Formosa Evergreen

We visit the National Museum of History in Taipei, where Formosa Evergreen, a monumental horizontal scroll painting, was commissioned. “What are the uses and aims of an artwork? This is something that must be considered before artists embark on their projects,” says Liang Yung-fei, director-general of the NMH.

Formosa Evergreen has been exhibited more often in foreign countries than in Taiwan. This photo shows the exhibition in Liège, Belgium in 1983. (photo by Fu Weixin)

A product of its times

Measuring 65.71 meters long and 2.41 meters tall, Formosa Evergreen encompasses minute topographical details across the island of Taiwan, from Yeliu on the North Coast to Cape Eluanbi in Kenting National Park, interspersed with major manmade landmarks such as the Presidential Office Building, Taoyuan International Airport, Kaohsiung Port, and the Sun Yat-sen Freeway. This is indeed the most accomplished of all collaborative paintings in Taiwan. Its enormous scale has much to do with the circumstances of its gestation.

Formosa Evergreen was completed in 1981. Liang reminds us that between 1970 and 1980 international politics was extraordinarily volatile. Events such as the Republic of China’s loss of its seat at the United Nations, and the United States’ derecognition of the ROC, served to reinforce the collective identity of the Taiwanese people. It was around this time that many large-scale collaborative paintings came into being, thanks to the efforts of the public sector. Examples include The Return of Spring and the Recovery of the Mother­land and Pine and Cypress in Spring at the National Dr. Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall, as well as Sea of Clouds on the Jade Mountain and another ink-wash painting also entitled Formosa Evergreen, both of which were donated by Taipei Veterans General Hospital to the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts.

Unlike the projects of individual artists, or those commissioned by commercial enterprises, these paintings rested on public trust in government organizations and were often unrestrained by financial considerations, bearing witness to a strong sense of social cohesion. ­Liang regards the NMH’s Formosa Evergreen as representing a “social movement in art.”

Liang Yung-fei, director-general of the National Museum of History, launched several collaborative art projects when he served as director-general of the National Dr. Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall. (photo by Jimmy Lin)

Conceptions

Formosa Evergreen was conceived when during a visit to Brussels Ho Hao-tien, then director-general of the NMH, saw the oil painting Panorama of the Battle of Waterloo, completed by French artist Louis Dumoulin in 1912. The magnificent work inspired Ho to enlist the help of his colleagues—Xia Mei-xun, Liu Ping-heng, Huang Yong-chuan, and Luo Huan-guang—and invite 11 of the most important ink-wash painters of that era to collaborate on a large-scale artwork.

Liang interprets the choice of ink wash as a sign of loyalty to “Chinese cultural legacies” and associates the subject matter—Taiwan’s natural landscapes and important infrastructure works—with the Ten Major Construction Projects of the 1970s, the concomitant economic growth, and people’s growing sense of identification with the increasingly prosperous island. In expressing the people’s hopes and expectations both for themselves and for Taiwan’s future, Formosa Evergreen “truly responds to its historical moment and carries high artistic value.”

Collaborative work

Even if we know nothing about the historical context of Formosa Evergreen, we can still appreciate its beauty from a purely artistic perspective. The painting was a product of 11 revered ink-wash painters in post-World-War-II Taiwan. They included eminent painters of the older generation—Zhang Daqian, Huang Junbi, Zhang Gunian, Hu Ke-min, and Yao Menggu—who served as advisors. The others were younger artists: Luo Fang, Li Qimao, Fan Bohong, Su Fengnan, Lo Cheng-hsien, and Cai You. These collaborators not only belonged to different generations and genders but also practiced different styles.

We can identify a lineage of collaborative works in the history of Chinese ink-wash painting. Artists and writers in ancient China used to gather and share their inspirations with each other, creating art spontaneously. Testifying to this literati culture, Herb Garden in Front of a Thatched House was co-created by artists of the Wu School in the Ming Dynasty. Painters who specialized in different motifs would sometimes join forces, too: in the Northern-Song painting Reading a Stele by Pitted Rocks, the human figures were painted by Wang Xiao, the trees and rocks by Li Cheng. Furthermore, Chinese emperors would ask several court artists to collaborate on large-scale paintings, such as the Qing-Dynasty Kangxi Emperor’s Southern Inspection Tour.

Formosa Evergreen, however, stands apart from these traditions. Lo Cheng-hsien recalls that the seven painters responsible for the actual process of painting (Zhang Gunian and the six younger artists) did not set out with a clear sense of their respective tasks, even though they had an overarching vision based on preliminary sketches. Their work was largely guided by the specific progress of the project. This method helped ensure the overall stylistic consistency of the painting. Traditional Chinese ink-wash painting differs from Western oils in that artists do not set great store by idiosyncratic uses of brushwork and color, and Formosa Evergreen fully embodies the spirit of self-effacement and tolerance required of a collaborative project.

In 1982 Formosa Evergreen became the first collaborative painting to win a National Award for Arts.

An epochal ink-wash landscape

On the other hand, in order to render their subjects faithfully, before starting work six of the major painters, sponsored by the NMH, traveled around the island five times, making sketches and taking photographs along the way. They also consulted aerial photographs supplied by the Ministry of National Defense.

Together with the advice of experts at the NMH, the painters’ diligent field research and visceral responses to the actual landscapes helped them determine what to include in their painting. Lo Cheng-hsien and Cai You—the youngest of the group—were tasked with making the preliminary sketches. Lo began with Keelung in Northern Taiwan, while Cai started with Eluanbi in the south. They joined up in Central Taiwan. Their sketches were then revised according to suggestions offered by the other artists and the advisors. Finally they were submitted to Zhang Daqian for comments.

Chinese ink-wash painting has a long history, and painters can easily find themselves slavishly imitating conventional styles. Only when they open their eyes to the living environment and gain creative inspiration from it can they avoid the pitfalls of imitation. According to NMH associate research fellow Tsai Yao-ching, Formosa Evergreen “encapsulates the transformation and integration of ink-wash landscape painting in Taiwan.”

Art should originate in the interaction between artists and their environments. Lo Cheng-hsien points out that the younger participants in the Formosa Evergreen project had ample experience of sketching en plein air, in addition to a firm grounding in traditional techniques. “Only by drawing from nature can we produce sketches that are intimately connected with the actualities of modern life,” Lo says.

With its traditional emphasis on the unity of nature and humanity, Chinese ink-wash painting does not merely depict the natural world in an objective way. In addition to representing external reality, it seeks to convey the inherent connections between culture and nature. So “this work was never going to be just a topographical painting that allows us to identify real architecture and natural landscapes. Rather, it has its own artistic integrity,” Lo tells us.

Completed more than 40 years ago, Formosa Evergreen is an important cultural asset bequeathed to us by some of Taiwan’s most distinguished ink-wash painters. From both historical and artistic points of view, the painting is worth cherishing.

In order to produce authentically Taiwanese landscapes, the painters took several island-wide sketching trips, sponsored by the NMH. This photo shows (from left to right) NMH staff member Luo Huan-guang and painters Fan Bohong, Li Qimao, Su Fengnan, and Cao You.