Notes
The modernist movement and the oil painting movement were the central trends that characterized artistic development in the greater China region during the 20th century. They provided artists with concrete means of expressing their sense of both external and internal realities, allowing them to produce a body of creative work through which they reflected their specific environments and voiced their personal experiences and outlooks. Thus, beyond the beauty embodied in their work, they also conveyed a sense of the living, breathing pulse of their times and the prevailing currents of thought of the day.
Taiwan, with its southerly location off China's coast, is closely tied to China both geographically and in terms of the kinship ties between its peoples. Artistically, perhaps the greatest difference between the two regions has been the ability of Taiwanese artists to more completely escape the restrictive influences of tradition in Chinese culture, enabling them to examine broad issues of self, nation, and ethnicity from a perspective of greater diversity and cultural detachment. One modern artist who embodied these features was Guo Bochuan, who was born in Taiwan on July 21, 1901, to a family that traced its roots to Jinjiang County in the nearby coastal province of Fujian
Guo Bochuan employed his distinctive painting style in the service of works that embody his response to the culture and environment of his era. Purely in terms of his stance as a painter, his personal thoughts and feelings were sublimated on canvas through compositional structures that perfectly united the rational elements of painting with a mastery of the more subjective, expressive elements in the shaping of their forms and colors.
The May 4th movement that began in 1919 led to intense self-reflection and self-criticism on the part of cultural and artistic figures in China, and by the 1930s, artists in Taiwan were filled with a fervent idealism for modern art. Guo Bochuan left Taiwan at the end of 1934, traveling first to Japan and then, in 1937, to China, where he toured and sketched its northeastern regions for a year before arriving in 1938 in Beijing, then known as Beiping. At the suggestion of his music teacher at a normal college, he took up teaching positions at National Beiping Normal University and National Beiping Academy of Art, and later, at the strenuous urging of Qiu Shiming, president of the Jinghua Academy of the Arts, he became dean of the western painting department there as well as dean of disciplinary affairs. Guo thus developed deep connections with Beijing, the city where, from 1937 until his return to Taiwan in 1949, he spent a full twelve years during the prime of his life, and his stay in the mainland brought him personal experience of social turbulence and the spreading ravages of war in a way few other Taiwanese artists of his time could understand. These experiences engendered sharp realizations about society and the world that would be transformed and given artistic expression in his canvases.
1939: The Imperial Palace
Among the trove of historical materials relating to the life of Guo Bochuan, the memoirs published in 1980 by his wife, Zhu Wanhua ("Bochuan and I"), are notable for their mention of his staunch defense of Chinese identity-his own and his nation's. That defense took the form of adherence to three rules: he would not teach in Japanese, accept Japanese rations, or paint propaganda paintings. They were his three principles of nationalism, a kind of declaration on which he refused to bend or waver during his 12 years in Beijing. Guo's adherence to principle also found expression in the majority of his paintings, in his habit of using signatures resembling traditional Chinese seals and in dating his works in the Republic of China calendar (where year one is 1911, the year of the founding of the Republic). These testify to the artist's character and his artistic orientation, his calm strength during an era of great upheaval and the manner in which he upheld respect for his ethnic identity. Guo Bochuan the artist focused on creative work, but in another role, was an enthusiastic promoter and educator; under the aegis of the New Association of the Arts organized in Beijing in 1941, he held solo exhibitions each year to further the growth and appreciation of modern art in China.
The architecture of the ancient capital of Beijing, as the embodiment of age-old traditions central to Chinese culture, had a grandeur and majesty that Guo Bochuan found impressive and inspiring. Guo's first oil depiction of the Imperial Palace, from 1939, is a rigorously structured composition that testifies to the artist's belief in Beijing as the world's most beautiful city in that era.
During his stay in Beijing, Guo developed a close friendship with one of the masters of traditional Chinese painting, Huang Binhong, and was inevitably influenced by the traditional styles and symbols that gave those traditional landscapes their poignant expressiveness. In addition, the city itself provided eye-opening panoramas of imperial majesty beneath clear skies and rolling clouds and brilliantly colored glazed-tile roofs and dense greenery, all of which were a never-ending source of inspiration for the artist.
Guo Bochuan accompanied Japanese artist Umehara Ryuzaburo during the latter's first visit to Beijing; together the two visited numerous points of interest, enjoying their historical architecture or local color. Acquaintance with this artist seems to have urged Guo toward both greater coloristic awareness and more boldly expressive brushwork. As both artists left us oils that embody their admiration for the Imperial Palace and deeply felt impressions of it, it is possible to make some stylistic comparisons. In his 1940 Forbidden City (Fig. 1), Umehara Ryuzaburo's high vantage point presents a view that angles across the city from a distance and reveals only a small corner of the palace grounds. This is partly due to the vantage point of the artist, from his temporary residence at the Beijing Grand Hotel, looking from a balcony across the Avenue of Eternal Peace and the Forbidden City. But the view was also deliberately chosen to emphasize the sky rather than having the Imperial City as its main focus; it highlights the painter's skill at projecting the natural features of the scene and his fine handling of color and brushwork. Guo Bochuan selects a different viewpoint in his own 1939 Imperial Palace, one revealing close observation of a scene that was obviously much loved by the artist. The palace is presented from above in a resplendent tapestry of color that encompasses a broad, spacious view of the palace environs; cool and warm tones play off against each other in thin, transparent layers of pigment that build and overlap to create a richly layered, three-dimensional effect. This work, one of a number in which Guo depicted the Imperial Palace, is the finest in the series in terms of his handling of light and its effects within the scene. Judging from the angle of light and the layering of tones within the painting, it is likely Guo was facing the Imperial City under nearly the full light of noon, the sunlight falling directly from above and casting bright reflections from the buildings while throwing other areas into deep shadow. Similar treatments of lighting effects are rarely seen in oils; the resulting visual effect gives the Imperial Palace an exceptionally vivid and lifelike presence on the canvas, while at another level, the work communicates the respect and veneration for the Imperial Palace scene that Guo Bochuan, as an artist concerned with his Chinese identity, felt so deeply.
Another important stylistic development that occurred during Guo Bochuan's Beijing period grew from his decision to employ traditional eastern color schemes in the oil medium. In Imperial Palace, vermilion reds, dark greens, and sapphires from the painted porcelains of the Ming's Wanli period (1572 to 1620) reappear in the mixed palette of reds, blues, and greens through which Guo depicts the palace grounds. Here, the oils are diluted to a thin translucency that successfully projects a porcelain-like feeling of transparency and lustrous color throughout the canvas. In his brushwork, too, Guo's swiftly moving brush produces drifting washes of color not unlike those of the ink-wash medium. Through this ingenious and masterful approach, Guo achieves an effects of both classical elegance and delicacy as well as an overall atmosphere that exudes imposing energy. The stylistic approach Guo establishes here would continue to exert a decisive influence in his work after his later return to Taiwan.
Guo Bochuan in Taiwan
Tainan was Guo Bochuan's birthplace and the hometown to which he returned after the war. He had a deep feeling for the region that had nurtured him during his youth, and after his return in 1948 he resided permanently in Tainan, where for a 20-year period he taught in the Architecture Department of Tainan's National Cheng Kung University.
During the years in Taiwan, Guo studied the colors of its handcrafted utensils, embroidery, and red-walled temples, searching for colors that would suit his personal artistic style and making the essential features of its native culture a part of his work, and in 1952, he and other artist friends also organized the Tainan Fine Arts Association. Compared to other Taiwanese artists of his generation, Guo was prone to imposing strict demands on himself: his style conveys the impression of simplicity and depth, and emphasizes composition; his colors are strong and saturated and his brushwork precise, while his handling of line suggests a calligraphic artistry. All in all, Guo was an artist who sought mastery of the essentials of painting. A statement he made through his Tainan Fine Arts Association is revealing of his artistic ideals and outlook: "When we are deciding on the admission of a new member to the Association, we pay special attention to questions of character, aside from considerations about the quality of their work. The success of an artist depends to a large degree on the high quality of their values and character, and can the work of an artist truly be called art if it does not reflect their character and personality? We must see in it at least some reflection of these qualities." Wang Baiyuan further commented on Guo Bochuan's style in a special 1955 issue of the Taipei Cultural Affairs quarterly. In his essay "History of the Taiwan Fine Arts Movement," he wrote that "Guo's style emphasizes feeling; it finds simplicity within the complex, its variety is well harmonized, and all in all it constitutes a new style." *March 1955, Taiwan Province Historical Research Commission, pg. 63.
Guo began experimenting in 1943 with the combination of Chinese xuan paper and oils, attempting to create a feeling of weight that would contrast with traditional oil techniques. His resulting use of xuan paper along with long-handled, round, soft-bristled brushes successfully produced a new kind of color with lightness, gracefulness, and transparency, which reflected the feel of ink-and-brush work. This new style enable Guo to convey subjective personal perceptions through works based on a calligraphic sense of the structure and beauty of line and the abstraction of Chinese characters, combined with the texturing of layered oil pigments and his free and energetic brushwork. The painterly effects of brush and ink stress the calligraphic beauty of line itself: the initiation and continuation of the lines, their reversals and outlining effects, their splotches of ink and their curved, falling strokes; then there is the play of the brush itself, the speed of the brush and the rhythm of its curves, the spreading washes and the luster of liquid ink. The concept of using calligraphic techniques in painting was already familiar and well-defined in traditional Chinese painting, but Guo Bochuan innovated in the use of the energetic sweeps and turns of calligraphy and its traditional aesthetics, marshalling these techniques to emphasize three-dimensional effects and adding their simple richness to the array of effects possible in oil. His oils were thus able to communicate the real and natural feel of modern scenes through techniques that nevertheless were redolent of their origins in ancient and traditional landscape paintings.
Guo produced a series of paintings featuring typically Taiwanese scenes, of which the Confucian temples of Tainan and its Anping Harbor are particularly representative of his style. In these typically Taiwanese prospects Guo had seemingly rediscovered the fundamental architectural beauty of which he was so fond: the flying eaves of the temples, their embellished ridgework in the "horseback" style and their vermilion columns became natural vehicles for Guo's cultivated and refined brushwork. Two Guo Bochuan works from 1966 and 1972 respectively, Confucian Temple at Tainan and Fishing Harbor at Anping, exemplify his approach to the treatment of these subjects. Guo Bochuan oils presenting such subjects as Fishing Harbor at Anping are especially rare, and this particular work is one of the most outstanding of its kind in Guo's entire oeuvre.
After his return in 1948, Guo traveled throughout the island of Taiwan and painted its beautiful scenery in a series of outstanding, memorable works. Among them are his 1953 Danshui Sunset and Danshui Scene, which express his fond impressions of the scenery of northern Taiwan. In particular, they capture important local scenes and historical relics, such as the nearly 100-year-old Danshui Church situated alongside the Danshui River and views of the distant Guanyin Mountain from across that same river. Each is a reflection of the deep and nostalgic feeling of the people of Taiwan for these particular scenes of their native land. Fruit and flower still lifes were also a favored subject of this artist, and provide further insights into his attitudes toward life. In them, brilliant reds and finely patterned tablecloths form the backgrounds to casual arrangements of books and daily items. In this Still Life, Guo presents his subject from an almost vertical position and with selective detail, creating a vivid sense of presence with a sensibility that is in some ways almost photographic, which allows viewers to analyze and interpret Guo's conception from a personal, subjective perspective. Still Life fully conveys the genuineness and directness of this artist's personality.
