text by Tsai Wen-ting
The winner of the prize for fine art in last year's National Culture and Arts Foundation Awards-one of the highest honors for an artist in Taiwan-was contemporary painter Hsia Yang.
Hsia first became a leading light on the Taiwan art scene back in the 1950s, as one of the "Eight Great Outlaws" who launched the island's modern art movement. Since then his artistic vocation has taken him around the world, and he has at last ended up back in Taiwan. What is it that distinguishes Hsia's work and that marked him out for the National Arts and Culture award, and what kind of contribution has he made to contemporary art in Taiwan?
Friendly and relaxed by nature, Hsia Yang doesn't seem overly excited about winning the National Culture and Arts Award. If anything it is his friends who are happiest, relieved to see Hsia gaining deserved recognition for the achievements of his peripatetic, ill-starred life.
Lonely start in life
Hsia Tzu-hsiang, as he was then named, was born into a literary family in Hunan Province. Fate robbed him of his mother within a week of his birth, and of his father when he was just four. His grandmother took him to Sichuan to escape the war, and they returned a couple of years later to find the family home in ruins. When he was nine his grandmother died and he was entrusted to a great aunt. She in turn died when Hsia was 13, after which he went to live with an uncle and aunt in Hankou. They wanted to send him to join his elder brother in Changsha, but his brother didn't have the means to take care of him either. At the age of 16, after years of being passed from pillar to post, Hsia joined the army-where at least he knew that he'd get fed.
"It was a big clan, and it just fell apart!" says Hsia with a rueful smile, the expression of one who has seen life and holds few illusions.
Hsia joined up in the year that the Nationalist forces retreated from the mainland, and soon found himself in a desk job at Air Force General HQ in Taiwan. By coincidence, the dormitory bunk above his was occupied by another aspiring painter, Wu Hao. The two became firm friends and began to take classes under Li Chung-sheng, the doyen of modern art in Taiwan. At Li's Antung Street Studio they teamed up with a group of like-minded young painters, including Ouyang Wen-yuan, Huo Kang, Hsiao Chin, Li Yuan-chia, Chen Tao-ming and Hsiao Ming-hsien. Together they formed the Ton-Fan Group, and eventually they became known as the "Eight Great Outlaws" of Taiwanese modern art. As Hsia recalls, the main incentive for studying under Li Chung-sheng was that Li's fees were relatively affordable.
Other painters charged upwards of 45 yuan per month, with fees at studios run by older, more established Taiwanese artists reaching 60 or 70 yuan. No amount of scrimping and saving was going to put that within reach of someone like Hsia, getting by on a military allowance of just 25 yuan per month. The only choice was the Antung Street Studio, where the monthly fee was just 20 yuan.
Rescuing Chinese art
The economic constraints and repressive censorship of the era did nothing to deter these young art fiends. As Hsia recalls, the only art materials they could get hold of were red and black ink, courtesy of the military, and pencils. Sometimes they mixed the ink with glue to produce an oil-paint texture. Scraping together the money for just one tube of oil paint involved considerable effort, and Hsia remembers repeatedly uncapping that single tube to breathe in the lovely scent of linseed oil. The painters took turns taking off their shirts to model for each other, and Hsia would sometimes spend the whole day sketching customers at the ice-cream shop by the train station, after paying for a single slice of watermelon.
In 1955, against the advice of their teacher and clueless about the risks involved in starting up a new organization (Taiwan was under martial law at the time), the young artists formed themselves into the Ton-Fan Group. People flocked to buy tickets for the exhibition that they mounted at a venue in Taipei's Chunghua Road, but many visitors found that the art was not to their liking. Some, feeling "cheated," flung their exhibition leaflets on the floor in disgust. "They cost 50 cents each to produce!" exclaims Hsia, still bemoaning the waste.
Raising the banner of reform, the Outlaws issued a declaration forecasting Chinese art's inevitable decline if it stayed stuck in the past. Only through the introduction of modern forms of expression from the outside world, they said, could the boundless resources of China's art tradition be revitalized. The declaration, which Hsia drafted, shows that the group's objective was to modernize Chinese art by drawing Western artistic concepts and methods into the production of essentially Chinese works. This insistence on the "China" element has been a hallmark of Hsia Yang's art ever since.
Outlaws around the world
From paintings of his done during that early period, one sees how Hsia rendered human figures using the thick lines of traditional Chinese folk painting, but proceeded to dissect and reassemble those figures in a Western, mechanistic fashion. In his painting Flying Apsaras, Hsia brings a modern geometrical approach to the traditional image of airborne Buddhist spirits. Critic Wang Chia-chi describes these divine beings shown wafting through a void of blank space as "kind of surreal. . . like astronauts in a state of weightlessness." Hsia has also produced a number of purely abstract works, drawing on his deep familiarity with that most important element of Chinese art-the use of line.
In 1955 Hsiao Chin went to study in Spain, becoming the first of the Ton-Fan Group to go overseas. He wrote back to Taiwan describing the new trends in art that he was witness to, and the other painters, after poring over the contents of his densely written airmail letters, began putting some of those ideas into practice. Taiwan was very cut off from the world in those days, and those studying art naturally wanted to see for themselves what was happening elsewhere. In their letters to Hsiao, all the others, including their teacher Li Chung-sheng, asked about the cost of living overseas.
One by one, each member of the group set off on his own modern art pilgrimage to the West. Hsia Yang, for whom France was the art center of the world, made his move in 1963, traveling by ship from Keelung to Hong Kong and from there on to Europe. The cost of his one-way ticket was borne by his colleague at Air Force HQ Chang Chuan-jen, who generously put his entire savings of NT$5,000 at Hsia's disposal. On the way to France Hsia stopped off in Milan to visit Hsiao Chin. Hsia remembers that Hsiao's first words on meeting were: "Come on, let's paint." For someone like Hsia, orphaned early and shunted for years among various relatives, the support and affection of his friends has played a particularly important part in his life.
Fuzzy people, floating people
During his four-and-a-half years in Paris Hsia lived in a tiny garret in the red light district with barely enough room to stand up in. He supported himself doing miscellaneous jobs, working on people's houses and restoring furniture. Times were tough, but it was during this period that he found what he had been probing for in his use of line, and started on the "fuzzy people" phase of his output.
Hsia's fuzzy people were born into his work as if by a natural process. While experimenting with a tangle of lines Hsia found unidentifiable clusters taking shape, from which human forms began to emerge. "This was something I really knew I could work with," recalls Hsia. It was a case of "seizing that special thing of your own," which for an artist is of the utmost importance.
Like a Taoist priest painting magic symbols, Hsia uses line to create human figures and the written word to invoke power. With rapid, sweeping strokes of the brush he creates fluid, free-floating figures, without faces or personalities, performing their allotted roles in the midst of a coldly linear realm. The resulting images reflect the alienation of modern life, conveying a sense of illusion and impermanence.
It has been suggested that Hsia Yang himself, the lifelong drifter, is the prototype for these blurry beings. But then again, which of us is not in transit, drifting through this brief existence? "As the Chinese say, man is a passenger through life who is gone in an instant. Hsia Yang's fuzzy people exist very much within this Eastern philosophical context." So says Fu Shen, one of the judges in the fine arts category for the 2000 National Culture and Arts Foundation awards.
While he was in France Hsia received a letter from a friend in the US saying: "Life is easier here." Soon afterwards he moved to New York, renting a cheap loft in SoHo and supporting himself as a furniture restorer.
Photorealism was the vogue in American painting at the time. It didn't appeal to Hsia at first, but he knew he had to learn something in his new country of residence, and at the same time he needed to produce work that was commercially viable. He began employing photographic effects, for example depicting a crowd of passersby on a New York street as a speeding blur. His work now became populated with "floating people" of this kind, although in spirit they were still the fuzzy people of his earlier period.
Hsia spent over 20 years in New York, painting in the cavernous gloom of his loft, eating Chinese food and listening to traditional Chinese opera music. The walls of the loft were pasted with simple verses, written by Hsia in language that was part literary Chinese and part colloquial. "I was like a Chinese person dwelling in a Chinese concession in New York," says Hsia with a laugh.
The biggest boon of living in New York was that this was where Hsia met his wife Wu Shuang-hsi. Wu had grown up in a contented home never knowing poverty, and held a PhD in philosophy. She met Hsia through the painter Hsieh Li-fa, and since then the two of them have shared a simple and quiet life together. "Feeling anxious when the old lady's not here, and looking listlessly out the window/ So bored of this dumb view, it's much better when the silly little thing's around." So runs one of Hsia's light-hearted couplets, testifying to the affection that unites these two people who only came together relatively late in life.
Going home
Hsia returned to Taiwan in 1992, after three decades away. With a basic source of income guaranteed through an art-gallery contract, Hsia rented a spacious, light-filled three-story house in Peitou. The new place was ideal for painting, but at NT$35,000 per month the rent was on the high side. Hsia's "silly little" wife was in tears when it came to signing the lease, worrying that eventually they wouldn't be able to afford the rent. Luckily Professor Li Chih-wen of the National Institute of the Arts offered to support them to the tune of NT$10,000 per month for the first three years after their return to Taiwan, and Hsia and his wife were thus able to settle themselves down. "At key moments, a little help from your friends can make all the difference," says Hsia. Financial help from his friends at such moments was what enabled Hsia to go abroad in the first place and then, eventually, to return again to Taiwan. This is something that the reserved Hsia has frequent cause to think about.
After returning to Taiwan Hsia Yang reverted to painting fuzzy people. Over the years, Hsia's fuzzy people have taken on a number of different guises, be it as judges, singers, couples, beach babes or whatever. They have mimicked famous icons of Western art such as the Mona Lisa, Millet's The Gleaners, and Botticelli's Venus, and now the fuzzy family includes well-known figures from the Chinese Buddhist pantheon, part of a series of works that examines the role of religion in people's lives. For Hsia Yang, all characters are fair game for inclusion in his work, and all of them end up reverting to nothingness.
Fuzzy people stand up
Why is Hsia so into "fuzzy people," and has he ever thought about trying something else? The painter points out that he can't predict what direction he may follow in the future, and says that if a new theme or style emerges it will be through a natural process, like the one that first gave birth to the fuzzy people.
At the end of 2000 Hsia's fuzzy people at last "stood up" for themselves, becoming sculptures rather than just images on paper. Hsia was fiddling with an aluminum ring from a broken hair-dryer, shaping it into a little figure, when the idea dawned of doing fuzzy people in solid form. By cutting and twisting pieces of copper, iron and steel, he was able to produce amusing little statuettes of his hitherto two-dimensional fuzzy people.
Hsia's friends were not surprised by his move into sculpture, because he has always been good with his hands. In New York he once made a hand-operated washing machine from a saucepan and several pieces of wood, and on another occasion he used the motor from an electric fan to power a self-adjusting easel. In Hsia's hands, all sorts of discarded objects, from sewing machines to camera lenses, are salvaged and put to good use. "I'm the Leonardo da Vinci of the Orient," chuckles Hsia.
Returning East has brought Hsia back into contact with the other "Outlaws" who used to dominate the Taiwan art scene. Of those, Chen Tao-ming has since given up art and gone into business, Li Yuan-chia passed away in Britain, and Ouyang Wen-yuan doesn't paint any more because of psychological problems. However, Hsiao Chin, Wu Hao, Huo Kang and Hsiao Ming-hsien are all still active. At a reunion two years ago, Hsia declared proudly: "We're the same merry band of rebels, still advancing as one!" For artists to produce outstanding work they have to immerse themselves utterly in the act of creation. These painters, remaining committed to the "pure" creative spirit and thoroughly loyal to the cause of art, are still the same old "outlaws" that they ever were.
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