文 / 高志仁
A Taiwan- and Britain-trained illustrator is making a name for his homeland and a distinctive world vision for himself.
In March this year, 33-year-old Page Tsou (鄒駿昇) from Taiwan became the winner of the International Award for Illustration at the 2011 Bologna Children’s Book Fair in Italy, one of the most prestigious events of its kind in the world. This year, 35 entrants, including those from France, Germany, Iran, Italy, Japan and South Korea, competed for the international award, which was established in 2009 to recognize younger artists. Tsou took home prize money of US$30,000, and exposure from the win led to an offer to illustrate a children’s book that will be presented at next year’s book fair in Bologna. He had been selected previously to exhibit at the event in 2008 and 2010.
Tsou’s winning artwork series, titled Dancing Feathers, was originally part of a public art project by US artist Ray King, who installed a sculpture in the shape of a giant feather at Luzhou Mass Rapid Transit station in Taipei. In illustrations by Tsou from the same series of works, feathers float through city landscapes and into buildings, and rest on King’s hat. The Bologna jury report described Tsou’s work as poetic and dreamlike, praised his ability as reflecting the best graphic traditions and great pictorial vision, and celebrated the artist as having “profound cultural knowledge together with consummate craftsmanship.” Three months later, the series won Tsou the title of Best in Show at the 3x3 Professional Show in the United States, which is organized by 3x3 magazine.
Tsou grew up in Taichung City in central Taiwan, and in 1993 he became one of the first students to enter the newly formed fine art class at Chushan Senior High School in neighboring Nantou County. He showed a keen interest in drawing in early childhood and won a number of awards for painting at elementary school. That recognition gave him a sense of achievement despite average performance in regular academic subjects. “I drew instead of writing for the weekly journal at junior high school,” Tsou says. “Luckily, my teacher allowed me to do so and encouraged me to become an art major.” For tertiary education, he entered the Department of Art Education at National Chiayi Teachers College, now the Department of Visual Arts of National Chiayi University in southern Taiwan, which was formed in 2000 by merging the teachers’ college with National Chiayi Institute of Technology. After graduating from university in 2001 and then teaching at an elementary school for several years, Tsou moved to London in 2005 to study graphic design at Kingston University, where he obtained a master’s degree. In 2009, he completed another master’s program, this time in communication art and design, at the Royal College of Art in London.
Tsou says the combination of his education in Taiwan and abroad has given him quite a well-rounded training in art. While Taiwan’s formal education in subjects including sketching, watercolors, calligraphy and ink painting gave him solid technical skills, the artist says that the education model he experienced in London encouraged him to think creatively. “Many Taiwanese students are used to waiting for the teacher’s instructions,” Tsou says, “but my teachers in London just told me which projects to do and gave little instruction to follow, even few classes to attend.” He says that during his graduate study many of his most stimulating conversations did not occur with his teachers, but with his classmates. “They often talked about their future plans in five or 10 years, unlike many people in Taiwan who usually just say what they hope will happen in the following year,” he says. Tsou says Taiwanese people often adopt a pragmatic attitude focused on immediate results. As he sees it, local people tend to concentrate only on the very near future because they lack much of a sense of history.
By contrast, London is an international city that offers a middle ground between historical traditions and modern life, Tsou says. Among other things, he appreciated the city’s many museums and art galleries and the easily accessible exhibitions. He also adores the “steampunk” style that emerged in England in the 1980s. Steampunk often features fantasy or futuristic machinery in the style of illustration common during Britain’s Victorian era (1837–1901), when steam power was widely used.
A Chip Among the Fishes
As a stranger to London, however, Tsou also felt a sense of alienation as the city is so different from the environment in Taiwan, where he grew up. He tried to convey such feelings in the series Chip & Fishes, a play on the name of the popular British dish fish and chips. The series casts Tsou as a little chip roaming among Londoners, who are depicted as impersonal fish-men. Works from Chip & Fishes were selected for the Bologna fair exhibition in 2008.
The sense of being somewhere between a visitor and a resident in a foreign land speaks to Tsou’s approach to art in general, which seems to exist between illustration and fine art. “I use the forms of illustration and graphic design, which are similar to each other, to dip into the realm of fine art,” Tsou says, adding that his thinking is more like that of an artist. This is perhaps why the 2011 Bologna award jury linked his work to the graphic art tradition represented by Saul Steinberg (1914–1999), the Romanian-born illustrator renowned for his sharp, witty drawings for The New Yorker magazine and widely acclaimed for expertly crossing the boundaries between illustration, cartoons and fine art. In 2010, Tsou was again invited to the Bologna event to exhibit his new series, The Gift That Keeps On Giving, a collection of works he developed from his previous series Toy Gun. “Toy guns are part of the indirect education that tacitly draws kids toward games of violence and war,” Tsou says. “I took away the sweet colors and hues common to children’s literature in order to present problems usually ignored by society.” Works in The Gift That Keeps On Giving series draw on the whimsy of the steampunk style, but are presented in cold, mostly monochromatic hues.
From July to September this year, Tsou held a solo exhibition called The And, Never End at the Agora Art Space and a hair salon in Taipei. The show, his first since moving back to Taiwan, presented a series of images of the backs of people’s heads, in contrast to regular portraits. Tsou recalls that after sketching thousands of faces, it occurred to him that he had never thought much about the opposite side of the head. “What matters is not the head or the back of the head, but rather what lies behind [things] that usually eludes attention,” he says. He refers particularly to fixed ways of doing or looking at things that eventually condition one’s everyday life.
The “rear views” in The And, Never End show are presented through illustration and photography. “Sometimes I’d ask myself if hand drawing was really necessary and then replace it by taking photos,” says Tsou, who freely combines media including collage, computer manipulated images and video in many of his works. In this respect, he draws inspiration from a wide variety of sources. One artist he admires is Andy Warhol (1928–1987), a leading figure in modern pop art who created works in many different forms of media such as painting, film, sculpture, television, fashion, theater and photography. Perhaps surprisingly, another person he appreciates is martial artist and cultural icon Bruce Lee (李小龍, 1940–1973), who developed a more practical and flexible martial art from traditional styles. Tsou likes the fact that Lee combined various kinds of kung fu into a unique form that could overpower many of the devotees of any one particular style.
By the same token, while Tsou receives accolades such as “Taiwan’s glory,” he does not intend to pursue any particular “Taiwanese” artistic style by, for example, using visual elements or symbols typical of folk art or local temples. For him, the essence of what it means to be Taiwanese resists exact definition. He explains that his artwork is based on his experiences and internalized views, and the fact that “I grew up in Taiwan and I’m Taiwanese from head to toe” means his creations are Taiwanese despite the influence of English education or culture.
The Veiled World
For the artist, even the label “Taiwan’s glory” is problematic as it implies that Taiwanese people must rely on the outcome of foreign competitions to recognize local talent. This, he says, suggests a general lack of knowledge or taste in art. “I can talk freely about art subjects with a [non-artist] friend from Italy, for example, but I can seldom do so here in Taiwan,” Tsou says. “Art education won’t necessarily produce an artist, but it can certainly nurture an appreciation of art.” He points out that art education is quite different from developing skills such as drawing or painting in that it can lead one’s mind toward what may not be readily seen or felt. Exploring that somewhat veiled world is also where his artistic mission lies.
Just as the 2011 Bologna award jury celebrated Tsou’s artwork for reflecting a “particular vision of the world,” the artist conceives of his role as not only to create, but also to discover. “If my work has an issue in it, I won’t put it too bluntly or exhaustively but rather in a way that provides room for viewers to think for themselves. My work just suggests to viewers to have a different appreciation for the things in it that already exist in the world. An artist not only works as a creator, but also as a discoverer, who offers a view of the world from a specific angle.”
(Taiwan Review Byline:PAT GAO Publication Date:11/01/20112) |
