亞洲現代與當代藝術 Modern and Contemporary Asian Art

BEYOND THE FINITE
This piece, known as Sans titre, was created by Chu Teh-chun in
1983. Witnessing the masterly brush’s color configuration is like
listening to the melody of a great piece of music. The rhythm and
cadence are intricately interwoven like a dance. The thickness of
the contours are staggered, layered and juxtaposed in the picture,
forming a harmonious and ambient atmosphere. The picture with
the warm colors is like an impassioned and gentle symphony.
Moreover, the spirit of the Chinese style brush strokes is seen in
both the large and small dots. Through this, the art manifests a
bright and ephemeral poetic spirit. Wu Guang-zhong, the peer in
Hangzhou School of Fine Arts, also commented that each one of
Chu’s paintings are like kinetic harmonies, the beauty of rhythm is
unified in harmonic colors, it’s like “To watch others dance before
a crystal, looks intense but also totally silent, as if unconstrained
strengths were all melted in one placid beauty.”
THE MAGNIFICENT GLORY OF THE GOLDEN ERA
This overview of Chu Teh-chun’s artwork is akin to appreciating
a lyrical epic. The methods of textural painting often gives the
viewers a feeling of spiritual energy. The most appropriate phrase
for describing his artworks is “vivid artistic conception”. He was
constantly transforming and refining his methods and was full
of an almost supernatural enthusiasm. Regarding the various
interpretations of his art as well as his artistic reproduction of
nature, it has been pointed out that some of his transformations
went beyond an objective rendition of the landscape but rather
had become a highly subjective and poetic expression instead.
Via the transition from the specific to the abstract, he has created
a portrayal of the intellectual realizations he had accumulated
throughout his life.
Born in a time of turmoil and cultural flows, Chu Teh-chun had
transitioned from a traditional Chinese environment to a modern
European aesthetic. Beginning in the 1980s, Chu Teh-chun began
employing oriental charm as a basis for complementing features of
Western artistic expression. The brushstrokes and contours of his
art are reminiscent of the forms found in Chinese calligraphy. Xie
Hun, an art historian from the Southern Qi Dynasty, describes in his
seminal work, “The Record of the Classification of Old Painters”,
the Six principles of Chinese painting: spirit resonance, bone
method, correspondence to the object, suitability to type, division
and planning and transmission by copying. One can easily see that
the first two principles, spirit resonance and the bone method, are
incorporated in Chu Teh-chun’s artworks.
()1365
Yuan Dynasty, Wang Meng, A Solitaire Living in Xianshan Peak, c.1365, color on silk,
149x63.5cm, Collection of Palace Museum, Beijing, China
In addition to embodying the representation of oriental culture,
Chu Teh-chun had also liberated his artistic forms from the confines
of specific matters, manifesting in a penetration of magnificent
grandeur. Beyond just representing the unique symbolism and
characteristics of music among the Chinese literati, Chu Teh-chun’s
art had another manifestation as well: a unique esoteric motif that
is repeatedly reflected in his works, namely a meditation on the
vastness and boundlessness of the universe. Through this detached
sentimental style, he conveys his esteem for the beauty of nature.
The overall picture was particularly effective at capturing and
conveying the feeling and texture of air. In Chu Teh-chun’s paintings,
he had rearranged the scenery that he witnesses. Whether it is the
lighting of a portrait or the oriental heritage which permeates the
atmosphere, he had broken the principles of conventional judgment
one step at a time. His one-of-a-kind artistic forms are an ingenious
fusion of Eastern and
Western influences.
He uses an abstract
naturalistic approach
to allow these unique
cultural sources to
blend with each
other, preserving their
positive attributes
while discarding their
superfluous elements.
It is as so though
the horizon were a
surging, radiating
and magnificent
flower that bloomed
with unprecedented
vitality.