Fuzzy people, floating people
During his four-and-a-half years in Paris Hsia lived in a tiny garret in the red light district with barely enough room to stand up in. He supported himself doing miscellaneous jobs, working on people's houses and restoring furniture. Times were tough, but it was during this period that he found what he had been probing for in his use of line, and started on the "fuzzy people" phase of his output.
Hsia's fuzzy people were born into his work as if by a natural process. While experimenting with a tangle of lines Hsia found unidentifiable clusters taking shape, from which human forms began to emerge. "This was something I really knew I could work with," recalls Hsia. It was a case of "seizing that special thing of your own," which for an artist is of the utmost importance.
Like a Taoist priest painting magic symbols, Hsia uses line to create human figures and the written word to invoke power. With rapid, sweeping strokes of the brush he creates fluid, free-floating figures, without faces or personalities, performing their allotted roles in the midst of a coldly linear realm. The resulting images reflect the alienation of modern life, conveying a sense of illusion and impermanence.
It has been suggested that Hsia Yang himself, the lifelong drifter, is the prototype for these blurry beings. But then again, which of us is not in transit, drifting through this brief existence? "As the Chinese say, man is a passenger through life who is gone in an instant. Hsia Yang's fuzzy people exist very much within this Eastern philosophical context." So says Fu Shen, one of the judges in the fine arts category for the 2000 National Culture and Arts Foundation awards.
While he was in France Hsia received a letter from a friend in the US saying: "Life is easier here." Soon afterwards he moved to New York, renting a cheap loft in SoHo and supporting himself as a furniture restorer.
Photorealism was the vogue in American painting at the time. It didn't appeal to Hsia at first, but he knew he had to learn something in his new country of residence, and at the same time he needed to produce work that was commercially viable. He began employing photographic effects, for example depicting a crowd of passersby on a New York street as a speeding blur. His work now became populated with "floating people" of this kind, although in spirit they were still the fuzzy people of his earlier period.
Hsia spent over 20 years in New York, painting in the cavernous gloom of his loft, eating Chinese food and listening to traditional Chinese opera music. The walls of the loft were pasted with simple verses, written by Hsia in language that was part literary Chinese and part colloquial. "I was like a Chinese person dwelling in a Chinese concession in New York," says Hsia with a laugh.
The biggest boon of living in New York was that this was where Hsia met his wife Wu Shuang-hsi. Wu had grown up in a contented home never knowing poverty, and held a PhD in philosophy. She met Hsia through the painter Hsieh Li-fa, and since then the two of them have shared a simple and quiet life together. "Feeling anxious when the old lady's not here, and looking listlessly out the window/ So bored of this dumb view, it's much better when the silly little thing's around." So runs one of Hsia's light-hearted couplets, testifying to the affection that unites these two people who only came together relatively late in life.
Going home
Hsia returned to Taiwan in 1992, after three decades away. With a basic source of income guaranteed through an art-gallery contract, Hsia rented a spacious, light-filled three-story house in Peitou. The new place was ideal for painting, but at NT$35,000 per month the rent was on the high side. Hsia's "silly little" wife was in tears when it came to signing the lease, worrying that eventually they wouldn't be able to afford the rent. Luckily Professor Li Chih-wen of the National Institute of the Arts offered to support them to the tune of NT$10,000 per month for the first three years after their return to Taiwan, and Hsia and his wife were thus able to settle themselves down. "At key moments, a little help from your friends can make all the difference," says Hsia. Financial help from his friends at such moments was what enabled Hsia to go abroad in the first place and then, eventually, to return again to Taiwan. This is something that the reserved Hsia has frequent cause to think about.
After returning to Taiwan Hsia Yang reverted to painting fuzzy people. Over the years, Hsia's fuzzy people have taken on a number of different guises, be it as judges, singers, couples, beach babes or whatever. They have mimicked famous icons of Western art such as the Mona Lisa, Millet's The Gleaners, and Botticelli's Venus, and now the fuzzy family includes well-known figures from the Chinese Buddhist pantheon, part of a series of works that examines the role of religion in people's lives. For Hsia Yang, all characters are fair game for inclusion in his work, and all of them end up reverting to nothingness.
Fuzzy people stand up
Why is Hsia so into "fuzzy people," and has he ever thought about trying something else? The painter points out that he can't predict what direction he may follow in the future, and says that if a new theme or style emerges it will be through a natural process, like the one that first gave birth to the fuzzy people.
At the end of 2000 Hsia's fuzzy people at last "stood up" for themselves, becoming sculptures rather than just images on paper. Hsia was fiddling with an aluminum ring from a broken hair-dryer, shaping it into a little figure, when the idea dawned of doing fuzzy people in solid form. By cutting and twisting pieces of copper, iron and steel, he was able to produce amusing little statuettes of his hitherto two-dimensional fuzzy people.
Hsia's friends were not surprised by his move into sculpture, because he has always been good with his hands. In New York he once made a hand-operated washing machine from a saucepan and several pieces of wood, and on another occasion he used the motor from an electric fan to power a self-adjusting easel. In Hsia's hands, all sorts of discarded objects, from sewing machines to camera lenses, are salvaged and put to good use. "I'm the Leonardo da Vinci of the Orient," chuckles Hsia.
Returning East has brought Hsia back into contact with the other "Outlaws" who used to dominate the Taiwan art scene. Of those, Chen Tao-ming has since given up art and gone into business, Li Yuan-chia passed away in Britain, and Ouyang Wen-yuan doesn't paint any more because of psychological problems. However, Hsiao Chin, Wu Hao, Huo Kang and Hsiao Ming-hsien are all still active. At a reunion two years ago, Hsia declared proudly: "We're the same merry band of rebels, still advancing as one!" For artists to produce outstanding work they have to immerse themselves utterly in the act of creation. These painters, remaining committed to the "pure" creative spirit and thoroughly loyal to the cause of art, are still the same old "outlaws" that they ever were.