Reviving the Past: Antiquity & Antiquarianism in East Asian Art

Reviving the Past | The Boundaries of Heaven | Circuits of Exchange An Elegant Gathering

This selection of paintings honors the contributions and generosity of Dr. Chu-tsing Li, Judith Harris Murphy Distinguished Professor of Art History, and his wife, the late Yao Wen Li. Through the generosity of gifts and learned expertise, Dr. and Mrs. Li profoundly shaped the permanent collection of East Asian painting at the Spencer Museum. In 1966 they moved to Lawrence, where Dr. Li established a doctoral program in Chinese art in the Kress Department of Art History. Dr. Li’s expertise in traditional and modern Chinese painting positioned him to recognize many important development in contemporary ink painting and oftentimes to work directly with artist (his association with Wu Guanzhong was central to the purchase of Pine Spirit). In 2001, the Spencer Museum honored Dr. Li’s contributions to the Spencer Museum with the purchase of Li Huayi’s The Silence of Pines on Remote Peaks.

After studying under Lin Fengmian 林風眠 (1900-1991) and Pan Tianshou 潘天寿 (1897-1971), Wu was awarded a government scholarship in 1946 to continue his art education at Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts in Paris. In 1950 he returned to teach at the newly established Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, which was dominated by socialist realism. As a self-styled “fortress of bourgeois formalism” he was severely criticized and because of his refusal to conform to political dogma he was eventually banned from painting in 1966. More than a decade later, when he finally began to paint again, Wu developed a new style that forged Western and Chinese media and formal principles. In Pine Spirit, dots explode across the surface amid dancing lines and bold brushstrokes with only minimal concern for the naturalistic shapes of mountains and pines.

Trained by the Belgian-educated painter Zhang Chongren 张充仁 (1907-1998), Li utilized his painting skills to make posters during the Cultural Revolution (1966-76). However he grew tired of socialist realism, and in the late 1970s set out to find new sources for his art. After moving to San Francisco in 1982, he was inspired by the expressive “ink splash” painting of Zhang Daqian (see this gallery). However, after viewing Early Spring by Guo Xi at the National Palace Museum in Taiwan, Li turned to Song painting for inspiration. In this work, he combines the monumentality of the Northern Song period with the intimacy of the Southern Song art.

Xia had planned to study at the National College of Art at Hangzhou; however with the outbreak of full civil war between the Chinese Communist Party and the Nationalists (KMT) following the end of World War II, he was forced to join the Nationalist Army, which eventually retreated to Taiwan in 1949. It was not until much later in life following retirement from a design career in 1978 that Xia returned to painting. Many of his works utilize a more intimate album format, allowing for close observation of detail. Though small in size, his landscapes are full of unexpected details and careful delineation.