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Lot Essay
“As trees form a forest, with the bark of every individual tree disappearing within, the forests become a pictorial plane dotted with vibrant colours, almost as if the sound of the drum, as if pure abstraction – it becomes visual symphony.”
“There is no line between the real, the figurative and the abstract; the artist can move freely amongst them. What we seek is the real feeling…” – Wu Guanzhong
A recurring theme in Wu Guanzhong’s oeuvre, the white birch is often seen as the creature that best embodies the beauty of form in the artist’s eye. In his essay written in 2000, Wu vividly recalls the sense of the awe he felt from seeing the White Birch forest in the breathtaking snowscape in Northern China: ‘White birches grow alongside lakes and rivers, as if they prefer a clean and pure environment. The white trunks are slim and elegant, with the branches gently hanging downward, like a young girl, contemplating, nostalgic. […] Some of the older trees long have black cracks in their snow-white bodies, like strokes of pure dark ink against white paper, most expressively and vividly.”
Since 1981, Wu had travelled to some of the most remote parts of China – from the depths of the Changbai Mountains to the Altay region in Xinjiang – in search of the perfect White Birch forest of his heart. To the artist, the white birch symbolises the nobel quality of solitude and austerity as it stands gracefully in some of the most desolate landscapes and extreme climates. Unlike the twisted roots and gnarled branches of pine trees, the white birch’s upright and slender limbs radiate an elegant flair, without harshness, without hostility. During one of the artist’s excursions into the forests, he was told by the locals that as a tradition, lovers often used the bark of white birches on which to inscribe love letters. Touched by the anecdote and all the connotations attached to the white birch, he once compared the curved cracks in the bark to the eyes of lovers – as if blinking tenderly, displaying affection for each other. It is hardly surpising that the artist incorporated this fascination with the white birch in the creation of White Birch.
White Birch (Lot 4) was created in 1988. In the late 1980s, Wu’s paintings became increasingly more vigorous and powerful as the interplay between multiple layers of ink and colours intensified in the background. Painted at a crucial transitional moment in the artist’s career, White Birch serves as an important witness of this artistic transformation: from figurative to abstract, from simple lines to a full integration of colours and patterns. Compared to the White Birch (Fig.1) executed in 1985, the present painting is visibly bolder in the use of colour and brushstrokes, with a higher degree of complexity in composition as well as a mature gradation of varying shades of black and grey. A later work in the early 1990s In the Forest (Fig.2) displays a clear progression from the two White Birch paintings, but instead of portraying the materiality of the trees, Wu is able to capture a vibrant, kaleidoscopic vision of the forest – achieving what he so aptly calls a ‘visual symphony’. The pursuit of the beauty of form and the sincere adoration of nature remain the central concern of Wu’s work.
For the artist, what sets the white birch apart is its embodiment of structured lines and contrasting colours in nature, therefore exemplifying the ideal form of beauty. Based on his acute observation and masterful techniques, Wu recreates the scenery of nature with remarkable grace and sensual simplicity. Colours dance across the picture surface: patches of green representing verdant leaves attached to the branch, followed by vibrant shades of yellow; orange dots appearing on the barks, echoed by delicate touches of almost invisible red. Alluding to the shadows in the depths of the forest, layers of ink in the background are rendered skillfully, creating a mysterious ambiance in the scene.
Between the seemingly spontaneous and deceptively simple lines and colours, Wu Guanzhong displays an incredible mastery over the rhythmic movement of form. White Birch demonstrates a nearly mathematical variation of black and white, abstract and figurative, with dots, lines and planes corresponding to the dialectical interplay between order and chaos in nature. The artist sets the image free from mimetic portrayal in order to achieve a spiritual abstraction, almost like music, within the mind and the universe. Such musicality and abstraction is also seen in the geometic paintings of the 20th century modernist master Piet Mondrian (1872-1944), where forms are reduced to a near-industrial extreme (Fig.3). In Wu Guanzhong’s work, the inspiration for the early figurative, semi-abstract and later abstract works all originates from his heart-felt connection with the nature. The symphony of the white birch forest does not only come from mathmtical conceptualisation but also stems from his genuine passion for nature and beauty.
“There is no line between the real, the figurative and the abstract; the artist can move freely amongst them. What we seek is the real feeling…” – Wu Guanzhong
A recurring theme in Wu Guanzhong’s oeuvre, the white birch is often seen as the creature that best embodies the beauty of form in the artist’s eye. In his essay written in 2000, Wu vividly recalls the sense of the awe he felt from seeing the White Birch forest in the breathtaking snowscape in Northern China: ‘White birches grow alongside lakes and rivers, as if they prefer a clean and pure environment. The white trunks are slim and elegant, with the branches gently hanging downward, like a young girl, contemplating, nostalgic. […] Some of the older trees long have black cracks in their snow-white bodies, like strokes of pure dark ink against white paper, most expressively and vividly.”
Since 1981, Wu had travelled to some of the most remote parts of China – from the depths of the Changbai Mountains to the Altay region in Xinjiang – in search of the perfect White Birch forest of his heart. To the artist, the white birch symbolises the nobel quality of solitude and austerity as it stands gracefully in some of the most desolate landscapes and extreme climates. Unlike the twisted roots and gnarled branches of pine trees, the white birch’s upright and slender limbs radiate an elegant flair, without harshness, without hostility. During one of the artist’s excursions into the forests, he was told by the locals that as a tradition, lovers often used the bark of white birches on which to inscribe love letters. Touched by the anecdote and all the connotations attached to the white birch, he once compared the curved cracks in the bark to the eyes of lovers – as if blinking tenderly, displaying affection for each other. It is hardly surpising that the artist incorporated this fascination with the white birch in the creation of White Birch.
White Birch (Lot 4) was created in 1988. In the late 1980s, Wu’s paintings became increasingly more vigorous and powerful as the interplay between multiple layers of ink and colours intensified in the background. Painted at a crucial transitional moment in the artist’s career, White Birch serves as an important witness of this artistic transformation: from figurative to abstract, from simple lines to a full integration of colours and patterns. Compared to the White Birch (Fig.1) executed in 1985, the present painting is visibly bolder in the use of colour and brushstrokes, with a higher degree of complexity in composition as well as a mature gradation of varying shades of black and grey. A later work in the early 1990s In the Forest (Fig.2) displays a clear progression from the two White Birch paintings, but instead of portraying the materiality of the trees, Wu is able to capture a vibrant, kaleidoscopic vision of the forest – achieving what he so aptly calls a ‘visual symphony’. The pursuit of the beauty of form and the sincere adoration of nature remain the central concern of Wu’s work.
For the artist, what sets the white birch apart is its embodiment of structured lines and contrasting colours in nature, therefore exemplifying the ideal form of beauty. Based on his acute observation and masterful techniques, Wu recreates the scenery of nature with remarkable grace and sensual simplicity. Colours dance across the picture surface: patches of green representing verdant leaves attached to the branch, followed by vibrant shades of yellow; orange dots appearing on the barks, echoed by delicate touches of almost invisible red. Alluding to the shadows in the depths of the forest, layers of ink in the background are rendered skillfully, creating a mysterious ambiance in the scene.
Between the seemingly spontaneous and deceptively simple lines and colours, Wu Guanzhong displays an incredible mastery over the rhythmic movement of form. White Birch demonstrates a nearly mathematical variation of black and white, abstract and figurative, with dots, lines and planes corresponding to the dialectical interplay between order and chaos in nature. The artist sets the image free from mimetic portrayal in order to achieve a spiritual abstraction, almost like music, within the mind and the universe. Such musicality and abstraction is also seen in the geometic paintings of the 20th century modernist master Piet Mondrian (1872-1944), where forms are reduced to a near-industrial extreme (Fig.3). In Wu Guanzhong’s work, the inspiration for the early figurative, semi-abstract and later abstract works all originates from his heart-felt connection with the nature. The symphony of the white birch forest does not only come from mathmtical conceptualisation but also stems from his genuine passion for nature and beauty.