Recently, the Taipei Fine Arts Museum has started exhibiting part of its collection in thematic exhibitions -- a great way to learn about Taiwan's modern history as told through art. Figurative painting in Taiwan is divided into five areas and these take the viewer through the story of Taiwan's diverse painting history and features 120 works by 70 artists.
The first theme is "Naturalism-Objectivity," which mainly consists of landscape painting. This inclusion seems strange, as in Western art history classes it is taught that figurative painting is the depiction of the human form. For local painters, however, there did not seem to be separate categories as the body and the landscape were interchangeable subjects for them.
The impressionist school of pain-ting began to influence Taiwanese painters in the 1950s. It also coincided with the New Art Movement of the Japanese colonial period (1895 to 1945) when artists depicted material objects in naturalistic ways. Even though the techniques may have come from outside influences, the subject matter was unique to Taiwan and included images of farmers, village life, and the water buffalo -- which soon came to symbolize Formosan life.
PHOTO COURTESY OF TFAM
Yen Shui-long's (
Under the theme "Altered Forms-Simplification," more lyrical and fanciful paintings appear. Wu Hao's (
As nativist literature began to influence the local visual arts during the 1970s, painters began to use Western painting techniques such as photorealism to portray Taiwan's grassroots culture. "Native Consciousness-Photorealism" is a grouping of paintings that depict Taiwan's unique local flavor.
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As neo-expressionist painting swept Europe and North America in the early 1980s, the passionate forms of expressive brushwork had a major influence on Taiwanese painters. However, these artists had strong ideas about Taiwanese identity and were concerned with the contemporary political and social issues, as martial law was beginning to lose its grip. Under the theme "Historical Subjects-Neo-Expressionism" many of the works by these critical painters refer to the local history of coloni-zation and the struggle in the search for a native identity.
Yang Mao-lin's (
The last theme of the exhibition is "Virtual Realities-New Figurative Forms" and highlights the pluralist nature of the local art scene in the 1990s. As more artists studied or traveled abroad, they brought back diverse cultural influences. Wu Yung-chieh's (
PHOTO COURTESY OF TFAM
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