by Luchia Meihua Lee
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| Zhang Hongtu, MY-H, Oil on Canvas 50" x 72" 2008 |
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| 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 |
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| 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
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-D
MY-F
MY-O
MY-P
MY-Q
MY-R
R 
MY-S
MY-X
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