Among artists of his age, Wang Huaiqing appears to be low-keyed, yet his artistic achievement is outstanding. His artistic style, like his personality, is simple, plain with economical. He rarely mentions his own art works publicly, and when he does talk about it, he always gives only a cogent glimpse of the creation of art works. He prefers to work without distraction and quietly. He said, "A lot of fussy stuff need to be presented quietly; a lot of passionate stuff should be presented calmly." People who know him always are impressed by his gentle and graceful speech. Wang Huaiqing's elegant, simple and sincere characters are somehow related to his background when he was growing up. His parents passed away when he was a teen; without any one to rely on, the young man used to stay in a corner where would not attract other people's attention. That imbued him with fortitude of a quiet character. Wang was born in Beijing at the time when WWII had just ended. In this Imperial, ancient city, there used to be many whose heart longed for culture her i tage. Wang was inf luenced by hearing and seeing culture constantly during his childhood. After graduating from elementary school, Wang was also influenced by his elderly brother who was fond of arts. He took and passed the entrance exam for the affiliated junior high of Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA), forging an indissoluble bond with the arts when he was 11 years old. He studied in the affiliated high school of CAFA; after graduation, he passed his exam with high enough scores to enter the Central Academy of Arts and Crafts. Afterwards, he pursued his masters degree in Arts. Due to his curiosity in Chinese architecture, furniture and folk art (such as Han brick, ceramics), and a broad interest in Western modern realism, including representation, decoration, flat print, and abstract arts, he went beyond the tough yet often narrow regimen of Soviet-realistic training.
While he was pursuing his masters degree in the Arts academic school, Wang and his classmates formed the "Same Generation Painting Society," which arranged an exhibition to be held in the National Art Museum of China. Among those works, his "Bo Le Choosing a Horse" and "Jujube Tree" were selected by the National Art Museum of China for it's collection. China arts circle, the Wall Street Journal and Contemporary Magazine (French) gave Wang's eight works in this exhibition good reviews. In 1985, Wang attended a national oil painting academic conference on Huangshan ("Yellow Mountain"), this conference later became one of the important triggers of the "85 New Wave Movement", and also marked a new milestone in Chinese oil painting arts. During the trip to Hunagshan, he passed by the city Shaoxing and visited the great writer Lu Xun's old home. This had a significant influence to him.
To the artist in painting, the old house in Shaoxing was an unfamiliar environment; however, from the space where people used to live and carry on their activities, also where their hearts clung, the artist had a feeling of déjà vu. The strong contrast between white walls and black pillars, the heavy and thick wooden structure, bore a great spirit, solemn and stern. However, when he observed the artistic patterns of the windows and beams, he found that they were full of warm and gentle feelings. The cultural tang of the regions south of the Yangtze inspired him considerably, causing him to create very dramatic paintings. Wang visited Shaoxing again in 1990 and this time he focused on the old furniture instead of old architecture. Lines on long benches, desks, chairs, the structure of mortise and tenon, touched him deeply. Those brilliant furniture pieces are art, between the horizontal and vertical, full of oriental abstract charm, demonstrate the intelligence of human beings.
After his visit to this precious heritage site, the artist started thinking of how to continue this beautiful tradition and reassign a contemporary meaning to it. Wang had lived in Beijing more than six decades, since his childhood; he had seen the historical remains which prospered and then had faded and died away during the process of modernization. He sighed for those alleys in Beijing where he used to wander as in his childhood memories, which were gradually fading away. Even if you rebuild those alleys, you cannot retrieve that kind of verve and taste. In recent years, the collection and distribution centers of old furniture in Beijing were where Wang always lingered. Every time he visited those centers, he would buy one or two pieces of furniture, or some wood craft patterns for a window, or old bottles and jars. In Wang's eyes, that furniture with its blazing history had lost its home; those antiques had no relevance, no destination, he called them "foundlings of culture." Wang said "That furniture had lost its home. However, when you observed them carefully, their parts, their posture and limbs, when you studied them in detail, you could see the nobility and glory that belonged to past times, but their souls had nowhere to continue." (quoted from China Central Television, Investing in Art Objects, "A record of oil painters: Wang Huaiqing – search for the hometown" an interview, July 24, 2007)
Wang Huaiqing was not just fascinated with those delicate antiques. He also looked for the sentiment and interests that hi s ances tor s used to seek. As the processes of modern society were changing rapidly, traditional culture was swiftly collapsing. When faced with the impotence to halt great changes in the course of time, the artist strove to reclaim the nobility and glory by actual effort - through his paintbrushes. Wang seemed to be upholding the spirit of the vanishing culture in his mind and he looked for the possibility of transmitting that culture.
A chance occurrence led to what happened in 1987. Wang and his family were invited to visit the States, where he served as a visiting scholar at Oklahoma University for two years. During this period Wang also did numerous studies in various fields that broadened his vision. He had some individual and joint exhibitions in New York City. Wang took his teacher Wu Guanzhong's words: "Only Chinese giants can compete with foreign giants, and Chinese giants can only grow up in China" to encourage himself. Wu had studied in France when he was young, where he worked with excellent foreign artists. However, he went back to China eventually. What Wu said was a strong encouragement to Wang.
At the end of 1988, Wang Huaiqing returned to Beijing. He did not cause a commotion and stopped receiving visitors in order to concentrate on his painting. He rarely had contact with the outside. Wang re-painted "Hometown" in 1989; this work won a bronze medal from the 7th Annual National Arts Work Exhibition and was collected by the Shanghai Art Museum. In 1991, the "Great Ming Manner" won a gold medal at the Chinese Annual Oil Painting Exhibition. In the same year, in the Selected Art Works by Wu Guanzhong & His Students Exhibition that was hosted by the China Artist Association, his works gained high praise from Wu and art critics. In the following year, Wu visited a contemporary art museum in the UK. Standing before many Western masterpieces, he told his company of friends: "If we put Wang's works here, they would definitely be as good as the others."
If we take an overview of the changes in Wang's painting style, we would find that he established his reputation in the early 80's with contract oil painting. During the mid 80's he started to study the abstract structure of residential houses in the regions south of the Yangtze. In the early 90's, Wang started to develop rebuilding Ming Dynasty style furniture. By refuting Eastern and Western painting tradition and reconstructing them, he proceeded to a Modern Structure (according to Jia Fangzhou). Chinese calligraphy and painting share the same origin; there is a similar structure when drawing calligraphy and when chiseling a seal in seal script. Likewise in painting, spatial placement is critical. Some Western modern abstract artists were enlightened by Chinese calligraphy, such as the American abstract expressionist Franz Kline (1910-1962) and the French abstract artist Pierre Soulages (1919-) who is a master of the expressionism in black.
The commentator Jia Fangzhou thinks that, from the aspect of the teacher and pupil relationship, Wang's "structure" and "black-and-white" elements in his 90's works, were related directly to Wu. Jia mentioned, "As early as the 50's and 60's, Wu sensed a simplicity and structural beauty among the white walls and black tiles from the regions south of the Yangtze ('the region of rivers and lakes"). He expressed it again and again, until the reduced "block structure" of white-wall-black-tile became his special language to denote these southern Yangtze regions. In recent years, he pushed further to develop the block structures into abstract regions. The most influential teachers for Wu are Pan Tienshou and Lin Fengmian; they are also exemplary for emphasis on structure. Pan found a way that is near to modern structure from traditional composition. His "Big Block" article was designed to emphasize structure... Lin was a paragon for emphasizing structure too. Like Pan, he introduced Western modern structural concepts into ink wash painting, altering the general layout of traditional ink wash painting from the root. However, Lin found that modern Western art could complete the insufficiency in Chinese traditional arts. This deep inner link lead him to find the connection between East and West, thereby establishing his artistic direction." (Odile Chen ed., Jia Fangzhou, 'A World of Contrasts - on Wang Huaiqing's Modern Structure', Wang Huaiqing, Lin & Keng Gallery, Taipei, 1999, pp. 2-3) Jia believed that Pan Tianshou, Lin Fengmian and Wu Guanzhong are the pioneers of Eastern structuralism, and Wang Huaiqing completed their pioneering work. 
During the mid 90's, Wang became more adept at startling deconstruction. He fragmented a desk and chair, and allowed the parts to be suspended in space to create free and spectacular movement. In 1996, Wang developed a series of Night Revels that were based on Gu Hongzhong's "The Night Revels of Han Xizai." In this series, lifeless furniture replaced historical figures,achieving an interest in variation of form that was both skillful and vivid. The art critic Michael Sullivan called this series dazzling "deconstruction" - the delicate, profound and charming visual effects may compete with Picasso's works. This work was exhibited by the China Oil Painting Association for the first time in 1996, and then in the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 1998 under the theme of "China: 5,000 years," Wang produced unusually brilliant results again.
As time progressed into the late 90's, Wang started experimenting with the triptych form as in his large "triptych" classical works. The Western-style triptych originated from altarpieces in the Middle Ages, gradually being transformed into a regular form of composition for pictures up to the 20th century. Some arts masters such as Francis Bacon, Zao Wou-ki were skilled at using the triptych as a great way to present a narrative. It seems that Wang had found the holy meaning in the triptych's classical form. In the past, those altar tables were transformed into an important painting structure in the Renaissance. The sublimation of spirit seems to match the meaning that Wang found in the old building in the Jiangnan regions and the Ming style furniture - from which he derived a whole new creative meaning.
The unprecedented artistic masterpiece "Gold Stone" in this auction was finished in 1998, and is the largest work of Wang Huaiqing, ever offered in any auction. This work was exhibited in the "Wang Huaiqing Solo Exhibition" in 1999, and was the cover piece of the exhibition catalogue. Later this work was chosen by Beijing's China Arts Museum for the 20th Century Chinese Oil Painting Exhibition as Wang's representative work. One may certainly imagine the importance of this painting.
"Gold Stone" is an abstract work painted in "black" and "gold", a combination he had rarely used as his key colors. Diverging from the previous two element, black and white style, the artist returns to the third color in his painting at this stage. In "Bo Le Choosing a Horse," from his early period work, he applied the color gold around part of Bo Le's head, borrowing gold's meaning of consecration and eternal. It was common to use gold foil with lacquer on grotto frescoes and religious sculptures in the Sui Dynasty. In Western religious culture, gold used to be a central color in painting. "Black" and "gold" may hardly seem to classify as colors, and yet represent the most truly classical colors that are employed in the history of Eastern and Western painting.
The arts historian Hsieh Li-fa pointed out: "There has been a long history for using the color black as base key in painting in the Eastern arts, so to call the color black the King of Colors would be not be an exaggeration. There were numerous period styles and individual figures in thousands of years. If we look into it seriously, everything was just water, ink and paper varying in relation to each other on paper, or we might say, it is a universe of ink from the painting brushes of artists. Painting styles were passed on for hundreds of years. Despite the habit among the literati and officialdom of limiting the painting material to only ink and paper, there were some other colors that showed up, but these were only seen as secondary to the color black, as the explanation of the image. The basic frame was still the ink-color that was extended in black. So we can see the tenacity of Eastern culture. The color black is not only a color for expression in painting, but also represents a spirit." He continued, "The color black in Eastern painting, always makes me think about the color gold that was very common in religious paintings before the Western Renaissance period, to manifest the holy and the glorious that is revered in the religion. People used costly gold foil to put on the panels as the basic color key in their paintings. The color gold is symbolic, usually representing some specific meaning; however, if we see it from the aspect of the abstract, it is sensational, and can serve for dominance or contracts. Among various colors in a painting, the color gold can stand for harmony; so that in the times when religious arts were especially outstanding, the color gold dominated the painting sur face wi th absolute super ior i ty, establishing a 'golden' age in art history." (from Hsieh Li-Fa, an essay for 2002 symposia: "When the colors of the age are put into traditional ink - the accident of the old age make the new age a certainty".)
The color black of the East and the color gold of the West, represent two unique cultures individually; however, these two elements were integrated skillfully into Wang's "Gold Stone". To Wang, black, white or gold are all colors! Wang always had a fondness for the spirit of classical culture. He quotes Chinese ancient books and phrases in the titles of his works, such as "Tiangongkaiwu" (Traces of Nature), "a great sound is silent" (words from Lao-tzu) and "gold stones". The phrases in the titles contain abstract meanings. Tiangongkaiwu, the so-called "techniques encyclopedia" of China, is a book is especially beloved by Wang, he claimed this book was rich in old Chinese wisdom. "Gold Stone" originates from the "History of Later Han Dynasty" from which the quotation is "utmost sincerity can split even bronze and stone." An earnest and sincere person may cause a great sensation - shake the mountains and hills, splitting even bronze and stone. Considering either this title phrase or this giant painting itself, the artist hopes to hearten people on and challenge themselves. You can imagine Wang pursues art with the will to split stones. While the artist was creating the "Gold Stone" Triptych, he experienced a difficult struggle in his heart. He used Venice gold as a collage on the background successfully, which produced a large piece of majestic gold, upon this powerful black was painted on freely and burst open inside. Massive monoliths of black, the scattered remains of black, from strong and thick to sparse and thin, full of rhythm, flow with great momentum like a grand epic. In the composition, black and gold symbolize king and eternity. Wang's art span time and space, confident, bold and constrained, standing mighty.
Wang's wife was his classmate in the Central Institute of Arts and Crafts and is also an artist. She is Wang's most candid commentator, for "Gold Stone", her "marvelous piece of advice" were these two words given without a glimmer of doubt. Wu Guanzhong also approved Wang for dealing with a matter summarily without regard to details and for facing the challenge with daring. He wrote: "In Gold Stone it is as if two armies have just joined battle, struggling to dominate one another, but both supremely indifferent to their fate. ..." (Wu Guanzhong, 'Wang Huai Qing', "Wang Huai Qing – Traces of Nature", Yan Gallery, Hong Kong, Aug. 2005). Over the many years, Wu has always led and supported his student, moreover, he gives Wang's achievement a good review.
Wang has never stopped in his persistence to magnify the human spirit, in a chaotic new age, the clear and bright mind steers on, refusing to follow the current trends. He thinks that an artist is always searching for something, seeking for the explanation of art. English commentator Michael Sullivan confirms Wang's effort. He thinks that Wang has connected the visual world and abstract art, this allows Western artistic circle to have a way to understand his works. Sullivan described Wang as following: "But Wang Huaiqing insists that the roots of his style are deep in Chinese culture, and above all his awareness of himself as a Chinese at a critical moment in modern Chinese history. Three things motivate him; his perceptions of traditional China and its relation with the modern world, his own memories of life, and his search for the essential order of painting. I think it is the combination in Wang Huaiquing's work of this sense of 'ren' – which involves both his own nature and his sense of Chinese identity – with his power to creat epoetic order out of apparent chaos, that makes the best of his painting so deeply satisfying."
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