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Transcending the Gongbi Tradition

Dr Chen Fong-fong
Curator

Transcending the Gongbi Tradition: Contemporary Hong Kong Fine-Brush Painters is the first major showcase of recent work by contemporary Hong Kong painters who employ gongbi (fine-brush) techniques. Featuring both established and emerging artists, including Chan Kwan-lok, Sam Cheng, Cherie Cheuk Ka-wai, Eunice Cheung Wai-man, Barbara Choi Tak-yee, Lai Kwan-ting, Jess Leung Lai-man, Joey Leung Ka-yin, and Wilson Shieh, this showcase encompasses a wide array of subject matter that stems from traditional landscape (shanshui), bird-and-flower, animal, figure, and architectural (jiehua) genres. This show invites the viewer to look solely and intensely at gongbi painting – its materials, techniques, aesthetics, and spirit. In these paintings, the traditional brush and ink, xuan paper and silk, linear forms and rhythms, multiple layers of ink and colour, and delicate, meticulous treatments are blended with contemporary objects, figures, buildings, and everyday life. Because these painters’ practices engage with the city around them by using a medium with roots in antiquity, the works presented here manifest a linkage between the traditional and the contemporary. These nine artists consciously chose gongbi as their visual language. Though they were professionally trained in this historical mode, their artworks assert variation within tradition, and their individual styles have a decidedly contemporary quality that opens new aesthetic vistas and invites meditative viewing.

The basic tools of Chinese painting are a brush, ink, pigment, paper, and silk. The essential implements and modelling techniques of traditional Chinese painting were established in the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods (770-221 BCE). In the Chinese painting tradition, fine-brush (gongbi) and freehand (xieyi) are two major categories of painting technique. Gongbi painting stresses line drawing, and a brush is used to create fine strokes that delineate the subject matter. Xieyi painting emphasises an expressive quality, often using a calligraphic approach to convey a lifelike effect. It may also express the painter’s emotional or mental state, rather than realistically depicting a specific form. Xieyi is a more expressionistic, abbreviated style of painting that is completed quickly, while gongbi is detail-oriented and time-consuming. After it emerged in the Song dynasty (960-1279), xieyi painting became the favoured style of the literati classes, though gongbi painting was still popular at the Imperial Academy and in professional painters’ workshops into the Ming and Qing dynasties (1368-1912). Beginning in the Yuan dynasty (1271-1368), xieyi became the mainstream and gongbi was marginalised because the latter required the meticulous and skilful rendering of recognizable objects, which was associated with the style of the artisan class, rather than the literati. Thus, these two traditional categories came to represent two classes, the literati and the artisans, as well as the tastes of those classes. Before engaging with the contemporary interpretations of the gongbi style, a brief examination of the development of gongbi painting will elucidate the traditions and techniques that underpin the exhibited artists’ work.


The Gongbi Tradition in Chinese Painting

Chinese painting flourished in the Tang dynasty, and the early Chinese painting tradition is visible in Tang wall paintings and later copies. During that period, artists made high-level works with subjects and techniques spanning religious imagery, genre scenes and figures, court ladies, birds and flowers, animals, architecture, and blue-green landscapes. Famed Northern Song literati scholar Su Shi (1037-1101) wrote, “The learning of superior men and the skills of a hundred kinds of craftsmen, having originated in the Three Eras [Xia, Shang, and Zhou] and having passed through the Han and Tang dynasties, have reached a state of completion. By the time poetry had produced a Du Fu [712-770], prose writing a Han Yu [768-824], calligraphy a Yan Zhenqing [709-785], and painting a Wu Daozi, the stylistic variations of past and present, as well as all technical possibilities, were fully available.”1 Evidently, Wu Daozi (active ca. 710-760) was the acme of Chinese painting in the Song period. Wu Daozi was also admired in his time, particularly for his line drawings of figures accented with pale colour. His fluid brushwork and versatility of style even won him the esteem of Emperor Xuanzong of Tang (685-762). In On the Famous Paintings of the Tang Dynasty, Zhu Jingxuan (active ninth century) writes, “He excels in his paintings of figures and Buddhas, spirits and ghosts, birds and beasts, landscapes, buildings, and plants; he is the best the nation has seen.”2 Wu Daozi has been called “the sage of painting,” but it is worth noting that he represented a vernacular artisan tradition connected to popular culture and religious art, which was quite outside the realm of court painting. Li Sixun (651-716) and his son Li Zhaodao (675-741), members of the Tang imperial family, are credited with pioneering the outline drawing method in the blue-green landscape tradition, characterized by contour lines painted in malachite green. Their vibrant colours and fine painting style were popular at court. The Imperial Painting Academy was founded during the Five Dynasties (907-960) and flourished during the Northern and Southern Song. This kind of coloured gongbi painting was adopted at the Academy during the Song period. 

During the Five Dynasties period, Later Shu (934-965) masters Huang Quan (903-968) and Huang Jucai (933-993) used a distinctive outlining method in their bird-and-flower paintings. They added rich, brilliant colours to finely depict every detail of a bird’s feathers or an animal’s fur and convey the creature’s form and soul. These techniques laid a solid foundation for the gongbi bird-and-flower painting tradition in the Song-era Imperial Academy. Gongbi painting reached its peak in the Song dynasty, a time when literati xieyi painting was also rising. Vernacular painting, court painting, and literati painting all had their own sets of conventions, but Song literati painters and Academy painters did exchange ideas. Painters from the Imperial Academy inherited the fine style of court painting, which informed a distinctive type of Academy painting (yuanti hua). This style was precise in modelling and rigorous in technique, while remaining immensely decorative.

With the rise of Song literati painting, literati painters outside the Academy advocated for xieyi painting in ink, which changed the function and conception of painting in society. In xieyi ink painting, the subject is rendered in expressive yet concise brushwork. The literati favoured landscape paintings in ink over those painted in blue-green styles; they wanted to convey a mood with their landscapes, or pursue a desolate, tranquil poetry. Most of these works were xieyi paintings solely in ink or gently accented with pale washes. This mode of literati painting ended the dominance of figure painting in the pre-Song era, which centred on linear modelling and the flat application of colour. Landscape painting had already broken with the monotony of line drawing through a diverse array of texturing techniques used to depict the surfaces of mountains and stones. Unlike court painters, literati painters were neither required to paint political and educational propaganda nor decorate the court. The early Chinese painting tradition’s focus on didactic, representational images had shifted toward an expressive, intuitive kind of painting less interested in verisimilitude and more interested in self-contained “ink play.” Zhao Mengfu (1254-1322), an official of the Yuan dynasty who was related to the Song imperial family, advocated for a return to antiquity, which he traced back to the blue-green landscape tradition of the Tang dynasty. He also incorporated elements of Five Dynasties and Northern Song ink landscapes into his distinctive yet elegant literati painting style. Ming painter Dong Qichang (1555-1636) coined the terms “Northern School” and “Southern School” in a rejection of the Imperial Academy and professional painters. Gongbi painting was primarily perpetuated in the Imperial Academy, while literati xieyi painting became the mainstream, continuing into the Ming and Qing dynasties. 

Chinese art was challenged and inspired by Japanese and Western art in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which paved the way for the transformation of ink painting and Chinese art in general. While Chinese reformers learned about realism in Western painting, they also became interested in the realistic style of Song paintings, which they believed compared favourably with Western achievements. Xu Beihong (1895-1953) bluntly stated that Song bird-and-flower painting was the peak of Chinese painting.3  Modern painters Yu Fei’an (1889-1959), Chen Zhifo (1896-1962), and Yu Zhizhen (1915-1995) inherited the Song painting tradition and incorporated sketching from life into their gongbi paintings.

In discussing how modern Chinese painters have engaged with tradition, Wucius Wong (b. 1936) wrote, “Some Chinese artists rest their defence for its continuation on its original purity. Others regard it as an impediment to progress and advocate its total rejection. Some see the need for its rejuvenation and seek individual ways of injecting a modern spirit into the old form, or of providing it with a new form without changing its spirit. Others find their way back to it after a long journey in Western art.”4 In Chinese painting, innovation is not diametrically opposed to tradition; they are all part of the same lineage. Even as artists perpetuate Chinese culture, they can explore and develop new forms and styles. 

The rise of the modern ink movement in the mid-twentieth century was a watershed moment in Hong Kong art. By emphasising the expressiveness of their brushwork and ink tones, Lui Shou-kwan (1919-1975) and his followers sought to modernise Chinese painting using Chinese traditions, painting tools, and materials, while also incorporating Western artistic forms and styles. Their pioneering explorations launched a new ink art movement in Hong Kong. Contemporary ink presentations around the world have given the medium a place in contemporary art, revealing the connections between contemporary ink and traditional Chinese art and displaying various types of experimental ink work. 

Within this larger context, a remarkable, if small, group of contemporary gongbi artists have emerged since the late twentieth century. Contemporary Hong Kong gongbi painters still use traditional tools in their paintings, but some have employed contemporary media and techniques in their art to present a range of ideas about the contemporary moment and depictions of urban environments, thereby creating some distance from traditional painters. This showcase perpetuates tradition in some of the themes and techniques the artists utilised, but the content of the paintings bears the mark of our times and reflects every artist’s unique style.


The Exhibited Gongbi Painters and Their Work

These nine artists were trained in two major art schools in Hong Kong. Jess Leung Lai-man graduated from the Academy of Visual Arts at Hong Kong Baptist University (est. 2004), and the other eight are alumni of the Department of Fine Arts at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (est. 1957). The field of gongbi painting has been shaped by this group of Hong Kong painters over the last 20 years, a period that has seen the emergence of a thriving art market and the development of museums, art institutions, and schools in Hong Kong. Their work is truly a remarkable presence in the city’s artistic landscape.

A pioneer in contemporary gongbi painting, Wilson Shieh established himself as a versatile image-maker in the 1990s. His signature Architecture Series represents Hong Kong’s skyscrapers as women wearing elaborate dresses, which have impressed the contemporary art world since 2006. In his male and female versions of East, South, West, North, he delineates the details of the clothing in ink, offering a vision of different regions, ethnicities, and cultures. Refusing to be bound by conventional materials, Joey Leung Ka-yin has used multi-media and doggerel to develop her gongbi figures and narratives since 2005. Her new work transcends traditional subject matter and delves into depictions of allegorical figures in relational situations, conveying complex ideas about human existence and the surrounding environment. 

Eunice Cheung Wai-man and Lai Kwan-ting both received their MFAs in 2011; Cheung kicked off her artistic career with an artwork shortlisted for the Hong Kong Contemporary Art Biennial Awards 2009, while Lai received the Young Artist Award from the Hong Kong Contemporary Art Biennial Awards 2009. Inspired by her doctoral studies and exposure to Japanese art, Eunice Cheung Wai-man has crossed cultures in her new work, incorporating the use of line and colour from ukiyo-e into anthropomorphic animals that reflect her interest in working mothers. In her new Working Mom Tangram, she takes a fresh approach to these paintings, using classic tangram shapes to portray the everyday lives of working mothers in seven scenarios. A mother herself, Lai Kwan-ting’s new pieces are informed by family life and reveal her growing interest in sibling relationships. The realistic depictions of her daughter and son serve as a harmonious record of the everyday and vividly express parental love from a woman painter’s perspective. 

The remaining five artists have embarked upon their artistic careers in the last decade. Barbara Choi Tak-yee focuses on depicting Hong Kong architecture and heritage in the style of archaic blue-green landscape paintings. She creates a distinctive, whimsical effect by painting authentic Hong Kong neighbourhoods hidden within almost otherworldly seas of mountains and clouds. Showing her interest in local history and architecture, Sam Cheng juxtaposes modern cafés and older low-rise tong lau. Though these realistic buildings are surrounded by traditional clouds and blue-green mountains, Cheng includes tiny details from real life, and the way she renders solids and voids creates tensions that extend beyond the pictorial space. In her series Lingering Clouds, Cherie Cheuk Ka-wai explicitly places her work in dialogue with the writing of Tao Yuanming (365–427) and Xi Xi (b. 1937). Cheuk depicts birds, creatures that feature in both classical paintings and daily life, perched on architectural platforms or children’s toys. With pleasant, delicate colours, Cheuk creates striking compositions involving engaging displays of seemingly random but carefully arranged objects and patterns that evoke nostalgic memories. Chan Kwan-lok has an exceptional talent for composing large-scale works in monochrome ink. In this new series of four paintings inspired by flying spiders, Chan has shifted focus from sea creatures to adventures on land and the search for a new home. By modulating the tonalities of the ink, Chan creates precise demarcations between dark and light and reveals the aesthetic dimension of the line, rendering pictorial forms with restrained brushstrokes and smooth, simple, graceful, and unpretentious rhythms. Jess Leung Lai-man engages with Hong Kong society and cityscapes using her unique and multi-layered group portraits, in which each character has a distinct posture and expression. Her new works are inspired by Hong Kong’s Rugby Sevens, highlighting the hedonistic atmosphere during and after the tournament. Leung’s figure paintings present highly individualised but anonymous figures in visual narratives imbued with complex feelings. 


These artists’ ink aesthetics are a hybrid of traditional and contemporary art forms and materials, and Transcending the Gongbi Tradition expands the canon of contemporary ink by showcasing the often-overlooked genre of contemporary gongbi painting. In exploring the spiritual and contemplative qualities that underpin gongbi techniques and materials and placing the art within the context of intergenerational developments in Hong Kong ink art, this presentation enriches our understanding of Hong Kong art, contemporary ink art, and Chinese art history. 





Endnotes
1. Su Shi, “Shu Wu Daozi huahou” (Writing on a Painting by Wu Daozi), in Wen Fong, Between Two Cultures (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2001), 19.
2. Author’s translation of Zhu Jingxuan, Tangchao minghua lu (On the Famous Paintings of the Tang Dynasty) ann. Wen Zhaoxuan (Chengdu: Sichuan meishu chubanshe, 1985), 3.
3. Xu Beihong. Xu Beihong yishu wenji 1 (An Anthology of Xu Beihong’s Art Essays Volume 1) (Taipei: Yishujia chubanshe, 1987), 99, 220. See also Wang Cheng-hua. “In the Name of the Nation: Song Painting and Artistic Discourse in Early Twentieth-Century China,” in A Companion to Asian Art and Architecture, eds. Rebecca M. Brown and Deborah S. Hutton (Oxford, England; Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), 537-560.
4. Wucius Wong, “Chinese Painting in Hong Kong,” in Twentieth-Century Chinese Painting, Kao Mayching eds. (Hong Kong; New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 210.



工筆新傳

陳芳芳博士
策展人

「工筆新傳——傳統藝術在香港的當代探索」作品選萃匯集了當代香港工筆名家與後進的近作,藝術家包括:石家豪、卓家慧、張惠文、陳鈞樂、梁嘉賢、梁麗雯、蔡德怡、鄭丹珊和賴筠婷,作品題材多樣,從傳統山水、花鳥、動物、人物以至界畫,全方位展現工筆繪畫的媒介、技法、美學與意涵。現今的建築、人與物,通過傳統筆墨紙絹、線條勾勒、墨彩層層渲染,在作品中精緻細膩地描畫出來。畫家們以深具古典淵源的工筆繪畫為媒介,紀錄香港的城市點滴,其作品正體現傳統與當代的連繫。九位畫家著意選擇工筆為其視覺語言,雖師法古典表達模式,但畫作均有迥異於傳統之處,且畫家的個人風格也極見當代特色,呈現嶄新美學角度,值得觀者靜觀深思。

中國畫的基本畫具有毛筆、墨、顏料、紙和絹。早在春秋戰國時期,傳統中國繪畫已奠定主要工具及造型方式,即使用毛筆和墨,及以線描方式造型。在中國畫學傳統中,「工筆」與「寫意」是兩大分類,二者是繪畫技法。工筆著重線描,用筆工細,以細膩筆觸刻畫形象。寫意,俗稱「粗筆」,側重不求形似的逸筆草草,以筆墨捕捉物象的意態神韻,抑有遣興抒懷之作,旨在傳意。一般而言,寫意畫屬筆簡意賅的畫法,可快速完成;而工筆畫繪製細緻,需時較長。寫意畫自宋代興起後,文人精英階層主導的主流畫壇自此崇尚寫意畫風,明清時期的工筆畫主要在宮廷畫院和民間繪製。元代起寫意成為主流,工筆漸成末技,亦因工筆力求精工,「工」有工匠之意,這使寫意和工筆兩大傳統指向文人和畫匠兩大階層,及其代表的精英與大眾兩種審美意趣,而歸結至雅俗之辨的問題。本文先簡述中國工筆畫的發展脈絡,進而以參展藝術家的工筆作品為例,闡釋當代工筆和傳統藝術的關係。


中國畫中的工筆傳統

唐朝是中國畫全面發展的鼎盛時期。從唐代壁畫及後世摹本可窺見早期的中國繪畫傳統,例如道釋畫、風俗人物畫、宮廷婦女、花鳥、動物、樓閣臺榭和青綠山水等題材及技法已臻於高水平創作。北宋中期著名的文人學者蘇軾 (1037-1101) 曾說,「君子之於學,百工之於技,自三代歷漢至唐而備矣。詩至於杜子美 (杜甫,712-770),文至於韓退之 (韓愈,768-824),書至於顏魯公 (顏真卿,709-785),畫至於吳道子,而古今之變,天下之能事畢矣。」1由此可見,宋人眼中吳道子 (約活躍於710-760) 是中國繪畫創作的高峰,集大成者。吳道子在世時備受推崇,猶擅長線描及淡設色人物畫法,以其筆法流暢,靈活多變見稱,並獲唐玄宗 (685-762)賞識。朱景玄 (活躍於九世紀) 的《唐朝名畫錄》載:「凡畫人物、佛像、神鬼、禽獸、山水、台殿、草木,皆冠絕於世,國朝第一。」2畫史尊稱吳道子畫聖,值得注意的是,其代表的是有別於宮廷藝術,與大眾通俗文化及宗教藝術接軌的民間畫工傳統。設色畫中,青綠山水極具古意。史載唐代宗室李思訓 (651-716) 及其子李昭道 (675-741) 建立勾勒法青綠山水傳統,特點是沿輪廓線著石綠,其炫麗色彩及工細線描風格受宮廷歡迎。宮廷畫院始於五代,盛於兩宋,這種設色工筆畫被宋代畫院採用。

五代後蜀的花鳥畫大師黃荃 (903-968) 、黃居寀 (933-993) 父子以勾勒法繪畫花鳥畫,設色濃麗鮮明,細緻描繪鳥的每一根羽毛和獸的毛皮,達至形神俱備,這為宋畫院的工筆花鳥畫傳統奠定基礎。工筆畫於宋代處於巔峰期,文人寫意畫亦隨之興起。當時民間繪畫、宮廷繪畫和文人繪畫各自形成體系,宋代文人士大夫畫家和畫院畫家之間相互交流。簡而言之,畫院畫家繼承宮廷繪畫工細的風格,形成特點鮮明的「院體畫」,講求造型準確,作法嚴謹,色彩鮮豔,裝飾意趣濃厚。

宋代文人畫興起,畫院外的文人士大夫提倡水墨寫意畫,繪畫的社會功能觀念隨之改變。水墨寫意畫以筆墨表現洗鍊簡括的造型。水墨山水畫亦比青綠山水更受文人青睞。文人追求山水意境,或者蕭條淡泊的詩意,作品多為寫意水墨或淡設色,這打破了宋代以前以人物畫創作為主,以單線勾勒造型及平塗設色的表現形式。山水畫已突破單一線描形式,創造出多種多樣的皴法,以表現山石質感。文人畫家不似畫院畫家要承擔各種政教宣傳和裝飾美化宮廷的任務,早期中國畫傳統以圖為鑑及勸戒的社會功能轉為寄情寓興為主,繪畫不求形似,乃聊以自娛的墨戲。出仕元朝的宋宗師畫家趙孟頫(1254-1322) 提倡復古,上溯至唐代的青綠山水傳統,結合五代及北宋的水墨山水元素,獨創古雅妍麗的文人畫畫風。明代董其昌(1555-1636) 倡「南北宗」說,排斥院體和職業畫家,工筆畫主要在宮廷畫院中繼承,文人寫意畫成主流,歷經明清時期而不衰。

十九世紀末至二十世紀初,中國畫壇受到日本及西方藝術的衝擊和啟迪,力圖改良中國畫,進行美術革命。改革派知識份子一般認為要學習洋畫的寫實精神,中國畫中可與西畫競爭的便是宋畫對自然景物體察入微所展現的寫實性。徐悲鴻(1895-1953) 直言宋代花鳥畫是中國繪畫的最高峰。3現代畫家于非闇 (1889-1959) 、陳之佛 (1896-1962) 和俞致貞 (1915-1995) 等人,則承傳宋畫傳統,並結合寫生經驗創作工筆畫。

香港水墨畫家王無邪 (1936年生) 曾談到現代中國畫家對傳統有不同抉擇:「部分中國畫家延續傳統,以捍衛傳統的真貌,有些視傳統為障礙,主張全盤摒棄;亦有認為需要更新傳統,另闢蹊徑,為舊有形式加注現代精神,又或保留舊有精神於新形式之中;其他則經過漫長的西方藝術探索,再回歸傳統。」4事實上,歷代的傳統中國繪畫有創新之處,但其「新」並非與「舊」對立,而是承傳,在師承及承傳中國文化的同時,探索如何展現新貌,獨樹一格。

二十世紀下半葉現代水墨興起是香港藝術發展的重要里程碑。著眼於運筆輕重和墨色變化,呂壽琨 (1919-1975) 和現代水墨的追隨者在紮根傳統中國工具與材料的同時,也糅合西方現代藝術的形式和風格。他們探索水墨新面貌,並成為新水墨運動的開拓者。當代水墨藝術盛行,香港和海外皆舉辦當代水墨展,這些當代水墨展也考慮現當代水墨發展對中國繪畫傳統的傳承及創新,並展示了各種水墨實驗和探索。

在這一歷史脈絡下,自二十世紀末起,香港出現了一小撮以工筆為主要創作媒介的當代藝術家。當代香港工筆藝術家多使用傳統工具來創作工筆畫,但是有些工筆畫家也會在他們的藝術創作中運用當代媒材和借鑑科技,並呈現多元化的當代表達和城市景觀,從而與傳統畫家區分開。這些作品與傳統一脈相承,繪畫主題及技巧皆承傳有序,但畫作內容無不呈現時代特徵,每位參展藝術家各有其獨特風格。


參與工筆藝術家及作品特色

九位藝術家師出本港兩大藝術院系,梁麗雯畢業於香港浸會大學視覺藝術院 (成立於2004年) ,其餘八位則是香港中文大學藝術系 (成立於1957年) 的畢業生。過去二十年間,香港藝術市場日趨興旺,博物館、藝術機構與院校蓬勃發展;工筆繪畫這片園地,在這群本港畫家耕耘不輟下,也漸成氣象,其作品在本港藝術界有著別具一格的風貌。

石家豪可說是當代工筆繪畫的先驅人物,早在二十世紀九十年代已確立起其圖像多面手的地位,其代表作「建築系列」,把香港摩天大廈的形象轉化成風姿綽約的女士衣裙,自2006年以來,石氏正以此見重於當代藝壇。新作男版女版的《東南西北》以墨筆勾寫服飾細節,引發地域國族和文化想像。梁嘉賢向以不拘泥傳統媒介見稱,自2005年起,其工筆人物畫作就開始以多媒介塑材,結合打油詩題字,自成一格,其新作在題材上也作出突破,刻劃漫畫式人物的相對性處境,探索人類的存在與周遭環境的複雜關係。

張惠文與賴筠婷於2011取得藝術碩士學位。兩人在開展藝術事業之初,張惠文的作品入選2009年香港當代藝術雙年獎,賴筠婷則獲得2009年香港當代藝術雙年獎青年藝術家獎榮譽。張惠文憑其博士研究及其對日本藝術的認識,在其新作中展現出跨文化特色,在描繪人物化的動物時,糅合了日本浮世繪的線條與色彩運用元素,從中呈現其對在職母親的思考。張氏在新作《職媽七巧板》中,採取了有別於以往的構圖和敘事模式,以經典七巧板圖形,描繪在職母親日常生活的七個場景。同樣是母親的賴筠婷,新作也以家庭生活為靈感,體現其愈加關注的兄弟姐妹情;作品中寫實描畫了其女兒、兒子的形象,紀錄了融洽的日常,栩栩如生地從女畫家的角度見證父母之愛。

其他五位畫家均是於2010年代開展藝術事業。蔡德怡擅以古典青綠山水工筆技法,繪畫本港建築與遺跡,把具真實感的城市面貌融入虛渺的群山雲海之景,營造特有的古意盎然的奇幻意境。鄭丹珊喜在作品對照呈現現代咖啡室與較老舊唐樓的畫面,反映其對本地歷史與建築的興趣,畫中寫實的建築物有傳統的雲霧與青綠山巒縈繞,並仔細描畫了種種生活細節,其風格特點在於將虛實之間對峙的緊張感躍然紙上。在卓家慧的《停雲》系列,清晰可見畫作與陶淵明 (365-427) 和西西 (1937年生) 著作間的對話;鳥既是古典書畫也是日常生活常見題材,卓氏作品中的鳥或棲於建築物的平台,或停在孩童玩具上,畫面色彩悅目有緻,構圖裡看似隨意放置的物件與圖案,實則經精心安排,藉以牽動觀者的回憶與懷舊之情。陳鈞樂尤擅長以水墨繪製大型作品,在本系列四幅受到飛蜘蛛啟發而創作的繪畫中,陳氏把眼光從海獸轉移到陸地,於此尋找家園。作品以墨色勾勒物象輪廓,其深淺濃淡變化呈現明暗之別,亦揭示線條的美學維度,並以克制的筆觸、婉約雅潔的氣韻營造畫面。梁麗雯以其獨有的層層渲染群像,繪畫出香港社會與城市面貌,當中人物姿態與神情各異。新作取材自香港七人欖球賽,突出賽事其間和過後的享樂主義氛圍;梁氏筆下的人物面貌雖各有特徵,但卻在蘊藏複雜情感的視覺敘事中只屬茫茫人海的無名一員。


這次「工筆新傳」作品選萃,正聚焦在全球當代水墨發展進程中備受忽略的當代工筆畫,冀助當代水墨開拓工筆一系,並在探索工筆技法與媒介的精神意涵與省思、把工筆置於香港水墨藝術跨代發展軌跡的同時,增進大眾對香港藝術、當代水墨以至中國藝術史的認識與理解。





註釋
1. 蘇軾:〈書吳道子畫後〉,俞劍華編著:《中國古代畫論類編》(北京:人民美術出版社,2004),冊上,頁455。
2. 朱景玄撰,溫肇玄注:《唐朝名畫錄》(成都:四川美術出版社,1985),頁3。
3. 徐悲鴻:《徐悲鴻藝術文集》(台北:藝術家,1987),冊1,頁99、220。Wang, Cheng-hua. “In the Name of the Nation: Song Painting and Artistic Discourse in Early Twentieth-Century China.” In Rebecca M. Brown and Deborah S. Hutton eds., A Companion to Asian Art and Architecture (Oxford, England; Malden, Mass.:Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), 537-560.
4. Wucius Wong, “Chinese Painting in Hong Kong,” in Kao Mayching eds. Twentieth-Century Chinese Painting (Hong Kong; New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 210.




References 參考書目

Su, Shi 蘇軾. “Writing on a Painting by Wu Daozi” (書吳道子畫後). In Fong, Wen. Between Two Cultures. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2001.

Wang, Cheng-hua. “In the Name of the Nation: Song Painting and Artistic Discourse in Early Twentieth‐Century China.” In A Companion to Asian Art and Architecture, edited by Rebecca M. Brown and Deborah S. Hutton, 537-560. Oxford, England; Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011.

Wong, Wucius. “Chinese Painting in Hong Kong.” In Twentieth-Century Chinese Painting, edited by Kao Mayching, 210-223. Hong Kong; New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.

Xu, Beihong 徐悲鴻. An Anthology of Xu Beihong’s Art Essays Volume 1 (徐悲鴻藝術文集). Taipei: Yishujia chubanshe, 1987. 

Zhu, Jingxuan 朱景玄. On the Famous Paintings of the Tang Dynasty (唐朝名畫錄), annotated by Wen Zhaoxuan 溫肇玄. Chengdu: Sichuan meishu chubanshe, 1985.




Curator Bio 策展人簡介

Dr CHEN Fong-fong is a Research Assistant Professor of Art History in the Department of Visual Studies at Lingnan University. Her research centres on representations of women and fashion in China from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries across mediums. Other research interests include photography, the transnational history of Chinese art, museum studies, and Hong Kong art.

Dr Chen was previously a visiting scholar and a J.S. Lee Memorial Fellow at the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) and an associate curator at the University Museum and Art Gallery at the University of Hong Kong. She has curated numerous exhibitions including Multiple Encounters in collaboration with Yang Fudong (BAMPFA, 2014), Tradition to Contemporary: Ink Painting and Artistic Development in 20th-Century China (HKU UMAG, 2018), and Silent Voices (1a Space, 2020). She also received a MacLean Fellowship, a research grant from the Lord Wilson Heritage Trust, and a project grant from the Hong Kong Arts Development Council.

陳芳芳博士是嶺南大學視覺研究系研究助理教授。陳博士專注研究十八至二十世紀中國藝術中的女性與時尚。她的研究興趣還包括攝影、二十世紀中國藝術的跨國歷史、博物館研究和香港藝術。

陳博士是美國加州大學柏克萊分校美術館與太平洋電影檔案館(BAMPFA)訪問學者及利榮森紀念交流計劃訪問學人,並曾擔任香港大學美術博物館副館長。她曾與楊福東合作策劃《重|遇》藝術展覽(BAMPFA,2014),及策劃《鑑古賞今——二十世紀中國的水墨與藝術發展》(HKU UMAG,2018) 和《無聲之聲》展覽(1a Space, 2020)。 陳博士亦獲得MacLean獎學金、衞奕信勳爵文物信託及香港藝術發展局資助。