Wang Huaiqing was born and grew up in Beijing. He started his art education in the Affiliated High School of the Central Academy of Fine Art (CAFA) at the age of 12, and continued his education in the academy as a junior and then senior high school student. Afterwards he entered CAFA as a college student with excellent exam grades. Later he graduated from CAFA with a master's degree. All his education was completed in the historical city of the ancient capital, Beijing, and he now has more than 50 years' experience of art creation. Since a young boy, his artworks of painting, wood engravings were chosen by children art competitions or exhibitions held in India and Russia. His eight paintings exhibited in "Same Generation Oil Painting Exhibition", China National Art Museum, Beijing, were praised by the American "Wall Street Daily" and French "Contemporary" magazine. Among the eight "Bo Le Choosing a Horse" and "Jujube Trees" were collected as masterpieces by the China National Art Museum. This was the moment when Wang started to make a figure.
Wang's first solo exhibition was held in New York in 1987 when he was a guest artist of Oklahoma University. At that time his family had been living in the USA for two years. Later he held several solo exhibitions in Singapore, Taiwan, Macao and Hong Kong, at regular intervals during the1990s, while his works of art were also exhibited in France, Japan, and Germany. He was at that time quite famous abroad. In 1998 in the "China 5000 Years" exhibition in the Guggenheim Museum, New York, which was curated by Chen Kuiyi, a Chinese exhibition designer living in the USA, Wang Huaiqing's modern- and abstract-style "Night Revel - Night Revels of Han Xizai, Series -1", was displayed adjacent to Gu Hongzhong's (a Chinese painter during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period) authentic work of "Night Revels of Han Xizai" which is a national treasure held by Beijing's Palace Museum. Wang's brand new interpretation of classical aesthetics made his works brilliant eye catchers and a hot topic.
The "Art of Wang Huaiqing" exhibition, Shanghai Art Museum, 2007
The "Art of Wang Huaiqing" exhibition held in Shanghai Art Museum in 2007 was the 63-year-old artist's debut in Mainland China. The exhibition traveled to the Guangdong Art Museum the next year. It seemed inexplicable that Wang, as a first-grade painter of the Beijing Painting Academy, a member of the China Artist Association, and director of the China Oil Painting Society, has not yet held a solo exhibition in his hometown Beijing. His works only sporadically appear in annual exhibitions or expositions of collected oil paintings. Beijing is full of art institutions and is filled with a cultural atmosphere. Is it the case that his paintings are not accepted by the art circles in Beijing? Or is it because Wang feels reluctant to express his passions in his hometown, and would rather expand his fame abroad and hide his capabilities in Beijing's small alleys?
Wang has been living for years in the historic city of an ancient capital, and the works of his entire life cannot be separated from themes in connection with ancient history and culture. He started from a reference to "Bo Le Choosing a Horse" the classical story in the Spring and Autumn Period, and continued with a collection of Ming-dynasty style furniture paintings from his old chamber to the south of the Changjiang River, then to the recreation of the "Night Revel" of Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, next, enlightened by the ancient scientific masterpiece "Tiangong Kaiwu" ("Traces of Nature") of the Ming Dynasty for "Ancient Jade" and "Eight Treasures", until finally his recent painting of "Flying Apsaras", and "Sceptre [Ruyi-Symbol of Auspices]". All his works of art reflect his reluctance to part with traditional Chinese culture. He has been so addicted to research of old cultures and old furniture that he himself looks odd if compared with those who regard ancient relics as an ordinary background in Beijing. Moreover, he deflects from the mainstream art style. He is fond of an abstract structural style, and this choice is a path that is less travelled by more realistic, popular and raffish styles, which are widely accepted in China's contemporary art circles. Maybe those are the reasons why his art has appealed to overseas aficionadas.
Culture faces a crisis arising from modernization and urbanization. Old alleys have been demolished, and old furniture has been scattered and lost. The emotions and tastes of our ancestors will gradually vanish as time goes by. Wang Huaiqing constantly lingers in the distributing centers of ancient furniture in Beijing, trying to find some clues to the already disappeared flourish in history. Every time he carries back a couple of objects such as a wood-carved window decoration, old porcelain bottles and jars, desk and chair parts, and accessories. In the eyes of Wang Huaiqing, these pieces used to flourish in prosperous dynasties, but now they have lost the culture to which they were attached, and they actually have no place to return. They are, in the words of Wang, culturally homeless. Wang said: "When you carefully observe the 'homeless' furniture, their parts, postures, body, when you read them, you will feel the dignity and splendor of the ancient world. However, their souls have no place to attach." (Extracted from the interview record of 'Oil Painting Figures: Wang Huaiqing – Looking For Home', CCTV "Investment in Works of Art", July 24, 2007) Realizing humans' tiny capability when facing the change of time and history, artists are unable to resist the temptation of resuming the dignity and splendor through their own efforts and their own brushes. Wang bears in mind the culture and spirit that have been forgotten by most people, and keeps finding possibilities for continuing and inheriting past cultures. That is the reason why Wang's mind is always occupied with the themes of history and culture.
As for his forms of painting, black and white have been Wang's main colors since the mid 1980's. This reminds people of his mentor: Wu Guanzhong. Wang has discovered the purity and strength of black and white from various sources such as the white walls and black tiles of the ancient buildings to the south of the lower reaches of the Changjiang River, and the structures of traditional calligraphy. Black and white is the most important pair of colors in Chinese painting inheritance, and our ancestors' sentiment of the two colors has been inherited over a long history. Black, at the ultimate level beyond any other color, calls out the inner connection inside traditional Chinese art. Wu Guanzhong guided and transited from B&W colors to the structure of abstract paintings. This enlightened Wang Huaiqing to make the same selection of the contradiction and counterpoint of B&W. He deliberately blackens the furniture in the paintings to alter the original color of the object and to change it into a form of art. This also reflects Wang's effort of tracing and connecting to the origin of culture. Wang is good at dealing with the texture of paintings. He manages to make mottled spaces between B&W. Those spaces represent the trail of history and enrich the expression of the paintings.
Wang Huaiqing is conscious of calligraphy while dealing with the overall arrangement of his works of art. His furniture parts in early times are shaped like seal characters and have the ax-and-chisel taste of a rubbing from a stone inscription. The composition of his recent paintings is seen with vivid strokes of various parts of Chinese characters such as horizontal, left falling, vertical, right falling, etc. Those strokes display the spirit of abstractive expressions. Chia Chi Jason Wang, an art critic said: "Wang Huaiqing's great interest in the calligraphic form of expression is especially perceived from his works of art created after 2004. Moreover, his style has changed from the original flexible geometric characters with strong sense of structure to the current style of expressionism with the emphasis of calligraphic characters. The most typical examples include 'High Mountain Water Fall' (2004-2005), 'Traces of Nature' (2004), 'Happiness' (2005), 'Flying Apsaras' (2006)."
The painting item "Flying Apsaras" for this auction is Wang's magnum opus with the strong style of abstractive expressionism. This painting is designed to be a series of three scrolls. Such form and structure endow the work of art with religious awesomeness like altar paintings. The phrase "Flying Apsaras" originated from a Buddhism quotation. Since its spreading in China, Buddhism was also influenced by Taoism and gradually integrated into Chinese culture. Thus Flying Apsaras is granted with oriental visualized figures of flying goddess and heaven beauties. Flying Apsaras is also the most beautiful icon representing Dunhuang Art. For Chinese culture, religious art has significant historic origin and cultural background. As an image of art, Flying Apsaras is the symbol of beautifulness, and is the combination of multiple cultures of India, Middle East, and the Central Land of China.
Flying with freedom and with singing, dancing, fragrance, flowers, banners and music, Flying Apsaras has long been the incarnation of ultimate beautifulness in history and cultural inheritance. It also represents the pursuit of freedom and happiness. Wang Huaiqing designed to describe the themes by adding the proportion of whiteness to emphasize the lightness of flying. The main part painted with broad brushes shows speediness. The banner-like strokes of black lines imply the fluentness of the flying immortal. Some black strokes matched and pasted with blackened solid wood pieces, window decorations, etc. provide observers with new visual experience. Whereas the artist's specialized textiling skills reserved to deal with the blank areas add the works of art with the quality of historical relics and murals by means of various expressions such as variegate, shading around to make stand out, wrinkled painting, etc.
As fluent as floating cloud and running water, the three scrolls of "Flying Apsaras" carry the oriental feelings and have the form of abstractive expressionism. However, aren't the collapsed furniture and broken window decorations and paper cuttings hidden in black brush strokes bearing the artist's pursuit to classical cultures and his sigh with deep feeling thereupon? Su Dongpo, the great poet in Song Dynasty said in his prose: "Live in the ultimate world like a mayfly, and as a millet in the ocean as tiny, we bemoan what a short life we are leading, and envy the Changjiang River's infinite running; how I wish to fly around the universe, hand in hand with the immortals, and to embrace the shiny moon, living and exist endlessly in heaven." The modern artist adds in his works of art more Zen philosophy and wisdom, seeking to learn from the ancestors' free bosom and open mind, and to set people's spirit as free as the flying immortals.
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