturation and the completion of his early artistic aspirations. As Tsai (2015: 27) points out, “Hsiao Chin’s art never repeats itself, [because he] is capable of turning an act of return into a new beginning”. In the first years in Milan after his return from the USA, Hsiao continued his hard edge style, but by 1977, Hsiao’s brushstrokes were once again unforced, monochromatic surfaces were substituted by ample blank spaces, and the calm rationality of his American paintings was forever deserted in favor of a freer mode of expression. Hsiao’s mature stage had begun. These stylistic variations were not only determined by Hsiao’s return to the more familiar environment of Milan, but most importantly by his interest, since 1973, in Chan (禪) Buddhism, which inspired the artist with profound cosmological reflections and induced him to react to the rationalism and the composure of the previous years (Hsiao Chong-ray, 2006;

Tsai, 2015). Hsiao’s personal interpretation of Chan Buddhism and its influence on his works through the concept of “intuitiveness” will be discussed later in the present chapter. If we look at the outward features of Hsiao’s paintings, after a decade of “geometric abstraction”, Hsiao’s turn towards Chan Buddhism somehow drew the artists nearer to the other side of the “spectrum” of post-War abstraction, i.e. abstract expressionism. However, despite Hsiao’s stylistic U-turn, the primary orientation of his art did not alter: in his paintings, he continued to pursue a metaphysical sense of profound spirituality, and even though brushstrokes became more spontaneous, canvases clearly preserved the meditative and spiritual vocation

Hsiao had envisioned since the Punto years. Aldo Tagliaferri (quoted in Pola, 2017:

19), thus synthesizes the effect the works of this period make on the viewer: “[These paintings] emphasize the bare spaces [and] exhibit decisive brushstrokes, but seem eager for silence” [figs.41-48].

In many of the paintings from Hsiao’s Chan Series, it is possible to observe extremely colorful parallel lines escaping towards the edge of the canvas. As Enzo

Biffi Gentile (1977, quoted by Pola, 2017: 29) points out, in this period “we notice the resumption of ‘lateral’ attention paid to the painting or drawing, with the lines

136 penetrating from the outside, not accepting the confines of the work and manifesting a sense of continuum” [figs.49-50].

From the early 1980s, with his depiction of “cosmic landscapes” (Wu, 2017:

11), what Hsiao referred to as “chi” [sic!] (qi 炁) in many of the titles of his late 1970s works, became the absolute protagonist of the artist’s production. At the turn of the decade, the enigmatic canvases informed by Chan thought changed into an investigation of “the relationship between the physical being and the world” (Tsai,

2015:23) and “a meditation upon the composition of the universe” (Hsiao Chong- ray, 2006).64 In the artist’s vision, qi is the “invisible, unnamable yet omnipresent vitality” (Tsai, 2015) of the universe. Hsiao gives visual representation to such universal energy in a variety of ways (or “landscapes”): it can take the shape of

“magnetic waves”, showers, waterfalls, volcanoes, galaxies, whirlpools, natural and astral phenomena that are chosen as powerful manifestations of the great cosmological energy of qi that Hsiao puts at the very center of his art65 [figs.51-58].

Maggie Wu (2018: 217) states that in this period Hsiao “expressed his energy of spirit, which played the same tune on different instruments with the landscape painting of Northern Song Dynasty”. Even though Hsiao “do[es] not particularly like the academicians of the Northern school” (Yip, 1985), the comparison is indeed appropriate. The reverence Hsiao felt for the “cosmic landscapes” (Wu, 2017: 11) or the “impressive manifestations of nature” (Vanni, 2009) he depicted, for their mysterious kinship with their beholder, and for the powerful qi that moved and gave life to them (Northern Song painting would probably have called it Dao) somehow relates Hsiao Chin with his renown ancestors. In this period, Hsiao’s

64 As Tsai puts it, Hsiao’s works in the 1980s “look through the spiritual core of the world through an intuitive and contemplative form of abstract expression. [At the same time], Hsiao Chin also observes the external world from the point of view of the inner dimension” (2015:23). 65 “[Hsiao] looks back into the origin of the universe […] [The artist] creates dramatic grandeur with powerful brushwork […] making the invisible sea of qi a tangible aesthetic form. In so doing, Hsiao Chin observes the motion of the universe as well as changes of attributes of all objects from both the macro and the micro perspectives. To date, the “infinity of qi” has remained the main theme of Hsiao Chin’s art practice” (Tsai, 2015: 24).

137 admiration for the phenomena he depicts once again gives his artworks a sense of spirituality and wonder-inspired meditation. The incredible dynamism of the lines, the liveliness of subject matters, the spontaneity of brushstrokes, the liberation of colors and the inspiration derived from the “intuitive” philosophy of Chan

Buddhism thus ultimately do not betray the fundamental conviction held by Hsiao of art as a spiritual space of “quiet contemplation”.66

In 1978, Hsiao founded another international movement called SURYA, meaning “sun” in Sanskrit. SURYA inherited and expanded the ideals proposed by

Punto, emphasizing the awe the artists felt towards the energy of qi (Hsiao Chin,

1984b: 301). The sun, a theme Hsiao particularly loves, was chosen as the symbol and the origin of the great energy of the universe (Documentary A Historical

Dialogue with Art, 2020)67.

After Hsiao’s abandonment of his “intuitively minimal” style in the late

1970s, his creativity had entered its mature stage. In 1990, however, a tragic event once again forced the artist to reach an even more profound level of awareness in his art. In that year, Hsiao’s 23 years old daughter Samantha68 suddenly passed away in an accident. His father, stricken with grief, was unable to paint for several months (Documentary A Historical Dialogue with Art, 2020). However, “overcome by the pain of loss, [Hsiao Chin] turned again to the spiritual roots that had sustained him throughout a long life in art” (Hunter, 1997: 24), and his suffering gradually led him towards a new epiphany:

Once I have been through such heart-wrenching experience and understand the nature of it, it finally dawns on me that life is eternal and does not end with death.

66 More on the concept of “quiet contemplation” at p.151. 67 The participating artists’ declaration at SURYA’s first exhibition in Milan stated: “This world of ours is full of mysterious wonders and the greatest marvels are still our own personal inner thoughts. This mysteriousness is not limited by time and belongs to everyone and is eternal. For us, the discussion of the consciousnesses and the internal aspects of human beings are more important. We rely on religious reverence and humbleness to approach art and paying our highest respects to the unknowable supreme intelligence that created us and rules us” (Quoted in Hsiao Chong-ray, 2006). 68 Samantha was born in New York in 1967 of Hsiao’s marriage with the Italian painter Pia Pizzo, terminated in 1969 (Wu, 2018: 171).

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Rather, the seed of eternal life continues to grow on the brighter end of the Great Threshold (Hsiao Chin, quoted in Tsai, 2015: 25).69

In 1990, the investigation of the transcendental energies of the universe took a much more personal and introspective turn, and Hsiao’s works developed into “a monumental and profound visual reflection on life and death” (Pola, 2017:20). The representation of qi in Hsiao’s cosmic landscapes of the 1980s thus gave way to existential reflections on the relationship between the universal energy of qi and human life70. The representative themes of the period are “Samantha’s Sublimation”, the “Passage through the Great Threshold”71 and the “Eternal Garden”72 [figs.59-66].

The death of Samantha did not cause Hsiao’s art to turn towards pessimism or despair, but forced him to go deeper in his exploration of the universal order he had depicted in the previous decade. Hsiao thus visually articulates his reflection on the

“holistic interrelationship and co-dependency between this and the other side of life” with bright colors and free-flowing lines, creating canvases that evoke a sense of infinite, otherworldly vastness (Tsai, 2015: 25). In one of the artist’s most poignant series, “Samantha in the Eternal Garden”, Hsiao depicts his daughter as a line of a different color, sublimated and roaming freely within the vast expanse of the

Eternal Garden, “an eternal and blessed place, and a place of happiness”

(Documentary A historical dialogue with art, 2020) [figs.67-68].

69 Original Chinese text: 當經歷且參悟透了之後，終於明了，永恆的生命，並不僅僅止於此生、此世，而是在於生死“大限”度過後的化外光明彼岸。 70 “The artist tr[ies] on bright, vibrant colors and free-flowing lines that glow with the promise of a renewed spiritual life. Hsiao’s idiosyncratic dichotomous thinking is visually articulated to show his philosophical view on the holistic interrelationship and co-dependency between this and the other side of life. […] The vast expanses of colors give off a sense of rhythm that evokes poetic imagination of the infinite, as if all lives were completely liberated in the free open space and hence quietly extend their being into the world beyond this world once they had passed the Great Threshold” (Tsai, 2015: 25). “These large acrylics on canvas symbolize the passage to eternity (crossing the “Great Threshold”) as a movement both gentle and impetuous. From an area of form and indeterminate consistency, waves of color depart, vibrating in broad rhythm or coiled in vortexes, where the great experience of abstraction retrieves its profound meaning: an accumulation of energy and image of the ineffable” (Bossaglia, 1993, quoted in Pola, 2017: 21). 71 The “Great Threshold” (daxian 大限) is an expression indicating death. 72 In Hsiao’s explanation, the “Eternal garden” conveys the meaning of heaven and paradise (Hsiao & Hui, 2019: 63).

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Since the 1990s, Hsiao’s works, while preserving the very unique

Eastern/Western touch typical of the artist, have continued to research the great and awe-inspiring nature of the vital forces that move the universe, even though, compared to the works of the 1980s, the focus has shifted towards the mysterious relationship of these forces with human existence, and the “harmonious relationship between human lives and the universe, as well as the profound spiritual power that enables the persistence and coexistence of all lives, objects, cultures and religions” (Tsai, 2015: 25). The wild strokes of Hsiao’s “Zen and qi” phase in the 1980s (Hsiao Chong-ray, 2006) have mostly been abandoned in favor of measured and slow touches apt for the contemplative and calm nature of the works and tranquil state of mind of the artist. Hsiao’s mature vocabulary features diverse forms and rich colors, all aimed at expressing “the profound meaning of being […] and to praise the sacred yet intangible energy that drives the gears of the entire universe”, and his lifelong research of both Eastern and Western art and thinking now provides him “with a solid intellectual foundation” (Tsai, 2015: 26)

[figs.69-75].

3. Critical analysis

Given his very peculiar life trajectory, numerous directives could be chosen to thoroughly analyze the complex work of Hsiao Chin. Hsiao’s career, as Vanni

(2009) defines it, is an “infinite journey”, and analyzing his works, even those extremely simple in appearance, always means taking into account a large number of factors, given the combination of “Eastern philosophies, Western artistic forms and the artist’s personal history” (Tsai, 2015: 26-27) that they all feature. The present essay does not have the pretense to conclude the debate over Hsiao Chin’s long artistic career, and the insights written by eminent scholars and critics from all over the world already examine the work of this artist in depth. In light of the question that move this research, namely the different understanding by the members of the

Eastern Painting Association and the Fifth Moo Group of the depiction of “Eastern-

140 ness” in art, the different analyses proposed below will be useful in investigating how Hsiao Chin personally re-interpreted Li Chun-shan’s teachings and Ton-Fan’s beliefs. In Philip Dodd’s (2020c) brilliant formulation, Hsiao is an artist who

is both routed and rooted – routed not only in terms of the range of western countries he has lived and made work in (Spain, Italy, US), but also in terms of his understanding of the languages of western art. He is, though, equally rooted, as he told me: “After experiencing and researching contemporary Western ideas first hand [in Spain and Italy], I felt a cultural shock and became more aware of the richness and profundity of my country’s artistic culture and philosophical thinking”.

“Rooted and routed” (“national and international”, in Wai-lim Yip’s words, 1995:

48) are the two key characteristics that best describe not only Hsiao’s career, but also the view on modern art advocated by Li Chun-shan and inherited by the founders of the Eastern Painting Association. As seen in Chapter 1, Li encouraged his students to “pay attention to the development and changes of the current art trends at all times” (Hsiao Chong-ray, 2006), while constantly emphasizing the fundamental importance of conveying an “Eastern Spirit” in their works. For this reason, a critical analysis of the work of Hsiao Chin, and of the influence Li Chun- shan had on his later production, cannot but start from these two major features,

“rootedness” and “routed-ness”.

I have had a utopian intuition and idea for many years: that the mainstreams of two world cultures, East and West, will eventually merge and create a new culture that is both cosmopolitan in nature and entirely free of regional restrictions. Ever since the twentieth century, this idea has already been gradually achieved in the world of art (Hsiao Chin, 1983g: 165).73

3.1 A modern approach

An appraisal of Hsiao Chin’s extremely personal blend of Eastern thought and Western artistic techniques cannot overlook his relationship with the concepts of “modernity” and “avant-garde”, of which, as highlighted in Chapter 1, Li Chun- shan held a very peculiar understanding. In the master’s view, practicing modern

73 Original Chinese text: 多年來, 我一直有著一個鳥托邦式的直覺和想法, 就是地球上兩個文化的主流: 東方和西方, 終有一天會合一而產生一個新的世界性而地域限制的文化, 這個想法,二十世紀以來,以先在藝術上慢慢的實現了。

141 art did not mean to adopt Western artistic standards, but rather signified being able to express one’s personal creativity: Li identified in the “three post-Impressionist masters” the initiators of said approach (Hsiao Chong-ray, 1991b: 86). Such an understanding of modern art was to be inherited by the members of the Ton-Fan

Group, and was masterly interpreted by Hsiao Chin, who developed a very peculiar relationship with the West and with China’s artistic tradition, different from that of the members of the Fifth Moon Group. Hsiao did not seem to consider the preservation of China’s traditional painting techniques or media an important matter. On the contrary, his first concern was how to be modern74:

The spirit of any era should be a “modern” one, marked by the innovative. The strict adherence to the ancestors’ codes of activities without probing into the rationale behind them is very wrong (Hsiao Chin, quoted in Yip, 1995: 49).

In Hsiao’s view, being modern primarily meant understanding the creative

“rationale” under the marvelous artistic productions of the past, and thus learning to “push forward” rather than “stick[ing] to old conventions” (Hsiao Chin, 1980c:

233). In order to keep Chinese tradition alive, Hsiao claimed that one should not refer to the outward appearance of the works of the ancients, but understand that the most outstanding productions of Chinese history were created by a spirit of innovation, by the “modern” attitude of those who produced them.

According to Li’s teaching, and Hsiao’s understanding of them, the answer to the question on “how to be modern” also coincided with the solution to another fundamental problem, i.e. how to be Chinese. As Hsiao recalls, “Mr. Li often spoke about the importance of one’s ethnic traits. Without them, your art could not truly

74 “No matter how Chinese art develops, what its tendencies and core beliefs become, these are just minor issues. What really matters for Chinese art is how it ‘modernizes’. The only path for Chinese art to survive is ‘modernization’” (Hsiao Chin, 1984a: 35). “Modern art, in the narrow sense, refers to the new ideas in Western art, but in the broader sense, every era has art with its own temporality and creative spirit, and all such art is the “modern art” of that time. Painters such as Liang Kai, Shitao, Bada Shanren, and the Eight Eccentrics of Yangzhou were all ‘avant-garde’ figures in the history of Chinese painting. They achieved unique innovations while carrying forward the thread of the past, pushing forward instead of sticking to old conventions” (Hsiao Chin, 1980c: 233).

142 be of the world” (Hsiao Chin, 1980c: 229). The Ton-fan Manifesto analyzed in

Chapter 1 also made it clear that “the spirit [of regional culture] always remains the strongest foundation for new creativity”. Therefore, being a modern artist did not mean to westernize, but to become part of the global movement of contemporary art, where all local boundaries and “parochialisms” were to be incorporated in a new, universal conception of artistic creation. In his 1978 article “Tradition and

Modernization in Chinese painting”, Hsiao wanted to provide young Chinese artists with a “rulebook” for modern artistic creation. Firstly, he encouraged them to cultivate “an innovative spirit […], referenc[ing] the conceptual realms and techniques of the ancients, and apply[ing] them in a living way” (Hsiao Chin, 1978:

117) while at the same time “absorb[ing] and infus[ing] the artistic experiences of the world” (Hsiao Chin, 1978: 119). Hsiao, consistent with the above-mentioned

Ton-fan view on “global art”, goes on to say that

Narrow regional notions are no longer in keeping with the times. All regions across the globe are now engaged in intimate exchange. There is no need to pursue something purely Chinese, and in fact, it simply is not possible […] Taking on a global vision is “elevation”. The creation that takes place after this elevation is the true “Chinese” creation (Hsiao Chin, 1978: 119-121).75

As shown in Chapter 1, the two characterizing features the Fifth Moon painters claimed for their art were “abstraction” and “Chinese-ness”. The words by

Hsiao Chin reported above demonstrate that, even though both the Ton-Fan and the Fifth Moon aimed at the modernization of Chinese painting and the artists belonging to them still held a sincere personal esteem towards each other, in many respects their ideological standpoints seemed to diverge. According to Hsiao, the profound understanding of the “spirit” of one’s cultural tradition, which is always a spirit of innovation, should go hand in hand with an openness to outside influences, in order to prevent such tradition from becoming stagnant and always

75 Original Chinese text: 狹窄的地域觀念, 已不合時宜了,如今世界各地方的各種交流很密切,我們不必去追求百分之百的中國, 事實上這也不可能。放眼在世界上,就是⸢提升⸥, 提升之後的創作, 才真正是⸢中國的⸥。

143 repeating itself: producing “purely Chinese” art was therefore impossible, even though this did not mean to “blindly worship all things foreign” (Hsiao Chin, 1978:

119). Hsiao also believes that abstraction is only one of the choices that can be taken for a Chinese artist eager to be “modern”. Hsiao attacks all controversies over the

“trivial details” (Hsiao Chin, 1978: 121) of painting modes and media. He believes that in modern art there should be no distinction between Chinese and Western painting or contention about the use of ink or oil, because “all media are merely techniques and tools of creation. Creative ideas are the root ideas that lead all else.”

(Hsiao Chin, 1980b: 185). For this reason, Hsiao also thinks that “issues such as [...] whether to employ realism or abstraction are just minor ones, and it is unwise to ceaselessly bicker over them” (Hsiao Chin, 1978: 121). Hsiao Chin thus calls into question the Fifth Moon’s contention that abstraction was the path Chinese painting should have followed for its modernization. On the contrary, even though after his transfer to Europe he also decided to embrace abstract art, Hsiao believes that the

“creative ideas” underlying artistic creation are the means through which Chinese art can modernize, and that as long as art is informed by a spirit of innovation, whether it is abstract or not does not count much. Hsiao’s return to semi-figurative themes (volcanoes, galaxies, waterfalls, etc.) in the 1980s also testifies to the fact that for Hsiao Chin abstractionism was simply a mode of expression that did not exclude all the others. Hsiao’s artistic career, rooted in Li’s unconventional pedagogy, is not a process of gradual Westernization, nor is it a desperate attempt to save Chinese tradition, but a journey towards the discovery of his own path of artistic expression.

Hsiao believes that said journey is the first duty of a modern artist76:

The first step to art creation in modern art should be an understanding of the self. One should learn to think exhaustively about one's world, and learn to expand it,

76 “The duty of a thoughtful creator is to understand and analyze the self in the process of his work, to sift through the roots and future paths of his tradition and spirit, and to stand up to the tests of life and his time, and thus explore his own path, engage in the construction and affirmation of his spirit, and affect sublimation” (Hsiao Chin, 1980c: 227). “The path of art is infinite, and ‘all roads lead to Rome’. The most important, and also the most precious, is to find the great path that leads to the discovery of yourself” (Hsiao Chin, 1983k: 279).

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especially one's inner world. It would not be possible to find your own path if you cannot understand yourself and your feelings. Mr. Li Chun-shan has taught me to think about this problem […] From here I began my quest. Psychology, philosophy, literature, religion — anything that could help me to understand myself, I was truly interested (Hsiao Chin, quoted in Yip, 1985).

This emphasis on the individuality of artistic creation, however unimportant it might seem, is paramount. The “modernity” of the painters of the past that Hsiao admires (Shitao, Bada Shanren, etc. see note 74) consisted in their ability to stand out from the mass and the contemporary artistic environment and affirm their “true self” (zhenwo 真我, Hsiao Chin, 1983i: 219) through their art. It is no coincidence that some of these painters from the early Qing period are known as “individualists”. If we compare the statements reported above with the beliefs of the pioneers of modernist painting in Mainland China at the beginning of the 20th century, it is possible to notice a huge difference between the two positions. While the latter imbued the modernization of Chinese painting with a sense of cultural mission,

Hsiao emphasizes that the first duty of a modern artist is to discover their own means of expression, and only when such expression has been found will their art be able to respond to the needs of their time. Hsiao Chin believed that Chinese painting consisted of “profound creation, rooted in observation, subjective experience and meditation” (Hsiao Chin, 1980c: 229).

Hsiao’s concern for personal expression, however, does not fall into self- referentiality, but is always accompanied by the (Eastern) awareness of the relational nature of human beings, who are always connected with the others, with tradition, with the universe. As will be shown, Hsiao’s emphasis on individual expression is thus not in contradiction with his claim that an artist should also be “a voice of social concern and insight” (Hsiao Chin, 1991: 51).

Interestingly, when Hsiao moved towards Chan thought at the beginning of the 1970s, he started putting greater emphasis on the concepts of wuwo 無我 (no-self) and wangwo 忘我 (oblivion of the self). These concepts, closely correlated with that

145 of “intuitiveness” that will be later introduced and explained in depth77, appear to be in contrast with the artist’s emphasis on the search of the “true self”. On the contrary, Hsiao sees the stage of no-self, in which he “allows the pre-existing internal energies to be the driving forces of the brushstrokes and the colors without any constraints” (Hsiao Chin, 1983k: 279) as the ultimate stage of his journey of self- exploration. He says:

It is only through the "true self" that [one] can approach the "no self" state of the creator and be free and unconstrained. But to "cultivate" to the point of discovering the "true self" and drive it is just as difficult as the "enlightenment" of Zen. It can only be attained through strenuous "gradual cultivation" (Hsiao Chin, 1983i: 219)78.

A cognizance of the asserted self [is not] in conflict with selflessness, because before we renounce the self, we must know what it is, or else how do we know what we are renouncing? (Hsiao Chin, quoted in Yip, 1985).

The very first key to understanding the work of Hsiao Chin is thus his absolute modernity and his very unconventional relationship with Chinese tradition and

Western avant-garde art. To him, preserving tradition was firstly a conceptual matter: it meant being able to find one’s “true self” and discovering the “rationale” behind the masterpieces of the past, which were able to “push forward” rather than looking back nostalgically to old aesthetic conventions. This modern approach would have then allowed the artist to discard all regional, long-established limitations and to embrace the Ton-Fan ideal of a “cosmopolitan art”.

3.2 The Eastern spirit

Undoubtedly, one of the most prominent and widely-recognized characteristics of Hsiao’s works is their constant reference to the artist’s Chinese cultural identity. Throughout his whole career, and despite all his stylistic changes,

Hsiao never failed to look back at the spiritual roots of his land of origin (Bossaglia,

1993; Tsai, 2015: 20). For Hsiao Chin, the “East” is not simply a source of inspiration,

77 See p.153. 78 Original Chinese text: 唯有「真我」，才是最接近造物者的「無我」境界，從而方能自由自在，無牽無掛地創作。但是，要「修鍊」到能發現「真我」及駕馭自如，正如禪宗的「頓悟」一樣地困難，要經過努力的「漸修」方能得到。

146 it is the spring of his whole production. This accent on “Eastern-ness” undoubtedly stemmed from Hsiao’s years in Taiwan under Li Chun-shan’s tutoring79. Li Chun- shan had always encouraged his disciples to learn as much as they could about modern art theories, and often introduced them to the latest trends he had got to know while he was studying in Japan. At the same time, he warned them on the importance for their works to convey a distinctive “Eastern spirit”, different from the “Latin spirit” of Western art. Li Chun-shan avoided teaching painting techniques to his students, and preferred giving them absolute freedom of expression and spurred them to express freely and find their own vocabulary, believing in the importance of artistic theory over painting methods. Such an emphasis on the theoretical foundation of art can probably explain the fact that for

Hsiao Chin depicting the “Eastern Spirit” did not primarily mean to follow any kind of traditional aesthetics or to adopt specific media, as also witnessed by the numerous changes that Hsiao Chin’s style went through over the years. On the contrary, it meant to depict a “spiritual” space: for Hsiao Chin, such spiritual inclination of art is also one of the constant trends within the long-standing tradition of Chinese painting. According to the artist, “Chinese painting has to undergo many processes of intellectual molding, meditation, keen observation and reflection, then purified and refined, it takes shape on paper” (Hsiao Chin, quoted in Yip, 1985), and “centers round the concept of idealism – that is, recipient molding, observation in repose, and purification” (Hsiao Chin, quoted in Yip, 1985). Hsiao’s understanding of “modernity” and “Eastern spirit” also led him to some harsh criticism towards the ways that some of his contemporaries or predecessors had adopted to the same end of modernizing Chinese painting, such as Xu Beihong or

Hong Kong’s Modern Ink Art Movement 80 . In the case of Xu Beihong, Hsiao

79 See Chapter 1, p.39-48. 80 The Movement to which Hsiao refers is Hong Kong’s Xin Shuimo Yundong 新水墨運動 (Modern Ink Art Movement), which attempted a fusion of Chinese traditional media and Western modern techniques. It was first initiated in Hong Kong in the 1960s and the 1970s by Lui Shou-kwan, Wucius Wong and Liu Kuo-song (Andrews and Shen, 2012: 235-236).

147 believed he had not been able to grasp neither “the roots of Western art”, nor “the essence of Chinese painting”, resulting in extremely superficial attempts to fuse

Eastern and Western art practices (Hsiao Chin, 1980c: 235) 81. As for the Modern Ink

Art Movement, given Hsiao’s firm belief that the modernization of Chinese painting did not depend on the choice of specific media, he labelled Hong Kong group’s endeavors as a “modicum of modern painting tricks [used] to return to tradition”82.

Compared to both these experiences, Hsiao’s resolution to express an

“Eastern spirit” was indeed very peculiar. In many respects, his works lose the typical features of traditional Chinese aesthetics. However, in Hsiao’s understanding, conveying an Eastern Spirit primarily signified to found his activity as a painter on ancient Eastern philosophies, especially Daoism and Chan

Buddhism. On the one hand, Hsiao’s works may appear as “visual representations” of the main tenets of these two systems of thought. If, for example, we look at Hsiao

Chin’s explanation of his 1963 work Sansheng wanwu 三生萬物 (Three gave birth to everything) [fig.76], he says: “I used the visual language of painting to translate [a] literary idea to my piece” (Hsiao Chin & Wu, 2017: 205). The “idea” he refers to is a passage of Laozi’s Daodejing 道德經: “One gave birth to two, two gave birth to three, and three gave birth to everything”.83 On the other hand, and this is probably the real influence these philosophies had on Hsiao’s art, the artist embodies these beliefs, and his painting action, since his very first Italian years, is driven and inspired by

81 “When Xu Beihong traveled to France, not only did he fail to comprehensively research Western modern art (upon his return to China, he vocally derided Matisse), but he also failed to fully understand Western classical traditions. […] [He] knew only to imitate its academicist outer shell, he entered the academy only to learn the dead imitation of the tradition, rather than the living creation that emerged from it. […] During his time in the West, Xu Beihong did not grasp the roots of Western art, and when he returned to China and painted Chinese painting, he did not grasp the essence of Chinese painting. He fused superficial life studies techniques into freehand ink painting, and thought that he had achieved a fusion of Chinese and Western art” (Hsiao Chin, 1980c: 235). 82 “In recent years, ‘modern ink painting’ in Hong Kong and Taiwan has used a modicum of modern painting tricks to return to tradition, but none of these approaches will succeed in bringing Chinese art to a worldwide language that is of the time, free, insightful or sublime of spirit” (Hsiao Chin, 1979a: 149-151). 83 Original Chinese text: 一生二, 二生三, 三生萬物 (Laozi, 42).

148 his personal experience of them. As Hsiao himself points out, “these philosophies helped me mold my view on life – a very concrete molding effect it was. What I see in life, I express it in my paintings” (Hsiao Chin, quoted in Yip, 1985) or else “[My paintings] [are] not based on quotes of classical literature, instead [they are] the findings proven by my own intuition, or ‘borrowing some symbols to record my own process of enlightenment’” (Hsiao Chin, quoted in Li, 2018: 16). Therefore, according to Hsiao Chin, the “Eastern spirit” in art is not a series of aesthetic principles or a set of painting rules, but an approach to creation rooted in Eastern philosophies. As stated in the section above, the painter believes that the outward appearance of artworks and the techniques or media that the artist employs are secondary to the ideas and the theories underlying artistic creation. For this reason, as Hsiao makes clear in many of his paintings, even if the artworks produced by painters from the East and from the West might look similar, they are in fact different in “spirit”.

Hsiao Chin attaches great importance to ancient Eastern philosophies also because of his keen sense of cultural mission. He believes a modern artist should always possess “a profound understanding of the spirit of [one’s] epoch” (Hsiao

Chin, 1978: 117), and that “If [an artwork] does not capture the spirit of the artist's own time, then [….] it can only be an empty, detached product” (Hsiao Chin, 1978:

117). Hsiao was not alien to the environment where he lived. On the contrary, he responded to the same issues and imbued his art with the same concerns of his

Western contemporaries (Hunter, 1997: 16), rejecting the idea of “art for art’s sake”.

In the ancient systems of thought of Daoism and Buddhism Hsiao did not only a see value for his personal life, but also a viable “path to redemption” (jiejiu zhi dao

解救之道, Hsiao Chin, 1983e: 111) for the spiritualty-deprived Western society. He claims:

Due to the extreme development of materialism and consumerism, Western modern culture has broken the balance between human spiritual and material life, bringing about many psychological, ecological and social crises. These can be mended and

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saved by ancient Eastern philosophy, and these concepts can be expressed in the form of art (Hsiao Chin, 1984a: 45).84

According to Hsiao, in Eastern philosophies men from both the East and the West can find the profound existential meaning and the natural order that have been lost in their run towards progress and in the process of building a “materialist and consumeristic society”. Hsiao thus founds his art on the firm belief that a global gathering around “Oriental wisdom” (Tagliaferri, 2009) is possible and necessary, and that such common concourse could constitute the first step towards the new cosmopolitan culture that the Eastern Painting Association envisioned and of which

Hsiao has become not only a staunch promoter, but also an outstanding representative Hsiao Chin, 1980c: 239).85

The first conscious formulation of Hsiao’s creative ideas took shape in 1961 with the foundation of Punto. Throughout his career, Hsiao never abandoned the theoretical stances of the Punto Movement, even though they were conceived at the very beginning of his exploration of what he calls “spiritual art” (jingshenxing yishu

精神性藝術, Hsiao & Wu, 2017: Vol.1, 255). On the contrary, these ideas “became the core of [his] creative thinking” (Hsiao Chin, 1983k: 271) and “the spirit of Punto never […] extinguished” (Gong, 2020: 31): in order to understand Hsiao’s attitude towards art creation looking at Punto is therefore fundamental.

84 Original Chinese text: 西方現代文化,由於物質及消費主義的極端發展, 打破了人類精神物質的均衡而出現許多心理˴生態及社會的危機; 在此,正是許多東方古代哲學思想可以彌補及助之挽救的。這種理念, 我們也可以通過藝術形式去表現出來。 85 “After Existentialism, many knowledgeable people in the West have come to a deep realization that the materialist, consumerist, industrial society of the West is headed towards utter destruction and the collapse of the human spirit, and have called for a return to nature and a new understanding of the natural order, and after discovering that many Eastern philosophical ideas can remedy the crises in Western culture and society, have set out to research it to that end. […] In this time of overly developed material civilization, it is the people of the West who are coming to the East in a quest for wisdom. This may be the first sign of tomorrow's great unity of global culture” (Hsiao Chin, 1980c: 239).

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3.2.1 The spirit of Punto

Punto primarily intended to be a reaction to the contemporary artistic climate.

Hsiao Chin and the other founders of the movement were unhappy with the art autre style dominating Europe’s artistic circles, and believed that the free expression of emotion preached by gestural and action painting harmed the spiritual nature art should possess (Wu, 2018: 95-105). As Hsiao Chong-ray (2006) points out, Punto proclaimed five “absolutely opposed” styles, among which figured academicism, the style of all those who worshipped the past and renounced to any personal creativity in artistic creation, informalism, which coincided with unrestrained instinctivity and total abandonment to the flow of emotions, and automatism,

“neglect[ing] nobler human spirituality”. Such an aversion towards instinctivity and irrationality in art creation is very meaningful for this research. Li Chun-shan never failed to remind his students about the importance of the unity of hands, eyes, heart, and mind: for this reason, all the artworks that did not represent a “spiritual space”, but only let the artist vent their most wild feelings, could not be accepted

(Hsiao Chong-ray, 2006). On the other hand, the artists belonging to the Fifth Moon did not deny a certain admiration towards the “gestural” branch of American

Abstract Expressionism, and felt a kinship, or at least an aesthetic familiarity, between their understanding of the “essence of Chinese Painting” and the artistic outcomes of the movement led by Jackson Pollock. As Hsiao Chong-ray (1991c: 219) puts it, “Hsiao’s stance against ‘the automatic techniques of abstraction’ set Hsiao

Chin on a radically different stylistic path than that of other contemporary

Taiwanese artists, especially those belonging to the “Fifth Moon Group”.

Punto, however, was not simply a movement of rebellion. Hsiao’s stance against informal art was accompanied by the profound awareness of the direction his own art should have taken. The “compelling vision” (Gong, 2020: 26) around which the whole Punto movement revolved was that of jingguan 靜觀. This expression, which has now curiously come to translate the contemporary practice of “mindfulness”, literally means “silent observation” or “tranquil contemplation”.

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For the Punto members, the first duty of their artworks was to offer a space of meditation, tranquility, reflection, and self-introspection (Wu, 2017: 11; Hsiao

Chong-ray, 2006). As shown in Hsiao Chin’s biography, the “spiritual” turn that the painter’s work took in this period was rooted in the Eastern philosophies that the artist had come to know and research is the early 1960s. The artistic production in the “West” in the 1950s had been marked by the trauma of war, which had exacerbated the existential fears that had accompanied the first half of the century.

While Europe’s informal art was founded on “the concepts of escape […], revolt, nausea, disillusionment and deceit” (Vescovo, 1990: 41), and American Abstract

Expressionism had “made evident the crisis of modern rationality, where chaos and senselessness seemed to govern the world” (Dorfles & Vettese, 2009: 305), the Punto artists wanted to venture into the possibility of a meaning, at least a meaning for one’s personal life, despite all the horrors the world had faced less than two decades before.

The “point” from which the movement took its name was considered the most basic element of artistic creations, from which all other elements (line and plane) derive. At the same time, from a Daoist perspective, the point also represents the all-encompassing unity from which all things originate and in which all things end (Dodd, 2020a). Schiffer (1988: 12) proposes a personal interpretation of the name of the movement:

The name [Punto] […] explicitly summarized Hsiao’s mindset […]: having very soon nourished some perplexity about the gesturalism of informal art and having consequently, and as a reaction, re-approached the Eastern theories that until then he had neglected and perhaps underestimated, the painter proposed with his group to constitute a stopping point, a point of reflection and concentration, meditation and contemplation of the world and its values, through an intense inner and spiritual research86.

86 Original Italian text: Il nome stesso […] riassumeva esplicitamente il pensiero di Hsiao […]: avendo nutrito molto presto qualche perplessità circa il gestualismo dell'informale ed essendosi di conseguenza, e per reazione, riaccostato alle teorie orientali che fino ad allora aveva trascurato e forse sottovalutato, il pittore si proponeva con il suo gruppo di costituire un punto d'arresto, un punto di riflessione e di concentrazione, di meditazione e di contemplazione del mondo e dei valori, attraverso un'intensa ricerca interiore e spirituale.

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In 1961, Hsiao had found his way: art had to follow the Eastern path of

“tranquil contemplation”. It should not express the “anguish of being in the world”

(Argan, 2002: 261) like Abstract Expressionism, but rather dare to propose the spiritual meaning and the harmony found in Eastern philosophies. Despite being rooted in the “East”, from where three out of the four founders came, Punto aspired to be an international movement, or to use the words of the Ton-Fan Manifesto, a cosmopolitan movement, embodying the ideal of “universal” art envisioned by the

Taiwanese group. The participation of artists from all over the world to the Punto exhibition reveals the great attractiveness of the movement’s ideas, which were alien to the principal schemes of Western abstract art (Gong, 2020: 30-31).

Hsiao’s artistic development witnesses that the artist never abandoned his initial resolution to use painting as the depiction of a “spiritual space” of quiet contemplation, following his master’s teachings. In Hsiao’s works, however, the spirit of jingguan coexisted with another, “Eastern” principle, that of “intuitiveness”.

3.2.2 Intuitiveness and Chan

On multiple occasions, Hsiao described “intuitiveness” (zhijuexing 直覺性) as an important component of his artistic production (Hsiao Chin, 1983k: 273). For example, in order to differentiate the paintings he produced in the USA with the

Minimal artworks popular at the time, he claims that his creativity was not informed by mathematical rationality, but was on the contrary led by his "Eastern intuitive heart”. This “intuitive heart” accompanied Hsiao since his Punto years, but it was his interest in Chan Buddhism in the early 1970s that allowed him to express it more freely (Hsiao Chin, 1983k: 277). In order to understand the difference between

Hsiao’s notion of “intuitiveness” and the “instinctivity” he attacked with his Punto movement, it might prove useful to look at the conception of such notion in the two systems of thought by which Hsiao was mainly inspired, namely Daoism and Chan

Buddhism.

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In Zhuangzi’s writings, the notion that approximates intuitiveness most closely is that of “spontaneity” (ziran 自然). Spontaneity does not mean going with one’s gut feeling. On the contrary, it is the natural acme of a long process of discipline and learning. Such “learning” is not the study of a notion, but “a process more similar to the acquisition of a craft” (Cheng, 2000: 116). Zhuangzi exemplifies this idea with many metaphors, such as that of Cook Ding 87 . In Zhuangzi’s description, the cook’s gestures are natural and totally spontaneous, and his hands move with no hesitation whatsoever. His ability in cutting the ox, however, is not given by a natural “instinct”, but it is rather the result of a long process of practice.

In the spontaneous (/intuitive) gesture, “there is a perfect identity between hand and spirit, a concurrence between the confidence of the former and the lucidity of the latter […] The spirit (shen 神) is at the height of vitality […] and moves […] without the obstacles that could be represented by any effort of reflection, conceptualization, and formalization. And yet, the movement of shen is not directed by the subconscious, let alone by the unconscious, but by the forgetting of consciousness” (Cheng, 2000: 119). This state of “spontaneity” seems to perfectly

87 “The cook was cutting up an ox for the ruler Wen Hui. Whenever he applied his hand, leaned forward with his shoulder, planted his foot, and employed the pressure of his knee, in the audible ripping off of the skin, and slicing operation of the knife, the sounds were all in regular cadence. Movements and sounds proceeded as in the dance of 'the Mulberry Forest' and the blended notes of the King Shou. The ruler said, “Ah! Admirable! That your art should have become so perfect!” [Having finished his operation], the cook laid down his knife, and replied to the remark, “What your servant loves is the method of the Dao, something in advance of any art. When I first began to cut up an ox, I saw nothing but the entire carcass. After three years I ceased to see it as a whole. Now I deal with it in a spirit-like manner, and do not look at it with my eyes. The use of my senses is discarded, and my spirit acts as it wills. Observing the natural lines, (my knife) slips through the great crevices and slides through the great cavities, taking advantage of the facilities thus presented. My art avoids the membranous ligatures, and much more the great bones. […] There are the interstices of the joints, and the edge of the knife has no appreciable thickness; when that which is so thin enters where the interstice is, how easily it moves along! The blade has more than room enough. Nevertheless, whenever I come to a complicated joint, and see that there will be some difficulty, I proceed anxiously and with caution, not allowing my eyes to wander from the place, and moving my hand slowly. Then by a very slight movement of the knife, the part is quickly separated, and drops like a clod of earth to the ground. Then standing up with the knife in my hand, I look all round, and in a leisurely manner, with an air of satisfaction, wipe it clean, and put it in its sheath” (Zhuangzi, 3) - Translation by James Legge, retrieved from https://ctext.org/zhuangzi/nourishing-the-lord-of- life?searchu=cook%20ding&searchmode=showall#result

154 describe the unforced brushstrokes Hsiao utilizes, especially after he abandoned his

“hard edge” style in the mid-1970s. He says: “[In the late 1970s] I started a paper artwork series, I painted them when I was in meditation with a free mind, so my hands were moving without my command, and my hands completed the work.

Completely automatic” (Documentary A Historical Dialogue with Art, 2020) [fig.77].

Despite this similarity with Zhuangzi’s thought, Hsiao mainly connects “intuitive gestures” to his interest in Chan thought. Chan Buddhism believes that

“enlightenment” cannot be achieved through the study of the scriptures, but only through the constant practice of meditation. Starting from the 8th century, Chan saw the establishment of two different schools of thought: the Northern school, whose

“leader” is traditionally identified in the monk Shenxiu 神秀 (605?-705), claimed that enlightenment was a gradual process, while the Southern school believed in

“sudden enlightenment”, a notion first promoted by the humble and uneducated worker Huineng 惠能 (638-713) (Cheng, 2000: 426-432). The two most important

Chan painters in China’s artistic tradition, Liang Kai 梁楷 (c.1140-c.1210) and Muqi

牧谿 (c.1210-c.1270) [figs.78-79], best exemplify the teachings of the Southern school:

Liang Kai is considered to be the “inventor” of the infamous xieyi 寫意 technique, which aims at depicting a subject with synthetic brushstrokes and very few details.

As Celli points out, for Liang Kai “quick and energic brushstrokes, spread on paper in a reduced range of ink tones, seem to translate the simplicity and the spontaneity with which the disruptive force of intuition appears in the mind free of concepts”88

(Celli, 2010: 832). Despite the controversy between the Northern and the Southern schools, Hsiao does not take a stance in favor of one or the other, maintaining that sudden enlightenment and gradual cultivation are both fundamental components of art creation. 89 The “intuitiveness” of Hsiao’s paintings, more obviously

88 Original Italian text: Le pennellate rapide ed energiche, stese sulla carta in una gamma ridotta di toni d’inchiostro, paiono tradurre la semplicità e la spontaneità con cui l’intuizione illuminante si manifesta nella mente libera dai concetti. 89 “In Zen Buddhism, after the Fifth Patriarch Hongren, Shenxiu founded the school of gradual enlightenment, and Huineng founded the school of sudden enlightenment. Both are equally

155 manifested through unrestrained brushstrokes and a free use of colors since the late

1970s, certainly derives from a “sudden enlightenment” and an immediate inspiration, but is also the outcome of a long process of cultivation and self- introspection, much similar to the acquisition of Cook Ding’s great cutting ability.

In yet another affirmation of the “modernity” of his creation, Hsiao Chin takes the distances from the tradition of Chan art and underlines how his creativity is not informed by the techniques of his predecessors, but by his personal interpretation of the philosophy behind said techniques:

The influence that Zen (Chan) had on me was that it helped me decide to cast off the constraints of the veil of Western rationality, to bring out the naked, living "Eastern intuitive heart", to allow me to create freely without any established notions, and allow my own thoughts to flow like water […] In late 1974 and early 1975, I began to break away from my cautious style of the past, and to record my consciousness as it leaped freely across the painting. […] Zen (Chan) never taught me how to paint a picture. Despite misunderstanding on the part of others, I do not practice Zen (Chan) art. As far as I am concerned, Zen (Chan) makes me see my own inner mind with a clearer vision, allowing more freedom for me to show the true self in the painting. Most importantly, it lets these pre-existing internal energies to be the driving forces of the brushstrokes and the colors without any constraints. It also makes me unite with my own inner strength (Hsiao Chin, 1983k: 277-79).90

The discovery of Chan thus did not mean the following of a tradition, or the embrace of a certain aesthetic (even though Hsiao never went back to the geometric abstraction of his previous works), but introduced the artist to the fundamentality of “intuitiveness” in art creation. As Hsiao puts it, “Zen thought taught me to

important […] The methods differ, but both aim to cultivate one's own ‘living true nature’. This is quite similar to the artistic path of discovering one's own personality and putting it to use. […] Zen places great emphasis on practice and evidence, while ignoring theory” (Hsiao Chin, 1983k: 275). “Artists must have their own centered ideologies. They must not be swayed by trends or popular opinions. The study, research, and preparation of the creation of art are like the ’gradual cultivation’ found in Zen Buddhism; the moment of creation is ‘sudden enlightenment’” (Hsiao & Wu, 2017: Vol.1, 209). 90 Original Chinese text: 禪，當時給我的影響，是決定放棄西方理性外衣的拘束，讓我這顆「東方人的直覺心⸥ 赤裸裸˴ 活潑潑地跳出來，自由自在的創作，毫無成見的，讓自己的思維像水一般地流動。 […] 一九七四年底˴七五年初，我開始放棄以前拘謹的作風，一改而為無意識地在畫面上作心性跳動的記述。[…] 禪，並沒有教我如何去畫畫，而我的畫中不是在畫禪（有些人作如此的誤解）；禪，祇是讓我更清楚地看到我的內心，更自由地讓我的「本性」能活潑潑地呈現在畫面上，更無拘無束地讓這股本來就存在我內心中的力量來駕馭我的筆與顏色，它使我與我心中的力量合一。

156 understand that I need not to do anything deliberate to achieve something” (Hsiao

Chin, quoted in Yip, 1985). He even claims that “works executed with no restraint, with total abandon and free-flowing emotions, have the best visual appeal” (Hsiao

Chin, quoted in Yip: 1985). Even though these quotes might seem to contradict the artist’s stance against Abstract Expressionism and in favor of “quiet contemplation”,

Hsiao is not praising randomness or irrational emotional expression (which he attempted to pursue in his very first years in Spain), because his lines and colors are always the expression of both “gradual cultivation” and “sudden enlightenment”, and are not momentary outbursts, but singular moments inscribed in a journey of learning, and intuitive manifestations of “pre-existing internal energies”. While the

Abstract Expressionist gesture is an expression of “existential meanings and [of] a sharpened awareness of the artistic process itself as a valid form of self-affirmation”

(Hunter, 1997: 21), Hsiao’s intuitiveness, what he calls the manifestation of “no-self”, affirms the universal force of qi that moves the entire universe and that gives meaning to life itself. For this reason, in Hsiao’s works disorder gives way to dynamism, tension to tranquility, and instinctivity to intuitiveness.

3.3 The relationship with Western Art

This final section will evaluate the influence “Western” avant-garde trends exerted on Hsiao Chin’s production. Even though Hsiao Chin left Taiwan when he was only twenty-one years old, and lived most of his life abroad, he never failed to look back to his homeland as the source of his inspiration. However, at the very basis of Ton-Fan’s ideology and later of Hsiao’s production there was the conviction that modern art should transcend all national boundaries. It is safe to say that, if

Hsiao had not gone West, his art would probably not exist.91

91 The artist recalls: “As for my own idiom, I must say before I left Taiwan, I had none. It was only when I went abroad, when I was directly confronted with Western art that I underwent a transformation, and I began to be deeply interested in Chinese thought and Chinese art. But I had my induction in Taiwan, under Mr. Li Chun-Shan. He often said to us that a Chinese modern painter should assimilate the quintessential characteristics of the Chinese tradition, and re-express them through modern art forms” (Hsiao Chin, quoted in Yip, 1985).

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There is a three-fold ascendancy that the initial encounter with Western art had on Hsiao Chin. Firstly, even though his journey of “self-exploration” had already begun in Taiwan under the tutorship of Li Chun-shan, going to Europe allowed him to come into contact with a new visual culture. He recalls: “When I first arrived in Europe […] I looked around everywhere, tried to see as much as possible, anything related to art. Visual art is expressed in visual language, and for visual language. First, you have to study with the ‘eyes’ before feeling with the

‘heart’ and analyzing with the ‘brain’” (Hsiao Chin, 1983, quoted in Gong, 2020: 15).

The “visual” influence of Western art can be seen in Hsiao’s decision to embrace abstract art. Before leaving Taiwan, Hsiao’s style still had not gone abstract, and it was only after his arrival in Spain that, influenced by the climate of informal art, he moved his first steps towards non-figuration. Even when the artist disavowed his first “informal” works produced in 1958 and started shifting towards Punto, he never abandoned abstraction. Secondly, Hsiao was inspired by modern art’s

“freedom of creation”.92 As a matter of fact, Ton-Fan artists were first drawn to

Western avant-garde because of the admiration they felt for the “three post-

Impressionist masters” and what those artists had initiated, namely the abandonment of scientific proportions and lifelikeness concerns in art in favor of the artist’s total creative freedom.93 Thirdly, when Hsiao Chin moved to Europe he went through the experience of cultural alienation, and it was because of this experience that he felt the urge to “go back” to his own culture and to study it in depth.94

92 “[In the West], the end of the 19th century up to the beginning of the 20th century was an age of individual creativity, which means that an artist could find his own path in artistic creation through emotional, conceptual, and experiential explorations. […] It has a decisive, inspiring effect on me in my creative activity. If I had not been so inspired by this freedom of creation, I would not have tried so hard in merging the spirit of Chinese philosophy into Chinese traditional art and expressing it through an original form. Modern art has given us a lot of freedom” (Hsiao Chin, quoted in Yip, 1985). 93 See Chapter 1, p.44-45 94 See p.129-130

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This section will firstly investigate what Western artists and art theories most influenced Hsiao’s production. Secondly, it will briefly analyze the techniques and the media utilized by the artist to express and convey the far-reaching ideology he developed over the years in his career.

3.3.1 The reflection on space: Mark Rothko and Lucio Fontana

As seen in chapter 1, Li Chun Shan pedagogical approach used to put “theory over technique”. Hsiao certainly inherited this disposition from his teacher. In a

1985 interview (Yip, 1985), Hsiao clearly pointed out that “the influence of Western art on [him] [….] [was] more of a conceptual rather than a formal kind”. At the same time, given the absolute importance Hsiao attached to individual creativity and self- discovery, he also stated that “the theories of others can only serve as references.

You must never use them; otherwise you will be speaking the words of others rather than your own” (Hsiao Chin, 1983k: 275). As clearly testified by his unique style,

Hsiao’s works cannot be compared or assimilated to any of the many “currents” or schools of thought of Western art. However, there have been a few occasions in which Hsiao has admitted that some Western artists have in fact had an influence on his thought. Curiously, the two artists that Hsiao sometimes mentions as two of his main inspirators, Rothko and Fontana, also developed their artistic careers in countries different from the ones where they were born. As a matter of fact, the

Italian Lucio Fontana was born in Argentina, while the American Mark Rothko was born in Latvia.

There are two primary reasons as to why I have such changes in my art concepts, the first one is because of the early teachings I received from Li Zhong-sheng, which is to oppose the contingency and emphasizing the unification of ‘hands, eyes, heart, and brain’, the other is because of the plane, silent, and three-dimensional works of Spatialism master Fontana and other artists, which influenced me after I had moved to Milan (Hsiao Chin, quoted in Hsiao Chong-ray, 2006). I like Rothko, so it is natural that I am influenced by him, though not necessarily in form. Among all 20th century artists, I think I am especially drawn to him, but I may not draw with the same idiom. I feel that he has inspired me a lot (Hsiao Chin, quoted in Yip, 1985).

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The divergencies between the works of Mark Rothko and Lucio Fontana may appear to outnumber their similarities. Both of these artists, however, proposed a unique visual reflection on space. While Fontana dedicated his artistic production to the overcoming of spatial limitations in art, exploring the possibilities of the artistic gesture, Mark Rothko and his renown “color fields”, while conveying a sense of flatness, also aspire to become “a curtain of mist […] that forms an area of greater density but does not interrupt the continuity of the space” (Palma Bucarelli, quoted in Calza, Hernandez & Varini, 1999: 292). The reflection on space was also a fundamental part of Hsiao Chin’s production:

I have always dreamed of painting a “spaceless space” which, I feel, should transcend the two-dimensionality of painting and, at the same time, convey a sense of energy (Hsiao Chin, 2015b: 11).95

By analyzing the works of Rothko and Fontana more in depth, it is possible to understand why their works fascinated Hsiao Chin more than anyone else’s. Mark

Rothko is usually classified as an exponent of the American current of Abstract

Expressionism. Argan (2002: 262) proposes a different classification: a more apt categorization for Rothko would be “abstract Impressionism”, as after the removal of the figurative image, what remains in the artist’ paintings is “a coloristic- luminous substance, expanded and vibrant” (Argan, 2002: 262). Rothko’s gesture is not active and fierce as that of Jackson Pollock, but rather “slow, soft, calm rhythmic, uniform”, and his action “is not planned nor hasty”: it is “accomplished through a gradual accumulation and refinement of experience in the course of practice”

(Argan, 2002: 262), just like that of Cook Ding. The visual effect of the light that the color fields by Rothko radiate is that of a total envelopment, which allows the spectator to enter a new “space of imagination” (Argan, 2002: 263). Rothko’s canvases, in their extreme simplicity, are therefore characterized by a strong and inescapable spiritual afflatus, given by the opacity of their trembling colors, that

95Original Chinese text: 我自己一直夢想著一種 ⸢沒有空間的空間⸥, 能打破繪畫的二度空間之平面限制, 傳達一種能量的展現。

160 engross the viewers and force them to contemplate and meditate (Calza, Hernandez

& Varini, 1999: 292-293) [figs.80-81]. The intense sense of mystery that Rothko’s paintings emanate did not leave Hsiao indifferent when he first saw them in person at the 1958 Venice Biennale. It is possible that Hsiao’s turn towards the “spirituality” of art creation, which later brought him to the foundation of Punto, was also determined by his encounter with Mark Rothko’s color fields. As Hsiao makes clear, their influence on his art was not “formal”, but rather “conceptual” (Hsiao Chin, quoted in Yip, 1985): those paintings constituted the alternative to the hectic gesture of Jackson Pollock and the European informalists, and indicated a new possible path for art, the path of contemplation and spirituality, of purity and transcendence, the path Hsiao would stick to for the rest of his career.

On the other hand, Hsiao Chin felt he had also something in common with

Lucio Fontana. He said “behind Fontana there [is] his own infinite philosophy, and this [is] also true of the Azimuth Group: they have something that is almost Zen, or approaching Zen…” (Hsiao Chin, 2008, quoted in Pola, 2017: 17). In order to understand the kinship Hsiao felt with the Italian artist, it is necessary to look at some of Fontana’s most renowned productions, namely his Concetto Spaziale, Attese series, in which the canvases are crossed by one or multiples vertical cuts [figs.82-

83]. In the quote reported above96, Hsiao describes Fontana’s works as “plane, silent and three-dimensional”. Even though the first and the third adjective he uses seem to be in contradiction, they perfectly describe Fontana’s cut canvases: they are flat and monochrome, but the sudden gesture of the artist allows the contemplative viewer not only to reach behind, but also beyond the canvas.

By piercing the sheet or the canvas, Fontana permanently breaks the two- dimensional screen and introduces the void in the formulation of an image of space as infinite space, on both sides of the surface, which becomes only a limited measure

96 See p.159

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of this unlimited flow (Giorgio De Marchis, quoted in Calza, Hernandez & Varini, 1994: 314).97

Besides Fontana’s reflection on space in art creation, there are other points in common between Hsiao and the Italian artist. Firstly, while Fontana is the most important representative of informal art in Italy, his works are quite distant from the materic and gestural currents of European “mainstream” art autre. Despite the centrality of the creative gesture in the artist’s production, the cut canvases do not convey a sense of unease, but want to absorb the spectator in contemplation. To say it with the words Li Chun-shan would have used, Fontana’s works are not just the outpouring of his “heart”, but also the mental product of his “mind”. Secondly,

Fontana’s art, just like Hsiao’s, emphasizes contrasts: the painted surfaces are cracked by the anti-painting action of the cut, and within the title, the cold, rational idea of “spatial concept” is opposed to the warm, emotional feeling of “waiting”

(Calza, Henrnandez & Varini, 1994: 314). Lastly, and most importantly, Fontana’s sudden creative movements are not in any way “instinctive”. However quick and sudden, they are the result of precise calculation and fastidious compositional study, and they are not driven by randomness (Calza, Henrnandez & Varini, 1994: 314-

315). It is therefore possible to classify Fontana’s gesture, if not as “Chan”, at least as “intuitive” in the acceptation explained above. His gesture is a movement that, while inspired by immediate enlightenment, is the product of a long process of meditation. For this reason, the dynamic Attese convey a sense of “suspended dynamism” (Schiffer, 1988) just like the Daoist and the Zen works by Hsiao Chin.

Hsiao Chin asserts that Punto was the first international art movement to fuse “not just the form, but also the ideas of Western avant-garde with the Eastern meditative spirit” (Hsiao Chin,1980a: 169). Many considerations could be done about Hsiao Chin’s statement. Hsiao does not specify what the “avant -garde ideas”

97 Original Italian text: Bucando il foglio o la tela, Fontana rompe definitivamente lo schermo bidimensionale e introduce il vuoto nella formulazione di un’immagine dello spazio come spazio infinito, al di qua e al di là della superficie che diventa solo misura limitata di questo fluire illimitato.

162 he refers to actually are, and it is therefore hard to understand to what extent Punto shared and inherited them. As the introduction to the present chapter has specified,

Hsiao somehow became an interpreter of the anti-informal spirit that was starting to penetrate in the city of Milan in the early 1960s mainly through the figures of

Piero Manzoni and the Azimuth artists and shared by Hsiao’s good friend Antonio

Calderara, with whom the artist felt a profound closeness due to their common desire to reposition spirituality at the center of art creation. It is probably for this reason that he could claim that in his “opposition to the flood of non- representational, emotional art” he “was not alone” (Hsiao Chin, 1983, quoted in

Gong, 2020). Moreover, Milan’s artistic horizon was marked by the presence of the immense figure of Fontana, whose possible influence on Hsiao Chin has been explained above. Joshua Gong, in his recently-published Hsiao Chin and Punto (2020) also proposes an interesting interpretation of Punto as a “phenomenological way to solve the crises caused by modernity” (Gong, 2020: 20): following Gong’s analysis, it would therefore be possible to identify the “Western ideas” Hsiao refers to in the quote above with the philosophical current of phenomenology. The scholar claims that in a world where “the renegades of modern European society were looking for salvation” (Gong, 2020; 22), Punto, which was “abstract in form, but closer to

Buddhism and [Western] phenomenology” in concept (Gong, 2020: 20) offered the possibility to turn to a “collective quest to know about our existence by tracing the pre-objective intuition, the origin of being” (Gong, 2020: 20). This was “the purity in the intention of making art” that Punto artists invoked in their manifesto (Hsiao

Chin, 1983j: 243): as previously stated, the movement dared to propose a new universal meaning through art, to transcend the boundaries of East and West and explore the common significance of existence.

3.3.2 Artistic vocabulary and media

Given Hsiao’s constant concern for being modern, his emphasis on the importance of finding one’s personal creative path and his will to be “an oracle of

163 the human spirit and the spokesperson for its ideas”, as the Punto manifesto declared (Hsiao Chin, 1983j: 243), the artist constantly re-stated his belief that disputes over styles and techniques were completely unnecessary, and that as long as an artwork embodied a spirit of innovation (in the acceptation previously explained)98, was rooted in the East and was able to interpret its era, any discussion over whether it was abstract or realist, painted with ink or oil, was unneeded. These convictions, however, do not in any way mean that in his career Hsiao did not utilize specific techniques adopted from Western schools or Chinese tradition, nor that he has been careless in his choice of media.

The early informal artworks of 1958 are the only paintings in Hsiao’s career for which it is possible to say that the artist was directly influenced in form by a

Western artistic current, i.e. informal art. After that brief season, Hsiao set a firm foot on the research of his own personal style. Hsiao Chin founded his works on

Eastern philosophy, and this foundation coincided with his own interpretation of

Li Chun-shan’s instruction to imbue artworks with an “Eastern Spirit”. Regarding the modes he employs to reach said objective, Hsiao says:

One should always try to explore the limited physical space to the maximum and to generate maximum energy in the confines of space, to learn in a material world that transcends the boundaries of time, and in so doing to grasp the deeper meanings of life. It is through my awkward brushwork [benzhuo de bi 笨拙的筆] and the bright primary colors [yuanshi de secai 原始的色彩] that I achieve such goals (Hsiao Chin, 2015b: 11).99

As the quote witnesses, within Hsiao’s artistic vocabulary, the two components of calligraphic brushstrokes and color are predominant. The former seems to derive exclusively from the East. The calligraphic line, almost always accompanied by the technique of feibai, first appeared in Hsiao’s works in the early 1960s. It was later abandoned between 1963 and 1976, and then made its return with the Chan series.

To comment Hsiao’s paintings from the late 1970s, Hsiao Chong-ray (2006) said:

98 See “A modern approach”, p.141. 99 Original Chinese text: 人們須在有限的空間中達到一種無限大的能量和探索，在超越時間的非物質性世界中去學習、瞭解生命深刻的意涵。而以我笨拙的筆，和原始的色彩，來表達一點這樣的觀念。

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“Just as rapid growth and self-reliance comes with age, so is the shedding of the rough and awkward air of frenzy from the brushstrokes of Chinese painting [of the

‘informal’ period in 1958], changing into a warm implicit steadiness”. Indeed, calligraphic lines appear to have been chosen by Hsiao as a suitable form to express the calm dynamism and the spirit of quiet contemplation that he wished to convey through his works since the Punto years [figs.84-89].

As for color, bright pigments have been one of the main protagonists of

Hsiao’s artistic production since his years as a student in Li Chun-shan’s Andong

Street Studio, as his fauvist-leaning Opera figures make clear. Hsiao’s bright colors became dull in his “Daoist” period in the early 1960s, as well as in his Chan series in the late 1970s, even though both periods were then followed by works characterized by an incredibly wide and vivid palette (the mandala-inspired paintings in the 1960s and the cosmic landscapes in the 1980s). To this day, Hsiao’s intense colors are one of the most distinctive features of his works. Hsiao’s first attraction to color in

Taiwan appears to be related to his interest in fauvism (Hsiao Chin, 1993: 247). In

1963/64, however, it was the discovery of the “unparalleled colors” of mandala paintings that determined Hsiao’s adoption of a brighter and more diverse palette

(Documentary Interview of Hsiao Chin, French subtitles, 2015). In this case, Hsiao’s buoyant colors seem to trace back to an “Eastern” source, even though the influence of the first advocates of the “liberation” of colors, namely Western historic avant- gardes, is also present. In China’s traditional literati painting, bright colors are almost non-existent, and monochrome works and milder palettes are far more common. The simple element of color reveals the complexity of Hsiao’s art, always informed by a combination of Eastern and Western influences.

Dodd (2020) makes an interesting observation about the “Eastern-ness” of

Hsiao’s artworks:

Western critics will have to get used to learning about the cultural grammar of art from Asia if they are to understand [Hsiao Chin], in the same way that a viewer needs to understand Greek myth and the Bible to make sense of Poussin (Dodd, 2020a).

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Hsiao’s paintings certainly feature a wide variety of Eastern symbolism, especially in the Daoist period. Many critics identify Hsiao’s circles from the Daoist and Chan period as symbols of the sky, and his squares as representations of the earth (Wu,

2018; Hsiao Chong-ray, 2006; Tagliaferri, 2009; etc.), following the Chinese belief that “the Sky is round and the Earth is square” (tianyuan defang 天圓地方). If, for example, we look at Hsiao’s 1963 Great Earth, the rectangles on both sides clearly refer to the Earth trigram within the ancient Yijing 易經 (Book of Changes), the fundamental text of Chinese cosmology [fig.90]. The red circle in the center would on the contrary represent the sky. In this work, it might also be possible to see a reference to ancient ritual objects, such as the cong vessels (representing earth) and bi disks (representing sky) produced by the Neolithic Liangzhu culture (3400-2250

BCE) (Sotheby’s, 2019). The Daoist duality to which the work gives visual representation is then enhanced by the use of two contrasting colors (a warm red and a cold blue).

In Hsiao’s artistic vocabulary, “Eastern” elements hence have a fundamental role. Western abstraction, however, also had an ideological and visual influence on

Hsiao’s work. In his comment to Hsiao’s 1965 Power of the Light [fig.91], Dodd (2020a) provides a good example of said influence, claiming for example that Hsiao’s minimalist and geometric composition responded to the post-war currents of

Geometrical Abstraction and Op Art, or that his “dotted colors” are inspired by

French Expressionism and American Abstract Expressionism. He continues:

Hsiao Chin, with an utmost clarity of vision, is able to adopt the features of various artistic currents for his own expressive ends and assimilate them into an individualistic language. Asian artists participating in Western abstraction tend to begin with calligraphic lines and focus on literati poetics and use of negative space. By contrast, Hsiao began with the premise of adopting abstract painting into Asian philosophy, and from this premise founded an international avant-garde movement [Punto, editor’s note] that is equal in influence and brilliance as the contemporary French Lyrical Abstraction, Zero Art Group of Italy, and Gutai Group of Japan (Dodd, 2020a).

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As Dodd makes clear, Hsiao’s approach to abstraction is extremely peculiar.

Differently from the Fifth Moon painters, he does not concentrate primarily on the

“abstract” elements of traditional Chinese painting, such as “the use of negative space”, but utilizes the artistic vocabulary he learned in the “West” to express the ancient systems of thoughts of the “East”. The “drippings” of paint in some of

Hsiao’s paintings can hence remind the viewer of the techniques introduced by gestural painters in the 1950s [figs.92-93], and the sharp compositions of his

American years might echo the minimal works of Kenneth Noland (1924-2010) or the hard edge works of Frank Stella (1936-)100 [figs.94-99], but Hsiao uniquely adopts the rules of the game of western modern abstract art to express his own cultural roots. In another example, the colors of his “Zen and qi phase” between the end of the 1970s and 1990 might hint at a visual suggestion to artists such as Morris Louis

(Chiang, 2015: 35) [figs.100-101], but Hsiao’s colors are aimed at expressing something totally different. All these sporadic influences reveal Hsiao’s total freedom of expression, and his belief in the “triviality” of the discussion of East vs

West (Hsiao Chin, 1978: 121). Once Hsiao discovered the route he wanted to follow, got to know “his true self” according to the teachings of his master Li, and deeply delved into the philosophical foundation of his work, he also came to the realization that there was no prohibited style or technique, as long as it helped his art transmit his “Eastern Spirit”. As Tagliaferri (2009) points out, “Hsiao’s interest in certain styles or techniques of a particular school or period manifests itself in his works, as does his fascination with symbols devised in ancient times for the purpose of transmitting a highly complex structure of beliefs” (Tagliaferri, 2009). This total creative freedom and absolute openness to “foreign” visual influences, which Hsiao had learned from his master Li Chun-shan and of which he later became a living

100 For more on this, it is possible to consult the virtual version of the exhibition In My Beginning is My End – the Art of Hsiao Chin (Daugavpils Mark Rothko Art Centre, 2020): www.3812gallery.com/viewing-room/7-mark-rothko-art-centre-presents.../ (visited on October 6th, 2020).

167 example, is also at the basis of Hsiao’s critique to Xu Beihong or the New Ink Art

Movement.101

Hsiao’s above-mentioned freedom is also reflected in his relationship with artistic media. In spite of his conviction that, provided the artist had found their own creative vocabulary, all media could convey an “Eastern spirit”, Hsiao’s continuous experimentations with different media witness his awareness that, as far as his own artistic expression is concerned, not all materials are apt to reach the result he desires and convey the feelings he wants. As seen, as soon as Hsiao moved to Milan in the late 1950s, he discarded the use of “torpid” Western oil (Hsiao Chin,

1993: 249), which he considered “too thick and insufficiently reserved” (Wu, 2018:

95). He says:

In my thoughts, I gradually shifted closer to "meditation and contemplation that follows nature" [shunhuziran de mingxiang yu jingguan 順乎自然102的冥想與靜觀]. In painting, I attempted to pursue a more prosaic spirituality. In late 1960, I stopped using oil paint. I felt that the more flexible water-based paints were more suited to my needs (Hsiao Chin, 1983j: 241).103

The quote testifies to the fact that Hsiao’s art was not much a “visual version” of the founding texts of ancient Eastern philosophies, or worse an explanation of them.

For Hsiao, “the utmost important thing about painting is not the act of painting itself, but to explore the origin of one’s life, to record one’s feelings and experiences”

(Quoted in Wu, 2018: 177). Therefore, the shift in his style is described as a natural consequence of the change in his thought, and since Hsiao depicts life, his art

101 Daniel Salvatore-Schiffer proposes a very poetic formulation on the relationship Hsiao held with Western art: “Contemporary abstraction has profoundly influenced, if not impregnated, the aesthetics of Hsiao Chin […] What strikes the eye in his canvases is the extreme elegance of colors and shapes: harmony and rigor in tones and in the geometries of pictorial composition have rarely merged so happily, as if the plane of the image that is offered to the gaze expresses only a natural purity […] From time to time one perceives the finesse and musicality of a Klee, the brightness and sensuality of a Kandinsky, the strength and ethics of a Mondrian, the intelligence and restlessness of a Malevich, the fantasy and femininity of a Miro, the lyricism and grandeur of a Rothko. The infinity of a masterpiece” (Daniel Salvatore-Schiifer, 1988: 12-13). 102 The expression shunhuziran 順乎自然 (following nature) derives from Daoist thought. 103 Original Chinese text: 在意念上，我漸漸更趨於「順乎自然的冥想與靜觀」；在畫面上，我嘗試追求盛淡泊的精神性。一九六〇年末，我索性放棄了油畫顏料的使用，我覺得明快的水性顏料，更適合我的需求。

168 changes because his view on life changes. Even though Hsiao lacked a technical education in art, the passage from oil to water-based paints was as intuitive as his creative gestures, simply because he felt that ink best “suited his needs”. After he moved to Milan, Hsiao never used oil paintings again. Just a few years after his turn towards ink, in the mid-1960s, Hsiao shifted to acrylic paint “to achieve more structural and color symmetry” (Chiang, 2015: 35). It was not just a coincidence that the artist’s interest in acrylic coincided with his “geometric” turn and the consequent exigency to paint sharper forms and brighter hues: compared to ink, acrylic allowed a more even and precise application of color. Acrylic is also easy to dilute, making it possible for the painter to adjust the transparency of the medium

(Chiang, 2015: 35). In 1977, however, he once again discarded acrylic paints, which he deemed too “flat”, in favor of Chinese brushes and colored inks (Hsiao Chin,

1983k: 277), necessary for his quick, “intuitive” gestures. In the 1980s, he decided to take up acrylic again, whose decisive appearance was also quite suitable to manifest the spirit of tranquil contemplation of his cosmic landscapes and later, of his “great thresholds” and “eternal gardens”. Ink and acrylic, a totally Eastern and a totally

Western (however both water-based) medium, are the media of Hsiao’s maturity, and he still employs them to this day, both on Eastern paper or Western canvas, once again demonstrating the cosmopolitan nature of his art.

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[1] Hsiao Chin, Untitled, 1955, Oil on canvas

[2] Hsiao Chin, Chinese opera characters, 1955, 38,5 x 51 cm, Oil on canvas

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[3] Antoni Tàpies, Ocre-gris sobre marró, 1962, 260 x 195 cm, Mixed media on canvas

[4] Modest Cuixart, Composición informalista, 1960, 92 x 73 cm, Oil on canvas

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[5] Antonio Saura, Crucifixion, 1959-1960, 195.6x325.7 cm, Oil on canvas

[6] Hsiao Chin and Tharrats, December 10th, 1957, at the inaugural Ton-Fan exhibition in Barcelona

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[7] Hsiao Chin, Untitled, 1958, 46 x 55 cm, Oil on canvas

[8] Hsiao Chin, Untitled, 1957, 34 x 36 cm, Ink on paper

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[9] Hsiao Chin, Interior, 1958, 150 x 65 cm, Oil on canvas

[10] Hsiao Chin, Painting-AO, 65 x 55cm, 1959, Oil on canvas

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[11] Hsiao Chin, Dive, 1961, 140 × 110 cm, Acrylic on canvas

[12] Hsiao Chin, Crouch, 1961, 140 × 110 cm, Acrylic and ink on canvas

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[13] Hsiao Chin, Pintura–DK, 1959, 95.5 x 80 cm, Oil on canvas

[14] Hsiao Chin, Untitled – 16, 1959, 57 × 32 cm, Ink on paper

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[15] Mark Tobey, Untitled, 1957, 61 x 86.4 cm, Sumi ink on paper

[16] Mark Rothko, No. 13 (White, Red on Yellow), 1958, 241.9 × 206.7 cm, Oil and acrylic with powdered pigments on canvas

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[17] Hsiao Chin, Dao, 1961, 60 x 140 cm, Ink on canvas

[18] Hsiao Chin, Untitled, 1961, 140 x 100 cm, Ink on canvas 178

[19] Hsiao Chin, Illuminated Heart-2, 1963, 50 x 60cm, Acrylic on canvas

[20] Hsiao Chin, Protection for Kindness 守柔, 1962, 60 x 80cm, Acrylic on canvas

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[21] Hsiao Chin, The awakening (覺然), 1962, 50 x 60cm, Acrylic on canvas

[22] Hsiao Chin, La Forza, 1962, 70 x 80cm, Ink on canvas

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[23] Hsiao Chin, Through, 1964, 116 x 91cm, Acrylic and ink on canvas

[24] Hsiao Chin, The Cycles (I cicli) , 1963, 120 x 76cm, Acrylic on canvas

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[25] Hsiao Chin, Contemplation, 1962, 70 x 90 cm, Acrylic on canvas

[26] Hsiao Chin, Dancing Light-16, 1963, 90 x 140 cm, Acrylic on canvas

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[27] Antonio Calderara, Spazio Luce, 1960, 13.5 x 13.5 cm, Watercolor on paper

[28] Antonio Calderara, Untitled, 1963, 18 x 18 cm, Watercolor on paper

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[29] Mandala of the bodhisattva Manjushri,1600-1800, Tibet, 47.6 x 39.1 cm, Colors on cotton [thangka]

[30] Hsiao Chin, The Sun-9, 1964, 110x140 cm, Acrylic and ink on canvas

184

[31] Hsiao Chin, Untitled, 1963, 63 x 86cm, Mixed media on paper

[32] Hsiao Chin, Power of the Light, 1965, 160 x 130cm, Acrylic on canvas

185

[33] Hsiao Chin, Purple light, 1965, 146 x 114 cm, Ink on canvas

[34] Hsiao Chin, L'illusione del potere Universo, 1965, 130 x 160 cm, Acrylic on canvas

186

[35] Hsiao Chin, Sublimation, 1967, ø 200 cm, Acrylic on canvas

[36] Hsiao Chin, The ego in the infinity n. 2, 1967, 75 x 90 cm, Acrylic on canvas 187

[37] Hsiao Chin, Nirvana, 1970, ø 100 cm, Acrylic on canvas

[38] Hsiao Chin, Rebirth, 1976, 90x90 cm, Acrylic on canvas

188

[39] Hsiao Chin, Tension-VI, 1968, 86.5 x 88.5cm, Acrylic on canvas

[40] Hsiao Chin, Poised to Roar, 1974, 80 x 100cm, Acrylic on canvas

189

[41] Hsiao Chin, Chan–5, 1976, 47 x 85 cm, Ink on canvas

[42] Hsiao Chin, Chan – 27, 1977, 59 x 146 cm, Ink on canvas

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[43] Hsiao Chin, Chan – 65, 1981, 100 x 145 cm, Ink on canvas

[44] Hsiao Chin, Chan – 9, 1977 , 82 x 140 cm, Acrylic on canvas

[45] Hsiao Chin, Chi – 18, 1982, 114 x 145 cm, Ink on canvas 191

[46] Hsiao Chin, Il passo, 1973, 54.5 x 93 cm, Acrylic on paper

[47] Hsiao Chin, Chi, 1979, 139 x 65.5 cm, Ink on paper

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[48] Hsiao Chin, Chi, 1978, 153 x 446 cm, Acrylic on canvas

[49] Hsiao Chin, Chan–34, , 1979, 87 x 140 cm, Ink on Chinese paper

[50] Hsiao Chin, Chan–25, 1977, 240 x 600 cm, Ink on canvas 193

[51] Hsiao Chin, Leisure of Chi , 1983, 110 x 140cm, Acrylic on canvas

[52] Hsiao Chin, Enormous cosmic whirpool, 1983, 225 x 225 cm, Ink on canvas

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[53] Hsiao Chin, Chi – 225, 1984, 150 x 150 cm, Acrylic on canvas

[54] Hsiao Chin, The Grand Shower, 1985, 90 x 110cm, Acrylic on canvas

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[55] Hsiao Chin, The big volcano, 1985, 187 x 112 cm, Acrylic on canvas

[56] Hsiao Chin, Rainshower – 22, 1985, 112 x 187 cm, Acrylic on canvas

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[57] Hsiao Chin, Ocean waves – 9, 1986, 130 x 180 cm, Acrylic on canvas

[58] Hsiao Chin, Untitled, 1988, 350 x 180 cm, Acrylic on canvas

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[59] Hsiao Chin, The sublimation of Samantha– 4, 1991, 130 x 100 cm, Acrylic on canvas

[60] Hsiao Chin, The Sublimation of Samantha-7, 1991, 140 x 110cm, Acrylic on canvas

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[61] Hsiao Chin, Passage through the great threshold – 45, 1991, 70 x 80 cm, Acrylic on canvas

[62] Hsiao Chin, Passage through the great threshold – 64, 1991, 70 x 100 cm, Acrylic on canvas

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[63] Hsiao Chin, To the eternal garden – 11, 1992, 40 x 50 cm, Acrylic on canvas

[64] Hsiao Chin, To the eternal garden – 39, 1992, 25 x 20 cm, Acrylic on canvas

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[65] Hsiao Chin, The Eternal Garden-82, 1997, 90 x 75cm, Acrylic on canvas

[66] Hsiao Chin, Contemplazione superamento della grande soglia, 1996, 80 x 110 cm, Acrylic on canvas

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[67] Hsiao Chin, Samantha nel giardino eterno-3, 1999, 140 x 180cm, Acrylic on canvas

[68] Hsiao Chin, Samantha nel giardino eterno-2, 1999, 130 x 160cm, Acrylic on canvas

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[69] Hsiao Chin, Force of the New World-3, 1996, 140 x 140cm, Acrylic on canvas

[70] Hsiao Chin, Samadhi-39, 2000, 130 x 160cm, Acrylic on canvas

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[71] Hsiao Chin, Milky way, 2001, 100 x 140 cm, Acrylic on canvas

[72] Hsiao Chin, The Suite of Universe-4, 2015, 140 x 200 cm, Acrylic on canvas

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[73] Hsiao Chin, Inner Joy, 2014, 143 x 290 cm, Acrylic on canvas

[74] Hsiao Chin, Sole di Notte, 2016, 100 x 200 cm, Acrylic on canvas

[75] Hsiao Chin, Light of Divinity-16, 2017, 110 x 180cm, Acrylic on canvas

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[76] Hsiao Chin, Three gave birth to everything, 1963, 230x354 cm, Ink and acrylic on canvas

[77] Hsiao Chin, Descent, 1977, 102 x 55 cm, Ink on canvas

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[78] Liang Kai, Sixth Chan Patriarch Chopping Bamboo, early 13th century, 73x32 cm, Ink on paper

[79] Muqi, Guanyin, Crane, and Gibbons (detail), 13th century, 174.2x99 cm, Ink and color on silk

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[80] Mark Rothko, Red, White and Brown, 1957, 252 x 207 cm, Oil on canvas

[81] Mark Rothko, Dark over Light Earth/Violet and yellow in Rose, 1954, 11.4 x172.7 cm, Oil on canvas

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[82] Lucio Fontana, Concetto spaziale, Attesa, 1964, 46 x 38 cm, Water based paint on canvas

[83] Lucio Fontana, Concetto spaziale. Attese, 1964, 190,3 x 115,5 cm, Cementite on canvas

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[84] Hsiao Chin, Parallelism of Dao (detail), 1963, 60 x 50cm, Acrylic on canvas

[85] Hsiao Chin, Admiration (detail), 1966, 38 x 51cm, Acrylic on paper

[86] Hsiao Chin, Pass over (detail), 1973, 36 x 65cm, Acrylic on paper

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[87] Hsiao Chin, The Force of Recovery – 2, 1991, 36 x 31 cm, Acrylic on canvas

[88] Hsiao Chin, Flying over the Eternal Garden-20 (detail), 1998, 110 x 250cm, Acrylic on canvas

[89] Hsiao Chin, Communion, 2010, 130 x 160 cm, Acrylic on canvas

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[90] Hsiao Chin, Great Earth, 1963, 80 x 100cm, Acrylic on canvas

[91] Hsiao Chin, Power of the Light, 1965, 160 x 130cm, Acrylic on canvas

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[92] Hsiao Chin, Energy Gathering, 1965, 110 x 90 cm, Acrylic on canvas

[93] Jackson Pollock, Mural on Indian Red Ground, 1950, 180 cm × 240 cm, Oil on canvas

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[94] Frank Stella, Delaware Crossing (detail), 1961, 195.6 x 195.6 cm, Alkyd on canvas

[95] Hsiao Chin, Vibrazione Universale (detail), 1965, 140 x 290 cm, Acrylic on canvas

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[96] Kenneth Noland, Baba Yagga, 1964, 163.2 x 168.3 cm, Acrylic on canvas

[97] Hsiao Chin, Shoot the Sun, 1966, 131 x 103 cm, Acrylic on canvas

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[98] Kenneth Noland, Beginning, 1958, 229 x 243 cm, Magna on canvas

[99] Hsiao Chin, Cosmic vortex - 16, 1985, 113 x 132 cm, Acrylic on canvas

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[100] Morris Louis, Number 4-31 1962, 210.2 x 147.6 cm, Synthetic polymer paint on canvas

[101] Hsiao Chin, Chan 37 (detail), 1979, 75 x 141 cm, Ink on chinese paper

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Chapter 3 – Chuang Che or On nature and tradition

“Looking at Chuang Che’s sixty-years-long creative career, it can be said to be a self-examination propelled by the rupture between traditional Chinese painting and modernity. Chuang Che’s paintings seem to be able to bridge the chasm between Eastern and Western culture, allowing modern Eastern and Western men to start dialoguing and appreciating each other again” - Pan Fan, 2017: 146104

“While admiring works of art, one often feels their origins are from the farthest reaches away. When you view my own painting creations, I hope you will share the same feeling” – Chuang Che, 2012105

1. Introduction

In the summer of 1963, the Punto International Movement, founded by Hsiao

Chin in Milan two years earlier, held its first exhibition in Taiwan, the land that had

“adopted” Hsiao after his flight from the Mainland in 1949. Gong (2020: 26) reports that, in the eyes of a Taiwanese audience that was not used to the geometric abstraction of many of the works on display, the exhibition was “shocking”. The squared figures106 of Punto especially caused a sensation among Fifth Moon artists.

As Chen Yuren (2010: 2) highlights, the 1963 Punto exhibition deepened the already- existing differences between the Fifth Moon and the Ton Fan. As shown in Chapter

1, the two associations, however moved by the same spirit of rebellion against

Taiwan’s artistic climate, the same fascination for Western new trends, and the same urge to renovate Chinese painting, did in fact diverge on certain ideas. In order to analyze the art and the aesthetic of Chuang Che, and their difference with those of

104 Original Chinese text: 綜觀莊喆六十餘年的創作生涯, 可以說是對中國繪畫與現代斷裂的自省, 彷彿裂塹般的東西文化得以由繪畫擺渡, 讓現代的東˴ 西方人得以透過他的作品彼此欣賞, 對話, 再次創新與躍起。 105 Original Chinese text: 看一幅畫時，常覺得它來自千里之遙。看我畫望你也有同感。 106 In 1963 Hsiao Chin had grown interested in mandala paintings, and his works had started featuring geometric compositions and neat surfaces of color.

218

Hsiao Chin, the 1963 Punto exhibition might therefore be a good starting point. In an article published in the magazine Wenxing, Liu Kuo-song expressed his perplexities about the artworks Punto members had sent to Taiwan. In his words, it is possible not only to detect some of the theories underlying the activities of the

Fifth Moon Group, but also the fundamental convictions that drove the work of

Chuang Che both in his first Taiwanese years and, to some extent, throughout his whole career. Even though Chuang and Liu took different decisions, for example, in respect of their choice of artistic media, and their views did not always coincide

(Ma, 2016: 28), this article appears to express positions on which the two artists agreed. Below is a partial translation of Liu’s long piece:

On August 15th last year, the insert of the United Daily News “New Art” first published Huang Chaohu’s introduction to the new Punto Art Movement. After reading it, Taiwan’s art lovers were very excited. They were eager to know what the theoretical bases of the movement were, and how Punto’s artworks looked like. […] Now, thanks to the support of the National Taiwan Museum of Art, and the two magazines Wenxing and Modern Literature, the works of this movement have been transported to Taiwan for an exhibition, giving us the opportunity to see and appreciate them. […] I realized that the fifty-five works that have been sent, except for a few, are all stereotypical dispositions of squares, circles, and dots. If one wanted to look for a common ambition of the movement, then it must be the display of pure geometry. Their formal arrangement of planes is purely rational and aesthetic-driven. This, I believe, is the typical spirit of the Western tradition, and it is different from the "Chinese spirit of tranquil contemplation" that they advertise. The aesthetic features of Chinese painting are grounded on the most fundamental philosophy of our country, that is the cosmology expressed in the Book of Changes [Yijing 易經]. The two qi of Heaven and Earth gave life to all things, and all things are born out of the qi of Heaven and Earth, and all objects can be said to be an “accumulation of qi" […] This endless regeneration of the qi of yin and yang is woven into the rhythm of life. The main theme of Chinese painting is the “Spirit resonance” [described by Xie He]107, that could also be expressed with the words "rhythm of life" or "the life of rhythm" […] Western painting has its origins in Greek sculpture and architecture […] Modern [Western] painting transformed the sculptural style of classicism into the colorist style of abstraction, and although their classical spirit has turned into a modern spirit, the Western cosmology that [Western abstract paintings] embody has remained consistent: "man" and "things", “heart” and “environment”

107 The first of Xie He’s Six Principles about art creation, 氣韻生動 qiyun shengdong, is extremely difficult to translate, and has thus given rise to numerous possible interpretations. Celli (2010: 772) explains: “The work must be animated by the presence of the qi; this means that the artist needs to be able, through his use of the brush, to transmit the essence of the subject he is depicting, and to let the vibrant rhythm of universal energy flow in the ink trace”.

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are opposed to each other. […] This kind of Western painting […] is rational, geometric, and quiet […]. Gu Kaizhi used the flowing beauty of lines […] to organize the figures and reproduce the wrinkles of their clothes, and then used to add calligraphy into the painting, thus giving rise to the basic style of Chinese painting where lines and dots intertwine. His style is lyrical, free, and dynamic. The framework of Western painting is that of architecture, and its subject is the sculptured human body, while Chinese painting uses calligraphy as its backbone and poetry as its soul. Therefore, the techniques of Western and Chinese painting appear to express two different worlds: while one favors the sculpted figure, the other uses the flying line, while one refers to reality, the other points at the soul, while one is intellectual, the other is emotional, while for one the self and the environment are in opposition, for the other they are united as a whole […] What I say is that the philosophical thinking of the Punto Art Movement and the Chinese spirit are different. In fact, the thinking of Punto embodies the Western traditional spirit. […]. The future achievements of this movement will only add a brick to the pyramid of Western art tradition, and they will not contribute to the development of Chinese painting. Chinese abstract painters who have been baptized by tradition rarely follow this kind of Western notions advocating pure abstraction. Modern Chinese painters, in terms of their creative form, are in accordance with the philosophical spirit of the Book of Changes, which uses “movement” to explain life and the universe […]. [In Chinese painting tradition], the dots and the lines are in movement, but they form a calm and silent picture. This still picture contains the life rhythm of the dynamic universe: it is absolute movement within stillness, and absolute stillness within movement (Liu, 1963).108

108 Original Chinese text: 去年八月十五日聯合報「新藝」第一次刊出黃朝湖有關 Punto 新繪畫運動的介紹文字，國內畫友看過之後，甚為興奮，但興奮之餘，急欲知道該運動的理論根據與作品形式. 現在由於國立臺灣藝術館，文星雜誌社與現代文學社的支持，使得該運動的作品得以運臺展覽，給國人一個欣賞觀摩的機會 […] 我發現在寄來的五十五張作品中，除了極少數幾張外，全部為方形圓形與點的刻板安排，如果要找出該運動共同的肯定與追求，那就是畫面上單純幾何學的處理，是一種純理智，純美學的形的平面安排，這是道地的西方傳統精神，與他們自己所標榜的「中國的靜觀精神」不同，這是我的看法。中國繪畫所表現的境界特徵，可以說根基於中華民族的基本哲學，即易經的宇宙觀：乾坤二氣化生萬物，萬物皆稟天地之氣以生，一切物體可以說是一種「氣積」(莊子：天，積氣也。)這生生不已的陰陽二氣織成一種有節奏的生命。中國繪畫的主題「氣韻生動」就是「生命的節奏」或「有節奏的生命」。[…] 西洋繪畫的境界，其淵源基礎在於希臘的雕刻與建築 […] 近代畫風更由古典主義的雕刻風格進展為色彩主義的抽象風格，雖象徵了古典精神向現代精神的轉變，然它們的宇宙觀點仍是一貫的，即「人」與「物」、「心」與「境」的相視對立。[…] 這種[…] 西洋繪畫[…]是理智的，是幾何學的，是靜的[…]顧愷之更以線文流動之美[…]組織人物衣褶，再加書法入畫，形成中國畫點線交織的畫風，是感情的，是自由揮洒的，是動的。西畫以建築空間為間架，以雕刻人體為對象；中畫以書法為骨幹，以詩境為靈魂。因中西畫法所表現的「境界層」根本不同，一為沉重的雕象，一為飛動的線條；一為實在的，一為虛靈的；一為智性的，一為感性；一為物我對立的，一為物我渾融的。[…] 我之說「龐圖」藝術運動的哲學思想與中國精神不同，是道地的西方傳統精神[…]它將來的成就，只是在西洋藝術傳統的金字塔加上一塊磚，對中國繪畫的發展，不會有何貢獻。國內受過傳統洗禮的抽象畫家，很少是追隨那種西洋純抽象畫家的概念。中國現代畫家，在創作形式上是與易經以「動」說明宇宙人生[…]的哲學精神互為表裏。以動的點線構成極平靜寂淡的畫面，而在這靜的畫面背後，卻又蘊藏著宇宙極動的生節奏，是靜中之極動，是動中之極靜。

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Liu Kuo-song’s article perfectly reflects the disorientation the artist felt in front of the exhibited artworks. It is clear that Liu has a profound knowledge of

China’s painting tradition, and his idea of Western art as dominated by logic and rationalism is very similar to that of Hsiao Chin, presented in Chapter 2. Hsiao re- interpreted the teachings of his master Li Chun-shan about the importance of an

“Eastern spirit” in art creation, and thus repeatedly stressed that all disputes about the outward appearance of a painting were “trivial” as long as the artwork embodied a “modern approach” and depicted a “spiritual space” (which, in his case, meant founding his art on Daoism and Chan Buddhism). Liu, on the contrary, does not believe that the geometric works on display could possibly be defined as

“Chinese” and represent the jingguan (spirit of “tranquil contemplation”) they advocated, because the very essence of Chinese painting lies in the movement, the vitality, and the rhythm of qi 氣, which is also the element that allows the Chinese worldview to avoid any contraposition between the self and external nature.

Qi is the protagonist of Chuang Che’s production. He says “Abstraction [….] is a kind of drama, is absolutely dynamic, and allows me to respond and experience the world in a satisfying way. My artwork is not still, but actually comes from movement, conflict and power” (Chuang Che, quoted in Hsiao Chong-ray, 2015: 25).

While Hsiao’s artworks were dominated by the meditative “stillness” of jingguan, the “movement” and the rhythm that Liu Kuo-song identifies as the basis of Chinese cosmology and traditional painting are the “subject matter” of Chuang Che’s abstraction. The present chapter aims to analyze Chuang’s poetics of qi, as well as his personal interpretation of the “East” and the “West” that his art is often credited to masterly combine (Chuang Che and others, 1997: 57).

2. Biography and artistic development

The recollection of an artist’s experiences as a child and as a young adult is sometimes characterized by a subtle hue of sentimentality, and the connections between said experiences and the artist’s professional career are oftentimes more

221 imaginative than real. In Chuang Che’s case, however, it is impossible not to trace the origin of the artist’s creative path in his early, troubled years in Mainland China.

The two pillars on which the artist’s creativity stands are his personal relationship with nature and his attachment to Chinese painting tradition. Chuang Che’s childhood and adolescence have been spent in almost constant migration and, as

Pan Fan (2017: 8) suggests, the early steps of his learning process were not much in school, because “nature served as his mentor, and the treasures of the Palace

Museum as his cultural repository”. Chuang was born in 1934 in Beijing, in a dark season of wars. The artist’s father, Chuang Yan (Zhuang Yan 莊嚴, 1899-1980), was a renowned calligrapher, who had a curatorial position at the Palace Museum in

Beijing and later served as Deputy Director of the National Palace Museum in

Taiwan (Kuo, 2000: 91). At the outbreak of the war with Japan, Chuang Yan, his wife, and his sons left Beijing and followed the treasure of the Forbidden City to the outskirts of Chongqing 重慶, the headquarter of the Nationalist Party and the city where the precious collection had been stored for security reasons. In the years spent in the country’s wild interior, Chuang became, as shall ever remain, a “child of China’s mountains and rivers” (Stanley-Baker, 1992: 15). Chuang Che recalls

(2007: 16):

When I was five years old, my family lived in a village called Shiyougou 石油溝, about one hundred kilometers away from Chongqing, Sichuan Province. It is a very quiet and secluded place where the best of the art treasures from the collections of Beijing Palace Museum were safeguarded […] My love for nature was born in the total quietude and solitude there. Sometimes at night I could even hear the howling of a tiger in the bamboo groves by the river. The treasured ancient paintings were periodically taken out to be aired. Among the people in charge of this were two of my earliest teachers, Liu Eshi and Huang Yi, both artists. Mr. Liu diligently made copies of the paintings that were being aired. At that time, I was too young to grasp the wonders hidden in them, but was able to memorize long lists of the works that were on display. I still fondly remember the scene before bedtime, when my family often played a game of guessing who painted which painting (Chuang Che, 2007: 16).109

109 Original Chinese text: 小時候五歲時，還住在四川鄉下重慶市一百里外的石油溝，故宮的國寶就存放在那僻靜處。[…] 對自然生情那時的感覺是寂無人煙，因為河邊的仃林中晚上可聽到虎嘯聲。故宮

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In his early childhood, Chuang had the unique experience of admiring some of the most prestigious examples from Chinese painting tradition. Not only could he behold those artifacts, but he was also initiated to the practice of painting and calligraphy by his father and by his two masters Liu Eshi 劉峨士 (?-1952), who was primarily a landscape painter, and Huang Yi 黃異 (1909-1954), who on the contrary excelled in figure painting (Hsiao Chong-ray, 2015: 18).

In the winter of 1949, after the defeat of the KMT, 14-years-old Chuang Che once again had to move, and followed his family (and the National Palace collection) to Taiwan. They settled in Wufeng District 霧峰區 (Taizhong county 台中縣), where the precious artifacts had been stored in caves and warehouses (Hsiao Chong-ray,

2015: 18). In this period, Chuang continued to frequent his two teachers, and their attentive copies of classical paintings from the collection of the National Palace slowly grew ingrained in Chuang’s mind. In 1954, he enrolled in the Fine Arts

Department of National Taiwan Normal University, and graduated in 1958 (Liu,

2015: 44).

In 2017, Hsiao Chin wrote: “To speak about the biggest difference between

Fifth Moon and Ton Fan, we must start from the basics. Fifth Moon came from an academy background. The members of Ton Fan began by learning to create” (Hsiao

Chin, 2017: 231). As the chapter will show, Hsiao’s remark is true only to a certain extent. Undoubtedly, all the initial members of the Fifth Moon were graduates of

Taiwan Normal University. However, Chuang was also profoundly dissatisfied with his experience as an art student: at school, Chinese painting and Western painting were taught separately and there was no mutual exchange whatsoever between the two. In Chinese painting classes, all students were asked to do was to study and copy the drawings and the paintings that were given to them. When

Chuang transferred to the Western style curriculum, he found that teachers only

名畫常取掛曬，我的啟蒙老師劉峨士與黃異二位是辦事處的工作人員，都是畫家，劉先生逐日臨摹，我太年幼，看不懂畫中奧妙，卻熟記一長串畫名，睡前全家常玩猜畫家畫哪一幅畫的遊戲，這些都深埋難忘。

223 required their disciples to paint from models, following outdated Western teaching methods. As the artist states “After four years I felt very disappointed because I had learned nothing from either school” (Chuang Che, 1997: 50). Chuang’s experience in college was not different to that of Hsiao, given the disillusionment they both felt towards formal artistic training110. The “academicism” Hsiao attributes to the Fifth

Moon members cannot hence be related to the faith the latter had in traditional learning and teaching methods.

The discrepancy between East and West that Chuang started to sense since his college years, his desire to explore new creative paths, and his dissatisfaction with the “mundane and mediocre […] Taiwanese art world” (Chuang Che, 2015: 9) could find expression in his choice to join other like-minded artists in the Fifth Moon

Group in 1958 (Liu, 2015: 44), right after his graduation111. As seen in Chapter 1, the

Fifth Moon Group first theorized abstraction as one of the distinctive features of the works of the group only in the early 1960s. The first works Chuang presented at the third Fifth Moon Exhibition in 1959 (Hsiao Chong-ray, 1991c: 277), made in oil on canvas, thus “[fell] somewhere between representation and symbolism”, mainly expressing sentiments of “loneliness, death, [and] sorrow” (Hsiao Chong-ray, 2015:

18) [figs.1-2]. The choice of using oil already witnesses Chuang’s primary concern for finding apt media for his personal expression. Even though Chuang Che was aware (since his very first artistic experiments) of his discontent with the use of ink,

110 Chuang’s brother, Chuang Ling (2015: 38-39), also witnesses: “I heard Chuang Che telling Father that he was not studying what he wanted in school. For example, he could not stand that his Chinese painting teacher never explained anything but just wanted the students to mechanically copy examples. Also, considering that the entire world was caught up in western art trends, as an art student with ideas, he thought that he should try to make his own artworks. He was searching for an expressive path between Chinese traditional landscape painting on one hand, and new conceptual trends and techniques that had arisen since western Impressionism on the other, hoping this path would allow him to continually explore and develop new ideas”. 111 The early development of Chuang Che’s art is eminently described in two of the scholarly contributions for the catalog of Chuang Che’s 2015 retrospective exhibition, namely Hsiao Chong- ray’s “A Crane Returns Home - Chuang Che's Art, Philosophy and Life” and Lesley Ma’s “Broken Ground: Chuang Che’s Modernist Paintings of the 1960s”. The article by Lesley Ma that has been used as a reference for the present work is the revised version published in 2016 for the magazine Yishu.

224 he was not keen on making an exclusive choice between “East” and “West”. As

Hsiao Chong-ray (2015: 19) points out, in this early period “Chuang [already] used oil and canvas (western painting materials) to express the unique spirit and thinking of the East, which later initiated heated discussions about Chinese versions of modern painting vs modern versions of Chinese painting”.

Between 1960 and 1961, Chuang Che served in the military. After 18 months, he went back to his home in central Taiwan, and in 1963 he took a teaching position at Tunghai (Donghai 東海) University’s department of Architecture in Taizhong. As

Ma underlines, even though Chuang Che never failed to submit his works for the annual Fifth Moon exhibition, he was quite distant (both physically and intellectually) from the discussions kindling Taipei art circles (Ma, 2016: 22). What

Chuang Che desired to attain with his art and his participation in the Fifth Moon

Group, namely the end of the contraposition between East and West that Chinese art had experienced since the beginning of the 20th century, was not so dissimilar from the ideal of a “universal” art envisioned by Hsiao Chin. As Chuang makes clear112 and the chapter will further highlight, however, while Hsiao Chin and the

Ton Fan group upheld the notions of “Eastern spirit” and “cosmopolitan art”,

Chuang’s primary reference to the “East” is constituted by the classical artistic genre of landscape painting. It was in those early years that traditional Chinese painting and aesthetics assumed the role of touchstones in Chuang’s production.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Fifth Moon painters all embraced abstraction, and as a reaction to the new sweeping art trends of Abstract

112 Chuang thus recalls the time after he was discharged from the military: “During this period of peaceful days [in the early 1960s], I poured all my energy into my creative life and spent a lot of time contemplating the probable convergence of Eastern and Western art forms when both were entering a period of abstraction. At the time it was fortunate that many young people of my generation who grew up in Taiwan shared the common idea I had, that it was time for Chinese modern art to be born. This was when and how the Fifth Moon and Ton Fan art groups took their ‘baby steps’. It was only natural for me to explore in the direction of abstract landscape painting. It seemed that somewhere, Teacher Liu was directing me with his imitation of Woods and Hills in Misty Rain. The soaring hawk that appeared in my childhood dream also revisited me again and again. And thus classical landscape painting sounded its clarion call to me there and then” (Chuang Che, 2007: 17).

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Expressionism and informal art, they tried to renovate Chinese painting referencing to its intrinsic abstract qualities (Peng, 2016). Consistently with the direction of the whole Group, Chuang’s works also started moving towards abstraction (Hsiao

Chong-ray, 1991: 277). As soon as he delved into abstraction, the painter started the exploration that later characterized his entire production, namely the study of

“whether [a material as] opaque and unctuous [as oil] could be made as watery and transparent as ink” (Ma, 2016: 22). The artist’s first attempts in the realm of non- figuration consisted of monochromatic, “splashed” paintings (Ma, 2016: 19), in what

Chuang himself defined as “an exploding style of abstract interpretation” (Chuang,

1992a: 5). In the early 1960s, before his adoption of the collage technique, Chuang enacted a very peculiar creative process for the production of his paintings, which consisted in moistening and painting with black oil the surface of cheap canvases, and then rinsing them under running water. The water did not dissolve the black pigment, which on the contrary left traces and bubbles on the canvas, ultimately leading to “a reduction in the paint’s thickness and stickiness, but an increase in the painting’s overall dramatic effect” (Ma, 2016: 22). This unconventional painting method somehow imitated the “splashed ink” technique initiated by the Tang

Dynasty painter Wang Mo 王墨 (c.734-805). As Ma (2016: 22) explains, with these experiments “Chuang Che transplanted some of ink painting’s chief characteristics—the rhythm and lyricism generated by the shading and fluidity of ink—to black oil paint, which is thick and heavy by nature”. Figures 3 and 4 exemplify this “running water technique”. In these works, it is also possible to notice Chuang’s conformity with the other Fifth Moon members in his intention to preserve some of the main features of Chinese painting traditional aesthetics, such as “giving careful consideration to shading and balance” and maintaining “the sense of the illusionary space” (Ma, 2016: 23), while at the same time breaking away from the media through which said features were normally obtained, namely ink and paper.

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Hsiao Chong-ray (2015: 21; 1991c: 277-278) reports that in 1961, after seeing

Chuang Che’s works at the Fifth Moon Exhibition, the critic Yu Kwang-chung

“made the bold conjecture that Chuang was in the midst of a spiritual crisis or facing a moral test”. Hsiao Cong-ray comments that “Yu's conjecture was not groundless.

Chuang was struggling with the question of Chinese modern painting at the time, seeking a breakthrough, and his passion and introspection were at odds”. This observation seems to effectively illustrate Chuang’s disposition towards art. The dramatic experience of separation from the Mainland certainly left a mark on the artist’s works from this period, but the “crisis” Yu seems to be referring to is the issue of the modernization of Chinese painting. This problem is not interpreted by

Chuang as an intellectual matter, but appears to be imbued with profound existential implications. The dilemma of the status of his nation’s art was not only conceived as a “political” problem, but also as a private concern, just like the preservation of the artifacts of the Palace Museum had been, for the artist’s whole family, an issue concerning their personal lives113.

Around 1964, Chuang abandoned the previous “rinsing technique”, considered too hard to control, and for the purpose of consolidating his compositions, he embraced the use of collage, a procedure that was completely alien to traditional Chinese painting and that Chuang had been utilizing since the turn of the decade (Liu, 1992: 13). Compared to the use of running water, collage appeared to be a “safer” and more suitable technique for the artist’s needs. He continued to experiment with collage until he moved to the United States in 1973. The paper he used “was mostly the strong, ready-made kind, including cotton paper made […] for Japanese shoji screens, and paper traditionally used for Chinese New Year couplets and paper money. On these kinds of non-art paper, Chuang Che painted ink lines, then cut, trimmed, and tore them; while they were still damp, he affixed them with cowhide glue to the surface of the canvas” (Ma, 2016: 19). The surface,

113 See “Artistic vocabulary and media”, p. 258.

227 the color, and the whole visual effect of Chuang’s canvases were deeply affected by this new technique, not only because of the natural texture and changing color of the types of paper Chuang utilized, but also because of the artist’s “destructive” interactions with his media. This very “physical” relationship with his canvases, which had already begun with the artist’s “rinsing” technique, constituted “Chuang

Che’s unique foray into action painting” (Ma, 2016: 25). Despite the undisputable relatedness between Chuang’s creative process and the techniques introduced by

Western action painters, however, the Taiwanese artist already demonstrated not only his independence from European and American art forms, but also the peculiarity of his “Chinese” approach, as well as of his own personality:

Chuang Che’s strategies of destroying, gluing, patching, and altering the line in the 1960s were in a tacit conversation with European, American, and Japanese abstract artists. They all brought new meanings to painting after the atrocities of war. However, Chuang Che carried out his destruction more cautiously than the others. His patching with ripped paper feels more like mending or healing. […] By disrupting the surface of his paintings, Chuang Che injected a necessary dose of dynamism, fueled by the uncompromising rigor of a young artist, in an era flooded with nihilism and confusion (Ma, 2016: 30).

The other fundamental element characterizing the artist’s early works is the inclusion of oddly-shaped and hardly-intelligible Chinese characters. In the early

1960s, as well as after his transfer to America, Chuang emphasized “the abstract components of calligraphy and the emotional capacity of the line into painting”, believing that “Chinese painters were even more qualified and resourceful [to use lines]” than the abstract Western painters who first used lines as independent and emotional components of abstract art (Ma, 2016: 23-24). Ma (2016: 25) reports the words of the critic Yu Kwang-chung, who in 1964 defined Chuang’s brushwork as

“bold, wild and vigorous, permeated with qi like a forceful spring”114. Ma (2016: 26) also suggests that Chuang’s decision to incorporate Chinese characters in his works was in the first place determined by a critique he received from the art historian

Thomas Lawton, who said that his art had no “Chinese spirit”, which prompted

114 More on the influence of calligraphy on Chuang’s art in “Artistic vocabulary and media” at p.163.

228 him to add to his paintings some “signifiers of cultural identity”. The presence of lines of poetry or prose at the margins of a painting was very common in Chinese tradition, and Chuang was perfectly aware of the close kinship between painting and calligraphy, two arts that share the same media (ink, brush, and paper) and to some extent also the same techniques. However, while, when Chuang Che paints, he appears to be doing calligraphy, when he writes calligraphy he distances himself from the traditional techniques of said ancient art. His characters are not simple and superfluous additions to the painting, but give weight to and build the entire composition. Furthermore, “to lessen the script’s linguistic and calligraphic associations, Chuang Che used a wooden stick, an unconventional art tool, to write characters, which was uneven in size and thickness”. The resulting brushstrokes were smudged and difficult to identify, and their “brokenness” is aligned with the torn state of the paper on which they are written (Ma, 2016: 27). Chuang’s early production has been labeled by Liu Yong-ren (2015: 45) as an “abstract visualization of poetry”. Given the “lyrical” nature of Chuang’s paintings and the close relationship they had with poetry, the profound admiration Yu Kwang-chung and other modern Taiwanese poets felt for this artist is thus not surprising (Hsiao

Chong-ray, 2015: 24) [figs.5-9].

Besides their compositional function, the characters in the painting also offer viewers keys for a possible interpretation of the whole work, hence enriching painting language with written language (Ma, 2016: 29). Hsiao’s extremely peculiar use of Chinese characters is exemplified by his 1966 painting Xiang Dufu zhijing – guopo shanhe zai 向杜甫致敬·國破山河在 (Homage to Du Fu – A Kingdom Shattered,

Rivers and Mountains Survive) [fig.5]. It is firstly possible to notice that the work is a diptych, “an occasional interest of the artist which allows not merely a larger field on which to work, but an important formal device that allows the literal break in the surface to interact with elements that either ‘stop’ at or proceed over the gap, adding a complexity of suggested movement among the painted elements”

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(Wechsler, 2016: 23). Most of the characters are barely intelligible and are turned by the artist into blotches of black paint. Lesley Ma brilliantly comments:

[Chuang’s] country [Mainland China, editor’s note] is literally torn; so are the characters and the paper pieces in the painting. The poem and the texture of the painting express the rootless and fragmentary life lived by both Chuang Che and his father’s generations. He expresses the helplessness and frustration that overwhelmed an era and asks the viewer to make an emotional connection with the ancient past through common knowledge of classic poetry (Ma, 2016: 28).

The painting makes it easier to understand Yu Kwang-chung definition of

Chuang as “a typical abstract expressionist” (Yu, 1961): the abstract form, comprised of torn papers and swift brushstrokes, is, for the artist, a way to express his own inner feelings of conflict and nostalgia for the land where he grew up, as well as the hardships of war, migration, and dictatorship. Chuang’s art, “abstract in style, and expressive in content” (Stanley-Baker, 1992: 16), incorporates “tattered paper, jagged brushstrokes, and unsophisticated characters […] underscoring his intention to reflect his time and demonstrating the legitimacy and timeliness of destruction in art making” (Ma, 2016: 30). These sentiments of sadness and disorientation also demonstrate the fact that, while all the painters belonging to the

Fifth Moon and the Ton Fan are now profoundly related to Taiwan, when they first arrived on the island from the Mainland they had to go through the hard experience of living as “exiles”. Du Fu’s line does not only want to lament the tragedy of a

“kingdom shattered”, but also praises the fact that rivers and mountains, representatives of nature, still survive. Nature is presented as an element of certainty that can survive the devastation carried out by men: this theme, related to

Chuang’s profound attachment to the natural environment, will be re-proposed in similar terms even in the 1990s. Since the very beginning of his career Chuang put a special emphasis on the Chinese tradition of depicting landscapes. Even though some of the works from this period seem to be exclusively concerned with “pure abstract forms” (Ma, 2016: 26), the vast majority of them contain a reference to natural landscapes, as Chuang himself states: “The role of paper on the canvas is

230 that of mountains, rocks, plains, and cliffs, while the line that shuttles through them reconciles the rigidity of the shape” (Chuang Che, quoted in Hsiao Chong-ray, 1991c:

281). As Liu (2015: 45) justly underlines, with his early “deconstruction of real-world landscapes”, Chuang already started the “dialogue between nature and human history and culture” that characterizes his whole production.

In 1962, Chuang won the gold medal at the 2nd Hong Kong International

Salon of Paintings (Liu, 2015: 44). In 1965 and 1966, he held his two first solo exhibitions in Taipei, thus testifying the discrete success he had already established in his country’s art circles (Ma, 2016: 19-20). At the end of 1966, Chuang received a grant from the John D. Rockefeller III Fund to study in the United States (Hsiao

Chong-ray 2015: 25). After a short period in Iowa (Chuang Che, 1992a: 5), he moved to New York, where he “stayed at an old hotel near Columbia University for more than nine months, using a large bedroom as [his] studio. During that period, the size of [his] paintings increased and the formal language of [his] work changed”

(Chuang Che, 1992a: 5). One of the most interesting works from Chuang’s

American years is represented by the painting Love, influenced by America’s posters and billboards and by the use of words and characters typical of Pop Artists. The painting was directly inspired by Robert Indiana’s LOVE [Figs.10-11]. In Chuang’s work, Indiana’s square is rotated forty-five degrees, thus assuming the format of the auspicious signs Chinese people usually attach in their homes or above their doors during Chinese New Year (Wechsler, 1997: 113). The English word is replaced by the Chinese character for “love”. While, however, one of the components of the traditional Chinese character ai 愛 is xin 心, “heart”, in Chuang’s painting this part is substituted by a red and orange circle, as a “rendering of an actual human heart”

(Wechsler, 1997: 113). This witty painting and its combination of multiple Chinese cultural elements with a symbol of Western Pop Art not only demonstrate the impact the journey to America left on the artist, but also Chuang’s experimental spirit and his boldness in the attempt to find a synthesis between East and West.

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After leaving the United States, Chuang traveled in Europe for around seven months. He recalls:

In 1967 I went to Europe and stayed first in London for a month, and then in Paris for six months. During that period I felt lost and confused and for six months I was unable to do any painting. On this European tour, I became aware of the deeply rooted history and cultural heritage of the different countries, which is missing in America. It made me realize that modernism, though it is particular about creating new ideas and is full of rebellious consciousness, can grow and mature through the transition from tradition. This was exactly what we had experienced in Taiwan (Chuang Che, 1992a: 5).115

To some extent, Chuang’s initial first-hand experience of the Western art world is comparable to that of Hsiao Chin, in the sense that said experience spurred both of them to look back at their own tradition and cultural roots. When Chuang returned to Taiwan in 1968, resuming his teaching position in the architecture department of Tunghai University, he continued to explore the possibilities of collage and the ideas he established since 1964 (Hsiao Chong-ray, 2015: 25) [figs.12-

13], but some new interesting themes also appeared in his paintings, along with brighter colors and more varied compositions, clearly informed by the artistic climate to which he had been exposed in Europe and America. His paintings from this period usually feature semi-abstract or recognizable forms, organized in different sub-compositions, all independent in their own right but organically placed in the canvas (Li, 1984: 181) [figs.14-15].

In the statement Chuang Che wrote on the occasion of his largest retrospective exhibition in Taipei in 2015, the artist lumped together all of the different phases and styles he went through between 1958 and 1972 under one single label, “The Beginning” (Chuang Che, 2015: 9). In 1973, the decision Chuang made to move to America with his whole family determined a major personal

115 Original Chinese text: 1967 年底我啟程去歐洲,先在倫敦一個月, 然後到巴黎六個月,這段期間使我一度失落, 半年幾乎末動一筆. 在歐洲參觀旅行目睹各國族在他們自己不同的地域與長遠歷史文化遺產上展現在美國完全看不到的一面。使我中看清現代主義雖然講求創新，具反叛意識，但實際卻得自傳統的蛻化而能茁壯成熟，這正好也是我們在台灣經歷的經驗。

232 breakthrough in the artist’s career. Chuang decided to settle on the outskirts of the city of Ann Arbor, in Michigan. He recalls:

Looking at the development of traditional Chinese art, we can see that landscape painting was a major force, and abstraction is the most appropriate vehicle for carrying forward its essence. In 1972, I left Taiwan for a painting studio on the bucolic outskirts of Ann Arbor, Michigan, to devote myself to this theme. From my observations and perceptions of the countryside, I created hundreds of landscape paintings in a lyrical style, and that was all I painted (Chuang Che, 2015: 9).

While in the first fifteen years of his career Chuang’s art had been informed by a decisive experimental spirit, the transfer to the United States firmly set the artist on the path of the exploration of the single theme of landscape painting116, thus making his Ann Arbor years his “most stable period” (Chuang Che, 1998: 11). The depiction of landscapes in abstract form already was one of the most important motifs of Chuang’s production: he justified such interest with the “mountainous environments”117 in which he grew up and the paramount importance the genre had had in Chinese painting tradition. In the fourteen years during which Chuang and his family resided in Ann Arbor, the artist traveled extensively across the United

States, visiting the country’s most spectacular sceneries, “experiencing the rich magnificence of nature and cultivating the ability to articulate nature in his own heart” (Liu, 2015: 45). The 1970s were the decade in which “Chuang’s main visual

116 Chuang recounts: “Curiously, following scarcely half a year of vacillating between painting and studying [art history], suddenly all the things that I have ever wanted to express before became possible. At that time, I was living in an apartment near the campus of the University of Michigan. In one of the bedrooms, I began to paint furiously. In the autumn of that same year, I held an exhibition in town. By the end of the year, all plans for studying art history disintegrated, and along with the exhibition there came many contracts for paintings. […] Where did all the paintings come from? I think they were the beneficial result of past failures, evidence that all the energy and time spent were well worthwhile. I say this not so much with a sense of accomplishment but because the dream of many years has become a reality. There are no words to describe this satisfaction” (Chuang Che, quoted in Li, 1984: 184-185). 117 “It is not difficult to explore how [my interest in landscape painting] originated. It is related to the countryside, where I grew up. From elementary to middle school, I have been in a mountainous environment. The May Painting Society had not been established long before, and we often discussed the issue of tradition all together. Undeniably, the main force of Chinese painting in the past resided in landscape, so subconsciously there already was an idea of giving landscapes a new form of expression” (Chuang Che, quoted in Hsiao Chong-ray, 1991c: 280).

233 style was gradually established” (Documentary 莊喆回顧展, 2015) [figs.16-27]. As soon as the artist transferred to the United States, he abandoned the semi- figurative/pop inquiries of the late 1960s and “moved back from images to abstraction, and from lines to colors” (Li, 1984: 181). In this period, color became, along with strong and sensitive brushstrokes and imposing compositions, one of the main protagonists of the artist’s canvases. Wechsler (2016: 23) identifies two

“signature motifs” within Chuang’s paintings from the period, namely “the coloristic allusions to nature in the watery pale blue-greens and the rich earthy browns, and the dashing calligraphic stroke” 118. In Chuang’s landscapes, subtle shades suggesting natural elements and often forming conglomerations of paint that give weight to the whole canvas are spread against backgrounds of “pale tones

[…] [that] offer the feeling of atmospheres dank, or misty, or dry” (Wechsler, 2016:

21-22). Peng (2016) interestingly sees in Chuang’s utilization of colors a faint echo of Li Sixun’s 李思訓 (651-716) blue and green landscapes. Chuang’s undivided attention to landscape painting and rediscovered use of colors and lines naturally also came with a fundamental change in his artistic media, i.e. the abandonment of the collage technique119. In America, Chuang Che felt the urge to go further in his exploration of artistic media. He continued to use oil, the “unctuous material” that had fascinated him since his very first steps in art, but also went further in his experiments with water-based acrylic. As Hsiao Chong-ray (2020) observes, the

118 See “Artistic vocabulary and media”, p.258. 119 “After moving to the United States, Chuang completely stopped using ink and gluing paper to canvas, and instead experimented extensively with oil and acrylic paint. By using water-based acrylics and oil-based paints together, Chuang was able to create effects by either blending the paints together or keeping them separate. The oil paint was subtly affected by the moisture in the acrylic, and it congealed to a greater or lesser degree, creating different shaped beads. The smaller beads are fine, as if they had been sprayed, and the larger ones are like gullies carved in a mountainside. All variations are endlessly fascinating. Chuang, however, did not fall into the trap of just relying on these beautiful effects, which would have left his work devoid of content. He always introduced tension into these large compositions with proportion, rhythm, color, order, texture or blank space, in much the same way that traditional painters did. The foundation of all of his paintings is his brushwork, which is referred to using the term "bones" [骨 gu] in traditional ink painting” (Hsiao Chong-ray, 2015: 26).

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“simultaneous use of water-based acrylic and oil-based oil colors created a phenomenon whereby the two materials were intriguingly both mutually exclusive and complementary”. The Daoist poetics of contrasts thus finds physical embodiment in the co-existence, on the same canvas, of two materials that are chemically incompatible but that the painter is able to effectively mix. Oils and acrylics are the main media of Chuang’s artistic maturity, and to this day they are still the materials the artist employs most frequently (Chuang Che, 2012: 4).

In 1987, after fourteen years of landscape paintings fostered by the tranquil environment of Ann Arbor, a new transfer determined a fundamental change and a renewed diversity in Chuang’s production. In that year, Chuang Che moved to

Dobbs Ferry, in the state of New York, located about thirty miles north of Lower

Manhattan. Chuang established his studio in an abandoned beer factory on the

Hudson River, which inspired a number of different works that he collectively called the Hudson River Series. Chuang maintains that “tremendous changes” occurred when he moved away from Michigan, when he “gradually extricated

[him]self from the quasi-classical romantic landscape mindset and plunged into the immense maelstrom of ‘modernist’ revelation [龐大的⸢現代⸥啟示 pangdade xiandai qishi]” (Chuang Che, 2005: 12-13). The decision to abandon the long-frequented theme of landscapes to venture into new artistic experimentations was determined by the astonishment the artist felt for “the ravaging of the […] natural environment by […] the advancing urban sprawl” (Chuang Che, 2005: 12-13). He says:

Over a century ago, before the encroachment of modern civilization, the American continent was truly as lovely as poetry, but today I encounter its bad side: the water is unfit for swimming, the shores are littered with refuse floated ashore, tugboats shuttle back and forth, and trains thunder by at all times. While there may be some inspiring window-viewing scenes remaining, these are more or less overshadowed by the weight of the overall environment […]. I began using wood and found objects to create relief and sculptures, working from the premise of exploring the basic form of the "human being” (Chuang Che, 1998: 11).120

120 Original Chinese text: 早在一百多年文明未侵入整個美洲大陸時都是那般詩意美好的, 我看到的卻是險惡的一面, 水質不能游泳, 河岸陳滿飄來的棄物, 拖舶船往返上上下下, 火車震動急馳. 這樣的大環

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The quotes reported above are dense with all the implications of Chuang’s transfer to Dobbs Ferry. Firstly, the artist claims that in New York he was able to abandon the “quasi-classical romantic landscape painting mindset” that had dominated his art until that point (and had allowed him to produce works of outstanding quality and beauty). The (temporary) abandonment of the landscape genre, and of the typical grand compositions that had accompanied Chuang’s art until that point, however, did not by any means correspond to a shift in the main protagonist of the artist’s production. As a matter of fact, nature and its imposing presence remained at the center of Chuang’s reflection, even though when it came to creativity such

“reflection” took a completely different form than the landscapes of the previous years. Since his transfer to America (and even before that), nature had been the starting point of Chuang’s creations. When he moved to Dobbs Ferry, he realized that, within the “pristine natural environment” he had been depicting, discomforting upheavals had been introduced by the disruptive element of man.

Therefore, it probably would not be wrong to state that the factor that determined the radical changes occurred in Chuang’s style in this period was his reflection on a part of nature that, until that point, had not been taken into great consideration in his art, namely that of human beings. This is also the reason why Chuang claims that, from the moment he left Michigan and discovered the corruption of the surrounding natural environment, he adopted the creative premise of “exploring the basic form of the human being” (Chuang Che, 1998: 11). The artist also maintains that in this period he embraced “the maelstrom of modernist revelation”. In the years spent in Dobbs Ferry, the aesthetic sensibility that Chuang had inherited from his study of classical paintings and that he shared with the other members of the

Fifth Moon Group did indeed seem to disappear in favor of newer art modes, only to resurface a few years later. The most representative works from this period are the paintings, the sculptures, and the reliefs belonging to the Hudson River Series,

境即使仍存在一些憑窗遙望心曠神怡的一面, 究竟是苦澀的了。[…]我開始用木材與拾來的物品製作浮雕與雕塑, 以⸢人⸥的基本形狀出發探討.

236 where discarded materials Chuang fished from the river next to his studio become the primary media of his works [figs.28-39]. In a “highly tactile” process (Liu Yong- ren, 2015: 47), the artist either attaches these materials to the canvas or uses them to create simple, primitive and unpretentious sculptures: the principal materials of the works of this period are thus driftwoods, nails, wood mountings, metal strips, and all sorts of ready-made objects gathered from the banks of the Hudson River (Liu

Yong-ren, 2015: 47).

With Chuang’s Hudson River Series, nature is not simply the “subject matter” of the artist’s abstract artworks, but somehow becomes the very structure of his compositions. Liu Wen-tan (1993) relates Chuang’s interest in the inclusion of

“everyday objects” in his paintings to the works of Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008) and Jasper Johns (1930-). However, as the critic himself makes clear121, even though

Chuang Che certainly reacted to this "object-oriented" New York school of art and the outward appearance of his artworks evidently changed, and even though the artist claimed that he was “plunging in the maelstrom of modernist revelation”, the direction he followed was not altered, because abstraction remained the main mode of his art, and nature the undisputed protagonist. By gluing dumped materials to the lower part of his abstract canvases, Chuang thus also discarded Rauschenberg or John’s claim of an incompatibility between assemblage and abstraction (Liu Wen-

121 “Artists such as Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns had come to believe that the abstract art of their day had run amok and swept art into the realm of subjectivity and self-centeredness. They felt that this, in turn, had widened the gap between art and man's everyday living environment. For these reasons they staunchly opposed all forms of abstract art […] and expounded that art must return to topics that can be seen and touched in our everyday lives. Chuang Che undoubtedly reacted to this ‘object-oriented’ New York school of art, but as a "Chinese" artist his emotional will and style were never completely compatible with these Western artists. In Chuang's works there is not only an absence of conflict between assemblage and the abstract, but actually a harmonious inclusion of abstract expression in both the forms and moods of his works. In this way the ultimate effects of his paintings are a result of the combination of the art of assemblage and abstraction. […] [Chuang’s paintings] use wooden boards, pieces of iron, iron rings, buckets, and wire, and fragments of concrete as well as other objects in their assemblages. Yet these objects only take up roughly one- seventh of the surface area of his paintings, and the living environments represented by these objects display an entirely natural, unadorned modernism that protests civilization, especially urban civilization” (Liu Wen-tan, 1993).

237 tan, 1993). Liu Yong-ren (2015: 47) underlines that the works from the Hudson River

Series are “half-representational, half-abstract”, and Chuang does not seem to be primarily concerned with distinguishing clearly between figurative and non- figurative art, as the landscapes he produced in Ann Arbor had already made clear.

As a matter of fact, in the reliefs, the sculptures, and the paintings of the Hudson

River Series it is sometimes possible to spot faint human traits. This initial bend towards figuration introduces to the ensuing phase of the artist’s production, which he defines as a period of “synthesis” 122 (Chuang Che, 2015: 9).

In 1992, Chuang moved his studio to Fourth Street in Lower East Manhattan, in New York City. This new transfer led Chuang’s art towards yet another stage, in which the painter abandoned his production of ready-made objects. He continued instead “in the vein of [his] earlier serial of motifs” (Chuang Che, 2005: 12-13), while at the same time exploring new subjects and themes. This new phase led to the production of Chuang’s Faces series and to his “modern renditions of classical paintings” (Chuang Che, 2005: 12-13).

The Faces series is an exploration of the theme of the relationship between man and nature. The paintings from this group mainly consist of oblong, semi- abstract human faces that remind the viewer both of some of the reliefs of the

Hudson River Series in terms of composition, and of the landscapes Chuang produced in Ann Arbor in terms of media and colors [figs.40-42]:

The human figure in Chuang Che’s art is often well integrated into the abstract compositional fabric of each painting. Humans, after all, are part of nature, and the artist has commented "Man and nature are one." In a visual synthesis redolent of Daoist and related Eastern thought, his paintings sometimes describe a figure inside a landscape, or a landscape inside a figure. "You are nature, and nature becomes

122 In the timeline proposed by the artist in the statements he submitted for the catalog of his largest retrospective exhibition at Taipei Fine Arts Museum in 2015, Chuang identified four different stages of his artistic development, which all coincided with decisive changes in his painting style. These phases are: “The beginning” (1958-1972), referring to his early steps in Taiwan, “Combining” (1972- 1987), which coincided with his years in Ann Arbor and his exploration of the landscape genre in acrylic and oil, “Dialectic” (1987-1992), when he established his studio in Dobbs Ferry along the Hudson River, and “Synthesis” (1993-2014), in which Chuang tried “to bring together the previous three stages or perhaps extended the special qualities of each by exploring them again” (Chuang Che, 2015: 9).

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you." It is not surprising that he has previously created series of paintings that are entirely and obviously figurative, such as his personal reworking of the Sixteen Lohans of the master Guanxiu. And it is logical that such images are constructed of the signature swirls, puddles, and dragged pigment patches that one finds in his abstractions. As human and natural forms partake of common organic matter, so too are Chuang Che's imaginative people and places made from the same stuff of art (Wechsler, 2007: 153).123

As the critic makes clear and the critical analysis (p.241) will further explain,

Chuang’s engagement with human faces is therefore a visual interpretation of the

Chinese principle that sees man and nature as part of a fundamental unity.

As already anticipated, a discernable trend in Chuang’s production between the late 1990s and the early 2000s is the creation of series of “variations” inspired by famous classical paintings from China’s (or Japan’s) artistic tradition. In this respect, the three most important series are Chuang’s Rock and Cypress, a re-interpretation of Wen Zhengming’s (文徵明, 1470-1559) Old Cypress and Rock [figs.44-49], his

Sixteen Lohans Series, inspired by the Arhats depicted by Guanxiu (貫休, 832-912)

[figs.50-55], and his Variations on Sesshū’s Broken Ink Landscape, modeled on Sesshū

Tōyō’s (雪舟等楊, 1420-1506) Broken Ink Landscape scroll [figs.56-59].

In the artist’s recollection of his first intuition to start the Rock and Cypress series 124, it is possible to observe not only the constant and profound relationship

123 In a similar, fundamental statement, Ian Findlay-Brown (2007: 111) claims: “Chuang rarely makes anything that would appear to be a figure, human, or animal, but this is not to say that he ignores them. Chuang sees everything in nature, people, animals, the land, the sky, the plants, trees, and flowers to be a unique whole, a synthesized universe where everything is connected. Like the sculptor teasing the human figure from the stone or marble or wood, Chuang Che sees figures within the landscape. An excellent and clear example of this is Man of Landscape (1994) [fig.43]. The face emerges from the brownish background like that of an ancient skull from deep within the earth, sightless, pitted, and somewhat menacing” (Findlay-Brown, 2007: 111). 124 “In January 1997 I suddenly had the idea to re-paint Wen Jen-Ming's [sic!] Rock and Cypress […] Since January I have now [1998, editor’s note] painted over 60 pieces, ranging from seven feet [2.14 meters, editor’s note] to postcard size. Generally, they can be categorized as follows: 1. Thematic symbolism, the visual and psychological relationships between the inscribed poetry and the cypress theme. 2. The image of the basic elements of trees and rocks in landscape painting. 3. The significance of general composition. 4. The significance of the mass of rocks and the line of trees. 5. The signification of imagery and abstract possibility. 6. The potentiality of adding color and its meaning in the painting.

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Chuang held with the “Eastern” painting tradition throughout his life, but also the complex personal elaboration he made of the models he admired. Chuang categorizes his attempts of re-painting Wen Zhengming’s masterpiece into seven types of explorations: sometimes he reflects on the composition of the painting, sometimes on its theme, sometimes on the physical presence of the subject matter.

In all these endeavors, Chuang is not engaging in a purely aesthetic or intellectual exercise. On the contrary, Chuang’s studies are a dramatic meditation on the value of painting and tradition, as also made clear by his Variations of Sesshu’s Broken Ink

Landscape. As the artist himself explains, Sesshū was heavily influenced by the

“concise and restrained style” of two Southern Song Dynasty painters, namely Ma

Yuan 馬遠 (c. 1160-1225) and Xia Gui 夏圭 (fl.1195-1224), whose works demonstrate that “the two basic elements in painting, the line and the plane, can virtually be merged into one” (Chuang Che, 2005: 14-15). Chuang believed that Sesshū’s work

“made a summary of landscape composition”, where the vertical element of the mountain and the horizontal element of water are placed at the center of the composition and transformed into linear, elementary shapes, thus making the entire painting extremely simple and concise. In his Broken Ink Landscapes, Chuang presents his comprehension of Sesshū’s masterpiece by eliminating all details and adding colors, eventually reaching an outcome which is both “abstract” and

“natural” (Chuang Che, 2005: 14-15). As he maintains, “this combination

[abstract/natural] is exactly what I have been trying to do in the past forty years”

(Chuang Che, 2005: 14-15). The series of variations Chuang produced since the end of the 1990s made evident the cultural (and existential) mission he had taken on since the beginning of his artistic career, which is “to find modernity in ancient paintings” (Chuang Che, 2005: 14-15), delving into the innumerable, new

7. The relationships between the movement of brushstrokes and the physical state outlined in the original picture […] This has become the longest series I have ever painted. There have always been model examples exerting their influence on my work of the past four decades, and always a primary physical image at the root. In other words, my works do not come out of thin air” (Chuang, 1998: 12).

240 possibilities of exploration they offer. The artist calls into question the long-standing tradition of copying the masterpieces of the past by re-interpreting the elements of modernity within traditional paintings and giving them new life with his personal language of abstract, colorful expression.

As Chuang himself states (2015: 9), the mature period that began in 1993, when he moved his studio to East Manhattan, New York, allowed him to make a synthesis of his previous productions. Chuang returned to a style similar to that of the abstract renditions of landscapes during his Ann Arbor years: oil and acrylic paint give his canvases a strong visual impact, augmented by Chuang’s superb use of calligraphic gestures and subtle colors (Kuo, 2000: 92) [figs.60-67]. In the last twenty-five years, Chuang delved deeper and deeper into the genre of landscape painting and the motif of the relationship between man and nature, effectively explained by Wechsler (2007) and Findlay-Brown (2007) in the quotes reported at p.228-229 and in note 123 respectively, and best represented by the theme of the

Man of Landscape (山水人) [fig.43].

For nearly two decades, Chuang Che has remained ensconced in his New York studio, devoting himself to painting. His works remain spirited, fluid, profound explorations of the nature of art itself. As he has progressed, he has incorporated all the phases of the past, or carried forward the special qualities of certain stages in new directions. […] His large-scale canvases are intricately beautiful, with the towering structure of monuments and a brush style that is puissant, transcendent and moving (Liu Yong-ren, 2015: 47).

3. Critical Analysis

The two words Philipp Dodd (2020c) used to describe Hsiao Chin’s career can also effectively synthesize the artistic development of Chuang Che. Chuang is an artist who is “rooted” in the aesthetic tradition of his country of origin, but he is also “routed”, because he has lived most of his life abroad, and the experience of distance from his motherland has to some extent shaped his evolution as an artist.

Between 1978 and 1982 (Tseng, 2007: 77), Chuang Che formulated his well-known theory of the “Third Road”. He says:

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The West tries to merge with the world, while China sticks to its own traditions, I think this is just a passive attitude that does not bring anywhere. My idea was that of blurring the frontier, not to follow East or West, but to create a third road. My conclusion is that they will meet each other, like two rivers, before diving into the sea (Documentary Interview de Chuang Che, 2014). 125

In the artist’s words, it is possible to hear the echo of the rigid educational model he had found in his student days in Taiwan, where Eastern and Western art were presented as absolute and alternative choices. Chuang’s resolution to find a

“third road”, a new direction that was not following any of the other two, but that could on the contrary be an expression of his own, personal perspective, is the legacy of the new and unique vision Chuang and the other members of the Fifth

Moon had been able to embrace in Taiwan’s unfavorable political climate in the late

1950s. The artists both of the Fifth Moon and the Ton Fan wanted to adopt a

“Chinese” or “Eastern” approach to modern painting, and by so doing they wanted to reach a synthesis of two traditions that, until that moment, had only been presented to them as almost incompatible.

3.1 The East: Tradition and Nature

Liu Yong-ren, in his presentation to Chuang Che’s retrospective exhibition in

2015 in Taipei (Documentary 莊喆回顧展, 2015), said that even though Chuang had resided in New York for many years, his heart was still tied to the East. Just like

Hsiao Chin, the artist’s prolonged absence from his “cultural” homeland did not translate into a complete “Westernization” of his art practice, but rather meant a radicalization and a renewed awareness of his Chinese identity. Differently from

Hsiao, however, who founded his conceptual art on ancient Eastern philosophies,

Chuang Che’s “Eastern-ness” is mainly revealed by his unique reflection on the

125 In another statement about the same topic of the “third road”, Chuang said: “I make modern Chinese paintings. They are neither entirely traditional Chinese, nor entirely modern western style. They neither extend the Chinese painting tradition, nor follow western modernism. Rather they are a mixture of China and the West. I don't know what kind of painting it will be, because I have to wait for the work to get confirmation. But very clearly, I must take a road that does not yet exist” (Chuang Che, 1980, quoted in Chuang Ling, 2015: 39).

242 relationship between painting and nature and by his constant reference to China’s artistic tradition, which can be spotted in the composition of his grand landscapes even at first sight. Nature and tradition are, in a sense, the two sources from which

Chuang’s art springs: “There is still boundless life and opportunity hiding in the real physical nature and in our historical legacy of paintings. I believe that this kind of dual evolution can transcend space and time, unto eternity!” (Chuang Che, 2005:

14-15). These two integral components of Chuang Che’s art can be directly linked to his childhood experiences. Chuang grew up among the breathtaking sceneries of

China interior, and repeatedly had the opportunity to admire some of the most precious artifacts of China’s painting tradition. Nature and tradition thus grew embedded in the artist’s mind, and continue to constitute his two most important sources of inspiration to this day. Paradoxically, Chuang’s two accesses to the international trend of abstraction, which first appeared in the West as an aspiration to break both with the modes of the past and the depiction of real objects, are the aesthetic and ideological reference to Chinese painting tradition and the relationship with reality and the natural world. These two components gave shape to Chuang Che’s determination to promote a “modern Chinese painting” and also reveal the artist’s never-fading bond with “the East”.

3.1.1 The reference to China’s painting tradition

Consistently with the general tendency of the Taiwanese modernist art movement, Chuang Che was certain that, despite the unheartening artistic climate of the island, “mere rebellion and unfettered freedom were not enough” (Liu, 2012:

12). The artists of the Fifth Moon wanted to break away from the mundanity of contemporary art circles and make their art international, as testified by their participation in numerous art events and festivals outside Taiwan. However, their art also had to be truly “Chinese”, and, through the support offered by Western abstraction, had to give new life to a tradition which had crystallized into the repetition of models from a dead past.

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The references Chuang makes to China’s painting tradition are extremely varied. His 1964 painting Shiyou zhenyi er lixing, shiyou zhenbi er caocao 是有真意而立

形, 是有真筆而草草 (Where there's true feeling, there's form; where there's a brush, there's expression), which takes the title from the inscription in the lower right corner, appears to be an early declaration of poetics, revealing the artist’s intention to embrace abstraction as his means of expression [fig.7]. In his 2015 “Soliloquy”

(Chuang Che, 2015: 9), the artist explained that those lines referred to four great masters of the past that he admired: Bada Shanren, Shitao, Chen Hongshou (陳洪綬,

1598-1652), and Xu Wei (徐渭, 1521-1593). He writes: “Their paintings were historic: with personal style and unique brushwork, they swept away all that was mundane and mediocre, and the Taiwanese art world of the 1950s was just that”. In another statement about these artists, Chuang maintains: “History met with a few rebels such as Shitao and Xu Wei, […] [who] are practitioners of tradition but […] don't just imitate, they break new grounds” (Chuang Che, 1992b). The painters to which

Chuang refers are indeed renowned for the boldness and the unconventionality of their style, which clearly distinguished them from their contemporaries. Xu Wei, in particular, is often used as a reference by scholars to demonstrate the modernity and the high degree of abstraction Chinese painting had been able to reach in the course of its development (Wechsler, 2017: 232-233) [fig.68]. On another occasion

Chuang, calling attention to the orchids of Li Shan 李鱓 (1686-1756) [fig.69] and the bamboos of Zheng Xie 鄭燮 (1693-1765), openly reveals his fondness for their “quick, freehand brushwork”, finally admitting that he is “inclined to think that that’s what attracted [him] to abstraction” (Chuang Che, quoted in Hsiao Chong-ray, 2015: 21).

All these explicit references make it clear that the abstract elements inherent to

Chinese tradition, as well as the bold spirit of those who first introduced them, served as an inspiration for the activities of Chuang Che. The artist is, in a sense, an heir of the literati painting tradition that “viewed the myriad things of the world through the mindset of literature and poetry, feeling the living vitality of all things”

(Liu, 2015: 45), and that translated the painters’ “clairvoyant gaze on the roots of

244 life” into inhibited and synthetic brushstrokes, according absolute primacy to the

“pursuit of rhythmic vitality” rather than to the precision of the drawing and the life-likeness of the final outcome (Liu Yong-ren, 2015: 45-46). However, Chuang

Che’s admiration did not limit to the tradition of literati painting, which in the works of some extremely courageous and innovative figures had been able to reach real “peaks” of abstraction. On the contrary, Chuang seems to take as models all the artists of the past that had been able to express, within their paintings, the vitality of the qi, the “movement” that Liu Kuo-song identifies as the very heart of Chinese painting tradition (Liu, 1963). He thus does not conceal his love for Ma Yuan and

Xia Gui, whose style is arguably diametrically opposite to the unrestrained brushwork of Xu Wei (Chuang Che, 2005: 14-15) [fig.70].

While Hsiao Chin mainly looks at the great masters of the past as embodiments of a “spirit of innovation”, in Chuang Che’s art the legacy of tradition is not only “spiritual”, but also comes with a set of aesthetic features. As shown in

Chapter 1, the Fifth Moon painters, feeling an assonance between the Chinese traditional aesthetic of qi and Western abstraction, embraced the Western trend of non-figuration to “express their deep roots” (Vazieux, 2017:19) and “to merge

Chinese tradition with the international artistic context of the 1950s” (Documentary

Interview de Chuang Che, 2014). Chuang’s early “heavy dark lines and layers of washes” (Li, 1984: 179-180), his extremely limited palette and calligraphic brushstrokes, his intentional inclusion of vast blank spaces, and his introduction of

Chinese characters in his canvases in the 1960s all witness the close relationship

Chuang held with some of the key aesthetic characteristics of Chinese painting.

Despite Chuang’s profound knowledge and deep appreciation for the entirety of the painting tradition of his country’s past, the most important and evident legacy Chuang received from said tradition, as seen in the artist’s biography, consists in his choice to prosecute the tradition of landscape painting. More precisely, this legacy lies in the adoption of what Pan Fan (2017: 146) refers to as the

“Tang-Song aesthetic of the boundless” (唐宋蒼茫美學), which became evident in

245 the magnificent compositions of the paintings Chuang produced after he transferred to Ann Arbor in 1973. The artist, who saw in abstraction the ideal mode to “carry forward the essence of Chinese landscape painting” (Chuang Che, 2015:

9), claims:

In my opinion, landscape painting is one of the most important parts of Chinese painting, because it merges the essence of nature with the essence of painting […] Let's take Fan Kuan or Guo Xi as example. […] After them, nobody has been able to reproduce the grandness they had been able to create. [With my work], I wanted to restore the scale (規模), the quality (質量), and the weight (重量) of the Northern Song landscape painting (Documentary Interview de Chuang Che, 2014).

By indicating two other models from the tradition of Chinese painting, Guo

Xi (郭熙, c.1020-c.1090) and Fan Kuan (范寬, c.960-1030) [figs.71-72], Chuang also reveals the direction in which he wanted to set his art since the beginning of his career, namely the restoration of the great tradition of Northern Song landscape painting, and the recreation of the sense of infinite space the works by Guo Xi and

Fan Kuan had been able to convey. In Chuang Che’s large canvases, it is thus possible to trace the attempt of the artist to reinterpret the “aesthetic of the boundless” that permeates the paintings of these artists.

Between the 1990s and the early 2000s, some traditional artworks directly inspired Chuang’s creativity, and he bravely decided to paint entire series of

“variations” based on those paintings. However, even when the reference to tradition is not as explicit as in these works, Chuang’s “Chinese-ness” is expressed in the peculiar relationship that his paintings establish with nature. Said relationship is similar to the respect and the reverence with which the artist’s renowned ancestors filled their landscapes (Hsiao Chong-ray, 2015: 26), but also discloses the extreme modernity of Chuang Che’s thinking.

3.1.2 Nature

“The reality of nature itself” (Findlay-Brown, 2007: 109) is the second, fundamental wellspring of Chuang Che’s art. Critics are unanimous in recognizing the role of nature in the artist’s creativity. Pedro Tseng, for example, maintains that

246

Chuang's whole style is originated from his “identification with nature” (Tseng,

2007: 75), while Wechsler (2007: 153) states that “nature [is] the true meaning and source of all [of Chuang Che’s] art”. In two recent, fascinating essays, Hsiao Chong- ray (2020) and Peng Chang-ming (2016) reconstructed Chuang’s artistic development following his relationship with mountains and landscape painting.

The artist himself admits that, throughout his career, he has “never given up on observing and experiencing nature” (Chuang Che, quoted in Hsiao Chong-ray, 2015:

25). In Chuang’s art, “ancient paintings, the natural environment, and his imagination” (Ma, 2016: 25), along with the influence of Western modern art, merge into one, thus creating an extremely complex outcome that is capable of

“embodying modern thinking and eastern aesthetics” (Hsiao Chong-ray, 2015: 16).

In order to comprehend Chuang’s extremely peculiar reflection on the role of nature in painting, it might be useful to start from an article Chuang wrote in 1963, some excerpts of which are reported in Hsiao Chong-ray’s essay A crane returns home (2015:

22-23) 126 . The thoughts Chuang Che expresses, even though they were first formulated at the dawn of his artistic career, already testify to the basic elements of his ideas about nature and modern painting. Chuang gives a very broad overview of the element of “reality” within the history of Chinese landscape painting: since the Song Dynasty, artists confronted the real world and reproduced it in their paintings. While, however, Li Tang or Fan Kuan seemed to be concerned with a close reproduction of the very materiality of their “blades of grass and chunks of wood”, since the Yuan Dynasty the individual emotions of the artist also started to

126 “Chinese painting possesses an intrinsic quality of reality—it is not empty—such as the comprehensive emphasis on the reality of quality and quantity in Song Dynasty painting. And although painting turned to the bold brushwork and feeling of vastness promoted by the Ma-Xia School in the Southern Song Dynasty, the work of this period still relied on the volume of forms for poignancy, which can be traced back to the works of Li Tang (1050-1130) and Fan Kuan (960-1030). […] Starting in the Yuan Dynasty, the personality of the artist gradually started permeating Chinese painting, and by the time of the Four Monks of the late-Ming early-Qing period (Zhu Da, Shitao, Kun Can, and Hong Ren) painting was emanating intense, subconscious emotions. Throughout the tradition, there had always been an element of reality, despite changing themes or the degree to which abstraction was apparent. […] The end [of my art] is to interpret nature as an artist” (Chuang Che, 1963, quoted in Hsiao Chong-ray, 2015: 22-23).

247 emerge from painting, leading eventually to the high subjectivity of late Ming-early

Qing painters, who at the same time never rejected the omnipresent element of reality. Chuang shows his knowledge of the development of Chinese painting, and witnesses his desire not to deviate from reality, without which art “becomes void”

(Liu Wen-tan, 1992: 12). Despite his choice to embrace full-blown abstraction,

Chuang is thus from the very outset certain that he does not want to abandon the

“element of reality” that has always accompanied Chinese art. Chuang’s thus further explains the relationship he sees between painting and the reality of nature:

There are two levels here, natural form and constructed independent form. The concept for my work is that nature is not just what is on the ground, and nature is not as superficial as what the naked eye can see. There are other parts, in the air, underwater, and even the microscopic level. Our understanding of nature today versus what was understood in the past is very different. Our visual environment is much richer than it was in the past [….] For me observing the world, by which I mean nature, is an entirely different experience from facing a blank canvas, which refers to the entire process of creating something out of nothing. […] Because I greatly admire the subtle variations in color on mossy stones, I have a memory of the outline of certain moss on a stone. This outline is often reproduced in my paintings […]. I call this relationship that forms between observation and painting “parallel”. I have never directly copied the outline, but it still appears in my work due to my emotional connection to the mossy stone and the use of certain memory- related techniques (Chuang Che, quoted in Hsiao Chong-ray, 2015: 25-26).127

In the same interview with Wai Lim-yip in the mid-1980s, from which the excerpt reported above is taken, Chuang Che explained that the formulation of his theory of the “parallelism” between nature and art creation developed over the years. He states that in the 1950s he wanted to “reveal the spirit of tradition” by freeing painting from the details of the natural world, stressing the fact that, when he first began his artistic exploration, he felt that painting and nature were “unified”,

127 Original Chinese text: 這裡面有兩個層次：獨立的形的結講、自然。在我概念中的『自然」不是在一個平面上, 不是一眼望去的自然外表：它可以演繹到局部、空中、水底乃至顯徹鏡中。這也是我們這個時代對自然的了解與過去不同的地方。在這個時代，視覺的環境是遠較過去為豐富。[…] 對我，眼睛看外界—自然是一回事，而對一張畫布，無中生有由開始到完結，其間過程又是另一經歷。[…] 比方我看見一塊有綠苔的石頭，其細微的色彩變化使我讚歎。我記得住那由細節到石頭邊緣所形成的輪廓。這記憶往往會在一瞬間從大筆在畫面上的輪廓、再由潑灑的油彩、從松節油的變化、乾濕、沈澱等物理作用而呈現出類似那石頭上笞蘇的彼果來。這就成了並行。後者並沒有直接抄襲自然的痕跡，可是由於石頭的感動而用了類似再記憶的手法。

248 and not simply “parallel” (Hsiao Chong-ray, 2020). The artist’s assertions are not easy to comprehend, but are thus interpreted by the critic Liu Wen-tan: “Chuang

Che’s abstract landscape paintings originally began as depictions of the external appearances of nature, and then turned to expressing form and spirit as their ultimate goals” (Liu, 2015: 43). It seems that, in the course of his artistic development,

Chuang expanded his understanding of the landscape genre, affirming the total independence of his creative act from real landscapes128 and trying to encompass in his definition of nature all different elements, even microscopic life forms or “the outline of moss on a stone”. As he states, “for me, [nature] is without fixed form”

(Chuang Che, 1973, quoted in Stanley Baker, 1992: 17). Therefore, Chuang’s paintings do not aspire to be a depiction of nature or an “abstraction” of it, but on the contrary look for the “essence of nature” and aim at the “creation of a new order”

(Liu, 2015: 44) through the act of painting itself. What Chuang is interested in is thus how to “reach a new comprehension (jiewu 解悟) of the physical image”

(Documentary 莊喆回顧展, 2015). As his quote about “mossy stones” demonstrates, his paintings are not the product of a mental recollection of images of nature, but a totally separate act, able to give nature new meaning, because “one can only behold nature, not imitate it” (Chuang Che, quoted in Liu, 2015: 47). His transition “from representing nature to exhausting the essence of it” (Liu, 1992: 13) comes with the awareness of the autonomy of the two-dimensional world of the canvas with respect to the natural world (Hsiao Chong-ray, 2015: 25). Ma (2016: 24) identifies in

Chuang’s unwillingness to surpass the boundaries of the canvas with his ample brushstrokes another difference with American abstract expressionists, such as

Kline or Pollock: “respecting the border is an indication that the tension and meaning within the painting are independent of the viewer’s space”, they are separate from nature and reality, and for this reason they are also able to create a

128 “For art to grow, it must be independent. […] Independence of art begins at the moment when it breaks free from nature. Abstraction is the reduction of external nature, so that the essence of nature may be magnified.” (Chuang Che, 1966, quoted in Liu, 2015: 44).

249 new, natural order within the artwork. Wechsler (2007: 153) further underlines that the artist's paintings are rarely inspired by specific landscapes, and that “various aspects of nature coalesce from within the accumulating strokes and washes”

(Wechsler, 2007: 153). In fact, the majority of the poetic titles of Chuang Che’s works are only given once the paintings are completed. Given Chuang’s “broadened” conception of nature and landscape, his determination to renovate the tradition of landscape painting thus seems to transform into an attempt to embrace in his work all the genres of Chinese painting (Tseng, 2007: 77). He says: “I think this path is what abstract art should follow. Landscape, human figures, and bird-and-flower genres have developed on their own for thousands of years. Is it possible to use an effective method to encompass them all?” (Chuang Che, 2012: 4).

Chuang’s art simultaneously relies upon and breaks free from nature and in the artist’s mind abstraction is not the opposite of figuration. Paradoxically, the whole significance of Chuang’s reflection on his work as a form of research for the essence of nature and the essence of painting, as well as his attempt to look for “the meaning in form” and to “displace” physical images, become more comprehensible with his temporary turn towards semi-figuration in the 1990s. Chuang’s Faces series

[figs.40-43] made it clear that the central concern of Chuang’s language is not

“abstract or concrete”, but rather “to reveal the essence of the image through the power of the brushstroke” (Liu Yong-ren 2015: 46). As Chuang himself states: “I feel it is not important whether one is an abstractionist or not, what is important is to look through the form and find the true meaning behind it” (Chuang Che, 2005:

12)129.

129 Original Chinese text: 我覺得抽象與否並不是重心, 解悟圖像, 找它的真義才是。Complete quote: “My ultimate goal has become the search for the meaning behind the form. For the past forty years, I have been generally considered as an "abstractionist". Is this right? - I have been wondering, but I have never argued about it with people. This is because I feel it is not important whether one is an abstractionist or not, what is important is to look through the form and find the true meaning behind it. Art historians use a theoretical approach to look through the form is search of its meaning, while artists on the other hand can only search for it by toiling in front of their canvasses, trying their luck one painting after another. The piles of works accumulated through long years of labor eventually give them a clue, a passageway, to the beyond” (Chuang Che, 2005: 12).

250

Chuang’s Faces or Lohans [figs.51-55] series are rooted in the artist’s firm conviction that, as in Chinese and Daoist thought and aesthetics, “man and nature are a whole. Man is just a part of nature and is not separated from her”

(Documentary Interview de Chuang Che, 2014). Representing human figures with the same techniques, the same colors and the same lines used to depict natural landscapes visually re-emphasizes the structural unity between man and nature

(Findlay-Brown, 2007: 111). Interestingly, if we look at the halcyon days of landscape painting during the Northern Song Dynasty, the whole genre was based on the belief that the universe was limited, understandable, and governed by a higher and orderly principle. Knowledge thus did not consist in the analysis of particular aspects of nature, but in the discovery of their constitutive interrelatedness. For Northern Song Dynasty landscape painters, the pictorial act was aimed at grasping the “secret plot” of nature, the universal principle and the dynamic energies by which it is moved, and “in virtue of the relationship between macro and microcosm, to reveal to the individual his belonging to the ordered universe” (Celli, 2010: 810-811). In other words, the representation of nature was in fact “the most complete metaphor for the representation of man” (Celli, 2010: 810-

811). Chuang’s interesting mixing of human and natural forms is thus a “modern” re-interpretation of the long-standing tradition of landscape painting, which by investigating the universal principle that ordered the cosmos, had also stated the position of man as an integral part of it, related to all other parts and made of the very same substance.

This substance, to which Chuang refers as the “meaning behind the form”, can be identified in the invisible qi 氣 that moves all nature. In the article reported at p.218, Liu Kuo-song identified in qi the force permeating the entire Chinese painting tradition. Chuang Che, on his part, seems to follow Xie He’s first principle to depict the qi of mountains and rivers, but gives shape to it with the conscience of a modern artist and a modern man. Once in abstraction the outward appearance of things is removed, what remains is just their essence, the qi that pervades the whole

251 universe, from the moss on a stone to the highest mountain, from microscopic life forms to human beings. This was the force that Chinese landscape painting had tried to capture, that breath “whose form cannot be defined, but which contains the possibility of all forms” (Zhuang, 1993). Chuang’s claim that his art is independent of nature is thus consistent with his need to capture the “essence” of it130.

Chuang’s reflection on nature and painting also provides interesting insights about the relationship Chuang held with the American current of Abstract

Expressionism. As seen in Chapter 2, the berserk gesture of action painting derived from the existential anguish of the second post-war period. As his early collages demonstrate, the tragedy of war had not left Chuang indifferent either. Moreover, the artist is aware that “our way of life has drifted far away from a state of harmony with nature” (Chuang Che, 1966, quoted in Liu, 2015: 44). Chuang’s gesture, however, even though it has somewhat been inspired by action painting, is not aimed at self-affirmation, but rather points at something outside the self, at an inherent order within nature, and strives for the re-creation of said order through the depiction of the essence of nature (Liu, 2015: 44). Peng (2016) thus effectively synthesizes Chuang’s artistic endeavor:

The importance of the gesture, the action in the process of being accomplished, is sometimes found both in cursive calligraphy and in the xieyi [ 寫意] painting technique, as well as in Abstract Expressionism. […] [For the latter,] the gesture is a means of action, existential affirmation, and creative freedom. […] Contrary to a pure "heroic" exaltation of the human gesture, Chuang Che sought to go beyond the formal and philosophical propositions of Abstract Expressionism, believing that there could be another possible way, that consisted of the rethinking of the relation of man and nature, freed from an anthropocentric approach, and able instead to consider the possible communion and osmosis between the two, as Daoist wisdom and Chan Buddhism had envisioned. […] The graphic origin of many Chinese ideograms, and the Daoist idea that the same vital and spiritual principle animates man and the universe, can shed light on Chuang Che's choices and the aesthetic and philosophical foundation that underlies his conception of an abstraction closely linked to a conception of the landscape […] [Chuang is] convinced that there is no

130 “In Chuang Che's abstract paintings, the whole universe alludes to the breath of life that is replete in nature: the seasons, trees, rocks, lakes and seas, birds, the light of the sky, the hues of clouds, snow, desolation, people…” (Liu, 2015: 45).

252

rupture between abstraction and figuration, nor opposition between man and nature, but continuity, and a possible passage from one to the other (Peng, 2016).131

3.2 The Relationship with Western Art

Despite Chuang’s constant reference to Chinese artistic tradition, Western art also played a fundamental role in his creative development. In their ambitious project of “breaking free both from Western art and from dependence on the traditional formal vocabulary” (Sullivan, 1989: 199), the artists of the Fifth Moon wanted to create a synthesis between East and West (Liu, 2015: 43). Chuang Che undoubtedly shared with his peers these mixed feelings of admiration for the West and simultaneous necessity of personal expression, and it was these sentiments that probably also led to Chuang’s choice to transfer to the United States. His description of the country is strikingly similar to that proposed by Hsiao Chin132: “In America, owing to its short history, there is no traditional pressure. As an Asian, its freedom provides me with a much bigger breathing space” (Chuang Che, 1992a: 5) 133 .

Chuang, just like Hsiao, is particularly impressed by America’s lack of a long history, compared to China or Europe. For this same reason, Chuang does not believe in the definition of Abstract Expressionism as a totally “American” movement: “the members [of this movement] come from many places, even different countries. They just happened to meet in New York” (Chuang Che and others, 1997: 50-51). Despite

131 Original French text : L’importance que revêt le geste, l’action en train de s’accomplir, se retrouve à la fois dans la calligraphie cursive et dans la peinture en xieyi et également dans l’expressionnisme abstrait […] le geste étant un moyen d’action, d’affirmation de l’être, de sa liberté créatrice. Or, contrairement à une pure exaltation « héroïque » du geste humain, Chuang Che chercha à aller au- delà des propositions formelles et philosophiques de l’expressionnisme abstrait, en pensant qu’il y avait une autre voie possible en repensant le rapport de l’homme à la nature, affranchi d’une approche anthropocentrique, et qui envisagerait au contraire sa possible communion et osmose avec la nature, comme l’avaient développé la sagesse taoïste et le bouddhisme chan. […]. L’origine graphique de nombre d’idéogrammes chinois, l’idée taoïste qu’un même principe vital et spirituel anime l’homme et l’univers, peuvent éclairer les choix de Chuang Che et le fondement esthétique et philosophique qui sous-tend sa conception d’une abstraction intimement liée à une conception du paysage. […] [L'artiste est] convaincu qu’il n’y pas de rupture entre abstraction et figuration, ni d’opposition entre l’homme et la nature, mais une continuité, un passage possible de l’un à l’autre. 132 See Chapter 2, p.134 133 Pedro Tseng (2007: 75) further explains “Chuang Che decided to stay in America because it is a land that has never been dominated by any ancient culture in particular, which in turn benefited him as he felt free in this new land.”

253 these convictions, Western abstract art doubtlessly served as a key “stimulus”

(Sullivan, 1989: 261) for Chuang Che and the Fifth Moon members who wanted to exit from the impasse of the eternal contraposition between East and West. The artist (2015: 9) admits:

Schools of western art, from Impressionism to Surrealism and Cubism, reached their pinnacle in the unrestrained style of Abstract Expressionism, which greatly impacted my generation. This has developed my entire way of understanding painting, which is through form and brushwork (Chuang Che, 2015: 9).134

In Chuang’s early production, it is indeed possible to trace the influence of Abstract

Expressionism. The artist’s use of canvas and collage, and his decision to embrace pure abstraction are all indebted to the “visual” influence of contemporary Western art (Li, 1984: 179-180). Sullivan (1989: 199) defines the lines of Chuang Che’s early

Taiwanese years as “Kline-like”. Paintings from the period 1963-1966 can in fact be interpreted as a synthesis of traditional Chinese painting and calligraphy and modern Western Abstract Expressionism (Li, 1984: 179-180), and it is possible to hypothesize that Chuang’s belief in the great potential of calligraphy in modern painting was related to the influence of Western abstraction. Lesley Ma (2016: 23) quotes an article Chuang wrote in 1960 for the periodical Bihui, in which he introduced the art of Pierre Soulages, Hans Hartung, Jackson Pollock, and Franz

Kline, “artists known for elevating the role of the line in abstract art” (Ma, 2016: 23).

By looking at their works, Chuang grew certain of the modern potential of calligraphy. He believed that, given the Asian rich tradition of calligraphy, Chinese painters were even more skilled in expressing the emotional capacity of the line compared to Western modern artists. He wrote, “Kline’s abstraction still relies on the organization of the black and white, but because he could use the space of the painting freely, he carried no preconceived restrictions such as ‘this should be a character’ or ‘the lines should be organized this way’” (quoted in Ma, 2016: 26).

Chuang Che’s bold brushwork, his use of “splashing and dripping”, the poignant

134 Original Chinese text: 面對的西方已走過了後印象, 超現實, 立體主義進入自由抽象表現主義高峰時期, 也同樣衝擊著我輩, 造型用筆於是對我就解讀成繪畫全部了。

254 expressivity of his early productions (as explained in the analysis of Homage to Du

Fu), his action of gluing torn pieces of paper to the canvas are certainly informed by action painting. As demonstrated in the previous section, however, from an ideological point of view, Chuang Che’s art, especially after his transfer to the

United States, appears to be distant from that of Western action painters in many respects. Chuang’s keen interest in Western modern art trends thus led the artist to a complex experience of assimilation and rejection, in which the artist was influenced by American and European approaches while simultaneously affirming his unique personality and cultural identity.

Given the centrality that Chuang’s reflection on the relationship between painting and nature had in the artist’s production, however, there are some specific

Western models that not only titillated Chuang’s curiosity and experimental spirit, but to which he really seems to feel a profound intellectual kinship. The main direction of Chuang’s art is “to fix new images following displacement - to give an image new life after putting it back together” (Chuang Che, 1998: 12). The artist thus seems to appreciate all those Western artists and movements that shared his same concern for the investigation of the relationship between abstract painting and the natural world. As Wechsler suggests, “Chuang’s preferences tend toward artists who share his concept of the compatibility of abstraction with references to reality,

[…] He was instinctively drawn to those artists who insisted upon the validity of combining of the techniques of gestural abstraction with recognizable imagery”

(Wechsler, 2007: 151-152). Chuang’s first reference is to Pablo Picasso, whom he greatly admires (Liu, 2012: 10):

My early steps can be compared with the early cubist movement, in that both sought to take the subject matter apart and then try to put it together again through a process of re-synthesis and re-construction (Chuang Che, 2005: 12).135

135 Original Chinese text: 我的起步有點像初期的立體主義, 把對象分解, 然後再一點一滴通過綜合去還原。 Chuang also maintains: “The spiritual state of the mind is abstract. One might also call it a state of consciousness. States of consciousness are the manifestations of the images of nature, and this is

255

Despite their common interest in an art that could reinterpret nature and images and give them new meaning, understanding the relationship between the flat and geometric paintings of cubism and Chuang Che’s vast and dynamic landscape is not easy. Picasso’s conviction that “art is always art, and not nature”

(Dorfles & Vettese, 2009: 94) somehow echoes Chuang’s belief in the “parallel” relationship between nature and art, despite the constant reference they both made to images from reality. It is interesting to notice how close Picasso’s and Chuang’s researches and experiments got in certain phases of their careers. Picasso was one of the first initiators of the technique of collage, also adopted by Chuang in his

Taiwan years, while the simple statues of the Hudson River Series [figs.32-35] might remind of the objets trouvés of Picasso’s mature production. The two artists also shared an interest in the re-proposition of paintings coming from their respective classical traditions, as demonstrated by Picasso’s d’après and his well-known Las

Meninas series, inspired by Velazquez’ 17th-century canvas (Dorfles & Vettese, 2009:

80-101) [figs.73-75].

Willem de Kooning is a Western artist that Chuang admires even more explicitly than Picasso, openly admitting the influence the Dutch artist had on his production (Documentary Interview de Chuang Che, 2014). A first similarity between the two artists lies in their choice of subject matters: while Chuang’s art aims at

“evoking humans and landscapes” (Documentary Interview de Chuang Che, 2014),

De Kooning also showed a marked preference for the two themes of women (or human body in general) and sceneries (Liu, 2015: 47) [figs.76-79]. De Kooning’s

Women certainly recall Picasso’s Demoiselles d’Avignon, manifesting a strong sense both of physical sensuality and disquieting violence. The painter’s obsessive and vigorous gestures, as well as his almost brutal distortion of the human image, seem to reflect the “aggressive and contradictory American society” (Calza, Hernandez

& Varini, 1999: 286), and his research appears to be a display of decomposition

what symbols are. When we look at the cruelty, horror, and violence of Picasso's Guernica, we are looking at nature” (Chuang Che, 1966, quoted in Liu, 2015: 44).

256 rather than the attempt to find a new order in nature. However, the bold brushstrokes of De Kooning, his choice to stick to “figuration” (better, abstract figuration) in an era where absolute abstraction was at its height, producing “half- hidden, half-visible” images (Liu, 2015: 47), and his continuous exploration of the possibilities of oil painting could be seen as interesting points of contact with

Chuang’s art. As Liu (2015: 47) suggests, “If for De Kooning, ‘Flesh is the reason oil paint was invented’, then for Chuang Che the purpose of oil paint is to evoke a longing for the wilderness, and with the Oriental lyricism that arose as an inherent and inseparable element of his work, he naturally formed his painting style melding

East and West” (Liu, 2015: 47).

Two other interesting Western examples Chuang is often associated with are the artists of the CoBrA Group (Wechsler, 2007: 151-152; Peng, 2016), and the famous series of paintings belonging to the mature production of Claude Monet

(1840-1926), The Water Lilies (Documentary Interview de Chuang Che, 2014). As far as

CoBrA is concerned, Chuang’s interest is still connected to the group’s attentiveness for “an abstraction that never forgets nature nor man” (Peng, 2016), and might also be related to the depiction of primitive figures from the Nordic tradition by some members of the group, which could be linked to Chuang’s research for “an original form (根源之形)” (Zhuang, 1993: 2) that could encompass the possibility of all forms.

Indeed, Picasso’s Demoiselles d’Avignon, De Kooning Women, and Asger Jorn’s faces

[figs.80-81] all share an allusion to primitivism, a feature that might also be faintly spotted in the “masks” of Chuang Che’s Faces series [figs.40-43], where man and nature blend into one. As for the Water Lilies, this well-known series by Monet constitutes the most “abstract” manifestation of the impressionist movement136. The subject matter almost disappears to give way to the absolute predominance of color and light, which gradually become independent from the real object the artist is

136 Chuang Che recalls: “I also have been influenced by the works of the last period of Monet, The Water Lilies. I saw these works in Chicago in the 1980s, they were free and open, they surpassed impressionism and they were full of energy. The touch is spontaneous and without restraint” (Documentary Interview de Chuang Che, 2014).

257 trying to depict, creating a separate world within the canvas (Dorfles, Laurocci &

Vettese, 2009: 157). Monet’s simultaneous reliance on and independence from nature, along with his masterly use of color, make Chuang’s admiration for these works understandable [fig.82].

The last artist who deserves a special mention in this section is Zao Wou-ki

(Zhao Wuji 趙無極, 1920-2013), a painter who, just Like Chuang, is both “Eastern” and “Western” [figs.83-84]. In his statements about Zao Wou-ki 137 , Chuang expresses his admiration towards an artist who, while adopting the “international” style of abstraction, had still been able to preserve an unmistakable “Eastern” quality, especially in his use of the totally-Western media of oil. With firm foundations in the East and an open outlook towards the West, Zao first inspired

Chuang to set foot on the “third road”.

3.3 Artistic vocabulary and media

As Pan Fan (2017: 146) suggests, the one consistent determination throughout

Chuang’s long career was his desire to create a modern abstract painting belonging to China. As seen in section 3.1.2, abstraction is, for Chuang, the “creation of the essence of nature as a new order, and the projection of the essence of nature within the atmosphere of philosophical appreciation” (Liu, 2015: 44). The act of painting is thus not conceived as a simple leisure activity ending in itself, but is rather imbued with clear cultural, philosophical, or even existential connotations. Since a very young age, fate linked the destiny of Chuang’s whole family to the preservation of the ancient treasures of the National Palace Museum: the reason behind their state of “continuous migration” (Pan Fan, 2017: 8) was following and protecting “simple”

137 “In the late 1950s, the one man who influenced me, I think, was Zao Wou-ki. At that time he was in Paris. His work touched something in me because I felt it was sort of Oriental, yet international […] In that period of time I feel art was really international. No matter if you are from China or whatever country. If you can touch something in your art, and that language can just, as you say, transfer, there are no boundaries” (Chuang Che & others, 1997: 50-51). “The way [Zao Wou-ki] uses oil is oriental, and it has nothing to do with the oil thickness in the canvases by Soutine or Van Gogh” (Documentary Interview de Chuang Che, 2014).

258 objects of art. It is probably not too hazardous to speculate that this experience also contributed to shaping the little Chuang’s weltanschauung, introducing him to the intimate relationship between life, even personal life, and art. As the Taiwanese critic Yang Wei 楊蔚 (1928-2004), poetically expresses, “Chuang is a pure painter - his entire being exudes painting” (quoted in Hsiao Chong-ray, 2015: 24). Given

Chuang’s extremely serious approach to art creation, it is thus not surprising that the artist firmly emphasizes “having painterly quality as mission, [and] using the structure of abstraction to holistically view the changes in painting materials”

(Chuang Che, 2012: 4). The absolute discipline that characterizes Chuang’s production, as well as his concern for “quality” and his accuracy in the choice of artistic media, might also hint at why Hsiao Chin identified the Fifth Moon members with an “academic” orientation alien to the Ton Fan.

From a pictorial point of view, the two most important components of

Chuang’s vocabulary are “rhythmic calligraphic lines and subtle and evocative colors” (Kuo, 2000: 92). Calligraphy is without a doubt an omnipresent element throughout Chuang’s long career. According to the painter, “calligraphy is the essence of Chinese art itself, because it is in cursive writing that the gesture of the brush reaches its noblest expression” (Documentary Interview de Chuang Che, 2014).

As the artist admits, his interest in calligraphy is related to the profession of his renowned father Chuang Yan, whose works indeed became “a kind of foundation training for [his] visual perception”, spurring him to ask himself whether “the art of calligraphy and the art of painting [could] be merged into one single art form”

(Chuang Che, 2007: 18). This question first brought Chuang to the decision of including characters as compositional elements within his canvases, attaining the results exposed in the artist’s biography. In these works, the artist emphasized the abstract qualities of Chinese characters “as part of his attempt to bridge the gap between traditional Eastern calligraphic gestures and purely non-objective Western mark-making” (Wechsler, 2007: 151). Chuang Che’s assessments of Kline’s work, reported at p.254, hints at both the discrepancy he felt between his art and Kline’s

259 free lines, and at his own resolution to emphasize the intrinsic discipline within the calligraphic gesture, which does not need to create a new mark, but just needs to follow a pre-established order.

When Chuang stopped including Chinese characters in his compositions, his works also grew “much less obviously calligraphically-inspired” (Findlay-Brown,

2007: 110). The artist, while profoundly aware of the expressive quality of the line, was also certain that “in abstraction, [he could] not resolve all [painterly] issues using the simple element of the line” (Documentary Interview de Chuang Che,

2014).

The gesture of the line is just part of a whole […] [In the 1960s], my researches led me to the decomposition of calligraphy, resulting in its dissolution. Calligraphy was thus transformed into traits, but I had to deal with the problems of depth and volume, of line and plane. I think colors are important, and they constitute a great challenge for a painter. In my opinion, in order to be a “complete” painter, you need to master colors (Documentary Interview de Chuang Che, 2014).

In spite of this awareness, calligraphy did not stop exerting its influence on

Chuang’s art. On the contrary, the “calligraphic nature” of his paintings remained evident in his bishi 筆勢, the “energy” or the “momentum” of his brush, which became a core component of the artist’s attempt to recreate landscapes in an abstract form (Tseng, 2007: 75). Chuang’s elegant and agile, puissant, and controlled brushstrokes preserve the “gestural” character of calligraphy (Hsiao Chong-ray,

2015: 27) but, differently from the feverish and desperate gestures of American action painters, they “can simultaneously present creativity, meaning, and a sense of freedom” (Wechsler, 2016: 21), hence resulting in harmony (the harmony of nature) rather than chaos [figs.16-27].

Color is the other component of Chuang Che’s landscapes, even though in the artist’s early production, as well as in his reliefs and sculptures of the 1990s, color only has a secondary importance. Chuang’s personal use of colors once again derives from the relationship his art holds with the natural world and from his need to reproduce the essence of nature within the limited frames of his canvases. The

260 artist’s highly personal palette features “leaf-greens, sunny yellows and oranges, oceanic blue-greens” as well as “a wide range of complicated tertiary colors, both dark and light, virtually unnamable in their complexity” (Wechsler, 2007: 151). As

Wechsler comments, “it is though each painting symbolically dredges the very soil- upturning roots, pebbles, organic matter - and then presents this multitude of overlooked natural colors for the viewer's inspection” (Wechsler, 2017: 151). Subtle,

“organic” tones are accompanied by bright, intense hues, usually “employed in concentrated areas or as accents, enlivening the surface and focusing attention at various points within the overall composition (Wechsler, 2007: 151)”.

Chuang’s research for an art that could merge East and West has also been translated into a continuous experimentation of artistic media. Actually, this experimentation has arguably been the absolute protagonist of Chuang Che’s production since its very outset in Taiwan, when he used to discuss the issue of

“tradition” (Documentary Interview de Chuang Che, 2014) with his Fifth Moon peers:

A much-debated topic at the time [late 1950s, editor’s note] was whether or not ink and brush constitute the whole of Chinese art. Fundamentally, I both embraced and denied this thought simultaneously. I recognized the inspirations of ink and brush, and questioned whether there can be substitutes for this traditional technique. Can other mediums express the feeling of brush and ink? To answer this, I began experimenting with canvas, oil and acrylic as substitutes (Chuang Che, 1992b).138

As the quote demonstrates, Chuang takes the distance from the tendency within the

Fifth Moon Group, mainly promoted by Liu Kuo-song, of advocating the importance of the use of brush and ink for the creation of a Chinese modern painting.

Chuang does not believe that abandoning ink equals losing one’s Chinese identity; on the contrary, he maintains that “in order to offer new possibilities of expression you need to understand the different techniques and re-interpret them in your own way” (Documentary Interview de Chuang Che, 2014). Chuang’s early concerns regarding the use of ink appear to be two-fold. While the artist felt the (very modern)

138 Original Chinese text: 水墨是否即是中國繪畫的一切根源？是當時被激烈討論的主題。基本上我同時認定又拒絕，我祗認可水墨感，但不僅是水墨，水墨感可以由其它的媒材借用傳達嗎？為了堅侍這方面的驗證，我用布與油、壓克力等這些來取代的。

261 need to “express” through painting the vibrations and the changes of the contemporary world, the ancient medium of ink, however noble, seemed unable to grasp the flamboyant new environment by which he was surrounded.139 At the same time, however, Chuang was also aware that, while ink did not seem to be able to suit his needs anymore, he could not dispel what he calls “the feeling of ink and brush” with the same ease. The pathos and the evocative power belonging to ink, as well as the transparency, the fluidity and the “suggestive evanescence” (Peng,

2016) of the medium, were characteristics to which Chuang did not want to renounce, however attracted by the thickness of oil colors.140

Chuang’s attention in the choice of his media is once again related to his emphasis on “painterly quality” and on the close relationship Chuang felt between painting and life. Throughout Chuang’s whole career, the materiality and the physical presence of his media is never hidden, but always emphasized and sought after. This research of materiality is perfectly exemplified by the collages in different colors he produced in the 1960s (Li, 1984: 179-180), to which he added Chinese characters in oil or ink, and his so-called Hudson River Series. In his collages, Chuang

“exploited the sinews, textures and colors of cotton paper, which he tore, cut and trimmed before puckering it with wet glue and adhering it to canvas” (Liu, 2015:

139 “The lifestyle in the 1950s in Taiwan was changing to a quick, modern pace. Very few people were wearing leather shoes when I started middle school, and it wasn't until my second or third year that bicycles were imported […] Modern cars were commonplace by the time I reached high school […]. The road from Taichung to Wufeng appeared very different when I was in my freshman year of college. To accommodate the width of the new asphalt road, mango and eucalyptus trees had to be cut down. The rice paddies and tobacco fields that had stretched from Dali Township to Caohu Village were gradually subdivided for housing. The scenery completely changed, becoming a bustling, noisy, garish display of advertising and neon lights. How could this be captured with the black ink of traditional painting? […] Traditional Chinese painting is a bible with many chapters, but still cannot express what we discover or feel in the world today” (Chuang Che, 1987, quoted in Hsiao Chong-ray, 2015: 17-18). 140 Peng Chang-Ming (2016) thus synthesizes the questions moving the artist’s first experiments: “How to reconcile the techniques of ink, its fluidity, its suggestive evanescence, with the thickness of oil and acrylic paint? How to break free from the monochromy of ink painting […]? How to overcome the dichotomy between abstraction and figuration, between nature and man, as it had been asserted by supporters of abstraction? By what pictorial means was it possible to give new expression to the spirit of cosmic monumentality that emanated from the great landscapes of the Northern Song period, notably those of Fan Kuan and Guo Xi?” (Peng, 2016).

262

45), thus succeeding in giving weight and texture to his works [figs.5-9]. As for

Chuang’s reliefs and sculptures, when the painter moved to Dobbs Ferry, he was shocked by the corruption of the natural environment perpetrated by human beings.

He decided to give shape to his thoughts by attaching to his canvases “raw” materials, directly scavenged from the Hudson River, in yet another confirmation not only of the close relationship of his art with nature, but also of the importance he gave to the materiality of his artworks [figs.28-39]. This interest is also reflected in the choice of the two media of Chuang’s maturity, namely oil and acrylic.

A unique character of modern art lies in the unleashing of the materiality of the medium […] I chose oil and acrylic as my media. Oil has spawned various strands of vitality since post-Impressionism. Cézanne and Van Gogh both liberated the ointment-like denseness of oil, layering it to create three-dimensional spaces, something of real substance. At the same time, oil can convey lightness, sprightliness, and fleetingness. Cézanne’s and Van Gogh’s paintings embody both effects of oil. Artists of Abstract Expressionism could be said to have explored the potential of oil to its limits. Acrylic, which has been around for less than a hundred years, is fundamentally a new material imitative of oil. With its water-based and fast drying qualities, it is a great bargain in terms of time and efficiency, which further suits modern society’s penchant for speed. In the past fifty years, oil and acrylic have been the critical elements in my work (Chuang Che, 2012: 4).141

As Liu Yong-ren underlines (Documentary 莊喆回顧展, 2015), Chuang wants to mix the “effects” (效果 xiaoguo) of acrylic and oil, the transparency and runniness of the former and the weight of the latter (even though Chuang’s oils are turned into a water-like material thanks to the addition of a huge quantity of paint thinner).142 The combination of these mutually-repulsive pigments not only testifies

141 Original Chinese text: 現代藝術的另一特點是要發揮媒材本身。[…] 我選用的媒材是油彩與壓克力。油彩從後印象主義已出現不同前的生機了。塞尚與梵高都把油彩的膏狀厚度解放了出來，堆積出三度性的空間而成一種實體。相反一面又能傳達出輕快飄逸，塞尚與梵高的畫兩者俱有。而在抽象表現主義的畫家群可說把油彩的性質徹底發掘了出來。壓克力顏料還不滿一百年，基本上是仿造油彩的新種，用水來調拌更能在時間效率上撿到便宜──快乾。在這五十年之中油彩與壓克力都在我的畫上成重要的一環。 142 “In my case, I choose dilution. I add a lot of thinner to oil, and I use it just like ink. Hence, painting for me is just like doing calligraphy, because once diluted oil is very similar to ink, and this diluted oil is totally different from that used in Western art. Dilution allowed me to apply colors freely, making them as transparent as water. […] I pour oil in water before it gets dry. This provokes a physical reaction, which has a unique visual rendition in my paintings. These procedures always had a fundamental importance in my works” (Documentary Interview de Chuang Che, 2014).

263 to Chuang’s boldness in experimenting with media, but can also be seen as a perfect synthesis of his “third road”: in Chuang’s art, the two apparently irreconcilable shores of East and West engage in a tense, dramatic relationship, finally giving rise to a sublime harmony.

264

[1] Chuang Che, Untitled (detail), 1957, 32x41 cm, Oil on canvas

[2] Chuang Che, Boat and sea (detail), 1958, Oil on canvas

[3] Chuang Che, 1962–2, 89 x 118 cm, Oil and collage on canvas 265

[4] Chuang Che, Untitled, 1963, 60 x 84 cm, Oil and ink on canvas

[5] Chuang Che, Homage to Du Fu – A Kingdom Shattered, Rivers and Mountains Survive, 1966, 76 x 112 cm (each panel), Oil and collage on canvas

266

[6] Chuang Che, As lofty as a mountain, 1960, 112×75.7cm, mixed media on canvas

[7] Chuang Che, Where There's True Feeling, There's Form; Where There's a Brush, There's Expression, 1965-1, 1965, 75 x 112 cm, Oil and collage on canvas

267

[8] Chuang Che, Remembrance, 1965, 111.8 x 74.9 cm, Oil, ink and wash and paper collage on canvas

[9] Chuang Che, Untitled Composition, 1966, 86.5 x 63 cm, Oil and collage on canvas

268

[10] Robert Indiana, LOVE, 1967, 86.3 x 86.3 cm, Screenprint

[11] Chuang Che, Love, 1967, 116x116 cm, Oil and rice paper on canvas

269

[12] Chuang Che, Autumn Landscape, 1971, 86.4 x 102.2 cm, Acrylic and collage on canvas

[13] Chuang Che, Rising Sun, 1971, 121 x 84.5 cm, Mixed media on canvas

270

[14] Chuang Che, Untitled, 1969, 86.5 x 121.5 cm, Mixed media on canvas

[15] Chuang Che, WINDOW, 1972, 85 x 129 cm, Mixed media on canvas

271

[16] Chuang Che, Untitled, 1974 , 106.7 x 142.2 cm, Mixed media on canvas

[17] Chuang Che, Early spring, 1976, 100 x 127 cm, Acrylic on canvas

272

[18] Chuang Che, Untitled, 1976, 132.1 x 172.7 cm, Oil on canvas

[19] Chuang Che, Composition, 1979, Oil & acrylic on canvas, 88 x 121 cm

273

[20] Chuang Che, The Shadow, 1979, 125 x 87 cm, Oil on canvas

[21] Chuang Che, Untitled, 1984, 172.5 x 246 cm, Oil and acrylic on canvas

274

[22] Chuang Che, Dewy Mountain, 1987, 125.5 x 126 cm, Oil on canvas

[23] Chuang Che, Misty River and Mountain Peak, 1989, 126x126 cm, Acrylic on canvas 275

[24] Chuang Che, Chant of Winter Snow, 1989, 126x126 cm, Acrylic and oil on canvas

[25] Chuang Che, Abstract, 1989, 56 x 98 cm, Acrylic and oil on canvas

276

[26] Chuang Che, Spring Way, 1991, 152 x 129 cm, Oil on canvas

[27] Chuang Che, Rainfall Behind the Mountain, 1993, 128 × 309 cm (diptych), Oil on canvas

277

[28] Chuang Che, Relief I, 1993

[29] Chuang Che, Relief III, 1990-1995

278

[30] Chuang Che, Relief VI, 1993, 33 × 25 × 14 cm, Oil on wood

[31] Chuang Che, Relief VII, 1997, 48.5 × 46 × 5 cm, Mixed media

279

[32] Chuang Che, Standing Statue I, 1991-1992

[33] Chuang Che, Standing Statue III, 1991-1992

280

[34] Chuang Che, Standing Statue V, 1991-92

[35] Chuang Che, Standing Statue II, 1996

281

[36] Chuang Che, The Bottom of the Valley, 1992, 158x145cm, Mixed media

[37] Chuang Che, Fire bank, 1992, 132x125 cm, Mixed media

282

[38] Chuang Che, Song of String, 1992, 169x102 cm, Mixed media

[39] Chuang Che, The hedge, 1992, 175x131 cm, Mixed media

283

[40] Chuang Che, Self Portrait-Unspeakable, 1992, 60x34 cm, Oil, acrylic and collage on canvas paper

[41] Chuang Che, Self-portrait, 1992, 59 x 49 cm, Mixed media on canvas

284

[42] Chuang Che, Clearing Up, 1992, 60x50 cm, Mixed media on canvas

[43] Chuang Che, Man of landscape, 1994, 167x127cm, Acrylic oil on canvas

285

[44] Wen Zhenggming, Old Cypress and Rock (detail), 1550, Ink on paper, 26.04 x 48.9 cm

[45] Chuang Che, Rock and Cypress 1, 1997, 76 x 167 cm, Acrylic on canvas

[46] Chuang Che, Rock and Cypress 8, 1998, 44.5 x 120 cm, Oil on canvas

286

[47] Chuang Che, Variation of cypress and mountain 2, 1998, 45 x 120 cm, Oil and acrylic on canvas

[48] Chuang Che, Rock and Cypress 3, 1997, 60 x 100 cm, Acrylic on paper

[49] Chuang Che, Rock and Cypress 12, 1998, 40 x 100 cm, Acrylic on canvas

287

[50] Guanxiu (832-912), Sixteen Lohans - Ajita, 129.1x65.7 cm, Ink and color on silk

[51] Chuang Che, Sixteen Lohans Series / 7, 2003, 196 × 97 cm, Mixed media on Paper

288

[52] Guanxiu (832-912), Sixteen Lohans – Ingata, 129.1x65.7 cm, Ink and color on silk

[53] Chuang Che, Sixteen Lohan Series – 13, 2003, 196 x 97 cm, Colored ink on paper

289

[54] Chuang Che, Sixteen Lohan Series-Vanavasin and Ajita, 2003, 127x65cm,Ink and color on paper

[55] Chuang Che, Sixteen Lohans Series – 9 and 15. 196 x 97 cm, Colored ink on paper

290

[56] Sesshū Tōyō, Broken Ink Landscape (detail), 1495, 148.6 x 32.7 cm, Ink on paper

[57] Chuang Che, Variation on Sesshu’s Broken Ink Landscape – 4, 2005, 167 x 127 cm, Mixed media on canvas 291

[58] Chuang Che, Variation on Sesshu’s Broken Ink Landscape - 7, 2003, 127x167cm, Acrylic and oil on canvas

[59] Chuang Che, Variation on Sesshu's Broken Ink Landscape - 2, 2005, 167 x 127 cm, Acrylic and oil on canvas 292

[60] Chuang Che, Vicissitudes of Nature, 1998, 127 x 168 cm, Oil and acylic on canvas

[61] Chuang Che, Dancing Landscape, 2005, 102x173cm, Acrylic and oil on Canvas

[62] Chuang Che, Sunset over Mountain Lake Shore, 2005, 127 x 178 cm, Oil on Canvas 293

[63] Chuang Che, Intersection, 2000, 127 x 168 cm, Oil and acrylic on canvas

[64] Chuang Che, Green Rock and Splendid Cloud, 2010, 127 x 336 cm, Acrylic on canvas

[65] Chuang Che, Stand Alone on the World, 2008, 171.5 x 346 cm, Acrylic on canvas

294

[66] Chuang Che, Human Landscape Series/Space Exploration, 2014, 169 × 127 cm, Acrylic and oil on canvas

[67] Chuang Che, Awakening, 2019, 167.5 x 127cm, Oil on canvas 295

[68] Xu Wei (1521-1593), Flowers and Other Plants, 30,5 x 1045 cm, Ink on paper

[69] Li Shan (1686-1762), Orchid, 17.8 x 23.5 cm, Ink on paper, mounted

[70] Ma Yuan (c.1160-1225), Mountain Path in Spring, 27.4 × 43.1 cm, Ink on silk

296

[71] Fan Kuan (c.960-1030), Travellers among Mountains and Streams, 206x103 cm, Ink and color on silk

[72] Guo Xi, Early Spring, 1072, 158x108 cm, Ink and color on silk 297

[73] Pablo Picasso, Still-life with Chair Caning, 1912, 29 × 37 cm, Oil on oil-cloth over canvas edged with rope

[74] Pablo Picasso, The Bathers, 1956, h 264 cm, Wood

[75] Pablo Picasso, Las Meninas de Velázquez, 1957, 194 x 260 cm, Oil on canvas 298

[76] Willem De Kooning, Montauk Highway, 1958, 150 x 122 cm, Oil and combined media on heavy paper mounted to canvas

[77] Willem De Kooning, Two Figures in a Landscape, 1967, 177,8 x 203,2 cm, Oil on canvas 299

[78] Willem de Kooning, Woman I, 1950–52, 192.7 x 147.3 cm, Oil and metallic paint on canvas

[79] Willem de Kooning, Excavation, 1950, 205.7 × 254.6 cm, Oil on canvas

300

[80] Asger Jorn, Underdeveloped imbecility, 1961, 80 x 59 cm, Oil on canvas

[81] Pablo Picasso, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, 1907, 243.9 cm × 233.7 cm, Oil on canvas

[82] Claude Monet, Water Lilies: The Clouds (detail), 1915-1926, 200 x 1275 cm, Oil on canvas

301

[83] Zao Wou-ki, 30-7-64, 1964, 150 x 162 cm, Oil on canvas

[84] Zao Wou-Ki: 13.01.76, 1976, 149.8 x 161 cm, Oil on canvas

302

Conclusions

The present work has analyzed the similarities and the differences in the art and thinking of Hsiao Chin and Chuang Che. Despite their common desire to modernize Chinese painting through an integration of Western thought and techniques, and their shared attachment to their Chinese cultural roots, the two artists created profoundly different artworks. While they appear to find common ground in some ideological stances, the main difference between the two consists in their different conception of the “Eastern-ness” with which they are both credited to imbue their artworks. Hsiao and Chuang’s paintings are the outcome of two distinct and personal artistic philosophies, and reveal the absolute necessity to define and give significance to the two broad categories of “East” and “West”, which always entail a wide range of different approaches. The thesis has thus tried to give an answer to the two questions Chuang Che posed at the 1997 panel discussion quoted in the introduction of this work: “What is East? What is West?”.

This research has started from the theoretical and artistic stances of the

Eastern Painting Association and the Fifth Moon Group, to which Hsiao Chin and

Chuang Che respectively belonged, and has demonstrated that the propositions of the two associations had a key importance in the artistic development of the two artists. The origins of the Eastern Painting Association are intimately related to the central figure of Li Chun-shan, who, with his holistic and unconventional teaching methods, was able to introduce the young founders of the Ton-Fan Group to modern art production. The total creative freedom Li gave to his disciples determined both the anti-academic stance of the group and its lack of a shared style and a well-defined theoretical foundation, which was only partly provided by the

“European Newsletter” Hsiao Chin sent from Spain in the late 1950s. The Ton-Fan members never theorized abstraction as the only direction to follow for the modernization of Chinese painting: they believed that art was primarily a spiritual matter and that, for this reason, in modern artistic creation theory was more

303 important than the choice of specific media and techniques. Li spurred his students to become part of the global movement of modern art, while also preserving a distinct “Eastern spirit”, which he characterized as suggestive, imaginative, and symbolic.

As for the members of the Fifth Moon Group, mostly top-graduates of

National Taiwan Normal University, after the first years of experimental activity, they gave a strong theoretical basis to their undertakings, promoting absolute abstraction as a characterizing feature of their works. The resolution to embrace abstraction also came with an explicit bond with classical Chinese art. For them, the abstract elements and “modern” premises of traditional ink painting served as clear touchstones, and while they experimented with different media and adopted highly-individual styles, they all referred to certain aesthetic connotations belonging to Chinese painting tradition, primarily the use of the “negative space” as a fundamental compositional element. Western abstraction was a decisive visual provocation for the Fifth Moon artists, urging them to make art “independent” from natural forms and to break away from the disheartening contemporary artistic environment, while at the same time prompting them to embrace and push further the aesthetic legacy of their tradition.

After this necessary premise, the thesis has delved into the exploration of

Hsiao Chin and Chuang Che’s works and thought. Besides a very similar life trajectory, and a shared objective to give new life to Chinese painting and find their own “form of expression” (Documentary Interview de Chuang Che, 2014), Chuang

Che and Hsiao Chin also appear to find some common ground in their conception of

Western modern art vis-à-vis Chinese traditional art. In the 1960s, Chuang defined abstract art as “by definition anti-European”, and maintained that “anyone who continues to make distinctions between today's East and West based on antiquated cultural forms, is either ignorant, or short-sighted” (Chuang Che, quoted in Hsiao Chong-ray,

2015: 20-21). On his part, Hsiao Chin also believed that modern abstract art was in contraposition with the ”Latin Spirit” of measure and rationality dominating Western

304 tradition, and that for this reason in abstraction East and West could finally merge and form a new cosmopolitan and universal art. The lyrical and intuitive nature of Chinese traditional painting and the consequent primacy of expression over the naturalistic depiction of reality, the conception of Western art as overly logical and rational, and the ideal of the convergence of Eastern and Western art hence all appear to be shared convictions between the two artists.

Notwithstanding these common features, the divergencies between Chuang and Hsiao perfectly reflect the different stances of the Fifth Moon Group and the

Eastern Painting Association. After the two artists went abroad and experienced first-hand the Western art trends that they greatly admired, they were able to personally develop the embryonic propositions of the two groups and to embrace them as an integral component of their individual creative ideologies. The emphasis on the “spiritual” foundation of art Hsiao Chin had learned from his teacher Li

Chun-shan explains the fact that, for the artist, conveying an “Eastern Spirit” in his creations did not primarily mean to look at the tradition of Chinese painting, but rather to found his painting activity on ancient Eastern philosophies, especially

Daoism and Chan Buddhism. Despite the artist’s explicit desire to perpetuate “the essence of Chinese art” (中國畫的精粹, Hsiao Chin, 1980c: 235), his references to his country’s tradition seem to limit to an admiration for the “spirit of innovation” of some specific painters (such as Shitao), and they are not related to any particular medium or aesthetic connotation whatsoever, as also witnessed by the numerous changes that Hsiao Chin’s style went through over the various phases of his career.

The painter’s “spiritual” art revolves around the two (Eastern) concepts of jingguan

(tranquil contemplation) and zhijuexing (intuitiveness). In reaction to the

“istinctivity” of informal art and action painting, since the outset of his career Hsiao

Chin wanted to re-state the role of art as a venue for reflection and meditation

(jingguan), where the viewer did not have to take part in the anguish of the painter, but could rather be transported to a tranquil and contemplative dimension. Hsiao’s

“Eastern-ness” is also to be seen in the importance he attached to “intuitiveness” in

305 art creation: the painter’s understanding of this concept is informed by the Daoist notion of “spontaneity” (ziran) and by Chan Buddhism’s ideas of “gradual cultivation” and “sudden enlightenment”. Hsiao Chin’s artworks, especially after the mid-1970s, are simultaneously the product of immediate inspiration and the outcome of a long process of cultivation and self-introspection. Hsiao does not praise randomness or irrational emotional expression, because his lines and colors are not momentary outbursts of emotions, but singular, intuitive moments inscribed in a journey of self-cultivation, and are thus able to preserve the unique stillness of jingguan.

In Chuang Che’s art, “East” takes a very different shape than in Hsiao’s paintings. Interestingly, the artist’s production bears the mark of his childhood experiences, when, in the wild sceneries of Southwest China, he repeatedly had the opportunity to admire some of the most precious examples of his country’s painting tradition. The relationship Chuang established with said tradition, especially with the fundamental genre of landscape painting, constitutes the artists’ most evident reference to his “Eastern” cultural roots. Chuang Che, just like the other members of the Fifth Moon Group, greatly admired the boldness of some innovative figures from China’s classical art, such as Xu Wei o Zheng Xie, and was heavily influenced by the high degree of abstraction they were able to attain in their works. The greatest legacy Chuang inherited from his country’s tradition, however, was the “aesthetic of the boundless” of Northern Song Dynasty landscape paintings, the sense of weight and infinite space that the misty mountains depicted by Guo Xi or Fan Kuan were able to convey. In the artist’s words and paintings, tradition indisputably remains both a spiritual and aesthetic benchmark. The works by Chuang Che, especially those produced after his transfer to the United States, also stem from a complex and very modern reflection by the artist on the relationship between nature and painting, which also reveals the special bond that ties the painter with his

“Eastern” origin. The artist makes clear that, in his paintings, figuration and abstraction are not at odds with each other. This idea is clearly illustrated in his

306 semi-figurative Faces or Lohans series, but in reality all his works, however abstract, always preserve allusions to different elements of the external natural world, from mossy stones to high mountain peaks, from microscopic life forms to human beings.

These allusions are mostly indirect and non-explicit, because Chuang Che believes in the complete independence of his art from nature (an idea already promoted by the Fifth Moon Group), and holds that art should in fact be the “creation of the essence of nature as a new order” (Liu, 2015: 44). This essence is what ancestral

Chinese cosmology had defined as qi 氣 , the vital breath that moves all manifestation of nature. According to the famous 6th-century critic Xie He, the depiction of the qi of the subject matter had to be the primary concern of a painter:

Chuang, in his simultaneous reliance on and independence from the natural world, inherits this precept, but by liberating his abstract works from real-life images, he ultimately makes the omnipresent qi, essence of nature and meaning of all forms, the sole protagonist of his canvases.

As for Hsiao Chin and Chuang Che’s relationship with the “West”, for both artists it is necessary to distinguish two levels of analysis. As a matter of fact, in both cases certain Western models have exerted a “visual” influence on their work, while some others have resonated with the very philosophical base underlying the artists’ production. In his canvases, Hsiao Chin merges Asian philosophies and symbolism with sporadic elements both from Chinese painting tradition, such as the use of calligraphic lines, and Western modern art, such as the geometric compositions of minimal art. Two artists with which the painter appears to have a deeper conceptual kinship are Mark Rothko and Lucio Fontana, even though at first glance their works do not seem to share anything with those of Hsiao Chin. Rothko, just like Hsiao, put spirituality at the very center of his art, and his luminous color-fields are meant to envelop the viewer in contemplation. The silent and highly conceptual cut canvases by Fontana also aim to plunge the viewer into a dimension transcending that of the canvas, and the disruptive gesture of the artist is not the simple outpouring of his feelings, but rather the result of a long and fastidious compositional study, which

307 eventually finds expression in the painter’s sudden cut. Chuang Che’s references to

Western art are very different from those of Hsiao Chin. From a visual and technical point of view, abstract expressionism and action painting, from which Hsiao Chin explicitly takes distance, clearly influenced the bold brushstrokes of Chuang’s landscapes or the collages he produced in the 1960s. From an ideological and intellectual perspective, Chuang seems to be attracted to the artists who share his interest in the displacement of physical images, and who “insisted upon the validity of combining the techniques of gestural abstraction with recognizable imagery”

(Wechsler, 2007: 151-152). Picasso, the CoBrA Group, and especially Willem de

Kooning, with their half representational/half abstract works, hence served as

“Western” inspirators of the artist’s production.

While Hsiao Chin claims to put qi 炁 at the very center of his art, Chuang

Che’s aesthetic is grounded on the dynamism of qi 氣. Hsiao’s emphasis on qi 炁, the grand energy represented in the painter’s “cosmic landscape”, highlights the artist’s resolution to make his artworks a space of spiritual reflection and calm contemplation. Chuang Che’s lively qi 氣, on the other hand, witnesses the artist’s attachment both to nature and to Chinese painting tradition. Very interestingly, however, both qis seem to eventually lead the painters to the central issue of human life. After his daughter passed away in 1990, Hsiao depicted her as a line of different color moving freely in his “eternal gardens”, thus giving visual representation to his belief that Samantha had become part of the original matter of qi 炁 that moves the universe and from which she originated. It was around the same period, when the painter moved to Dobbs Ferry in the state of New York, that Chuang Che’s abstract landscapes appeared to reach almost the same conclusion: man and nature, the self and the environment are not in contraposition, but rather unified by the same vital breath, the same qi 氣. It is thus fascinating to notice that, despite all the indisputable differences between the ideologies of Hsiao and Chuang, as well as the distance in the outward appearance of their works, the anthropological reflection on the role of man within the universe appears to be, for both of them, the final goal

308 of art-making. With their creations, both artists also distanced themselves from the existential torment that permeates post-war Western abstract art: within the senselessness of violence and chaos, Hsiao and Chuang dared to venture into the possibility of a meaning. Hsiao Chin saw in Daoism and Buddhism a possible “path to redemption” (Hsiao Chin, 1983e: 111) for the spirituality-deprived Western society, while Chuang Che’s gestures did not want to be a form of self-affirmation, but rather an orderly and positive act, able to reconstruct a lost order and to propose a rethinking of the relation of man and nature (Peng, 2016).

The present essay served as an initial investigation of the art of Hsiao Chin and Chuang Che, focusing primarily on the two painters’ understanding of “East” and “West”. Much more could be said about both of them, and given the exceptional number of writings Hsiao and Chuang produced, the analysis hereby proposed could certainly be further developed. Moreover, this research opens to other innumerable paths of investigation. Firstly, Hsiao Chin and Chuang Che were not the only members of the Eastern Painting Association and the Fifth Moon Group who reached for the “West” after their participation in the modernist art movement in Taiwan. Ho Kan and Li Yuan-chia of the Ton-Fan Group, for example, followed

Hsiao Chin in Europe in the 1960s, and also settled down there. Fong Chung-Ray, a member of the Fifth Moon Group, decided on the other hand to transfer to the

United States in the mid-1970s. Analyzing the works of these artists would help expand the conclusions of the present essay, showing that Hsiao Chin and Chuang

Che are not isolated cases, but that the painters’ belonging either to the Fifth Moon

Group or the Eastern Painting Association somehow determined the direction on which they set their whole artistic careers. Secondly, the emergence of abstract art in Taiwan in the post-second world war period could be compared to and associated with the contemporary development of the same trend in Japan, Korea, and Hong Kong. Studying the different approaches to abstraction in the East-Asian region would further demonstrate the existence of many “Easts” and many “Wests”, highlighting the impossibility of adopting monolithic, pre-established categories in

309 analyzing artistic creation. The legacy of the Fifth Moon and the Eastern Painting

Association in Taiwan, the differences between the artists presented in this thesis and the production of Zao Wou-Ki or Chu Teh-Chun in Paris, the development of abstract art in Mainland China after the end of Maoism, the references to tradition in Chinese contemporary art, the role of spirituality in Chinese modern painting or the diaspora of Taiwanese artists are just some of the other themes to which the present study could lead.

By delving into the art and thinking of Hsiao Chin and Chuang Che, it is possible to comprehend the originality of the two painters’ “Taiwanese” perspective.

International abstraction gave the artists belonging to the Taiwanese modernist art movement the opportunity to imagine a synthesis between two cultures whose

“encounter”, until that moment, had been more similar to a “clash”. Most importantly, however, in the art of Hsiao and Chuang it is possible to appreciate the variety of different approaches that the meeting of “East” and “West” had been able to produce in the twentieth century, and to understand that outlooks that are sometimes lumped under the single label of “East” and that are equally concerned with the preservation of the “essence” of Chinese painting tradition, actually present profoundly divergent points of view due to the layered, complex and deep philosophies on which they are grounded. Despite the two painters’ constant reference to their cultural identity, their works also confirm the uniquely personal nature of artistic creation, which is always expression of the artist’s individual self, that unfathomable dimension on which no analysis or categorization will ever be able to encroach. Ultimately, Hsiao Chin and Chuang Che’s artworks can only be made more easily intelligible by this research, but their meaning will only disclose to those who accept to truly experience them and face the challenge they pose, thus understanding that, despite all geographical and cultural differences, human beings always have the opportunity to build bridges instead of walls.

310

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‘Holistic View, Microscopic Vision’”. In Chuang Che: Holistic View and Microscopic Vision, edited by Lee, Steven, 10-12. Asia Art Center. Liu, Yong-ren. 2015. “On the Effusive Vitality of Chuang Che's Art”. In Effusive Vitality: Chuang Che Retrospective Exhibition, 43-48. Taipei Fine Arts Museum. Lu, Ching-fu. 1993. “Modernism’s Experimental Period”. In Taiwan Art (1945-1993), edited by Li Ping, 51-61. Taipei Fine Arts Museum. Lü, Peng. 2017. “China and Taiwan: the Potential for Modernism”. In From China to Taiwan, 1955-1985: the pioneers of abstraction, edited by Vazieux, Sabine, 248-253. Éditions Racine. Ma, Lesley. 2016. “Broken Ground: Chuang Che’s Modernist Paintings of the 1960s”. In Yishu 15 (1), 19-31. Mason, Penelope. 2004. A History of Japanese Art. Pearson. National Museum of History. 1970. Five Chinese painters: Fifth Moon exhibition. National Museum of History. Pan, Fan 潘襎. 2017. Yuanqi. Pangbo: Zhuang Zhe. 元氣.磅礴: 莊喆. National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts. Pan, Hsie-jen. 2011. The Modernist Wave. Taiwan Art in the 1950s and 1960s. National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts. Peng, Chang-Ming. 2016. “Réminiscences, résurgences et création: l’abstraction-paysage de Chuang Che”. In Chuang Che: 50 ans d’abstraction, 10-15. Éditions Galerie Hervé Courtaigne. Pola, Francesca. 2017. Interwined trajectories. Hsiao Chin, Giorgio Marconi and Milan. In Hsiao Chin. Una Collezione. Skira. Pugliatti, Teresa. 1985. Hsiao Chin: Ancient Culture in a Modern Idiom. In Hsiao. Messina: Industria poligrafica della Sicilia. Retrieved from: http://www.hsiaochin.net/inglese/index.php?action=antologia_critica. Quintavalle, Arturo Carlo. 2008. “Hsiao and the origins of the reflection on art in China”. In Hsiao Chin, Skira, 25-26. Retrieved from: www.hsiaochin.net/inglese/index.php?action=antologia_critica Schiffer, Daniel Salvatore. 1988. “Hsiao Chin - Il segno senza tempo”. In Hsiao Chin, 9-30. Mazzotta. Stanley-Baker, Joan. 1992. “Chuang Che: An Appreciation”. In Solo Exhibition of Chuang Che, 15-20. Taipei Fine Arts Museum. Sotheby’s. 2019. Hsiao Chin. Infinite Universe. Sotheby’s. Sullivan, Michael. 1989. The Meeting of Eastern and Western Art. University of California Press. Sullivan, Michael. 1996. Art and artists of twentieth-century China. University of California Press.

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Tagliaferri, Aldo. 2009. “The way Hsiao Chin draws on what is not there”. In Hsiao Chin, 101.118. Carlo Cambi Editore. Retrieved from: http://www.hsiaochin.net/inglese/index.php?action=antologia_critica. Tao, Wen-yue. 2019a. “The Evocative Imagery of an Art Giant: a Review of the Modern Art Development in Taiwan under the Influence of Li Chun-shan”. In Pioneers of the Avant-Garde Movement in Taiwan: from Li Chun-shan to his disciples, 16-25. National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts. Tao, Wen-yue. 2019b. “Heeding Creativity and Instruction from the Subconcious – Reading Lee Chun-shan”. In Transforming Nature into Pure Color: The Abstract Art of Lee Chun-Shan, 7- 9. Taiwan Soka Association. Thorp; Robert L. and Richard Ellis Vinograd. 2001. Chinese art and cultur. Harry N. Abrams, 2001 Tsai Chao-yi. 2015. “Topology of Meaning of Life: Retrospect and Prospect of Hsiao Chin’s Art”. In Eighty years of energy: Hsiao Chin's retrospect & prospect, 20-27. National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts. Tseng, Pedro. 2007. “From modern painting of China to Chinese Modern Painting”. In Chuang Che: Deep Ridge. Remote Way. Solo Exhibition at National Art Museum of China, 74-77. Asia Art Center. Tseng, Pedro. 2012. “The Major Lineages and Genres of Taiwanese Abstract Art”. In Formless form: Taiwanese Abstract Art. Taipei Fine Arts Museum, edited by Liao, Tsun-ling, . Taipei Fine Arts Museum. Tsuei, Yeong-shuei. 2011. Lee Chun-shan Centennial Memorial Exhibition. National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts. Vanni, Maurizio. 2009. Hsiao Chin. In-finite journey 1955-2008. In Hsiao Chin, 41-69. Carlo Cambi Editore. Retrived from: www.hsiaochin.net/inglese/index.php?action=antologia_critica Vazieux, Sabine. 2017. “The Aesthetic Encounter and Fusion between the East and the West”. In From China to Taiwan, 1955-1985: the pioneers of abstraction, edited by Vazieux, Sabine, 17- 19. Éditions Racine. Vescovo, Marisa. 1990. “Dopo il 1945”. In Astrattismo, 39-50. Giunti. Wechsler, Jeffrey. 1997. “From Asian Traditions to Modern Expressions: Abstract Art by Asian Americans”. In Asian traditions/modern expressions: Asian American artists and abstraction, 1945-1970, 58-145) Wechsler, Jeffrey. 2007. “The Nature of Abstraction”. In Chuang Che: Deep Ridge. Remote Way. Solo Exhibition at National Art Museum of China, 150-153. Asia Art Center. Wechsler, Jeffrey. 2016. “The modernity of tradition”. In Chuang Che. Findlay Galleries. Wu, Maggie. 2017. “Foreword. A Pioneer of Chinese Abstract Art”. In A Historical Dialogue with Art vol.1, edited by Maggie Wu. Punto Press.

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Wu, Maggie. 2018. Legend of the Rambling King: Side View of Hsiao Chin. Punto Press. Yip, Wai-lim. 1985. Hsiao Chin, a Neotaoist Approach to Painting [Interview to Hsiao Chin]. The Hong Kong Institute for Promotion of Chinese Culture. Yip, Wai-lim. 1995. “Meditations: From Condensation and Dispersion to the Void – the Morphology of Hsiao Chin’s Paintings”. In Hsiao Chin: the odyssey 1953-1994, 46-62. Taipei Fine Arts Museum. Yu Kwang-Chung 余光中. 1961. “Wuyue huazhan 五月畫展”. Wenxing 文星 (44): 25-26. Retrieved from: https://www.liukuosung.org/document- info1.php?lang=tw&Year=1956&p=18 Yu Kwang-Chung. 1964. “On from Clairvoyancism”. In Five Chinese painters: Fifth Moon exhibition, 1970. National Museum of History. Zeng, Dejin. 2005. “Preface”. In Theme: Primal Form - An Exhibition of Chuang Che's Paintings, 7. National Museum of History. Zhuang, Bohe 莊伯和. 1993. “Zhuiqiu genyuande xing 追求根源的形”. In Zhuang Zhe 1960- 1990 莊喆 1960-1990. Longmen Art Gallery.

Webliography Hsiao Chin, Artist Website: www.hsiaochin.net Hsiao Chin, Artist Website: www.hsiaochin.com Hsiao Chin International Art Foundation: www.hsiaochin.org.tw 3812 Gallery: www.3812gallery.com/ Chinese Text Project: https://ctext.org Encyclopedia Britannica: www.britannica.com

Documentaries Interview of Hsiao Chin (French subtitles) / 藝術家蕭勤訪談. Directed by Sabine Vazieux and Yu Hsiao Hwei. Galerie Vazieux, 2015. Retrieved from: www.hsiaochin.com/video/4-hsiaochin-a-historical-dialogue-with-art-a-documentary-of-hsiao-chin/ Hsiao Chin: A Historical Dialogue with Art. Directed by Zhang Keming. 3812 Gallery, 2020. Retrieved from: www.youtube.com/watch?v=fK1sLEz8x_w In my beginning is my end: Hsiao Chin. 3812 gallery & Daugavpils Mark Rothko Art Centre, 2020. Retrieved from: www.youtube.com/watch?v=20K1C-svKaI&feature=emb_title Interview de Chuang Che (French subtitles). Produced by Sabine Vazieux and Yu Hsiao Hwei. Galerie Vazieux, 2014. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fK1sLEz8x_w 莊喆回顧展→鴻濛與酣暢 Effusive Vitality: CHUANG CHE Retrospective Exhibition (Chinese). Texts by Liu Yong-ren. Taipei Fine Arts Museum, 2015. Retrieved from: www.youtube.com/watch?v=apa51iscMXo&feature=youtu.be

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Glossary of Chinese and Japanese names and terms

English translation / Transliteration most often seen in Pinyin Characters English-language writings Asai Chū - 浅井忠

Azuma Kenjiro - 吾妻兼治郎

Bada Shanren Bada Shanren 八大山人

Bihui Magazine Bihui 筆匯

Bishi (“Brush momentum”, technical Bishi 筆勢 term describing the vigor of the calligraphic gesture)

Black Western Painting Society - - 黑色洋画会 Kuroiro Yōga-kai

Book of Changes (Ancient Chinese Yijing 易經 text)

Cai Yuanpei Cai Yuanpei 蔡元培

Central Art Association Zhongbu meishu 中部美術研究會 yanjiuhui

Chan School (Buddhist school) Chanzong 禪宗

Chao Chung-hsiang Zhao Chunxiang 趙春翔

Chen Cheng-po Chen Chengbo 陳澄波

Chen Chin Chen Jin 陳進

Chen Hongshou Chen Hongshou 陳洪綬

Chen Jingrong Chen Jingrong 陳景容

Chen Shizeng Chen Shizeng 陳師曾

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Chen Shuren Chen Shuren 陳樹人

Chen Ting-shih Chen Tingshi 陳庭詩

Chen Yin-huei Chen Yinhui 陳銀輝

Cheng Chung-chuan Zheng Qiongjuan 鄭瓊娟

Chiang Han-tung Jiang Handong 江漢東

Chiang Kai-shek Jiang Zhongzheng 蔣中正

Chin Sung Qin Song 秦松

China Modern Art Center Zhongguo xianzai 中國現代藝術中心 yishu zhongxin

Chinese Arts and Culture Zhongguo Wenyi 中國文藝協會 Association Xiehui

Chinese Fine Arts Association Zhongguo meishu 中國美術協會 xiehui

Chinese Independent Art Zhonghua duli 中華獨立美術學會 Association meishu xuehui

Chongqing (Chinese city) Chongqing 重慶

Chu Te-chun Zhu Dequn 朱德群

Chu Tehi-I Qu Deyi 曲德義

Chu Weibor Zhu Weibai 朱為白

Chuang Che Zhuang Zhe 莊喆

Chuang Yan Zhuang Yan 莊嚴

Daodejing (Ancient Daoist text) Daodejing 道德經

Eastern Painting Association / Ton Dongfang huahui 東方畫會 Fan Art Group

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Eight outlaws (Press nickname Bada xiangma 八大響馬 describing the eight founders of the Eastern Painting Association)

Era Art Association Jiyuan meishuhui 紀元美術會

Esoteric School (Buddhist school) Mizong 密宗

European Newsletter (Newsletter Ouzhou tongxun 歐洲通訊 written by Hsiao Chin for the United Daily News in the late 1950s)

Fan Kuan Fan Kuan 范寬

Feibai technique (“Flying white”, Feibai 飛白 calligraphic technique that consists in leaving blank traces of white in the stroke instead of applying the ink uniformly)

Feng Chaoran Feng Chaoran 馮超然

Fifth Moon Group (May Art Society) wuyue huahui 五月畫會

Fine Arts Class (Educational Meishu Yanjiuban 美術研究班 institution founded in 1951 and aimed at the promotion of avant- garde art in Taiwan)

Fong Chung-ray Feng Zhongrui 馮鍾睿

Foujita Tsuguharu - 藤田嗣治

Fu Baoshi Fu Baoshi 傅抱石

Gao Jianfu Gao Jianfu 高劍父

Gao Qifeng Gao Qifeng 高奇峰

Gōhara Kotō - 郷原古統

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Gouache painting (“glue-and-color Jiaocaihua 膠彩畫 painting”, glue-based paint)

Greenhouse Fine Arts Research Lüshe meishu 綠舍美術研究會 Association yanjiuhui

Gu Fu-sheng Gu Fusheng 顧福生

Gu Xianliang Gu Xianliang 顧獻樑

Guan Liang Guan Liang 關良

Guanxiu Guanxiu 貫休

Guo Dongrong Guo Dongrong 郭東榮

Guo Xi Guo Xi 郭熙

Guo Yulun Guo Yulun 郭豫倫

Han Hsiang-ning Han Xiangning 韓湘寧

He Tiehua He Tiehua 何鐵華

Heavenly Horse Society Tianmahui 天馬會

Ho Chao-chu He Zhaoqu 何肇衢

Ho Kan Huo Gang 霍剛

Hsia Yan Xia Yang 夏陽

Hsiao Chin Xiao Qin 蕭勤

Hsiao Ju-sung Xiao Rusong 蕭如松

Hsiao Ming-hsien Xiao Mingxian 蕭明賢

Hsiao Yu-mei Xiao Youmei 蕭友梅

Hsin Sheng Daily News Xin sheng bao 新生報

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Hsinchu Art Research Association Xinzhu meishu 新竹美術研究會 yanjiuhui

Hsu Fu-kuan Xu Fuguan 徐復觀

Hsu Yu-jen Xu Yuren 許雨仁

Hu Chi-chung Hu Qizhong 胡奇中

Huang Binhong Huang Binhong 黃賓虹

Huang Chaohu Huang Chaohu 黃朝湖,

Huang Huacheng Huang Huacheng 黃華成

Huang Junbi Huang Junbi 黄君壁

Huang Rung-tsan Huang Rongcan 黃榮燦

Huang Yi Huang Yi 黃異

Huawai Painting Association Huawai huahui 畫外畫會

Huineng Huineng 惠能

Independent Fine Arts Exhibition Duli meizhan 獨立美展

Jingguan / Tranquil contemplation Jingguan 靜觀 (Spiritual principle advocated by Hsiao Chin and the other members of the Punto International Art Movement)

Kang Youwei Kang Youwei 康有為

Kaohsiung Art Research Association Gaoxiong meishu 高雄美術研究會 yanjiuhui

Kinoshita Seigai - 木下靜涯

Kuo Hsue-hu Guo Xuehu 郭雪湖

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Kuo Jen-chang Guo Zhenchang 郭振昌

Kuomintang (Political party) Guomindang 國民黨

Kuroda Seiki - 黒田清輝

Lai Chuanjian Lai Chuanjian 賴傳鑑

Lee Shi-chi Li Xiqi 李錫奇

Lee Shih-chiao Li Shiqiao 李石樵

Li Chun-shan Li Zhongsheng 李仲生

Li Fangzhi Li Fangzhi 李芳枝

Li Keran Li Keran 李可染

Li Meishu Li Meishu 李梅樹

Li Shan Li Shan 李鱓

Li Sixun Li Sixun 李思訓

Li Yuan-chia Li Yuanjia 李元佳

Liang Kai Liang Kai 梁楷

Liao Chi-chun Liao Jichun 廖繼春

Lin Fengmian Lin Fengmian 林風眠

Lin Sheng-yang Lin Shengyang 林聖楊

Lin Yushan Lin Yushan 林玉山

Lingnan School (Painting school Lingnan huapai 嶺南畫派 initiated in the early 20th century by Gao Jianfu, Gao Qifeng and Chen Shuren. The school sought to integrate certain Western painting

325 techniques, such as chiaroscuro or a tridimensional rendition of volumes, with Chinese traditional media, composition conventions, and painting techniques.

Liu Eshi Liu Eshi 劉峨士

Liu Kuo-sung Liu Guosong 劉國松

Liu Shi Liu Shi 劉獅

Liubai technique (“Leaving blank”, Liubai 留白 traditional ink painting technique that consisted in the intentional inclusion of blank areas in a painting)

Lu Xun Lu Xun 鲁迅

Lui Shou-kwan Lü Shoukun 呂壽琨

Ma Shouhua Ma Shouhua 馬壽華

Ma Yuan Ma Yuan 馬遠

Mao Zedong Mao Zedong 毛澤東

May Art Society (see Fifth Moon Group)

Mi Fei/Mi Fu Mi Fu 米黻

Modern Eye Group Xiandaiyan huahui 現代眼畫會

Modern Painting Exhibition Xiandai huihua 現代繪畫聯展 lianzhan

Modern Printmaking Association Xiandai banhuahui 現代版畫會

Modernist art movement Xiandai huihua 現代繪畫運動 yundong

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Muqi Muqi 牧谿

Nakamura Ken’ichi - 中村研一

National Center of the Arts Guoli yishuguan 國立藝術館

National Museum of History Guoli lishi bowuguan 國立歷史博物館

National painting (Term coined at Guohua 國畫 the end of the 19th century in Mainland China to distinguish traditional Chinese painting in ink on paper/silk from Western painting or xihua, which mainly comprehended oils and watercolors) National Taipei Teacher’s College, Taiwan shengli Taibei 臺灣省立臺北師範 now National Taipei University of shifan daxue 學校 Education National Taiwan Normal University Taiwan shengli shifan 臺灣省立師範大學, daxue

New Art Magazine Xin yishu 新藝術

New Culture Movement Xinwenhua yundong 新文化運動

New Ink Art Movement Xin Shuimo Yundong 新水墨運動

Ni Yide Ni Yide 倪貽德

Nihonga (Painting style originated in - 日本画 Japan at the end of the 19th century that combined traditional Japanese media with Western painting and drawing techniques)

Nikakai (Japanese art society) - 二科会

Ou-yang Wenyuan Ouyang Wenyuan 歐陽文苑

Pan Tianshou Pan Tianshou 潘天壽

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Pang Xunqin Pang Xunqin 龐薰琹

Provincial Fine Arts Exhibition Taiwansheng meishu 台灣省美術展覽會 zhanlanhui

Pu Ru / Pu Xinyu Pu Ru / Pu Xinyu 溥儒/ 溥心畬

Punto International Art Movement Pangtu Guoji Yishu 龐圖國際藝術運動 Yundong

Qi Baishi Qi Baishi 齊白石

Seiji Tōgō - 東郷青児

Sesshū Tōyō Sesshū Tōyō 雪舟等楊

Seven Friends Painting Association Qiyou huahui 七友畫會

Seyōga (“Western painting”, one of - 西洋画 the two painting categories accepted at official art exhibitions during Japanese colonial rule in Taiwan)

Shenxiu Shenxiu 神秀

Shitao Shitao 石濤

Shiy De-jinn Xi Dejin 席德進

Splashed painting technique Pocai 潑彩 (Painting technique invented by the Tang Dynasty painter Wang Mo and later adopted by Zhang Daqian)

Spontaneity (Daoist concept) Ziran 自然

Storm Society Juelanshe 決欄社

Tainan Fine Arts Research Tainan meishu 台南美術研究會 Association yanjiuhui

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Taiwan Fine Arts Exhibition (Taiwan - 台湾美術展覧会 bijutsu tenrankai, Taiten)

Taiwan Government-General Art - 台湾総督府美術展 Exhibition (Taiwansōtokufu bijutsu 覧会 tenrankai, Futen)

Taiwan Students’ Fine Art Quanxing xuesheng 全省學生美展 Exhibition meizhan

Taiwan Teachers’ Fine Art Quanxing jiaoyuan 全省教員美展 Exhibition meizhan

Taiyang Art Association Taiyang meishu 台陽美術協會 xiehui

Ten People Calligraphy Society Shiren shuhui 十人書會

Tommy Chen Chen Daoming 陳道明

Ton Fan Art Group (see Eastern Painting Association)

Toyōga (“Eastern painting”, one of - 東画 the two painting categories accepted at official art exhibitions during Japanese colonial rule in Taiwan)

Tunghai University Donghai daxue 東海大學

United Daily News Lianhebao 聯合報

Wang Mo Wang Mo 王墨

Wang Shijie Wang Shijie 王世杰

Wen Zhengming Wen Zhengming 文徵明

Wenxing Magazine Wenxing 文星

Wu Hao Wu Hao 吳昊

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Wu Hufan Wu Hufan 吳湖帆

Wucius Wong Wang Wuxie 王無邪

Xia Gui Xia Gui 夏圭

Xie He Xie He 謝赫

Xieyi (“Writing ideas”, painting style Xieyi 寫意 unconcerned with an accurate depiction of details and characterized by bold and swift brushstrokes)

Xu Beihong Xu Beihong 徐悲鴻

Xu Wei Xu Wei 徐渭

Yang Sanlang Yang Sanlang 楊三郎

Yu Kwang-chung Yu Guangzhong 余光中

Yuyu Yang Yang Yingfeng 楊英風

Zao Wou-ki Zhao Wuji 趙無極

Zhang Daqian Zhang Daqian 張大千

Zhang Longyan Zhang Longyan 張隆延

Zhang Zhidong Zhang Zhidong 張之洞

Zhao Shou Zhao Shou 趙獸

Zheng Xie Zheng Xie 鄭燮

Zhu Ruoji Zhu Ruoji 朱若極

Zong Bing Zong Bing 宗炳

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Appendix I – “Our words”

Time never stopped its course, and everything in the world is engrossed in the course of time, forever changing. Men ceaselessly try to use their intelligence to change the environment they are in, and yet they live in an ever-changing environment. From a vertical perspective, history leads us to the present and opens us to the future; from a horizontal perspective, regions and nations associate and mutually influence each other, thus gradually staging the evolution of humanity. The whole twentieth century has been affecting us dramatically, we must now enter the environment of the epoch of today and catch up with the tide of the world we live in. Only by constantly absorbing new notions will it be possible to develop creativity. If we look at art, by clinging to the old forms we suffocated the development of Chinese art, not only forever preventing the spirit and the vigor of tradition from expressing themselves, but also putting them onto a path of constant and inexorable decline. Western art from the Renaissance to the 19th century has rooted in and developed through the research of nature itself (ziranbenshen), but the stimulus of

Eastern Art at the end of the 19th century gave rise to an abrupt change. The traditional, narrow path of naturalism was abandoned, Western Art ventured on the large road of conceptualism and started researching the essence of painting itself, hence gaining universality to the utmost reach, embracing the peculiar expressions and the intrinsic shapes of every nation and region up to the present. Due to mutual exchanges, local cultures inevitably perish little by little, but their spirit always remains the strongest foundation for new creativity. China’s traditional notion of painting, at its root, is absolutely identical to this modern, cosmopolitan notion of painting; they only show little differences from the point of view of expressive shapes and forms. If we could let modern painting develop in

China, then the innumerable artistic treasures of our country would inevitably appear in today’s international trends with a new attitude, marching on the great highway of constant progress. However, since Chinese people had very little access to modern artworks, and since they naturally feel an excessive passion for traditional art, they cannot help having a prejudice towards modern art. They believe it is just some weird and fashionable decoration invented in the West, while in fact modern art has a historical foundation and it has

331 developed and matured as a product of its own time. Modern art is on no account trendy, frivolous thing that appeared in the time of a day, and the concepts it advocates have never been so from its very beginning. We therefore strongly desire that Chinese people could reconsider their belief that Western art is necessarily realist. On the contrary, if they could take advantage of their original Chinese perspective, it would not be hard for them to enjoy and delight in modern art. True art is by no means the product of the “ivory tower”, and it is not a tool in the hand the narcissists, but it is for everyone to enjoy. However, we oppose the false theory of the “massification of art” promoted by the Communist clique, because that would mean ignoring the diverse aesthetic needs of people, cordoning off their aesthetic capability and oppressing their soul. On the contrary, we believe that the

“artisticization of the masses” is freedom, and that such artisticization would allow the soul to enjoy unlimited expansion. Artists create all sorts of artworks, hence all sorts of people can find an art they like. Contrary to the Communists then, who impose on people the styles of art they must appreciate, our belief will without a doubt lead to an expansion and a broadening of the scope of art, as this is the tendency of art in the free world. Lastly, we say: we highly value the immense artistic heritage of China, but a nation always has to live and grow. In the process of growing, on the one hand, the nation leaves history behind, on the other, it needs new resources. We are already in the 1960s, what has China left in the past half of the century? And what does it need now? We believe it is now time for Chinese artists to start considering these issues.

We hereby thank all the Spanish writers that took part in the exhibit.

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我們的話時間從未停止過它的運行, 世間底一切都投人在時間中，隨時變化著，人類不停地使用其智慧改變其環境, 而又生活在繼續改變著的環境裹。在縱的方面, 歷史指導著現在而開發木來, 在橫的方面, 各地域或民族團交往而相互影響. 於是, 遂演成了人類的進化。二十世紀的一切早已嚴重地影響著我們，我們必需進入到今日人的時代環境裹. 趕上今日的世界潮流, 隨時吸收新的觀念, 然後才能發展創造, 就藝術方面而言，如果僅是固守舊有的形式、實為窒息了中國藝術的生長, 不但使傳統的精神永遠無從發揮, 並且反而造成了日趨沒落底必然悄勢。西洋繪書自文藝復興到十九世紀中期，都是遵循對自然本身的探究立其足根而嚮展的, 到十九世紀末期因受束方藝術的刺激, 興起了劇烈的變化, 放棄其傳統的狹窄底自然主義, 而為廣闊的觀念主義,並由從繪畫藝術的本質上底探討而發展, 故極具廣大的普遍性，而可容納任何民族的獨特表現, 時至今日, 各種地域性的固有形式, 必因世界各地文化頻相交流而漸漸消滅，但其精神則可永為新的創造底最力強的基本·我國傳統的繪書觀, 與現代世界性的繪畫觀在根本上完全一致, 惟於表現的形式上稍有差異，如能使現代繪畫在我國普遍發展, 則中國的無限藝術寶藏, 必將在今日世界潮流中以嶄新的姿態出現, 而走向了日新不已之偉大坦途, 惟以國人因現代作風的作品甚少介紹, 而對固有的傳統藝術存過份的熱愛, 對於現代藝術難免抱有偏見，認為是西洋新起的一種怪誕不經的流行花樣，實際上它是有著歷史的根據, 和時代的因素發展而成的，決不是一種成於朝夕間的所謂流行浮薄的東西, 並且在念上中國卻早已如此，因此甚願國人能一反過去對西洋畫必須畫得逼真底觀念，而用中國人原來的看法, 就不難領略到現代藝喃的趣味了。真正的藝術決不是所謂象牙塔中的產品也決不是自我陶醉的工具，而是給大家欣賞的，但是我們反對共產集團的藝術大眾化底謬論, 因為如此正是減少了人們美感的多樣需要, 縮小了人們美感的的範圍, 這不啻為一種心靈底壓迫, 我們認為大眾藝術化是對的, 一方面盡量提倡以養成風氣, 另一方面將各種各樣的藝術放在人們的眼前, 這樣才能使人們的視野到了自由而使心靈的享受擴展無限。藝術家創造各種的性格典型底作品· 於是, 各種性格典型的人們也都可以找到他們所喜愛的藝術, 那末, 比起共產集團規定人們必須以何種作風為藝術欣賞的對象而言, 我們的意見, 也是自由世界共同的趨向，將是毫無疑義的加強了藝術的廣大和深遠。最後我們這樣說；中國一切美術的偉大遺產, 我們極為珍視，但是一個民族必須是永遠活著的, 生長著的, 在生長過程中, 她一方面留下了歷史，一方面需要著新的資源· 現在已經是二十世紀的六十年代了，她在過去的半個世紀曾留下了什麼? 而現在將需要著什麼？我們想，中國的藝術家們, 至少到現在是應該開始注意到了。謹在此向參加展出的西班牙作家們致最大之敬意與謝忱。

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