LUI SHOU-KWAN AND NEW INK PAINTING
Cheung Ying Man, Chris
Born in the year of the May Fourth Movement, Lui Shou-kwan was the
founder of New Ink Painting, and he attempted to transform traditional
Chinese painting into a modern form. Lui was born in Canton, and his father
Lui Chan-ming was a famous late Qing literati painter. He was nourished by
traditional Chinese art, and had a deep knowledge about its history, theories
and techniques. Yet after he settled in Hong Kong in 1948, he was influenced
by western art, especially Impressionist paintings and Abstractionism. New
Ink Painting was the product of Lui’s “east-meets-west” experience; it was a
break-through of Chinese painting. He was influential as he taught painting in
universities and he published his ideas of art in newspapers and magazines.
Lui used ink and absorbent Chinese paper for his painting, which is very
traditional; yet, his work, especially his mature work is very typical and new in
style.
Lui Shou-kwan was a self-taught painter. In his teenage he learnt the
technique of Chinese painting by copying classical masterpieces. He studied
literati and court art from different dynasties. Lui believed an artist has to learn
skills from different schools and styles, so as to be free from the limitation of
convention. His childhood contact with art did not inspire him to paint seriously;
he started his painting career when he moved to Hong Kong. His early work
was greatly influenced by tradition; he considered it “naturalistic and
romantic”[1]. One of his earliest works is Rabbit; it shows Lui’s interest in
traditional court painting. It is very detailed, vivid, elegant and delicate. Lui
seldom used silk, but he was eager to test out different materials. He was
testing out different styles in the 50s, and learning skills from the traditional
painting and the style of western art. He was studying Impressionism in the
mid-50s, and made a copy of Turner’s famous Snow Storm. Waves is an
attempt to combine western expression with Chinese brush and ink, Lui was
testing out the expressive quality of Chinese media. In Turner, Lui discovered
new form, new colour and space, which he applied in his later painting. At the
same time he was also studying Matisse, Picasso, Kandinsky, etc.
Lui worked in a ferry company since 1949 and remained there for 17 years.
His vision of the agitated sea and the coastal landscape became the main
subject matter to his painting in the 60s. There are four main types of
landscape that he painted – hills, islands, houses and boats. Lui’s style at the
time was partly influenced by the classical works he copied, by his father and
his father’s friend, and also by the inspiration of western art. Winding Bridge is
a reflection of these complicated influences. It is a monumental landscape
showing a troop of people voyaging up and down the hill, which presents a
traditional idea of the harmonious relationship between man and nature. But
the bold use of ink in representing vegetation and the hill is quite abstract. Lui
thought that nature is the best teacher; he did his painting by making sketches
of the real landscape, and studied it carefully. Many of his work had a sketchy
manner, like Kellet Island, Spring in Aberdeen and Island and Boats. In the
mid 60s, his landscape paintings turned more abstract, Evening and Harbour
is an obvious example. Lui used bold, flat black ink to show the dark sky and
a touch of red ink is the falling sun. Form is minimized. The colour is more
expressive. It is the influence of Impressionism on the one hand, but his bold
use of black ink looks like his father’s work too. Actually the influence of his
father and his father’s friends should not be neglected. Lui Shou-kwan was
not the first one who does sketches, Huang Boye, friend of Lui Chan-ming, a
major painter of Ling-nan school in Hong Kong did sketches and Lui Shoukwan knew him from his father. The development of Lui’s style does not
affected solely by modern art; he had tried all the time to combine modern and
classical style to form a new one. His effort was recognized in Hong Kong as
well as overseas; his work was exhibited in U.K. and U.S. since 1954.
In the 1960s and 70s, Lui was actively writing in magazines and newspaper
about his ideas of the development of Chinese painting. He thought that
Chinese painting since the Ming Dynasty has abandoned the principles of
creativity, they are just imitations of early masterpieces, it was an obstacle for
the development of Chinese painting. Lui thought that many artists at the time
were still working under the shadow of the past, they could not free
themselves from classical influence. Lui considered it a shame to be a
copycat. Lui’s principle of modern artist is, any artist who creates new forms
or techniques, or whose work shows his individuality, no matter the work is
good or not, this artist should be respected, and his work preserved. New Ink
Painting is a new style of Chinese literati painting, its concept comes from
Wang Weir’s naturalism in the Tang Dynasty. Painters create, just as nature
nourishes every being, so painters should have the spirit of nature. The media
of New Ink Painting is traditional ink, paper and brush, but as long as it helps
to express the spirit, there should be no restriction of media. He valued
creativity and individuality highly, yet the inheritance of traditional painting
techniques is also important.
Lui’s mature work is produced in 1970s, which he named it Zen painting.
Although Lui continued using absorbent paper and ink, the Zen painting is
greatly deviated from Chinese tradition in terms of style. It is highly abstract,
yet, it is not an imitation of western abstractionism; it is an interpretation of
Chinese abstraction. As he explained in an interview in 1961, Chinese
painting is often an imitation of nature, and it is to present a personal spirit
through painting the nature. A painter need to copy old masterpieces when he
learns to paint, but copying is not a creation. Art is to create, yet imitating the
nature is just another kind of copying, it is neither a creation. So how can a
Chinese painter create his own art? Lui tried to find the answer by studying
the theories of different schools of western art, and he read about
abstractionism. Then he look back to the history of Chinese painting, he found
that Chinese painters emphasized the presentation of personal spirit beyond
the importance of form. Lui then considered developing a new trend by
abandoning the physical form so as to attain a higher level of personal
expression. Abstractionism inspired him to break through the limitation of form
and create his own form. At the same time, Lui was interested in Zen
Buddhism, so it became the subject of his painting. Lui said,
“Color and form philosophically refer to objects with physical manifestation.
The Buddhist says, ‘boundless color and form; luminous consummation’….
How can one express this luminous completeness in a painting, to attain
the state of boundless colour and form? This is what Zen painting
inspires.”[2]
Through these paintings Lui wanted to present the Buddhist idea of confusion
of the universe and supreme purity of Buddhism, lotus is often used as the
subject matter because it represents purified soul.
Zen painting can be divided into two styles, one I would call it the “dry” style,
and the other “wet”. The dry one is more emphasized in the use of brush in
his expression, which the wet one was an experiment of the expressive
quality of ink and colour. The dry style is usually composed by heavy
horizontal black strokes at the bottom, representing mud or leaves in the lotus
pond. It also means confusion. The red patch above it is a lotus flower, the
Buddhist soul. Contrasting with the red and black is the white empty
background; it represents the universe or void. Zhong Zi and Zen Painting are
very typical “dry” Zen paintings. In Zhong Zi, Lui presented the flower in a
form of butterfly, and it contains a more complicated meaning – the butterfly
comes from the book Zhong Zi, the masterpiece of Taoism, it was about
Zhong Zi’s dream, hence Lui was combining Taoism and Buddhism in the
painting. In In Search of Zen, the red dot is transformed into blue, and the red
horizontal line is the horizon joining the sky and the pond. The dense black ink
of the “dry” Zen painting is dragged by a broad brush on paper, this technique
is very much deviated from tradition, but its expressive quality reminds one of
calligraphy.
Comparatively, the “wet” style appears more complex than the “dry” version.
It was done by sprinkling water and diluted ink and colour on paper, and the
colour spread unrestrained, it then formed a picture naturally. It is again a
representation of lotus or pond, in Zen 4, the radiation of colour looks like
dissolved images of lotus flower. And in Zen 7, the yellow and blue is the
dissolved image of leave in the agitated water, for the greenness of leaves is
a combination of yellow and blue. Zen Painting 1971 shows the reflection of
moon in the pond, the black ink at the bottom represents the leaves and mud.
There is less empty area in the “wet” version than the “dry”, the use of brush
is also less emphasized. The ink looks transparent and expanding, the
dissolved form is mysterious. In his Zen painting, Lui abandoned the physical
form of lotus and present it with a new form, which is typical. It is a
combination of modern and tradition – the spirit it presents is Chinese, and the
medium is traditional; yet the abstract presentation is modern and the way he
used ink and brush is very new to Chinese painting.
Despite of his interest in western art, Lui Shou-kwan was an artist with great
commitment to the future of Chinese art. He concerned about the
development of painting, emphasizing the importance of creativity. With his
creativity he sets an example to the new generation, his followers like Irene
Chou and Wucius Wong was inspired. New Ink Painting has now become a
very important style of painting in Hong Kong.
Endnotes
1. From an interview done in 1961, Hong Kong Time Daily.
2. Quote comes from the exhibition “Lu Shoukun – New Ink Painting” of Hong
Kong Museum of Art.
© Cheung Ying Man, Chris 2003.
First written as an essay for the Hong Kong Art Workshop course of the
Department of Fine Arts, the University of Hong Kong.