Page 281 - The Arts of China, By Michael Sullivan Good Book

J IV Wu Kuan-chung (bom lulu).
and a paralysis gripped all forms of artistic expression except those Rtfltrtioni in ike Ritr FirUs Chinese ink
promoted by Chiang Ch'ing herself. 1979-
With the death of Mao Tse-tung in September of 1976 and the
fall of the Gang of Four a month later, the floodgates began cau-
tiously to open: at first a trickle, then in 1979-80 a great outpour-
ing of pent-up bitterness at the horrors of the recent past and of
hope for the future. The painting of these years, depicting not
only vividly remembered sufferings but also the great protest
demonstration of April 4/5, 1976, at T'ien-an-men Square, was
more dramatic, expressive of feelings more widely shared, than
any perhaps in the history of Chinese art.
Now the work of old painters who had survived, such as Liu
Hai-su, Li K'o-jan, Ch'ien Sung-yen, and Lin Feng-mien, came to
life again. Painters in mid-career, among them 1 luang Yung-yu
and Wu Kuan-chung, produced works that blended traditional
and modern with great originality and freedom. Wu Kuan-chung,
who spent several years in France in the 1950s, has through his
writings been a leading influence in the post-Mao era in preparing
the reading public for modernism, teaching them not to be intim-
idated by the abstraction that under Mao had been condemned as