Examining Chinese art

BOBBIE ALLEN

The Chinese were painting sophisticated works of art when tribes in

the West were still trying to get familiar with tool use and their

nifty opposable thumbs. They had (and still have) thousands of years

of complex influences, schools and styles to draw on. Their art is

infused with philosophical thought.

That’s a lot of history. But since the turn of the 20th Century,

and surviving the Revolution, China set up a European-style “academy”

system to train artists in Western methods, along with more

traditional Chinese styles. This has resulted in stunning diversity

in the contemporary art coming from modern China as the academy

artists retrace the history of Western art, working in new media and

styles to represent the familiar, universally human subjects of art.

And perhaps by chance (but most likely by design), Laguna Beach has a

gallery that features some of these artists, Contemporary Chinese

Fine Art.

Enter the gallery at 1099 S. Coast Hwy. and you’re immediately in

the presence of some jaw-dropping still life painting. These canvases

are in the tradition of the old “academic” style of Realism:

hyper-accurate depictions of fruit and common objects,

straight-forward, with as little interpretation of the subject as

possible.

As impressive as these still lifes are, and I’ll come back to them

in a moment, they speak in a different voice than the single painting

currently showing by Zhao Kailin. It is a 40x38 portrait in oil of a

young girl called “Affection Return Home.” She stands facing the

viewer directly, one hand holding a braid of her hair, as if she was

asked to move it aside. This is a remarkable work, moving, full of

quiet dignity and not to be missed.

Such knowledge in oil painting you rarely see in the postmodern

world. Zhao applies his paint with care in a work that must have

taken a great deal of time to complete. The subject stands, life size

or close to it, against a weathered wood wall. A window to her right

looks out on golden fields where a flock of birds has just lifted

into the air. She wears a plain white shift. A small bowl with an

apple in it sits on the sill.

In her direct and unabashed gaze is all the ambiguity of great

portraiture. So accurate is the detail that we see the light from the

window reflected in the iris of her large brown eyes. Zhao paid

special attention to the wisps of hair that frame her face, the kind

of detail that comes from an artist that respects the intelligence of

the viewer. These details only become truly visible if you study a

canvas, think about its intent on you.

Looking at her, you can’t shake the feeling of intent. Her gaze is

intent, her hand intently holds her braid. What is this melancholy?

She’s puzzling. She stands among the obvious signs of rural poverty:

This is a farm. The walls and window are gray with weather and age

(executed by the artist with brushstrokes that convey the tired

texture of the wood). Her shift, plain and white (white is extremely

difficult to paint because it’s never really pure white), could be a

nightgown or slip.

Yet she wears jewelry: gold hoops slightly too large for a girl

her age, a bangle bracelet, oddly shaped and engraved, a long black

cord necklace with a bright green glass bead dangling from it. And

her lips are full, ripe and redder than the apple in the bowl.

Those lips, slightly parted, are the focal point of a brilliantly

expressed face. Many, many layers of paint give her skin the natural

texture and glow of a warm, living person. But she is, unlike the

still lifes on the walls, interpreted for us. She’s trying to tell us

something. What she tells you will depend, I suppose, upon what you

bring to her. But to me, she speaks of China.

Turn to look at the amazing work of Cao Hui and you’ll see what I

mean by “interpreted.” There’s a wall of glowing still lifes that

represent the same set of vases and bowls shuffled around in

different order. Each canvas seems to speak of a different skill:

this is the “wow” factor of Realism, where the painting represents

not so much the artist’s vision as the artist’s amazing ability to

depict reality more accurately than reality itself.

Take the aforementioned difficulty with white. On one canvas,

“Redden Fruit” (23x31), Cao paints not just a white tablecloth under

his bowl of fruit but a white lace tablecloth in two different

patterns, draped in folds and curves. The blue and white porcelain

bowls in “Warmth” (23x28) reflect light perfectly at the same time

the glaze appears translucent (that’s mind-blowing in and of itself).

There’s a huge range of colors, textures, and hues in Cao’s

canvases, something that also indicates a great deal of skill.

“Warmth” and another canvas, “The Tangerine is Fragrant I” (25x31),

has draped silk tapestries that alone have impressive color ranges in

them, aside from the bowls of different fruits. One, done in a bright

emerald green, has human figures woven into the cloth, and you can

see each tiny thread, the expressions on the faces.

And think about fruits: imagine depicting the differences between

the pitted surface of a lemon, tangerine, or kumquat next to a

strawberry-each pore or pit throwing a tiny shadow. You learn a great

respect for method. Some feel that method without interpretation has

no feeling; but that all depends, I suppose, on whether or not you

think method is inseparable from expression, like the body from the

soul.

The gallery is offering a rare opportunity to see method in

action, between Nov. 12 and 26(with a reception from 6 to 9 p.m.

tonight). A new canvas will be on display by Zhao -- an unfinished

canvas, a work in progress. It’s always a brave thing for an artist

to show an incomplete work; it takes a lot of confidence in ability

to follow through with the promise of the existing paint, the promise

of an artist’s vision to fulfill the viewer’s expectations. I, for

one, will be waiting to see the results.

* BOBBIE ALLEN is a poet and writer who has taught art theory and

criticism. She teaches writing at Saddleback College.