Remembering a master

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When Chang Dai-chien (張大千) met Pablo Picasso in 1956, art critics hailed the confab as a summit between the world’s greatest living artists. Although Picasso and Chang worked in different genres, they were united by their artistic genius and the profound influence they exerted on their respective cultures. A photograph of the two artists forms part of a retrospective of Chang’s work that is currently on display at the National Museum of History.

Entitled Chang Dai-chien: Memorial Painting and Calligraphy Exhibition (張大千110 — 書畫紀念特展), the exhibit features 96 of Chang’s works as a means of illustrating his entire oeuvre — from his early calligraphy and ink paintings to the Buddhist fresco-inspired works of his middle period and the expressionist paintings of his late period.

Documentaries of the artist’s life and work, photos of Chang pictured with famous personalities and brief introductions — in English and Chinese — provide added depth.

Chang is unquestionably an artistic legend. Art historians generally agree that his faculty for emulating the styles and techniques found in the Chinese artistic tradition of ink painting and calligraphy dating as far back as the Tang Dynasty is unsurpassed. As such, the exhibit is as much a survey of the tradition of Chinese pictorial art over the past 1,000 years as it is an exhibition of one artist’s work.

The museum, to its credit, doesn’t skirt around Chang’s career as a copier and forger. Nor does it linger on those concerns — copying the great masters is presented as a necessary stage in Chang’s artistic development.

The 1929 Painting in the Style of Shih T’ao’s “Grass Hut by the Path in Autumn” (仿石濤秋徑草堂圖) illustrates Chang’s mastery of previous styles.

The lower half of the canvas, rendered in shades of dark green, blobs of black and pale brown, depicts an intellectual sitting outside a thatched hut that is partially obscured by thick foliage. Chang, following in a tradition developed by Shih T’ao, uses negative space as a means of showing perspective.

In 1939, Chang traveled to Dunhuang (敦煌), an ancient city along the Silk Road in the northwest of China, to study the Buddhist frescoes located in the Mogao Caves (莫高窟). The almost three years he spent there left an indelible mark on his painting technique.

Deity Descending to Earth (降聖圖) reveals the direction Chang was taking. The vibrant oranges, yellows, greens, blues and reds of this painting replicate the ornamental beauty of the Buddhist frescoes and contrasts the ink painting tradition that emphasizes line over color.

The influence of these Buddhist frescoes can be seen in the paintings of the following decade when vivid coloring appears in Chang’s pictures that depict more traditional subject matter. Seeking Inspiration (覓句圖) is an ink painting of an intellectual sitting at a desk under a tree and contemplating nature. The vibrant blue cap he wears on his head and the red flower on his table, as well as the green leaves growing on the tree, reveal that ornamental coloring had become an important part of Chang’s style.

There is another reason why this painting is important: the vase holding the flower is rendered in expressionist swaths of green, blue and red — a technique of painting and use of color that would come to characterize much of Chang’s later work.