An Adventurer to the End--Max Liu Bids the World Adieu

The funeral differed greatly from the typical funeral melancholy. No obituary notices were sent out, nor were donations accepted. The funeral was conducted in the absence of flowers or traditional funeral scrolls; in their place were sketches of a Formosan clouded leopard, black-face spoonbill, maroon oriole and ten other rare animals that Liu had been working on for the arrivals terminal at Chiang Kai-shek International Airport. There were also two works in progress that Liu was unable to complete-a painting and a book-and footage from an expedition to Papua New Guinea.

"In 1993 I went with my father to Papua New Guinea. He told me that if anything happened to him, I should bury him there, because that was nature's way," says Liu's youngest son, Liu Ning-sheng, who is the spitting image of what his father looked like in his younger days.

While in Japan as a lad, Liu was a lover of all kinds of sport. (courtesy of Liu Ning-sheng)

Without a goodbye

The day before he passed away, Liu went to visit the National Museum of History, where a retrospective exhibit of his works was going to be held at the end of May. That very night he departed from the world without a warning or farewell. His passage was free and easy, but those whom he left behind were reluctant to let go.

Liu's biographer Yang Meng-yu once asked Liu whether he worried about not being able to wrap up loose ends should something befall him during one of his romps through some remote corner of the world. Liu replied, "What is there to worry about? Who am I, (millionaire entrepreneur) Wang Yung-ching?" Even in his swift and unforeseen death, Liu displayed his singularly carefree nature.

"Professor Liu taught more than just watercolors," observes a former student from the fine arts department at Tunghai University. Indeed, Liu's appeal resides not only in his prowess in his varied professions as engineer, painter, pedagogue, and explorer, but also in his earnest yet lighthearted approach to life. It was this quality that drew people to him, and made them listen to him and take delight in the way his face creased over and his eyes squinted when he laughed.

(facing page) Vietnam provided a turning point for Max Liu. In addition to receiving a big salary, during this time he also developed a unique and dreamlike semi-abstract style. (courtesy of the Taiwan Museum of Arts)

Trials and tribulations

In 1912, the first full year of the newly founded Republic of China, a penetrating infant cry resounded within the Liu family residence in the Fuzhou region of Fujian Province. Liu's frail mother died not long after giving birth prematurely to her son, thus depriving him of a mother's nurturing love and leaving him alone with his father who, after the passing of his beloved wife, took refuge in drink.

When Liu was six years old, the First World War dealt a crippling blow to the family business of exporting tea leaves, eventually causing the family to go bankrupt. At the age of eight, he went with his father, grandmother, and older sister to Japan. Little did any of them suspect that three years after fleeing eastward to Japan, they would again encounter great misfortune, this time brought on by the Kanto Earthquake.

Liu, who was 11 years old that year, remembered that he was on his way from school when the earth suddenly began to convulse, the force of the quake flinging him this way and that. In front of him, the world was instantly transformed into a sea of flame and debris. 140,000 people lost their lives in that formidable quake, but the members of the Liu family were fortunate enough to emerge unscathed, though afterward they were economically the worse for wear.

Liu worked his way through high school, and in 1932, he applied for a Chinese Indemnity Scholarship as an Overseas Chinese to study electrical engineering at Tokyo's National Railway Technical College, which served as a launching pad into a career in the field.

When war broke out in 1937 between Japan and China, Liu was overwhelmed with patriotic fervor, and returned resolutely to his motherland, where he served as an assistant instructor in the electrical engineering department at Zhongshan University in Guangzhou. Two years later, Japan had overrun Guangzhou; immediately before the Japanese invasion and in the midst of such turbulent times, Max Liu married a sweet young lady from Hangzhou, Ku Hui-chen.

After marriage, Liu became a military engineer. During military service, he often made trips between Yunnan Province and Burma. On such treks the road was often lined with rotting corpses that no one had bothered to bury. His clothes, unwashed for months at time, were infested with lice that would bore their way in and out of his buttonholes. During the war, Liu picked up black water fever, an extremely virulent strain of malaria that very nearly cost him his life. By the age of 30, he had already experienced two brushes with death.

When the war finally ended in 1945, Liu turned down a government offer of a higher-paying assignment in the northeast in favor of a job on the temperate southern island of Taiwan. Although the infamous February 28 Incident still loomed ahead, it was nevertheless at the moment he set foot on Taiwan that he began to come into his own.

The many trials and adventures that Liu went through are reflected in his many self-portraits, and also express the different mindsets and pleasures of different stages of his life. This captivating 1996 portrait, entitled The Old Man and the Sea, shows the kind of humor and understanding that come from life experience. (courtesy of the Taiwan Museum of Arts)

Making ends meet

Taiwan was in shambles after the war. Liu was sent off to Patoutsu (in Keelung) to be in charge of maintenance at a power plant. Resolute but not in the slightest bit condescending, he got along famously with the Patoutsu locals. He followed the example of the workers, drinking tea directly from the spout of the teapot, and he also freely offered them rides home. In return, they would bring him fresh fish. His honesty and knack for getting along with people allowed him to escape injury in the midst of the tumultuous conditions brought on by the strife that began on February 28, 1947. In fact, many local Taiwanese went as far as to organize a group to protect Liu and his family.

After two years in rainy Patoutsu, Max Liu began work at Taiwan Sugar Corporation, where he served as an engineer in their electronics division. Liu's family by then consisted of four people, but the arrival of his father from Hong Kong meant yet another mouth to feed. With Liu as the sole breadwinner, they were hard pressed to make ends meet. "I remember that every time I looked at my father's tattered undershirt, from the back it resembled a giant spider web draped across his body," Liu once reminisced. In those days, the weight of so much responsibility often left him feeling overwhelmed.

"Old Liu used to say that he was somebody who had to struggle to keep his head above water. Most people thought he was joking, but in actuality he really did have a lot of responsibilities," avers Liu Yung-yi, a reporter who had ample opportunity to get to know the famous artist.

At that time, in addition to helping out at an architectural firm, he also began to translate and submit articles for publication in large numbers, especially on the subject of rudimentary art theory. Most people do not realize that, through Ouya, a publishing firm established in 1961 and specializing in fine arts publications, he introduced a wealth of new concepts to the art community, which at the time was desperate for new ideas. Over the course of a lifetime, Liu published or translated 32 books and over 300 articles, an astounding achievement.

Back in 1949, Liu was browsing through an exhibit of architect Hsiang Hung's artwork at Chungshan Hall when someone asked him, "Hsiang Hung is an engineer and so are you, so why don't you paint, too?" Afterwards, he began to study painting independently, relying on his extensive knowledge of English to pore through art publications.

After one year of study, he completed his first painting, a portrait of his then infant son, Liu Ning-sheng, sprawled out on his stomach for a summer nap, revealing his infant buttocks. The piece was thoroughly adorable, leading Chao Chun-hsiang, a professor at National Taiwan Normal University, to exclaim, "Brilliant!" A year later, another work, Lonely Hall in Setting Sun, painted at the Confucian Temple in Tainan, was selected for the fifth Taiwan Fine Arts Exhibition, showing that Professor Chao's earlier comments had been more than just polite chitchat.

By shifting from fine arts to anthropology, Liu was able to get close to the aboriginal world and listen to the words of its heart. The painting on the opposite page, created in 1989, is entitled Enraged Lan-yu Island. (courtesy of the Taipei Fine Arts Museum)

Turning crisis into opportunity

In 1964, the American military landed at Vietnam's Cam Ranh Bay, and sought to entice Taiwan military engineers to work in Vietnam by offering generous salaries. Although war is always filled with uncertainty, Liu remained unfazed, recognizing that such a trip was a rare chance to make some serious money. "The Vietnamese were fighting for their people, but I was fighting to sustain my family," he once said, referring to how he stoically put his life on the line. In response to a question on how to deal with life's predicaments, Liu, in his last televised interview answered, "All things are predetermined by heaven, so all I do is deal with one hurdle at a time."

In places of war, life and death become unpredictable. Nevertheless, Liu managed to keep an even keel throughout. He was able to send his fantastic salary of US$850 back to Taiwan and diligently pursue painting at the same time. Like one possessed, he threw himself into his work, boldly capturing the local flavor, also drawing inspiration from the ruins of the Kingdom of Champa. At the same time, his style underwent transformation as well, moving away from realistic portrayals of figures and landscapes towards semi-abstraction. His newer works made use of primitive-like shapes, as well as dreamlike and ambiguous shading, evincing a kind of poeticism and an air of mystery.

By the time his three-year contract in Vietnam expired, Liu had a fistful of dollars and over 200 paintings he selected to take home with him. As soon as he got home, he put on an exhibition of his Vietnam works at the Museum of History. In that year, the 56 year-old Liu rose from amateur status to that of a professor of fine arts and a judge of art competitions, leading people to perceive him as an ingenious artist. The stress of his former life began gradually to melt away.

Although not formally trained, Liu was nevertheless one of the most respected masters of the fine arts world. Above is a biography of Liu, co-published by the Executive Yuan Council for Cultural Affairs and Hsiung-shih Art Books.

The spirit of primitivism

Ni Tsai-chin, a professor in the fine arts department at Fo Guang University, has noted in regard to Liu's creations: "Max Liu approaches the role of an 'aborigine' in contemporary art. He has managed to stay removed from all cultural and regional trends, approaching primitive peoples in terms of the naivety that he has injected into our overly-civilized consciousness." Liu indeed disdained the rigid confines of the various schools of academic art, nor was he like most watercolorists, who strive for technical perfection. His work always displayed innocence and understated humor, the most precious qualities in art, for they spring from the uniqueness of the human soul.

Liu once stated, "I like to travel those paths less traveled by, and I also love to see things I've never seen before." His experimentation with different materials was extensive, including watercolors, pastels, graphite, crayons-he even went as far as to dabble with alcohol, table salt, talcum powder, and coffee grounds. "Art is not a fixed, immutable thing. It is not decoration. Art is an adventure, a gamble." If you read carefully through Old Liu's insights, it isn't hard at all to fathom how he could so frequently cross the line between different professions, from modern art to primitive art, and thereafter into the field of anthropology.

While in Japan as a lad, Liu was a lover of all kinds of sport. (courtesy of Liu Ning-sheng)

Child of the jungle

Liu retired from the engineering career that he had pursued for most of his life in 1971. The next year he accepted an invitation to work as a lecturer in the Philippines. While serving his tenure in the Philippines, he also participated in a survey of Filipino aboriginal art, unlocking the gateway into the realm of cultural anthropology.

In the ten years following that time, one could frequently pick out the wiry frame of Max Liu at the department of anthropology at National Taiwan University or at the Institute of Ethnology library at Academia Sinica, his head always buried in a stack of books. One could also find him at the aboriginal villages scattered about the island where, garbed in his signature khakis and sporting a backpack, he would sketch and take notes with undivided concentration.

In 1981, after months of preparing a vast array of materials, he arrived in Borneo carrying a hoard of one-dollar coins and Taiwan jade. Under the direction of an interpreter, a guide, and a longboat helmsman, Liu and company rowed deep into the heart of the island. The crew navigated its way past the dangerous shoals that had claimed the lives of many other explorers, zipping through the cracks between rocky cliffs on their arrow-shaped longboat. It was a treacherous journey, to be certain. Along the way, in addition to encountering hordes of spiders that enveloped them like a violent storm, they were also nearly decapitated by vines, and witnessed the horrifying spectacle of a Swiss journalist coming close to getting engulfed in a mudslide.

However, for Max Liu, the jungle held limitless charm. "Plenty of books portray the jungle as a bitter opponent of man, but authors rarely acknowledge that when man enters a jungle, he is an intruder. Should you meet with the unexpected, you must recognize that you are bound by the laws of the jungle, and are powerless to interfere," wrote Liu in one of his books.

(facing page) Here is a Liu's 1988 work Sorcerer in the Garden of Eden. (courtesy of the Taiwan Museum of Arts)

Not always a people person

As an anthropologist, Max Liu was like a bird exploring nature, delving into jungles all over the world, from Asia to Africa, from Borneo to Latin America and Oceania.

At 83 years of age, he painted a series of animal paintings-water buffalo, tigers, chimpanzees, Taipei tree frogs, and others-as artwork for Council of Agriculture posters exhorting the public to protect Taiwan wildlife. When activists beheld the posters, they all exclaimed, "These animals are alive and they have dignity." Liu had once enjoyed the blood of the hunt, but due to his understanding of Mother Earth, he turned from hunting to protection, even forming a committee that was dedicated to nature conservation.

Someone once asked Liu what he liked best. Without a second's hesitation, he swiftly responded, "Animals." When asked what he disliked most intensely, Liu's response was, "That kind of animal that walks upright, speaks, and hasn't any hair on its body. Even a jungle snake is politer than the folk in Taipei." Liu not only resembled an aborigine artist, he was like an effervescent animal whose sole aim was to leave the concrete jungle and return to Mother Nature's firm embrace.

African yearnings

From late May through early July, the National Museum of History held Explorer of Art: A Memorial Exhibition of Max Liu. The exhibit featured televised footage of a group of aborigines with their faces brightly painted. With them and similarly decorated was Max Liu, on what turned out to be his final exploration, in Papua New Guinea. In 1993, the year the footage was taken, Liu was a venerable 82 years of age. The videotape showed him tackling a stretch of mountainous road on which he was compelled to rely on the support of a walking stick. While watching the clip, Liu was his typical humorous self, joking around with the folks next to him saying, "What's with this old guy who's taking so long? Wait a minute-I guess it's me, after all. Ha, ha, ha!"

In this two-month trip, Liu visited the Kukukuku tribe and was able to observe their burial rituals. He also visited another tribe that scorned clothing, save for a gourd shaped shell that the men wear on the genitals. Finally, there was the Huli tribe, well known for their love of self-decoration, a feat accomplished by smearing colorful natural dyes on their faces and bodies. "Aboriginal life may seem monotonous, but they can use their imaginations to embellish their lives by creating powerful stories and art," said Liu, who always regarded the aborigines with respect and admiration.

People say that Max Liu was constantly crossing lines, from engineer to artist to anthropologist. However, examining his life in total, one can see that the unflagging string of adventures were all part of the path of self-discovery; it was a road that unpeeled the layers of civilization one at a time, and ultimately led back to the embrace of nature.

While in Africa, Liu observed tribal life in its simple setting and thought, "I don't think civilization can create a paradise on earth. I think in my next life, I would like to be an African child. Only they understand uprightness, strength, and freedom."

"Only those are fit to live who do not fear to die; and none are fit to die who have shrunk from the joy of life and the duty of life. Both life and death are parts of the same Great Adventure," states Max Liu's favorite quote, originally from the pen of American president Theodore Roosevelt.

Old Liu has left to explore another world. Or perhaps his wish has been granted and he has already been born into the vast African savannah, embarking on another fulfilling journey. As for us, we can only sift through the over 1000 paintings that he bequeathed to us and search for his hasty footprints.