Chinese Art in Europe.

If you enjoy the Chinese Arts, Lingnan, Chao Shao-an or any angle of Traditional Chinese Art then I hope you like what you find here today!
Neil Armstrong. (fmip.fbip.)
Chinese Art in Europe.
by Armstrong
 

Monk under Jasmine Blossom Tree.

Is there such a thing?

Here again I tried to find the real tree  and every time it comes out sidelopped. See two posts below this one for that explanation.

The happier side to these lessons were that I actually liked the way the tree side stepped its blossoms. It was as if the Monk had some kind of value or relevance to the nature of it.

The tree I wandered in and out of the Mustard Seed gardens teachings. I am not a professional I state at the outset just someone who is determined to learn and who enjoys the effort of learning such a diverse education. That education being the education of limb control. training my hand to make the movements that represent the same manner Chao Shao-an used to paint his works.

An understanding of the Lingnan spontaneous style has been the most difficult arena I have entered into.
I would recommend it to anyone eager to try the Chinese Arts. I made all the mistakes the naïve do when they start out. including buying ink stones made of pottery. Ink sticks made of car engine oil and highly highly poisonous. on and on..... lessons quickly learned.

Send me a comment if yo9u have a painting you would like included online somewhere outside f a c e b o o k s soul destroying arena.
Or if you'd like one of your own.

 


Wednesday, September 26, 2018, 11:27 PM
( 5 / 11 )

by Armstrong
 

Mustard Seed garden Lesson.

So we try and try  again.

One thing always to remember is to continue to try.
If the initial work does not fit the eye try again. Compare the two. Watch the initial effort while you paint the next. See what you disliked about the initial effort and do not do it again.
Easy.

here is another attempt and still before I realised that the right sidedness of the tree was a subconscious affair. See previous post for that explanation.


Wednesday, September 26, 2018, 11:19 PM
( 5 / 30 )

Chinese Paper, Paintings
Progress always... Chao Shao-An.
by Armstrong
 

Mustard Seed Garden Lesson. 

Sometimes the difficulty is stepping outside the standard lessons line and not overvaluing that precious and very expensive piece of Chinese Xuan paper and saying, OK, let's wander off into something different.

It can be very easy to stay on track and keep to the rules. Today I post a p[ainting which in the end took on four different hues because I tried to find out why the image didn't work. the painting.
the reason it didn't work was that the flowers were very off balance. the reason? That the flowers were always off sided???
My Wife has just has  a brain tumor removed. After wakening from the initial operation and having to go into a second emergency operation she awoke finally paralysed down her right side and initially could not speak.

My painting continually came out one sided. This is absolutely true.

So these next few posts are from that period where I tried to find a solution to the painting only to have it pointed out to me by a friend half way across the world.

Neil Armstrong.


Wednesday, September 26, 2018, 11:17 PM
( 0 / 0 )

Ink Sticks, Chinese Brushes, Chinese Paper, China, Paintings, History
Midsummer 2017.
by Armstrong

Raggedybird.com Raggedy Bird Chao Shao-an painting chinese arts

4th August 2017. It's a beautiful world.
Chinese Art Supliers we trust!

If you're determined enough you will slowly start to see the attitude of the brush resemble Chao's work, or whichever Master you work and learn from by Example. It is a slow road for most and I will never claim I am now or ever will be a Master.

That would be foolhardy.

For one thing I have never been brought up in China, nor have I had the life of a Chinese person.
Nor have I worked, eaten, breathed slept and survived in anywhere Chinese.

So, that massive side of Chinese spirituality will always be missing.
I am western conditioned, regardless of the fact that I hate that branding.

Lucky for us, in the 2000's we can purchase from China the art materials we so badly need from any number of outlets advertising across the world. 

Two that I particularly love and trust enough to spend copious fund swith are www.Inkston.com and www.HMayXuanPaper.com because the quality, material range and speed of service as well as the perfect degree of one to one communicationmakes these suppliers the top of anyones list.... if you're serious about the Chinese Arts.

I, for one, cannot stand to use anything that is strictly not traditionally Chinese. Nor do I enjoy using liquid inks, I more prefer to make that black ink from an ink stick because I know that sticks history and I know the forests it came from and I can see it in my minds eye....... and its what the Chinese have done for so many ages past.  

As with the paper. As old as I can afford it. I prefer that off white look to it. Tatty edges and torn into shape.

It's something that starts to grow on you spiritually as you as you study the art more and more. It is as if the fibres of Chinese something slowly integrate and help you see what should be there, as opposed to what you thought ought to be there instead.

It is a gentle journey, and one I respect in that THIS is CHINESE not Western. I use Chinese stone for the seals, Chinese bamboo for the brushes. It is as if something has suddenly repelled me from the western side of Art.

I do not look too deeply as to why I enjoy it so much. I simply enjoy what feels to flourish as time crawls on. I am me. I am English. But not neccessarily by nature.


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Wednesday, August 2, 2017, 10:00 PM
( 0 / 0 )

by Armstrong

Tonight's Chao Shao-an Practice.

Translation:= The four great things are all void and empty:
sit for a while
and forget about being you or me.
Both sides are highways;
drink a cup
and each go east or west.


This evening I thought I'd post the practice I work upon in the Studio here in Scotland.  After yet another fruitful trip to China I managed to obtain some superb paper which is probably meant for calligraphy but, as the Owner said ion the Art Store, "You use it as you feel."

This painting is a little saddening for me as, because of the origin of the material, I remember the elements that cost me someone I deemed a friend. I think greed got in there somewhere.

I purchased from someone a pair of ink sticks. Nothing unusual there... I had purchased many things from this person and to the tune of over £1000ukp but these two ink sticks were destined to cost me £100 or so with shipping. Upon using them it was apparent that they were at least 80% glue. That being the case they were the sort of "tourist" objects sold to travelling holidaymakers and not Artists. This is common and in the 14 years I have studied this field I have seen it and been victim to it many times.

On this occasion there was no reasoning with the person supplying. These were definitely NOT Huishi Hu Kaiwen ink sticks from the revered Chinese oldest Ink Stick factory.

I videoed the results twice and on each occasion the excuses got wilder and wilder. The ink sticks were supposed to be identical in use to the one I already have; a genuine one that works and makes ink in about 2 minutes. The pair delivered didn't make anything more than very pale grey dishwater.

The person supplying them insisted they were genuine and became offensive and I had to walk the other way I'm afraid. Life's too short to suffer antagonistics.

The books I studied to get this painting were supplied by her hence the disappointment of their memory in use. But we have to move forwards when we are bitten so many times in life.

Chao Shao-an Practice - Walking in Chao Shao-ang's Footsteps.

 

Translation:= With ten thousand volumes of books,
in perfect quietude one converses
with sages and saints.


Sometimes in the evening I sit and look at a particular painting by Chao Shao-An.

Then I sit and look at the colours and wonder how thin the paint was in some parts of the painting.
Then  I look at the scratches where the bristles have split and scored lines with the main body of the brush head.
Then I look at the range of colours used.
Then I look at the space around the subject
and the complimentary incidental plants or branches included in the composition
and how much quieter they are than the main subject; the point of interest.

Then I choose some paper.
Then I try.

This is a copy of a painting he has done.
Walking in his footsteps.
Then  I will paint this again & again & again.

And when I feel a degree of fluency come through I'll change the bird and change the flora. Such as it is.

For me it's something beautiful to leave the computer behind with Animation and Dragons, Elves and Ogres and sit outside electronica and paint in this ancient fashion which is where the initial drive to paint Chinese came from.


Thursday, April 13, 2017, 10:55 PM
( 0 / 0 )

Ink Stones, Ink Sticks, Chinese Brushes, Chinese Paper, Water Bowls, China, Paintings, History
Chao Shao-an Practice. But what of others?
by Armstrong
"In Situ". Studying hard the practice of Chao Shao-an style Chinese Painting!
But Phones are definitely
not worthy of displaying our Works?

It's been a while since I've felt the need to write something inside this Blog.  Actually, its not a blog, it's more of a standard website from the days of the 1990's in so far as it allows full width formatting and shows the Paintings I work on and from in large detail. Big enough to see without pussyfooting about with fade in galleries and giant arrows on the images. I hate that.

Artists need  S P A C E . Not between the ears either.
The ability for other artists to display their work seems to have been crushed with social media sites. I host with HeartInternet utilising the fastest servers on the planet without limits on space or bandwidth because you need something of a vehicle to display what you're doing in the Arts with impact.

Phones are not browsers.
Too many people are sadly dependant on squinched up little images shown on what basically amounts to a Phone site. How on earth we're supposed to impress a client or potential customer with an image three inches across baffles me and the design of sites that are "phone shaped" and only utilise the middle third of a screen...... and that's acceptable?

Size matters.
The only way to seriously browse the web is through a proper desktop device or large laptop. If you're on a "just passing" crusade with your life and its progress and your study levels mimics this.... then so will your life achievements.
I'm afraid a postage stamp sized representation of your achievements...... kind of self declares by its size, the level of achievement to onlookers.

One Taker brave enough.
I'm happy to say that Darlene Kaplan, an American Chinese Art Enthusiast of some note who is quite achieved in this field in the states has taken up the offer I put out on a social site of having a full scale blog to post her work on.
I get the impression that it is a challenge for her as web technologies are not her hot spot but... she is ready for the challenge and already has several online prescences though sadly... some adhere to the failings stated above. 
One of her sites kind of hung off left on 27% of the screen.   Who the hell designs these things? SEE HERE Darlene's newa nd upcoming Blog....... and bookmark it because it will be worth your attention And, as you'll see, it uses the whole of that brand new monitor your new computer came with. Not just the middle third bit.
Her works are seen across the planet andif, like me, you've been in the field a while and enjoy seeing the work of others because you can now appreciate it, her posts will be worth the time it takes to read them.

Old coding still works, it's just called something ridiculous now.
In 1994 we used "variable parameters" on the pages so that it didn't matter what you viewed the site on it organised itself to fit.  Now they call this "Adaptive" as if its some kind of magic programming that's come about but in truth, its been missing for years because programmers and coders and internet designers have been lame, lazy and basically..... crap.  Spewing out nonsense sites and convincing their clientele that "This is the way forwards!"

Let us pray!
I hope that by the next decade's end we have a system where people are once again looking at high definition internet sites on large viewers because if you went to the movies and were handed a three inch handheld pocket device to watch the movie on while you walked around the refreshment booth, you'd want your money back.

Increasing Numbers to the Chinese Arts in the West.
Pleasingly, there are more and more people taking up the Chinese Arts. Sadly, too many are mixing it with Westernisms and this is a contamination not tolerated by the traditionalists in China.  That's a bit like going out for a Chinese meal and then being asked if you want some Bisto poured all over your rice.
You wouldn't.
So why play this game with something that's historically beautiful. No, I have zero toleration for Western Infiltration of pollutants in this most ancient art to the degree there is nothing western on my Art Table at all. I have never indulged in Western Style Painting. only Chinese. I am lucky in this respect as I have no habitual traits to spoil the progressive walk I demand from it.

Are you an Artist looking for a way to display your works? Bigger than the patronising social sites allow you? You can write to me and we can see what can be done.   

Neil Armstrong. 


Friday, September 9, 2016, 10:39 PM
1 comment 1 comment ( 762 views )  |  
( 4.8 / 19 )

Chinese Paper, China, Paintings, History
The New Landscape of Chinese Ink Painting !
by RaggedyBird

The New Landscape of Chinese Ink Painting 


From "Fresh Ink," Arnold Chang's Secluded Valley in the Cold Mountains (detail), 2008, handscroll, is a response to Jackson Pollock's classic drip painting Number 10.
COURTESY MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, BOSTON/PROPERTY OF THE ARTIST

Contemporary Chinese art has attracted so much attention in recent years that it is hard to imagine any overlooked artist or movement. But while many oil painters and conceptual artists like Cai Guo-Qiang and Zhang Huan have become art stars and millionaires, practitioners of traditional ink-and-brush painting have largely been ignored. Now, with major exhibitions in the works at U.S. museums, and with strong results in the auction houses, contemporary Chinese ink painting is finally moving into the spotlight.


"It is time for people to get to know about China in a more esthetic, contemplative way," says Hao Sheng, curator of Chinese art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where his exhibition "Fresh Ink: Ten Takes on Chinese Tradition" will open on November 20. The exhibition will pair works from the museum’s renowned collection of Chinese painting with art made in response to it by contemporary Chinese artists, many of whom are trained in classical ink painting.

Painting with brush and ink on rice paper is a traditional form of Chinese painting. "I prefer to call it 'calligraphy painting,' a type of painting that is influenced by a literary imagination and the written word," says Johnson Chang, curator and owner of Hanart TZ Gallery in Hong Kong, who has been at the forefront of promoting contemporary ink painting for the past two decades.

"Ink art," as some curators call it, can encompass a wide range of untraditional techniques, even multimedia productions that evoke classical art and the literati tradition. "All the contemporary formats of art can combine with the tradition of ink painting," says Kuiyi Shen, professor of Asian art history, theory, and criticism at the University of California, San Diego, and cocurator (with Britta Erickson and Lu Hong) in 2007 of the Third Chengdu Biennale, which was devoted to contemporary ink painting. "Ink is an idea, an esthetic, that can reflect ideas of modern people," he emphasizes.
Focusing on artists who demonstrate a relationship to the past, Hao Sheng found a surprising range of approaches within the ten he selected for "Fresh Ink," from the Chinese American Arnold Chang, who studied classical ink painting for more than 20 years, to the MacArthur Award-winning conceptual artist Xu Bing, who recently returned to China, after more than a decade in New York, to serve as vice chairman of Beijing's Central Academy of Fine Arts, China's leading art school. "These artists' relationship with tradition is very diverse," says Sheng. "There are those who seek to hold up the highest standards. Then there are others who seek to subvert them. But these challenges are also based on a deep knowledge of what the tradition is."


Scholars have been interested in contemporary ink painting since the inception of the New Ink Painting movement in Taiwan and Hong Kong, in the '60s, but "Fresh Ink" will give a wider audience an opportunity to see ink painting made by living practitioners. The MFA’s collection provided plenty of inspiration for the artists. Yu Hong, a woman artist, chose to respond to Court Ladies Preparing Newly Woven Silk (early 12th century) by painting directly on silk banners. Traditionalist Li Huayi, inspired by Northern Song dynasty scrolls, inscribed a landscape of craggy mountains, pines, and clouds on a series of screens. Qin Feng made calligraphic abstract strokes across accordion-like, towering screens. Xu Bing, known for his experimental approach to Chinese characters, took the 17th-century Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting as his starting point, scanning motifs from it and rearranging them.


"The concept of learning from the past is something that happens in all art making but certainly has deep tradition in Chinese art," says Sheng, referring to the Chinese academic training that requires students to learn by copying the masters. Ironically, many of the artists in the show had seen the classical works only in reproduction, since so many masterpieces were smuggled out of China during the civil war of the '30s through the Communist period.


"I am not attracted to ink painting because it is a hot new area," says Arnold Chang, who lives in New York. "I've been doing ink painting since I was a kid." Chang was taught by the master painter and collector C. C. Wang and also studied with James Cahill, the prominent scholar of Chinese art at the University of California, Berkeley. He thus acquired better training in ink painting than many of his colleagues in China, especially those who grew up during the Cultural Revolution, when traditional art forms were considered feudal and antirevolutionary and were strictly forbidden.
For the exhibition, Chang chose a non-Chinese work, Jackson Pollock's Number 10 (1949), and produced a landscape of similar dimensions. "I am a contemporary artist, yes, but how do we define contemporary Chinese art? Is it contemporary art done by Chinese people? Or is it Chinese art done by contemporary people?"
Placing himself and his art in the latter category, Chang acknowledges that works like his appeal mostly to those already steeped in the classical tradition. "If it opens up the world of actual Chinese painting to contemporary audiences, then I would feel completely gratified," he says.


In contrast to Chang's conservative approach, many Chinese artists are taking liberties with what is sometimes called the "ink esthetic." Qiu Zhijie, for example, is a conceptual artist who has made photographs, installations, and ink drawings. In 2009, when his works were not released from customs in time for the opening of a show at Chambers Fine Art in New York, he painted a surrealistic landscape, reflecting his circumstances, directly on the gallery wall.
For a recent show at Contrasts Gallery in Shanghai, curator Gao Minglu, a renowned scholar, selected artists who were considering ink from various points of view, including He Xiangyu, who made pigment from Coca-Cola, and Zhang Yu, who made pictures entirely from his inky fingerprints. "In the past, ink painting was a very elitist sort of thing, but now contemporary artists use it to address daily life," Gao says.

"My main focus is to look for works where the artist is still resonating with the past in some way," says Maxwell Hearn, curator of Asian art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, who is planning a contemporary-ink survey show. His recent exhibition "Mastering the Art of Chinese Painting: Xie Zhiliu (1910–1997)" gave audiences an idea of how a 20th-century master of ink painting prepared for his projects.
Although Xie represents an older generation, his estate was an invaluable find, because it included sketchbooks and tracings that had clearly been used to make the seemingly spontaneous paintings. "I had always had the idea that Chinese artists meditate for three days in front of a blank piece of paper and then create beautiful masterpieces.

But, no, Chinese artists, like Western artists, make preparatory sketches," Hearn says.
Most museum curators in the United States have been trained in classical but not contemporary Chinese art, and they would like to build a bridge between the two. Ink painting is popular in China, where it is practiced by amateur enthusiasts as well as trained artists. It has generated important shows. In Hong Kong, where there is a large community of collectors and supporters of ink painting, dealer Alice King is spearheading a movement to establish a contemporary-ink museum in the West Kowloon Cultural District.


"It is something that the West hasn't really understood or been keyed into, but anyone with an understanding of ink painting sees that it is one of the really important movements at the moment," says independent curator Britta Erickson, author of On the Edge: Contemporary Chinese Artists Encounter the West, who is currently working on a series of videos about contemporary ink painters.


There is certainly a growing interest among Chinese collectors for works by 20th-century masters of ink painting. In May of this year, Aachensee Lake (1968) by Zhang Daqian sold for an astonishing $14.8 million at China Guardian Auctions in Beijing. The figure rivaled records achieved by such contemporary art stars as Zhang Xiaogang and Yue Minjun and demonstrated the strength of the market for modernist ink paintings in mainland China. Just weeks later, Christie's Hong Kong made more than $27 million in a single afternoon sale of modern Chinese paintings, with works by Fu Baoshi and Xu Beihong attracting bids topping $1 million.


Now the question is whether this enthusiasm will spread to contemporary practitioners of ink painting. The record for a contemporary artist is $976,569, for Xu Bing's The Living Word (2001), which is strong but pales in comparison to prices for the top-selling Chinese oil painters. "We have been concentrating on new ink painting because it is much more undervalued and modest in price, so people can build good collections in it still, and I think there is a lot of very interesting work being done in it," says New York/London dealer Michael Goedhuis, who represents several artists included in "Fresh Ink," such as Liu Dan, Qin Feng, and Li Jin. He says he has works by them available for less than $75,000. (A more traditional painter, Li Huayi, who shows with Eskenazi Limited in London, sells for between $300,000 and $1 million.)


Contemporary ink art is featured in galleries specializing in contemporary Chinese art around the world. In New York, it can be found at Chambers Fine Art, Ethan Cohen Fine Arts, and China 2000 Fine Art; in London, at Michael Goedhuis and Eskenazi; and in Hong Kong, at Alice King, Hanart TZ, and Schoeni Art Gallery. At Chambers Fine Art, works by Qiu Zhijie sell for $20,000 to $200,000, while Wang Tiande, who creates calligraphy with cigarette burns on rice paper, sells for up to $150,000. Ethan Cohen also shows Qin Feng, for prices as high as $500,000. Qin Feng, whose works have fetched $450,000 at auction, has created a series of silk screens with Pace Prints, priced at $2,500 to $10,000 for each print.


"We see that interest in contemporary ink paintings is expanding, and the strongest interest seems to be among collectors who are already interested in modern Chinese paintings," says Elizabeth Hammer, Chinese-art specialist at Christie's New York. "However, I think it unlikely that contemporary ink will follow in the footsteps of contemporary Chinese art, as the collectors interested in these two areas, and the type of marketing and exposure dedicated to each, have been and continue to be quite different."


One obstacle cited by those involved in this market is that Westerners have little education in classical Chinese art, so they have not developed connoisseurship in the field and may not be sensitive to the nuances or able to pick up the references in these more contemporary artworks. "I think about this all the time, because I am working in a museum in America and I am showing some of the finest objects of the Chinese tradition," says Sheng. "How to get people to accept that these works are so beautiful and so important is a challenge."


He hopes that by pairing classical and contemporary, he will help the audience understand the works. "I think when we show contemporary and classical works together, the interpretation goes both ways. The classical works provide historical background for the new works, while the new works offer a new interpretation for the old ones."

 


Thursday, May 26, 2011, 05:38 PM
( 5 / 47 )

China, Paintings, History
Artists: Gordon Cheung
by RaggedyBird

       Gordon Cheung      
 
(From Yahoo Wikipedia)

Gordon Cheung (born 1975) is a contemporary artist who captures the mood of the global collapse of civilization where moral, economic, and environmental crises have spun out of control.

Spiritual undertones are balanced alongside familiar contemporary images including sources from popular media, cyberspace, nature, graffiti, kitsch, and historical painting.


Cheung has recently used video animation and sculpture in his work, but focuses mainly on painting. He chooses bold colors and often paints on dense collages made from London's pink financial times listings with ink, oil, acrylic gel and spray paint.

During an interview he has said of his work, "They're meant to be artificially luminous, a metaphor perhaps for the loss of that utopian vision of the future after the millennium bug threat, the .com crash, the collapse of Enron, the war on terror- and all before the current recession. Yet it's also meant to suggest a glimmer of hope."

Cheung received an MFA from the Royal College of Art in 2001, and currently lives and works in London. Gordon's works can be found in major collections both in Europe and America including Elspeth & Imogen Turner Collection (UK) and Stephane Janssen Collection (USA), works from both collections are loaned to major museums on a regular basis.

References
http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/yourgallery/artist_profile//371.html
http://www.gordoncheung.com/PAGES/archive/Arc_Press_Reviews/r_2009-02-artworld.html
http://www.gordoncheung.com/PAGES/archive/Arc_Press_Reviews/rev_i-dmag_sept05.html

 


Tuesday, May 10, 2011, 10:05 AM
( 5 / 18 )


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