Lot 1002: AI XUAN

AI XUAN
(B. 1947)
Autumn Day
signed in Chinese; signed 'Aixuan' in Pinyin; dated '2001' (lower right)
oil on canvas
90.5 x 103 cm. (35 5/8 x 40 1/2 in.)
Painted in 2001

Christie's Hong Kong, 26 November 2006, Lot 185
Acquired from the above by the present owner

Ai Xuan began his art training when he enrolled in the Beijing Central Academy of Fine Arts Preparatory School in 1963. The Cultural Revolution began shortly before his graduation in 1967 and interrupted his formal training. It was in 1973 when Ai Xuan served as an artist stationed in Chengdu Military Zone that he first stepped foot in Tibet. He recalled his first experience of the grandeur and expanse of the remote highlands and his feeling of profound unity in heaven, earth and human life. The tranquil silence of the snowy wilderness assaulted his senses, and the emptiness and loneliness brought to his mind a type of pre-historic, primeval beginnings of life itself, somewhere in which time seems to have frozen still. After being enveloped in this type of infinite horizon of indestructible silence, Ai Xuan left conventional realism to create abstracted, evocative images filled with allusions to reflect these complex emotions he felt and embodied it in the scenes of Tibet. Ai Xuan said of his work, "I try to express a very complicated feeling...my paintings aren't simple representations of Tibetan life...I'm expressing my own feelings and my own sense of destiny." Since then he developed a close relationship with the misty snow scenes, sequestered cottages, and the innocent faces of the girls of the region and they become the subjects for expressing the artist's inner world. Through them he explores the meaning and value of the vitality in life symbolic of the human condition and spiritual fulfillment in his paintings.

Ai's Autumn Day (Lot 1002) depicts a young Tibetan girl covered in traditional cotton-quilted jacket sitting alone on a dry, cold autumn day deep within the remote highlands, accompanied by nothing but a wandering dog and the wilderness. The crisp, dry grass is masterfully captured under Ai's textured brushstrokes, which also render the cloudless sky, creating an all encompassing atmospheric ambience. Ai captures the moment when thegirl glances aloofly mid-thought into the clear sky above. Her inquisitive and curious expression is tinged with sorrow, solitude and mystery and evokes profound empathy from the viewer. Ai portrays the girl looking away from us to accentuate the distance between her and the viewers, whereby they feel like an intruder to the girl's inner world.

Autumn Day emphasizes the complex emotions of the subject. In one of Ai Xuan's favourite historic works of art, Rembrandt's Self Portrait (Fig. 1), painted when the Dutch artist faced increasing financial difficulties, Ai draws inspiration to capture both pride and sadness in the eyes of his subjects to render the hardship and realities of the lives of the Tibetan people on the barren terrains. The expression of emotions through the eyes continues to be a powerful tool for Ai; in Autumn Day, the supplication and curiosity in the girl's look into the sky convey a combination of innocence, sadness and perseverance all at the same time. The son of Ai Qing, one of China's most prominent poets, the literary background of Ai Xuan comes through in the poetic mood in his paintings. This concern for poetry and sentimentality in his images is also reflected in his admiration in the works of American Realist Andrew Wyeth, whom Ai had the opportunity to meet in 1988. Like Wyeth, Ai strives for the abstracted landscapes and rendering of heavy, unspoken emotions, and specific regional landscapes and circumstances of their reality. By means of naturalistic depiction, exquisite brushwork and meticulously rendered forms, Ai fills his works with passionate sentiments that reflect his subject's complex emotions.

As explained by art critic Roger Fry, "The most important aspect of Chinese art is the rhythm of line. Outline work is always the most prominent feature". Ai Xuan's well-drawn, defined forms demonstrate this classical Chinese aesthetic concern for the rhythm of line. The multiple, interlacing curved lines delineating the girl's contour is visually balanced by the long sweeping curved horizon in the background. A flowing diagonal is created in the figure's coat and the crumbling rocks behind her, and leads our gaze from the foreground, the middle ground into the far horizon; this line is offset with the textural details and irregular form of the dog in the right of the image to create compositional balance. Like works by the Yuan Dynasty artist Ni Zan, whom he admires greatly, Ai strives to capture the essence of images into their purified and simplified version as to elegantly evoke imagination and emotional allusions and his use of rhythm in line and attention to compositional arrangements are fundamental to this construction. The emphasis on an indistinct time and infinite horizon representative of time itself reveals a Zen-like sensibility in Ai's works; time and space seem to collapse altogether in creating timeless testament to existence. As Ai Xuan's paintings continue to evolve, his focus in expressing his inner world through personification of the solitude and tranquility remains steadfast and his aesthetic concerns and wide influences from the East and West continue to spark a spirit of reflection on the human condition and its true destiny.