Arts - Hong Kong - page 607

paint from art magazines and a correspondence course. Stylistically, Chan was a loner with
no apparent allegiance to any painting tradition. He was also a genius who, particularly in
his post-60s works, transformed Hong Kong into a fantastical realm of dreams and hallucin-
ations. His 1976 painting Ping Chau is a bizarre interpretation of the somnolent outlying is-
land which is at once puzzling and endearing.
Avant-Garde
The 1980s and '90s saw the coming of age of artists born after WWII, many of whom had
received their training abroad. Less burdened by the need to reconcile East and West, they
devoted their efforts to defining avant-garde art, often through Western mediums. They were
also politically engaged. Wong Yan-kwai, a painter educated in France, was arguably the
most influential artist of that period and is still one of the most accomplished today. His
powerful paintings in vibrant colours are free of any social or historical context. Wong's
mural graces Club 71 in Central.
London-trained Antonio Mak (1951-94) is Hong Kong's most famous contemporary
sculptor and is known for his figurative pieces in cast bronze. He focused on the human fig-
ure as well as on animals important in Chinese legend and mythology (eg horses and tigers),
and was greatly influenced by Rodin.
Salisbury Gardens, leading to the entrance of the Hong Kong Museum of Art in Tsim Sha
Tsui, is lined with modern sculptures by contemporary Hong Kong sculptors. Dotted among
the greenery of Kowloon Park is Sculpture Walk, with 30 marble, bronze and other weather-
resistant works by both local and overseas artists, including a bronze by Mak called Torso
and one by Britain's late Sir Eduardo Paolozzi (1924-2005) called Concept of Newton .
Antonio Mak's work employs much visual 'punning'. In his Bible from Happy Valley(1992),
a racehorse is portrayed with a winglike book made of lead across its back. The word
'book' in Cantonese has the same sound as 'to lose (at gambling)'.
Contemporary
Compared to their predecessors, Hong Kong's young artists - those born in the '70s and '80s
- take a more internalised view of the world. They are overwhelmingly unfussed with ortho-
dox Chinese culture and older generations' attempts to amalgamate East and West. Instead,
they're often looking for - or perhaps, trying to retrieve - something that is uniquely Hong
Kong. Nonetheless, their works show eloquence in a host of mediums, from Wilson Shieh's