ILLUSTEATED:
Zao Wou-Ki, in Zao Wou-Ki, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Tours, Nantes, 1990, p. 10

Zao Wou-ki’s paintings are forever imbued with a profound poetic grace. Whether an impassioned pursuit of artistic accomplishments, an exploration of the almighty forces between universe and earth, the revelation of his tortuous inner struggles or expression of his delightful temperament and serene generosity, Zao’s art at each phase of his career always embody a sort of otherworldly purity of elegance. Life’s ups and downs have never detracted from his noble magnanimity, and have moreover enhanced his accumulation of wisdom. The world he had constructed with lucid brushstrokes expands the limits of our imagination amidst the crystalline clarity and tranquility of his spiritual rhythms. The quality of his poetic grace, however, was not only a derivation of his Chinese literary background but also the fruit of deep friendships he forged with various poets in his contemporary France. One of the most celebrated anecdotes was his close acquaintance with Henri Michaux. The artist’s lyrical abstractness is like a lyrical song that neither clearly indicates its object of portrayal nor possesses an overarching narrative. Although its intrinsic content defies description and explanation, the wealth of connotations carried within is always touching to the human heart.

With bright cyan as its main tone, “01.11.86” glows with clear, pure rays of luminosity that demonstrate the artist’s extraordinary skills in the representation of light. Zao was truly a master of the essence of oil painting. The early influence of Paul Klee (1879 – 1940) and Zao’s own investigation into the wonders of Chinese characters, especially oracles, evolved into indispensable elements for his artistic creation. In the 1970s, after the shock and pain of losing his wife, the artist regained inner peace in the world of ink and wash. He conducted a large number of exercises in ink wash painting, thereby acquiring a deepening appreciation for the indescribable grace and intangible artistic conception of Chinese landscape painting. In the 1980s, his oil paintings began to reveal a sort of distant and profound Eastern ambience that once again tantalized the art scene. Zao thus described his mentality after retrieving the techniques of ink and wash, “I saw how space was given birth through my brush and was formed and disseminated through my thought. A lightness of being permeates throughout: lightness of brushstroke, lightness of color, even lightness of transient passing time” (Zao Wou-ki & Françoise Marquet, tr. Liu Li, Self-Portrait of Zao Wou-ki, 1st edition, Artist Publishing Co., Taipei: 1992, p. 115). With this exceptional ability to convey profound philosophical thought with this indescribable lightness, Zao’s artwork embodies a lyrical abstractness of unprecedented ephemerality. In 1981, Zao was invited to hold his first solo exhibition at Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, a great success that was highly acclaimed by all. Even in his sixties, Zao continued to forge pinnacles in his artistic career, ceaselessly and persistently.

During his later years, Zao’s art seemed to come into being effortlessly, the culmination of his wealth of profound artistic thought and fluent artistic techniques. His abundant experiences had transformed into the radiance of wisdom. The paintings still exhibit an awe-inspiring magnificence, yet the artist was capable of embodying profound and powerful forcefulness with exquisite lightness. In “01.11.86,” the eminence and majestic glory of heaven and earth, dauntingly sublime to the human mind, is encircled by a sort of warm, gentle atmosphere appearing to be as light and carefree as the break of dawn that penetrates the darkness of night and heralds infinite possibility. The artist exhibited the delight of washed ink through a composition that strongly features the contrast between light and dark, especially in the lower part of the canvas. The detailed and complicated textures of brush strokes seem to bestow mighty forces of life, growing and changing organically while echoing the infinite source of life emanating within the cosmos. The artist left most of the space upon the canvas to light, lucid tones of blue and green, a delicate portrayal of the cosmic light that has traveled afar, through various substances, and yet still emits an extremely powerful energy and sense of vast expansiveness. The atmosphere of the painting reminds people of the timeless classic “The Monk by the Sea” (1808 – 1810) by German Romantic master Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840), in which the monk standing upon the beach faces a vast, infinite expanse of ocean, evincing the insignificance of individuals as well as the infinite possibilities of the human mind. Looking into the extensive, boundless and magnificent landscape depicted in “01.11.86,” we are once again witnesses to the mysterious wonders of our universe, inspired to converse with nature, and invited to contemplate on the glories of our past, present and the future.