Thursday, March 26, 2015

Zhang Hongtu's Water Painting

RE-MAKE OF MA YUAN'S WATER ALBUM (780 YEARS LATER)

by Luchia Meihua Lee 
Zhang Hongtu, MY-H, Oil on Canvas
50" x 72" 2008
Ma Yuan, Walter Album 11"x16.5"
In 2008 Zhang Hongtu created 12 oil paintings entitled RE-MAKE OF MA YUAN'S WATER ALBUM (780 YEARS LATER). Each piece is 50 x 72 inches. The original series is referred to as the Water Album by Ma Yuan, an album of 12 paintings depicting water in various situations. The original series has been esteemed as the most vivid, best presentation of water in traditional Chinese painting. Ma Yuan (1160-1225) was one of the best-known literati and painters of the South Song Dynasty. The water album was formerly in the collection of Taipei National Palace Museum. Now the album is in the collection of the Palace Museum in Beijing. The size for each painting in the original series is 11x16.5 inches. The most difficult challenge for brush ink painters is to draw water, because it is formless, and changeable. In this, it is like human minds.
Zhang Hongtu’s art work, while quoting the past, is all related to the present, as in these reflections on the environment. Everything is cross cultural, and hybrid. From his early work in NY, his art reflects his attitude toward art, society, and himself. And Zhang is true to himself, while also changing his point of view frequently. In his statement “if Ma Yuan still lived today and saw the polluted water today, would he still paint his twelve paintings of water?” Zhang continues both to reference and to challenge western and eastern painting.

Zhang kept Ma Yuan’s different wave patterns on his canvas, but floating on the water is trash or foam from chemical pollution, or the clear water has become soy sauce colored. Ma Yuan’s water paintings remain, but they are updated to reflect current conditions.
The uncompromising black and white nature of traditional Chinese brush ink painting in general, and in Ma Yuan’s work in particular, is shockingly subverted by Zhang’s addition of color. In different paintings, he tints the water or the sky green or purple or red to emphasize its contamination. In another painting in the series, Zhang shows cracked, sunbaked earth in spaces that Ma Yuan filled with abundantly flowing water.

Zhang uses “re-make” both in this series and in his ongoing Shan Shui series, which is a virtuosic combination of Impressionist master pieces with Chinese Landscape painting. He uses “re-make” – meaning re-produce or re-present – when he is hybridizing a new and an old style in a way that might cause discomfort at first sight. This RE-MAKE OF MA YUAN'S WATER ALBUM is related to his ongoing Shan Shui [1] Today series. It reflects on the serious pollution problems of China, and by extension in the rest or world, and in a beautiful way focuses on this urgent phenomenon.
Chinese brush ink painting is a fusion of mind and matter; it is said that for the painter the images and feeling should melt together, and this be is should be evident in his work. Relatively speaking, early western art uses more realistic images to express profound feelings. Direct representations of reality are not valued as highly in Chinese brush ink painting, which is much more abstract and emphasizes emotional and philosophic content over details such as perspective.

Zhang Hongtu MY-A
Ma Yuan, Water Album
There is a calligraphy by Hongtu in the upper left section of the first painting in his remake of Ma Yuan’s Water Album. This first of Ma Yuan’s paintings is entitled “Waves Pushing the Golden Wind” and Zhang’s commentary reads “Part of the painting has been lost. Ma Yuan was born 800 years ago. He left these 12 water paintings. That the paintings are still with us is our fortune, and deeply appreciated; but the water depicted in the painting, is it still there?”
Although the original Ma Yuan Water paintings have individual titles,[2] Zhang uses captions of the form RE-MAKE OF MA YUAN'S WATER ALBUM- A. C. D. F. and so on.

The Original Ma Yuan[3] Water Album conjures up splendidly vivid and exciting demonstrations of different types of water. Ma Yuan inherited and further developed the Northern style landscape, and brought new ideas to painting. His brush is full of emotion and at the same time disciplined and careful; although he did not use colors, he indicated various tints by employing shades of grey. Large strokes depict cracked hard rocks. A few economical strokes suffice for trees, whose structure is more twisted and runs in a crosswise direction; the viewpoint is natural and vivid. His water paintings offer a detailed observation of nature and paradoxically a superb realistic ability.

By making visible the Chinese environmental crisis in a pictorial way that is both classical and modern, Zhang Hongtu opens a critical public space in which environmental issues can be scrutinized and changed. His images have inspired people to rethink the meaning behind the fake and fatal beauty of landscape, what has passed before and what has been left to us, and what to pass on to the next era. As a result, we might pay more attention and take action on several fronts. To investigate these paintings, we must adapt not only the formal perspective on the painting, but also consider the spirit of the post-communist, free market economic system to discuss the Eco art expression. Also, through the historical aesthetic spirit of beauty, and cultural connotation, we should penetrate the ugliness and melancholy with the compassion of the artist mind’s to ponder our mother earth and humankind.
In traditional Chinese philosophy, harmony with nature, and therefore with heaven, gives humans the possibility to unit with oneness. That is the Taoist sense of nature.[4]  This philosophy permeated lyrics in seals and poems that were included in paintings and represented the mind of the painter. Unlike western landscape, in Chinese Shan Shui the figure either is wrapped inside a hut, walking along the mountain trail or rowing a boat in the river – melting into the landscape, like a puzzle game. Humans should be seen as a small and insignificant part of nature, and not in a precise proportion or the perspective. In a way, we might name it as surrealism in its disregard of representation, while it is exact in its expression of the philosophy of harmony.

Zhang’s appropriation of the work of one of the most acclaimed exponents of Chinese landscape painting thus takes on an additional layer of irony.


[1] Shan Shui is literally translated as “mountain and water” although more idiomatically it might be rendered as landscape. Chinese Landscape painting  did not reflect directly the top of steep peaks, nor the feet of cliffs, nor towering mountains , nor paths, nor people sitting alone – although it contain all these elements
[2] The 12 paintings in this album were titled 1.  Wave Pushing the Golden Wind, 2. Dongting Lake breeze,  3. Waves Overlapping Waves, 4.Cold Pond, 5.Yangtze hills, 6.Yellow River Reflux, 7.Autumn water echo wave, 8. Cloud generate sea, 9. Splendid lake water, 10. Stretch clouds, curb  waves, 11. Dawn breaking over the hill,, 12. Small waves floating. (波蹙金風、洞庭風細、層波疊浪、寒塘清淺、長江萬頃、黃河逆流、秋水回波、雲生滄海、湖光瀲灧、雲舒浪卷、曉日烘山、細浪漂漂)
[3] He is one of the most important painters of the Southern Song Dynasty; his paintings won royal favor, and many bore inscriptions by Emperor Ningzong or his empress; Ma Yuan, Li Tang, Liu Song, and Xia Gui collectively were referred to as the "four Song masters," while Ma Yuan and Xia Gui gave their names to the Ma-Xia school of painting.
[4] As it is expressed in Tao Te Ching, Man follows earth, earth follows heaven, heaven follows Tao, and Tao follows Nature.

Below is the reference images of these 12 paintings


RE-MAKE OF MA YUAN'S WATER ALBUM (780 YEARS LATER)
Oil on canvas
50 x 72 inches, 2008
(Left) Zhang Hongtu Re-make of Ma Yuan Water Album
MY-
(Right) Original Ma Yuan Water Album  
 MY-H 
  
MY-F 
  MY-O


MY-Q
MY-R





 











   



   

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