Expression in abstraction
In 2006 Chiang designed artworks for a public art program organized by Chunghwa Telecom and the Ministry of Transportation and Communications. The brochure for the program included the following passage on Chiang:
“Paul Chiang’s paintings invariable employ the abstract vocabulary of contour and color to create mysterious and infinitely varied tableaux, through which he depicts the connection between the profundity of the abstract world and the soul of the artist.”
Chiang explains that the sense of solitude present in abstract painting reflects aspects of his own personality. “A work of art is the manifestation of the artist and his life,” he says.
Chiang, who was born in Taichung, lost his mother at an early age, and his father was often away on business. Sensitive by nature, he lacked the youthful sociability of other youngsters. The temptations of the outside world held little fascination for him, and he devoted his energies to exploring his inner self.
When adult relatives caught him daydreaming, the called him a fool. Little did they know that thoughts of the taciturn youth before them were soaring toward lofty realms of abstraction well beyond pedestrian realities.
What, after all, is the essence of the abstract? Chiang finds an answer in the classical music that he is so fond of. “When listening to Debussy’s Claire de Lune, or Mahler’s Ninth Symphony, words are superfluous: you can feel the spirit of the artist through the music itself,” he says.
After graduating from the Department of Fine Arts at Taiwan Provincial Teachers’ College (today’s National Taiwan Normal University), Chiang traveled abroad, constantly searching for the essence of art. However, he felt that his brush failed to express the artistic essence that he pursued. Before he painted Notre Dame de Paris, Chiang felt that he could not realize his own artistic ideal. His life in those days was full of hardship and doubt, and he often felt the loneliness of failure.
After Chiang moved to New York, his painting style began to show minimalist influences. Yet after rising interest during the 1960s and ’70s, enthusiasm for minimalism was already waning in the American art market. At the time his agent, Ivan Karp, looked at his work and didn’t mince words when he warned that Chiang’s artworks weren’t painted in a style that the public would readily appreciate, admire, or collect. But hearing this pointed criticism didn’t cause Chiang to waver in his stylistic choices.
Like a religious seeker for truth in art, Chiang persisted along his arduous artistic path. But in his more than 50 years as an artist, Chiang has found moments of satisfaction. The painting of the first artworks that lived up to his ideals, his Notre Dame de Paris series, was one such moment. In 1965 he traveled to France in pursuit of his artistic dreams, and in several subsequent visits he discovered that churches could be seen everywhere. These became the places where Chiang most loved to linger.
Whenever he entered a church, he was moved by the way the light filtered in and the sacred, serene atmosphere. In 1982, he rented a loft in the Latin Quarter, covered the windows and worked in the sealed-off space. There Chiang painted Notre Dame de Paris, one of his proudest accomplishments, and initiated his unusual creative habit of painting in cloistered rooms.
Deeply moved by the tranquility and sacred atmosphere of the cathedral, Paul Chiang was inspired to paint his masterpiece Notre Dame de Paris. (courtesy of Paul Chiang)