Page 272 - The Arts of China, By Michael Sullivan Good Book

to the new restless spirit that was then abroad in the prosperous
coastal cities such as Shanghai (Fig. 306).
For in Shanghai, where Jen Po-nicn lived, the impact of Euro-
pean civilisation was beginning to be felt. It showed itself in paint-
ing less in any change of style than in a new energy and boldness,
which was perhaps the unconscious answer of the literati to the
challenge of Western art. This new spirit burst forth in a handful
of late followers of the Wu School such as Chao Chih-ch'ien
(1829-1884), a distinguished scholar noted for his paintings of
vines and flowers amid rocks, whose compositions and brush
techniques were to influence the modern master Ch'i Pai-shih.
Chaos follower Wu Ch'ang-shih (1 842-1927) was a prolific
painter chiefly of bamboo, flowers, and rocks, which he com-
bined with calligraphy in compositions of considerable power
(Fig. 307). The heavy, emphatic ink and strong colour these artists
employed come as a refreshing contrast to the timid good manners
of most of the late Ch'ing painters.
Among the twentieth-century artists who may have been pro-
voked into a reassertion of traditional styles were Huang Pin-
hung (1864/65-1955) and Ch'i Pai-shih (1863-1957). Huang Pin-
hung was one of the last of the great Wu School landscape paint-
ers. He led the busy life of a "professional amateur" between
Shanghai and Peking, as painter, teacher, art historian, and con-
noisseur, developing a style that became more and more daring
and exprcssionistic as he approached old age. From a very differ-
ent milieu came Ch'i Pai-shih, son of a small tenant-farmer in
Hunan who by talent and sheer determination became a dominat-
ing figure among painters in Peking, expressing himself with
great boldness and simplicity. In his sixties he painted some very
original landscapes, but he is best known for his late paintings,
chiefly of birds and flowers, crabs and shrimps, which he reduces
to essentials while miraculously preserving their inner life. A far
more versatile and sophisticated figure is the painter, collector,
and connoisseur Chang Dai Chien (Chang Ta-ch'ien), born at
Nei-chiang in Szechwan in 1 899 and trained in the Ch'ing literary
style. While in the landscapes of his later years he made bold ex-
periments in ink-flinging and -splashing that reflect the influence
of abstract expressionism—a movement that has stimulated many
309 Ch"i P»i-shih (1863-1957), The Far Eastern painters since 1950—he always remained a tradition-
Thing for Prolonging Lift It Win*!
Hinging scroti. Ink MM colour on alist at heart, in his dress and bearing seemingly a survival from
paper.
another age. The best of his work, such as the great landscape Ten
Thousand Miles of the Yangtse (Fig. 308) painted in 1968, combines
a breadth of conception with a sharpness and clarity of detail that
remind us of Sung landscape painting. He died in 1983 in Taipei.
THE MODERN It might be thought that Westernisation in the first half of the
MOVEMENT twentieth century would have dealt Chinese traditional art the
same crippling blow that had struckjapanese art in the nineteenth.
This did not happen, partly because of the overpowering strength
of the tradition itself and the cultural self-confidence of the edu-
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