EXHIBITED:
Literature Modern Abstract Painting, J.P. Art Center, Kaohsiung, September 10-18, 2013

ILLUSTRATED:
Jean Leymarie, Zao Wou-ki, Editions Cercle d'Art, Paris, 1986, black-and-white illustrated, no. 489, p. 345

This painting is to be sold with a certificate of authenticity issued by Atelier Zao Wou-ki.

In the abstract paintings of Zao Wou-ki, the depiction of light is always superb. In some of Zao’s paintings, light is the central focus of the work, with the rays of light transfixing the viewer and having a pronounced emotional effect on them. Alternatively, the light may emanate out from one corner of the canvas to suffuse the painting, sometimes with a powerful brilliance, sometimes soft and restrained. What is common to all of Zao’s works is the way that light is shown as embodying an immense sense of vigor and energy, along with a beauty that refuses to be ignored. In Zao’s diptych painting “23.9.76”, the artist presents an interpretation of the clash between light and dark. In this painting, against a background of interleaved silver and earth tones, blocks of rich, dark color occupy the lower left hand corner, center and right side of the canvas. These patches of color are dense and coagulated, with a latent sense of disturbance. Between these blocks of dark brown, dark clouds seem to rise up from the earth, and a mysterious radiance emanates out from irregular cracks. Indistinct symbols revolving in space bring to mind Zao’s “Oracle Bone” works from the 1950s. Spreading out from the lower middle of the canvas is a soft silvery-blue light, what seems to be a “heavenly” light with its origins in the far-off realms of the wider universe – vast, boundless, and bottomless. The scene floats in the middle of all this, with no obvious center, and no point at which it disappears; the viewer of the painting also has a sense of having been set free from the fetters of gravity, and being able to “enter” the painting from different angles and different routes, exploring the unbounded unknown that it presents to us. As we seem to hear the violent sounds of objects and forces colliding with one another and being sent spinning round, we also come to appreciate the passion and yearning that underlay the artist’s ability to explore the mysteries of the cosmos in this way.

The French art critic Francois Jacob commented that “in the paintings of Zao Wou-ki, there is an endless questioning of the world, and a determination to remake it. Some of his paintings bring to mind the incredible violence of the outpouring of energy that was the origin of the universe, and the final ‘jolt’ in this event. Other paintings depict nebulae in their riotous ‘rebellion,’ or the birth of light, or the creation of water.” (From the foreword to “Zao Wou-ki: Paintings, 1980 – 1985,” Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York, 1986; Kwai Fung Art Publishing House, Hong Kong, p. 375) Having previously drawn inspiration from Paul Klee and from the ancient Chinese “oracle bone” inscriptions, Zao Wou-ki reached the height of his artistic brilliance in his later abstract works. By integrating aspects of East Asian philosophy into European art, Zao embraced the infinite turbulence of cosmic vitality, and opened up a whole new form of artistic perspective. Despite the tendency in abstract painting to dispense with form, Zao Wou-ki continued to focus on the physical world; however, he no longer depicted the physical substance of the world, instead seeking to show the transformation of matter, striving to capture the vortex of its motion and its primal scream.

Zao Wou-ki’s abstract paintings always embodied the essence of the scenes that he portrayed; one might say that he depicted the “spirit” of the landscape. Zao was like an explorer, making his solitary way through the formless, unknown boundary between the universe, blazing new trails, exploring the solitary depths of the cosmos, and capturing the rhythm of the earth and the power of nature. At the same time, the paintings also captured aspects of Zao’s own spirit, just as traditional Chinese literati landscape painting depicted not just the scene as the painter saw it, but also the topography of the artist’s soul. The impressive scale of this topography is of course reflective of the artist’s deep understanding and response to life itself. Zao Wou-ki’s creative work was always closely linked to his life experience and to his internal spiritual journey. The painting “23.9.76” is at one and the same time a landscape and a scene from the artist’s own soul. Around 1970, the health of Zao’s second wife Chan May-Khan was deteriorating steadily; she was in more or less constant pain for several years, and died in 1972. Frustrated by his inability to help her, Zao was heartbroken. For a while, he found it difficult to bring himself to continue painting in oils, but he was able to use traditional Chinese ink brush painting on paper as a release for his spiritual torment. During this period, the architect I.M. Pei and his wife Eileen Loo visited Zao, and were impressed by his ink-brush paintings on paper. Some years later, in his foreword for the exhibition catalog accompanying a solo exhibition of Zao’s work in New York, I.M. Pei recalled that “I was enraptured … the lines were almost ethereally faint, and yet at the same time they embodied an immense degree of detail. What struck me as most significant was that these ink brush paintings and Zao’s oil paintings shared a common artistic lexicon, despite the enormous gulf between the two genres in terms of technique. I can still remember how deep an impression it made on me to discover that Zao Wou-ki was an artist working in the Western tradition who also took aesthetic inspiration from the Chinese tradition; furthermore, it was this aesthetic inspiration that was the foundation for the way he constantly evolved and progressed as an artist” (from the foreword by I.M. Pei to the exhibition catalog for “Zao Wou-Ki. Encres de Chine 1982 – 1996. A Tribute to Pierre Matisse,” Editions Jan Kruiger and Maria Gaetana Matisse, 1996; Kwai Fung Art Publishing House, Hong Kong, p. 375).

After recovering from his loss, Zao Wou-ki moved on to a new stage in his artistic career in which the nature of his art was once more transformed. This time, the strokes of the ink brush helped Zao to find inner peace, and instilled a quiet new power into his abstract paintings. In “23.9.76,” the brown tones are displayed against a pale background, sometimes concentrated like thick ink, and sometimes spread out as though applied with a wet brush. A sense of rhythmic movement suffuses the work, as though the invisible force that animates all things were operating in this conjuncture of the universe. In particular, the finely detailed expression of color tones is reminiscent of the rhythmic power of ink brush painting. In the horizontal structure of the upper part of the painting, Zao has succeeded in creating a “wet” effect comparable to that of ink brush painting on an oil painting canvas; the light, variegated layering effect gives added spatial depth to the work, suggesting distant hills wreathed in mist or swirling clouds. The convergence and interpenetration of the virtual and the real seems to represent both competition and also a kind of symbiotic fusion. In this painting, Zao Wou-ki is not attempting to tell a story, and yet we can hear the movement of the earth and the low murmur of the wind, we can see the dance of light, and we can sense an ineffable force, gyrating through the atmosphere, that gives the canvas as a whole a poetic, dreamlike character. As Zao Wou-ki himself once remarked.” (Zao Wou-ki and Francoise Marquet, “Zao Wou-ki Discusses his Art,” translated by Liu Li, Artist Publishing, Taipei, 1992, p. 144-145) This was the way in which Zao communicated with life and with the world – a fearless, passionate dynamism.