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Lot Essay
‘He shows everything with brushstrokes and contrasts of colours, his most beautiful works are the barest ones.’ ——Zao Wou-Ki
Painted in 1930, Sanyu’s Nu blanc au genou levé belongs to the earliest group of 12 nude paintings by the artist. It evinces Sanyu’s flair for progressing his calligraphic virtuosity with the Western medium of oil at a time when both his career and personal life prospered: not only did he receive applauses from the press about his recent nude painting and the generous support from the art collector and dealer Pierre-Henri Roché he met a year ago, it was also not long after his marriage with Ms. Hardrouyère. Nude remains the earliest and most prominent subject matter Sanyu studied extensively as a Chinese artist who moved to Montparnasse district in Paris and lived through les années folles (‘Roaring Twenties’). It represents a newfound beauty that fascinated the artist who was accustomed to a conservative view towards the female body in China.
Went to a relatively liberal Grande Chaumière at the time to study life drawing, Sanyu produced a prolific number of nude sketches in watercolour and ink with his trained and sensitive hand of a Chinese calligrapher. As one of the very few monochrome paintings Sanyu created during what would later be considered his ‘pinnacle’ period, the present work, with its minimal palette and lyrical brushstrokes, sees Sanyu’s early attempt to forge a painting style that coalesces the Western and Eastern aesthetics and spatial concepts—one that continued to guide his creative impulse for decades to come. Since its initial acquisition in 1930s by Roché, Nu blanc au genou levé has subsequently fallen into the hands of two eminent Sanyu collectors: Riedel and Dreyfus, and remains in private hands shy of a century.
A Parisian journalist Pierre Joffroy once described Sanyu as the ‘inventor of essentialism’, as ‘he unites the East and West in his painting in a sublime form where one loses usual points of reference’ (A. Chau, 'Defining the Modern "Wenren" and the Role of the White Female Body in Modern Chinese Literature and Art', Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, Vol. 29, No. 1, Spring 2017, p.29). Such brilliance is markedly evidenced in Nu blanc au genou levé. Resting on a luscious stream of ivory white against a nocturnal background, the one-eye female nude is animated in merely a few strokes reminiscent of the curved linearity in Chinese calligraphy. Yet upon closer inspection, these rhythmic lines that are seemingly achieved by the painter’s brush are, in fact, generated through etching. Sanyu’s deliberate choice of the dark background and his way of demarcating the subject matter through scrapping (removal of paint instead of adding) connect the Eastern aesthetic notion of "form and emptiness give rise to each other; unpainted spaces have a miraculous effect" with the Western surrealist concept of negative space. Through his exploration of the slow-drying quality of oil paint, Sanyu formed an intricate interplay between form and emptiness that goes beyond formal concerns of perspective and space.
Priming his entire canvas in dark paint with broad brushstrokes, Sanyu gave an ancient texture and a phantasmagoric depth to the composition of the present work. The appearance of a pitch-black background is not uncommon in Sanyu’s composition, and it allows his protagonist to steep in the surrealist ethos. The white female nude depicted in the present work is devoid of urban modernity reference, reclining against an enigmatic space full of potential. Sanyu’s nude, as observed by the art historian Eugene Wang, ‘takes on a levitating and oneiric overtone’ and becomes ‘a gateway into “the marvellous," a horizon of redemption that offers glimpses of “what lies ahead, beyond”’ (E. Wang, ‘Sanyu: a Chinese Surrealist in Paris’, in Sanyu: l'écriture du corps, exh. cat. Musée des arts asiatiques Guimet, Paris 2004, p. 62). Moreover, the elongation and horizontally stretched female nude, with its animal-like limbs, reveal the bestial undertones of Sanyu’s nude as opposed to the verticality of the human stance. Sanyu’s choice of defamiliarising the female body is perhaps his way to imbue his composition with surrealist poetic bestiary while at the same time probing into the notion of beauty at the time. His female nude is at once intimate and distanced; tamed and unpredictable.
The fantastical quality of Sanyu’s nude was also tied closely to the photographic experiments in the late 1920s, when the first portable camera was invented, which burgeoned experimental photography. As one of the few artists of the School of Paris who owned a camera, Sanyu befriended like-minded Surrealist artists such as Andre Kertesz and Man Ray, who explored the subconscious and inner spiritual world through deformation in their photographic works. Depicting his nude with a single eye, Sanyu’s Nu blanc au genou levé, in the same vein as May Ray’s Le Primat de la matière sur la pensé (1931), captures physic states as a formal device for reverie, rapture, and dream. Likewise, the present work also inherits the poetic sentiment unique to Chinese literati painting. Submerging into the opulent torrent of divine white, the nude, like a majestic mountain, becomes one with the background, much like how the immortal depicted in Liang Kai’s splashed ink painting doubles as the landscape. In the latter, the viewer is invited into its pictorial realm and be part of the "heaven and earth" that the immortal metamorphoses into. The nude is thus no longer part of our sphere in the eye of Sanyu as it represents a space of infinite possibilities.
While Modigliani tended to depict his nude with a close-up view towards the body core, which stimulates immediate sexual tension, Sanyu, on the contrary, focused on the depiction of extremities of the body to express his admiration of the other gender. In the present work, the exaggerated and plump thighs stand for both the liberation of females and the artist’s appreciation of a new standard of beauty; while the hand that lies prominently next to the female chin looks as if a Buddha’s hand fruit (fo-shou)—an organically-shaped citron that often appears in Chinese court paintings as a metaphor of female sexuality and eroticism. Sanyu’s simplified and freehand depiction of the female nude not only demonstrates his mastery of capturing the spiritual affinity but also reveals his brilliant and subtle intervention towards such a time-honoured painting subject as the female nude—one that is filled with poetic evocation and a sense of humour that originated from the literati traditions of his own culture.
Sanyu’s preference for depicting non-Chinese female nudes was also what set him apart from his Chinese contemporaries like Xu Beihong, Lin Fengmian, and Pang Yuliang at the time. His desire to depict the "other", the white female nude, aptly attested to his avant-garde vision and courage to foray into the unfamiliar and embrace the culture that is markedly distinct from his own. With its unconventional presence, the white female nude portrayed in Nu blanc au genou levé represents the metamorphosis stage of a female into something greater and even formidable during the uncertainty. In 2004, the present work was included at the group show organised by the Joan Miro Foundation titled "The Woman, Metamorphosis of Modernity", pronouncing the nude under Sanyu’s hands a personification of liberty—an immortal emblem of modernity that transcends time.
Painted in 1930, Sanyu’s Nu blanc au genou levé belongs to the earliest group of 12 nude paintings by the artist. It evinces Sanyu’s flair for progressing his calligraphic virtuosity with the Western medium of oil at a time when both his career and personal life prospered: not only did he receive applauses from the press about his recent nude painting and the generous support from the art collector and dealer Pierre-Henri Roché he met a year ago, it was also not long after his marriage with Ms. Hardrouyère. Nude remains the earliest and most prominent subject matter Sanyu studied extensively as a Chinese artist who moved to Montparnasse district in Paris and lived through les années folles (‘Roaring Twenties’). It represents a newfound beauty that fascinated the artist who was accustomed to a conservative view towards the female body in China.
Went to a relatively liberal Grande Chaumière at the time to study life drawing, Sanyu produced a prolific number of nude sketches in watercolour and ink with his trained and sensitive hand of a Chinese calligrapher. As one of the very few monochrome paintings Sanyu created during what would later be considered his ‘pinnacle’ period, the present work, with its minimal palette and lyrical brushstrokes, sees Sanyu’s early attempt to forge a painting style that coalesces the Western and Eastern aesthetics and spatial concepts—one that continued to guide his creative impulse for decades to come. Since its initial acquisition in 1930s by Roché, Nu blanc au genou levé has subsequently fallen into the hands of two eminent Sanyu collectors: Riedel and Dreyfus, and remains in private hands shy of a century.
A Parisian journalist Pierre Joffroy once described Sanyu as the ‘inventor of essentialism’, as ‘he unites the East and West in his painting in a sublime form where one loses usual points of reference’ (A. Chau, 'Defining the Modern "Wenren" and the Role of the White Female Body in Modern Chinese Literature and Art', Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, Vol. 29, No. 1, Spring 2017, p.29). Such brilliance is markedly evidenced in Nu blanc au genou levé. Resting on a luscious stream of ivory white against a nocturnal background, the one-eye female nude is animated in merely a few strokes reminiscent of the curved linearity in Chinese calligraphy. Yet upon closer inspection, these rhythmic lines that are seemingly achieved by the painter’s brush are, in fact, generated through etching. Sanyu’s deliberate choice of the dark background and his way of demarcating the subject matter through scrapping (removal of paint instead of adding) connect the Eastern aesthetic notion of "form and emptiness give rise to each other; unpainted spaces have a miraculous effect" with the Western surrealist concept of negative space. Through his exploration of the slow-drying quality of oil paint, Sanyu formed an intricate interplay between form and emptiness that goes beyond formal concerns of perspective and space.
Priming his entire canvas in dark paint with broad brushstrokes, Sanyu gave an ancient texture and a phantasmagoric depth to the composition of the present work. The appearance of a pitch-black background is not uncommon in Sanyu’s composition, and it allows his protagonist to steep in the surrealist ethos. The white female nude depicted in the present work is devoid of urban modernity reference, reclining against an enigmatic space full of potential. Sanyu’s nude, as observed by the art historian Eugene Wang, ‘takes on a levitating and oneiric overtone’ and becomes ‘a gateway into “the marvellous," a horizon of redemption that offers glimpses of “what lies ahead, beyond”’ (E. Wang, ‘Sanyu: a Chinese Surrealist in Paris’, in Sanyu: l'écriture du corps, exh. cat. Musée des arts asiatiques Guimet, Paris 2004, p. 62). Moreover, the elongation and horizontally stretched female nude, with its animal-like limbs, reveal the bestial undertones of Sanyu’s nude as opposed to the verticality of the human stance. Sanyu’s choice of defamiliarising the female body is perhaps his way to imbue his composition with surrealist poetic bestiary while at the same time probing into the notion of beauty at the time. His female nude is at once intimate and distanced; tamed and unpredictable.
The fantastical quality of Sanyu’s nude was also tied closely to the photographic experiments in the late 1920s, when the first portable camera was invented, which burgeoned experimental photography. As one of the few artists of the School of Paris who owned a camera, Sanyu befriended like-minded Surrealist artists such as Andre Kertesz and Man Ray, who explored the subconscious and inner spiritual world through deformation in their photographic works. Depicting his nude with a single eye, Sanyu’s Nu blanc au genou levé, in the same vein as May Ray’s Le Primat de la matière sur la pensé (1931), captures physic states as a formal device for reverie, rapture, and dream. Likewise, the present work also inherits the poetic sentiment unique to Chinese literati painting. Submerging into the opulent torrent of divine white, the nude, like a majestic mountain, becomes one with the background, much like how the immortal depicted in Liang Kai’s splashed ink painting doubles as the landscape. In the latter, the viewer is invited into its pictorial realm and be part of the "heaven and earth" that the immortal metamorphoses into. The nude is thus no longer part of our sphere in the eye of Sanyu as it represents a space of infinite possibilities.
While Modigliani tended to depict his nude with a close-up view towards the body core, which stimulates immediate sexual tension, Sanyu, on the contrary, focused on the depiction of extremities of the body to express his admiration of the other gender. In the present work, the exaggerated and plump thighs stand for both the liberation of females and the artist’s appreciation of a new standard of beauty; while the hand that lies prominently next to the female chin looks as if a Buddha’s hand fruit (fo-shou)—an organically-shaped citron that often appears in Chinese court paintings as a metaphor of female sexuality and eroticism. Sanyu’s simplified and freehand depiction of the female nude not only demonstrates his mastery of capturing the spiritual affinity but also reveals his brilliant and subtle intervention towards such a time-honoured painting subject as the female nude—one that is filled with poetic evocation and a sense of humour that originated from the literati traditions of his own culture.
Sanyu’s preference for depicting non-Chinese female nudes was also what set him apart from his Chinese contemporaries like Xu Beihong, Lin Fengmian, and Pang Yuliang at the time. His desire to depict the "other", the white female nude, aptly attested to his avant-garde vision and courage to foray into the unfamiliar and embrace the culture that is markedly distinct from his own. With its unconventional presence, the white female nude portrayed in Nu blanc au genou levé represents the metamorphosis stage of a female into something greater and even formidable during the uncertainty. In 2004, the present work was included at the group show organised by the Joan Miro Foundation titled "The Woman, Metamorphosis of Modernity", pronouncing the nude under Sanyu’s hands a personification of liberty—an immortal emblem of modernity that transcends time.