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Lot Essay
Duality between Zao Wou-Ki's watercolour and oil
Zao Wou-Ki's watercolour and oil creations have undergone a neck-to-neck development. Stylistically, they have also kept their forces united. There is, however, no subordination as between Zao Wou-Ki's watercolours and ink paintings and his oils. On the contrary, he has always been aware that the development of his artistic direction necessitated a traversal between these two media.
Zao Wou-Ki, who had already resolved to fling himself heart and soul into ink painting upon arrival in Paris, absorbed many new things and, although he was detached from Chinese ink painting, yet still maintained a close connection with Western watercolour landscapes and still-lifes from the late 1940s to the early 1950s, up until the mid-1950s, when he developed a line-method natural and urban landscape style (Lots 438 & 439), followed by his inscription style and subsequent full abstraction of the 1960s, all created using watercolours. Zao Wou-Ki continued his watercolours in the late 20th century.
Although Zao Wou-Ki purposefully eschewed Chinese ink after his arrival in Paris, he did not completely dislodge himself from his cultural roots. His hidden inner feelings of Chineseness manifest themselves in various ways. In the 1960s, Zao planted common Chinese trees at the end of his garden: maples, birches, with a few lemon trees, and orchids brought back from China, and also a few orange trees. Every morning, Zao Wou-Ki would see to their leaves, and then water them. For him, gardening was an elegant Chinese pastime that reminded him of his father. As Zao Wou-Ki himself said: "Although the influence of Paris is undeniable in all my training as an artist, I also wish to say that I have gradually rediscovered China; it has affirmed itself as my deeper personality. In my recent paintings, this is expressed in an innate manner. Paradoxically, perhaps, it is to Paris I owe this return to my deepest origins".
The Parallel Path
French art critic Daniel Marchesseau once said that Zao Wou-Ki's painting is the "integration of two world uniques", that is to say of a "Paris Chinese, a Chinese Chinese". Most view Zao Wou-Ki as a Chinese Western painter, but in fact Zao Wou-Ki's Chinese culture was what enabled him to successfully bridge Chinese and Western aesthetics, and thus create novel abstract painting. This Eastern and Western cultural exchange is not just a one-way street, however, but a way of importing Oriental art elements into a Western painting method. In fact, Zao Wou-Ki also infuses Western art into the creation of his paper-background compositions. As Zao Wou-Ki stated: "Everyone is bound by a tradition, I am bound by two." Zao always wandered to and fro between the two traditions of ink and oil painting. He assimilated Western colour composition and space layout, made the transition to watercolours, and then initiated his ink painting in the 1970's. At the same time, Zao's fine Chinese painting brushwork is to be seen within the perspective of the transplantation of this into his oil paintings. In the process of this free transmigration, Zhao transposed these perspectives in a parallel course of studying and developing watercolour creations and oil painting and ink.
This parallel path of watercolour/ink and oil painting creation may also be seen in the works of Wu Guanzhong, an artist of the same generation. From 1974 on, Wu Guanzhong returned to traditional Chinese paintings in an attempt to establish a new system of values. Wu Guanzhong borrowed geometric elements from Western abstract art - point, line and surface - in order to reformulate Chinese ink painting (Figs. 1 and 2), while Zao Wou-Ki from the 1950s consciously targeted reinforcing those elements lacking in Chinese ink painting, such as Western art colours, composition and arrangement, and infused these into his water-based pigments to fabricate traditional Chinese watercolour works. His watercolour works from the 1950s tend to be small, but in the 1960s larger sized watercolour creations began to appear, with Untitled (Lot 437) representing one such larger creation.
Celebrated Chinese writer Fran?ois Cheng (Cheng Baoyi) wrote in a 2003 article about Zao Wou-Ki's watercolour painting: "Its rhythm is reminiscent of the Ming dynasty and it has the interest of Song dynasty freehand brushwork." In his 1961 creation Untitled, Zao first applies emerald green, then pastel green, indigo blue and light bark brown across from left to right and then, with strong rapid strokes draw these together with another, intertwining black line. He makes full use of the stacked effect of the ink layers, and then adds cerulean blue into the middle part of the pastel green to express a multi-layered sense and add texture and density, thereby displaying an orderly rhythm; as Zao Wou-Ki said: "I do not want to fill it, but give it life." His works show objects in an atmosphere of disillusionment, like a reproduction of Guo Xi's Early Spring (Fig. 3) in which, amid misty clouds, rocks stand tall in the scenery in a majestic landscape replicating the Song dynasty style. Zao Wou-Ki continues the momentum of Chinese traditional ink, while strengthening the rhythm of stacked colours and visual effects to construct distinctive watercolour works with Chinese traditional aesthetics.
Zao Wou-Ki's watercolour and oil creations have undergone a neck-to-neck development. Stylistically, they have also kept their forces united. There is, however, no subordination as between Zao Wou-Ki's watercolours and ink paintings and his oils. On the contrary, he has always been aware that the development of his artistic direction necessitated a traversal between these two media.
Zao Wou-Ki, who had already resolved to fling himself heart and soul into ink painting upon arrival in Paris, absorbed many new things and, although he was detached from Chinese ink painting, yet still maintained a close connection with Western watercolour landscapes and still-lifes from the late 1940s to the early 1950s, up until the mid-1950s, when he developed a line-method natural and urban landscape style (Lots 438 & 439), followed by his inscription style and subsequent full abstraction of the 1960s, all created using watercolours. Zao Wou-Ki continued his watercolours in the late 20th century.
Although Zao Wou-Ki purposefully eschewed Chinese ink after his arrival in Paris, he did not completely dislodge himself from his cultural roots. His hidden inner feelings of Chineseness manifest themselves in various ways. In the 1960s, Zao planted common Chinese trees at the end of his garden: maples, birches, with a few lemon trees, and orchids brought back from China, and also a few orange trees. Every morning, Zao Wou-Ki would see to their leaves, and then water them. For him, gardening was an elegant Chinese pastime that reminded him of his father. As Zao Wou-Ki himself said: "Although the influence of Paris is undeniable in all my training as an artist, I also wish to say that I have gradually rediscovered China; it has affirmed itself as my deeper personality. In my recent paintings, this is expressed in an innate manner. Paradoxically, perhaps, it is to Paris I owe this return to my deepest origins".
The Parallel Path
French art critic Daniel Marchesseau once said that Zao Wou-Ki's painting is the "integration of two world uniques", that is to say of a "Paris Chinese, a Chinese Chinese". Most view Zao Wou-Ki as a Chinese Western painter, but in fact Zao Wou-Ki's Chinese culture was what enabled him to successfully bridge Chinese and Western aesthetics, and thus create novel abstract painting. This Eastern and Western cultural exchange is not just a one-way street, however, but a way of importing Oriental art elements into a Western painting method. In fact, Zao Wou-Ki also infuses Western art into the creation of his paper-background compositions. As Zao Wou-Ki stated: "Everyone is bound by a tradition, I am bound by two." Zao always wandered to and fro between the two traditions of ink and oil painting. He assimilated Western colour composition and space layout, made the transition to watercolours, and then initiated his ink painting in the 1970's. At the same time, Zao's fine Chinese painting brushwork is to be seen within the perspective of the transplantation of this into his oil paintings. In the process of this free transmigration, Zhao transposed these perspectives in a parallel course of studying and developing watercolour creations and oil painting and ink.
This parallel path of watercolour/ink and oil painting creation may also be seen in the works of Wu Guanzhong, an artist of the same generation. From 1974 on, Wu Guanzhong returned to traditional Chinese paintings in an attempt to establish a new system of values. Wu Guanzhong borrowed geometric elements from Western abstract art - point, line and surface - in order to reformulate Chinese ink painting (Figs. 1 and 2), while Zao Wou-Ki from the 1950s consciously targeted reinforcing those elements lacking in Chinese ink painting, such as Western art colours, composition and arrangement, and infused these into his water-based pigments to fabricate traditional Chinese watercolour works. His watercolour works from the 1950s tend to be small, but in the 1960s larger sized watercolour creations began to appear, with Untitled (Lot 437) representing one such larger creation.
Celebrated Chinese writer Fran?ois Cheng (Cheng Baoyi) wrote in a 2003 article about Zao Wou-Ki's watercolour painting: "Its rhythm is reminiscent of the Ming dynasty and it has the interest of Song dynasty freehand brushwork." In his 1961 creation Untitled, Zao first applies emerald green, then pastel green, indigo blue and light bark brown across from left to right and then, with strong rapid strokes draw these together with another, intertwining black line. He makes full use of the stacked effect of the ink layers, and then adds cerulean blue into the middle part of the pastel green to express a multi-layered sense and add texture and density, thereby displaying an orderly rhythm; as Zao Wou-Ki said: "I do not want to fill it, but give it life." His works show objects in an atmosphere of disillusionment, like a reproduction of Guo Xi's Early Spring (Fig. 3) in which, amid misty clouds, rocks stand tall in the scenery in a majestic landscape replicating the Song dynasty style. Zao Wou-Ki continues the momentum of Chinese traditional ink, while strengthening the rhythm of stacked colours and visual effects to construct distinctive watercolour works with Chinese traditional aesthetics.