While such serenity is not the main theme of Wang Shu's ink and water paintings on display in his "Landscape Poems" exhibition at the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in Taipei from March 8 to April 5, it does portray the 74-year-old artist's approach to art. The calligraphy superimposed on this particular painting, a short poem by Wang himself, reads, "Learn by watching mountains and knowing water; comprehend the wisdom from the heart to lead a free life."
Wang was born in Shandong Province in eastern China in 1933. After he lost both parents six years later during the Second Sino-Japanese War, he was left to join the countless other displaced persons wandering the region. Forced to learn the realities of life at an early age, he joined the army at 16 simply, he said, as a means to survive. Defeat of the government forces by Mao Zedong's Communists in the Chinese Civil War brought Wang to Taiwan in 1949, where he remained in the army until 1960. He then embarked on an impoverished life as an elementary-school teacher and slowly took up painting landscapes in his spare time, teaching himself through observation.
"I began to paint at 38 years of age," Wang said. "I often went to art exhibitions in Taipei because I liked exhibitions very much." Careful observation of the works on display inspired him to paint more himself. "At first, I read up on literature that was closely related to the paintings." A lack of opportunities to learn from master artists and to obtain good equipment did not discourage him; instead he felt free to develop his own style and tried experimenting with new approaches to traditional styles of Chinese painting.
"If I had studied art before commencing my career, my unique creativity would have be spoiled," he explained. "You would not be able to see this kind of work if I had studied it. If I learned to paint in Taiwan, I could never have earned a living in Europe."
Wang said that the biggest difference between himself and Chinese artists like the master painter and art educator Xu Beihong (1895-1953) was that they went to Europe to learn, while he went to teach.
At the start of his artistic career, Wang traveled to every corner of Taipei County in search of scenes for his paintings. With nature as his source of creative inspiration and the continual theme of his "portraits," Wang explained that, "Unless I am outdoors, I can't draw pictures."
This mantra can be easily seen in his "landscape poems," which express his philosophy of life against the background of touching scenic spots. Wang admitted that his stark positioning of large Chinese characters in the middle of a painting was an attempt to subvert convention. Speaking of the first of seven of his exhibitions held at the Taiwan Provincial Museum--now called National Taiwan Museum--in 1973, he recalled, "At that time, when I looked at an ink painting, especially Chinese ones, the works all looked the same with a style inherited from the same few schools of artists."
In Wang's opinion, most artists incorporated techniques learned from four main schools of Chinese painting: those of Chang Dai-chien (1899-1983), Pu Hsin-yu (1896-1963), Huang Chun-pi (1898-1991) and the Lingnan school. Wang said that, following the deaths of the three master painters, the Lingnan style was most familiar nowadays. "I understand them like the back of my hand, but they haven't heard of me at all," he claimed.
Wang never joined an art club or association even though he wrote poems and prose dedicated to the promotion of painting. "I paint, but I don't participate in art associations because one needs to handle the creative challenge alone, deal with life on your own. If you join with others, it becomes a party. Once the party is formed, the members become a very motley crew."
Wang cited impressionists in the West as an example. "If you have ever appreciated Western impressionist paintings, you'll find everyone is independent," he said. "Each style is unique. Van Gogh is van Gogh, Cezanne is Cezanne, and Reynolds is Reynolds. Only Chinese people have become accustomed to creating within the bounds of a certain school."
Despite spending a great deal of time pursuing a teaching career in Taiwan and Austria, Wang never taught students to imitate his style. "When I teach in Taiwan, I tell my students to ignore others' work and leave them aside," he said. Wang's evocative teachings aim to make learners acquire aesthetic experience through careful observation. "They watch how I draw, and I want them to re-examine themselves from my experience." Wang took his students to parks and asked them to look at a tree and paint what they saw. "Everyone paints differently," he said.
Wang explained that personal experience makes the difference to a painter and his work, not technique. "Techniques are the accumulation of personal experiences," he said. "My paintings look Chinese because I am Chinese and have absorbed a great deal of Chinese culture and thinking." This explains the blend of calligraphy and painting in his work, a free style illustrating his admiration of mother earth.
In order to truly present the scenes he witnessed, Wang avoided using black ink, which is generally employed in traditional Chinese "ink and water" paintings. Instead of black, he chose the three primary colors of red, yellow and blue. "Only late at night when you can't see anything does a scene demand black ink," said Wang, adding that people see a wide variety of colors during the day. In light of this, he used colored inks to reflect the world as seen through his eyes.
Among his wide range of works covering Austrian, Chinese and Taiwanese landscapes, Wang's favorites include a series depicting the running waters of Sindian's Mengmeng Valley and the Feitsui Reservoir, both in Taipei County, and the grandeur of Yellow Mountain in China's Anhui Province. Nevertheless, Wang never restricts himself to a particular place in his painting. "As long as it's natural, I like it," he said, adding that he continually seeks new places to paint. This, he said, makes him by necessity a traveler.
It was this wanderlust that, to his surprise, changed his life and caused him to move to live in another part of the world. Carrying only his painting tools, in 1982 Wang made his way to southern Italy and Vienna, where he met Austrian pastor Rloes Macheinee. Although the latter had worked in China's Henan Province for 25 years, he told Wang he had never seen such a unique approach to Chinese painting. Macheinee introduced Wang to the director of a local museum, which would later hold several exhibitions of Wang's work. Invited to exhibit at a cultural center in Salzburg, Wang moved to Austria in 1985. This was followed by a touring bus exhibition that took a selection of 30 works by Wang around the towns and villages of Austria for the next four years.
The secret of Wang's cross-cultural appeal perhaps lies not just in his picturesque views and Chinese calligraphy but also in his deep respect for environmental preservation as expressed in his art. Wang lamented that nowadays so many people were strangers to nature. "I feel that my life is part of nature. If I leave nature behind, my life becomes very, very empty," he said, adding, "I want to speak for nature."
Pointing to the trees around the CKS memorial, Wang said he wanted to help more people to appreciate their surroundings, "No matter whether it's a tree at the memorial hall or the hills of Guilin, both can be one's teacher in life."
Write to Sandra Shih at sandrashih@mail.gio.gov.tw