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Lot Essay
Hidden behind the resplendent masses of colours, depicting the ephemeral beauty of the oft-desired cherry blossoms, we find one of Walasse Ting's women. Here she is in the painting I love Cherry Blossom (Lot 471)—misty-eyed, leaning lazily and mouth half open—beckoning to share the pleasures of her world with her discoverer. Having first trained in Shanghai, Ting then traveled to Paris in 1952, where he associated with the avant-garde CoBrA movement. He then settled down in New York City in 1959. While many of Ting's earlier works were charged with exotic colours and the vibrant lifestyle, it was in New York where he focused on portraits of women. Through his artwork, Ting consistently strives for the transient, which can be discerned from his poems: "love, resembling a butterfly when it comes, and a flower on paper when it goes." While initially captivating the audience with the sheer vibrancy of his paintings, Ting's paintings are memorable for their playfulness and distinctive perspective of portraiture.
Ting makes use of spontaneous delineative lines to model the female figure's face, her striking pose and the folds of her clothing. Ting depicts the painting's flowers in an ambiguous space—simultaneously being overlapped by figurative lines and overlapping the shapes of colour that also make up the figure.
Ting's mastery of powerful visual stimulation also lingers in the rendering of Blue Horse (Lot 472). Luscious curves of the figure and buoyant animals formed by fields of colours, heavily influenced by the effusive application method of the New York Abstract Expressionists, were captured in a moment of intimacy and affection. Animals, especially horses, were to Ting, symbols of freedom of self and existential truth, an iconography for fields of greenery and mountainous hills and the strive for the perpetual exploration of the inner terrain.
Perhaps dissatisfied with the language of pure abstraction, Ting returned to more traditional themes of self-expression. In Flower with Watermelon and Birds (Lot 473), familiar imagery such as flowers, fruits, fishes, and birds are portrayed. The cropped perspective creates an added sense of intimacy, and the triangular slice of watermelon invites the viewer into the painting. The bouquet of flowers created with alluring dabs of rich color, and the slow trickle of paint that moves vertically along the paper creates an air of gentle adoration. As such, Ting's figures are not the main subjects of his paintings, but are rather one of the vehicles of expression alongside colour and gesture.
Two Women with Horse and Parrot (Lot 593) is an ink painting. The simplicity in its color further demonstrated Ting's exceptional mastery of the composition of space. Instead of adopting the idea of 'the void' in Chinese traditional painting, Ting utilized the entire surface demonstrating a new style forged through the fusion of Eastern and Western compositional styles.
Ting makes use of spontaneous delineative lines to model the female figure's face, her striking pose and the folds of her clothing. Ting depicts the painting's flowers in an ambiguous space—simultaneously being overlapped by figurative lines and overlapping the shapes of colour that also make up the figure.
Ting's mastery of powerful visual stimulation also lingers in the rendering of Blue Horse (Lot 472). Luscious curves of the figure and buoyant animals formed by fields of colours, heavily influenced by the effusive application method of the New York Abstract Expressionists, were captured in a moment of intimacy and affection. Animals, especially horses, were to Ting, symbols of freedom of self and existential truth, an iconography for fields of greenery and mountainous hills and the strive for the perpetual exploration of the inner terrain.
Perhaps dissatisfied with the language of pure abstraction, Ting returned to more traditional themes of self-expression. In Flower with Watermelon and Birds (Lot 473), familiar imagery such as flowers, fruits, fishes, and birds are portrayed. The cropped perspective creates an added sense of intimacy, and the triangular slice of watermelon invites the viewer into the painting. The bouquet of flowers created with alluring dabs of rich color, and the slow trickle of paint that moves vertically along the paper creates an air of gentle adoration. As such, Ting's figures are not the main subjects of his paintings, but are rather one of the vehicles of expression alongside colour and gesture.
Two Women with Horse and Parrot (Lot 593) is an ink painting. The simplicity in its color further demonstrated Ting's exceptional mastery of the composition of space. Instead of adopting the idea of 'the void' in Chinese traditional painting, Ting utilized the entire surface demonstrating a new style forged through the fusion of Eastern and Western compositional styles.