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Lot Essay
Chinese painter Wang Huaiqing once said, "An artist may use his whole life seeking ego and searching for explanations about art, just like there is always something hidden and cannot be found, the artist is somewhat bitter, for he is a lifelong seeker." It is because of his persistence in seeking new things that has enabled Wang to create an art entirely of his own. While Wang's abstract painting has enjoyed critical acclaim throughout the world, his early realist practice remains more opaque and enigmatic. This season Christie's is pleased to showcase two of his rare and early works from the late 1980's, Fossil of the Dragon (Lot 2122) and Great Wall on Mountain Ridge [Lot 2123], a rare chance for viewers to chart the path from realism to a kind of nativist abstraction.
Fossil of the Dragon [Lot 2122] features the meandering path of the Great Wall of China, winding through the composition and extending to the far upper left of the composition. Great Wall on Mountain Ridge [Lot 2123] again features the Great Wall, but seen from afar, where the verdant hills lead the viewer's gaze to the steep uphill pathway that finally vanishes at the hilltop. Both canvases were painted in 1987 at a stage where Wang had just begun to simplify his compositions and slowly develop a vocabulary in abstraction; these two realist paintings illustrate his study of line and form in a landscape setting, elements that will later dominate his work in abstraction. In Fossil of the Dragon, the detailed attention to the layering of bricks produces a a web-like pattern that dissolves into the background, and the foreground of lines and rectangular brick shapes is thus reduced to abstracted elements, a trend given full expression in Wang's later work. For example, in his Traces of Nature IV, painted nearly 20 years later in 2004 (See Fig. 1), Wang explicitly uses line to divide the picture in horizontal and vertical joint form, similar to that found in Chinese traditional hard wooden furniture and architecture. 1987 also marks the period during which Wang was first inspired by the architecture of black tiles and white walls in Jiangnan, its dark heavy pillars and heavy crossbeams forming the elements for his later abstraction works. It is this inspiration from the ancient city that inspires him to explore the ancient culture and architecture of China, thus his study of the Great Wall became a natural progression in a lifelong investigation into structures, forms and spatial arrangements.
Aside from the abstraction studies of line and shape, the two paintings also display Wang's romanticized vision of Chinese landscape. Wang's works are full of a poetic ambience and lyricism, with their soft palates and earthy hues suggest the lingering sentimentality of the Chinese literati. The untended Great Wall is gently ruptured with verdant grass, the unruly weeds soften the harsh brick wall that has been weathered by time. The combination of the harsh ancient architecture against the slow grown of nature suggests the harmony of Yin and Yang, finally uniting the picture with a sense of quiet grandeur and soft spirituality.
Fossil of the Dragon [Lot 2122] features the meandering path of the Great Wall of China, winding through the composition and extending to the far upper left of the composition. Great Wall on Mountain Ridge [Lot 2123] again features the Great Wall, but seen from afar, where the verdant hills lead the viewer's gaze to the steep uphill pathway that finally vanishes at the hilltop. Both canvases were painted in 1987 at a stage where Wang had just begun to simplify his compositions and slowly develop a vocabulary in abstraction; these two realist paintings illustrate his study of line and form in a landscape setting, elements that will later dominate his work in abstraction. In Fossil of the Dragon, the detailed attention to the layering of bricks produces a a web-like pattern that dissolves into the background, and the foreground of lines and rectangular brick shapes is thus reduced to abstracted elements, a trend given full expression in Wang's later work. For example, in his Traces of Nature IV, painted nearly 20 years later in 2004 (See Fig. 1), Wang explicitly uses line to divide the picture in horizontal and vertical joint form, similar to that found in Chinese traditional hard wooden furniture and architecture. 1987 also marks the period during which Wang was first inspired by the architecture of black tiles and white walls in Jiangnan, its dark heavy pillars and heavy crossbeams forming the elements for his later abstraction works. It is this inspiration from the ancient city that inspires him to explore the ancient culture and architecture of China, thus his study of the Great Wall became a natural progression in a lifelong investigation into structures, forms and spatial arrangements.
Aside from the abstraction studies of line and shape, the two paintings also display Wang's romanticized vision of Chinese landscape. Wang's works are full of a poetic ambience and lyricism, with their soft palates and earthy hues suggest the lingering sentimentality of the Chinese literati. The untended Great Wall is gently ruptured with verdant grass, the unruly weeds soften the harsh brick wall that has been weathered by time. The combination of the harsh ancient architecture against the slow grown of nature suggests the harmony of Yin and Yang, finally uniting the picture with a sense of quiet grandeur and soft spirituality.