.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Cheong Soo Pieng's artistic development is a remarkable cohesion of Eastern and Western sensibilities; a progressive vanguard of abstract experimentation and narrative figuration combined with a keen awareness of the rapid pace of aesthetic modernity within 20th century painting.
Born in 1917, Xiamen, China, Cheong Soo Pieng first studied Chinese ink painting in the Xiamen Academy of Fine Arts, and later combined this training with Western concepts in the Xin Hua Academy of Fine Arts in Shanghai, then a hotbed of modernist culture and learning. By the time he migrated to Singapore in 1946, he had a solid grasp of Chinese ink and Western oil painting history, techniques, pictorial formats.
After his arrival in Singapore, Cheong sought a continuation of the modern Chinese art movement that was taking place in Shanghai within his new surroundings in tropical Southeast Asia. Along with migrant artist contemporaries, Liu Kang, Chen Wen Hsi and Chen Chong Swee, Cheong founded the 'Nanyang' style of art that was largely concerned with the integration of traditional Chinese art forms with modern developments in Western art, depicting the vivid context of Southeast Asia as their main subject matter. The 'Nanyang School' moniker was derived from the brave new world of the Straits region, but also after the Nanyang Academy of Fine Art where the quartet taught, fraternized and sought to inspire a new generation of Southeast Asian artists.
In 1952, the Nanyang artists undertook a historic field trip to Bali, to search for a distinctly Southeast Asian visual expression. Cheong Soo Pieng's stay was of five months, and culminated in the watershed exhibition 'Four Artists to Bali' at the Singapore Art Society. As TK Sabapathy observed, the Bali trip resulted in the creation of figure types which are indelibly linked with the Nanyang Artists and which proved to be vastly influential on other artists following in their wake.
"Not only did Bali offer them a rich visual source, the Balinese experience also revealed the ritualistic, experiential and decorative nature of Southeast Asian art - a point which sets the Singapore story apart from the Gauguinian legend. During and after the trip, images of Bali provided both the inspiration and visual sources which enabled the artists to crystalise their exploration of an aesthetic style in Singapore art." Kwok Kian Chow
Picking Lotuses epitomizes the far-reaching influences the Bali trip had on Cheong's career, and his lifelong fascination with the vibrant, exotic beauty of Southeast Asian women. Painted in 1978, over two decades after Cheong's first Bali visit, the experimental stylization of figural form which he developed in the post-Bali period has coalesced here into a confident, subtle, yet deeply elegant visual archetype which recurs throughout his works, particularly during the 1970s and 80s as he returned from abstraction to figurative portrayals. Female anatomies are depicted as exaggeratedly angular yet with a strong linear quality as their elongated eyes, neck, limbs all flow into each other in seamless harmony.
"(In painting I first) experimented a good deal in color technique, and when I had evolved a technique which pleased me I tried it upon studies of the human form. I went to Bali on a sketching trip, and there I was fascinated by the scenery and by the Balinese women. I discovered that Balinese women are the ideal subject for me, and I made a good number of paintings, modern in feeling and to my own liking many of which I do not wish to sell." Cheong Soo Pieng
Cheong Soo Pieng also had an appreciation for the brightly patterned texture of woven batik cloth found in Southeast Asia. Within Picking Lotuses, the women's native garb is painstakingly detailed and complements Cheong's trademark 'pointillism' in depicting background scenery, for instance the closely rendered dots that form the plateau upon which the women sit, which expands into larger circular and triangular shapes to form the foliage and leaves in the background. The geometrical arrangement of these shapes acknowledge Cheong's inspiration by modern artists such as Braque, Klee and Miro, and also suggests a certain graphic design sensibility; yet simultaneously bears resemblance to the foliage in Song Dynasty scroll painting, as pointed out by Yeo Wei Wei and Seng Yu Jin (Cheong Soo Pieng - Visions of Southeast Asia, p. 143)
This modernist propensity juxtaposes with Cheong's fundamental training in ink painting. Even here, Cheong is apt to mix and match different strains of tradition. For example, the tree branches cut an extended diagonal swathe across the pictorial plane, bringing to mind the lithe, spontaneous brushwork of philosopher-painters such as Bada Shanren, whose bravura lines are designed to interrupt a spatially void background. Yet Cheong's portrayal of the lotus pond relies on a more classical approach, as the horizon of the pond vanishes quietly into the tranquil mists beyond, rendering pictorial depth within what is otherwise a flattened modern visual format. The entire composition displays an extraordinary acuity for pictorial balance and reflects Cheong's mastery in composing detailed, evocative images with just the right amount of aesthetic restraint.
Born in 1917, Xiamen, China, Cheong Soo Pieng first studied Chinese ink painting in the Xiamen Academy of Fine Arts, and later combined this training with Western concepts in the Xin Hua Academy of Fine Arts in Shanghai, then a hotbed of modernist culture and learning. By the time he migrated to Singapore in 1946, he had a solid grasp of Chinese ink and Western oil painting history, techniques, pictorial formats.
After his arrival in Singapore, Cheong sought a continuation of the modern Chinese art movement that was taking place in Shanghai within his new surroundings in tropical Southeast Asia. Along with migrant artist contemporaries, Liu Kang, Chen Wen Hsi and Chen Chong Swee, Cheong founded the 'Nanyang' style of art that was largely concerned with the integration of traditional Chinese art forms with modern developments in Western art, depicting the vivid context of Southeast Asia as their main subject matter. The 'Nanyang School' moniker was derived from the brave new world of the Straits region, but also after the Nanyang Academy of Fine Art where the quartet taught, fraternized and sought to inspire a new generation of Southeast Asian artists.
In 1952, the Nanyang artists undertook a historic field trip to Bali, to search for a distinctly Southeast Asian visual expression. Cheong Soo Pieng's stay was of five months, and culminated in the watershed exhibition 'Four Artists to Bali' at the Singapore Art Society. As TK Sabapathy observed, the Bali trip resulted in the creation of figure types which are indelibly linked with the Nanyang Artists and which proved to be vastly influential on other artists following in their wake.
"Not only did Bali offer them a rich visual source, the Balinese experience also revealed the ritualistic, experiential and decorative nature of Southeast Asian art - a point which sets the Singapore story apart from the Gauguinian legend. During and after the trip, images of Bali provided both the inspiration and visual sources which enabled the artists to crystalise their exploration of an aesthetic style in Singapore art." Kwok Kian Chow
Picking Lotuses epitomizes the far-reaching influences the Bali trip had on Cheong's career, and his lifelong fascination with the vibrant, exotic beauty of Southeast Asian women. Painted in 1978, over two decades after Cheong's first Bali visit, the experimental stylization of figural form which he developed in the post-Bali period has coalesced here into a confident, subtle, yet deeply elegant visual archetype which recurs throughout his works, particularly during the 1970s and 80s as he returned from abstraction to figurative portrayals. Female anatomies are depicted as exaggeratedly angular yet with a strong linear quality as their elongated eyes, neck, limbs all flow into each other in seamless harmony.
"(In painting I first) experimented a good deal in color technique, and when I had evolved a technique which pleased me I tried it upon studies of the human form. I went to Bali on a sketching trip, and there I was fascinated by the scenery and by the Balinese women. I discovered that Balinese women are the ideal subject for me, and I made a good number of paintings, modern in feeling and to my own liking many of which I do not wish to sell." Cheong Soo Pieng
Cheong Soo Pieng also had an appreciation for the brightly patterned texture of woven batik cloth found in Southeast Asia. Within Picking Lotuses, the women's native garb is painstakingly detailed and complements Cheong's trademark 'pointillism' in depicting background scenery, for instance the closely rendered dots that form the plateau upon which the women sit, which expands into larger circular and triangular shapes to form the foliage and leaves in the background. The geometrical arrangement of these shapes acknowledge Cheong's inspiration by modern artists such as Braque, Klee and Miro, and also suggests a certain graphic design sensibility; yet simultaneously bears resemblance to the foliage in Song Dynasty scroll painting, as pointed out by Yeo Wei Wei and Seng Yu Jin (Cheong Soo Pieng - Visions of Southeast Asia, p. 143)
This modernist propensity juxtaposes with Cheong's fundamental training in ink painting. Even here, Cheong is apt to mix and match different strains of tradition. For example, the tree branches cut an extended diagonal swathe across the pictorial plane, bringing to mind the lithe, spontaneous brushwork of philosopher-painters such as Bada Shanren, whose bravura lines are designed to interrupt a spatially void background. Yet Cheong's portrayal of the lotus pond relies on a more classical approach, as the horizon of the pond vanishes quietly into the tranquil mists beyond, rendering pictorial depth within what is otherwise a flattened modern visual format. The entire composition displays an extraordinary acuity for pictorial balance and reflects Cheong's mastery in composing detailed, evocative images with just the right amount of aesthetic restraint.