"Modern art is often inspired by primitive art. To understand the essence of art, one cannot but explore primitive art," Liu was once quoted as saying.
After these trips came the maturing of Liu's style, exemplified by his most celebrated work -- Evening Call (薄暮的呼聲), painted in 1979. Fascinated by the subject, Liu made nearly two dozen paintings of an oval-shaped red-and-black bird against the setting sun throughout his life. All of them are titled Evening Call but it was the 1979 version that made observers
notice the maturity.
Unfortunately, the exhibition shows only one of them, in the Life -- Philosophy (生命-哲思) section. Inspired by Paul Klee's small-format works in the 1940s, the painting blends the realistic and the abstract with color
blocks to present the bird.
Behind the painting is the story of Po Yo Bird (婆憂鳥), which Liu's grandma told him in his childhood. As the story goes, there was a very poor family with a boy and a loving grandma. On a festival day, the boy wanted a
rice tamale, which the grandma couldn't afford. She then made one with earth to stop him from crying. However, mistaking for real, the boy swallowed the earth tamale and died. Afterwards, the grandma cried day in and day out at
the loss of her beloved grandson. To comfort her, the boy transformed into a bird flitting at her door chirping poyo, poyo, meaning "grandma, don't feel sad for me."
The section features many of Liu's best works, evolved from his belief that there's a spirit in everything. Liu painted a rock as a lovely high-spirited round-faced girl in Goblin in the Keelung Mountain (基隆山的小精靈).
Wagon in Manila (馬尼拉的馬車) illustrates his activism for animal protection. The painting originally came with the text: "If you have been to Manila, did you carefully observe the cart horses? Did you see how their
hoofs slip on the cobble stones or how they drag cart wheels out of one crack on the road before soon sinking into another?"
Love for wildlife drove Liu to many trips to preservation areas including rainforests in Borneo, South Africa, Kenya and Papua New Guinea. The 1984 series of African wildlife in The Wild -- The Calling (野性-呼喚) section shows a different side to Liu's sometimes sweet sentimentality in
his other works. Paintings like Leopard Hunting (獵豹) and Animal Emperor (萬獸之王) reveal Liu's deep personal involvement and sympathy for wildlife.
Another highlight of the exhibition is Liu's 16 self-portraits, mostly painted when he was over 80. The Character -- Crossover (角色-越界) section is where viewers may find the most interesting works in the
exhibition. Out of light-hearted self-ridicule, Liu painted himself as a clown, an owl, a cowboy or even a blackboard. In Those days of Frustration -- Self Portrait (那段潦倒的日子), Liu appears like a frog smashed flat on
a window pane, but something in his black and white face suggests a happy-go-lucky spirit and a resilient vitality.
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