Literati Expressionism 文人表现主义
From ArtSpeak China (ASC) Wiki
Contents |
[edit] Who
Mu Jiashen, Li Keran, C.C. Wang, Chang Dai-Chen.
[edit] When
This style, along with other Neo- and Post- Traditionalist schools, was introduced at the end of the 18th century and remained relevant until the end of the 1980s.
[edit] Where
The movement was pervasive throughout China.
[edit] What
A recent current of superbly painted work, Literati-Expressionism, was created primarily by older traditionalists, artists born shortly after the turn of the century who remained active in the 1980s. They received solid classical educations and were instructed in traditional use of the Chinese brush, but from an early age were exposed at school and in urban society to both Chinese and Western art. The natural evolution over the course of their long artistic careers from the classical tradition of literati brushwork to unique personal imagery has produced subtle landscapes with a strongly modern flavor.[1]
Mostly trained in the Shanghai-Suzhou area, these artists share a remarkable technical facility that has led some scholars to consider them the last practitioners of literati painting. The quality called loftiness in literati painting theory refers to a perfectly balanced emotional distance, an art achieved through suggestion and not domination; implication and not explication. The artist reveals himself intuitively, but this self, however eccentric or individualistic, is rarely primal, raw, or messy, but instead is the result of conscious cultivation of character and knowledge. The ability to sail effortlessly through the administration of mundane, if important, affairs, showing the world only the cool essence of one's personality, is a fundamental part of the scholar-official's cultivation and survives in the literati aesthetic. The viewer is left, then, with a responsibility to bring to the work a similar self-awareness, and to attempt an engagement with the intellect and personality behind the painting, as well as with its image.[1]
Careful examination of each landscape in the first group will make clear the originality of the artist. Their varied styles, ranging from the substantiality of Li Keran, to the orderliness of C.C. Wang, and finally to the flamboyance of Chang Dai-chien, create very different openings for conversations between viewer and artist.[1]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 http://kaladarshan.arts.ohio-state.edu/Exhibitions/5000years/intr/Transintro.html#anchor36158166
