Misty Landscapes and Sweeping Vistas: Quo Ying-Sheng, Yeh Tzu-Chi, Chen Chien-Jung
By Thalia Vrachopoulos, Ph.D.
As opposed to French Academic views of landscape painting as the lowest category on the artistic ladder, Chinese and Taiwanese history demonstrates that landscape painting is the oldest, most consistent, and respected of art traditions. After the Japanese annexation in 1895, modern landscape entered Taiwan in watercolor and oil painting media. Masters such as Chen Cheng-po and Yang Sang-lang, and Liao Chi-chun expressed the beauty of Taiwan’s forests, seas, ‘misty landscapes, and sweeping vistas’ in the western style and studied art in Japan during the annexation returning home to paint the local countryside and to influence the younger generation of Taiwanese artists. During the post WWII period with increasing American involvement, Liu Kuo-sung and others like him comprising the new avant-garde, sought to re-organize and re-think the arts of Taiwan.
After much experimentation Taiwanese artists began to appreciate their indigenous roots and to seek international stature. Many of these studied abroad especially in the United States as did Yeh Tzu-chi earning his MFA at Brooklyn College, CUNY. While depicting the nostalgia and uniqueness of the Taiwanese landscape artists like Yeh paint in a new hyper-realist style incorporating western oil painting methodologies.
Yeh’s Mountains, Taroko, 2007-2009 is a landscape executed in the most elaborate, detailed, expert style resulting in a visually compelling and seductive mountain scene. But, Yeh’s landscapes are anything but simple and anything but typical historical landscapes. They are a re-envisioning of both the variety and the splendor not only of the Taiwanese landscape but, also of landscape in general, in that they contain a fantastic element seen in misty, effects or a re-iteration of the surface against the linear perspective of the scene. In this work we are offered up a rising mountain sloping to the right of the canvas with all its folds and crevices covered with a wild variety of trees executed in an extremely work-intensive style. The words ‘offered up’ here are used to specify that the mountain is backed up by an area of white clouds serving almost like a white platter reiterating all the deep forestation and making it appear even denser than if it were set on a perspectival background.
Yeh accomplishes this paradoxical element again in his work Mountain Road to Hualien, 1993-2008 by creating an abstracted background over which the panoply of forest green is juxtaposed. For this horizontal landscape Yeh uses the rough linen support and tempera over color to create some of the tooth or texture that lends even more depth to the forest. Yet, only an abstraction can possibly have such a straight horizon line as this one. And, only in an abstraction can we see the beige ground left untouched to be read as void. In another of his works entitled A Ship on the Misty Ocean, 2007-09 this abstract quality is even more emphasized as seen in this almost totally abstract surface textured with tempera paint on rough linen. The dark brown ship’s smokestacks point like arrows to the sky as it appears to sit on the extremely high horizon line. A reading can only be attained via Yeh’s placement of elements and their context, for the work is otherwise very abstract. This type of perspectival system was used in Chinese painting where figures are inferred through placement. The lowest layer is brown, becoming at it proceeds upward a soft lilac and blue suggesting the shore and the sea with a ship at the upper sector. Were it not for the ship’s presence, it would appear like a Rothko, totally abstract. Consequently, even though Yeh’s landscapes appear at times to be hyper-realistic, when studying them further one can’t help but note the abstract qualities that result in work engaging the new figuration as well as conceptual painting.
Abstraction is also Chen Chien-jung’s expertise, but rather than using the natural landscape as does Yeh, Chen thematically deploys architectural vistas as did the 20th Century American painter Richard Diebenkorn. Like Diebenkorn Chen also hovers between abstraction and figuration, but in fact Chen is even more varied in his style than Diebenkorn.
Chen is full of complex dualisms such as the linear and painterly, construction and de-construction, dark and light elements. These tendencies can be seen when comparing his Tenri works Landscape 39, 2009 and Landscape 40, 2010. In the earlier work Chen opposes thick dark red brush strokes against a strong black linear structure further delineated by white line and blue touches. Were it not for these latter highlights it wouldn’t be possible to have a clear reading. The building seems to hover rather than sit comfortably on the ground which lends a de-stabilizing element to this painting as to many of his works. The paint is very neatly applied to form the structure that recedes into the distance while simultaneously through the openings such as doors and windows we are offered a view of painterly areas with a horizontal directionality. The building seems to melt into drips of white and red paint on the far right section.
That Chen is using drip painting is even clearer in a 2009 canvas entitled Landscape 38 in which the artist no only drips and spatters paint, but also moves it around by hand creating de Kooning-like passages. In its top portion are the horizontal building structures again but rendered in dematerialized form being composed of line on the turquoise and white ground. These structures appear more like Utopian projects rather than real buildings and have the feel of St. Ellia’s early studies for futuristic architecture in space. In his fantastic urban landscapes Chen uses intuitive processes that offer him the ability to work and rework, alter and re-configure his works. Rather than depicting existing buildings Chen offers us the sensation of city living. In constructing and de-constructing Chen subverts the traditional landscape in order to study the conventions of art but also to arrive at something fresh and to offer us his own new systems of meaning.
Quo Ying-sheng is an extensively awarded photographer who studied art in France now working both in Paris and Taiwan. His dark and moody photographs depict the international character of a globalized world while simultaneously being sensitive lyrical artistic studies into the human imprint. Landscape to Quo is culturally encoded as seen through his many photographs of distinct geographic areas that are shaped by the moirés and people inhabiting them. In this sense they are associative and valued for their historic specificity as is Quo’s image of the Louvre museum, for its international social meaning.
The word landscape has a German origin from the verb “scapjan/schaffen” meaning ‘shaped lands’ and was made famous by Carl Sauer who developed the idea of a cultural landscape as one created by a specific human group. Quo’s 1980 image of the Louvre’s façade gutted in preparation for its renovation is reminiscent of a partially dressed female caught in the midst of her toilet. This marred beauty like human nature is an important element in Quo’s works but it is also the quality that makes them critically viable. Quo is not simply depicting the variety in cultural landscape by offering us tourist images of Algiers, Paris, or Taipei rather he’s featuring and critiquing human foible; imperfection and vulnerability. By producing Snow; France, 1991 a photograph of a building with many shut down doors and windows but also cracked walls, Quo is engaging Duchamp in commenting on the follies of man. And like Duchamp’s famous work Dust Breeding or his readymade In Advance of a Broken Arm he also highlights the foolishness of the human need for a safety net.
The art critic Chang Cheng-lin in writing about Quo’s French period works, points out that the artist vacillates back and forth between works with panoramic sweeping views and close-ups with limited perspective. It is true that Quo is a man of great contrasts but I choose to see this tendency as part of his working process and his need to make a statement and not as vacillation. Quo is also investigating the great Chinese Sung landscape traditions for by depicting long views he is scrutinizing Northern Landscape while in accessing the close up he’s making contact with Southern painting style. Quo’s Wandering; France, 1991 can be compared to the sweeping landscapes of Dong Yuan while his Interior Body Temperature; Paris, 1981 is analogous to the close-ups of Emperor Hui Zong’s literati style or to the Lyric painting mode of Li Di.
These three artists represent the best contributions to the contemporary Taiwanese art world inasmuch as they are unique in their style and vision but also because they created during historical moments when it was very difficult to be creative.
After much experimentation Taiwanese artists began to appreciate their indigenous roots and to seek international stature. Many of these studied abroad especially in the United States as did Yeh Tzu-chi earning his MFA at Brooklyn College, CUNY. While depicting the nostalgia and uniqueness of the Taiwanese landscape artists like Yeh paint in a new hyper-realist style incorporating western oil painting methodologies.
Yeh’s Mountains, Taroko, 2007-2009 is a landscape executed in the most elaborate, detailed, expert style resulting in a visually compelling and seductive mountain scene. But, Yeh’s landscapes are anything but simple and anything but typical historical landscapes. They are a re-envisioning of both the variety and the splendor not only of the Taiwanese landscape but, also of landscape in general, in that they contain a fantastic element seen in misty, effects or a re-iteration of the surface against the linear perspective of the scene. In this work we are offered up a rising mountain sloping to the right of the canvas with all its folds and crevices covered with a wild variety of trees executed in an extremely work-intensive style. The words ‘offered up’ here are used to specify that the mountain is backed up by an area of white clouds serving almost like a white platter reiterating all the deep forestation and making it appear even denser than if it were set on a perspectival background.
Yeh accomplishes this paradoxical element again in his work Mountain Road to Hualien, 1993-2008 by creating an abstracted background over which the panoply of forest green is juxtaposed. For this horizontal landscape Yeh uses the rough linen support and tempera over color to create some of the tooth or texture that lends even more depth to the forest. Yet, only an abstraction can possibly have such a straight horizon line as this one. And, only in an abstraction can we see the beige ground left untouched to be read as void. In another of his works entitled A Ship on the Misty Ocean, 2007-09 this abstract quality is even more emphasized as seen in this almost totally abstract surface textured with tempera paint on rough linen. The dark brown ship’s smokestacks point like arrows to the sky as it appears to sit on the extremely high horizon line. A reading can only be attained via Yeh’s placement of elements and their context, for the work is otherwise very abstract. This type of perspectival system was used in Chinese painting where figures are inferred through placement. The lowest layer is brown, becoming at it proceeds upward a soft lilac and blue suggesting the shore and the sea with a ship at the upper sector. Were it not for the ship’s presence, it would appear like a Rothko, totally abstract. Consequently, even though Yeh’s landscapes appear at times to be hyper-realistic, when studying them further one can’t help but note the abstract qualities that result in work engaging the new figuration as well as conceptual painting.
Abstraction is also Chen Chien-jung’s expertise, but rather than using the natural landscape as does Yeh, Chen thematically deploys architectural vistas as did the 20th Century American painter Richard Diebenkorn. Like Diebenkorn Chen also hovers between abstraction and figuration, but in fact Chen is even more varied in his style than Diebenkorn.
Chen is full of complex dualisms such as the linear and painterly, construction and de-construction, dark and light elements. These tendencies can be seen when comparing his Tenri works Landscape 39, 2009 and Landscape 40, 2010. In the earlier work Chen opposes thick dark red brush strokes against a strong black linear structure further delineated by white line and blue touches. Were it not for these latter highlights it wouldn’t be possible to have a clear reading. The building seems to hover rather than sit comfortably on the ground which lends a de-stabilizing element to this painting as to many of his works. The paint is very neatly applied to form the structure that recedes into the distance while simultaneously through the openings such as doors and windows we are offered a view of painterly areas with a horizontal directionality. The building seems to melt into drips of white and red paint on the far right section.
That Chen is using drip painting is even clearer in a 2009 canvas entitled Landscape 38 in which the artist no only drips and spatters paint, but also moves it around by hand creating de Kooning-like passages. In its top portion are the horizontal building structures again but rendered in dematerialized form being composed of line on the turquoise and white ground. These structures appear more like Utopian projects rather than real buildings and have the feel of St. Ellia’s early studies for futuristic architecture in space. In his fantastic urban landscapes Chen uses intuitive processes that offer him the ability to work and rework, alter and re-configure his works. Rather than depicting existing buildings Chen offers us the sensation of city living. In constructing and de-constructing Chen subverts the traditional landscape in order to study the conventions of art but also to arrive at something fresh and to offer us his own new systems of meaning.
Quo Ying-sheng is an extensively awarded photographer who studied art in France now working both in Paris and Taiwan. His dark and moody photographs depict the international character of a globalized world while simultaneously being sensitive lyrical artistic studies into the human imprint. Landscape to Quo is culturally encoded as seen through his many photographs of distinct geographic areas that are shaped by the moirés and people inhabiting them. In this sense they are associative and valued for their historic specificity as is Quo’s image of the Louvre museum, for its international social meaning.
The word landscape has a German origin from the verb “scapjan/schaffen” meaning ‘shaped lands’ and was made famous by Carl Sauer who developed the idea of a cultural landscape as one created by a specific human group. Quo’s 1980 image of the Louvre’s façade gutted in preparation for its renovation is reminiscent of a partially dressed female caught in the midst of her toilet. This marred beauty like human nature is an important element in Quo’s works but it is also the quality that makes them critically viable. Quo is not simply depicting the variety in cultural landscape by offering us tourist images of Algiers, Paris, or Taipei rather he’s featuring and critiquing human foible; imperfection and vulnerability. By producing Snow; France, 1991 a photograph of a building with many shut down doors and windows but also cracked walls, Quo is engaging Duchamp in commenting on the follies of man. And like Duchamp’s famous work Dust Breeding or his readymade In Advance of a Broken Arm he also highlights the foolishness of the human need for a safety net.
The art critic Chang Cheng-lin in writing about Quo’s French period works, points out that the artist vacillates back and forth between works with panoramic sweeping views and close-ups with limited perspective. It is true that Quo is a man of great contrasts but I choose to see this tendency as part of his working process and his need to make a statement and not as vacillation. Quo is also investigating the great Chinese Sung landscape traditions for by depicting long views he is scrutinizing Northern Landscape while in accessing the close up he’s making contact with Southern painting style. Quo’s Wandering; France, 1991 can be compared to the sweeping landscapes of Dong Yuan while his Interior Body Temperature; Paris, 1981 is analogous to the close-ups of Emperor Hui Zong’s literati style or to the Lyric painting mode of Li Di.
These three artists represent the best contributions to the contemporary Taiwanese art world inasmuch as they are unique in their style and vision but also because they created during historical moments when it was very difficult to be creative.