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Lot Essay
I admire Mi Fu's spatial arrangements and Ni Yunlin's handling of the more open areas of his paintingsK In my own paintings, many areas also look empty, but in oils, you cannot achieve washes of colour as easily as in ink, so I actually put more effort into the empty areas than the places where you see forms. The rhythm of form and emptiness in Chinese paintings, the way they continually move and push against each other, creates a wonderful balance of weight in the painting." -Zao Wou-ki
Zao Wou-ki's 60-year career has in many ways represented a journey from figuration to abstraction and from deconstruction to recombination. At the end of the 1990s, in 13.01.98 (Lot 3310), he returned once again to the basic integration of points, lines, and planes. In the Western realist tradition, formal elements served to depict real images; later, in the 20th century, Abstract Expressionism used the element on line to express motion, and relied on the effects of colour fields on the canvas. But in China, the simplified, generalized forms of objective scenes - whether to compose landscapes or in structure of calligraphy - all relied on subjective appraisals by the artist to arrange and integrate formal elements. As such, while 13.01.98 may have a basis in traditional landscape painting, Zao nevertheless breaks through the historical use of multiple perspective and spatial structuring, adapting those formal elements to create an entirely new visual experience.
13.01.98 exemplifies Zao's mature deployment of colours, that have become more vibrant and emphasizes the reconstructing of space and light. Pigments are handled more similarly to ink wash: more turpentine is blended into the pigment, rendering the canvas in washes and splashes of colours. The brushwork is more sweeping and unbounded. The sense of dimensions is more agile and lively, and the colours seem suggestive of the faint wreathing mist. Vivid hues of sky blues, cobalt, olive greens and ivory are adeptly combined to form the variety of transmuting paints, viscous or runny, hefty or floating. The impression is a feeling that colour itself is creating fantastic visual effects as they vibrate, spread, and evolve into new shades and tones that roll in grand waves across the canvas. 13.01.98 still preserves the Chines aesthetic realms of "emptiness", "essence" and "purity", and has construed up an idyllic imagery: a warm winter day, perhaps the twilight after sunset reflecting off the vegetation at the base of a snowcapped mountain. It is this light-hearted graceful ambience that evokes every kind of muses from Zao's audience. Zao Wou-ki has successfully strengthened the links between solid forms and abstract spaces, and between inner and outer realities, which has taken his work beyond mere abstract expressionism and made it the place where the concrete physical world and the invisible world of the spirit come together.
Zao Wou-ki's 60-year career has in many ways represented a journey from figuration to abstraction and from deconstruction to recombination. At the end of the 1990s, in 13.01.98 (Lot 3310), he returned once again to the basic integration of points, lines, and planes. In the Western realist tradition, formal elements served to depict real images; later, in the 20th century, Abstract Expressionism used the element on line to express motion, and relied on the effects of colour fields on the canvas. But in China, the simplified, generalized forms of objective scenes - whether to compose landscapes or in structure of calligraphy - all relied on subjective appraisals by the artist to arrange and integrate formal elements. As such, while 13.01.98 may have a basis in traditional landscape painting, Zao nevertheless breaks through the historical use of multiple perspective and spatial structuring, adapting those formal elements to create an entirely new visual experience.
13.01.98 exemplifies Zao's mature deployment of colours, that have become more vibrant and emphasizes the reconstructing of space and light. Pigments are handled more similarly to ink wash: more turpentine is blended into the pigment, rendering the canvas in washes and splashes of colours. The brushwork is more sweeping and unbounded. The sense of dimensions is more agile and lively, and the colours seem suggestive of the faint wreathing mist. Vivid hues of sky blues, cobalt, olive greens and ivory are adeptly combined to form the variety of transmuting paints, viscous or runny, hefty or floating. The impression is a feeling that colour itself is creating fantastic visual effects as they vibrate, spread, and evolve into new shades and tones that roll in grand waves across the canvas. 13.01.98 still preserves the Chines aesthetic realms of "emptiness", "essence" and "purity", and has construed up an idyllic imagery: a warm winter day, perhaps the twilight after sunset reflecting off the vegetation at the base of a snowcapped mountain. It is this light-hearted graceful ambience that evokes every kind of muses from Zao's audience. Zao Wou-ki has successfully strengthened the links between solid forms and abstract spaces, and between inner and outer realities, which has taken his work beyond mere abstract expressionism and made it the place where the concrete physical world and the invisible world of the spirit come together.