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拍品專文
Once emerging from the grey of night
Then heavy and dear and strong from the fire
In the evening full of God they bend down
Now ethereally surrounded by shuddering blue
Floating away over the firmament...
The source of this short verse, originally in German, is currently uncertain, but it is thought to be possibly the work of Paul Klee. Its graceful, flowing imagery breaks the bonds of time and space, filling the poem with a deep and philosophical sense of the inner world-and at the same time, it provides a beautiful accompaniment to Zao Wou-Ki's 1954 work Cinq Poissons (Five Fishes) (Lot 102). This painting features a group of fish, as often seen in Chinese ink paintings, which here swim to and fro in a leisurely manner against a formless background of taupe, with subtle shadings of ochre brown and touches of indigo. Undulating lightly in time with the waves, they seem to be swimming gracefully among ripples and froth beneath the curtain of night, or even floating amid the points of light from numerous stars in the endless universe.
Around the time of the First World War, Paul Klee found himself very moved by a volume of Chinese poetry which his wife had given him, and in his paintings he attempted to blend lines of poetry with letters and symbols. Many years later, in 1951, Zao Wou Ki was invited to show his work in Bern, Switzerland, and he spent much time there enjoying the museum dedicated to Klee, the Zentrum Paul Klee. Zao couldn't help but be fascinated by the lines, colours, symbols and motifs in Klee's work. In his memoirs, he recalled that "Klee was so good at creating incomparably vast spaces on small canvases...his understanding of and love for Chinese painting was very clear. When these tiny symbols appeared in the spaces he created, a world would be born, and it dazzled me!"
This kind of aesthetic DNA, the feeling for things that can be sensed but not described, planted itself deeply in Zao's creative bloodstream. This chance meeting of East and West, following its initial spark, soon found a total release as Zao began to re-explore China's traditional cosmology and its aesthetic roots. This was the impetus behind Zao's "Klee period," and it led even further to a series of interconnected creative innovations and transformations. Looking closely at Cinq Poissons, the influence of Song Dynasty painters leaps to our attention. Zao presents the bodies of the fish in strong, straight lines of thick, inky black. Seeing them against their more subdued background, one can't help thinking of the Song painter Ma Yuan and the way his "axe-cut strokes" contrasted with his empty spaces, in a kind of dialogue between presence and absence. The dots of white with which Zao creates rippling waves recall the "raindrop texture strokes" (yu dian jun) of ancient painters, and add considerable liveliness and interest to Cinq Poissons. Hidden in these early creative trials by Zao Wou-Ki are foreshadowings of a grand vision, a vision that would take in both East and West, intuition and rationality, and the earthly and the cosmic, and transform them in the poetic and dreamlike flow of the spaces of Zao Wou-Ki's paintings.
Then heavy and dear and strong from the fire
In the evening full of God they bend down
Now ethereally surrounded by shuddering blue
Floating away over the firmament...
The source of this short verse, originally in German, is currently uncertain, but it is thought to be possibly the work of Paul Klee. Its graceful, flowing imagery breaks the bonds of time and space, filling the poem with a deep and philosophical sense of the inner world-and at the same time, it provides a beautiful accompaniment to Zao Wou-Ki's 1954 work Cinq Poissons (Five Fishes) (Lot 102). This painting features a group of fish, as often seen in Chinese ink paintings, which here swim to and fro in a leisurely manner against a formless background of taupe, with subtle shadings of ochre brown and touches of indigo. Undulating lightly in time with the waves, they seem to be swimming gracefully among ripples and froth beneath the curtain of night, or even floating amid the points of light from numerous stars in the endless universe.
Around the time of the First World War, Paul Klee found himself very moved by a volume of Chinese poetry which his wife had given him, and in his paintings he attempted to blend lines of poetry with letters and symbols. Many years later, in 1951, Zao Wou Ki was invited to show his work in Bern, Switzerland, and he spent much time there enjoying the museum dedicated to Klee, the Zentrum Paul Klee. Zao couldn't help but be fascinated by the lines, colours, symbols and motifs in Klee's work. In his memoirs, he recalled that "Klee was so good at creating incomparably vast spaces on small canvases...his understanding of and love for Chinese painting was very clear. When these tiny symbols appeared in the spaces he created, a world would be born, and it dazzled me!"
This kind of aesthetic DNA, the feeling for things that can be sensed but not described, planted itself deeply in Zao's creative bloodstream. This chance meeting of East and West, following its initial spark, soon found a total release as Zao began to re-explore China's traditional cosmology and its aesthetic roots. This was the impetus behind Zao's "Klee period," and it led even further to a series of interconnected creative innovations and transformations. Looking closely at Cinq Poissons, the influence of Song Dynasty painters leaps to our attention. Zao presents the bodies of the fish in strong, straight lines of thick, inky black. Seeing them against their more subdued background, one can't help thinking of the Song painter Ma Yuan and the way his "axe-cut strokes" contrasted with his empty spaces, in a kind of dialogue between presence and absence. The dots of white with which Zao creates rippling waves recall the "raindrop texture strokes" (yu dian jun) of ancient painters, and add considerable liveliness and interest to Cinq Poissons. Hidden in these early creative trials by Zao Wou-Ki are foreshadowings of a grand vision, a vision that would take in both East and West, intuition and rationality, and the earthly and the cosmic, and transform them in the poetic and dreamlike flow of the spaces of Zao Wou-Ki's paintings.