Chinese
Contributions to America:
An International Academic Conference
Sheraton LaGuardia East Hotel, Flushing, Queens, New York
October 20-21, 2000
CHEN CHI: MASTER WATERCOLORIST
Lecture By Raymond J. Steiner
IT
IS NOT always prudent to assess the influence of artists during
their lifetime since, so often, it is not until after the last
act of creation that the body of work can be seen in its totality,
seen from its beginnings and on through its maturity, seen in
relation to the greater world of art that has served as its
milieu. In order to properly assess artists and to evaluate
the work they have produced, such a retrospective look is, in
most cases, not only desirable but also necessary to make sound,
critical judgments as to their worth and import. Woe to that
critic who hastily jumps upon the bandwagon to lend his voice
to the trumpeting of the latest star, lauding the newest of
the newest — only to discover that like many another Ônova,Õ
this star merely fizzles out after the briefest of flare-ups,
falling into a black hole of obscurity from which there is no
return.
Though
still very much alive and actively painting, no such concern
need trouble us when we consider the work of the Chinese-American
watercolorist, Chen Chi. Born in 1912, his almost ninety years
of life experience — with some seventy years of plying
his skill as a painter — afford us ample data from which
to make, if not a definitive, then surely a reliable appraisement
of his contributions to the world of art.
Chen
Chi was born in Wusih, Kiangsu, China,1
the year of his birth coinciding with the Republican Period
(1912—1949) and, if this was no specific omen, the meanings
of his family and given names might have been prophetic. ÔChenÕ
means Òthe way, or journeyÓ and ÔChi,Õ Òreached, or achieved,Ó2
the import of which will become clear as we review his life
and work. Raised in humble surroundings in a relatively small
town, Chen Chi found that by the age of 14 he was expected to
help support his family, and, toward that end, had traveled
to work at an oil pressing company in the bustling port city
of Shanghai. This move to a much larger city was, perhaps, not
such an unusual decision for a young man in the provinces since,
though smaller in size than Shanghai, Wusih was by no means
some back-water region untouched by the outside world. In addition
to its proximity to Shanghai (a distance of about an hour and
a half by train), Wusih was on the main rail line between Shanghai
and Nanking, another great Chinese city. The town is also bisected
by the Grand Canal, a 770-mile long waterway that to Chen Chi
was an even greater achievement than the Great Wall since, while
the Wall separated peoples, the Canal served as connector of
the culture and economy of northern and southern China.
Consequently, Wusih progressed industrially, becoming an important
link in the production of cotton, silk, and wheat mills.
Looking
beyond his native town of Wusih to seek greater opportunity,
then, would not have been so out of the ordinary for him. Although
his pay was only one Chinese dollar a month at the Shun Yue
oil pressing company in Shanghai, the company provided food
and housing, allowing him at the end of the year to send ten
dollars home to his father. The proprietor also took Chen Chi
in as a member of the family, educating him along with his own
children where he was taught by both an English teacher and
a traditional Chinese classics teacher with whom he read, among
other classical writers, the works of Confucius.
Over
the years with the company, Chen Chi had risen to the position
of treasurer, the new post allowing him time and opportunity
to cultivate a growing interest in art. He had discovered both
a facility for and a keen love of art which he indulged by taking
art classes at night and, whenever he could spare the time,
by practicing plein air painting in the surrounding countryside.
Rapid progress and a growing recognition of his artistic talents
soon made the life of merchandising oil unappealing and he sought
to make his own mark in the world by devoting his life to art.
By 1930, he was already becoming an integral part of the burgeoning
artscene in Shanghai, exhibiting his work in and around that
city.
Just
the year before, in 1929, Shanghai was the host city for the
First National Art Exhibition sponsored by the Ministry of Education,
and, with its inclusion of art from the West, the younger artists
were quick to respond to the new ideas and techniques that they
were seeing for the first time. In 1931 (the year that Japan
invaded Manchuria) he entered art school where he studied the
traditional Western methods of drawing from the cast. He had
become so proficient that, in his second term, he was asked
to serve as assistant monitor, a boon since his tuition fees
were then waived. The following year, 1932, the Japanese invaded
Shanghai and the art school was burned down during the hostilities.
After
the school was reorganized, Chen Chi became a member of the
avant-gardist ÒWhite Swan Art Club,Ó a group convinced that
their own artistic heritage in watercolor painting had become
moribund, rendered lifeless by tradition and formula. They quickly
and easily adapted to the new Western ideas and began experimenting
with materials such as oils, gouache, using charcoal and pencil,
even painting on non-absorbent papers and canvases. Although
the West and its techniques intrigued them, there was not much
material other than reproductions in magazines with which they
could whet their appetite — and these were few and far
between.
During
these exciting years of artistic ferment, Chen Chi steadily
gained in stature as an up-and-coming painter and was given
a position as a painting instructor at Wu Pen, a girlÕs high
school in Shanghai. He held this position from 1937 to 1942,
after which he became drawing and watercolor painting instructor
at St. JohnÕs University, Shanghai, remaining on their staff
until 1946. It was also in 1942 that he published
his first monograph, Aquarelles de Chen Chi,
the first of many books and catalogues that have been written
about his work. Although Chen Chi has never believed that art
was properly a subject that could be taught at a school, these
early years as a painting instructor would hold him in good
stead when he found himself called upon to teach once again
during his early years in America.
He enjoyed the classroom experience and though he wanted his
students to learn how to paint a Ògood picture,Ó he believed
that the teaching of art did not so much impart the knowledge
of how to become an artist as it served to help build character.
ÒYou try to teach them to concentrate by making them interested
in doing their projects,Ó says Chen Chi. ÒWhen they are interested,
they automatically concentrate their minds. In the same way
you teach them patience É This is also true with teaching them
to observe. If you succeed, you also stimulate their imagination.
All these things later affect their character É What we Chinese
also feel is true is that art influences peoplesÕ minds. If
you are in contact with art objects, all those aesthetic values
influence your mood. Art nourishes peoplesÕ characters, their
minds É Art has this kind of mission.Ó
Concurrently
with his teaching, Chen Chi was also building his reputation
through his participation in exhibitions, his first one-person
show in Shanghai held in 1940 when he was just 28 years old.
He continued to develop his style, including street scenes of
Shanghai life in his repertoire — his interest in the
depiction of the bustling movement of people on city thoroughfares
soon to carry over into his work in the United States. The members
of ÒThe White Swan Art ClubÓ were particularly interested in
learning about the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists. Their
bold use of brush stroke and expressive color fascinated the
young artists and they were hungry to see more of it. For a
time Chen Chi was especially influenced by the work of Vincent
van Gogh, the artistÕs life of poverty and deprivation especially
appealing to him and finding the Dutch artistÕs compassion for
the poor something with which he could readily identify. He
was also taken by the French ImpressionistsÕ play of light on
form and the quick on-the-spot perception, the spontaneous painting
of a first impression particularly in harmony with his growing
desire to be true to his own aesthetic vision and sensibilities.
Thus was born the unique blending of East and West that would
stand as a hallmark of his painting ever after. The Impressionist
predilection for landscape painting also furthered the affinity
between his own training of painting ÔShan-ShuiÕ (mountain and
water). However, as much as he admired the techniques of Western
painters, Chen Chi never felt it necessary to completely abandon
the traditions of Chinese art. When questioned about this phase
of his artistic evolution by an interviewer, he said, ÒWe realized
that even though we wanted modernization in the culture and
were looking to the West for new forms, we could not throw away
our entire Chinese heritage either. We realized that one has
to remain true to oneÕs heritage.Ó
An
immersion into Western life that he had never anticipated was
soon in the offing. In 1947, Roland Elliot, General Secretary
of the World StudentsÕ Relief, invited Chen Chi to come to the
States on a cultural exchange program where he was given the
opportunity to observe and exhibit outside of China. Whereas
his original intention when he came to this country was to paint
Chinese life for Western eyes, he now decided that he would
paint American life for his countrymen. He traveled and exhibited
extensively throughout the U.S., slowly building up both an
international reputation and a body of work that was uniquely
his own. I once compared Chen Chi to one of his paintings, ÒWalking
on a TightropeÓ (1956), finding the painting as representative
of his life and work.
The delicately balanced man, suspended on a slender line of
rope over empty space, seemed to me to perfectly depict this
artist who had come to so exquisitely balance East and West
in his work. However, if it was his aim to bring back his images
of American life to his homeland, political events and especially
the Korean War would interfere with his plans. Unable to leave
America because of the conflict, he applied himself wholeheartedly
to his painting, his first one-person show in America at the
Village Art Center in New York City in 1947 just the first of
a great many that would take place across America. By 1964,
Chen Chi would become not only a painter of some renown in this
country, but also a naturalized citizen of the United States.
ÒSo there was a reversal in my thinking,Ó said Chen Chi, Òand
I decided to bring the East to the West.Ó
The
fusion of East and West in the watercolors of Chen Chi is not
only a significant contribution to American culture, but one
of immense importance to the evolution of Western art as well.
Recognizing that he would now be painting and exhibiting in
America for some time (he would make his first trip back to
China in 1972), he decided to put aside Western technique for
a time and concentrate on bringing to his work those characteristics
that were distinctly from his own tradition. As he once stated:
ÒI
again began to use Chinese rice papers mainly and wanted to
emphasize the brush strokes, too. I think this is the most important
element — how the artistÕs character expresses mood and
feeling, all in the tip of the brush. Chinese rice papers are
more receptive than Western canvases, and an oil-paint brush
stroke on canvas is not as sensitive as a Chinese brush stroke
on Chinese paper. Chinese paper is more absorbent of color and
moisture, so if your brush stays longer on the surface of a
Chinese paper, the paper absorbs more of the moisture from the
brush, thus accepting more of the volume of the paint. If your
brush is pressed harder, the paper registers your touch —
the strength of your brush stroke on the paper. The paper not
only registers the strength of your brush — its volume
and energy — but also its timing; the tempo is a factor,
whether you move your brush faster or slower. It is as if several
pianists played the same piece. The music may be the same, but
each oneÕs touch makes a difference. If you paint a line, it
is just as a violinist draws his bow across the strings —
the quality of oneÕs touch makes a difference. The same is true
of a dancer. When I watched Moira Shearer dancing Sleeping
Beauty with SadlerÕs Wells at the Metropolitan, the tip
of her toe as she danced was just like a brush come to a point.
This you donÕt have in Western paintings. So I decided that
I wanted to bring this quality from Chinese painting and express
it in the Western-style paintings that I was then doing.Ó10
To
see one of Chen ChiÕs paintings is to visually experience the
skill of the master watercolorist, his lush use of color and
spontaneous flow of line compellingly beautiful. As anyone who
has ever tried to make this demanding medium submit to oneÕs
will has discovered — the experienced professional as
well as the novice — painting with watercolor is very
much a two-way street, with the materials having as much to
say on its own whatever the artist may intend. Of all the mediums,
it is the one — par excellence — in which chance
plays a decisive role. Beyond technique, beyond the skill of
the hand, it is precisely this element of chance that Chen Chi
has managed to harness in his work. In one of his poems, Ò1967
— Summer,Ó he writes:
A year has passed.
I took out paper
Brought back from Peking
By my friend Ida Pruitt.
I made a first try
—
Poured a pot of blue
To paint a sea
—
The paper crinkled
—
Heaven formed natural waves.
I felt great joy
To
know when Fortune is working with you is perhaps one of the
most elusive secrets the artist must learn, an observation that
serves as a recurrent theme in his book, Heaven & Water
(1983).
If
the conquering of Chance is paramount to the watercolorist,
it is the application of all of oneÕs life experiences to oneÕs
task that is one of Chen ChiÕs most enduring lessons to the
young painter. The bringing of the whole man to the work is
part of an ancient tradition to the Chinese painter, and one
that Chen Chi has taken to heart. Eastern philosophy dictates
that the artist Òtravel 10,000 milesÓ and to have read Ò10,000
classics.Ó To the Eastern way of thinking, the ÒMasterÓ —
of any discipline — is called so because he is first a
man of virtue and his works are admired not only for their aesthetic
value, but for the virtuous character of the creator as well.
The refined collector of Chinese art does not take pride so
much in the dollar value of his collection as he does of its
placing him in the company of such great and virtuous masters.
Chen Chi has not only taught these principles to his students
both here and in China, but has devoted his life to living up
to them. Ancient wisdom also dictates that the artist, like
Buddha, must have Òfour heartsÓ: the heart of beginning, the
heart of doing, the heart of returning, and the heart of building,
un-building, rebuilding, and ever-building. In his journey through
life, Chen Chi, as his name implies, has attained that lofty
goal in his artistic journey.
Yet,
in his endeavor to bring the East to the West, Chen Chi has
done more than blend the two aesthetic philosophies. His contribution
to our culture includes not only a fusion of artistic styles
and traditions, but, in the aggregate, a much deeper fusion
of contraries. Although he still considers himself to be a student
of art, still eager to learn all that he can about the vagaries
of his craft (he yearns to reach the age of 100 so that he can
begin over!), the advantage of his years has given him that
depth of character he claims to be the heritage of devoting
a lifetime to art. On the occasion of a major retrospective
of his works at the First World Cultural Summit at Versailles
in June of this year, I recently wrote:
ÒEast and West — Heart and Chance — Fire and Earth
— Heaven and Water: familiar pairings that one has come
to expect in the work of Chen Chi. From the very beginning of
his career as an artist, his bridging of opposing pairs has
been a hallmark of his painting, the singular fusion of the
aesthetics of East and West for example, perhaps the most familiar.
For most of his life Chen Chi has delved into the apparent dichotomies
of existence — its Yin and its Yang, its seemingly polar
oppositions and its paradoxical appositions. Yet, as he has
learned, to live fully aware of the contradictions is never
to allow oneself the precarious unbalance of choosing sides.
To deny one half of an equation — good over evil, for
instance — is also to negate the whole.Ó
Chen
Chi, incidentally, was the only artist chosen to be represented
at the Summit — a singular honor that highlights the scope
of his contribution to the world of culture and, parenthetically,
a fitting closure to the fact that it was the work of the artists
of that nation that first turned his eyes westward.
Stylistically,
Chen Chi has also found a middle ground between the representational
art he had learned in China and the abstract art he suddenly
found himself surrounded by when he arrived on the New York
artscene. Just as he turned the Impressionist technique into
one distinctly his own, so also did he seek a more subtle expression
of abstraction. He strove for a depiction that would suggest
the essence of a thing, a quality or an emotion.
It is this deeper understanding of an objectÕs Òthing-nessÓ
that he feels is true abstraction. ÒA square pear,Ó he once
told me, Òis still a pear.Ó As Pearl Buck astutely noted: ÒThe
Asian influence in Chen ChiÕs work is always to be found in
his persistent search for essential meaning.Ó
Now
honored not only in the Western world but also revered by his
native country — he has been made an honorary citizen
of China and, in 1999, a museum dedicated to his work opened
at the Shanghai Jiao Tong University — Chen Chi has brought particular honor
to America — a fact made obvious by the numerous awards
and medals he and his work have earned from his peers in this
country. He has been made a member of and has been honored by
some of the most prestigious arts organizations in America,
and his work is among some of the finest public collections
this nation has gathered. Beyond the distinction he has brought
upon himself and this country, however, and even beyond his
growing international reputation, is what he has done for the
individual artist of today. As recently as this past summer,
the up-and-coming Chinese/American artist Cheng-Khee Chee has
credited Chen Chi as a major influence on his own efforts of
synthesizing the art of East and West. Whatever oneÕs reputation in the greater
art world, it is the knowledge that an artist has touched the
life of a fellow artist that can often be the most gratifying.
As
he addressed the audience at the First World Cultural Summit
at Versailles this past June, Chen Chi emphasized his abiding
belief that art ought to serve as the architect of a new humanity.
No small dream. Chen Chi — master watercolorist, poet,
and philosopher — has brought honor to himself, to both
his adopted and native countries, and has added immeasurably
to the common fund of mankindÕs finer cultural endeavors. If
only for their singular beauty alone, Chen ChiÕs paintings might
indeed stand as a lasting contribution for generations of all
nations to come.
NOTES
CHEN
CHI, Aquarelles de Chen Chi, Shanghai, China, 1942.
CHEN
CHI, Chen Chi (Monograph), New York, NY, 2000.
CHEN
CHI, Two or Three Lines from Sketch Books of Chen Chi,
New York, NY, 1969.
CHEN
CHI, Heaven & Water, New York, NY, 1983.
CHEN
CHI, Heart & Chance: Chen Chi Watercolor Paintings, New York, NY, 1993.
NORELLI,
MARTINA R., East Meets West: Chen Chi Watercolors, Columbus,
GA. 1989.
SALIMEN,
JOHN, ÒEast Meets West to Make Magic,Ó Watercolor Magic Magazine, Cincinnati, OH.
Summer 2000.
STEINER,
RAYMOND J., ART TIMES, Mount Marion, NY, July 1989.
STEINER,
RAYMOND J., ART TIMES, Mount Marion, NY, September 1991.
STEINER,
RAYMOND J., ART TIMES, Mount Marion, NY, May 1999.
STEINER,
RAYMOND J., ART TIMES, Mount Marion, NY, June 2000.
