Ju Ming is one of Taiwan's most respected and prolific sculptors. A recently published biography chronicles his difficult--and stimulating--transformation from small-town woodcarver to internationally acclaimed artist.
At the intersection of Nanhai Road and Chungching South Road in Taipei, across the street from the Chinese Postal Museum, stands a five-story building that has become a landmark for Taiwan's arts community: the Yuyu Yang Lifescape Sculpture Museum. The modern, well-appointed structure, faced with attractive brick-colored tile, is filled with original works and models of larger pieces by the world-renowned sculptor Yuyu Yang (the artistic sobriquet of Yang Ying-feng, 楊英風), who died last October at the age of 71. The building stands on the exact location of what for decades was Yang's combination workshop and family home.
Here, on a winter morning in 1968, 32-year-old, small-town craftsman Ju Chuan-tai (朱川泰) took the first step in his transformation into Ju Ming (朱銘) the internationally acclaimed sculptor. Ju, carrying a large parcel, showed up at Yang's front door without an appointment. Yang himself answered the door, was a bit surprised, but cordially invited his guest in. After two hours of conversation, during which Ju untied his bundle to reveal his gift of two wooden sculptures, Yang agreed to take him on as an apprentice. "It was the happiest day of my life," Ju says, recalling that first meeting almost thirty years ago. "I not only got to meet a real artist, but also was permitted to be his disciple."
Worried about losing this opportunity through unnecessary delay, Ju decided not to return to his home in Taichung county, but instead spent the night in Taipei so that early the next morning he could go straight back to Yang's home and begin work. That first day brought heavy responsibility. After a brief orientation, Yang gave Ju his first assignment: an 80-cm-square hunk of Taiwan jade that had been dug out of the ground by veterans working on the Cross-Island Highway. Yang explained that he had been asked to turn the veined green stone into a marker for the scenic new highway, and that it was to be officially presented to the ROC's first lady, Madame Chiang Kai-shek.
The jade had gone untouched in the workshop for a long time. Although Yang had some ideas about the project, he never had time to start on it, and the few Art Academy students he showed it to had good design ideas, but insufficient skill. Yang had even asked a noted craftsman to take a look at the stone, but he was judged not up to the artistic demands.
For more than twenty days, Ju worked almost non-stop on the project. As he worked, Yang would occasionally take a look, nod his head, and just say, "Very good." Finally, he finished and had passed his first test: Yang was satisfied that Ju had turned the stone into a genuine work of art, and he was officially accepted as the master's disciple.
Soon thereafter, Ju returned home for the Chinese New Year, sold his small plot of farmland, and moved his wife and four children to metropolitan Taipei. At first, they rented an apartment in the southwestern suburb of Panchiao, forcing Ju to commute on an old scooter to Yang's residence, usually arriving by 8:00 A.M. It was a major shift in lifestyle, because Ju was already an established artisan back home. In Taipei he was starting again from scratch, but he did so willingly, despite the necessity of performing the trivial tasks expected of all apprentices. Before starting on his own project, he had to spend a couple of hours each day sweeping the floors, making tea, and doing other menial tasks. He spent nearly the whole day at his teacher's home, usually staying to share the evening meal.
After returning to Panchiao each evening, Ju had to work several more hours in order to support his family. Ju and his wife divided their apartment into a living area and a small factory, where Ju and several of his own apprentices filled orders for carved handicrafts.
Once asked what his original plans were for his talented new disciple, Yang replied, "I certainly didn't want him to be another Yuyu Yang!" It was an admirable point of view, and typical of his self-effacing attitude. Yang wanted Ju to create his own style because, he explained, "imitation could only make one subordinate to the master."
Yang's first task was to convince Ju to re-evaluate his previous experience as an artisan. In the field of traditional Taiwanese woodcarving, Ju had outshone almost everyone, but success brought him no satisfaction. He had become bored and somewhat skeptical about his work, even thinking of abandoning woodcarving completely and switching to abstract modern art. Yang convinced Ju not to give up the traditional skills he had acquired with such difficulty, but to search for fresh themes and new ways of expressing the same artistic spirit.
In addition, Yang encouraged Ju to turn away from his highly detailed and exquisite carving techniques and seek a plainer, more natural approach to his art. Ju recalls that Yang gave him superb advice: "The key is to achieve a balanced style, not too painstakingly detailed and not too boringly simplistic. When your technique matures, it will no longer be visible--everything will appear as though it was created naturally, giving the work a feeling of transcendence."
To follow this advice, Ju realized he would have to avoid imitating his first woodcarving master, noted artisan Lee Chin -chuan (李金川), as well as Yuyu Yang himself. This was symbolically achieved a couple of months into his apprenticeship, when Yang suggested that he change his name to Ju Ming. Ju did not ask why at the time, but in retrospect he believes it was done to help him throw off any old and restricting mental baggage belonging to artisan Ju Chuan-tai.
Less than a decade after he met Yuyu Yang, Ju Ming had his first major break. In 1976, the National Museum of History in Taipei invited Yang to give a solo exhibition of his works, an honor he had been accorded on several previous occasions. Yang agreed, but actually had another plan in mind. He knew that the museum, which periodically devoted space to showcase noted contemporary Chinese artists and calligraphers, would be reluctant to mount an exhibition by still-unknown Ju Ming. Nevertheless, Yang was determined to have Ju take his place.
When the time for the exhibition was nearly at hand, Yang told the museum staff that he was unfortunately lagging far behind his anticipated schedule, and strongly recommended that his talented disciple be accepted as a substitute. The pressure of time gave the curators little choice, although they had doubts. But Yang was a respected and persuasive advocate, and his assessment of Ju's talent was strongly backed by a Japanese sculptor who was asked to preview the sculptures. The rest, as they say, is history. The show was a smash hit. Each day, crowds of people stood in long lines to see Ju's work, convincing the museum to extend the exhibition dates.
Huang Yung-sung (黃永松), publisher of Echo magazine and a long-time promoter of Taiwanese art and culture, remembers the event well: "Ju Ming was lucky to have such wonderful timing. Previously, Taiwan's cultural circles focused on either traditional literati-style Chinese art and calligraphy or Western art, Impressionism being especially popular. Ju Ming introduced something very different: a down-to-earth, plain-but-full-of-life style, one that appealed to ordinary people. A growing interest in nativism [local Taiwan identity] had encouraged people to pay more attention to art rooted in Taiwan's own past."
While Ju thought it only natural to select subject matter that he had been familiar with since childhood, such as country folk, farm animals, and temple statues of Chinese gods and folk heroes, he had struck an especially responsive chord. Almost by accident, his search for higher artistic achievement led him to being perceived as the champion of the growing public interest in nativism.
Perhaps the most popular piece in his first exhibition was Teamwork, a large (173 x 75 cm) wooden sculpture inspired by a common practice in rural areas following mountain floods. Farmers would band together to collect lumber for sale by pulling uprooted trees out of swollen rivers. In this piece, a water buffalo, hooves buried deep in mud, strains at its traces to pull a wagon laden with tree trunks, as two farmers help push the heavy load up a steep bank. The composition of the work, and the underlying truth about how man and beast must rely on each together in rural areas, touched many hearts.
Kungfu, another piece in the exhibition, received no less attention. Here, a martial artist flies through the air in a classic kungfu position. This piece is especially noteworthy because it is a forerunner of Ju's Tai Chi Series, which depicts an array of dynamic martial art positions. Ju chose tai chi as a subject because he once studied this traditional art for health's sake. Since Yuyu Yang practiced tai chi to help maintain his mental and physical energy, so important to sculpting, Ju decided to follow suit.
He remembers well the learning process: "Some people lead with their hands to assume tai chi postures, but this isn't right--the hands should follow the body's movement and chi [breath, life-force], and naturally flow into certain positions," Ju says. After practicing the exercises for a year, he decided to create sculptures that captured tai chi's spirit. By that time, Ju had been studying with Yang for almost six years. Following his participation in an art exhibition in Japan in 1977, he decided to send several of his tai chi pieces, instead of nativistic sculpture in the Taiwan-buffalo genre. To his surprise, local art circles raised heated objections, apparently fearing that they were losing their artistic champion of Taiwan nativism (as tai chi was a martial art brought over from mainland China).
His teacher was one of the few persons who supported Ju's decision. "When Ju Ming practices tai chi, he puts his whole life into it--he regards it as a way of extending his life--I am quite moved by his attitude," Yang said during a conversation with painter Hsieh Li-fa, published in 1979 in Artists magazine. "Actually Ju Ming and water buffaloes have severed their relations," Yang explained. "An artist has to do what touches his heart--and only by doing so does he have a chance of producing work that can touch others' hearts."
Yang went on in the interview to defend his disciple's choice from an artist's standpoint: "Ju comes from the countryside, but does that mean he should be confined by the buffalo formula? Isn't everyone entitled to several stages of transformation? He has to grow, you know. To ask him to draw only from his memories and not let him deal with contemporary reality will force him to cut short his artistic life. Trying to force a formula on a budding artist is rather risky and it's a horrible thing. Ju Ming has transcended his previous 'home-boy' feelings and emotions. From practicing tai chi he has now opened his mind. How can these outdated formulas limit him any longer? He has become a different person."
When Ju first started carving his Tai Chi Series, he carefully studied each posture [ranging from 64 to 108 positions, depending on the school]. "I used to look at pictures before carving tai chi figures," Ju says. "But after I became familiar with the forms, I established my own perspective. I understood the motion from one form to another, so I've got much more than sixty-four positions to choose from." When a tai chi teacher once complained about a carving in the series because he did not recognize the particular position, Ju was delighted, because he had in fact carved a transition movement between forms: he realized that he had made great progress, as he was no longer stuck with carving only appearances: he could carve out the spirit of tai chi.
By 1980, Ju Ming had become a household name in Taiwan and around Asia, the result of successful shows in Japan and Hong Kong as well as at home. But he knew that if he was to achieve full international recognition, he would have to break into the American and European artistic scenes. He chose the United States as his first Western testing ground.
Accompanied by a close friend, he went to New York and soon settled in a Brooklyn apartment with a garage large enough for his work. To avoid complaints from neighbors about the noise from his sculpting, he transported logs home and unloaded them in the middle of the night, restricting chainsaw use to times when his neighbors were away at work. Moreover, he padded and sealed the garage as much as possible to reduce noise.
His choice and perseverance paid off. The next year, 1981, New York's Max Hutchinson Gallery mounted an exhibition of his sculptures. The show, focused on his new Living World Series, was moderately successful. Two items were sold, both painted wood: one a life-size human figure, the other a large bas-relief of a crowd. In time, Ju produced a great many more pieces in this series, and they became no less representative of his style than his tai chi works.
At that time, Echo magazine's Huang Yung-sung said that Ju's work fell into three stages: "His initial themes are Taiwanese; his Taichi Series is Chinese; and his Living World Series is international." British art commentator Ian Findlay, who wrote several reviews of the Living World Series, says these works demonstrated further progress in Ju's artistic sense and technique by combining traditional woodcarving techniques with trends in modern abstract art.
Several earlier pieces in the series are made of roughened logs, coarsely carved. "These expressionless faces and am biguous figures either look down at the ground or stare at the sky," Findlay wrote. "They seem to lack a purpose in life and are alienated from each other. The cracks and broken surfaces suggest their loneliness, fear, and despair. Strong tension has replaced the tranquillity presented by the smooth surfaces in Ju's Tai Chi Series."
The artistic transformation from tai chi to human society again prompted widespread discussion in Taiwan's art circles. Some said Ju had embraced Western techniques because he had started painting his woodcarvings; others argued that this was not necessarily a Western influence, as there were plenty of examples of painted woodcarvings in Chinese art history. Some even asked if Ju had hurt his hands when doing his large-scale Tai Chi Series, and therefore had unwillingly shifted to doing smaller pieces--a mistaken concern, as it turned out, for Ju was soon making bronze and steel works that required heavy-duty work. Ju himself took all the criticism and worry in stride, saying that he was just following a natural course by expressing his ever-changing experience and answering creative urges.
Roughly a decade later, during a 1992 interview with Hsiung Shih Art Monthly, Ju explained why he chose the Living World theme. "After all, I belong to human society and I know humans better than anything else. This subject allowed me more creative freedom, and it gave me an opportunity to look more deeply into the problems of life. I was hoping that I might be able to discover some truth during the process of creating sculptural works."
Over the years, Ju has used a broad range of materials in his work: wood (unpainted and painted), clay, stone, bronze (sometimes painted), and stainless steel. The Living World Series has gone through several permutations. One sub-theme focuses on gossipy women, for instance, another deals with happy families together, and yet another with sports--bronze and stainless-steel figures in the act of activities such as motorbiking, parachuting, and high-jumping.
In August 1991, Ju Ming also made it to London. That summer, the South Bank Centre, near the National Theatre, mounted a special exhibition on the bank of the Thames. Ju exhibited a dozen two- and three-meter-tall bronze tai chi and kungfu figures, the first Asian artist to be exhibited by the Centre. The show was an outstanding success, and the gallery had to extend the exhibition from one month to two; it subsequently traveled to six other British cities.
Later that year, Ju had the opportunity to show his work in France. The Musée d'art Contemporain à Dunkerque, in northwestern France, exhibited some selective works from his Living World Series, including many works from the sports theme. His colorful Parachuters, made of painted bronze and stainless steel, seemed to draw the most attention. Later, in December, Ju's Tai Chi Series exhibition also moved to this museum after finishing its tour of Great Britain.
In August 1995, Japan's Hakone Open-Air Museum, the oldest outdoor gallery in Asia, invited Ju to hold a solo exhibition. Established in 1969, the museum has a large collection by many 20th-century masters. Ju sent a retrospective exhibition of his work, eighty pieces in all, and the show marked in many respects his international a coming-of-age as a renowned sculptor.
Looking back on his artistic life thus far, Ju says that it has been a process not only of choosing the right path, but also of being willing to give up one path for another. It's both the choices and the "giving-ups," he says, that make all the difference. Early in his life, his father sent him to be apprenticed to a respected craftsman, and that opened the door to woodcarving. But eventually he decided to leave that path and start anew with Yuyu Yang. He says that this "parting" philosophy has been essential to his success.
"Teacher Yang often told me that my skill was too good and I needed to part with it in order to avoid triteness," he says, referring to his teacher's concern with the tendency for an artist's accomplished techniques to mask the "spirit" of a sculptured work. "I only had an incomplete comprehension of his meaning at first, but I kept it in mind and tried to understand it better. It isn't easy to part with something you've tried so hard to achieve, and knowing what to leave behind and what to keep is even more difficult."
Ju, now in his 60s, is still an active sculptor, but he also enjoys living a more relaxed life, traveling less and spending more time at home. Simple enjoyments--drinking good tea, eating hand-made steamed buns, harvesting vegetables he has planted himself, and enjoying the company of children--these are the sorts of things, he says, that bring him the greatest joy. Although seemingly disengaged from society, he is not indifferent to it--not surprising, of course, for one who has produced so many works in the Living World Series. "An artist patterns his work after nature, gains experience from human society, and keeps creating new horizons for tradition." Ju Ming says, reflecting on a long and fulfilling career. It is a process made clear by his own stunning work.
Translated and adapted by Eugenia Yun from [Carving for Humanity: A Biography of Ju Ming] , by Meng-yu Yang. Taipei: Commonwealth Publishing Co., 1997, 337pp. ISBN 957-621-398-3.