Page 108 - Beyond Compare Christie's Hong Kong RU WARE .pdf

BEYOND COMPARE: A Thousand Years of the Literati Aesthetic

“ The method can change many times, but brush and ink never change.
What never changes is the spirit; what changes many times is only the surface.”

–Huang Binhong

It’s in the Idea, Not in the Form
In Huang Binhong’s understanding of Chinese painting, the spirit of ink and brush was
unchanging; what changed were the forms and shapes portrayed through them. But those
forms change as the heart changes, so that the meaning in a painting is something that
comes from the heart (fig. 2). Zhou Chunya thought highly of Huang Binhong, and
he once said, “When I was painting my Rock series, I was studying the landscapes of the
scholar-painters. Unlike those who paint with Chinese ink and brush, I did not try to
understand the properties of the materials or the demands of the composition. I tried to
find the things that, based on my expressive purposes, would be new and unfamiliar to me,
to introduce some surprises.” He brought to bear the creative vocabulary of the German
Neo-Expressionists even as he explored the spirit and implications of the Eastern literati
painters and their free, lyrical style.

In this work from the Tree Series, Zhou applies brushwork in a Neo-Expressionist style,
building up a textural feel. He utilizes the free, flowing approach of ink-wash painting and
its speed to express a strong brush feel. Interweaving these two approaches on his canvas,
Zhou’s beautiful colours work with the empty areas of the canvas and their suggestion of
space, enhancing the sense of weight as in trees and stones. There is also the suggestion
of movement, so that in this mixture of line and colour we see what could be a tree, or
what might be a rock, or we glimpse a human form or the suggestion of written Chinese
characters (fig. 4). In the paintings of Zhu Da (Bada Shanren), we see shapes that are both
strange and yet filled with a kind of static, charged energy (fig. 3), while in German Neo-
Expressionism we find authoritative figures such as George Baselitz, using thick, heavy oils
with assured brushwork (fig. 1). The superior talent of Zhou Chunya is expressed most in
his modeling of form and use of colour.
Zhou Chunya enjoys expressing personal feelings through the painting medium. Typically,
he combines simple, clean brushwork with clear and vivid colour, which he pulls together
fig. 2 Huang Bin Hong, Landscape, 1893,
in strong, tightly knit compositions for an effect closely approaching abstraction. His National Museum of History, Taipei, Taiwan
reductive approach to painting requires a clear mind and controlled brushwork, where an ॱ̣ 㷌㇜ⵒ Ǘᬲ㟯ゲ۵ǘ ໝη ܀Ფ ܀٫ ᢶ܂ښḵ㩉
additional stroke would make the work busy and superfluous, but one less would make
the work seem incomplete. He focuses on reduction and refinement in the images he
paints, on directness of rhetoric in painting, and especially on the sensitivity and richness
of the subject itself.

Zhou Chunya created his Tree Series during the same span of years as his Rock Series. In
it, nature becomes the vehicle that affords him a direct outpouring of his feelings. Fusing
tradition and modernity, East and West, Zhou’s new wave avant-garde approach has found
for him a place in the broader flow of history. His Tree Series exudes timelessness and
conveys the sense of deep communion with nature, transferred onto these grand canvases.
They provide an artistic vocabulary well-suited to our times, letting viewers find a space
for deep communion with their own inner selves.

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