Details
LIU KUO-SUNG
(LIU GUOSONG, Chinese, B. 1932)
Through Rapids and Gorges
signed and dated in Chinese (lower left)
ink and colour with collage on paper
paper: 130.5 x 74 cm. (51 3/8 x 29 1/8 in.)
Painted in 1967
two seals of the artist
Provenance
From the Collection of Dr. George Beckmann and thence by descent to the present owner
Literature
Chu-Tsing Li, Liu Kuo-Sung: The Growth of a Modern Chinese Artist, National Gallery of Art and Museum of History, Taipei, Taiwan, 1969 (illustrated, fig. 53).

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Lot Essay

"K I felt that there was a lack of vigor in Chinese painting. In order to restore this vitality, it had to be given some new nourishment and blood." -Liu Kuo Sung1

Dissatisfied by the conservatism of traditional Chinese painting, Liu Kuo-Sung established the Fifth Moon Group in Taiwan in 1956. Liu and his colleagues pursued new creative objectives and sought inspiration from Western abstraction; a genre that caught on heavily after World War II, and bravely applied their findings from the Western trends to their own works. In the early 1960's Liu came to the pivotal realization that traditional Chinese literati painting aimed at the same goals as Abstraction Expressionism-self-expression through spontaneous action and interpretation. He said that he "Kgradually woke up to the importance of a national style and the truth that the tradition is something which no artist of originality can afford to break away from completely or find it necessary to discard."2 Thus Liu decided to abandon oil and canvas, returning to traditional Chinese ink and paper. He began exploring the use of various materials and techniques in his artistic production, including collage, rubbings, ripping, water immersion and other special effects. He never abandoned calligraphic rendering, but extended its form into a deeper aesthetic field, pursuing the rhythm and vigor of the brush in a new kind of Chinese landscape painting. He allowed the western influences to nourish the content and expressiveness in his work, creating not simply a blend of Eastern and Western cultures, but a new means of expression for Chinese painting. He continuously applied his artistic energy to transcend the limits of Chinese art and assiduously built new concepts upon the foundations of tradition. Liu's breakthrough was a seminal point in the transformation of modern Chinese art.
Aided by a grant from the John D Rockefeller II Fund, Liu travelled throughout America and Europe from 1966 to 1967. Visiting museums in the mornings and painting in the afternoons, he incorporated important lessons from western art while his personal style grew even stronger. Painted in 1967, Through Rapids and Gorges (Lot 165) showcases a closer relationship to Chinese landscape painting and a continued reinterpretation of the Chinese spirit. The subject of the painting is derived from the historic theme of the Three Gorges in the Yangtze River. Brown paper with marbled ink is collaged onto the upper part of the painting, signifying steady mountains, while contrastingly, the broad strokes of ink below convey the movement and power of rushing rapids. Through his various innovative techniques of paper soaking, ink dabbing and fibre plucking, he executed the work with the spontaneity of Abstract Expressionism but oriented the technique around the traditional medium of handmade Chinese paper. Eliminating the descriptive details of rocks and trees, Liu subverts the tradition of Chinese landscape painting by stripping nature down to its signifiers. The work's spatial ambiguity suspends the viewer between representation and reality, evoking rather than describing the grandeur and power of the heroic landscape of the artist's vision.
Through Rapids and Gorges inherits spiritual and physical elements from traditional landscape painting, but articulates these elements through new modes that allow for self-expression and innovation. The work makes the viewer aware of a convergence of the past and the present, and envisions a future for Chinese art that extends rather than discards its heritage. A pioneer of modern Chinese painting, Liu has influenced generations of painters to continue to strive for modernity without forgetting or forgoing the true spirit of traditional Chinese painting.

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