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In-Depth Information
On a technical level, the success of landscapes depended on the artists'
skill in capturing light and atmosphere. Blank, open spaces devoid of colour
create light-filled voids, contrasting with the darkness of mountain folds, filling
the painting with
qi
and vaporous vitality. Specific emotions are not aroused
but instead nebulous sensations permeate. Painting and classical poetry often
went hand in hand, best exemplified by the work of Tang-dynasty poet/artist
Wang Wei (699-759).
Modern Art
After 1949, classical Chinese techniques were abandoned and foreign artistic
techniques imported wholesale. Washes on silk were replaced with oil on can-
vas and China's traditional obsession with the mysterious and ineffable made
way for concrete attention to detail and realism.
By 1970, Chinese artists had aspired to master the skills of socialist-realism,
a vibrant communist-endorsed style that drew from European neoclassical art,
the lifelike canvases of Jacques Louis David and the output of Soviet Union
painters. The entire trajectory of Chinese painting - which had evolved in gla-
cial increments over the centuries - had been redirected virtually overnight.
It was only with the death of Mao Zedong in September 1976 that the shad-
ow of the Cultural Revolution - when Chinese aesthetics were conditioned by
the threat of violence - began its retreat and the individual artistic tempera-
ment was allowed to re-emerge. Painters such as Luo Zhongli employed the
realist techniques gleaned from China's art academies to depict the harsh real-
ities etched in the faces of contemporary peasants. A voracious appetite for
Western art introduced fresh concepts and ideas while the ambiguity of exact
meaning in the fine arts offered a degree of protection from state censors.
Much post-1989 Chinese art dwelled obsessively on contemporary socio-
economic realities, with consumer culture, materialism, urbanisation and social
change a repetitive focus. Meanwhile, many artists who left China in the 1990s
have returned, setting up private studios and galleries.
Cynical realists Fang Lijun and Yue Minjun fashioned grotesque portraits
that conveyed hollowness and mock joviality, tinged with despair. Born just be-
fore the Cultural Revolution in 1964 and heavily influenced by German expres-
sionism, Zeng Fanzhi explored the notions of alienation and isolation - themes
