Page 32 - The Pioneers, November 26, 2016 Hong Kong
P. 32
Lot 2503 Henri Fantin-Latour, Chrysanthemums in a vase, 1875,
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid Spain
亨利方丹拉圖爾《瓶菊》1875 西班牙 馬德里 提森-博內米薩博物館
sets of not entirely symmetrical chrysanthemums variations in color, light, and shadow. Sanyu sweeps
open to the left and right of the painting like the two several overlapping strokes of yellow pigment across
leaves of a book. It almost seems as if the canvas were the top of this canvas; viewers will instinctively form
folded and opened along a center line, and is still in a visual link between it and the yellow of the flowers
the process of opening. By means of this effect Sanyu below to form a uniform visual field. His harmonious
breaks through the single-point perspective consistently use of color produces contrasts between the objects
used in the West, placing the left and right sides in in the pictorial space, creating visual effects that
juxtaposition within the same pictorial space, producing draw the flower shapes closer, integrating them
a kind of dual-point perspective that adds three- with the depiction of the red tabletop and setting
dimensionality to the pictorial space and enhances them off against the black background. Viewers are
its breadth. Sanyu also places the vase as far forward automatically led away from attention to details to
in his pictorial space as possible, where the viewer focus instead on the story Sanyu is attempting to
can almost touch it, while the table on which it rests narrate. Where the Impressionists emphasized light
extends from this visual focal point toward the rear to and shade, rather than detail, and filled their works
extend spatial depth in that direction. Sanyu employs with variegated color, Sanyu here, by simply adding
multi-point perspective to an even greater extent than a few light strokes of color against his deep black
in traditional Chinese landscape paintings in order to background, creates a deep, enveloping atmosphere
create depth and breadth in this work, and this, along where light and shade seem a part of the air itself.
with breaking through the single-point perspective of
the West, imbues this work with a sense of space often Cezanne, 'the father of modern art,' once said, 'Painting
lacking in Chinese painting. By building on a foundation does not mean blindly copying reality, it means seeking
of Eastern and Western techniques, while adding an the harmony of various relationships.' In his painting,
unprecedented kind of personal vision and viewpoint, Sanyu followed a reductionist philosophy, but even
Sanyu developed an innovative new creative vocabulary while using low color values and simplified lines, he
of a kind that remains unparalleled even today. attended to all aspects of the work. The colors he
used were closely interrelated, and even if the relative
Pan Yuliang, another artist who traveled to France at sizes of his flowers and vase were far from what would
the same time as Sanyu and who has been called 'a be seen in reality, he created with them a pictorial
soul haunted by painting,' once said, 'It's rare to see an space of great visual harmony. Sanyu's painted works
artist such as Sanyu, whose work is always progressing transcended Eastern painting traditions and straddled
and always changing with the times.' Freeing himself various Western stylistic schools. This Chrysanthemums
from the restraints of academic realism, Sanyu threw in a Glass Vase has been in the possession of the
himself entirely into modernism's embrace. Beyond his French Levy family, who had been friends with Sanyu
attention to line and space, his work features exciting since 1950s. The painting has thus been held for many
years in France, receiving a public showing once at the
26 THE PIONEERS 先 鋒 薈 萃 Levy home in the year of Sanyu's death, then it was
