Basking in the sun on the expansive deck of his villa set in the lush valley above Taipei's National Palace Museum (故宮博物院), the sculptor Ju Ming (朱銘) has the calm air of a man who spends his time reflecting on a life of shining achievements. But looks can be deceptive.
Ju, one of Taiwan's most internationally acclaimed artists, is, in fact, still a full-time sculptor despite his age, 63. And by full-time, Ju means 24 hours a day.
"Art is not something I can turn off and on. It's me. It's my whole being," Ju said in a recent interview.
Indeed, behind his composed exterior, Ju is a tightly-contained bundle of energy, which, he says, unwinds explosively when he sets out to carve one of his monumental Taichi sculptures or his more earthy Living World series sculptures.
And if Ju's works tend to be massive, so is his disdain for much of the art produced in Taiwan nowadays, which he said reflects the lack of just the kind of "leisurely" approach to art that he possesses. When pressed for reasons behind this state affairs, he repeats the often-quoted refrain that the country's education system stifles creativity and forces conformity.
"Sometimes you see an artist's credentials on paper and think, `Wow! This person studied in Paris or wherever.' But then you have to look at the names on the works to figure out who did it, because they have no individual style," Ju said.
Some artists, Ju added, are left confused by cultural disorientation. A friend, for example, complained bitterly that his works had been criticized as "neither Chinese, nor Western." Ju replied simply by saying that the works then were a good reflection of Taiwan, which he described as a "trash heap, with all sorts of detritus that has come together to make our culture."
If Ju has little love for Taiwan's educational system, it is apparently because it did little to bring him where he is now, respected around the world for his art, the founder of a museum dedicated almost entirely to his own works and famously rich.
Small beginnings
For all of his accomplishments, Ju credits first of all himself for having stuck with his art through hard times, but he also attributes much of his success to his mentor Yuyu Yang (
Life changed irrevocably for Ju when, on impulse, he rang Yang's doorbell in 1968. "I just showed up at his door not expecting anything. I was a country boy and he was a great artist. We were like the sky and earth, polar opposites. But still he took me in," Ju said.
The encounter with Yang would mark the beginning of a career that would see Ju quickly outgrow his small-town beginnings and take his works -- in particular his daunting Taichi figures -- to exhibitions around the world.
Indeed, Ju's early years provided few hints of the fame and fortune to come. He was born into a family of extremely modest means in Tunghsiau (通宵), Miaoli County, in 1938 and admits with a wry smile that he was "a miserable student."
He began sculpting almost by chance, when his father recommended him to a master sculptor named Lee Chin-chuan (
"After stinking so bad at school I was really happy to finally have work," Ju said.
But Ju's steps along the path to becoming a sculptor of world renown were not all as fortuitous as his first one into Lee's workshop. In his twenties, Ju opened a commercial sculpture studio in Tunghsiau, carving on commission mostly for local temples. Financial success left him dissatisfied and, perhaps most importantly, was soon followed by financial collapse. At 31, Ju was back at ground zero contemplating his next career move and hoping to become, what he called a "genuine artist," in contrast to the journeyman work he had been doing until then.
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