text by Chia Chi Jason Wang
I. Studies
Many years after Paul Cézanne's (1839-1906) death, the painter Emile Bernard (1868-1941) published an article recalling that he once took a walk with Cézanne in the hometown Aix of the latter one day in 1904. In the course of their walk, Cézanne talked to him that an artist “must make an optic” of his own and such optic should be based “upon nature.” Bernard asked further whether he meant by “a union of the universe and the individual.” Cézanne answered, “I conceived it as a personal appreciation. I situate this appreciation in sensation, and I ask that the intelligence organize it into a work.” “But of what sensation do you speak? Of those of your feelings, or of those of your retina?” queried Bernard. And Cézanne replied, ”I think that there cannot be a separation between them; besides, being a painter I attach myself first of all to visual sensation.”
The conversation between Cézanne and Bernard provides a fundamental, concrete reasoning for us to grasp better what Cézanne had meant by “treat nature by the cylinder, the sphere, the cone,” also brought up in the same year. When Cézanne wrote down this sentence, he also pointed out in the same letter addressed to Bernard: “Lines parallel to the horizon give breadth, that is a section of nature or, if you prefer, of the spectacle that the Pater Omnipotens Aeterne Deus spreads out before our eyes. Lines perpendicular to this horizon give depth. But nature for us men is more depth than surface, whence the need of introducing into our light vibrations, represented by reds and yellows, a sufficient amount of blue to give the impression of air.”
Although those words by Cézanne were to inspire and influence Cubism as well as the development of abstract art and would be regarded as a major starting point of abstract art, Cézanne had insisted painting outdoors throughout his life. He chose to face nature directly and let nature reveal itself through the communion between his intelligence and hands. As written by Cézanne, “One must see one's model correctly and experience it in the right way; and further express oneself forcibly and with distinction.” Nature, being the subject of Cézanne, is a manifestation of the Creator—namely what Cézanne had called “Pater Omnipotens Aeterne Deus”—and it is the artist that represents through his personal perception and vision.
Hu Kun-Jung (b. 1955) has persisted in geometric abstract expressions since the 1980s, despite the fact that his formal skills and artistic concept originated more from the lineage of pure-abstraction after the 1910s, especially abstract art of the 1960s, which was no direct heir to Cézanne. For this, it seems somewhat peculiar that Hu Kun-Jung remained spiritually attached to Cézanne.
In 1981, Hu Kun-Jung gave his first solo exhibition at the American Cultural Center in Taipei, in which he showed a series of painting entitled “Surface.” As early as that, he already emphasized that he was searching for “new construction of any kind” in art, by deliberately dismissing any possible association with “nature,” such as the universe, landscape and flowers. It was in his hope that he could “perceive the beauty of the absolute reason purely by means of the verticality, horizontality, sizes and colors within the picture plane.” Be that as it may, the kind of structural thinking about colors that Hu has unveiled in the “Surface” series is kind of reminiscent of what Cézanne has left behind. In terms of form, the shapes that Hu constructs by laying out or piling up colors still recall scenes from reality. The construction of colors reminds one of a mountain; also, the mapping of color blocks or strips suggests that Hu was conscious of the structure of Cézanne's rock forms. Only the difference remains that, while Cézanne's subject was clearly the landscape of his hometown, Hu seems to have taken the form and structure of Cézanne as his subject. In other words, based on his personal view on pure abstract art, Hu refers to Cézanne's form and structure for a free-style maneuver. Moreover, the work as reconstructed by Hu sometimes betrays formal likeness to traditional Chinese landscape painting.
The formal purity Hu had aimed for was gradually realized after 1984. In an artist's statement dated 1984, he reiterated “color is a major factor that affects my two-dimensional form and structure,” and “the immediacy of my color fields is intimately related to the straight lines that define forms.” For Hu, the colors do not bear any symbolic meanings; instead, “the role they play depends purely on the shape and size they occupy.” “The spatial significance” as formed by the color fields and shapes is not only “unrelated to any existing ideal space;” the colors and shapes also “do not convey any specific space.” Instead, it is the color fields and shapes that define space.
In his 1984 personal statement, Hu also expressed for the first time that he was indeed not very fond of the “strong colors” already seen in his works, although they were dictated by the way he created and seemed inevitable. He wrote, “ I am more fond of intermediate colors,” and “I do not put emphasis on whether the spirit of my painting belongs to the East or the West.” In general, Hu has expounded in this statement his view of pure art as well as his aesthetic preference and choice in form.
Through Hu's statement, it is not too difficult to see that his view for art was not particularly different from the one that had swept widely in the European and American art worlds since the early 20th century through the 1960s—that is, “painting should be an absolute entity with no relation to the objects of the visible world, and that it should be composed of completely abstract forms whose origin were in the mind.” In other words, a work of art is self-autonomous and self-illuminating in nature and should not be an imitator of the external world by any means. However, what is equally worth questioning remains: as a contemporary artist, how could Hu stand out with distinction within the kind of theoretical mist that has been frequently made and heard in the international art scene?
Seen in retrospection, the artistic efforts made by Hu during the 1980s that proved most stimulating and expandable for his later development can be seen in a few three-dimensional works he had shown in a group exhibition titled “Difference in Space” at the Spring Gallery, also in Taipei, in 1984. He used long, narrow painted wooden slabs or strips, which vary in all kinds of length, as his basic medium for spatial construction. To one's surprise, Hu arranged the wooden slabs or strips respectively of different colors into uneven slanting angles and spacings, when he made them lean against the display wall. Thus, he successfully constructed an articulate space that is loaded with painted colors and three-dimensional rhythm at the same time. This installation work enables the viewer to see the intervals, the gap, the different highs and lows, and mutually variable slanting angles between the colored slabs or strips. Therefore, it reveals a construction that is rich in visual effect as well as spatial variations. Not only can these works be considered Hu's fine experimental pieces of the 1980s, they also provide for him a very crucial and major foundation for further spatial exploration, especially his painting.
In 1987, Hu held another solo exhibition, entitled “After Minimal and Material,” at the Spring Gallery. In the exhibition, he continued to take sculpture as a means to develop more spatial expressions for his geometric abstract forms. This exhibition can also be seen as Hu's personal touch and interaction with the formal language of minimal art. Hu used wooden slabs to construct a rectangular frame that is short of the fourth right angle, which makes the frame look like incomplete or unfinished. Taking this frame as a minimal element in shaping space, he repeated the frames numerous times and kept them with even spacing. Also, he would connect the frames by extending them into a pictorial pattern. Unlike the minimal artworks that originated in the U.S., which tended to bear certain “inherent theatricality,” Hu's attempts and gropings seemed mainly focused on how a geometric archetype could be formally deduced, developed and expanded in space. It is also obvious that Hu’s sculptural works as such can be seen as an extension of his painting—in spite of the appearance of a sculpture, the way he handled the work remains painting-oriented, including its spatial presentation. Especially worth noting is that, in this 1987 solo exhibition, Hu was thinking loudly regarding the construction of rectangular and square frames. Through the exploration of the formal structures, such as frame, rectangle and square, he has put in a reflection on “emptiness” as a possible spatial expression.
II. Fugue
In 1991, Hu decided to go abroad to Paris, with the limited deposit he had earned from his previous jobs. Later on, it was developed into a meager, frugal ten-year sojourn on an intermittent basis. If the 1980s can be seen as the beginning period of Hu's art career, the 1990s should be the immersion period that enabled him to establish his artistic style.
In 1993, Hu held his fourth solo exhibition at IT Park Art Space in Taipei. Until then, Hu made out a stylistic stability that is his own in general. Parallel structure, especially that of vertical juxtaposition, gradually became the main formation of his painting. His use of color fields was also purified and narrowed down to three fundamental elements, such as long, narrow rectangles, squares and triangles. Noticeably, intermediate colors were imported into his picture plane as well. To the general impression, horizontal and vertical constructions, more specifically the vertical color fields that are parallel to one another, different in width and length, uneven in spacing, and rich in the variation of pure colors, are the major stabilizing factors that form the picture plane.
It is worth paying attention that Hu adjusted what he had first thought in 1984. In the personal statement he wrote for his exhibition at the IT Park, he expected that “he could dedicate himself to becoming a meditation-based Eastern artist who is able to endow one's personal colors and constructions with the spirituality that is metaphysically more Eastern.” This change in attitude should be read as a kind of stylistic and psychological self-consciousness resulted from his stay in France and direct confrontation with the triumph already accomplished by contemporary geometric abstract artists in the West. Bearing the fact that Europe was where geometric abstract art had been initiated, how could Hu, as a marginal artist from the remote Far East, establish a distinctive style of his own, even surpass in Europe, especially France? Interestingly enough, in order to take up a vantage point that helped enhance his self-importance, the discourse strategy that Hu adopted was not so different from that started off by the earlier pioneering artists of the Eastern Group in the 1950s and the 1960s. To be more specific, those artists chose to zoom the word “East” or “Eastern” large, so that it could seemingly become “the other” to the West. Hu also made noticeable that Western thinking belonged to “rational logic” and was more “theory-based,” while what he aimed to transform was the cosmology and natural view of the East, in order to attain “a deep understanding and realization of modern Eastern spiritual philosophy.” As seen today, this view of “the East” is more an anti-thesis created to supplement “the West.” Underneath, this East is no more than “a theatrical stage affixed to Europe,” or “the Orient in the West,” as Edward W. Said (1935-2003) had put it. Nevertheless, Hu has without doubt developed an intense self-consciousness and attempt with regard to the uniqueness of his personal style, as to how he could achieve to becoming an established master.
According to Hu, he was already immersed in thinking the series of “The Discontinuous Squares” as early as 1994, which he did not actually paint until 1997. Although Hu has shown an early interest in the square form in his 1987 solo exhibition, another equally important and crucial inspiration for “The Discontinuous Squares” also derived from the geometric abstract pioneer Josef Albers (1899-1994).
A German-born painter, Albers taught at the Bauhaus in his early years; later, he emigrated to the US to escape the tyranny of the Nazis in 1933 and taught again at the Black Mountain College in North Carolina. From the 1950s to the 1960s, Albers developed his famous series entitled “Homage to the Square.” Following strict forms and formats, Albers simplified the picture plane to pure construction by using only the square as his primary geometric element. In each pictorial frame, also square in shape, he calculated how to put a square within a square. As a result, each painting is composed of 3 or 4 squares, which became a general directive for Albers. The squares are seen as if superimposed one on top the other. To all of the four sides, each square keeps rigorous proportional distances from the others. As for the width of the distance, it is based on the length of each single side of the smallest square, which becomes the standard value for proportional calculation. The squares shown in Albers's works look concentric but actually not. The squares are symmetrical to both the left and the right, and the center of the smallest square is, in fact, closer to the bottom of the painting.
Moreover, Albers endowed each square with pure but different colors, which creates for each painting a harmonious or contrasting visual dynamics. Thus, the painting is enhanced by a psychological effect that shows visual outwardness/inwardness or protrusion/recession. In 1963, Albers even published a book titled “Interaction of Color”,in which he presented his theory that “colors were governed by an internal and deceptive logic.” Through highly rational, disciplinary exploration of the squares, colors, and their formal arrangements, Albers has expressed a yearning for order in art. By researching into the matters of visual perception and illusion, Albers also brought in psychological space for his geometric abstract form and colors, particularly the allusion to sensation.
In comparison to the constantly invincible, stable order that Albers has accomplished, Hu Kun-Jung chose to title his series “The Discontinuous Squares” and made variations that differ from Albers's squares. Except that the shape of the frame remains square, Hu twisted the painted squares into uneven, slanting trapeziums. The squarely order seen in Albers's work is now broken. In Hu's works, there is no longer any set rules for constructing a painting. The square and color structure that seem nearly unmoving or eternally serene are turned into contingency that looks constantly variable and changeable after Hu's formal transformation. The unity and homogeneity of form and colors as perceived in Albers's works also disappears and is replaced by bustling rhythms that come thick and fast. Intuition-based improvisation becomes the main aesthetics that regulates the pictorial autonomy of Hu's works. Opposite to the holistic unity seen in Albers's works, Hu appeals to plural, mutative reproductions. Different from the kind of formal and aesthetic qualities, such as purity, simplicity, stability, serenity, and rationality felt in Albers's “Homage to the Square,” Hu's series of “The Discontinuous Squares” seems more intricate, constantly alternating, dynamic, colorful, and visually intriguing.
Unlike Albers, Hu seemingly does not care as much about the volumetric quality of his trapeziums. He is more concerned with the possible variations of the geometric shapes and the slants they create, in order to build up a special visual, spatial and psychological effect. In fact, this kind of formal construction could be found its origin in his earlier works, such as those seen in the 1984 “Difference in Space” group exhibition and the 1987 “After Minimal and Material” solo exhibition. Thus, Hu's “The Discontinuous Squares” series should not be regarded as a descendant of Albers, although it was indeed inspired by the latter. Properly speaking, Hu's series should be understood as a deliberate rebellion or mutation against Albers, for the sake of expressing his own uniqueness.
The series of “The Discontinuous Squares,” which Hu started off in 1997, not only boosted his stylistic confidence but also enabled him to work more openly and more freely in expanding spatial possibilities within his painting. Interrelated trapezoid, frame-like shapes that are set upward or downward, high or low, near or far, dense or sparse are dispersed in the picture plane, providing the viewer with more spaces for meditation or association. Until now, Hu Kun-Jung reached the mature period of his personal style.
III. Variations
In 2000, Hu held a solo exhibition at the Fairmate Art Gallery, Taipei. In addition to the series of “The Discontinuous Squares,” Hu began to adopt names of renowned composers of classical music to entitle his paintings. Despite the fact that the viewer may feel difficult to connect Hu’s geometric abstract constructions with the composer in question as well as his musical style, this kind of analog reflects at least that Hu may have been inspired or influenced by classical music and has attempted to instigate an association with music in his painting. To be more specific, it seems that he was interested in transforming the musical form, rhythm, tempo, tonal colors, even the pitch, strength, thickness and length of frequency and beat of classical music into visual forms, in order to express affection for different music. As a consequence, we see in Hu’s paintings all kinds of geometric shapes with various sizes, lengths, widths and densities arranged in mutually different colors, angles, spacings and compositions, which construct pictorial spaces that are highly versatile and no two are the same. Seen in this perspective, composition on a picture plane is indeed similar to musical composition--both belong to the category of geometric abstraction. Hu is here making an effort to push his painting to a different possibility of expression. At the same time, he also offers the viewer with an imaginary ladder that provides alternative readings and appreciations.
Besides musical expressions, Hu also employed titles such as landscapes that are concrete in suggesting spatial depths to name his paintings, which are commonly seen in his 2003 solo exhibition at the Main Trend Gallery, Taipei. As a result, we are further convinced that Hu, through the pure expression of painting, has been persistently concerned with the capacity of geometric abstract form in creating spatial imagination as well as its ability in provoking spatial meditation, although he did once enunciate that “expressions that are free of associations and non-descriptive” gave him “a deep affective impact.”
In fact, even though Hu has borrowed spacious scenes of the external world to be titles of his paintings, the evoking power of his forms is restricted to abstract mediation of space, instead of representation of any scene from real life. In other words, Hu's thinking is, after all, different from that of Cézanne. His abstraction does not refer to real scenery or object; as an alternative, he uses geometric abstract shapes as the essential formal elements from the very beginning. In this case, the composition of his painting is not aimed for representation and nor is it capable of representing the external world. Despite that Hu has named his paintings after real places or sceneries, these titles only evoke a spatial aura or poetic feeling. They serve more like abstract analogies, rather than referring to real places or real sceneries.
IV. Impromptus
Hu Kun-Jung's 2006 solo exhibition mainly shows the works he has finished during the year of 2005. The works can be seen as a continuation or further development of his earlier two solo exhibitions. The spatial constructions of Hu's new works appear to be more vigorous and richer in formal diversity. In comparison, Hu's earlier concern in formal structures, as seen in the 2000 and 2003 solo exhibitions, mainly focuses on the harmonious balance between formal constructions and colors. Most of his earlier works tend to emphasize the beauty of homogeneity or formal balance. In his new works done in 2005, Hu further amplifies the spatial contrasts and depth. Also, he adds to the temporal and rhythmic schemes of his new paintings with more details and more minute differentiations. Thus, more dramatic contrasts can be seen in these paintings. The colored blocks show stronger size differences and are arranged against one another in sharper angles, which result in compositions that are spatially more allusive and, therefore, propagate more spatial expressions and imaginations.
Moreover, Hu continues to follow the format of a horizontal multitych, which was first seen in “The Third Morning,” dated 2003. The paintings are now extended further and wider. Shown in the 2006 exhibition include three major works of grandeur scale, ranging from five to six meters wide, respectively entitled “Normandy Coast,” “Rococo Variations,” and “Dreamt of Cézanne Talking about Mozart.” In “Normandy Coast,” Hu employs repeatedly hollowed squares, irregular trapeziums and motifs seen the series of “The Discontinuous Squares,” and matches them with various grayscale colors. Accordingly, the painting forms a complicated spatial construction. By entitling the work as “Normandy Coast,” the artist also yields an association possible for the viewer to imagine a space that is open and airy.
Continuing the series of “The Discontinuous Squares,” Hu also engages in an advanced endeavor. Originally, the painting uses grayscale colors as its base and is composed of four or five layers of irregular trapezoid frames at most. Now, Hu adds one more layer and make them into six. At the same time, the artist no longer applies “The Discontinuous Squares” as a unified series name. He begins to apply different name to each work, for example, “Before Christ” and “The Dark Night.” This way, he adds respectively to each work with more vivid character and bequeaths it with better sense of time. Among the juxtaposed and interdependent color fields, Hu has created a kind of visual illusion, through which he transforms the geometric space into a meditation on time.
According to Hu, he does not prepare sketch or drawing in advance for his painting. That is, he does not use any established, pre-calculated draft as his first-hand original and then transmits or adapts it onto a larger canvas. Even though Hu has developed a concrete idiom to apply his geometric forms, the abstract construction seen on his canvas still relies mainly on his personal intuition, which, without doubt, carries a quality of immediacy. A work completed with such process is not only a spatial construction in itself but also a temporal trace written by time.
As mentioned earlier, Hu's geometric abstract composition is comparable to the process of a composer writing his music. Both are the result of abstract thinking procedures. The difference lies in that a composer writes music in notes, while Hu constructs his painting with visual colors and forms. For the art of painting, the completion of a painting requires visual composition; for the making of music, a composer's music score awaits players to combine the needed instruments or even needs a conductor to conduct an orchestra to represent the abstract beauty as perceived by the composer. Like a vestige marked by time, the temporality seen in Hu's painting is in fact closer to the process of music performance. In short, Hu is the composer, the conductor and the performer of his own painting all at the same time.
Both “Rococo Variations” and “Dreamt of Cézanne Talking about Mozart” display an obvious process of time. The geometric forms act like musical notes, and the visual colors analogous to the sounds of musical instruments and voices of singers, which present tonality and texture of distinctive diversity in terms of their lengths, strengths and pitches. Naming his work after the well-known classic music title “Rococo Variations,” Hu seems deliberately showing how he relates and feels about the painting. Perhaps we can describe as such: this painting concerns not only the compositional relations between notes and their tonalities, but also formal variations, thematic development, even the performance of the lead instruments--all of them involve a complexity of larger scale. To put it this way, as a painting corresponding to a concerto, the visual structure and psychological effect of “Rococo Variations” bear closer resemblance to a dramatic music performance that is powerful in its strength, impetus and impact.
After completing “Rococo Variations,” Hu becomes even more innovative in involving larger scale painting with more variations of space and time. He ventures into further exploration of formal structures. Take the work “Dreamt of Cézanne Talking about Mozart” as an example. The dramatic contrast of the composition turns more up-front and sharper. The artist pays more attention to the highs and lows of episodes or passages. If “Rococo Variations” can be described as “powerful in its strength, impetus and impact,” “Dreamt of Cézanne Talking about Mozart” is even more majestic and articulated with clattering details and changes. In order to make obvious the formal contrast and add more breath and rhythm to the painting, Hu has introduced more and finer niceties into the painting. Unlike before, he augments a quality of unacquainted hazard, seemingly manipulating imbalance within balance as well as introducing risks and conflicts into consistency and harmony.
As a title of a painting, “Dreamt of Cézanne Talking about Mozart” was originally no more than a mental journey made by Hu regarding his process of creating the work. As already discussed, Hu's reminiscence of Cézanne was more an investigation exploring the spatial relations shaped by various formal structures. Surprisingly, Mozart now becomes an unexpected guest, barging into Hu's metal journey. Judging from the semantics of this title, it is interesting to note that Mozart, being another source of Hu's inspiration, is manifested through Cézanne's presence. It also means that, Cézanne as a spiritual objective often frequented by Hu has proven most beneficial to his art; nevertheless, Mozart as an inspirational source remains needful for Hu to transform into visual formation so as to manifest.
In any case, through the work “Dreamt of Cézanne Talking about Mozart,” Hu has successfully mingled both the shapes of space and time, making possible a duo of painting and music performing together at the same time. Art as a free and abstract space provides a way for the viewer to meditate. Not only has Hu produced further possibilities for visual readings and appreciation of his painting, he also creates for himself the first summit of his mature period.
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