Sense and Sensibility

Among artists in Taiwan, those in the field of contemporary ink-wash painting have perhaps the most difficult task on their hands, though they also have the greatest advantage. During over 300 years of exposure to Western art-with its emphasis on light-and-shade, perspective, color changes and bold experimentation-traditional Chinese painting, though not without new masterpieces and great painters, has seemed generally unable to step out of the classical framework established by the ancient masters. It has only been in recent decades in Taiwan that a number of ink-wash painters trained in both Eastern and Western technique have begun to introduce the social content and subversive spirit of modern painting into their work, in an effort to open up new realms for the traditional art form.

Gathering of heroes

Now in his fiftieth year, Yuan Chin-taa belongs among the later wave of those whose work cocks a snook at the ink-wash tradition. Fortunately for him, his most prolific period coincided with the unfolding of enormous political, economic and social changes in Taiwan, when there was an outburst of new energy for artists to draw upon. Suddenly, after the lifting of martial law in 1987, nothing was out of bounds any more. Subject material seemed endless, and viewers were keen for anything new.

Looking back over his creative career, Yuan admits that he has focused in the past 20 years on "scouting a way ahead for contemporary Chinese painting." Says Yuan: "Every accomplished painter in the history of Chinese painting has been able to reflect his own time, bringing something new to the established form." He cites the example of the Tang dynasty painter Wu Daozi, who "wielded his brush with the force of a whirlwind," reflecting the abandoned, all-drinking all-singing spirit of Li Bai's age, the high Tang period. For Yuan, painting during the era when martial law was lifted, in a Taiwan convulsed by social movements, political upheaval, stock-market fever and financial scandals, naturally meant producing satirical works such as Crazy, with its swarming ants, Puppets, showing figures controlled by strings, Deconstructed Age, with its crowd of self-interested marchers, and Swapping Places on the theme of shifting power.

Despite the thick vein of satire and criticism in his work, Yuan's coloring and brushwork are rich and deft, bringing a complicit smile from his viewers. How does he use humor to enhance the effectiveness of his work in this way? Yuan attributes it to his mild temperament, the result of a happy childhood.

Eternal mother

Born in 1949, Yuan was raised in Yuanlin Township, Changhua County, the youngest of four children. His father, who worked in the fruit business, was the easy-come-easy-go sort, a natural Taoist. He didn't believe in trying too hard, and preferred to let life go its own course. But this meant that Yuan's mother had to do double duty. She took care of everything concerning family and home, including the children's education, and like a saint she did so uncomplainingly.

As the youngest, Yuan was always especially close to his mother, and for him she came to represent a sense of security and a haven from trouble. So long as she was there, all was right with the world.

In 1985, after studying modern art in New York, Yuan returned to Taiwan to develop his career and help take care of his ailing mother. He found his mother sick in hospital, and steadily losing her memory.

His mother's struggle against mental and physical decline lasted for a long time, and Yuan's many visits to the hospital during that period gave him a strong sense of the impermanence of human life. On one occasion three people including his mother were wheeled off for operations, of whom only his mother returned alive. Seeing the life of his mother, for so long the pillar of the family, slip gradually away, as well as the conditions of other patients of various ages and backgrounds, led Yuan to produce his series of paintings entitled Insects and Puppets, expressing the impermanence and helplessness of life. In Insects the creatures are jammed together tightly competing for resources in a limited space, while in Puppets the figures are jerked about on the end of strings, as if to say that while every character gets his day in the limelight, none controls his own fate.

For Yuan Chin-taa, in spite of works such as these questioning the basic character of life, there was, from the late 1980s on, a convergence within his own life of elements from his work with the creative drive.

Setting artistic roots

Like many naturally talented artists, Yuan enjoyed doodling as a child, and has always been very observant. Having grown up in the countryside, he often found himself captivated by the sight of ladybugs crowded onto a leaf to eat, or crickets engaged in a fight. He also loved rural temple festivals, with their rich and colorful sights and sounds-the dough figurines, the welcoming of the deities, the Taiwanese opera performances, the puppet theater. He especially loved puppet theater, and has deeply engraved memories of how the puppeteers manipulated their wooden charges. Naturally, these things have become subject matter for his art.

In that age of want, Yuan grew up with a lot of freedom. There were no special art classes for children and no overblown parental expectations. Yuan's talent expressed itself only in his doodling on odd scraps of paper, and in puppets carved from vegetables dug out of the fields. Such efforts rarely won praise from his teachers, and in fact he was often punished for lapses in concentration or for marking up his textbooks. Yet, it is perhaps because he was never led by the nose that he shows such creativity today.

Middle-school drawing classes laid the foundations for Yuan's landscapes, and he has never forgotten how they were taken all around to different places during his second year of middle school. Later, Yuan tested into Hsinchu Teachers College, where he received instruction from the well-known artists Li Tzu-fan and Chan Huan-tang. After Yuan served as a teacher for four years, his outstanding talent allowed him to gain special-track entry to the Department of Fine Arts at National Taiwan Normal University. That was his entree to formal academic training.

Yuan's sensitivity to color and his tremendous powers of observation made him an outstanding student at NTNU, and confirmed his vocation to spend his life as an artist and teacher. In addition to his regular classes, Yuan also studied with Li Shih-chiao and other respected artists. Each week when he went to the studio he would see some new work of Li's, and his experiences in this period made him realize that an artist's mission required dedication and a strong work ethic.

Renaissance man

Yuan began to feel that he had a particular mission with regard to Chinese ink-wash painting when he was a college student 30 years ago. Upon travelling to Yangmingshan to do landscape painting, he saw that the teacher's version of Yangmingshan still included an "old man of the mountains" of the type typically seen in ancient Chinese works of art. Yuan came to feel that traditional Chinese painting was out of touch with modern times, and that it was the responsibility of his generation to create a renaissance for ink-wash painting.

After graduating first in his class in the three categories of Chinese painting, oil painting, and watercolors, in the late 1970s Yuan began a series of paintings of subjects from his childhood home-precious objects stored in his memory-such as traditional family compound homes, rice drying grounds, ox-drawn carts, papaya trees, and temple festivals. This period was also the beginning of the "nativist literature" movement in Taiwan. Yuan was inspired to a deeper level by this literary wave, and achieved an even greater mastery of mood and ambience in his works.

In 1983, after teaching for a number of years, Yuan decided to go to the US for further study. His main goals were to see some original works in person and to better understand the Western approach to art. His days in New York were marked by culture shock and surprises, and he spent every weekend in museums or galleries or watching street performers. He also received a great deal of inspiration from the ideas expressed about painting in class by his teachers and fellow students.

Looking back on those days, Yuan believes they were critical in allowing him to move from objectively observing nature to subjectively observing events. Art is a stage for inspiration, while thought is the soul of painting, and the challenge of being an artist is to take day-to-day life experiences-everything absorbed through the senses and felt in the psyche-and manifest these in works of art that will call forth some response in the viewer, be it wonder, doubt, or agreement.

If you love it, give it time

Yuan's feelings about Chinese ink-wash painting run deep. Apart from working hard at painting, he examines social developments and disorders, and then explores these themes using various methods and media-including ink wash, acrylic paint, paper, clay, photocopies, collage and traditional carving. He also frequently writes about the difficulties faced and obstacles overcome by traditional Chinese ink-wash painting. He has devoted his life to "creating an individual style that nonetheless belongs to this era of Chinese painting."

Many serious art critics, however, are pessimistic about the future of ink-wash painting. Ni Tzai-chin, the former director of the Taiwan Museum of Art, whose essay "The Rise, Fall and Reevaluation of Ink-Wash Painting" shook Taiwan's art world, holds that the main problem lies with the ink-wash painting community's tradition of isolation. "The general art community knows a lot about ink-wash painting," he writes, "but ink-wash painters rarely have a deep understanding of modern or Western painting." Art departments deserve a share of the blame. "In the sophomore year, students are put on the ink-wash painting track before they have an adequate grounding in art theory and Western art. Once they start with ink-wash painting, it is easy for them to become alienated from the general arts environment. If you're not exposed to stimuli, then naturally it's going to be difficult to produce deep works of art."

With regard to outsiders' doubts about ink-wash painting, Yuan urges people to be more patient. After all, "The achievements of today's art community have come by building on thousands of years of Chinese civilization and its painting tradition." Furthermore, "The establishment of a modern style of Chinese painting requires both that a group of artists continually work at it over a long period of time, and that society as a whole participate and show concern." The future of Chinese painting will depend upon these joint efforts.

Yuan is now off to France, pleased to be exhibiting at the Association West Looks East. "They like my work, and this reflects a more general interest in modern Taiwanese ink-wash painting."

"Between the traditional and the modern, between reviving what is classical and Chinese and adopting what is new and Western, between xenophilia and nativism," how should one choose? For 150 years, these have been key questions for both Chinese academics and artists. Yuan's work reflects the answers that one Taiwanese painter is reaching today.

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Yuan's roof-top studio, filled with painting implements and piles of paper, is his private realm. For him, creation is the fountain of life. (photo by Pu Hua-chih)

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Crazy: (colored ink wash): Ants crawl around in a spiral, like investors blindly throwing themselves into the stock market. They exhaust their energies for naught.

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Paper Tiger (colored ink wash framed by a Chinese newspaper collage): A toothless paper tiger menaces, like a threatening character in hand-puppet theater. But in reality, it could be crushed in an instant.

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Deformed Fish (clay, glaze and pigments): A misshapen fish that swims in the seas off Taiwan's second nuclear power plant is a symbol of the pursuit of material wealth at the environment's expense. The fish suffer from deformities, illness and death. What about the people of Taiwan?

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The Temple (colored ink wash): An extension of an early series of Yuan's based on a nativist theme. Taiwan and its people have always been a source of creative inspiration for Yuan. The busy temple scene here amply displays his nostalgia.

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Life's Judge (clay and glaze): The fat frog symbolizes a corrupt, money-grubbing judge. The phrase on the side reads: "Those with money live; those without it die." The warning is conveyed with such good humor that those who see it can't help but laugh.

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7 Boss Crow (clay and glaze): This humorous depiction is a play on a Taiwanese phrase, substituting the character for crow for its homonym in a compound that describes a bossy person.

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Leaf-to-Fish (ink wash, leaf rubbings, collage): Chen has added eyes and cheeks to leaf rubbings. The bright colors convey Yuan's joyous character.

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Enchantment (ink wash, paper, collage): A reclining female figure suggests an advertisement for sexual services. This work compels people to think about a society that is obsessed with personal and sexual gratification.

Crazy: （colored ink wash）: Ants crawl around in a spiral, like investors blindly throwing themselves into the stock market. They exhaust their energies for naught.

Paper Tiger （colored ink wash framed by a Chinese newspaper collage）: A toothless paper tiger menaces, like a threatening character in hand-puppet theater. But in reality, it could be crushed in an instant.

Deformed Fish （clay, glaze and pigments）: A misshapen fish that swims in the seas off Taiwan's second nuclear power plant is a symbol of the pursuit of material wealth at the environment's expense. The fish suffer from deformities, illness and death. What about the people of Taiwan?

The Temple （colored ink wash）: An extension of an early series of Yuan's based on a nativist theme. Taiwan and its people have always been a source of creative inspiration for Yuan. The busy temple scene here amply displays his nostalgia.

Life's Judge （clay and glaze）: The fat frog symbolizes a corrupt, money-grubbing judge. The phrase on the side reads: "Those with money live; those without it die." The warning is conveyed with such good humor that those who see it can't help but laugh.

7 Boss Crow （clay and glaze）: This humorous depiction is a play on a Taiwanese phrase, substituting the character for crow for its homonym in a compound that describes a bossy person.