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An Exploration of the Relationship Between the Art and Life of Irene Chou

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An Exploration of the Relationship Between the Art and Life of Irene Chou "I am My Art; My Paintings are Me;: An Exploration of the Relationship Between the Art and Life of Irene Chou Author Butcher, Lorena Sun Published 2013 Thesis Type Thesis (PhD Doctorate) School School of Humanities DOI https://doi.org/10.25904/1912/2127 Copyright Statement The author owns the copyright in this thesis, unless stated otherwise. Downloaded from http://hdl.handle.net/10072/367682 Griffith Research Online https://research-repository.griffith.edu.au “I am my art; my paintings are me”: An exploration of the relationship between the art and life of Irene Chou Lorena Sun Butcher BSc (Communicative Disorders), MSc (Communicative Disorders), MEd (Research) Thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy School of Humanities, Griffith University November 2012 Statement of originality This work has not previously been submitted for a degree or diploma in any university. To the best of my knowledge and belief, the thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made in the thesis itself. (Signed)_____________________________ Lorena Sun Butcher ii Abstract Among the founding members of the New Ink Painting Movement in Hong Kong in the 1960s, Irene Chou (1924–2011) went the furthest in transcending the traditional boundaries of Chinese ink painting. One outstanding feature of Chou’s long career as an artist was that from the beginning of her career to the very end of her life, she continuously shifted from one style of painting to another. After painting sexually charged “landscape paintings”, she began painting line paintings. Just as she became known for her line paintings, Chou abruptly shifted to piled ink paintings. After she moved from Hong Kong to Brisbane, she shifted from painting on the traditional medium of xuan paper to painting on silk, board, satin, and even canvas and ming paper. As Chou’s work shifted from one medium to another, it became increasingly colourful. Some of her work even verged on being psychedelic. At that point, a critic warned her that she was painting herself into a dangerous zone. Why, this thesis asks, did Chou keep making so many shifts in her work, even though in some cases they appeared to put her career at risk? Most attempts to explain the shifts in Chou’s work have attributed particular shifts in her work to certain major events in her life. For example, her shift from the dark piled ink paintings to the brighter impact structural stroke paintings has been seen as the result of her getting over the death of her husband. Likewise, after her stroke, her shift from painting on xuan paper to painting on hemp paper with a greater use of colour was viewed by one critic as the result of Chou’s celebration of a new lease on life. This study demonstrates that there was no one-to-one relationship between the shifts in her work and the major events in her life. By employing an in-depth exploration into Irene Chou’s life and work, relying on the artist as the primary source of data, this study demonstrates that each shift took place for a host of reasons, interacting in a complex way. However, the underlying motivation for Chou to undertake the shifts was always the same: the desire to use her iii painting as a way to resolve inner conflicts and at the same time reach a higher level of attainment in her spiritual aspiration. In her art, Chou sought relief from an emotional wound first inflicted during her formative years, which was reopened in her married life. In fact, it was this irrepressible urge, in the face of the lack of a ready-made vernacular in the visual language, to tell the story of a modern Chinese woman that motivated her to develop her own visual language in the first place. The developmental nature of her visual language, namely the readiness of particular techniques, was another reason for certain shifts to take place in her work. But art would merely have been a form of therapy if Chou had not also developed a wider vision of reality. Right at the beginning of her career, she embraced the Song dynasty philosopher Lu Jiuyuan’s philosophy of recovering one’s original self so that one can be at one with the universe. For Chou, recovering her original self involved not only the practice of qigong, which gave her greater access to her inner self, the subject-matter of her whole oeuvre, but also a constant effort to live a life true to her inner self. While the shifts in her work did not have a one-to-one relationship with the major events in her life, the way Chou lived her life in response to these events contributed to the continuous shifts in her work. By living as she painted and painting as she lived, Chou came to achieve what her fellow New Ink painters set out to do: make Chinese ink painting contemporary. iv Acknowledgements My foremost gratitude is to Irene Chou, who sadly passed away in July 2011. Without her generosity with her time—or, more appropriately, with her life—this study would not have materialised. Her generosity of spirit gave me the opportunity to observe her life in myriad situations and to follow her work over a period of nearly two decades. In my long struggle to write this thesis, she neither encouraged me nor discouraged me but reminded to me to stay focused on my research question. During the course of my writing, she never asked to see what I had written, giving me the freedom to come to my own understanding of her life and work. I learned much from her, and I hope the thesis does justice to all that she taught me. Among the academics who helped me form and shape ideas for this study I want to express my special thanks to my husband, John Butcher. His patience in guiding me in my writing and his encouragement for me to persevere with the task when the going was tough helped me to eventually complete the thesis. Aside from my husband, I am also most grateful to Dr David Ip, Dr Lee Chun-yi, Dr Lai Chi-kong and Ms Hung Sheng, who all gave me ideas and insights during my many discussions with them about my thesis. I would also like to thank Jack Wu for inserting the Chinese characters in my bibliography, Charlie and Kate of Sunnybank Stationery for their help in reproducing the images used in this thesis and Susan Jarvis for editing, formatting and tidying up this thesis before submission. My deepest gratitude is to Professor Pat Buckridge and Professor Wayne Hudson, who took me on as a student when I did not have the background to undertake such a study. I would also like to express my thanks to Dr Belinda McKay for being willing to step in as the co-supervisor after Professor Hudson left Griffith University. I am grateful to Professor Buckridge particularly for putting up with a thesis that took far too long to complete. v vi Contents Statement of originality ........................................................................................... ii Abstract .................................................................................................................... iii Acknowledgements .................................................................................................. v List of figures ........................................................................................................... x Chapter 1: Introduction ............................................................................................ 1 Chapter 2: A Middle-class Shanghai Upbringing (1924–47) ............................... 17 Intellectual parents.......................................................................................................... 17 An unintentional art education ....................................................................................... 19 A middle-class life .......................................................................................................... 30 A daughter ...................................................................................................................... 34 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 42 Chapter 3: No ordinary housewife (1947–58) ....................................................... 44 Marrying Yang Yanqi..................................................................................................... 44 Becoming a mother......................................................................................................... 48 A partner in writing ........................................................................................................ 49 An open marriage ........................................................................................................... 57 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 64 Chapter 4: An idiosyncratic art education (1958–68) .......................................... 66 Lessons with Zhao Shaoang ........................................................................................... 66 Reading the Bible ........................................................................................................... 73 Studying traditional Chinese painting ............................................................................ 74 Studying Western art history and theory ........................................................................ 74 Experimenting techniques in modern art .......................................................................
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