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Lot Essay
“The brush and ink themselves alone, proves to be incapable; as if a piece of clay unsculpted, it has no value. The brush and ink are only slaves to serve the creator, nothing more than tools to provoke his thoughts, they are servants to follow the artist’s hands, digested through his mind before materialising upon the canvas. On their own, they could never consider the markings or the shapes they take; therefore, the essential quality of the work, never to be considered from a pure technical aspect, should constitute a vital testament of our times.”
-Wu Guanzhong, ‘Ink Equals to Zero’, “My Voice beyond Painting”
In Chinese painting, structure, perspective, and spatial illusion are created primarily through the thickness of lines; this intricate assembly of light, colour and temporal narrative achieved, combines to create the unified abstract form. Autumn onto the Wall (Lot 19) relies on the media of oil to carry out the essence of Chinese abstract art, as Wu united the artistic mediums, theories and methodologies of Chinese and Western art traditions, in search for a contemporary expression of eastern sensibilities.
The canvas is populated by a dense swathe of chrome orange and earthy red; the application of colour is performed with an immediacy, whereas unbridled abstract lines roam the canvas. By creating a dynamic between the correlations of each subject -- the lines of white birches, the shape of flattened sky, and the rubbing brushstrokes of the wall -- all subjects aspire to invite the viewers to imagine reality through the subjective tones of orange-red. Such methodical composition would be readily apparent in Bada Shanren’s Birds and Rocks, where the abstracted brushwork gives way to turbulent lines, in rich variations, unveils the transcendency of nature. The expressionistic style of the work requires of a subjective interpretation from the viewer, to reflect upon the intrinsic features presented in the physical world, of birds, rocks and earth, of a natural phenomena internalised within the artist’s domain, ultimately to discern the “sense of the beyond” conveyed. Wu Guanzhong had mastered the use of the ‘brush and ink’, but he did not limit himself to the medium; with an attempt to deconstruct the idea of technique in ‘Ink Equals to Zero’, Wu was meant to challenge the notions of realism and expressionism.
“Over and over, I have painted the white wall, graced by the sensual richness of autumn times….Yet the restrictions imposed by the wall appear to be disconcerting; the seemingly untrammelled extensions of the ivy, is constrained by the physique of the wall, while intruded by the space indicating the sky above. But if I were to compress the region of the sky, then the gable wall would lose its integrity.”
-Wu Guanzhong, Autumn onto the Wall, “Paintings by Wu Guanzhong, In Commemoration of Birth”
Wu’s treatment of Autumn onto the Wall has provoked the preconceptions of the ‘golden ratio’, by redifining the laws of perspective. At a glance, the imageries of the earth and the sky, the vines and the wall, are proposed as compositional elements in Rule of Thirds. Even with the viewer’s eyes fixed on the image, its focal point seems to expand way beyond the picture frame-the obscured shapes of vines, wild flowers and maple leaves spread through the horizontal axis along the wall; in comparison, the branches of the birch tree strive in a perpendicular direction. Swiftly the artist piled layers of oil, to depict the curvy vines in calligraphic strokes in hooks, bridles, raises and curves; the effortless lines and blobs of ink come together to remind us of how Cy Twobly had changed abstract expressionism. Expertly, Wu Guanzhong created the illusion of an infinite expansion, with the penetrating structure of his carefully selected subjects (vines and branches), to beckon the viewers on his expressive brushwork and dazzling colours; his art allows the mind to wander, the vast expanse of space that exists within and out of the picture frame. The powerful and commanding presence of the trees, also evident in Wu Pin’s Drawing Landscape and Klimt’s Farmhouse with Birch Trees declares that profound meanings are yet to be found beyond the scenery we conceive. To observe this work alongside Dwelling in the Fu-chun Mountains by Huang Kung-Wang, is to appreciate Wu’s adoption of the artistic wisdom in the traditional mountain and water scroll.
Autumn onto the Wall elucidaties eastern aesthetics with western modernism; the painting has served as the theoretical framework for his thoery ‘Ink Equals to Zero’, stirring the tides of thought in Chinese art to put forth his course of artistic exploration. As the paint flows from the brush to the surface, the resulted images resonate between relational changes; as for the empty spaces of void, further the spectator to fill in with his own evocation.
-Wu Guanzhong, ‘Ink Equals to Zero’, “My Voice beyond Painting”
In Chinese painting, structure, perspective, and spatial illusion are created primarily through the thickness of lines; this intricate assembly of light, colour and temporal narrative achieved, combines to create the unified abstract form. Autumn onto the Wall (Lot 19) relies on the media of oil to carry out the essence of Chinese abstract art, as Wu united the artistic mediums, theories and methodologies of Chinese and Western art traditions, in search for a contemporary expression of eastern sensibilities.
The canvas is populated by a dense swathe of chrome orange and earthy red; the application of colour is performed with an immediacy, whereas unbridled abstract lines roam the canvas. By creating a dynamic between the correlations of each subject -- the lines of white birches, the shape of flattened sky, and the rubbing brushstrokes of the wall -- all subjects aspire to invite the viewers to imagine reality through the subjective tones of orange-red. Such methodical composition would be readily apparent in Bada Shanren’s Birds and Rocks, where the abstracted brushwork gives way to turbulent lines, in rich variations, unveils the transcendency of nature. The expressionistic style of the work requires of a subjective interpretation from the viewer, to reflect upon the intrinsic features presented in the physical world, of birds, rocks and earth, of a natural phenomena internalised within the artist’s domain, ultimately to discern the “sense of the beyond” conveyed. Wu Guanzhong had mastered the use of the ‘brush and ink’, but he did not limit himself to the medium; with an attempt to deconstruct the idea of technique in ‘Ink Equals to Zero’, Wu was meant to challenge the notions of realism and expressionism.
“Over and over, I have painted the white wall, graced by the sensual richness of autumn times….Yet the restrictions imposed by the wall appear to be disconcerting; the seemingly untrammelled extensions of the ivy, is constrained by the physique of the wall, while intruded by the space indicating the sky above. But if I were to compress the region of the sky, then the gable wall would lose its integrity.”
-Wu Guanzhong, Autumn onto the Wall, “Paintings by Wu Guanzhong, In Commemoration of Birth”
Wu’s treatment of Autumn onto the Wall has provoked the preconceptions of the ‘golden ratio’, by redifining the laws of perspective. At a glance, the imageries of the earth and the sky, the vines and the wall, are proposed as compositional elements in Rule of Thirds. Even with the viewer’s eyes fixed on the image, its focal point seems to expand way beyond the picture frame-the obscured shapes of vines, wild flowers and maple leaves spread through the horizontal axis along the wall; in comparison, the branches of the birch tree strive in a perpendicular direction. Swiftly the artist piled layers of oil, to depict the curvy vines in calligraphic strokes in hooks, bridles, raises and curves; the effortless lines and blobs of ink come together to remind us of how Cy Twobly had changed abstract expressionism. Expertly, Wu Guanzhong created the illusion of an infinite expansion, with the penetrating structure of his carefully selected subjects (vines and branches), to beckon the viewers on his expressive brushwork and dazzling colours; his art allows the mind to wander, the vast expanse of space that exists within and out of the picture frame. The powerful and commanding presence of the trees, also evident in Wu Pin’s Drawing Landscape and Klimt’s Farmhouse with Birch Trees declares that profound meanings are yet to be found beyond the scenery we conceive. To observe this work alongside Dwelling in the Fu-chun Mountains by Huang Kung-Wang, is to appreciate Wu’s adoption of the artistic wisdom in the traditional mountain and water scroll.
Autumn onto the Wall elucidaties eastern aesthetics with western modernism; the painting has served as the theoretical framework for his thoery ‘Ink Equals to Zero’, stirring the tides of thought in Chinese art to put forth his course of artistic exploration. As the paint flows from the brush to the surface, the resulted images resonate between relational changes; as for the empty spaces of void, further the spectator to fill in with his own evocation.