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Lot Essay
'I love these dynamic and harmonious inks that demonstrate the spirit of China. Sometimes I think of T'ang Haywen when I see the top of mountains disappearing into the mist'. (Balthus on the T'ang Haywen Retrospective in Musée Océanographique, Monaco, 1997).
Christie's is pleased to present this season a selection of powerful works by Chinese artist T'ang Haywen, showing his virtuosity in various medium such as oil, ink and colour.
Born in Xiamen in 1927, T'ang Haywen moved to Saigon, Vietnam during the Sino-Japanese War with his family, where he attended a French school and studied calligraphy under his grandfather's guidance. Arriving in France in 1948, the same year as his compatriot Zao Wou-Ki, T'ang started studying medicine to live up to his parents' expectations. He soon started his artistic quest- travelling in Europe, visiting galleries and museums to discover Western art- and eventually developed his own unique practice that is in harmony with the Taoism' Three Treasures: compassion, moderation, and humility. This had become a true way of life for the artist. Like many of his contemporaries who immersed themselves in France at the time such as Chu Teh-Chun and Zao Wou-ki, T'ang found Abstract Expressionism a perfect channel to demonstrate the subtleties in traditional Chinese painting through pure non-figurative elements of colour, light and composition. We today rediscover a truly talented artist, indifferent to recognition and avoiding self-promotion, whose artistic force aims to a spiritual purpose way beyond our material reality.
Untitled (Lot 51), a rare example of T'ang's oil practice, depicts a vegetal abstract landscape of bluish greens spans running on a deep warm yellow background. Vertical brushstrokes- like long grass blades swinging under the wind - accelerate the tempo of the composition that is also enlightened by vivid orange touches. With its underlying blue, orange and green, Tang's oil practice is characteristic of layering colours, giving extensive depth to the abstract composition, and thus surpassing the limits of painting, to the manner of the Impressionists (Figs. 1 & 2). Untitled remains completely abstract, while at the same time translating the feeling of a sand and grass field swept by a powerful seaside wind. Tang's virtuosity lies in the very balance between abstraction and figuration, a no-man's-land where painting avoids categorization. In the lower left corner Tang skilfully painted a resembling insect, a unique figurative element allowing the composition to become a landscape, while the total absence of perspective immediately counters this interpretation. 'My painting is neither figurative nor abstract. I do not seek to describe the world, but rather bypassing and overcoming the conscious world in order to explore new forms still linked to nature and its rhythm. I am looking to identify Nature's forces and materialize them into painting.' (in Le Tao de la Peinture, T'ang Haywen, Une R?trospective, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, 1997, p. 19)
His spontaneity and simplicity led the artist to explore and develop a unique ink practice, which he had fully mastered by the 1970s. Dictated by a transcendental force T'ang uses the characteristic ink fluidity to draw broad flexible gestures on the paper and create powerful compositions. Notions of time and control are the core of T'ang's ink practice. The mastery of ink painting, an irreversible medium by essence, lies in the knowledge of the brush and its contact with the paper. Tan'g lets the ink spread freely and the paper absorb the diluted liquid then generating various shades of grey, which immediately contrast with rapid brushstrokes of deep black. The format of each 70 x 50 cm paper comes as a strict unifying frame to each unique composition, where empty and full spaces are equal. Thus emptiness in the composition vibrates of energy; an empty space from which originates the line, allowing breath and movement to the forms, and momentum to the gesture. Such as the wind and the breath, the empty space is a fundamental and complex element in T'ang's painting, a vital parameter to any of his compositions. Explaining this notion to Jean-Pierre Desroches, T'ang described: 'When at work, I constantly ask myself: working in favour of emptiness or working in favour of fullness. It is like body and soul, music only exists through silence.' In their concept of ink painting and hybrid influences, T'ang Haywen and Zao Wou-Ki follow the same artistic itinerary, in their own unique way of modernizing Chinese painting (fig 4).
While T'ang established himself as a calligrapher and as the ink practice remains central in his oeuvre, the artist also picks up his brush to draw intimate natural compositions in colours. As seen in Untitled (Lot 50), often inspired by landscapes and with more freedom, T'ang pursues with this colourful body of works the same instinct of translating our sensational world into art.
As T'ang avoids any categorisation and maintains his artistic independence, contemporary French artists such as Henri Michaux (Fig. 5) and Hans Hartung (Fig. 7) found in the ink medium and calligraphy a new vehicle of expression. Both Parisian School artists relate to the same quest of absolute drawing inspiration from the Eastern culture as a way of renewal. They both view the ink practice as an alternative expression, Hartung in his aesthetic research of abstraction and Michaux as a liberating equivalent to writing. Therefore all three artists transcend nationalities and time in their universal pursuit to overcome the human condition.
T'ang Haywen shows a masterful synthesis of abstraction, where the Western art developments of the 20th Century serve at best the purpose of a Chinese artist deeply rooted in the Taoist spirituality. Tang's practice is shaped by the spiritual elements of the Taoist approach to painting, in which the artist seeks to capture the interplay of energies that give life to the natural world. His artistic discoveries in France gave the artist the right freedom to develop a unique style imbued with both Asian philosophy and Western art historical discourse, at a time when the Parisian artistic swarm seeks new inspiration in art outside its European borders.
Christie's is pleased to present this season a selection of powerful works by Chinese artist T'ang Haywen, showing his virtuosity in various medium such as oil, ink and colour.
Born in Xiamen in 1927, T'ang Haywen moved to Saigon, Vietnam during the Sino-Japanese War with his family, where he attended a French school and studied calligraphy under his grandfather's guidance. Arriving in France in 1948, the same year as his compatriot Zao Wou-Ki, T'ang started studying medicine to live up to his parents' expectations. He soon started his artistic quest- travelling in Europe, visiting galleries and museums to discover Western art- and eventually developed his own unique practice that is in harmony with the Taoism' Three Treasures: compassion, moderation, and humility. This had become a true way of life for the artist. Like many of his contemporaries who immersed themselves in France at the time such as Chu Teh-Chun and Zao Wou-ki, T'ang found Abstract Expressionism a perfect channel to demonstrate the subtleties in traditional Chinese painting through pure non-figurative elements of colour, light and composition. We today rediscover a truly talented artist, indifferent to recognition and avoiding self-promotion, whose artistic force aims to a spiritual purpose way beyond our material reality.
Untitled (Lot 51), a rare example of T'ang's oil practice, depicts a vegetal abstract landscape of bluish greens spans running on a deep warm yellow background. Vertical brushstrokes- like long grass blades swinging under the wind - accelerate the tempo of the composition that is also enlightened by vivid orange touches. With its underlying blue, orange and green, Tang's oil practice is characteristic of layering colours, giving extensive depth to the abstract composition, and thus surpassing the limits of painting, to the manner of the Impressionists (Figs. 1 & 2). Untitled remains completely abstract, while at the same time translating the feeling of a sand and grass field swept by a powerful seaside wind. Tang's virtuosity lies in the very balance between abstraction and figuration, a no-man's-land where painting avoids categorization. In the lower left corner Tang skilfully painted a resembling insect, a unique figurative element allowing the composition to become a landscape, while the total absence of perspective immediately counters this interpretation. 'My painting is neither figurative nor abstract. I do not seek to describe the world, but rather bypassing and overcoming the conscious world in order to explore new forms still linked to nature and its rhythm. I am looking to identify Nature's forces and materialize them into painting.' (in Le Tao de la Peinture, T'ang Haywen, Une R?trospective, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, 1997, p. 19)
His spontaneity and simplicity led the artist to explore and develop a unique ink practice, which he had fully mastered by the 1970s. Dictated by a transcendental force T'ang uses the characteristic ink fluidity to draw broad flexible gestures on the paper and create powerful compositions. Notions of time and control are the core of T'ang's ink practice. The mastery of ink painting, an irreversible medium by essence, lies in the knowledge of the brush and its contact with the paper. Tan'g lets the ink spread freely and the paper absorb the diluted liquid then generating various shades of grey, which immediately contrast with rapid brushstrokes of deep black. The format of each 70 x 50 cm paper comes as a strict unifying frame to each unique composition, where empty and full spaces are equal. Thus emptiness in the composition vibrates of energy; an empty space from which originates the line, allowing breath and movement to the forms, and momentum to the gesture. Such as the wind and the breath, the empty space is a fundamental and complex element in T'ang's painting, a vital parameter to any of his compositions. Explaining this notion to Jean-Pierre Desroches, T'ang described: 'When at work, I constantly ask myself: working in favour of emptiness or working in favour of fullness. It is like body and soul, music only exists through silence.' In their concept of ink painting and hybrid influences, T'ang Haywen and Zao Wou-Ki follow the same artistic itinerary, in their own unique way of modernizing Chinese painting (fig 4).
While T'ang established himself as a calligrapher and as the ink practice remains central in his oeuvre, the artist also picks up his brush to draw intimate natural compositions in colours. As seen in Untitled (Lot 50), often inspired by landscapes and with more freedom, T'ang pursues with this colourful body of works the same instinct of translating our sensational world into art.
As T'ang avoids any categorisation and maintains his artistic independence, contemporary French artists such as Henri Michaux (Fig. 5) and Hans Hartung (Fig. 7) found in the ink medium and calligraphy a new vehicle of expression. Both Parisian School artists relate to the same quest of absolute drawing inspiration from the Eastern culture as a way of renewal. They both view the ink practice as an alternative expression, Hartung in his aesthetic research of abstraction and Michaux as a liberating equivalent to writing. Therefore all three artists transcend nationalities and time in their universal pursuit to overcome the human condition.
T'ang Haywen shows a masterful synthesis of abstraction, where the Western art developments of the 20th Century serve at best the purpose of a Chinese artist deeply rooted in the Taoist spirituality. Tang's practice is shaped by the spiritual elements of the Taoist approach to painting, in which the artist seeks to capture the interplay of energies that give life to the natural world. His artistic discoveries in France gave the artist the right freedom to develop a unique style imbued with both Asian philosophy and Western art historical discourse, at a time when the Parisian artistic swarm seeks new inspiration in art outside its European borders.