ILLUSTRATED:
Red Mouth, Walasse Ting & Toppan Printing co. (Hong Kong) Ltd, Hong Kong, 1977, color illustrated, p. 42

Born in Shanghai in 1929, Walasse Ting was a largely self-taught artist, whose only formal training was in Chinese calligraphy and sketching, but who succeeded in building an artistic career that extended over several decades. Supporting himself by his art, he painted on the streets of Shanghai before leaving China at the age of 19 (with just US$5 in his pocket) to travel to Africa, and from there to France. Despite not speaking a word of French when he arrived, Ting was deeply impressed by the “artistic capital of Europe,” and was particularly influenced by the paintings of Matisse, which led him to start filling his own works with bright colors. In 1960, Ting left France for New York, where he became close friends with a number of leading abstract artists and Pop artists, and established himself as one of the most active figures on the contemporary U.S. art scene. Ting excelled at drawing inspiration from daily life, using the colors of the sun in his paintings, and developing his own unique artistic lexicon of smooth lines, exaggerated forms and spectacular colors. Women, flowers, birds and animals – whatever he saw around him was potential subject matter for Ting’s paintings. While living in the Soho district of New York – a hotbed of American avant-garde art – Wallace Ting reached his own peak of creative achievement, producing a large number of works that were full of sensual joy and which had a dramatic impact on the viewer; Ting seemed to be a veritable “magician of color.” “The women portrayed in Ting’s paintings, which display considerable variation in terms of skin color, hair, eye-shadow, clothing and hosiery, all exude an entrancing allure. The bright yellow, red, purple and green tones meld together harmoniously without seeming in any way gaudy, like the changing of the seasons – colorful, lively and beautiful” (Huang Yu-ling, “An Encounter between Two Sensitive People,” taiwanschool, Taipei, September 1993 issue, p. 15).

“I Want My Lips to be Delicious,” one of Walasse Ting’s finest oil paintings, was created in 1974. It represents a continuation of the abstract, drip-painting style seen in Ting’s early work; the elegant, languorous female nude’s graceful, sensual form exudes a beautiful sense of rhythmic vitality, seeming almost to flow like water.