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Lot Essay
“The artist, pursuing beauty, paints images of things he sees. In the process of painting, he eliminates the nonessentials to discover how beauty itself is constituted.”
—Wu Guanzhong
Wu Guanzhong made beauty of form his first creative principle.He believed that beauty of form was the very essence of modernart, and that an artist could find it by simplifying scenic objectsand modeling their shapes for greater aesthetic beauty. On thatbasis, he investigated ways of further refining the elements of hismodeling, which led to works in a semi-abstract style. In that processhe was nourished and inspired by traditional Chinese aesthetics,and ultimately, his work revealed both a deep understanding of theChinese tradition and a mastery of Western painting techniques.
Wu once said that the essentials of beauty include contrast, harmony,rhythm, undulation, and a unified presentation of diverse elements. Inthe refined images and carefully managed composition of Flowers , Wuingeniously finds both contrast and balance among all its points, lines,and planes; the result is a colorful and strongly rhythmic painting,complex but unified. A nice finishing touch can be seen in the slender,graceful lines, with brushwork derived from Chinese ink painting,with which Wu links areas of different color for a sense of impliedmovement. And despite not specifically employing depth perspective,depth does appear as Wu employs the visual contrasts of colors toproduce expanding and contracting effects, echoing the color theoriesof American abstract expressionist painter Hans Hoffman.
The Impressionists once attempted to refine the coloristic elements offlower paintings in an entirely new way, and Klimt further simplifiedthem into a very nearly flat and semi-abstract form of expression. Asimilar vein of development can be seen in the progression from WuGuanzhong's early 1970s Flowers in the Mountain to this Flowersfrom the 1990s. Compared to his ink-wash works of that sameperiod, which are even more abstract, this Flowers has a more directconnection with the natural world. Wu's hope was that the viewer,through the more realistic detail of certain parts of the painting,could more easily appreciate its beauty, in line with his concept ofmaintaining a connection between abstraction and the real world –that "the kite string should never break."
Wu Guanzhong once gave high praise to Li Song's Flower Basket ,saying, “I have always admired that finely detailed Song Dynastyflower basket painting in the Palace Museum collection. Not for itsmeticulousness, but because of the richness and fullness created byits shapes and colors. It really conforms to our rigorous modern ideasabout modeling…. Van Gogh studied Millet, and Picasso imitated theancient Greeks. But that was not so much an imitation of style as a direct exploration of their predecessors' creative intents and the painsthey took with their work.” Clearly, traditional aesthetics were not aburden that limited Wu Guanzhong: Instead, they were the drivingforce behind his work, a great motivating factor, and a foundation thatshaped his creativity. James Cahill once summed up Wu Guanzhong'swork this way: “He represents all the painstaking labor of exploration behind modern Chinese painting, and his works are a crystallization ofhis arduous exploration.”
—Wu Guanzhong
Wu Guanzhong made beauty of form his first creative principle.He believed that beauty of form was the very essence of modernart, and that an artist could find it by simplifying scenic objectsand modeling their shapes for greater aesthetic beauty. On thatbasis, he investigated ways of further refining the elements of hismodeling, which led to works in a semi-abstract style. In that processhe was nourished and inspired by traditional Chinese aesthetics,and ultimately, his work revealed both a deep understanding of theChinese tradition and a mastery of Western painting techniques.
Wu once said that the essentials of beauty include contrast, harmony,rhythm, undulation, and a unified presentation of diverse elements. Inthe refined images and carefully managed composition of Flowers , Wuingeniously finds both contrast and balance among all its points, lines,and planes; the result is a colorful and strongly rhythmic painting,complex but unified. A nice finishing touch can be seen in the slender,graceful lines, with brushwork derived from Chinese ink painting,with which Wu links areas of different color for a sense of impliedmovement. And despite not specifically employing depth perspective,depth does appear as Wu employs the visual contrasts of colors toproduce expanding and contracting effects, echoing the color theoriesof American abstract expressionist painter Hans Hoffman.
The Impressionists once attempted to refine the coloristic elements offlower paintings in an entirely new way, and Klimt further simplifiedthem into a very nearly flat and semi-abstract form of expression. Asimilar vein of development can be seen in the progression from WuGuanzhong's early 1970s Flowers in the Mountain to this Flowersfrom the 1990s. Compared to his ink-wash works of that sameperiod, which are even more abstract, this Flowers has a more directconnection with the natural world. Wu's hope was that the viewer,through the more realistic detail of certain parts of the painting,could more easily appreciate its beauty, in line with his concept ofmaintaining a connection between abstraction and the real world –that "the kite string should never break."
Wu Guanzhong once gave high praise to Li Song's Flower Basket ,saying, “I have always admired that finely detailed Song Dynastyflower basket painting in the Palace Museum collection. Not for itsmeticulousness, but because of the richness and fullness created byits shapes and colors. It really conforms to our rigorous modern ideasabout modeling…. Van Gogh studied Millet, and Picasso imitated theancient Greeks. But that was not so much an imitation of style as a direct exploration of their predecessors' creative intents and the painsthey took with their work.” Clearly, traditional aesthetics were not aburden that limited Wu Guanzhong: Instead, they were the drivingforce behind his work, a great motivating factor, and a foundation thatshaped his creativity. James Cahill once summed up Wu Guanzhong'swork this way: “He represents all the painstaking labor of exploration behind modern Chinese painting, and his works are a crystallization ofhis arduous exploration.”