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Lot Essay
In the 1950s, Walasse Ting traveled to Paris to develop a career. Befriended by members of the Cobra Group such as Pierre Alechinsky and Asger Jorn he was already active in the European art scene during this period. In 1958, he went to New York and participated in the Abstract Expressionism movement, and developed his unique creative syntax and style. Created in 1961, Butterfly (Lot 1170) utilizes the expressive brushwork emphasized by Abstract Expressionism. Here, the use of primary colors--yellow, red and blue, its tonal gradation and alternation of dry and wet strokes reveal that Walasse Ting had begun exploring the fusion of East and West aesthetics. Untitled (Pink Landscape) (Lot 1155) of the landscape genre is rare among Ting's oeuvre. Ting employs a large patch of pink to define a landscape that is unfamiliar to us. Although the mountain is monumental and occupies the entire space, instead of overwhelming the viewer, Ting cleverly allows the transluscent layers of gouache to convey the loftiness of the peak, highlighting the painting's great sense of distance.
Following his returning to painting representative subjects in the 1970s, Ting transferred his inner emotions to the fluent and expressive brushstrokes, and captured images of alluring beauties against vibrant colors., The two works titled A Kiss, A Kiss (Lot 1168, 1169) of 1973 focus on the expressing the womens' inner feelings through explicit facial expressions. When asked by the photographer Juan Yi-chung in an interview about the subject of his creation, Ting said: "Eating, drinking, gambling, womanizing, greediness and anger, everything comes; happiness, disappointment, sweetness, sour, bitterness and spiciness, everything goes away." In his paintings, ladies of enchanting smiles and gazes become a medium, one central to the artist's lifestyle,. Hence, from the highly fluent yet controled acrylic pigment and direct outline of oil pastel, we can feel Ting's inherent power and momentous sentiments. In a sense, the vibrant florescent colors convey an aura of passion and bliss. Created in 1975, Love Me, Love Me (Lot 1184, 1185), further explores female nudes: the exposed nude form and daring body language tell of unhindered desire. Psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud believes that "sexual desire" is the core of human's psychological activities and expounds the concept of libido: "the libido of our sexual instincts coincide with the Eros of the poets and philosophers which holds all living things together," an idea that Ting has responded through his art. The origin of art is a distillation of one's desire to "eat and have sex [as it is in] our human nature." Under the abstract expressionist brushstrokes, Ting shows the positive view of the desire of life of the Chinese traditional culture. The shifting of subject matter from landscapes to nudes demonstrates the artist's profound exploration of natural instinct on different levels.
Following his returning to painting representative subjects in the 1970s, Ting transferred his inner emotions to the fluent and expressive brushstrokes, and captured images of alluring beauties against vibrant colors., The two works titled A Kiss, A Kiss (Lot 1168, 1169) of 1973 focus on the expressing the womens' inner feelings through explicit facial expressions. When asked by the photographer Juan Yi-chung in an interview about the subject of his creation, Ting said: "Eating, drinking, gambling, womanizing, greediness and anger, everything comes; happiness, disappointment, sweetness, sour, bitterness and spiciness, everything goes away." In his paintings, ladies of enchanting smiles and gazes become a medium, one central to the artist's lifestyle,. Hence, from the highly fluent yet controled acrylic pigment and direct outline of oil pastel, we can feel Ting's inherent power and momentous sentiments. In a sense, the vibrant florescent colors convey an aura of passion and bliss. Created in 1975, Love Me, Love Me (Lot 1184, 1185), further explores female nudes: the exposed nude form and daring body language tell of unhindered desire. Psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud believes that "sexual desire" is the core of human's psychological activities and expounds the concept of libido: "the libido of our sexual instincts coincide with the Eros of the poets and philosophers which holds all living things together," an idea that Ting has responded through his art. The origin of art is a distillation of one's desire to "eat and have sex [as it is in] our human nature." Under the abstract expressionist brushstrokes, Ting shows the positive view of the desire of life of the Chinese traditional culture. The shifting of subject matter from landscapes to nudes demonstrates the artist's profound exploration of natural instinct on different levels.