After One Century

	Gao had an intense childhood art education in mainland China focusing on European-style drawing and oil painting. This special background makes him the most renowned ink wash painter as he successfully blend Western format in Oriental culture and his stories in his art. His pictures occupy nearly the full frame of the paper, and, echoing his life as a teller of tales, each painting is a story. From his artworks we can feel loneliness and everything he has gone through in his life. It is usually depicted in his ink wash paintings stands a man facing the sea on a mountainous object. Once a refugee from China he flee from Beijing’s control after the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown. He was forced to destruct his work and while most of his work was banned in China. He later exiled to France and become a citizen there. Gao received his first lesson of oil painting in high school. In1978 when he had a chance to visit the Louvre, he was deeply impressed by Western masterpieces. Since the Renaissance, the western paintings were so unbeatable and he thought it was difficult to transcend the West. When seeing the ink paintings of Picasso, he thought the Westerns cannot master the layers of ink well, which later gave rise to his whim of blending the East and West. Ever since the Tang and Song dynasties, the development of Chinese ink paintings has been fully fledged and it was less likely to make a breakthrough. Meanwhile, admitting that it was meaningless to copy the West, he tried to paint the rice paper with ink. Although ink wash painting was not something new, it carried boarder meanings in Chinese.Not simply creating appearance of the objects, but to capture its soul as well as temperament and liveliness. Knowing so much about modern Western art, Gao has finely appreciated the importance given to the physical act of painting, the exploration on pictorial materiality, and specially, the autonomous status of painting. The artworks exude a fluid technique and spontaneous overflow, with lightly brushstrokes, by means of which he explores the painterly possibilities of ink. White and black, light and shadow, achieve a great variety of tonalities, giving a sensual and poetic effect full of texture. The success of Gao’s ink wash painting should be attributed to his emphasis on his own self-reflection. The pictures fluctuate between figurative and abstract painting, depicting images that in a broader sense remind of landscapes and inner worlds, as well as cosmic processes inspired by the artists’ reflections on the complexity of the human existence. He puts the emphasis on the subtle play of light and shadow, flat surfaces exuding a three-dimensional depth La sérénité, 2011 Indian ink on canvas 200x300 cm Gao Xingjian said his painting is like the heart of self and the inner landscape and a fresh painting language. He was once deprived of freedom. When reporters asked about what is the most valuable things in life, he immediately replied with a word freedom. From most of his paintings, we may feel how lonely he was separate from others and how strong his eagerness was to embrace the sky. Seeing the same landscapes and figures, the outcomes may vary across the viewers’ attitudes at the moment. With reference to the La sérénité(Serenity), the ink applied on the sun is very shallow and the direction of ink flows represents the sun rays out flowing from the centre of the sun. Looking at the bottom part of the painting was a mountain rising or a cliff enclosing, a liquid dispersal of ink resembling the distance of the objects where the blackness fades out gradually from the right. The focus of the painting stands a man facing the mountains. Being the centre of the painting, Gao applied the darkest layers of ink on the man whose posture shows resemblance to the Wanderer above the sea of mist by German Romantic artist Caspar David Friedrich. Wanderer above the sea of mist,1818 Oil on canvas 98.4x74.8 cm It is evident that Gao XingJian’s paintings are heavily influenced by the Romanticism which stresses on the importance of the free expression of the artists’ feelings. The importance the Romantics placed on untrammeled feeling is summed up in the remark of the German painter Caspar David Friedrich that "the artist's feeling is his law". To William Wordsworth poetry should be "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings". In order to truly express these feelings, the content of the art must come from the imagination of the artist, with as little interference as possible from "artificial" rules dictating what a work should consist of. The philosophies of these great pioneers are compatible with the belief of Gao XingJian and his abstract paintings can be summarized as the strong influence of the Eastern Figurative techniques combined to the big passion for Western Contemporary Painting However, in “Wanderer above the sea of mist” stands a young man upon a rocky precipice, his back to the viewers. He is wrapped in a dark green overcoat, and grips a walking stick in his right hand. His hair caught in a wind, the wanderer gazes out on a landscape covered in a thick sea of fog. In the middle ground, several other ridges, perhaps not unlike the ones the wanderer himself stands upon, jut out from the mass. Through the wreaths of fog, forests of trees can be perceived atop these escarpments. In the far distance, faded mountains rise in the left, gently leveling off into lowland plains in the east. Beyond here, the pervading fog stretches out indefinitely, eventually commingling with the horizon and becoming indistinguishable from the cloud-filled sky. Wanderer above the Sea of Fog is true to the Romantic style and experts’ analysis was that the message conveyed by the painting is one of Kantian self-reflection, expressed through the wanderer's gazings into the murkiness of the sea of fog. Others assert that Wanderer presents a metaphor for the unknown future and some felt that the impression the wanderer's position atop the precipice and before the twisted outlook leaves contradictory impression, suggesting at once mastery over a landscape and the insignificance of the individual within it. Yes, the image emerges not from the material but from the viewer’s memory, the sensations the viewer associates with places. In art, we never reach consensus. The form and image could never tell the answer. Other Reference from Romanticism

Reference:


http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/11/arts/11iht-seno.1.13566297.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&
http://www.ipreciation.dreamhosters.com/test/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=13%3Agao-xingjian-&catid=12%3A-gao-xing-jian-&Itemid=2&lang=en
http://www.homabooks.com/general/books/east_asia/china/1007.php
http://www.palais-des-papes.com/anglais/expositions.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ink_wash_painting
http://www.torbandena.com/en/index.php?sez=expo&page=05a
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstract_painting
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanticism
"GAO XINGJIAN-Return to Painting"
"另一種美學-高行健"
"Ink Paintings by Gao XingJian-Nobel Prize Winner"
"Darkness and Light-an exhibition of recent works by Gao XingJian"