Introduction, Page 3
Because vocabulary including sumi-e (ink painting) and guohua (Chinese painting) have rich nationalist associations with the countries of Japan and China, respectively, this project instead intentionally uses the neutral English language terminology of “ink painting.” By doing so, we attempt to build a transnational dialog that reflects transcultural exchanges and expressions in a multiethnic American context. However, while we do not want to foreground any one of these national traditions to the exclusion of others, it is also important to study and reference the specificity of these great individual traditions from Asia. Only in that way might we develop a more global sophistication that does not chauvinistically privilege our ignorance and reduce multifaceted complexity to meaningless generalizations. A polycentric approach is important as many of the artists whose work is explored here relied on the iconographic and philosophical foundations of Asian ink painting even as they expanded into new stylistic territory inspired by their new geographies.
It is also important to note at the outset that by the early twentieth century there was not only widespread awareness and training in oil painting in most Asian countries but broad interest in Asian art in the West, so any discussion of an East/West cultural polarity needs to be carefully dissected to expose its nuance. In fact, such wide-ranging international exchange between the high cultures of Europe and Asia can be traced to the Renaissance.1 Japan incorporated the Western art education of perspective and modeling as early as the 1870s. Several influential teachers in China, including Xu Beihong (1895–1953) and Lin Fengmian (1900–1991) brought their direct experience of School of Paris color and spontaneity to their classrooms by the 1920s. Perhaps because of this influx of new attitudes and approaches, early-twentieth-century art in Asia is incredibly dynamic. The lush Meiji- and Taisho-period painting in Japan and the individual achievement of artists like Taikan Yokoyama (1868–1958), who spent time in Boston at the turn of the twentieth century and studied at Boston Museum of Fine Arts curator Okakura Tenshin’s (1862– 1913) Tokyo school, are highly appealing. Powerfully inventive works by artists like Qi Bai- shi (1864–1957) and Pan Tianshou (1897–1971) in China effectively reawakened the giant ink-painting legacy that had become staid and predictable by the late Qing Dynasty. Pan Tianshou’s brilliant, inventive, and varied late-oeuvre brushwork, created in the 1950s and 1960s, stands as the starkest reminder that great ink painters continued to work in China after the mid-century.2 But horrifically, it is important to remember that Pan was specifically targeted principally because of his brilliant aesthetics; his intellectual and physical persecution led to his early death during the Cultural Revolution. At the same time, we will see that the initial blossoming of ink expressions on American soil have continued to flower.
It is also important to note at the outset that by the early twentieth century there was not only widespread awareness and training in oil painting in most Asian countries but broad interest in Asian art in the West, so any discussion of an East/West cultural polarity needs to be carefully dissected to expose its nuance. In fact, such wide-ranging international exchange between the high cultures of Europe and Asia can be traced to the Renaissance.1 Japan incorporated the Western art education of perspective and modeling as early as the 1870s. Several influential teachers in China, including Xu Beihong (1895–1953) and Lin Fengmian (1900–1991) brought their direct experience of School of Paris color and spontaneity to their classrooms by the 1920s. Perhaps because of this influx of new attitudes and approaches, early-twentieth-century art in Asia is incredibly dynamic. The lush Meiji- and Taisho-period painting in Japan and the individual achievement of artists like Taikan Yokoyama (1868–1958), who spent time in Boston at the turn of the twentieth century and studied at Boston Museum of Fine Arts curator Okakura Tenshin’s (1862– 1913) Tokyo school, are highly appealing. Powerfully inventive works by artists like Qi Bai- shi (1864–1957) and Pan Tianshou (1897–1971) in China effectively reawakened the giant ink-painting legacy that had become staid and predictable by the late Qing Dynasty. Pan Tianshou’s brilliant, inventive, and varied late-oeuvre brushwork, created in the 1950s and 1960s, stands as the starkest reminder that great ink painters continued to work in China after the mid-century.2 But horrifically, it is important to remember that Pan was specifically targeted principally because of his brilliant aesthetics; his intellectual and physical persecution led to his early death during the Cultural Revolution. At the same time, we will see that the initial blossoming of ink expressions on American soil have continued to flower.
| Previous page on path | Introduction Path, page 3 of 10 | Next page on path |
Discussion of "Introduction, Page 3"
Add your voice to this discussion.
Checking your signed in status ...