Q: You began painting at the age of fourteen and at age twenty tested into the Fine Arts Department of National Taiwan Normal University, where you became enthralled with contemporary abstract painting. You gave up the ink and brush of traditional Chinese painting for a time but later came back to ink-splash painting. Could you talk a bit about this artistic odyssey of yours?
A: The main reason I worshiped contemporary Western art at the time was my feeling that I was part of a "lost generation" that had lost its way under the collision of "China and tradition" with "the West and the contemporary."
The reason I was enamored of Western oils and avant-garde abstract art for a time was simply because I was disappointed with Chinese painting. You know, Chinese painting reached a zenith back in the Southern Sung and Yuan dynasties, a perfection in the use of ink, brush and creasing methods that proved confining and inhibiting for artists afterward.
So when I advocated a reform in the way the brush is held and then a reform in the brushes themselves it immediately created a big controversy. I was called a traitor to Chinese painting and worse. Actually I only wanted to stress that painting is made up of points, lines, surfaces, colors and textures and that the brush is only one tool among many for forming points and lines, just as creasing is only one method among many for forming texture, so why not try out different tools and different methods for a while?
Q: Although you have returned to ink-splash painting, you always seem to be experimenting and looking for breakthroughs. Could you talk about your experiments a little?
A: That's because I don't think you get very far in seeking the new and different by sticking to Chinese brush pens and ink. What I'm after is thorough innovation. It sounds kind of pathetic, but I put down my brush pens for a half year or more and painted on lotus pods and tree bark with brushes made of hair and straw, and I ran through paper factories all over Taipei collecting different kinds of paper for experiments. In methods, I not only brushed but also used rubbing techniques or let the ink seep down the surface of the paper. To sum it up, I was trying to create effects that couldn't be achieved by the brust alone. The results weren't bad. Sometimes they were done urder my control and sometimes they came by accident, but I could often produce sensations that the brush couldn't.
I have a creation I'm rather proud of, a paper-tearing method that I call cramp-and-peel creasing. In 1963 I had a paper factory specially make a kind of cotton paper with lots of thick threads or veins in it. After applying paint I pulled away the threads, and white lines of various thicknesses would appear. It was rather creative.
Q: Your paintings of that period, such as Inside and Outside the Window, had two scenes in one painting, which was very unusual. Also, you call your paintings abstracts, but they always have a strong landscape feel to them. How do you explain that?
A: Actually I rarely have a concept in mind before I set brush to paper--I just weigh and consider things step by step as I go along--so I think it's strange myself that my abstract paintings give people a landscape feel. I certainly don't intend to paint landscapes.
As for the series Inside and Outside the Window, it started like this: in 1961 I saw Fan Kuan's Hsi-shan Journey for the first time, and I really felt as if a huge mountain had crashed down on me. I got goose bumps and my hair stood on end. I've never felt anything like it.
It was precisely because I couldn't get over that experience that I painted the series Erect, with a tombstone on top and a horizontal scroll beneath. I was trying to express the sensation that the sky was pressing down on you, only I didn't succeed. After I went to the U.S., I was influenced by the hard-edge art popular at the time, and the tombstone gradually changed into a square, which was the Inside and Outside the Window series. Later I was influenced by OP Art and painted Mid-Autumn Festival and Lantern Festival.
A big event in the history of mankind occurred shortly thereafter (1969). Apollo 7 sent back many pictures of the moon and the earth from outer space and then Armstrong set foot on the moon. That set off my Space Paintings series.
Q: How long did that period last? And how did you evolve beyond it?
A: During the five years from 1969 to 1973 I painting nearly 40,000 space paintings. I used collage, acrylic oils, spray guns and other techniques to enrich the effect, and I tried to express the concepts of yin and yang, Buddhist thought and so forth. But after a while you run into a bottleneck. On the one hand, I felt I had said about all I wanted to say on this particular theme and, on the other hand, the paintings were becoming more and more Western in form, which ran counter to my original idea of blazing new trails for Chinese painting, so I decided to quit.
Q: What work have you done since Space Paintings? And what will your next step be?
A: After that I did some "water rubbings." You Pour ink or paint into a pan and let it float around until it forms a pattern you like, and then you apply the paper on top to make a pain ting. It's pretty interesting.
As for the next step, I don't know myself. I'll probably still experiment in various ways to enrich Chinese ink-splash paintings. I often think that I may not have the stuff of a great painter, but I am a trailblazer. Painting, in the end, is for fun--it means looking for something new and different--so I often say that you shouldn't be unscrupulous as a person but you have to be unscrupulous in your methods as a painter.
Q: Some people say that among painters from Taiwan you have had the greatest influence on painting on the mainland. Could you talk about the insights you've gained in that regard?
A: I'm proud of that. The first time I was invited to Peking was in 1983, to give an exhibition, and the painters there knew pitifully little about contemporary Western art. I tried to provide them with information in my lectures, and I heard at least three people call my talks "thirst-quenching," so you can see how hungry they are for information on the outside world.
Throughout the past thirty or forty years, I have always had the ideal of setting up a new tradition for twentieth-century Chinese painting, of giving a new look to contemporary ink-splash. And since the future of Chinese painting lies with the mainland, it's highly gratifying to able to plant seeds there and see them grow. The prospects are boundless.
[Picture Caption]
Liu Kuo-sung, who calls himself a "preacher," explains the inspiration for his series Space Paintings.
His abstract ink-splash paintings, which incorporate the "erratic cursive" script of traditional calligraphy, are reminiscent of landscapes. The white lines are the "cramp-and peel" creasing he invented.
Misty Eyot, ink-splash, 1962.
The Wind Sweeps By, ink-splash, 1963.
Inside and Outside the Window #2, ink-splash, 1967.
A Walk on the Moon, ink-splash, 1969.
Square, round and curved shapes, combined with "erratic cursive" calligraphy, form the chief ingredients of the Space Paintings series.
Flower Brook is a work of Liu's from the last two years. The use of color and the style are rather different than those of before.
Liu Kuo-sung has the open, straightforward character of a person from Shantung, and his paintings, like the man himself, are permeated with force and vigor.
Mainland painter Wu Kuan-chung was inspired by Liu. His contemporary ink-splashes are highly creative and have received a great deal of attention on the international painting scene. This is one of his landscapes.(photo courtesy of Dimensions Art Center)
Lin Feng-nien, now 91 and a forerunner in rejuvenating Chinese painting, has had a large influence on Liu. Shown here is his work Autumn.(photo courtesy of Dimensions Art Center)
Liu Kuo-sung, who calls himself a "preacher," explains the inspiration for his series Space Paintings.
His abstract ink-splash paintings, which incorporate the "erratic cursive" script of traditional calligraphy, are reminiscent of landscapes. The white lines are the "cramp-and peel" creasing he invented.
Misty Eyot, ink-splash, 1962.
The Wind Sweeps By, ink-splash, 1963.
Inside and Outside the Window #2, ink-splash, 1967.
A Walk on the Moon, ink-splash, 1969.
Square, round and curved shapes, combined with "erratic cursive" calligraphy, form the chief ingredients of the Space Paintings series.
Flower Brook is a work of Liu's from the last two years. The use of color and the style are rather different than those of before.
Liu Kuo-sung has the open, straightforward character of a person from Shantung, and his paintings, like the man himself, are permeated with force and vigor.
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