Asia Art Center (亞洲藝術中心) typifies modern Taipei –– a modish, commercial gallery on the ground-floor of a high-rise building flanked by shops and restaurants in a district that was, as Californian Jan Watten recalls, “just paddy fields” when she’d been a student at Taipei American School back in the 1960s and ‘70s.
Exhibition project manager Lo Wen-su (羅文妤) walks me through the gallery space where Geometric Variations (幾何變奏) is currently on display. The exhibition includes work by two acclaimed Indonesian artists, Fadjar Sidik and Handrio, as well as the Taiwanese artist Chu Wei-bor (朱為白), all of whom shared a talent for making “bold and iconoclastic abstract paintings,” according to the exhibition blurb.
Chu was born in 1929 in Nanjing and came to Taiwan with the Republic of China (ROC) government in 1949. It was not long afterwards that he launched his artistic career, one that spanned a whopping seven decades and would see him exhibited throughout Taiwan and overseas, including at the Bechtel International Center of Stanford University in 1971 and the Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts, which exhibited a retrospective show titled Sunyata: Chu Wei-bor Solo Exhibition in 2012.
Photo: Thomas Bird
According to Lo, the work Great Fortune (鴻禧, 2017), which is on display in the gallery, is the last work he completed before he fell ill. The artist died in 2018.
“Chu Wei-bor came from a long line of seamsters and was always interested in fabrics,” Lo explains, while showing me some of his iconic “cut canvases” which are influenced by Lucio Fontana’s concept of “Spatialism.”
But it is two older prints that catch my eye, both of which date back to the 1970s.
Photo courtesy of Jan Watten
“These are rarely seen glass plates,” says Lo, “experimental works that combine collage, painting and print to create a nuanced color gradation. He would have made these around the time he was working with Mrs. Watten at The Art Guild (藝術家畫廊).”
The Art Guild holds the distinction of being Taipei’s first contemporary gallery, a creative hub where talents from both the Fifth Moon Group (五月畫會) and the Ton-Fan Art Group (東方畫會) — two pioneering Taiwanese art collectives founded in the 1950s — were nurtured. Many went on to enjoy international success as part of a wave of modern Taiwanese artists that swept the globe in the latter decades of the twentieth century.
The gallery space was opened by American Jeanne Watten, whose daughter Jan and granddaughter Emily, are, serendipitously visiting Taiwan to attend a reunion at Taipei American School.
Photo courtesy of Asia Art Center
TAIPEI NUCLEUS
The twentieth century Taipei Jan Watten recalls is a far cry from the high-tech cityscape of today.
“I remember vividly eating jiaozih [dumplings] by the train tracks. At night, you’d hear the street vendors –– the sweet potato man, the mantou [steamed buns] man or the blind masseuse –– and they would all have their certain sounds,” she tells the Taipei Times.
Photo: Jan Watten
The Watten family first came to Taipei in 1958 after Jan’s father Ray, a doctor with the US Navy, was posted to Taiwan. A second posting brough them back again in 1965. These were dark times, with Taiwan under martial law and the specter of the cold war shaping a society that was ever on the cusp of conflict. But for an expat teenager, geopolitics was a distant, abstract thing.
“We definitely felt it, I mean, we were being watched. But I was a school kid. What I remember is walking along the rice paddies. Me and my friends explored, we tasted the food, absorbed culture and shopped for incredible jewelry, some of which I still have –– we were very free.”
Jan also helped out at mother Jeanne Watten’s gallery, which ran from 1967 to 1974 and was, according to Jan, “an environment where people would come and hang out for hours, not just for the exhibitions openings –– it was a community space. You know it was the ‘60s, so there was always ‘a happening.’”
Photo courtesy of Asia Art Center
According to Jan, her mother Jeanne had taken classes at the San Francisco Art Institute and enjoyed painting.
“She loved art and had really great taste. She felt that it was somehow important.”
It was after Jeanne befriended Hope Phillips, a teacher at Taipei American School who remained resident in Taiwan for 46 years, that she began to get to known some of Taipei’s aspiring artists, which kindled the idea to open an independent gallery in a city that at that time, had none.
Photo: Thomas Bird
“My mother was never in it for the money, she only took 10 percent of each sale to pay rent and cover costs.”
Nevertheless, The Art Guild soon became the go-to place for the hip members of Taipei’s creative classes.
“It was a place where people felt comfortable, where it felt safe and they could explore their creativity and collaborate together.”
Jan recently returned to visit the location of The Art Guild –– a third floor apartment on an old lane just off Shuangcheng Street (雙城街) in Taipei’s Zhongshan District (中山). Despite her colorful memories, she admits the neighborhood has seen better times.
“Everything has changed,” she says.
‘SYNCHRONICITY IS QUITE AMAZING’
The Watten family left Taipei for the US in 1974. Although Jeanne Watten continued to promote Taiwanese artists state-side –– maintaining strong links with the community she’d fostered for years –– Jan has not returned to Taiwan in half a century.
“At the time, I didn’t want to leave Taiwan. I’d fallen in love with it and considered it my home. It was really hard readjusting to life in the US.”
So why didn’t she come back?
“I think the reason I didn’t come back all these years is that I was sacred it had changed. And it has changed but I still love it. And to learn of this exhibition, well, the synchronicity is quite amazing.”
Jan has brought an artbook to Asia Art Center beautifully designed by her mother titled The Young ‘70s (朝氣蓬勃的七 十年代). In the opening pages, Jeanne Watten writes: “The work, most of which is based on traditional Chinese painting techniques and philosophies, is best described as progressive, exciting and different.”
Of the “Fifteen young contemporary artists from the nucleus of the Taipei Art Guild,” included in the book, Chu Wei-bor’s name appears second.
“Mrs Watten played such an important role in helping these artists. It is wonderful how her legacy still lives on in the Taiwanese art scene,” Lo Wen-su tells the Taipei Times.
Yet while Jeanne Watten’s legacy is evident in the plethora of galleries peppering Taipei in our time, as well as the enduring success of “guild artists” like Chu, the Watten family continue to carry the baton forward across the pacific.
“I opened Gray Loft Gallery in Oakland 12 years ago,” says Jan, who is a photographer by profession. “I have one photo show a year but I rarely show my own work because I want to give opportunities to artists to be able to show their work. Like The Art Guild, it’s on the third floor. I have to say, many of my friends who knew my mother have said how much she influenced me with this gallery.”
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