The Experimental 60s: Avant-Garde Art in Taiwan (前衛：六○年代台灣美術發展) is the second exhibition in Taipei Fine Arts Museum's (台北市立美術館) Taiwanese art history series meant as a celebration of the museum's 20th anniversary.
The comprehensive exhibition, with many works on loan from collectors across the country, will take up the entire first floor of TFAM till Dec. 9. Compared with its preceding exhibition From the Ground Up: Artists Associations in the 1950s, The Experimental 60s showcases a large number of "East meets West" issues, which are still relevant today. Viewers may also discover the early achievements of old masters who are no less active these days.
In the 1960s, political clashes in the wake of the KMT government's retreat to Taiwan in 1949 no longer defined the history of art in Taiwan. The government's defense alliance with the US provided a safe background for art development. The accompanying import of American culture led to what was called "modern painting." Fewer artists fell victim to "white terror" as they are increasingly focused on artistic theorizing, distancing themselves from politics.
While their Japan-educated art professors still preached impressionism, a younger generation of artists were exploring abstract expressionism through scraps of information in foreign-language magazines. Young artists were eager to "liberate forms."
The Fifth Moon Group (五月畫會) and the Ton-Fan Group (東方畫會 ) were the first to wholeheartedly adopt Western methods. The old vs. modern, or representative vs. abstract dichotomy caused fervent debate.
The Ton-Fan Group was made up of students of Lee Chun-sheng (李仲生), the first painter to propagate modern painting concepts through private workshops and to present human psychology on canvas. Sha Yang (夏陽), one of the prominent member of the group, found Chinese calligraphy and ink painting a fertile ground for developing abstract art. The traditional technique of leaving blank spaces on the paper and experimenting with the strokes of Chinese characters were extensively experimented with. Falling, in which a black brushstroke rushes down a long canvas, is one example of such a modern painting with "oriental" characteristics.
Liu Kuo-sung (劉國松 ), of the Fifth Moon Group, set up a brand of "space painting." Liu created an ambience similar to traditional Chinese ink landscape with a mix of ink, acrylic and photo collages. Only the theme is imagining outer space, prompted by the first human landing on the moon, instead of the misty mountains on earth.
First resisting the trends toward modern paintings, established artists in the 1960s later attempted to assimilate Western concepts into their styles without surrendering at once to the sea change of modernism.
As if to fill up the gap between their training in impressionism and the rising abstract art scene, Lee Shi-chiao (李石樵), tried out Cubist techniques in Full Moon of the New Year. Liao Chi-chun (廖繼春) maintained a delicate balance between the concrete and the abstract in his Still Life.
Meanwhile, art magazines helped painters here keep abreast of trends abroad. The new freedom offered by various mediums was especially contagious. Paper clips and other objects found their way onto the canvas. The first installation works were created around this time, though they were not called installations. Lee Hsi-chi's (李錫奇). Dusks is one such work.
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