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Lot Essay
"I rarely sense power in Chinese painting, but when I stood in front of Fan Kuan's 'Travel in the Mountains' for the first time I felt that the mountain bore down on me and I experienced a wave of power rushing towards me."
LIU KUO-SUNG
Through a life of restless artistic innovation, fervent advocacy for change and a pursuit for the spirituality beyond the realm of mere representation, Liu Kuo-Sung is leaving behind a legacy that stands testimony to his unparalleled contributions to the development of modern Chinese ink painting. Originally educated in the Western style during his studies at Taiwan Normal University, Liu Kuo-Sung began to reconsider issues of the long outdated traditional Chinese paintings after gazing upon Fan Kuan's 'Travel in the Mountains' at the National Palace Museum exhibition in 1960 in Taiwan.
Liu Kuo-Sung attempt to capture this distinct Chinese sensation to what he knew best through his studies, the abstract expressionism movement that swept through China's artistic circles in the late 1950s. He believed that abstract painting was the long sought-after answer that China's modern art was seeking in order to become accepted and relevant again in the contemporary art world. To open up space for change, he sought to distill the spirit of tradition by experimenting with new materials and techniques. What makes Liu Kuo-Sung distinctive is perhaps he led a new vernacular movement in Chinese ink painting by writing, inventing and attributing a new vocabulary to China's modern art.
Liu is best known for his strong simple forms executed with ink and brush. Inspired by the 1968 NASA Apollo missions, celestial bodies resembling the Earth, Moon and Sun have been featured frequently in his works. This cosmic fascination is presented in Liu's Moon's Metamorphosis (Lot 421). Using bright and nearly florescent colours, Liu plays with the geometric shape of the paper and the moon to instill a shallow sense of pictorial depth and a feeling of the extraterrestrial that is beyond the realm of humanity. Deeply rooted in the poetic sensibilities the Chinese have for the aesthetic appreciation of the moon, the work simultaneously is also an abstraction of the strange, cosmic world into a flat, two-dimensional drawing. As Liu sought to transcend the limitations of nature and express the freedom of the soul, his works often range between the portrayal of the incomprehensible, distant galaxy and his purely abstract ink paintings. Untitled (Lot420) is characteristic of the latter. After laying down his brushstrokes with traditional ink, Liu Kuo-Sung pulls the long fibers from the rough textured paper to produce spontaneous linear lines that break down the pure black strokes. The work becomes an experimentation that defies and rebels against the art of traditional Chinese ink while simultaneously, updating and creatively playing with ways to introduce it into the realm of the avant-garde. In retrospect, Liu is not only the pioneer in modern Chinese ink painting, he is also representative of an entire generation of Chinese painters who possessed the ambition and powerful artistic vision of such to fuse the dichotomy.
LIU KUO-SUNG
Through a life of restless artistic innovation, fervent advocacy for change and a pursuit for the spirituality beyond the realm of mere representation, Liu Kuo-Sung is leaving behind a legacy that stands testimony to his unparalleled contributions to the development of modern Chinese ink painting. Originally educated in the Western style during his studies at Taiwan Normal University, Liu Kuo-Sung began to reconsider issues of the long outdated traditional Chinese paintings after gazing upon Fan Kuan's 'Travel in the Mountains' at the National Palace Museum exhibition in 1960 in Taiwan.
Liu Kuo-Sung attempt to capture this distinct Chinese sensation to what he knew best through his studies, the abstract expressionism movement that swept through China's artistic circles in the late 1950s. He believed that abstract painting was the long sought-after answer that China's modern art was seeking in order to become accepted and relevant again in the contemporary art world. To open up space for change, he sought to distill the spirit of tradition by experimenting with new materials and techniques. What makes Liu Kuo-Sung distinctive is perhaps he led a new vernacular movement in Chinese ink painting by writing, inventing and attributing a new vocabulary to China's modern art.
Liu is best known for his strong simple forms executed with ink and brush. Inspired by the 1968 NASA Apollo missions, celestial bodies resembling the Earth, Moon and Sun have been featured frequently in his works. This cosmic fascination is presented in Liu's Moon's Metamorphosis (Lot 421). Using bright and nearly florescent colours, Liu plays with the geometric shape of the paper and the moon to instill a shallow sense of pictorial depth and a feeling of the extraterrestrial that is beyond the realm of humanity. Deeply rooted in the poetic sensibilities the Chinese have for the aesthetic appreciation of the moon, the work simultaneously is also an abstraction of the strange, cosmic world into a flat, two-dimensional drawing. As Liu sought to transcend the limitations of nature and express the freedom of the soul, his works often range between the portrayal of the incomprehensible, distant galaxy and his purely abstract ink paintings. Untitled (Lot420) is characteristic of the latter. After laying down his brushstrokes with traditional ink, Liu Kuo-Sung pulls the long fibers from the rough textured paper to produce spontaneous linear lines that break down the pure black strokes. The work becomes an experimentation that defies and rebels against the art of traditional Chinese ink while simultaneously, updating and creatively playing with ways to introduce it into the realm of the avant-garde. In retrospect, Liu is not only the pioneer in modern Chinese ink painting, he is also representative of an entire generation of Chinese painters who possessed the ambition and powerful artistic vision of such to fuse the dichotomy.