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Artist paints homesickness
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Mo Cheng
IF you head down to the noisy, bustling village of Caopu, an area just not far from the Buji Checkpoint, you will find among the residents a most unlikely character: a critically-accalimed painter named Chan Kin-chung.
Chan's four-storey house looks just like its neighbours: the same height, the same style, even the same balconies and windows with security bars.
However, the similarities end at the entrance. His simply decorated but carefully designed living room is filled with white furniture: white sofas, white tables, white chairs, and white stairs leading to a studio ... a most curious sight that exudes purity, solemnity and quietness.
And these are what Chan Kin-chung, 62, has spent his long career seeking.
We can see the products of the period he spent in Paris: solemnity and coldness repeatedly appear in his works, focusing on gates, windows and corners. The silent scene of a gate may shock spectators (as illustrated by the picture Composition No 1). Through the grey tune, dilapidated stones and withered grass, the painter expressed his loneliness and helplessness, which often happen to those living far from home.
We can see them in his works from the 90s: Village in Guangdong (below) is an example of his change in mood. The warm and light colours that seldom appeared in his earlier works reveal his happiness and liveliness. Having struggled for over 10 years in Paris, the painter had firmly established himself in the city's fabled art world where competition is fierce. He has won the admiration of not a few art critics, who praised him as "the Chinese painter who suddenly rose to fame". Critical acclaim is hard to come by in the art world, especially for a Chinese artist.
Why does he focus on the theme of solemnity? A brief review of Chan's life may help answer that question.
Born in Longchuan County, Guangdong Province, Chan spent his childhood in a rural area. The simplicity of the local customs, the rustic and picturesque landscapes left deep impressions upon him. This had a powerful influence on his art.
In 1955, Chan was admitted into an art secondary school in the central Chinese city of Wuhan. In 1950s' China, Russian and Soviet painting predominated, stressing an extremely rigid repetition of basic techniques.
Chan had a fondness for Russian oil painting. But later on, the more he saw of them, the less sublime they seemed. Having terminated his secondary studies, Chan entered the oil painting faculty of the Academy of Fine Arts in Guangzhou. He became aware that even if the Soviet method correctly guides a student to observe and paint with precision the form of objects, it could also distract from the essential by detaching itself from sclerotic details. Chan believed painting should go beyond the form.
Chan moved to Hong Kong in 1962. This move was followed by a long period of artistic stagnation.
But he read books concerning modern art and visited contemporary art exhibitions. He also developed an interest in ancient Chinese art and was touched by the serenity that emanates from the paintings of the Tang and Song dynasties (610AD-1279AD).
How to solve the difficult problem of somehow combining ancient and modern, Eastern and Western art forms, flummoxed him. For a better understanding of Western painting, he decided to go study in Paris in 1969.
Chan was struck by the artistic atmosphere of the city. He took in all the sights, particularly galleries like the Lourve, the Quai d'Orsay. Every month the city was filled with important exhibitions and numerous artistic salons, where new artists and various styles were presented: figuration, abstraction, pop art, op art, conceptual art... Chan was dazzled. Ignorant of almost all of these trends and what they represented, he had difficulty in grasping the merits of these works. For him it was the beginning of a period of disorientation. He relied on a spirit of investigation to help him find his way out.
Chan also found himself confronted with the necessity of earning his living and he was obliged to look for work. He once was a waiter in a restaurant. He cut leather in a purse factory. He painted furniture. It was only after hours that he could devote himself to his art. But he never painted portraits for passers-by in streets like many poor artists did. "When you do such paintings, you have to make the picture more 'beautiful', as your customers demand. You can't express yourself. This is harmful to a real artist," Chan said.
In early 1972, his former art student, Queenie, came from Hong Kong to continue her studies in Paris, and later married Chan. In July the same year, the couple moved into an artist studio, on the Moulin Vert street in the 14th district of Paris, which had previously served as home to Zao Wou-ki, another Chinese painter who is now probably the most distinguished Chinese painter overseas. The studio was tiny but very bright.
In his studio, he began to paint. But what should he paint? The question returned again.
One day while looking out of the window of his studio, he suddenly felt a singular sentiment that he had never before felt. Moved by the view, he immediately began to paint. And thus he painted for an entire month, until he was sure he had captured the atmosphere of serenity and mystery of the view. His intuition told him that he had at last found the expression that suited best his temperament and concepts.
A little later on, in the neighbourhood, he again experienced the same emotion and began to paint doors, windows, and gates. He thought a lot and painted a lot, in a meticulous and deep way, and was particularly attached to the simplicity and conciseness of the compositions. He treated the subject chosen (a door or a window for example) as a living being, containing in its own existence a mystery full of solitude and solemnity.
In March 1975, Chan's first exhibition was finally held at the Darial Gallery. The works were described by French art critic Alain Jouffroy as having "acquired such a degree of transparency that it lets his spectators develop. He knows how to transfer the most traditional Chinese thought (Laozi) into a contemporary visual reality".
Another critic said: "Amid so many expositions in Paris, many works were dazzling - some crying, some acting, some elegant and graceful, some rigid, some romantic ... Chan's paintings always hung quietly on the wall. It is as though the artist himself were standing there, brooding, contemplating, sincerely reminding people of that corner they had neglected. People cannot but turn their eyes towards him."
According to Chan, he "once had a sense of 'exile' and of 'tragedy', which is the product of social isolation".
"Even after more than three decades, I still feel lonely and nostalgic," Chan said.
Despite having lived in Paris for such a long time, a rather plain and modest Chan continues living a simple life. He built a house in Shenzhen last year so he could frequently visit his loved ones in Guangdong. "I choose to spend the winter here when it is much colder in France. I plan to tour and go out sketching next winter in Guangdong and its neighbouring regions. The countryside reminds me of my childhood," he said with longing.
Chan has brought back many of his works from France, some of which were bought from galleries. In his words, he wants to "leave something in the motherland".
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