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拍品专文
“When the [classical Chinese] masters painted leaves and grass, they made us feel (and nearly see) the air between them. In the pictures of Ting, too, we can breathe the air between thousands of colors which become buds and leaves, become clouds, rain, become summer, meadows, and all that is joy.”
Leon Arkus in Fresh Air School, Sam Francis, Joan Mitchell, and Walasse Ting, exh. cat. (Carnagie Museum of Art, Pittsburg, PA, USA, 1972).
The 1960s saw the bourgeoning of various art movements across Europe and the USA. Walasse Ting (Ding Xiongquan) internalised the strengths of different art trends and distilled them in his works. Painted in 1967, Beautiful Day stands out as a work of special significance for the artist, and it has been in the private collection of the current owner for the past 47 years. In the painting, the viewer can discern traces of Pop Art in the use of colours, and echoes of Abstract Expressionism in its stylistic expression. Walasse Ting was meticulous in his envisaging the image and bold with his brushstrokes, while the painting hints at influences of different art movements as well as a mature and distinctly personal style. Walasse Ting’s large-sized canvases from this period are rarely available in the market; among them, there are remarkably few compositions featuring splashes of paint across the entire canvas. It reflects the artist’s exceptional focus on the work, and his immersion in the creative process.
The space on the canvas is filled with azure, lemon, moss green and dark tangerine. The four main colours are equally prominent on the canvas; they seem to embody a perfect spontaneity, and yet they reveal a sense of order in the interaction between colours. Besides the four main colours, there are variations of the main colours amidst the layered splashes—drips of burgundy, azure, light orange, pink, and dark purple run free on the canvas. From the choice of colours and the brushstrokes alone, we can feel the excitement that surged within the artist during the creative process—a sense of joy and passion that almost flows out of the canvas, on a quest to bring us an exhilarating day.
Walasse Ting was born in Wuxi, Jiangsu Province in 1928; in his own words, he spent his childhood drawing on the streets. In 1952, he arrived in Paris and met CoBrA avant-garde painters Asger Jorn and Pierre Alechinsky. In 1958, he relocated to New York, where he connected with Pop Art and Abstraction Expressionist artists such as Andy Warhol and Robert Rauschenberg. When he published his poetry collection in 1964, the aforementioned art masters of the 1960s from Europe and the USA created original lithographs for his poetry. It culminated in the publication of 1¢ Life, which attested to his popularity in the European and American artistic circles. In 1970, Walasse Ting received a painting fellowship from the Guggenheim Museum, while the artist had claimed his place in the history of art. His work is in the collections of more than 40 leading art museums across four continents, including Museum of Modern Art in New York, Tate, Pompidou Centre in Paris, Taipei Fine Arts Museum in Taiwan, and the National Gallery of Australia.
Leon Arkus in Fresh Air School, Sam Francis, Joan Mitchell, and Walasse Ting, exh. cat. (Carnagie Museum of Art, Pittsburg, PA, USA, 1972).
The 1960s saw the bourgeoning of various art movements across Europe and the USA. Walasse Ting (Ding Xiongquan) internalised the strengths of different art trends and distilled them in his works. Painted in 1967, Beautiful Day stands out as a work of special significance for the artist, and it has been in the private collection of the current owner for the past 47 years. In the painting, the viewer can discern traces of Pop Art in the use of colours, and echoes of Abstract Expressionism in its stylistic expression. Walasse Ting was meticulous in his envisaging the image and bold with his brushstrokes, while the painting hints at influences of different art movements as well as a mature and distinctly personal style. Walasse Ting’s large-sized canvases from this period are rarely available in the market; among them, there are remarkably few compositions featuring splashes of paint across the entire canvas. It reflects the artist’s exceptional focus on the work, and his immersion in the creative process.
The space on the canvas is filled with azure, lemon, moss green and dark tangerine. The four main colours are equally prominent on the canvas; they seem to embody a perfect spontaneity, and yet they reveal a sense of order in the interaction between colours. Besides the four main colours, there are variations of the main colours amidst the layered splashes—drips of burgundy, azure, light orange, pink, and dark purple run free on the canvas. From the choice of colours and the brushstrokes alone, we can feel the excitement that surged within the artist during the creative process—a sense of joy and passion that almost flows out of the canvas, on a quest to bring us an exhilarating day.
Walasse Ting was born in Wuxi, Jiangsu Province in 1928; in his own words, he spent his childhood drawing on the streets. In 1952, he arrived in Paris and met CoBrA avant-garde painters Asger Jorn and Pierre Alechinsky. In 1958, he relocated to New York, where he connected with Pop Art and Abstraction Expressionist artists such as Andy Warhol and Robert Rauschenberg. When he published his poetry collection in 1964, the aforementioned art masters of the 1960s from Europe and the USA created original lithographs for his poetry. It culminated in the publication of 1¢ Life, which attested to his popularity in the European and American artistic circles. In 1970, Walasse Ting received a painting fellowship from the Guggenheim Museum, while the artist had claimed his place in the history of art. His work is in the collections of more than 40 leading art museums across four continents, including Museum of Modern Art in New York, Tate, Pompidou Centre in Paris, Taipei Fine Arts Museum in Taiwan, and the National Gallery of Australia.