PRINTCatalogue Note:
BLACK LINE SERIES
ZHOU CHUNYA
In examining the artistic movements and stylistic developments of Chinese artists over the past few decades, Zhou Chunya stands apart from his contemporaries. In inspiration, symbolism, technique, and purpose, Zhou has effectively developed his own artistic direction, continually diverging from the movements around him to explore and establish his own means of expression through art. Rejecting participation in the politically and ideologically charged artistic theories celebrated by other contemporary artists in China, Zhou instead cultivated his own passions and interests through the establishment of several iconic series: Tibet, Stones, Flowers, Peach Blossoms, and Green Dog. Zhou’s unique and distinctive voice has earned him recognition throughout his career, culminating in his first retrospective held at the Shanghai Art Museum in 2010. The same year, Zhou was named Artist of the Year at the 2010 Art Power Awards, a title awarded the previous year to his close friend, Zhang Xiaogang. Zhou’s refusal to mold his artistic voice to a discernable movement has set his work apart in both originality of style and expression.
Zhou’s first departure from the artistic movements around him came in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution. While Zhou’s classmates at the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute united to express the social upheaval and historical trauma of the Cultural Revolution through the newly established Scar Art movement, Zhou elected instead to focus on depictions of the idyllic, agrarian lives of the Tibetan people. Zhou explains that while he appreciated the Scar Art narratives of his peers, his artistic interests lay elsewhere, stating, I only wanted to sketch from life because in so doing I was confronting an immediate, living nature. This allowed my artistic expression to remain at one with my passions. Zhou’s Tibetan studies do not represent politicized metaphors or social theories, but instead focus on the simple aesthetic inspiration that Zhou found in the colors and rustic beauty of both the people and landscape.
Following his time in Tibet, Zhou left a socially tumultuous China to obtain his master’s degree at the Gesamthochschule in Kassel, Germany. Of his time in Germany, Zhou claims the classroom where I really studied was the art museums and galleries of Germany and other European countries. Exposure to Western artistic movements such as Cubism, Expressionism, Fauvism, and the Neo – Expressionist Junge Wilde (Wild Youth) theory expanded Zhou’s aesthetic and stylistically influenced his artistic exploration.
Despite Zhou’s identification with the artistic movements he discovered in Germany, he did not remain there long, returning to China in 1989. China has always held certain sway over Zhou, who states simply, I have been deeply influenced by Chinese tradition, which I can never be rid of wherever I am. It was in pursuit of this Chinese tradition that Zhou developed both his Stone and Flower series, combining the visual experimentation of the Western modern movements he had discovered in Germany with the traditional elements of Chinese literati painters. While his contemporaries in China were participating in the New Wave, Cynical Realism, and Political Pop movements saturated with social and political commentary, Zhou chose subject matter quintessential to the literati aesthetic, devoid of the contentious activism inherent in the movements around him.
While unmistakably influenced by traditional literati painters such as Dong Qichang, Shi Tao, Bada Shanren, and Huang Binhong, Zhou’s exploration of traditional themes sought to expand upon existing conventions by incorporating the brash colors and influences of Western artistic movements.
During the 1990s, the era in which waves of Art Nouveau pervaded the art scene and the Chinese Economic Reform had just begun, officially endorsed art in China still primarily served political and moral purposes. Many artists embarked on critiques of the status quo, but Zhou once again chose to diverge from the mainstream. He steered clear of prevailing languages in the art circle, such as political Pop, by delving wholeheartedly instead into Chinese literati landscape painting, and attempted to establish his own distinctive style by navigating between traditional ink wash, abstract expressionism and expressionism.
Although influenced by a wealth of traditional Chinese artists, such as Dong Qichang, Shi Tao, Bada Shanren and Hung Binhong, Zhou still strove to rediscover the essence of traditional Chinese painting. He incorporated his findings with the bold colors and aesthetic theories of Western art, thereby opening up an entire new field from the existing realm of traditional art forms. The most commonly seen creative style in his works from the 1990s was a tentative neo-expressionist integration of the color black in traditional Chinese ink wash with German expressionism. The artist blended his artistic thought into his colors and lines, and regarded himself as a painter who communicated through form. Black was the main tone in many of his renowned works of the 1900s, while portraits painted on black backgrounds, semi-abstract human figures, stones and rocks formulated the gist of his subject matter. Ravenel has presented many celebrated works of this style in its previous auctions.
Completed in 1995 and distinctly different from Zhou’s customary themes of stones and rocks or semi-abstract human figures, Black Lines, where all figurative elements have been withdrawn and all intelligible visual clues are absent, features a simple combination of black and sienna. The black lines that form the foundation of the canvas are arranged in order and diffuse from the center, while another layer of methodically positioned lines cover the previous layer from an alternate direction. The swiftly swept strokes leave clear, recognizable traces of speed and power. The pigments on the top layer in sienna and black form an uneven texture upon the canvas. This piece gives no clear indication of meaning; it is neither a critique, nor a tribute to anyone or anything. It simply reflects the artist’s self-expression of his individual creative process. The composition is similar in style with Zhou’s 1992 The Spirit of Landscape, a lot that was previously presented in the 2012 Ravenel Spring Auction. In “Black Lines,” however, Zhou’s abstract expressionist approach is substantiated in a deeper, more profound form. The title of this piece is in itself an intriguing statement. While titles of artworks usually guide viewer interpretation, abstract paintings often very much avoid the provision of suggestion. Just as the title Black Lines refers solely to what is directly visible on the canvas, all possibilities of figurative associations are aptly removed. Viewers may only perceive the passion of the artist that is generated during the creative process by moving along with the rhythmic pulse of the lines painted upon the canvas.
ZHOU CHUNYA
In examining the artistic movements and stylistic developments of Chinese artists over the past few decades, Zhou Chunya stands apart from his contemporaries. In inspiration, symbolism, technique, and purpose, Zhou has effectively developed his own artistic direction, continually diverging from the movements around him to explore and establish his own means of expression through art. Rejecting participation in the politically and ideologically charged artistic theories celebrated by other contemporary artists in China, Zhou instead cultivated his own passions and interests through the establishment of several iconic series: Tibet, Stones, Flowers, Peach Blossoms, and Green Dog. Zhou’s unique and distinctive voice has earned him recognition throughout his career, culminating in his first retrospective held at the Shanghai Art Museum in 2010. The same year, Zhou was named Artist of the Year at the 2010 Art Power Awards, a title awarded the previous year to his close friend, Zhang Xiaogang. Zhou’s refusal to mold his artistic voice to a discernable movement has set his work apart in both originality of style and expression.
Zhou’s first departure from the artistic movements around him came in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution. While Zhou’s classmates at the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute united to express the social upheaval and historical trauma of the Cultural Revolution through the newly established Scar Art movement, Zhou elected instead to focus on depictions of the idyllic, agrarian lives of the Tibetan people. Zhou explains that while he appreciated the Scar Art narratives of his peers, his artistic interests lay elsewhere, stating, I only wanted to sketch from life because in so doing I was confronting an immediate, living nature. This allowed my artistic expression to remain at one with my passions. Zhou’s Tibetan studies do not represent politicized metaphors or social theories, but instead focus on the simple aesthetic inspiration that Zhou found in the colors and rustic beauty of both the people and landscape.
Following his time in Tibet, Zhou left a socially tumultuous China to obtain his master’s degree at the Gesamthochschule in Kassel, Germany. Of his time in Germany, Zhou claims the classroom where I really studied was the art museums and galleries of Germany and other European countries. Exposure to Western artistic movements such as Cubism, Expressionism, Fauvism, and the Neo – Expressionist Junge Wilde (Wild Youth) theory expanded Zhou’s aesthetic and stylistically influenced his artistic exploration.
Despite Zhou’s identification with the artistic movements he discovered in Germany, he did not remain there long, returning to China in 1989. China has always held certain sway over Zhou, who states simply, I have been deeply influenced by Chinese tradition, which I can never be rid of wherever I am. It was in pursuit of this Chinese tradition that Zhou developed both his Stone and Flower series, combining the visual experimentation of the Western modern movements he had discovered in Germany with the traditional elements of Chinese literati painters. While his contemporaries in China were participating in the New Wave, Cynical Realism, and Political Pop movements saturated with social and political commentary, Zhou chose subject matter quintessential to the literati aesthetic, devoid of the contentious activism inherent in the movements around him.
While unmistakably influenced by traditional literati painters such as Dong Qichang, Shi Tao, Bada Shanren, and Huang Binhong, Zhou’s exploration of traditional themes sought to expand upon existing conventions by incorporating the brash colors and influences of Western artistic movements.
During the 1990s, the era in which waves of Art Nouveau pervaded the art scene and the Chinese Economic Reform had just begun, officially endorsed art in China still primarily served political and moral purposes. Many artists embarked on critiques of the status quo, but Zhou once again chose to diverge from the mainstream. He steered clear of prevailing languages in the art circle, such as political Pop, by delving wholeheartedly instead into Chinese literati landscape painting, and attempted to establish his own distinctive style by navigating between traditional ink wash, abstract expressionism and expressionism.
Although influenced by a wealth of traditional Chinese artists, such as Dong Qichang, Shi Tao, Bada Shanren and Hung Binhong, Zhou still strove to rediscover the essence of traditional Chinese painting. He incorporated his findings with the bold colors and aesthetic theories of Western art, thereby opening up an entire new field from the existing realm of traditional art forms. The most commonly seen creative style in his works from the 1990s was a tentative neo-expressionist integration of the color black in traditional Chinese ink wash with German expressionism. The artist blended his artistic thought into his colors and lines, and regarded himself as a painter who communicated through form. Black was the main tone in many of his renowned works of the 1900s, while portraits painted on black backgrounds, semi-abstract human figures, stones and rocks formulated the gist of his subject matter. Ravenel has presented many celebrated works of this style in its previous auctions.
Completed in 1995 and distinctly different from Zhou’s customary themes of stones and rocks or semi-abstract human figures, Black Lines, where all figurative elements have been withdrawn and all intelligible visual clues are absent, features a simple combination of black and sienna. The black lines that form the foundation of the canvas are arranged in order and diffuse from the center, while another layer of methodically positioned lines cover the previous layer from an alternate direction. The swiftly swept strokes leave clear, recognizable traces of speed and power. The pigments on the top layer in sienna and black form an uneven texture upon the canvas. This piece gives no clear indication of meaning; it is neither a critique, nor a tribute to anyone or anything. It simply reflects the artist’s self-expression of his individual creative process. The composition is similar in style with Zhou’s 1992 The Spirit of Landscape, a lot that was previously presented in the 2012 Ravenel Spring Auction. In “Black Lines,” however, Zhou’s abstract expressionist approach is substantiated in a deeper, more profound form. The title of this piece is in itself an intriguing statement. While titles of artworks usually guide viewer interpretation, abstract paintings often very much avoid the provision of suggestion. Just as the title Black Lines refers solely to what is directly visible on the canvas, all possibilities of figurative associations are aptly removed. Viewers may only perceive the passion of the artist that is generated during the creative process by moving along with the rhythmic pulse of the lines painted upon the canvas.