Chang Dai-chien, China's supreme artist, leaves an immense legacy of lore and treasure to China... and the world
As Taipei citizens walked out of Taipei's National Museum of History after viewing Chang Dai-chien's greatest work, Panorama of Mt. Lushan, they asked each other: When would the great painting master add the crowning touches, his signature and his personal seal, to the marvelous piece? - Never. He died of heart trouble on April 2, 1983, before he was given the opportunity.
Chang Dai-chien was a man of legend as well as a great artist. At the age of 85, he had continued his painting until his hospitalization on March 8.
The legendary artist was born in Neichiang County, Szechwan Province, on the first day of the Fourth Moon in 1899. Before his birth, his mother dreamed a grim dream—an old man handed her a brilliant bronze gong with a hairy animal lying in the center. He said to her, "This is a black ape, which is afraid of the moon and the smell of fish and meal."
Dai-chien was born not long after his mother was awakened by the nightmare. When he was weaned and fed with fish or meat, however little it would be, he would be upset. When he saw the moon, he cried. Ironically, Dai-chien became a gourmet later, and Taipei and Hongkong restaurants even served a dish called "Dai-chien Chicken." But the moon was never included in any of his paintings.
It was said that when Dai-chien was 12 years old, he contracted typhoid fever. Because of a wrong prescription by a quack doctor, all his hair fell out and he could not speak. His relatives were so unnerved that they consulted all renowned doctors. Fortunately, one of his brother's schoolmates was a reputed doctor. Under his treatment, the boy began to speak again, but was still very weak.
Right at that time, the boy's new doctor learned that villagers had killed a pregnant tigress. He sent a man to buy the fetus, and then baked it on a more than 200-year-old tile. He ground it into powder and mixed it with wine. After taking the concoction, Dai-chien showed no further upset. He began to recover rapidly.
Thereafter, Dai-chien also began to eat some shredded meal. After several years, he would not eat his meal unless meat was served.
He was sent to his uncle's home for recuperation. Separated from school work, he dabbled in pictures as a pastime. One day, when Dai-chien was sketching at the doorstep of his uncle's home, a woman fortune-teller from Honan Province came by. When she saw the beautiful painting, she asked Dai-chien to paint 24 pictures as covers she could use for fortune-telling books. She offered 80 coins for the service. Dai-chien obliged. He painted such folklore themes as A rat enters a dead end and A midget climbing a tall ladder. The woman was very pleased and handed the coins to him immediately after the paintings were finished. This was the first time Dai-chien had sold a painting.
Nobody knows whether the fortune-teller could really tell a man's future. But if so, she would have kept Dai-chien's 24 paintings and made a big fortune today.
When Dai-chien received the money, he went to a street shop to buy a snack with four coins. Another day, Dai-chien visited the food-shop again. As the man in the eatery lifted the lid of the steam basket, the delicious smell almost overwhelmed Dai-chien. He asked to buy a particularly delicious piece, but the man refused to sell it to him, declaring that the delicacy was reserved for his boss. Dai-chien asked: Why did that piece smell so delicious? The man replied, "it is rat meal."
Dai-chien could not resist the delicious smell, so he insisted on buying. He was charged 32 coins for the four-ounce dish. After many years, Dai-chien still considered it was worth the price.
When he was 17 years old, he studied at a middle school in Chungking. During summer vacation, when he was returning to his native place together with several schoolmates, they were hijacked by bandits. The bandits told the students to write letters home asking for ransom. When the bandits saw Dai-chien's beautiful handwriting, they asked him to remain in their group to serve as their ghostwriter. They threatened that they would shoot him if he did not obey.
Dai-chien won the respect of the bandits. He was served with every kind of good food. Once, the bandits took him to rob a wealthy family. While the bandits were ransacking the trunks and cabinets, Dai-chien stood by, watching. A bandit told him that it was against the rules if he took nothing, so Dai-chien picked up a book (Shu in Chinese, "Essence of Poetry"), Another bandit warned him that it was equally offending to seize that book, because Shu is pronounced the same as shoo (failure or defeat). So, Dai-chien took a painting from the wall, but he also secretly kept possession of the book.
Returning to the den of the bandits, Dai-chien had little to say to them, and often went to the backyard to read his book. This marked the beginning of a lifelong study of poetry.
One day when he was repeating the poems, he heard groans coming from a nearby hut. He went in and saw a wounded old man, who asked, "Why do you, kid, read poems here? Isn't this a bandit den? As I am afflicted almost to death, how can you be so unsensitive as to mouth poems here?"
He learned later that the man was an accomplished scholar who had passed the Imperial examinations and that he was suffering because his family could not amass the required ransom.
A man who passed the Imperial examinations was surely a good poet, so Dai-chien implored the scholar to teach him. With this instruction, he mastered the rhythm of poems.
Dai-chien was so popular in the den that he was considered a teacher; the sister of a bandit made shoes for him. The bandit chief even sent a man to the market to buy a toothbrush for Dai-chien, at the risk of the man's life.
He was released after the bandits were forced to surrender to the authorities. He had been held captive for a total of 100 days. This dramatic story led the late Cheng Man-ching, another famous painting master in Taiwan, to write:
"At the age of seventeen,
Dai-chien was hijacked on his
way home;
Instead of being killed,
The bandits offered to learn
from him."
After being held for 100 days, Dai-chien lived as a bonze for another 100 days.
When Dai-chien was 20 years old, his fiancée, Hsieh Shun-hua, died. Dai-chien, who was in Japan, returned to China in a hurry, but turmoil arising from Chang Hsun's attempt to become Emperor prevented him from attending the girl's funeral in Szechwan Province. His brother ordered him to return to Japan. The next year, Dai-chien returned again to China; he began to harbor the idea of remaining unmarried the rest of his life. He fled to Chanting Temple, where the abbot gave him the Buddhist name, Dai-chien. (His secular name was Chang Yuan, or Ape Chang). Later he heard that Abbot Ti-hsien of Kuantsung Temple at Sungchiang was more prestigious, so he moved from Chanting Temple to Kuantsung Temple. The reception bonze for the new temple suspected Dai-chien was an unruly monk and, therefore, closed the door to him. So Dai-chien went to a small inn and wrote a letter to Abbot Ti-hsien, who was impressed by Dai-chien's writing and gave him an audience. From that point, the two discussed Buddhism every day.
Dai-chien was to be given monk status, which required scorching marks on his forehead, but, doubting the necessity of the ritual, he maintained that forehead scorching was not a Buddhist practice. This view, he said, did not prevail until Emperor Wuti of the Liang Dynasty released felons in an amnesty. The Emperor ordered the released criminals to be marked in fear that they- unknown to others-would commit new crimes. Dai-chien did not consider himself criminal, so he refused to accept the ceremony of forehead scorching.
On the eve of the scorching, Dai- chien fled from Kuantsung Temple to take refuge at Lingyin Temple by the West Lake at Hangchow. He hired a boat to cross the lake, but when the boatman vilified him because he did not pay much, Dai-chien responded in kind; the boatman beat him. Dai-chien was angered. He threw off his Buddhist gown and seized an oar to fight back, making a public stir—" An unruly monk beats a boatman."
During his two months at Lingyin Temple, Dai-chien wrote letters to friends in Shanghai. Playing a trick to seduce him to Shanghai, they arranged with his brother, Shantzu, to seize him at the railway station and send him to Szechwan, concluding the 100 days of monk's life. Though Dai-chien had not officially become a monk, he continued to keep the title of Dai-chien Chu-shih—Dai-chien the secular Buddhist.
The 100-day experience of the monk's life gave him elements of mystery, and this helped him to enter the painters' community.
When Dai-chien was 25 years old, there were a number of societies and clubs for literati in Shanghai, with the Autumn Chrysanthemum Society as the most famous. Dai-chien's brother, Sang-tzu, was a reputed painter of tigers and a member of the Society, whose major activities included gathering its members to compose poetry, to paint, and to demonstrate calligraphy while drinking wine, eating crabs, and enjoying chrysanthemum flowers.
When the members learned that Shantzu had a brother with the experience of a monk's life, who could also do poems and paintings, curious, they asked Shantzu to bring him to the gathering. Shantzu obliged. Dai-chien composed impromptu poems, did his calligraphy, and painted landscapes, birds, beautiful figures, and flowers under the watch of the elders. His talent was immediately appreciated, and Shanghai newspapers later reported that "he hit it big" and "cut a nice figure."
In 1925, Dai-chien held his first exhibition in Shanghai. All 100 paintings were sold at 20 silver dollars apiece. This exhibition established his credentials as an accomplished painter.
Portraits of the artist
On November 18, 1963, the Central News Agency reported from Paris that a black ink painting of lotus flowers by Chang Dai-chien had been sold to an American collector for the hefty sum of US$60,000—believed to be the highest price ever paid for the work of any contemporary Chinese artist. The figure was impressive, but the news story itself was by no means surprising, for Dai-chien was described by a Japanese critic as the most accomplished Chinese painter in five hundred years.
Unlike the many renowned masters of the time who spent their earlier lives struggling in dire poverty, Dai-chien was born in a very wealthy family. His gift for painting came from his mother; his early training was by one of his sisters, a flower painter, and his brother, Shantzu, a famous painter of tigers. When he grew older, his mother sent him to Shanghai to study under two leading artists in the great metropolis: Tseng Nung-jan and Li Mei-an.
After having traversed the length and width of China, Dai-chien began roaming the world after the Chinese mainland was shut off behind the Bamboo Curtain. His extensive travel undoubtedly played an important part in his climb to the pinnacle of fame and accomplishment.
And Dai-chien certainly reached the top of the ladder. As a matter of fact, he was also without peer as an art connoisseur. A great collector himself, he could detect fakes from among authentic masterpieces at a glance. Because of his accomplishments in art, there are also many fake Chang Dai-chien paintings, especially in Hongkong and Japan. When people would tell him of this fact, he would say matter-of-factly, "I don't want to stop people making money."
He rarely commented on modern Chinese paintings. He believed the heyday of Chinese painting was reached during the Han Dynasty (206 B.C.—8 A.D.) The masters of the Tang and Sung Dynasties did quite well in maintaining the glory. However, Chinese painting suffered a long decline during the subsequent dynasties. In the republican years, there had been signs of revival, but the modern works were still far beneath the brilliant paintings of the old times, he said.
However, he had a genuine admiration for Prince Pu Jou, cousin of Emperor Henry Pu Yi, the only modern Chinese painter who had reached Dai-chien's own stature in fame and accomplishment. Pu Jou once commented on Dai-chien's paintings in these words: "His big strokes are as powerful as a sweeping army, and his small ones are as fine as silk produced by a spring silk-worm." Pu also said that "the universe cannot accommodate a single Dai-chien. "The Prince was dead when Dai-chien visited Taiwan in June 1963. Although the two had never been close friends, Dai-chien insisted on paying a visit to the late Prince's tomb at Yangmingshan.
The renowned artist had an obsession for flowers, including potted plants. He often went abroad to collect the pots and flowers he liked. A few years ago, when the Koreans learned he was going to Seoul to preside at an exhibition, the prices of potted plants jumped several times overnight. From a previous garden house in Brazil, he had made it a point to travel to all parts of the world, often for the exclusive purpose of seeing lovely flowers. In June, 1962, while in Japan, he told reporters that he had nothing in his mind except flowers when he made his yearly trip to that country. From Japan, his love for flowers would bring him to Paris, then back to Sao Paulo, where he was settled down by the time the peonies were in full bloom.
Most Chinese painters and poets have a particular preference for plum blossoms, because they can stand vigorous cold. The Chinese prefer to compare a persevering man to a plum. Chang Dai-chien was no exception. When he visited Japan in 1964, he bought many plum saplings for planting in his private garden in Brazil, half a world away. When he established a new home in California, he planted 100 plum trees in its gardens. He also had an obsession for odd-looking rocks.
Before the last world war, Dai-chien lived most of his time in Peking, where one could often see him walking alone at Hsishan and the Imperial Gardens.
In the fall of l938, he escaped to Hongkong from Japanese-occupied Peking and finally reached Chungking in his native province. He again visited the lofty mountains in the interior and, in 1940, penetrated further west to the Tun-huang Caves in Kansu Province.
Later, the whole Chinese mainland fell into the hands of the Communists. To escape the suffocating Red rule, Dai-chien and part of his family stealthily left his home province the night of December 7, 1950, to seek refuge in Hongkong. After a brief stay there, he went on to India and then to Argentina. During one of his trips to Brazil, he took a fancy to the vastest country in Latin America and decided to establish a permanent residence there—because in a certain area there the scenery is much like that of his native province.
In Brazil, Dai-chien and his family lived at a small town 75 miles from Sao Paulo. He bought 6.5 Brazilian acres of land there to build a Chinese-style garden which he called Pateh (eight virtues). The Pateh Garden was dotted with 1,000 persimmons whose golden fruits and green leaves presented an enchanting picture to the viewer. There were a large pool and numerous flowers, pines, bamboo groves, pavilions and rocks. So beautiful was the garden that Lang Ching-shan, the famous artist-photographer, who is more than 90 years old, took several hundred pictures in the garden during a one-month stay there as Dai-chien's guest.
He lived in Brazil until that country recognized the Chinese Communist regime, then left it behind and established a new home in California. Afraid of being mistaken for a Japanese, he raised a Republic of China flag in his yard. At that time, too, many people came to visit him. In order to determine whether they had political motives, he often met the visitors under the ROC flag, establishing immediately that he was a staunch supporter of the Republic of China. The flag staved off many lobbyists for the Communists and, therefore, saved him many troubles.
Among earlier Communist lobbyists were two nephews and a daughter, sent by the Communists to Hongkong to persuade the famous artist to return to the Chinese mainland. He told his nephews: "Do you want me or them? If you want me, stay with me. If you want them, go away." The two young men chose to stay with their uncle and accompanied him to Brazil. His daughter, Hsin-jui, implored her father to go "home" or send back his paintings. The patriotic painter rejected both requests.
In exile, Dai-chien lived in perfect conformity to the finest Chinese traditions. He spoke no foreign tongue and wore no Western dress. He even avoided using Western-invented fountain pens and eating Western-style food. The furniture in his house and the landscaping of his gardens Were typically Chinese.
Dai-chien always demanded that his children and grandchildren study Chinese, saying, "If you do not write Chinese characters, you are not Chinese." In keeping with Chinese tradition, he requested his children to pay him greetings every morning and evening. On the Dragon-Boat Festival, Mid-Autumn Festival, and the lunar New Year's Day, he would lead his children to kowtow to his ancestors. The old man kowtowed to his ancestors until he once fainted during the ceremony, owing to diabetes.
His loyalty to democracy was fully demonstrated in an exhibition of his paintings in India in early 1951. He arrived in India at the end of 1950 and was informed that New Delhi would recognize the Peking regime on New Year's Day of 1951 and that free Chinese Ambassador Lo Chia-lun was about to leave the country. Thereupon, he immediately asked the Indian sponsors to call off the exhibition, saying that he would hold no exhibition under a Communist flag. The sponsors solved the problem by moving up the date of the exhibition to anticipate the departure of Ambassador Lo.
A similar expression of his patriotism occurred in recent years. When the Carter administration recognized Communist China, he called off an exhibition in the U.S. that had been prepared for more than a year. A few months ago, when his greatest and also final painting was on display at Taipei's National Museum of History, a reporter found that in the 36 by 6 ft. Panorama of Mt. Lushon (Free China Review, March 1983) there were no people, and asked Dai-chien for an explanation. The old master, raising his voice, asked, "Before our return, where are the men there? In my mind, the Communists are not men."
Dai-chien's insistence on using the Chinese language started when he was a student in Japan over 60 years ago. He carried his point so far that he hired a Japanese interpreter, even for his studies. He had an explanation for this seemingly ridiculous practice. One day he was surprised to hear a Japanese professor conversing in flawless English, almost a feat among the Japanese. Dai-chien, accordingly, expressed his admiration, only to receive a scornful reply:
"I am ashamed of myself for my fluency in English," the professor said. "Only the slave speaks his master's tongue well." Then and there, Dai-chien decided to speak in his native tongue, under whatever circumstances.
This practice brought him many inconveniences and even embarrassment. Once a Brazilian reporter called on him at his residence for an interview. It happened he did not have an interpreter around. The only one in the family who could speak the native language was his seven-year-old son. The boy was then called upon to do the interpreting. When the interview was published in the press the next day, it said Dai-chien had nine wives and forty-five sons. The reporter joked that if the Chinese master decided to run for the Brazilian presidency, he could count on fifty-four sure votes.
Everyone seemed interested in the number of wives. When he returned to Taiwan for a brief visit, a reporter raised this question. Instead of being offended, Dai-chien guffawed and said, "I could give you a more than 50 percent discount." He actually had four wives and 16 children.
Of the four wives, one died, one was divorced, one was left on the mainland, and the fourth accompanied him for the last few decades, until his death on April 4. The great Chinese painter was also a great artist in managing his families. When he was on the mainland, the four wives served him as peacefully as a "teapot with four cups." "I had never any secret from my wives, except for my chin, which has been buried in my long beard even before I married them." Dai-chien began to sport a beard at the age of 25.
On another occasion, when Dai-chien was traveling aboard an ocean liner, his flowing beard and Chinese gown attracted the attention of his fellow passengers. They invited him to join the endless rounds of balls and social activities on the ship, despite his protestations that he could neither dance nor speak any foreign language. From then on he shunned ships in preference for airplanes, just to avoid the social mixing-and embarrassment.
Dai-Chien was easily the greatest collector of Chinese paintings. No price was too high once he decided on gelling a painting in his possession. He said that he did the collecting not only for his personal enjoyment, but also for the sake of preserving China's cultural heritage. His collections, accumulated over the last half century, included hundreds of masterpieces dating back to the Tang Dynasty (618-907). Most precious of all was Han Hsi-tsai's Night Bonquet, a court painting of the Southern Tang period. Few had seen the masterpiece save a few Imperial collectors. The painting was last seen in the hands of Emperor Henry Pu Yi. When Henry became a captive of the Russians at the end of World War II, the painting once again was lost, until Dai-chien bought it from an art dealer.
Dai-chien lived up to his words. He declared in his last will and testament that these paintings were to be donated to Taipei's National Palace Museum. Dai-chien believed that the essence of Chinese painting lay in the philosophy of Lao-tze, whose physical expression consisted in quiet, softness, withdrawal, and modesty. "What I strive to achieve is a faithful portrayal of the Lao-tze philosophy," he said. Both Picasso and many contemporary Western artists agreed that Dai-chien's works were rich in philosophical tones.
Most Chinese art critics divide Dai-chien's paintings into three stages. Stage one includes his earlier works, characterized by the implicity and magnitude of the Tang and Sung artists.
While Dai-chien was in Shanghai in his twenties, he devoted himself to imitating the works of Shih-tao and other ancient painters. He was so successful that few connoisseurs can distinguish Dai-chien's copies from Shih-tao's masterpieces. He used to imprint a chop (seal), bearing the four characters" Dai-chien for fun," on the back of such paintings. But when the paintings were mounted, the chop was covered up, so many connoisseurs were tricked. Several anthologies on Shih-tao's works were published in Japan, and not a few of the paintings included were done by Dai-chien, not by Shih-tao.
Then, Dai-chien, no longer content with random imitation, decided to visit the Tunhuang Caves several thousand kilometers away from Chengtu in Sze-chwan Province, setting out in 1940, accompanied by his wife and protected by a company of mounted soldiers. His intention was to index the caves for the convenience of later-day studies by himself and others. He spent five months numbering 309 caves.
Benefiting from the experience gathered from his limited stay, he spent two months preparing a second journey. Accompanying him were five Lamas, a son, a nephew, three students, a chef, and two servants. He used 78 mule carts to carry his provisions and painting instruments. The task this time was to copy the great cave murals.
In the ensuing two years and seven months, Dai-chien and his assistants copied 276 murals, but they could transport back less than a hundred of the copies. He excitedly told friends after his return: "I was often told that early Chinese culture had been influenced by Western culture. I found this was not true only after having studied the cave murals. On the figures in the Tunhuang murals, I saw the dress and other trappings of the Sui and Tang Dynasties. I think the historical value of the cave murals outstrips their art value."
The nearly three years of copying provided Dai-chien his most solid period, honing his skills. The experience changed his painting style. He learned the ancient painters' drawing tricks and their methods of applying colors; his paintings became more mature, dignified.
According to his personal secretary, Miss Chi Juo-chi, Dai-chien had to climb a 20 to 30 foot high scaffold to reach the murals at the top of the walls. Because these were the heydays of his life, he enjoyed the hardships and even regretted that he had not copied all the available murals.
Miss Feng Yu-heng, another personal secretary to the great master, related that Dai-chien always regretted that he had not had the time to sort out the mural copies for publication.
After he turned 60, he brought his art works to another stage. He introduced black ink painting. Such recent works as the Yangtze Panorama, a painting on Tzuhu, and the Panorama of Mt. Lushan are representative. These color ink paintings surpass even the Sung masterpieces in boldness and magnitude. His paintings of palm leaves, exhibited in West Germany and New York, rival the greatest works of the impressionist school.
The Yangtze Panorama was executed in honor of the 80th birthday of one of his lifelong friends, Chang Chun, the former secretary-general to the late President Chiang Kai-shek. But when the painting was displayed at Taipei's National Museum of History, it gave rise to a rash of criticisms. The Yangtze really flows eastward, but it flows westward in Dai-chien's painting. When asked the obvious question, Dai-chien explained that since he had lived in Shanghai, the biggest city at the mouth of the river, he was certainly aware that the Yangtze flows eastward. But, he said, a great artist must have the courage to create nature, not just to copy it.
The Tzuhu painting was done in tribute to the late President Chiang Kai-shek, whose remains are enshrined at the scenic spot.
The Panorama of Mt. Lushan, his last and also largest painting, was a present to his friend Li Hai-tien, the Holiday Inn proprietor in Japan. Lushan is one of the most fabulous mountains of mainland China. Dai-chien had previously visited all other major Chinese mountains, but never Lushan. When he was young, he had an opportunity to go to Lushan, but dragged his feet because he learned that his brother, Shantzu, was there at that time. Apparently, the great master feared his brother, because he had exacted strict discipline from the easy-going Dai-chien.
Nevertheless, he did not pluck his ideas about Lushan from the air. He studied photographs of the major peaks. When Chinese finally see the true features of something, they usually repeat an aphorism, "I have finally seen the likeness of Lushan," indicating that Lushan is so fabulous that few people have even delineated its true features.
Dai-chien's paintings are most popular in Japan, among all foreign countries. Many Japanese VIPs have in their possession one or more of Dai-chien's paintings. They include such big names as Prime Ministers Kishi, Fukuda, Miki, and Nakasone. Prime Minister Nakasone is one of the most obsessive lovers of Dai-chien's works. When Dai-chien's art was exhibited in Tokyo after the Japanese recognition of Communist China, no Japanese government leader dared view it except Nakasone, then Minister for International Trade and Industry. He was particularly attracted to Dai-chien's black ink paintings. The year before last, Dai-chien gave him a landscape painting; the ranking Japanese official personally went to a shop to choose the mounting materials.
His paintings are also popular in other countries. In May 1964, he held an exhibition at the ancient city of Cologne, West Germany, of fifty paintings, including landscapes, figures, flowers, and pines and stones. The largest painting, measuring 3 by 8 meters, was sold for 120,000 marks. The lowest price tag was equivalent to US$400. All the paintings were snatched up by collectors. Apart from the financial success, his exhibition also brought him unqualified eulogies from German critics, and won him multitudes of new admirers. While he was spending his 65th birthday yachting on the Rhine, over 40 foreign disciples paid their respects to the master by the traditional Chinese kowtow. Despite the triumph, he did not fail to take a trip to Amsterdam to see the famous Dutch tulips.
His New York exhibition in November, 1963, was even more successful. A black ink lotus painting was sold for US$60,000. He also won a gold medal and a title-The Greatest Painter of Contemporary China.
The great painting master of the East met Picasso, the master of the West, for the first time in Paris in July 1957, and the two held each other in awe ever after. During the meeting, they exchanged paintings. Dai-chien presented his new friend with a bamboo scroll. Picasso scribbled Dai-chien's likeness in return. On parting, Picasso asked for some brushes from his Chinese friend. The request was cheerfully complied with.
Dai-chien's works were exhibited in Paris at least six times. Included in a May, 1961, exhibition was a long lotus scroll. To execute the work, he had to demolish the partitions of several rooms at his home in Brazil in order to accommodate its huge spread—30 square meters. The same thing happened in Taipei when he began the Panorama of Mt. Lushan. He asked a carpenter to remove a pillar in a big room to accommodate a specially-made long painting table. The Paris painting took him three days and used up six reams of special paper of the same quality as the paper used by Emperor Chien Lung of the Manchu Dynasty. The Taipei painting took him more than two years—and still remains incomplete after his death. He rushed the painting to meet the exhibition's scheduled date, and was prepared to add some new details after the exhibition was over. He wrote a poem on the painting, but he had not affixed his signiture and seal. His old friend, Chang Chun, would write the dead painter's name in his behalf.
The black ink lotus painting marked both a new phase in his painting and a breakthrough in Chinese painting history. The so-called black-ink method was to spill the ink on the paper and then to guide the flow into preferred shapes by pulling the paper. Actually, not only black, but colored inks were so spilled. When the ink formed a shape, the painter added a few details, such as a pavilion on the mountain or a stem under a lotus leaf. How did Dai-chien switch to this bold way of painting? Perhaps accidentally. Dai-chien adopted this practice when he turned 60, at a time when his right eye was damaged by diabetes. This prevented him from drawing fine lines. When Dai-chien succeeded in making his first black-ink painting, he added to it this poem:
I rose with sudden excitement in the
middle of the night,
The noise awakened my family from
their sweet dreams.
I spilled the ink well and could
not contain the flow,
It took the shapes of summer clouds
and a high mountain.
This unique approach modernized Chinese painting and made it more impressionistic. Dai-chien added blue and green colors to make his paintings more interesting.
Chang Dai-chien painted under any conditions, provided the studio was adequately equipped. Noisy children and chatting friends did not detract him in the least. The only noise he dreaded was that from playing mahjong. He had listed three taboos in his family: playing mahjong, eating melon seeds, and smoking.
His brushes, ink, and even chop paste were no ordinary products. Dai-chien had 50 brushes of different sizes made in Japan in 1964. The smallest one could draw a hair-like line, while the biggest one could execute the swath of a mop. The hairs used for making the brushes were bought in London, collected from cow's ears. It was said that it requires thousands of head of cattle to produce barely one kilogram of such fine hairs, good enough for his brushes. This kind of brush is noted for resilience and is a coveted item among water-colorists.
Dai-chien had seemed not very happy while living in the United States. He once said that he was like a piece of timber there, heaving on the sea. When President Chiang Kai-shek passed away in April 1975, Dai-chien was eager to return to Taiwan to pay a last tribute to the revered President. He could not, because he was being confined to bed. In January the following year, he returned, although he did not recover. He went to Tzuhu, despite the rains, and spent a week to finish a painting.
Dai-chien returned to Taipei for permanent settlement in the same year. At first, he stayed in a condominium while waiting for the construction of his last home, Mo Yeh Ching She. It also has a typical Chinese garden and buildings, occupying an area of 560 ping (about 1,800 sq. meters). He spent NT$5 million to buy the land, and all details of the construction and garden layout were planned by Dai-chien himself. There is a reminder of his U.S. home-a three-meter high boulder which takes the shape of the map of Taiwan.
The body of the great painting master was cremated after a big funeral party and buried by this stone. In his last will, Dai-chien donated his home to the government, which will turn it into a museum in honor of the great artist.
Immense achievement At the Tunhuang Caves
When Chang Dai-chien was alive, he relished his memories of the beautiful murals he saw at the Tunhuang Buddhist Caves in mainland China.
"Figure painting reached a point of perfection in the heydays of the Tang Dynasty. The female images were so beautiful that the viewer's heart would heave when he saw them, although he knew they were murals, not real," he told a friend, Chiang Chao-shen, painting critic and deputy director of Taipei's National Palace Museum.
The great master marveled at the seriousness of the ancient artists who painted the murals: "The bottom of each mural was very close to the cave floor, but not a single carelessly done line could be found, in the hooves of a horse or the wheels of a cart. The painters would have been executing such details by prostrating themselves on the ground."
After observing the beauty of the cave murals, he began to doubt the credibility of the paintings attributed to Hsia Kuei, the most reputed landscape painter of the Sung Dynasty (960-1280). He noted: "Some of the background landscapes of the murals were done in the Hsia Kuei style—very well executed. Surely, Hsia Kuei would not go to such a remote place as Tunhuang to paint the murals himself. They were done by his disciples, and even the disciples of his disciples. Nevertheless, the paintings were better than the paintings passed down and attributed to Hsia Kuei. As there is no reason for the master's works to be inferior to those of his disciples, I don't believe that those of Hsia Kuei's paintings that we generally see were really done by the great master."
He told a story: On his return from Tunhuang, he and his party were very tired after a long trek over the desert, and they sat down to rest. When he placed his hands on the sand there, he felt something, and asked some of his men to remove the sand. Alas, it was a stiff corpse—a mummy. Judging from his helmet and armor, the dead man seemed to have been a general. The facial flesh was still well preserved, except for a deep wound, which might have been the cause of his death. Under the head there was placed something like a bill of accounts, which recorded all his merits in the field. The ending of the ac count related that he had given up his life courageously, in line of duty. According to the description, his death occurred in the Wuteh period during the reign of Emperor Kaotsu of the Tang Dynasty, between 618 and 626, more than a thousand years ago. "The corpse would not have been preserved so perfectly if it were not so terribly dry in the desert. After I inspected the dead warrior and read the document, I bade my men return them to their original condition, so that I would have no burden to bear in my mind," he remarked. "Some people still charge that I robbed Tunhuang treasures, although I gave up even this windfall," he complained.
Dai-chien often glowed over the beautiful cave murals, but he seldom mentioned the hardships he had encountered.
Before Dai-chien made his first trip to Tunhuang in 1940, a French explorer had numbered the caves. But this was done in a very disorderly way, because the explorer did it mainly for his own convenience in taking pictures and skipped caves that he felt had no photographic value.
Dai-chien indexed 309 caves in accordance with the directions of the ravines of the Chilien Mountain Range. A tourist could tour all the 309 caves in a day's time without wasting a step if he followed Dai-chien's numerical sequence. The work was completed by Dai-chien and his men in their five-month initial trip.
When his party reached Tunhuang the second time, its sole purpose was to copy the murals. The group included five Lamas; Dai-chien's son Hsin-chih; his nephew Hsin-teh; Liu Li-sheng, Hsiao Chien-chu, and Sung Tsung-wei, his disciples; and a chef and two servants. They encountered an array of difficulties.
The artist's paper and silk cloth they had brought were not always large enough. One of the largest murals measured about 130 feet. Dai-chien had to ask the Lamas to sew lengths of silk together. The giant "canvas" was then mounted on a frame and coated three times. It was finally glossed by rubbing with a big stone before Dai-chien applied his brush.
The colors used were mineral powders, ground until very fine, mostly by hired children. Dai-chien approved the quality each time before they were used. Tens of kilograms of color powders were expended at Tunhuang. Ordinarily, in those times, such colors were sold like gold, with one-tenth of a tael (Chinese ounce) as the unit.
During the copying, every line was executed conscientiously, true to the original: no personal idea of a painter was allowed to be infused into the copying. Dai-chien constantly emphasized this point to his son, nephew, and disciples. He would bid them do it over whenever he observed a flaw in their work. The work was made additionally difficult by the fact that the caves were not large enough to accommodate a table of sufficient area, so the painters had to hire carpenters to make awkward easels.
The lighting was so dim in most caves that the artist was forced to do the painting with one hand holding a candle. Sometimes, he had to stand on a ladder; at others, to crouch or lie on the ground. The task was so strenuous that even in winter, he would begin to sweat not long after starting his work. Sometimes, his disciples felt they could no longer endure the situation, but they were ashamed to retreat while their master was still ardently committed. Usually, they entered the caves in early morning, and came out at dusk. Occasionally, they burned mid-night oil.
Because colors on the murals had faded, the artist had to study the figures for a long time under candle light. In some cases, such studies had to be repeated scores of times before the first strokes could be accurately applied. To conserve materials, the painter would make first drafts with the help of a pane of glass, then attach each preliminary draft to the back of his painting paper or cloth. Bringing it now into the strong sunshine, he would then do the shadowing with charcoal. Finally, he would draw in the lines with brush and ink. After all the lines were drawn, the colors were added.
All Buddhist and other figures were painted by Dai-chien himself, while secondary details, such as pavilions, were copied by his disciples and the Lamas. The names of the painters and the sections they did were carefully documented. Normally, a large painting took two months; a small one, a dozen days.
Dai-chien declared: "Most students of Tunhuang art focus their attention on the Buddhist portraits. Actually, the portraits of the men and women who financed and worshipped the murals are also very important. All the male worshippers were portrayed directly—in person—by the original painter. The women might have found it inconvenient to pose for the painters, but depictions of their apparel were accurate. Because the figures were distributed in historical sequence, they provide the only credible valuable material for the study of Chinese figure painting."