Artistry in Motion --Changing Trends in Taiwan Art

When Western painting and drawing first came to Taiwan it was all called "modern art," though the definition of modern art has been hard to pin down. Early on, Chinese calligraphy and art derived from the Han tradition was repressed in the Japanese occupation era, and was replaced by French impressionism brought in indirectly via Japan. Painters like ChenCheng-po, Li Mei-shu, Yang San-lang, Li Shih-chiao, and Liao Chi-chun depicted subtropical Taiwan in drawings from life. You could say this was Taiwan's first fine arts movement. It had a lasting influence, and even today, half a century later, young painters are still joining their ranks. Some jest that this has become Taiwan's "national style of painting." And after the first generation has come a second generation of painters like Hung Juei-lin, Chen Teh-wang, Chang Wan-chuan, and Chen Chih-chi, whose styles are not entirely the same.

After the end of the Japanese occupation, when the government moved to Taiwan, traditional Chinese ink painting was no longer suppressed, and, with official assistance, became the mainstream. However, this simply marked a power shift in official definitions of the relative status of various art forms, and did not mean there was an artistic revolution involving the transformation of outlook and concepts.

In the 1950s, Taiwan received a great deal of  assistance from the United  States. Given strong aspirations to escape from the post-war hardships and to catch up with advanced Western civilization, young artists organized the "Orient" and "May" art associations. These sought a liberation of images, and declared total war on traditional ink painting and on natural realism. They argued that art must inevitably progress from the concrete to the abstract; in their view "abstract expressionism," with only basic shapes and colors, was the only end point of artistic development.

For a while, arts associations flourished beyond anyone’s control. However, embarrassed by their failure to touch a nerve in local society, major artists like Hsiao Chin, Liu Kuo-sung, Han Hsiangning, and Hsia Yang headed overseas and brought the movement to a halt. Thereafter came a group which copied American pop art. Using familiar techniques like collage or photocopying, they depicted everyday objects and figures that were part of people's daily lives. The problem was that at that time Taiwan was still not a highly commercialized consumer society, meaning that the social setting differed greatly from that of Western pop art, and in the end Taiwanese pop art was unable to gain a wide audience.

In the 1970s, amidst a series of diplomatic setbacks, the "native literature movement" arose in the literary world. This approach rejected blind Westernization and inspired a comprehensive reassessment in all arts circles. The fine arts world at that time uncovered two homegrown artists, Hung Tung and Ju Ming, and the painting world was swept by a nostalgic "native realism" emphasizing things and people from local Taiwanese culture and society, and especially from the countryside. Representative artists included Hsieh Ming-chang, Ong Ching-tu, Chen Tung-yuan, and others like Hsi Teh-chin and Hsu Kun-cheng who had awakened to this style even earlier than the others. In this third arts movement, the actual artistic results were far less significant than the transformation in attitudes.

Beyond the 1980s, painter Lin Hsing-yue feels that the greatest opportunity for transforming art is to reconcile the contradictions of the above movements. Artists active today are willing to absorb new waves, but not to follow them blindly. Artists who go abroad today do so not to worship at the feet of the masters, but to broaden their experience and training. They search for their own selves, but not in a nostalgic way; they seek diversity and richness, with as many styles as there are artists.

Nevertheless, the only true test of artistic value is time. Taiwan is still in its youth as far as modern art is concerned. Don't even mention the new generation, there are many first generation artists still out there creating. In this galaxy of "four generations of stars," only time will tell whose light will be the brightest in the heavens.

[Picture Caption]

p.20

"Sunset at Tamshui" by the first generation painter Chen Cheng-po. Oil painting, 1931; 91.5x116.1 cm. (photo courtesy of Sotheby's)

p.21

"Remembering the Small Ryukyus," a late work of the artist Chuang Shih-ho, a painter from the period when abstract art was at its height. Oil paintin g, 1983; 89x71 cm. (photo courtesy of the Tai pei Fine Arts Museum)

p.21

"The Old Man," by nativist realist era painter Hsi Teh-chin. Oil painting, 1969; 99.2x50.9 cm. (photo courtesy of the Taipei Fine Arts Museum)

p.22

"Rencontre," by new generation artist Lu Hsien-ming. Oil painting, 1993;160x160 cm. (photo courtesy of the artist)

"Rencontre," by new generation artist Lu Hsien-ming. Oil painting, 1993;160×160 cm. （photo courtesy of the artist）

Under nativist fashion, works by older artists set new records. （photo by Huang Li-li）