Introduction, Page 8
All three of these artists had pursued an art education incorporating Western techniques as well as ink painting while still in China. Some aspects of their work reflect their efforts to create hybrid synthesis, sometimes including the depiction of specific American locations in their paintings. For Wang, this sometimes took the form of Hudson River scenes traversed by modern bridges; Chang occasionally painted scenes associated with Yosemite or the coast of Carmel-by-the-Sea. Nonetheless, these artists were principally recognized as ambassadors of Chinese art in the West, and as a result, their work functioned as a signifier of classical China, and their stylistic innovations were appreciated as more subtle than spectacular.
Within a decade, another dynamic generation of artists had arrived from Asia, also displaced by war and revolutions, and drawn to the United States by the relative peace and range of opportunities available during the same period. This cohort included Chinese artists such as Chen Chi-kwan, Tseng Yuho, and C. C. Wang, as well as the Japanese artist Saburo Hasegawa. Hasegawa had distinguished credentials as an early modernist: he had worked in Paris creating abstract oil paintings in the 1930s and was later a close friend of Isamu Noguchi. But after the war, he eschewed oil painting and returned to working in ink, albeit with an abstract orientation. Because of his return to ink media, Hasegawa’s work was criticized as conservative in Japan, but he continued to be very influential in the United States, both in New York and California. He was a friend to and influence on major American artists and writers including painter Franz Kline, poet Gary Snyder, and philosopher Alan Watts. Hasegawa was a proponent of tea ceremony and associated with the circle of Soto Zen Buddhist teachers like Hodo Tobase, who practiced and sometimes taught calligraphy in classes that were popular with diverse artists. Hasegawa created many innovative abstract works using unusual stamps and rubbings, and he became a prominent teacher in the mid-1950s at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland and at the American Academy of Asian Studies in San Francisco. He died young, at the age of fifty in 1957.
Within a decade, another dynamic generation of artists had arrived from Asia, also displaced by war and revolutions, and drawn to the United States by the relative peace and range of opportunities available during the same period. This cohort included Chinese artists such as Chen Chi-kwan, Tseng Yuho, and C. C. Wang, as well as the Japanese artist Saburo Hasegawa. Hasegawa had distinguished credentials as an early modernist: he had worked in Paris creating abstract oil paintings in the 1930s and was later a close friend of Isamu Noguchi. But after the war, he eschewed oil painting and returned to working in ink, albeit with an abstract orientation. Because of his return to ink media, Hasegawa’s work was criticized as conservative in Japan, but he continued to be very influential in the United States, both in New York and California. He was a friend to and influence on major American artists and writers including painter Franz Kline, poet Gary Snyder, and philosopher Alan Watts. Hasegawa was a proponent of tea ceremony and associated with the circle of Soto Zen Buddhist teachers like Hodo Tobase, who practiced and sometimes taught calligraphy in classes that were popular with diverse artists. Hasegawa created many innovative abstract works using unusual stamps and rubbings, and he became a prominent teacher in the mid-1950s at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland and at the American Academy of Asian Studies in San Francisco. He died young, at the age of fifty in 1957.
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