Pine Spirit, Wu Guanzhong

Artwork Overview

1919–2010
Pine Spirit, 1984
Where object was made: China
Material/technique: Chinese ink; paper; color
Dimensions:
Sheet/Paper Dimensions (Height x Width): 70 x 140 cm
Sheet/Paper Dimensions (Height x Width): 27 9/16 x 55 1/8 in
Frame Dimensions (Height x Width x Depth): 36 1/2 x 66 1/8 x 2 1/2 in
Weight (Weight): 34 lbs
Credit line: Museum purchase: Gift of E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation
Accession number: 1991.0003
Not on display

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Images

Label texts

Exhibition Label: “An Elegant Gathering: Selections from the Collection Honoring Dr. and Mrs. Li,” Feb-2009, Kris Ercums After studying under Lin Fengmian 林風眠 (1900-1991) and Pan Tianshou 潘天寿 (1897-1971), Wu was awarded a government scholarship in 1946 to continue his art education at Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts in Paris. In 1950 he returned to teach at the newly established Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, which was dominated by socialist realism. As a self-styled “fortress of bourgeois formalism” he was severely criticized and because of his refusal to conform to political dogma he was eventually banned from painting in 1966. More than a decade later, when he finally began to paint again, Wu developed a new style that forged Western and Chinese media and formal principles. In Pine Spirit, dots explode across the surface amid dancing lines and bold brushstrokes with only minimal concern for the naturalistic shapes of mountains and pines. Exhibition Label: “Transformations,” Feb-2006, Mary Dusenbury and Alison Miller In this painting, Wu Guanzhong is looking both to the ancient Chinese tradition of shan-shui-hua and to abstract expressionism, transforming both into a highly individual and compelling vision of “mountains and rivers.” Archive Label 2003 (version 2): Wu Guanzhong was trained at the National Hangzhou Academy of Art in Western painting. He studied with the head of the Academy, Lin Fengmian, an artist deeply influenced by Post-Expressionism and Fauvism. In 1946, Wu received a scholarship to study in Paris where he gained a deeper understanding and appreciation of contemporary French painting. In 1950 Wu made the difficult decision to return to China hoping to contribute what he had learned to the new nation. Although he was given a professorship at the Central Academy of Art in Beijing, his formal approach was out of favor in a milieu of social-realism. In 1967, as the full force of the Cultural Revolution swept the country, Wu was sent to a labor farm and forbidden to paint. After ten years of hardship, Wu began to work intensely again in the comparative freedom that followed the end of the Cultural Revolution. Using both Western and Chinese media, he developed a radically new style based on his interpretation of the diverse formal principles of beauty found in contemporary European painting, traditional Chinese art, and the world of nature. In his Chinese-style (guohua) painitngs, Wu paints dots and lines in both ink and watercolor to build up semi-abstract forms. While the spectrum of colors and the practice of dripping ink and clolors onto the paper have no precedent in traditional Chinese painting, Wu uses the flexible Chinese brush to create lines of diverse widths and textures that are impossible with a Western brush. In Pine Spirit, dots explode across the surface amid dancing lines and bold brushstrokes with only minimal concern for the naturalistic shapes of mountains and pines. Archive Label 2003 (version 1): Wu Guanzhong studied Western painting at the National Hangzhou Academy of Art in Beijing under Lin Fengmian, an artist deeply influenced by Post-Expressionism and Fauvism, before moving to France in 1946. In 1950 Wu returned to China as a professor at the Central Academy of Art in Beijing, hoping to contribute what he had learned to the new nation. He found, however, that his formal approach was out of favor in a milieu of social-realism and in 1967, as the Cultural Revolution swept the country, Wu was sent to a labor farm and forbidden to paint. A decade later, when he finally began to paint again, Wu developed a radically new style that forged western and Chinese media and formal principles of beauty. In Pine Spirit, Wu paints dots and lines in both ink and watercolor to build up semi-abstract forms. Dots explode across the surface amid dancing lines and bold brushstrokes with only minimal concern for the naturalistic shapes of mountains and pines.

Resources

Audio

Didactic – Art Minute
Didactic – Art Minute
Episode 65 Apr-2006, David Cateforis, Associate Professor of Art History I’m David Cateforis with another art minute from the Spencer Museum of Art. “Pine Spirit,” a 1984 painting by the Chinese artist Wu Guanzhong, synthesizes influences from Western abstract painting and traditional Chinese landscape art. Born in 1919, Wu studied art both in China and France, gaining a firm grounding in Chinese ink painting and Western oil painting. “Pine Spirit,” executed in the traditional Chinese media of watercolors and ink on paper, is a highly abstracted depiction of a scene in the Yellow Mountains. Fluent lines and puddles of tan define the craggy background mountains while the foreground features a tangle of looping black ink lines energetically splashed onto the paper. These gestural lines recall the style of Jackson Pollock, the American abstract expressionist famous for his drip paintings. At the same time, they conjure the sweeping branches of the pine tree evoked in the painting’s title. In China the pine symbolizes longevity and steadfastness, which are fitting qualities for an artist who was in his mid-60s when he made the Spencer’s painting. But Wu Guanzhong’s painting seems above all to express youthful energy - experienced in nature and poured into art. From the Spencer Museum of Art, I’m David Cateforis.