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拍品专文
Chen Cheng-po was an important 20th century artist in the oil medium whose work shows links with Japan, Shanghai, and Taiwan. At the Tokyo School of Fine Arts in Japan, Chen learned to value the Eastern painting tradition. In Shanghai, after contact with painters who had studied in France, techniques and themes from the Eastern tradition began appearing in his Western-style oils, imbuing them with greater vitality and ultimately creating a style with a uniquely Taiwanese flavor. Chen's fine control of color, expressing his personal humanistic bent and an emphasis on Chinese ink-wash techniques, also reflected the bold use of color in Western art. These factors, added together, made Chen Cheng-po a unique and essential artist.
Summer Morning (Lot 19) dates from the period after Chen completed his studies in Japan, had taught art in Shanghai, and then returned to live permanently in Taiwan. An important figure in Taiwan's art history, Chen Cheng-po frequently won honors at the island-wide Taiwan Fine Arts Exhibitions that were held under Japanese colonial rule. In the third Taiwan Fine Arts Exhibition, the winning entry was this Summer Morning, due to Chen's superior handling of theme and subject and his use of color in the work. Much of the appeal of Summer Morning, in fact, derives from the way these elements are manifested throughout the work. One element of Chen Cheng-po's artistic vocabulary was the use of rounded, arcing compositional layouts, and these ovular compositions, which worked so well to set off his subjects, are seen in many of his works. Here, the banks of the pond form an oval that Chen sets in the middle of his pictorial space, while the surrounding scenery becomes part of the narrative Chen wants to convey. A father and his son link hands in visual counterpart to the rural village buildings, and by placing their backs to the viewer, the artist suggests that their story contains further untold elements. During the Renaissance, Botticelli similarly employed an oval composition in his famous The Birth of Venus (Fig. 1) to convey the interconnected relationships of the figures in the painting. Botticelli's oval helps create a narrative sequence of cause and effect, and at the same time, ingeniously produces symmetry in the work despite the unequal numbers of figures on each side. Van Gogh, in The Starry Night (Fig. 2), dazzles the viewer with a moonlight sky full of stars in whirling vortexes; this ability to successfully convey this dizzying feeling within his canvas was one element that attracted Chen Cheng-po to his work. In Chen's Summer Morning, the leaves of the distant trees cannot be seen in any detail; Chen depicts them in swirling swaths of dense greenery, which, like van Gogh's stars, convey a sense of beauty in the way the great masses of leaves congregate together. In traditional Eastern thought, the circle symbolically implies union and completeness, and Chen's oval composition here, combined with his father-and-son theme, speaks of fond thoughts for those dear to the artist and a desire for reunion. The loss of his mother when he was still very young meant that Chen had a lonely childhood, growing up dependent on his grandmother and leaving him with an intense desire for closer familial relationships-perhaps the reason why, in his paintings, we so often see images of parents and children together. Chen's father also left the family early on for life on his own, and the young artist seldom saw him. Though Chen infrequently displays father and son pairings in his work, that nevertheless becomes the central theme of this work, illustrating how rare a painting this Summer Morning was for Chen and highlighting all the more its value within his oeuvre.
Aside from any technique, the basic ardor of Chen's personality, his romantic temperament, was such that he harbored special feelings all his life for the place he grew up. Hence his hometown of Chiayi and its surroundings appeared often as subject in his paintings. In this respect he very much resembled the British naturalist painters of the 18th century, who often depicted the environs surrounding their towns and cities. One such painter was Richard Wilson, whose View in Windsor Great Park (Fig. 3) presents a composition and a scene of a very similar vein. One difference, however, lies in the way Chen Cheng-po extends the meandering pathway that begins at the bottom left all the way to the far right, opening the composition out on the right to give viewers a broader sense of space. Chen's scene is set somewhere outside of Chiayi; a father and his son, wearing woven bamboo-leaf hats, have risen early on this summer morning. In summer, the morning is the time for hurrying to the fields to start on the day's work; rural life often means rising with the sun and returning when evening falls. The father leads his son by the hand as they rise with the sun to get an early start and avoid the mid-day summer heat, but the pleasant, genial warmth of the morning sunlight encourages them to linger by the waterside and view the scene, even as they raise their arms to shield their eyes from the coming brilliance of the sun. In Chen's vivid and lifelike depiction, the coolly rippling waters in the center of the composition add an extra touch of summertime ambience.
Summer Morning (Lot 19) dates from the period after Chen completed his studies in Japan, had taught art in Shanghai, and then returned to live permanently in Taiwan. An important figure in Taiwan's art history, Chen Cheng-po frequently won honors at the island-wide Taiwan Fine Arts Exhibitions that were held under Japanese colonial rule. In the third Taiwan Fine Arts Exhibition, the winning entry was this Summer Morning, due to Chen's superior handling of theme and subject and his use of color in the work. Much of the appeal of Summer Morning, in fact, derives from the way these elements are manifested throughout the work. One element of Chen Cheng-po's artistic vocabulary was the use of rounded, arcing compositional layouts, and these ovular compositions, which worked so well to set off his subjects, are seen in many of his works. Here, the banks of the pond form an oval that Chen sets in the middle of his pictorial space, while the surrounding scenery becomes part of the narrative Chen wants to convey. A father and his son link hands in visual counterpart to the rural village buildings, and by placing their backs to the viewer, the artist suggests that their story contains further untold elements. During the Renaissance, Botticelli similarly employed an oval composition in his famous The Birth of Venus (Fig. 1) to convey the interconnected relationships of the figures in the painting. Botticelli's oval helps create a narrative sequence of cause and effect, and at the same time, ingeniously produces symmetry in the work despite the unequal numbers of figures on each side. Van Gogh, in The Starry Night (Fig. 2), dazzles the viewer with a moonlight sky full of stars in whirling vortexes; this ability to successfully convey this dizzying feeling within his canvas was one element that attracted Chen Cheng-po to his work. In Chen's Summer Morning, the leaves of the distant trees cannot be seen in any detail; Chen depicts them in swirling swaths of dense greenery, which, like van Gogh's stars, convey a sense of beauty in the way the great masses of leaves congregate together. In traditional Eastern thought, the circle symbolically implies union and completeness, and Chen's oval composition here, combined with his father-and-son theme, speaks of fond thoughts for those dear to the artist and a desire for reunion. The loss of his mother when he was still very young meant that Chen had a lonely childhood, growing up dependent on his grandmother and leaving him with an intense desire for closer familial relationships-perhaps the reason why, in his paintings, we so often see images of parents and children together. Chen's father also left the family early on for life on his own, and the young artist seldom saw him. Though Chen infrequently displays father and son pairings in his work, that nevertheless becomes the central theme of this work, illustrating how rare a painting this Summer Morning was for Chen and highlighting all the more its value within his oeuvre.
Aside from any technique, the basic ardor of Chen's personality, his romantic temperament, was such that he harbored special feelings all his life for the place he grew up. Hence his hometown of Chiayi and its surroundings appeared often as subject in his paintings. In this respect he very much resembled the British naturalist painters of the 18th century, who often depicted the environs surrounding their towns and cities. One such painter was Richard Wilson, whose View in Windsor Great Park (Fig. 3) presents a composition and a scene of a very similar vein. One difference, however, lies in the way Chen Cheng-po extends the meandering pathway that begins at the bottom left all the way to the far right, opening the composition out on the right to give viewers a broader sense of space. Chen's scene is set somewhere outside of Chiayi; a father and his son, wearing woven bamboo-leaf hats, have risen early on this summer morning. In summer, the morning is the time for hurrying to the fields to start on the day's work; rural life often means rising with the sun and returning when evening falls. The father leads his son by the hand as they rise with the sun to get an early start and avoid the mid-day summer heat, but the pleasant, genial warmth of the morning sunlight encourages them to linger by the waterside and view the scene, even as they raise their arms to shield their eyes from the coming brilliance of the sun. In Chen's vivid and lifelike depiction, the coolly rippling waters in the center of the composition add an extra touch of summertime ambience.