拍品专文
1964 was a year of intense activity for Zao Wou-Ki. Troubled by his wife's recurring relapses into illness, he threw himself into his painting with a vengence that is reflected in the quality of the paintings from that year. As Jean Leymarie remarks, the artist's "creative energy became more intense in 1964, one of Zao Wou-Ki's most fertile years. Except for a few grey-pink canvases of a heavenly purity...everything is convulsed once more by the dramatic vehemence that then possessed him... . His painting, always a faithful mirror of his state of mind, now became a refuge - or, more often than not, a battlefield." (op.cit.,)
The 1964 paintings are highly dramatic renderings of light and dark forces struggling with one another on a cosmic scale. In 21.9.64, one of the largest and most powerful pictures of this year, the famed lightness of Zao Wou-Ki's brushwork is combined with heavier and more sweeping gestures to create a myriad of forms and movements that suggests a constant interchange of emotional energy. The touch and scale in Zao Wou-Ki's calligraphic brushmarks is so constantly varied that one's eye gets lost in a swirl that is reminiscent of a constellation of nebulae. Yet somehow these marks come together to form a harmonious whole. "I like people to be able to stroll about in my canvases, as I do myself when I am painting them," (ibid., p. 43). In the present work, the large format combines with the brushed, scrubbed, stained, splattered and dripped marks to invite the viewer to do just that.
Zao Wou-Ki's highly skilled and peculiarly individual style of painting reflects strongly his Chinese origins - not just in the calligraphic nature of his control of the brush, but more profoundly in his concern with the elemental qualities of nature. "I love all colours," he has said, but "I have no favourites." As Jean Leymarie has pointed out, "In Zao Wou-Ki's eyes, colours are not substances but radiations... . For in China, where the intangible is so powerful, where scientists have always favoured the undulatory rather than the corpuscular hypothesis, and the notion of field rather than that of mechanism, colours are deemed to give life to space and describe only the flow of the light." (ibid., p. 44).
In a similar way, the form that Zao Wou-Ki paints, though created spontaneously, often seems to reflect the intangible energies such as the flames of a fire, the rushing of the wind or the splash of a waterfall. In 1961, Zao Wou-Ki remarked that, "Though the influence of Paris on the evolution of my career is undeniable, I must also say that I have gradually rediscovered China as my artistic personality developed, and this is intrinsically expressed in my most recent canvases. (ibid., p. 42).
The 1964 paintings are highly dramatic renderings of light and dark forces struggling with one another on a cosmic scale. In 21.9.64, one of the largest and most powerful pictures of this year, the famed lightness of Zao Wou-Ki's brushwork is combined with heavier and more sweeping gestures to create a myriad of forms and movements that suggests a constant interchange of emotional energy. The touch and scale in Zao Wou-Ki's calligraphic brushmarks is so constantly varied that one's eye gets lost in a swirl that is reminiscent of a constellation of nebulae. Yet somehow these marks come together to form a harmonious whole. "I like people to be able to stroll about in my canvases, as I do myself when I am painting them," (ibid., p. 43). In the present work, the large format combines with the brushed, scrubbed, stained, splattered and dripped marks to invite the viewer to do just that.
Zao Wou-Ki's highly skilled and peculiarly individual style of painting reflects strongly his Chinese origins - not just in the calligraphic nature of his control of the brush, but more profoundly in his concern with the elemental qualities of nature. "I love all colours," he has said, but "I have no favourites." As Jean Leymarie has pointed out, "In Zao Wou-Ki's eyes, colours are not substances but radiations... . For in China, where the intangible is so powerful, where scientists have always favoured the undulatory rather than the corpuscular hypothesis, and the notion of field rather than that of mechanism, colours are deemed to give life to space and describe only the flow of the light." (ibid., p. 44).
In a similar way, the form that Zao Wou-Ki paints, though created spontaneously, often seems to reflect the intangible energies such as the flames of a fire, the rushing of the wind or the splash of a waterfall. In 1961, Zao Wou-Ki remarked that, "Though the influence of Paris on the evolution of my career is undeniable, I must also say that I have gradually rediscovered China as my artistic personality developed, and this is intrinsically expressed in my most recent canvases. (ibid., p. 42).