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Lot Essay
Early in his career Liao Chi Chun was an art student in Japan, where, under the influence of the painting concepts and training he had received, he favored strict training in draftsmanship and the daring use of colours. His solid education in Realism and penetrating insights allowed him to develop his own inimitable style of painting. In the late 1950s, he began exploring and trying his hand at abstract painting. When he returned to Taiwan after visiting the United States and Europe in 1962, his personal painting style became even more distinctive. After 1970, he chose to express his rediscovery of "form" and "colour" by painting figurative images.
This work, Northeast Coast (Lot 26), was completed in 1973. The splendid decorative colours, covering the entire composition, complement each other and saturate the work with a lively rhythm. His extreme sensitivity toward colours inspired him to apply brilliant and vibrant paints. The daring use of pink, light green, and indigo, perfectly depicts the northeast coast landscape where "jagged rocks loom against the sky and raging waves crash at the base of rugged cliffs, creating a vast expanse of white water". The dynamic force projecting forth from this scene of untamed nature exerts maximum impact on the viewer. Pink ocean waves reflect the colour of the sky, as well as the alternating blue, green, and brown colours of the mountains. Under his careful arrangement, these vivid colours and forms combined to create a spectacular, lively, yet harmonious composition, conveying a sense of balance and a harmonizing rhythm. Intermingling paints enable ocean and sky to unite on the horizon, providing viewers a perspective where the entire space is extended to the far left, eventually fading into the distance. One thing worthy of note is that the artist's use of pink is quite personal, and when a dash of it appears here and there in the composition, the eye is not offended. In his work, Village au bord de la Seine, Maurice de Vlaminck used whitish pink to depict ripples of water that reflect the light and complement the sky. However, Liao chose a brighter colour scheme to strengthen the sense of vigorous ambiance and the composition's pulsating rhythm.
Besides colour, contours represent another important aspect of Liao Chi Chun's work. Combining the techniques of colour application and brush strokes, as seen in the schools of Fauvism and Post-Impressionism, he created a conglomeration of colorful blocks which push and pull against one another. The masses of rocks and mountains are revealed by the interaction between the contours and colour blocks. At this point, Liao abandoned realistic description, and painted the outlines of his subjects with thick, unrestrained strokes, moving the brush in only one direction. Rocks, mountains, ocean waves, and clouds were simplified into basic dots, lines, and colour blocks. This is very similar to Paul Cézanne's method of first deconstructing the form of a subject, transforming it into geometric forms, and then reassembling them to produce a composition focusing on the matching effect of lines and colours. However, the outlines in Liao's paintings are not as fragmental and obscure as those of Paul Cézanne. Painted in response to the painter's subjective conscious, some elements of objective reality still remain.
When the abundance of colours reaches a certain degree, the shapes of objects are naturally revealed. Liao Chi Chun utilised vigorous colours to create contrast, thereby enhancing and reinforcing the physical mass of objects. While arranging contours into form, he did not ignore how pleasing forms can be to the eye. He did not paint his impression of scenery as perceived at a certain point in time. On the contrary, he added his personal feelings as he objectively observed a scene, carefully processing in his mind what he had seen and reflected on. Next, he reassembled the images and expressed them in accord with his personal taste. This is a type of figurative painting where the work is infused with subjective feelings rather than being a pure representation of nature. In Northeast Coast, the technique of colour application, brush strokes, and the composition arrangement, are fairly mature. The forms, colours, and contours in the composition are tightly linked. At first glance, they may appear wild and unrestrained, but closer observation reveals they in fact mutually complement each other. Liao's art has transformed the natural subjects of the outside world into an internally derived aesthetic experience, showing viewers the Taiwan scenery as he perceived it. His use of paint brush allowed him to create a flamboyant symphony of colours.
This work, Northeast Coast (Lot 26), was completed in 1973. The splendid decorative colours, covering the entire composition, complement each other and saturate the work with a lively rhythm. His extreme sensitivity toward colours inspired him to apply brilliant and vibrant paints. The daring use of pink, light green, and indigo, perfectly depicts the northeast coast landscape where "jagged rocks loom against the sky and raging waves crash at the base of rugged cliffs, creating a vast expanse of white water". The dynamic force projecting forth from this scene of untamed nature exerts maximum impact on the viewer. Pink ocean waves reflect the colour of the sky, as well as the alternating blue, green, and brown colours of the mountains. Under his careful arrangement, these vivid colours and forms combined to create a spectacular, lively, yet harmonious composition, conveying a sense of balance and a harmonizing rhythm. Intermingling paints enable ocean and sky to unite on the horizon, providing viewers a perspective where the entire space is extended to the far left, eventually fading into the distance. One thing worthy of note is that the artist's use of pink is quite personal, and when a dash of it appears here and there in the composition, the eye is not offended. In his work, Village au bord de la Seine, Maurice de Vlaminck used whitish pink to depict ripples of water that reflect the light and complement the sky. However, Liao chose a brighter colour scheme to strengthen the sense of vigorous ambiance and the composition's pulsating rhythm.
Besides colour, contours represent another important aspect of Liao Chi Chun's work. Combining the techniques of colour application and brush strokes, as seen in the schools of Fauvism and Post-Impressionism, he created a conglomeration of colorful blocks which push and pull against one another. The masses of rocks and mountains are revealed by the interaction between the contours and colour blocks. At this point, Liao abandoned realistic description, and painted the outlines of his subjects with thick, unrestrained strokes, moving the brush in only one direction. Rocks, mountains, ocean waves, and clouds were simplified into basic dots, lines, and colour blocks. This is very similar to Paul Cézanne's method of first deconstructing the form of a subject, transforming it into geometric forms, and then reassembling them to produce a composition focusing on the matching effect of lines and colours. However, the outlines in Liao's paintings are not as fragmental and obscure as those of Paul Cézanne. Painted in response to the painter's subjective conscious, some elements of objective reality still remain.
When the abundance of colours reaches a certain degree, the shapes of objects are naturally revealed. Liao Chi Chun utilised vigorous colours to create contrast, thereby enhancing and reinforcing the physical mass of objects. While arranging contours into form, he did not ignore how pleasing forms can be to the eye. He did not paint his impression of scenery as perceived at a certain point in time. On the contrary, he added his personal feelings as he objectively observed a scene, carefully processing in his mind what he had seen and reflected on. Next, he reassembled the images and expressed them in accord with his personal taste. This is a type of figurative painting where the work is infused with subjective feelings rather than being a pure representation of nature. In Northeast Coast, the technique of colour application, brush strokes, and the composition arrangement, are fairly mature. The forms, colours, and contours in the composition are tightly linked. At first glance, they may appear wild and unrestrained, but closer observation reveals they in fact mutually complement each other. Liao's art has transformed the natural subjects of the outside world into an internally derived aesthetic experience, showing viewers the Taiwan scenery as he perceived it. His use of paint brush allowed him to create a flamboyant symphony of colours.