PROVENANCE:
Kleemann Galleries, New York

ILLUSTRATED:
Zao Wou-ki, Couleurs et mots, Le Cherche-Midi editeur, Paris, 1998, color illustrated,
no. 21, p. 28

Plantes tortillées: The Shift Toward Orientalism in Zao Wou-ki’s Abstract Art

Zao Wou-ki was one of the leading Chinese artists of the 20th century and a member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts. In 2002, Zao received a lifetime achievement award from the French government, conferral of a baton representing the highest honor of fine art in France and the famous green habit. He was also a giant of his generation in the history of Chinese modern art, a pioneer of abstract expressionism with many successors following in his steps to continue to explore the realm of fine art. His influence did not cease with his passing in 2013. The fabulous works he created continue to be treasured in world-class museums.

Family influences and artistic enlightenment

Zao Wou-ki was born in Beijing in 1921. His grandfather, Zao Shao-fu, was a liberal scholar in the Qing Dynasty and once a member of the League of Common Alliance, a revolutionary group bent on overthrowing the dynasty. His father, Zao Han-seng, was an art collector and amateur painter. The Zao family embraced the tenants of both Confucianism and Taoism, and comprised knowledgeable scholars pursuing righteousness and inner peace. The family chose names for each of their grandchildren that contained the word “wou” (meaning “emptiness”), the spirit of Taoism, from which the eldest grandchild Wou-ki’s name was derived. When he was six months old, Wou-ki moved with his father back to their hometown in Jiangsu Province. When his father went to work, his grandfather accompanied him in studying. As a descendent of the Song Dynasty’s royal family, Wou-ki was also influenced by the family’s rich cultural heritage, especially on his wandering artistic adventures during the second half of his life. Among the family’s art collection, an authentic calligraphy of Mi-Fu particularly caught Wou-ki’s eye. In addition, his uncle brought home western painting postcards from Paris. Jules Breton’s allegorical paintings and the The Angelus by Jean-François Millet, in particular, introduced him to modern western art for the first time. In 1935, at age 14, he was admitted to the Hangzhou National College of Art. He began to study both western and Chinese paintings under Lin Fengmian, Wu Dayu, and Pan Tianshou.

Lin Fengmian, the President of the China Academy of Art, and Wu Dayu, the Dean of the Western Painting Department, had studied in France and Germany, respectively. They returned to China with new artistic concepts and created an open and tolerant environment that encouraged students to be innovative and blend Chinese styles with western art. During his years at the academy, Zao Wou-ki showed special interest in the bright and clear style of Impressionism. He learned about the art of Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse, and Pablo Picasso by reading magazines from abroad and identified with those modern art masters. Abandoning the traditional Chinese art and European academic styles, he began to create landscape paintings and portraits in his own way. As the Second Sino-Japanese War broke out, he studied hard under difficult circumstances and graduated with honors six years later. He then stayed on at the academy as a teaching assistant, during which time he held his own art exhibitions. Later, with Lin’s encouragement, he travelled to France to pursue advanced studies. He originally only intended to stay in Paris for two years, but with the sudden upheaval taking place in China, Zao decided to remain in France permanently, and he never went home again.

Joining mainstream literary circles in Paris

Departing from Shanghai in February 1948, Zao travelled by sea for three months before he finally reached Marseille. Upon arriving in Paris, he rushed to the Louvre to feast his eyes on the masterpieces which he had long aspired to see. He and his wife, Lalan (1921–1995), settled in Montparnasse, where the School of Paris was born and literary circles gathered. He made friends with his neighbor, renowned Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti, and later became a member of the new School of Paris. Zao spent over a year learning French, visiting museums and art galleries, attending concerts, and making occasional sketches and prints. Then he frequented Académie de la Grand Chaumière, in which Sanyu, Pang Xunqin, and Wu Dayu had studied, and became acquainted with many fellow artists. Quite a few became masters of contemporary art, including Hans Hartung, Nicolas de Staël, Pierre Soulages, Vieira de Silva, and Sam Francis. During Zao’s second year in Paris, Galerie Creuze recognized his artistic skill and held an exhibition of his paintings which turned out to be a major success. Thereafter, Zao became increasingly renowned.

Zao Wou-ki began a serious study of the works created by western masters, and he secretly decided to abandon ink printing, which he was good at, to avoid becoming narrow-minded chinoiserie. Once it happened, he produced a batch of lithograph with minimal use of colors and a great deal of water, due to the budget. These paintings were thought to be a failure by the studio host, but after he finished these works, these ink exaggerated paintings showing on the paper with Chinese affection were unexpectedly appreciated highly by Henri Michaux (1899-1984), the great poet, who wrote the poems as the description of these works and printed them for publication, which were favored by most people.

Not Landscape, But Nature

Zao Wou-ki's early works are mostly figurative landscape or portraits. He has never dreamed of the fact that his initial intention of avoiding the chinoiserie turned out to be his first significant step on the European artistic stage. Henri Michaux pointed out that Zao Wou-ki's paintings were not landscape, but nature, and his assessment of the paintings pleased the artist mood. Through the introduction of Henri Michaux, Zao Wou-ki quickly entered the literary circles in Paris, and gradually tended toward the path of abstract expressionism painting.

Abstract Expressionism, also known as Non- Figurative, was a new form of mainstream art that flourished after the Second World War. Their beliefs lie in the use of form and color in an art form that wholly express the artist's concept of self. Starting from Kandinsky onwards, abstract art turned into an important art phenomenon during the mid twentieth century, while Expressionism, which began from the paintings of Cézanne and van Gogh, reemerged again during this time due to the impact of war. The two streams of art combined to form a trend that mesmerized New York. Despite the differences in style among the members, they still dominated in their own respective domains. Two groups emerged from the trends, one of which was Action Paintings such as the likes of Jackson Pollock, William de Kooning, Franz Kline and Philip Guston; the other group was Color Field Painting, represented by the likes of Mark Rothko, Kenneth Noland and Robert Motherwell. After the war, European art was also simultaneously inspired by the American art, initiating the artistic trend l'art informel on the European continent at nearly the same time. Representative figures include Hans Hartung, Gérard Schneider, Pierre Soulages etc., and Zao Wou-ki in precise, was one of the members from this artistic trend, favorably known as the lyric abstract painter.

Zao Wou-ki found bountiful poetry in Paul Klee’s small paintings, which were heavily influenced by oriental aesthetics. Inspired by Klee’s art, Zao rediscovered the charm hidden in the ancient symbols and lines of wall art and architecture, and began to express colors with two-dimensional lines in 1951–1952. He then transitioned from structured symbols and lines to explore oracle bone inscriptions. The pictographs used in the inscriptions comprise a writing system of pictorial symbols resembling natural objects which embody human wisdom, and interesting connections can be found between the symbols and drawing shapes. Initially, Zao outlined physical objects such as plants and stones. He then gradually turned to invisible natural phenomena such as fire, water, wind, and earth, and began to shape a distinctive style of his own. The period around 1954 was truly a time of transition for Zao—from narrative depiction to abstract lyricism. During this time—Zao’s “oracle bone period”—he gradually abandoned figurative art to embrace abstraction with an impressive shift toward Orientalism.

The Oracle Bone Period

Klee's oeuvre was instrumental in pushing the artist towards abandoning figural and objective painting, but at the same time Zao's embracing of abstractionism also meant that he was leaving behind the influence of Klee's lyricism, stating that painting should allow people to see the world in a different way, to see it from the perspective of a painter. Consequently, Zao strove to create an artistic vocabulary that is not dependant on my subject. By tracing the Chinese cultural tradition back to one of its origins, the oracle bone inscriptions, Zao learned to grasp the role of line (in itself an abstraction), which enabled him to simplify and generalize all those objects and images he had before represented in a more objective fashion. With this, the artist's unique and much admired individual style was truly born. As Zao put it, Suddenly, motifs began to take on shapes, while their backgrounds began to take on spatial depth, and as I repainted them again and again, discarding previous work and starting over many times, things that had been hidden in the deepest recesses of my mind began to surface.

In an article about Zao Wou-ki's paintings from this period that was published in the Parisian art journal Arts in 1955, the French art critic Alain Jouffroy outlined what it was that made Zao's work from this era so special: In Zao Wou-ki's work one can see how the Chinese vision of the universe, where flow and distance reflect the spirit of contemplation more than the object of contemplation, has been transformed into a modern vision of universal relevance. The modernity and artistic significance of Zao's oeuvre could hardly be summed up any better.

In the Chinese view of the world, man and heaven form an organic whole, and all things and creatures in the universe come about through the merging of matter and essence. The upshot of this is that man and nature are one, each forming an integral part of the other. This harmonious view of the cosmos is evident in Northern Song painter Kuo Hsi's Early Spring: the softly zigzagging mountains form the painting's central axis, and S-shaped rock structures help to create a sense of circular motion and make the landscape throb with currents of energy that can be felt if not actually seen. Qing Emperor Qianlong, a great friend and patron of the arts, wrote a poem to praise the merits of Early Spring: Budding trees and thawing rivers, a hermit's residence at lofty heights; a landscape dotted with willows and peaches, and mist rising in the valleys. One of Zao Wou-ki's works from 1954 titled Vent is currently in the collection of the Centre Pompidou in Paris. The French government bought the oil painting from a collector in 1985 for a research project examining the development of Zao's abstract style of painting. Vent offers an abstracted yet perfectly vivid and expressive image of tree leaves fluttering in the wind, circling, blowing and wavering in a constant interplay of air and matter, mover and moved—a poignant modern echo of the atmosphere permeating Kuo Hsi's classical landscape painting.

¡§Plantes tortillées¡¨ represents resilience in life

Zao Wou-ki contemplated in his autobiography, “I look at space—the stretching, twisting nature of space. I ponder how to paint wind, depict void, and express clarity and purity.” Despite the western artistic training he received for many years, he also continued to hear the call of the oriental traditions he had been exposed to in his childhood. To reconcile the conflict, Zao decided to follow his interest in art—to interpret natural phenomena from the perspectives of Chinese philosophy and to explore the infinity of abstract art. The works created during his oracle bone period are particularly unique and even cryptic.

Take the pair of two contrasting works that are both in the collection of the Centre Pompidou in Paris as an example—Vent expresses fluttering and lithe tree leaves; Incendie represents an image of burning flame. The national museum has a special affinity for Zao Wou-ki’s works from the oracle bone period, indicating how truly rare and precious these works are. Another red and black toned powerful canvas titled Plantes tortillées was created in 1954. It can be seen as the artist’s expression of the energy of earth, which corresponds to the Zen’s spirit of “still moves and moving stillness” and a quest for the truth of Tai-Chi.

With her vast deposits of nutrient, Mother Earth breeds innumerable lives and nourishes all things in nature. In this work, Plantes tortillées, Zao Wou-ki offers a perfect and abundant imagery of earth. On the back of the painting, the artist inscribed its title in French, which is literally translated as “twined plants.” Why are the plants twined? It is the artist’s intention to express the plants struggling to grow upwards in extreme environment, symbolizing the resilience of life.

Zao Wou-ki loved nature. Seeing green plants outdoors always pleased him. Sometimes he said jokingly, “These flowers are beautiful. Can I steal one?” When living in Paris, each morning at breakfast, he would take care of his miniature orange trees and orchids while having tea. Spending time in nature had been part of his daily life back in China. During the 1930’s, he had a big house in Shanghai, with a flowing stream, a fish pond, an exquisite garden, and a large lawn. Those were happy days. He wrote in his autobiography, Gardening is a noble pastime among the Chinese, and it reminds me of my father (Jardinier, pour un Chinois, est un passe-temps noble et me rappelle mon père.)

At their home in Shanghai, his father, Zao Han-seng, often watched him paint. Sometimes, Han-seng asked his son to help him tend the garden. Han-seng was a warm person. When he was 14, Wou-ki decided to pursue his passion as an artist, a decision which his father fully supported. The family’s Taoist traditions and his father’s love both served as Zao’s spiritual home and offered fertile ground for cultivating a lifetime of artistic pursuits. Having experienced political oppression by foreign countries for many generations, the Chinese used to consider children who went abroad as traitors. However, this open-minded father sent both of his sons abroad—one to the United States and the other to France. However, Wou-ki’s father suffered greatly during the Great Cultural Revolution in China and died in 1966. After 1948, the artist never had another chance to see his father—an irreplaceable source of strength throughout his life.

With an attachment to his hometown, or cultural nostalgia, the artist revealed in his work Plantes tortillées an oriental sentiment as well as the enormous vitality of nature. Coiled, intertwined plants, expressed in the form of somber colored symbols and lines, roll and tremble across a chaotic earth while warm rays of sunlight shine upon the dark toned earth, suggesting a hopeful and bright future in the face of unpredictable challenges. Like ancient mysteries, the exaggerated and complicated symbols on the canvas possess a suggestive power bestowed by the artist; this power not only helped to heal his mind, but also continues to inspire deep reflection in viewers.