From Native and Foreign Lands |
| ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Kao Chien-Hui
Realism and abstraction when carried to the extreme can leave us with too little or too much freedom of imagination. However, the works of Szeto Keung, a Chinese painter from New York show that he has mastered the difficult combination of extreme realism and extreme abstraction. Judged from the perspective of Western painting, his works are composed in the refined realist style of classical "Trompe l'oreil" and reflect the influence of other schools, such as Photo Realism, Abstract Expressionism, and Minimalism. Read from the aesthetic perspective of Eastern art, his paintings remind us of classical Chinese poetry by their glorified settings, colorful details, and an overall sentimental mood often described in poetic terms as "fallen flowers and settling smoke."
Szeto Keung was trained after the Lingnan School of Canton but several of his works of 1978 already betray his rebellious intention toward the school of painting, whicn in itself comes from a tradition of reform and innovation in modern China. In these works of the late 70s Szeto randomly places flowers and birds drwan in the style of the Lingnan School on notepaper; he then cuts up these drawings and pastes them as graffiti to signify his departure from the convention. After Szeto broke away from the confines of tradition, the influence of Chinese water and ink painting manifests in his works not so much in terms of a conscious imitation in color and shape, but more as an attempt to convey the overall aesthetic mood of classical Chinese literature. His painting entitled "Illusion" of 1978 marks this significant transition into a later and more mature phase of his artistic career. This painting represents strongly his pursuit for emptiness, which distinguishes it from the loneliness and melancholy in his later works, which include exquisite objects. In terms of technique, Szeto's paintings are completely Westernized after 1980s. He not only excessively employs the method of classical realism hut also integrates other modern styles such as pasting, misplacement, and abstract expressionism. However, beneath the surface of Western conventions, Szeto endorses the romantic longing for a remote past and ancient history. Technically, his works have not undergone much significant change since 1980s, however, he has gradually developed a style that enables him to capture the fluctuating emotions and the ever-changing aura unique to Chinese literature, as defined and described by Wang Guowei in his work Rentian Cihua.
Szeto's paintings are thought-provoking mainly because he integrates abstraction with realism and through creating misconception and nciuding misplaced oblects. elicits the possibility of cross-cuitura understanding and initiates a dialogue between time and space. Half deliberately and half subconsciously, his works are metaphoric in the same way as an incomplete chapter from a Western "New Novel" or an isolated frame in a filmic sequence overladen with meaningful images. They evoke our imagination and self-reflection just as when we are faced with an obscure short prose and try to find a way out of the labyrinth of its rich inter-textuality. Szeto's favorite literary form is Chinese lyrics-ci. Other painters might have tried to represent the wisdom of Eastern philosophy in Western oil paintings, but so far Szeto is the only one who successfully conveys both the emotional impact and the overall mood of classical Chinese literature by combining abstraction and realism. Since this approach is Szeto's invetion, it naturally provides a point of entry into decoding his works.
Applying Wang Guowei's analysis in Renjian Cihua of the four masters of Chinese lyrics, Wen, Wei, Feng and Li, to Szeto's paintings, I have by accident discovered an approach to read his works that is much similar to the ways in which poetry is appreciated. I have come to blieve that in the symphonic interplay of contemporary paintings and classical Chinese literature, Szeto has struck a strong and harmonious chord.
Szeto's typical method of composing a painting is to use an extremely detailed surrealist picture as the eye and place it within another imaginary and abstract-expressionist painting. This method of placing lonely objects singularly against a vast background creates the effect of displacement and dream and evokes aesthetic sentiments such as sentimentality and decadence. In other words, Szeto's aesthetics conveys to us the same kind of nostalgia and disorientation as when we try to recall a brief moment in the past and by mistake relate it to an entirely new and alen context. His structure of feeling is comparable to that in Wen Tingyun's poems.
Wen Tingyun tends to depict feelings, people, and objects in an abstract manner without identifying their unique essence and individual characteristics. Literary critic Wang Guowei has used a phrase from Wen's poem "On the painted screen the golden partridges" to describe Wen's style. By this assertion Wang refers to the poet's calm and detached observation, exquisite style of representation and appropriate abstraction of objects. Certain images in Wen's poems are constructed in an ornate and labored style because of his emphasis on the absolute beauty of objects. Although the poet has received both criticism and praise from various critics for this style, Yeh Chia-ying makes a useful suggestion in her book Jialing Tanci that we should adopt an objective and aesthetic perspective to Wen's poems and instead of focusing on individual images and their meanings, try to appreciate them holistically by activating our power of imagination. Another stylistic characteristic of Wen Feiqing's poems is that he likes to list the beautiful names of exquisite objects in a detached manner. I will now cite some examples of names, objects, and descriptions of their colors from Wen's poems in order to ilustrate the connection between Wen's poetry and Steto's paintings.
One of Wen's fourteen lyrics composed in the tune of Pu Sa Man reads as follows:
Within a crystal curtain, a pillow of crystal,
Warm incense stirs dreams in mandarin duck brocade.
Along the river, willows like mist
Geese fly beneath a sky of waning moon
Her lotus threads are a light autumn tint.
cloth-doll ribbons cut unevenly
Side curls concealed by fragrant red
Jade hairpins--a breeze in her hair
The poem lists exquisite objects such as "crystal curtain," "a pillow of crystal," "warm incense," "mandarin duck brocade," all of which are magnificently described by Wen's refined language. At the same time, lines such as "along the river willows like mist / Geese fly beneath a sky of waning moon" take us out of reality to another space of dreams. The rest of the poem starting from "Her lotus threads are a light autumn tint" can be read as further and more detailed descriptions of the shapes and colors of this other world of dreams.
One of the six lyrics by Wen Tingyun composed in the tune of "Geng Lou Zi" uses the same method to juxtapose dream with reality:
Incense in the jade burner,
Tears on the red candle:
They stubbornly shine on autumn grief in painted halls,
Emerald mascara light.
Side-curl clouds thin
The night is long, coverlet and pillow cold.
"Incense in the jade burner" and "tears on the red candle" are also descriptions of exquisite objects. They functioh as a means of conveying emotions through concrete settings
Another lyric from the same group has many famous lines:
The willow threads are long,
The Spring rain is fine.
Beyond the flowers the water clock sounds afar.
The migrant birds are startled,
The crows on the city wall roused.
Go the painted screen the golden partridges.The scented mist is thin,
Through the curtains it seeps,
Melancholy amongst the ponds and pavilions.
The red candles turned away,
The embroidered curtains lowered.
My dreams are long, of this you are unaware
In this poem, the intersecting descriptions of things in motion, such as in "The migrant birds are startled" and "The crows on the city wall roused." and static objects, such as "the golden partridges" create both the temporal and spatial dimensions of the dreamland. On the other hand, "red candles" and "embroidered curtains" emphasize the dazzling beauty of actual objects in reality.
Rather than draw directly from the list of exquisite objects in Wen's poems, Szeto Keung prefers to choose dilapidated oblects as subject of his paintings. Thus, the overall mood of his works is not as magnificent and glorified as Wen's poems. However, in terms of structure, Steto's refined and detailed descriptions of locales, scenery, objects and images are comparable to the style of Wen Tingyun. Both artists create an impact of such intensity that make their objects eye-catching and alive. Both use juxtaposition and displacement to create another world of dream that mirrors reality. However, written language can easily appeal to our senses of seeing, touching, and hearing through vivid descriptions of the shapes, colors, and sounds of objects. A narrative that is primarily made up of visual images, on the other hand, have certain disadvantages in this respect. Several lines that denote motion in Wen's poems, such as "The migrant birds are startled, / The crows on the city wail roused," convey both the sound and the gesture of the objects. By contrast, Szeto's pictures are mostly static and have to rely on the reader's concentration and imagination in order to create another space and time.
The noun phrases in Feiqing's poems, such as "painted screens," "warm incense," "jade incense-burner," and "red candles," have a similar function as Szeto's exquisitely depicted objects placed against their abstract backgrounds. Both artists create dream through displacement, yet Tingyun is also distinguished from Szeto by the unconventional and uninhibited spirit that is uniquely his own.
The writer of Baiyuzai Cihua makes the following comment on Wei Zhuang and his poems; Where he seems to be forthcoming, he is in fact subtle and discursive; where he seems to be communicative, he is in fact withdrawn and depressed. One of the biggest differences between Wei Duanji's poems and Feiqing's lies in that Wei is good at conveying subjective emotions in simple sentences and mingling naivety with sentimentality. Wei Zhuang's well-known "Five Lyrics Composed in the Tune of Pu Sa Man" can be used to illustrate Szeto's feelings of displacement and nostalgia after living overseas for decades.
Because of Huangchao Riot, Wei Zhuang was forced to move constantly between Chang An and Luo Yang before he finally travelled to the South of Yangtze River and found a temporary residence there. He did not rOturh to Chang An until he was fifty-eight years old, and after taking the Imperial Exam, he was given an official position in Sichuan, where he spent his old age until death. He never got a chance to visit Chang An again, and in the five "Pu Sa Man" lyrics, he recalls the fond memories of his past in Luo Yang and Chang An and laments his shiftless life and constant migrations. For Szeto Keung and his contemporary artists, New York of the 1970s evoked similar feelings as the Southern Land did to Wei Zhuang. Thus, a few lines from Wei Zhuang's poems adequately describe Szeto's sentiments as well, such as "Till he grows old, from Southern Land he won't part. To leave this land for home would break his heart," "And this time, now I've seen such beauty in flower, I swear I won't go back until I'm old," "Resting his horse on top of a hump-backed bridge, [ I face ] the Southern Land that everyone says fair." For Szeto Keung, Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, are but his conceptual homeland. His real "home" has to be found in the "Southern Land that everyone says fair," his imaginary world of eternal longing for a homeland and his historical contemplations.
Several works in the late 1980s, entitled "Green Butterfly," "Heart," "Black Feather," and "Lock," convey the calm and peace of a non-military zone. In fact, at the time, Taiwan, Hong Kong and mainland China were all undergoing their respective significant changes of lifting censorship, reclaiming by the mainland, and economic reforms. Most overseas artists who wore eager to participate in these political changes expressed much enthusiasm through their works. Szeto, on the other hand, remained unaffected by all these political upheavals. Cherishing his own wanderer's sentiments with a religious concentration, he represented them in his paintings in l990s in the form of wild roses, withered flowers and dry leaves, which are enshrined ano carefully placed in special spaces on the canvas. The beauty and sadness of these flowers convoy a narcissistic love that is unable to locate its object. It seems as though Szeto's newest passion is to communicate with ancient spirits and wander through the annals of the remote past.
Szeto openly conveys his historical contemplations in "A Touch of Southern Tang" of 1994. His choice of "Southern Tang" further betrays a even closer correspondence between his paintings and Rentian Cihua. The setting of Wen's poems seldom go beyond the enclosed spaces of chambers, halls, and gardens and the sentiments expressed by Wei's poems tend to fall into one of the two categories the laments of spring and the griefs about the separation of friends. In spite of these limitations, however, these two poets create an overall mood that is consistent with the lives of the genteel class of late Tang and Five Dynasties. Szeto's works accurately capture this mood even though it was inconsistent with his real life. Since early 1980s, Szeto has been recognized by major galleries in New York. His works have been shown in Taiwan and Hong Kong, and he has often been invited to speak at cultural gatherings and academic conferences. On the surface, for him, the "foreign land" with all its connotations of loneliness and desolation seem to have become a dream land that exists only in imagination with no correspondence to reality. Yet searching through the precarious artists' community in Soho and another equally precarious one in Hong Kong, Szeto is unable to find his true belonging. These lateral searches on a spatial dimension are consequently transformed into historical contemplations in his paintings. Coming from someone who lives in the fin-de-siecle of 1990s and is faced with the dramatic changes in his native lands, the aesthetics of his paintings can not be truly objectified. Their significance can only be roughly deciphered by comparing his works to the poems of Feng Zhengzhong, which according to Wang Guowei express an anxiety about real life in a way that transcends reality itself.
Feng Zhengzhong tends to use colorful language and sharp images to depict the feeling of sorrow that is both persistent and warm. Critic Yeh Chia-ying argues that Feng's poems carry a "passion under burden," and this phrase can be used to describe Szeto's paintings as well. For Szeto, both passion and burden come from his philosophical contemplations of time. Although he likes to depict withered, lonely, and shriveled objects in his paintings, underneath the surface of stillness lies the artist's passion to capture life and eternity in objects dead and gone. It seems as though the artist has given another life to these objects in his artificial world of imagery, and he creates this miracle by freezing the objects in their gestures of final moments so that they can never be altered by the flow of time. Once these objects are preserved in the eternity of art, they provide a mirror for reality, and their immutability is juxtaposed against the changes in our life.
It is worth mentioning that Feng Zhengzhong was intimately involved with the imperial court of Southern Tang, so that in a way, the tragic ending of Southeng Tang was also Zhengzhong's personal tragedy. The first line of Feng Zhengzhong's lyric composed in the tune of "Due Ta Zhi" says: "Who says that I dismissed my idle thoughts long time ago?" Meant to initiate a poem-ful of "Idle thoughts" and "melancholic sentiments" that cannot be easily "dismissed," this line is also an adequate description of Szeto Keung. Szeto's melancholy as conveyed by his work "A Touch of Southern Tang" is not just directed to the flow of historical time. By associating his feelings with the specific historical period of Southern Tang, Szeto apparently suggests that both his passion and burden arise out of an inability to face the changes in the homeland. Szeto not only imaginatively depicts the landscape of his homeland from far away, but also polarizes its constant political changes against the eternity of imagination and art.
Szeto's paintings combine the optimism of the "talented scholar from Luo Yang," the sense of nostalgia and melancholy of Feng Yangsi. and the refined language and structure of juxtaposition of Wei Feiqing. Based on the stylistics of these three poets, Szeto also portrays eternity and change from his own philosophical and historical perspective.
When I encountered Szeto's works for the first time, I was so touched by the juxtaposition of reality and dream, abstraction and realism that I could not find an adequate language to describe his style the rich suggestiveness of his paintings had an impact on me that was just like reading T S Eliot's "Waste Land," or William Faulkner's "Sound and Fury", or even Stephan Zweig "Letters from an Unknown Woman". When I turned to the titles, such as "Blue bird," "Black," "Feather," "Green Butterfly," "Red, Yellow, Blue," "Current," I found that they, too, were like isolated chapters of a book or individual phrases taken out of a poem. While they don't fully explain the obscure meanings of the paintings, they do provide us with materials to work our imagination. After searching through classical literature and focusing on its linguistic characteristics, figures of speech, and visual images, I realized that the sentiments conveyed by many Chinese poems, such as the laments of spring and fall, have parallel existence in the works of Szeto, who cannot totally abandon his cultural belonging even though he has been away from the homeland Szeto integrates these sentiments with his philosophical contemplations about self in time and Space, and his paintings are a way for him to keep track of each step he takes in this journey through Chinese poetry and his own philosophical thinking.
What might seem to be a disorienting mixture of reality and iliusion and its effects of misconception that we find in Szeto's paintings are far from just technical experiments. If so, Szeto would be no different from Western artists who employ realist methodology of "Trompe L'eoil" and attempt to create symbolism in a scientific manner. For example, in the still lives entitled "White smoke, Black Smoke," contemporary American art Steve Howley uses exactly the technique of Trompe L'oreil to juxtapose profanity with divinity in order to convoy a symbolic message. In another example, feathers, photographs and words in the backgrouhd of a self portrait of William Havneft are also drawn in the style of Trompe L'oreil. This style replaces the quick and easy collage of actual objects as in pop art. In fact, these experts who learned from and continued to develop the techniques of Surrealism have done more than just imitating the Surrealist effect of visual misconception on the audience; they try to convey the same messages as surrealism and other artistic trends that emerged alongside surrealism, such as pop and conceptual art. While pop incorporates real objects directly into art, these artists feel compelled to represent objects in a more conventional visual narrative. However in spite of the difference. the ways in which those artists use conventional visual narrrative as a means of conveying messages determines that they are not that different from pop in terms of objective, even though they seem to be anti-pop on the surface. Trompe L'oreil and pop differ only in terms of what counts as message. If we focus coy oh the technical variations of Szeto's paintings then we don't get far beyond visual shock and suspense. What distinguishes Szeto from other surrealist artists is that he is able to come to terms with a tradition that feeds the consistent flow of messages and to transform these messages into his style.
Coming from the perspective of an ethnic artist who contributes to the melting pot of global art, Szeto's paintings have the exotic flavor of a foreign land. However, this exotic flavor is grounded in subjective feelings. Therefore for those galleries in New York that might not have the expertise to decode Chinese poetry, Szeto's paintings are like a dazzling crystal tower which, even broken down to pieces can still allow them to appreciate the glaring beauty of its fragments For those of us who are immersed in Chinese culture, his paintings provide many cultural messages in bits and pieces which force us to construct our own coherent narratives by way of imagination and free association. Whenever I read the works of Szeto Keung produced in 1990s, I feel as though I were re-reading the lyrics of the four masters in Late Tang and Five Dynasties. His images create a multimedia stage of dreams, where the drama of cross-cultural negotiations and cultural rootedness unfolds in another setting and another time. Szeto never attempts to make any overt suggestions from a subjective perspective, however, reading his paintings is just like taking a sip of rice liquor or bitter tea or flipping to the pages of an ancient text where in between, memories are preserved in the form of a withered flower. His paintings stimulate but "idle thoughts," yet they are irresistible I just wish that the enchantment he has toward the poetry of Late Tang and Five Dynasties is a long-lasting fascination, not just a seasonal affliction that disappears with time.
(translated by Shen Shuang)