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Lot Essay
"Chu Teh-Chun is not an abstract painter. In fact in this regard Chu Teh-Chun quotes Kandinsky as saying that 'abstract art, far from being separated from nature, is more intimately linked to it than the art of the past ever was'. Beyond paradox, Chu Teh-Chun's paintings can indeed firstly appear as an abstraction that combines Mathieu's writing with the power of Cézanne, but through an architecture that has multiple lines of escape and that ultimately conjure up landscapes. Surely it is not the kind of landscapes where what is essential is seen from the exterior, but to paraphrase Zhang Can, where it is the heart of the painter and his remembrance interiorizing memories." (Pierre-Jean Rémy, Chu Teh-Chun, La Différence, p. 35)
Chinese Landscape Painting relates back to the Tang Dynasty disintegration, when, faced with the failure of the human order, painters sought permanence within the natural world, retreating into the mountains to find a sanctuary from the chaos of dynastic collapse. The Yuan Dynasty witnessed the burgeoning of a second kind of cultivated landscape, the internal landscape, which embodied both learned references to the styles of earlier masters and the inner spirit of the artist. Going beyond representation, scholar-artists imbued their paintings with personal feelings.
In the West, landscape painting was also perceived as first and foremost constituted in individual perception. Even though the practice did not act as a private retreat or a representation of the mind like in Chinese culture, the landscape conveys an unquestionable subjectivity. The painter alienated from landscape can feel one with nature only through the mediation of aesthetics. Although Western Landscape painters battled for the recognition of their genre until the nineteenth century, the category acquired its full appreciation with the Impressionists and later on became the great field of investigation for modern painters, namely Cézanne and Nicolas de Staël. Indeed the genre of landscape painting can be traced back as the bridge that ushered in the arrival of abstraction in the West.
Composed with three successive plans, Derrière la Colline (Behind the Hill) (Lot 110) suggests an abrupt vertical mountain unveiling a hidden complex world of golden yellow activity upon a far sky of atmospheric greens. The composition offers the perfect example of the cultural crossroads experienced by Chu Teh-Chun, encompassing both the Chinese and Western history of Landscape Painting. Considering the painterly practice as a solitary exercise and pouring his most inner feelings into his intimate composition, the artist embodies the Chinese tradition impeccably, while favouring abstraction over an openly figurative style, thus carrying forward the innovations of European modernism.
In the Battle of Alexander at Issus, painted in 1529, German artist Albrecht Altdorfer like-wise transformed a landscape panorama into a universal landscape fraught with significance. Depicting the battle if Issus, at which Alexander the Great defeated the Persian King Darius in 333 BC, the painting offers a comprehensive ordering of a natural scene, intended to point beyond the actual historical event, drawing an analogy between world history and cosmic occurrences that culminate in the phenomena of solar light and colour.
Starting out from imageries he finds in nature, Chu Teh-Chun incorporates the essence of both Chinese and Western traditions of landscape painting into a poetic, non-figurative art form. In his own untamed and unbridled manner he conceives an intricate cosmos of abstraction, spawning, with a philosophical mind and a sublime spirit, a harmony between man and nature, between the internal self and the external world. The art of Chu is thus an emblem of all these contemplations and of the artist's impactful sentiment and verve emerged out of his enduring artistic pursuit.
Chinese Landscape Painting relates back to the Tang Dynasty disintegration, when, faced with the failure of the human order, painters sought permanence within the natural world, retreating into the mountains to find a sanctuary from the chaos of dynastic collapse. The Yuan Dynasty witnessed the burgeoning of a second kind of cultivated landscape, the internal landscape, which embodied both learned references to the styles of earlier masters and the inner spirit of the artist. Going beyond representation, scholar-artists imbued their paintings with personal feelings.
In the West, landscape painting was also perceived as first and foremost constituted in individual perception. Even though the practice did not act as a private retreat or a representation of the mind like in Chinese culture, the landscape conveys an unquestionable subjectivity. The painter alienated from landscape can feel one with nature only through the mediation of aesthetics. Although Western Landscape painters battled for the recognition of their genre until the nineteenth century, the category acquired its full appreciation with the Impressionists and later on became the great field of investigation for modern painters, namely Cézanne and Nicolas de Staël. Indeed the genre of landscape painting can be traced back as the bridge that ushered in the arrival of abstraction in the West.
Composed with three successive plans, Derrière la Colline (Behind the Hill) (Lot 110) suggests an abrupt vertical mountain unveiling a hidden complex world of golden yellow activity upon a far sky of atmospheric greens. The composition offers the perfect example of the cultural crossroads experienced by Chu Teh-Chun, encompassing both the Chinese and Western history of Landscape Painting. Considering the painterly practice as a solitary exercise and pouring his most inner feelings into his intimate composition, the artist embodies the Chinese tradition impeccably, while favouring abstraction over an openly figurative style, thus carrying forward the innovations of European modernism.
In the Battle of Alexander at Issus, painted in 1529, German artist Albrecht Altdorfer like-wise transformed a landscape panorama into a universal landscape fraught with significance. Depicting the battle if Issus, at which Alexander the Great defeated the Persian King Darius in 333 BC, the painting offers a comprehensive ordering of a natural scene, intended to point beyond the actual historical event, drawing an analogy between world history and cosmic occurrences that culminate in the phenomena of solar light and colour.
Starting out from imageries he finds in nature, Chu Teh-Chun incorporates the essence of both Chinese and Western traditions of landscape painting into a poetic, non-figurative art form. In his own untamed and unbridled manner he conceives an intricate cosmos of abstraction, spawning, with a philosophical mind and a sublime spirit, a harmony between man and nature, between the internal self and the external world. The art of Chu is thus an emblem of all these contemplations and of the artist's impactful sentiment and verve emerged out of his enduring artistic pursuit.