Taiwan Today

Yang Mao-lin’s unique art style blurs the lines between high and low culture while adding a Taiwan twist.

Yang Mao-lin (楊茂林) never felt at home in school outside of art class. “I did badly in almost all academic subjects and felt like a hopeless student,” he said. “If it hadn’t been for my art teacher’s encouragement, I don’t know if I’d have ever gained enough self-confidence to know what I wanted to do with my life.”

This belief was enough to get Yang through his university entrance exam and onto a course studying fine art. After graduating from Taipei City-based Chinese Culture University in 1979, Yang set about making a career as an artist. Seven years later, he sold his first oil painting, bought by a German collector for NT$100,000 (US$3,333). By 2007, he was selling works for much greater sums—“Zeelandia Memorandum” fetched NT$14.7 million (US$490,000) at auction.

An oil and acrylic painting, “Zeelandia Memorandum” depicts the establishment of Fort Zeelandia during 17th century Dutch colonial rule in what is now the southern city of Tainan. The work is part of Yang’s Made in Taiwan series comprising 392 pieces created from 1989 to 2015 themed around the country’s culture, history and politics.

“Yang took a term known for being a country of origin label and subverted it as a cultural symbol highlighting Taiwan’s artistic identity,” said Liao Tsun-ling (廖春鈴), chief of the Research Department at Taipei Fine Arts Museum (TFAM). “Made in Taiwan explores the expressive potential of the country’s visual arts.”

Story Teller

In his career, Yang has utilized a variety of art forms including sketching, painting, sculpture and digital imagery. “He has a broad vision that’s both critical and reflective, experimenting with form, materials and techniques,” Liao said. “His creative process is constantly evolving.”

“Made in Taiwan: A Retrospective of Yang Mao-Lin,” curated by Liao, was held at TFAM in 2016 in recognition of the artist’s achievements. The exhibition showcased the distinct stylistic phases of his career.

At the start of his artistic journey in the 1980s when Taiwan was still under martial law, Yang featured political imagery such as street protests and clashes between civilians and law enforcement officers in his works. “He pushed the limits of what was considered permissible at the time and changed how people perceived art’s role in society,” Liao said. “He broke taboos and challenged authority, showing a critical attitude toward life under one-party government.”

The lifting of martial law in 1987 brought to a close 38 years of authoritarian rule and ushered in a new era of democracy and freedom in Taiwan. Yang’s themes shifted with the times to historical and cultural reflections, as well as the clash between globalization and nativism.

Yang’s motivation stems from a desire to illustrate Taiwan’s cultural, historical and political developments. “Art is how I upset the status quo,” he said.

In his depictions of Taiwan, Yang has featured scenes from the country’s authoritarian, colonial and indigenous past. But his favorite subject is something familiar to people around the world: pop culture. In the mid-1990s, he started painting famous characters such as King Kong, Peter Pan, Pinocchio and Superman.

By adopting such iconic imagery, Yang sought to eliminate some of the elitism of the art industry. “Comic books are maybe the most popular drawings in the world, but they’re often not considered ‘real’ art,” Liao said. “People forget pop culture helps shape national identity, making it equally worthy of attention.”

New Form

After working on canvas for 20 years, Yang decided to take a break from painting. “To me, art is an adventure. My passion for painting gradually faded as I became too comfortable with the process and familiar with all the essential techniques,” he said.

Seeking a new challenge, in 2002 Yang started a master’s degree program in sculpture at Taipei National University of the Arts, experimenting with materials like bronze, steel and wood. “Sculpting is physically demanding and requires a lot of patience,” he said. “But that feeling of pushing the boundaries again has allowed me to take my art to the next level.”

Although he was working with a new form, Yang continued to select characters from pop culture as subjects, painstakingly recreating them in 3D. Some of his most well-known works from this time depict comic book heroes as Buddha statues, providing an incisive commentary on the nature of modern day idols. “Yang uses iconic characters to attract attention,” said Chen Hsiang-wen (陳湘汶), an art curator who oversaw an exhibition of Yang’s works titled “Hybrid and Metamorphosis—Yang Mao-Lin’s Mythology” at Changhua County Art Museum in central Taiwan. “By depicting these icons as Buddhas, he’s blurring the distinction between high and low culture.”

Recent years have seen Yang return to painting, with fish a recurring motif in his works due to his childhood love of the animals. “Fish are a wonderful subject because they come in all shapes and sizes,” he said. “They give me the freedom to create something different every time I work.”

Chen has little doubt that Yang is improving with age. “He’s reached new heights of maturity in terms of his execution of ideas, sense of composition and use of color,” she said. “When audiences look closely at his work, they’ll notice the ever increasing attention to detail and visual texture.”

Over the years, Yang’s artworks have featured in exhibitions at home and abroad including in Australia, France, Italy, Japan and the U.S., as well as in collections at southern Taiwan’s Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, TFAM and National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts in the central city of Taichung. They have also been sold by auction houses including London-based Christie’s and Taipei’s Ravenel International Art Group and Zhong Cheng Auction.

Art is about so much more than financial success, however. “My aspiration is to have works accepted into permanent collections,” Yang said. “I’m lucky to be able to make art for a living. I just hope I never have to retire!” 

Write to Kelly Her at kher@mofa.gov.tw