.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
In an interview in 1962, Zao Wou-Ki declares, "Although the influence of Paris is undeniable in my training as an artist, I also wish to say that I have gradually rediscovered China and it has affirmed itself as my deeper personality. In my recent paintings, this is expressed in an innate manner. Paradoxically, perhaps, it is to Paris that I owe this return to my deepest origins."
In the mid-1950s, Zao Wou-Ki gradually retreated from his Klee stage of the early 1950s. In 1954, he created his first non-narrative painting Vent (Wind), and for a short time embarked upon his oracle bone period before transitioning to a fully abstract form.
In the 1956 Nuit, Mi-Nuit (Night, Mid-Night) (Lot 31), Zao Wou-Ki used a horizontal composition featuring a semi- transparent blue-green colour with a Prussian blue margin around the canvas, and with oracle bone inscriptions as his leitmotif. Detailed white cracks replicate the appearance of ancient writings, and the whole reflects the form of a Shang or Zhou dynasty bronze vessel, while also suggesting the feeling of the sublime beauty of a falling star in the sky on a chilly night. The regions of burnt sienna, carmine, light green, lilac, rattan yellow and pale orange colours surrounding the text replicate the patina of blue-green verdigris and red rust flecks that thickly accumulate on such bronze vessels over the ages, while the conspicuous relief conveys a profound sense of space and visual appeal.
In Nuit, Mi-Nuit (Night, Mid-Night) Zao Wou-Ki uses bold black text for his image, together with a depth of bright white for space and shadow, and ultimately infuses a slightly reddish visual effect, while 1957's Mistral and Nous Deux (We Two) also follow in this same vein. 1956 was a year that marked a turning point in both the life and art career of Zao Wou-Ki, the same year in which he created the night-themed longitudinal composition La Nuit Remue (The Night is Stirring). The dark night therein stands for the dual existence of dark and light, dim cold and radiance, abjection and aspiration, and it projects the pain of his separation with Lalan. A few red spots seem to gradually strip off and reveal healing wounds: "When midnight cuckoos whoop their ghastly refrain, I know spring's east wind will bring you home again." These pictographs also resemble nightbirds making their way through darkness towards light. In that same year, Zao Wou-Ki went to the United States to visit Pierre Soulages and his wife, to get to know Yves Klein, Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman, and to view the works of Jackson Pollock. This brief contact exerted a major influence on his abstract expressionism, particularly its seemingly balanced and spontaneous combination of fury and tranquility. As Zao wrote in his journal: 'The physical side of the gesture which throws materials on the canvas, is as if there is neither past nor tradition'. This was further to have a profound impact on the future of Western abstract and traditional Chinese aesthetic creation.
Nuit, Mi-Nuit (Night, Mid-Night) is an important work by Zao Wou-Ki from 1956, one embued with the character of a daily record: it stands at a point of the confluence of his life with his artistic creation, and it has reappeared in recent years as a rare and masterful ?uvre now offered to collectors.
In the mid-1950s, Zao Wou-Ki gradually retreated from his Klee stage of the early 1950s. In 1954, he created his first non-narrative painting Vent (Wind), and for a short time embarked upon his oracle bone period before transitioning to a fully abstract form.
In the 1956 Nuit, Mi-Nuit (Night, Mid-Night) (Lot 31), Zao Wou-Ki used a horizontal composition featuring a semi- transparent blue-green colour with a Prussian blue margin around the canvas, and with oracle bone inscriptions as his leitmotif. Detailed white cracks replicate the appearance of ancient writings, and the whole reflects the form of a Shang or Zhou dynasty bronze vessel, while also suggesting the feeling of the sublime beauty of a falling star in the sky on a chilly night. The regions of burnt sienna, carmine, light green, lilac, rattan yellow and pale orange colours surrounding the text replicate the patina of blue-green verdigris and red rust flecks that thickly accumulate on such bronze vessels over the ages, while the conspicuous relief conveys a profound sense of space and visual appeal.
In Nuit, Mi-Nuit (Night, Mid-Night) Zao Wou-Ki uses bold black text for his image, together with a depth of bright white for space and shadow, and ultimately infuses a slightly reddish visual effect, while 1957's Mistral and Nous Deux (We Two) also follow in this same vein. 1956 was a year that marked a turning point in both the life and art career of Zao Wou-Ki, the same year in which he created the night-themed longitudinal composition La Nuit Remue (The Night is Stirring). The dark night therein stands for the dual existence of dark and light, dim cold and radiance, abjection and aspiration, and it projects the pain of his separation with Lalan. A few red spots seem to gradually strip off and reveal healing wounds: "When midnight cuckoos whoop their ghastly refrain, I know spring's east wind will bring you home again." These pictographs also resemble nightbirds making their way through darkness towards light. In that same year, Zao Wou-Ki went to the United States to visit Pierre Soulages and his wife, to get to know Yves Klein, Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman, and to view the works of Jackson Pollock. This brief contact exerted a major influence on his abstract expressionism, particularly its seemingly balanced and spontaneous combination of fury and tranquility. As Zao wrote in his journal: 'The physical side of the gesture which throws materials on the canvas, is as if there is neither past nor tradition'. This was further to have a profound impact on the future of Western abstract and traditional Chinese aesthetic creation.
Nuit, Mi-Nuit (Night, Mid-Night) is an important work by Zao Wou-Ki from 1956, one embued with the character of a daily record: it stands at a point of the confluence of his life with his artistic creation, and it has reappeared in recent years as a rare and masterful ?uvre now offered to collectors.