Taiwan's Glory

Huang Ming-chang

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* 維梅爾的「花邊女工」by 黃銘昌

* 稻田畫家 黃銘昌堅持寫實下筆 by 吳垠慧

 

 

蕉葉迎風

 

 

 

Excerpts from 春曉－水稻田系列 by 陳韻如

黃銘昌 (Huang Ming-chang): 1952年生於台灣花蓮，1975年於文化大學美術系畢業，1978年進入國立高等巴黎美術學院就讀，於1984年畢業。旅居巴黎七年半的期間，是他繪畫生涯的轉捩點，不但奠定了他深厚的繪描功夫，也學到了古典油畫技法：製作畫布、煮調打底的顏料和膠，然後一筆一筆臨摹經典油畫。在法國期間他的作品曾多次入選大展，不過，由於成長於花蓮瑞穗，黃氏對於台灣的風土難以忘情。因此，黃銘昌在1985年回到台灣後，開始用細密的寫實風描繪新店附近、戶外的一片稻田。他對生活環境的觀察是：「巴黎的陽光淡薄，一切都彷彿籠罩在鴿灰色的基本調子裏……在台灣，一切物象都顯得高麗、溫暖、濃密而濕潤」，可見北方的冷調陽光與南國的旺盛生機之間有著極大的審美差異。黃銘昌以寫實的理念和技法，經過刻意精雕細琢式的營造，把物象予以「傳真」的表達，他的作品不論是室內系列或是遠眺系列，都呈現了高度的寫實性，且他的畫作中，透過光線的詮釋讓整個作品更加真實，「『光』是創作過程的初始，有光才有物體的形象出現，繼而『反射』出色彩，對於以自然為創作題材的藝術家來說，『光』在畫面上佔有相當重要的元素…」黃銘昌說。所以，「光」是黃銘昌的創作根本，是鋪陳，同時也是結束。

 

 

Excerpts from 黃銘昌《南島之風》 by 陳秀薇

受過法國巴黎七年紮實古典繪畫技法訓練的黃銘昌，培養出極敏銳的觀察力與形色和諧的精密寫實技巧。雖然歐洲的所見所聞令其震憾與景仰，但當他學成歸國、如吸飽的海綿逐漸釋出能量時，卻深切地感受到真正能觸動其內心的景致，其實並非色調柔和、雲淡風輕的歐洲風景，而是從小在台灣面對的澎湃海景、蓊鬱山林及炙熱陽光。因此回國後的他，無論是遠眺系列、稻田系列或海看系列、南島系列等，畫中出現的永遠是熱帶陽光、茂盛植物及開闊的景色，他曾說，以上的三個元素正是他的最愛。

對於居住在介於熱帶與亞熱帶島嶼的我們(創作者與觀者)來說，椰林稻田既是心中的美好回憶亦是現代生活中的難得想望。於是，黃銘昌作品中鋪天蓋地的綠及由各種熱帶植物交織而成的豐饒，大大地舒緩了我們視覺的疲勞，並撫慰了我們渴望的心。逼近真實的畫作讓人有如身臨其境：遠眺，極目所及都是自然天成，置身其中的我們彷彿收納了天地間的精華；近觀，每個角落的細緻度，絕對禁得起局部的探索，我們既看得到每個葉片的光影變化，還似乎可以感受到微風輕拂所引起的細微顫動。

雖然看起來逼真，卻不代表他的畫與實景百分之百相符，因為藝術畢竟不是科學紀錄，必然有許多基於美學的斟酌過程。喜歡至具南島風情的地點旅遊、拍照、畫素描或水彩，並仔細研究熱帶植物的生長與變化，這都只是繪畫之前的重要準備。正式作畫時，既要顧慮大格局的氣勢與構圖，更要對每個細部要求力臻完美、絲毫馬虎不得。一畝畝稻田、一草一木，就在他日日夜夜以一吋貂毛筆精細描繪辛勤的筆耕之下慢慢成長。嚴謹求真的態度，使其大型作品皆需耗費數月才能完成。

 

 

南島之風

 

* 黃銘昌《南島之風》 by 陳秀薇

Excerpt: 〈南島之風〉一如黃銘昌的大部份作品為純風景描繪，此屬作者個人之偏好，尋求內心的寧靜是其取景之依據。全景由靠近海的遠方山頭往遠處眺望：從近景的雜草、芭蕉，至中景的椰林、稻田，遠處是成片、細密的小植物，最遠的還有丘陵及海天一色。多元的熱帶植物交雜出現，讓佔畫面三分之二的綠色調中帶著繁複的變化。芭蕉樹在此作中有如長袖善舞的重要角色，在舞台前搖曳生姿、各展風情，強烈的光影強調了葉面的質感，使其更形耀眼。芭蕉葉及椰葉「面」的表現，錯搭其它小植物屬於「點」或「線」的變化，對比因此形成。遠方湛藍的海與輕柔的雲朵，顯得閒適清爽，舒緩了前方的熱力四射與擁擠。整幅畫在細膩的鋪陳中獲得和諧的統整。所有屬於技巧上的千錘百鍊，最終所追求的不只是纖毫畢現的真實，而是深化的意境。我相信黃銘昌畫作中的生命力與熱度，所有的觀賞者都深深地感受到了…。

 

 

綠豔

 

 

椰風

 

 

Dusk

 

 

春曉－水稻田系列

 

* 春曉－水稻田系列 by 陳韻如

Excerpt: 作者出生於花蓮瑞穗，雖然定居北台灣，但對稻田、海洋等自然景觀仍有著深深的依戀。此作表現南國椰林水田風情，在春天早晨，晨光灑落剛插秧的水田間，一片生機盎然。黃銘昌偏愛南國特有那種飽滿的綠意、充足的陽光與寧靜的悠閒，他不僅畫台灣的風景，也常至東南亞等地區，一邊親自感受當地的氣氛一邊尋找繪畫題材，此作即畫於峇里島烏布，正式畫油畫之前有水彩寫生稿；傍晚時分的同樣地點，也曾被作者畫成「晚晴」一作，兩者一早一晚，可互相比較、欣賞。作者擅長以精細綿密的手法表現田野，此作是表現亞洲水稻田文化的力作。

 

 

晚晴-黃昏水稻

 

 

A Peaceful Mind

 

 

舐犢情深-荷禾

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

* A Moment of Light: The confident vision of a landscape painter hypes up reality and applies Western painting
techniques to local subjects by Pat Gao

Excerpts: After six years of study in the rarefied atmosphere of the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-arts in Paris, Huang Ming-chang turned his attention to the rough agricultural landscape outside his apartment in Taipei County. With astonishing patience, he recreates in oil paint each rice stalk with a Chinese writing brush used for particularly fine calligraphy, just as a farmer would plant each seedling until the field was sown. The intense realism of his style makes it hard to imagine that the scene no longer exists--the city has since crept over the fields.

Huang's landscapes have become one of the most outstanding examples of modern Taiwanese painting and his work has sold at record prices for a younger generation of Taiwanese artists. For example, his painting Setting Sun fetched more than NT$2 million (US$60,606 ) at an auction at Sotheby's....

In addition to the powerful, somewhat crude styles of earlier masters, the technical maturity of Vermeer fascinates Huang. For him, the 17th-century Dutch painter's depiction of household interiors and common people illustrates the perfect harmony of color, contour and light that oil painting can achieve at its best. He recalls that in the initial stage of his study in France, he could not resist the exuberant glamour of the 19th-century Romantic painters such as Delacroix, Gericault and Goya. Numerous visits to the Louvre, however, gradually reoriented his sympathy from the sprawling dramatic tension in Gericault's The Raft of the Medusa, for example, to the domestic intimacy of Vermeer's The Lacemaker. Long after Huang's return to Taiwan, his affection for the Dutch master has prompted him to fly to the Netherlands just to see a Vermeer exhibition.

Not surprisingly, viewers can sense Vermeer's ethereal serenity in Huang's work. Paddy Fields in the Wind, for example, shows the painter's patient, confident vision of a dazzling totality that in lesser hands might merely be dull monotone. The entire canvas is covered with a breezy, lush greenness that is made up of countless rice plants individually depicted with hyper-real precision. "You can call his style photorealistic, elaborately realistic or classically realistic," says Sheila Lin, author of Taiwanese Contemporary Scenery Painting. "But his work shows such scientific rationale and meticulous calculation that it actually supersedes photography."

 

 

Photorealism

Photorealism is the genre of painting based on making a painting from the use of a photograph. The term is primarily applied to paintings from the United States art movement that began in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Origins: As a full-fledged art movement, Photorealism evolved from Pop Art and as a counter to Abstract Expressionism as well as Minimalist art movements in the late 1960s and early 1970s in the United States. Photorealists use a photograph or several photographs to create their work of art and it can be argued that the use of a camera and photographs is an acceptance of Modernism. However, the blatant admittance to the use of photographs in Photorealism was met with intense criticism when the movement began to gain momentum in the late 1960s, despite the fact that visual devices had been used since the fifteenth century to aid artists with their work.

The invention of photography in the nineteenth century had three effects on art: portrait and scenic artists were deemed inadequate to the photograph and many turned to photography as careers; within nineteenth and twentieth century art movements it is well documented that artists used the photograph as source material and as an aid -- however, they went to great lengths to deny the fact fearing that their work would be misunderstood as imitations; and through the photograph's invention artists were open to a great deal of new experimentation. Thus, the culmination of the invention of the photograph was a break in art's history towards the challenge facing the artist - since the earliest known cave drawings - trying to replicate the scenes they viewed.

By the time the Photorealists began producing their bodies of work the photograph had become the leading means of reproducing reality and abstraction was the focus of the art world. Realism continued as an on-going art movement, even experiencing a reemergence in the 1930s, but by the 1950s modernist critics and Abstract Expressionism had all but minimalized realism as a serious art undertaking. Though Photorealists share some aspects of American realists, such as Edward Hopper, they tried to set themselves as much apart from traditional realists as they did Abstract Expressionists. Photorealists were much more influenced by the work of Pop artists and were reacting against Abstract Expressionism.

Pop Art and Photorealism were both reactionary movements stemming from the ever increasing and overwhelming abundance of photographic media, which by the mid 20th century had grown into such a massive phenomenon that it was threatening to lessen the value of imagery in art. However, whereas the Pop artists were primarily pointing out the absurdity of much of the imagery (especially in commercial usage), the Photorealists were trying to reclaim and exalt the value of an image.

The association of Photorealism to Trompe L'oeil is a wrongly attributed comparison, an error in observation or interpretation made by many critics of the 1970s and 1980s. Trompe L'oeil paintings attempt to "fool the eye" and make the viewer think he is seeing an actual object, not a painted one. When observing a Photorealist painting, the viewer is always aware that they are looking at a painting.

Definition: The word Photorealism was coined by Louis K. Meisel in 1968 and appeared in print for the first time in 1970 in a Whitney Museum catalogue for the show "Twenty-two Realists." It is also sometimes labeled as Super-Realism, New Realism, Sharp Focus Realism, or Hyper-Realism.

Louis K. Meisel, two years later, developed a five-point definition at the request of Stuart M. Speiser, who had commissioned a large collection of works by the Photorealists, which later developed into a traveling show known as "Photo-Realism 1973: The Stuart M. Speiser Collection," which was donated to the Smithsonian in 1978 and is shown in several of its museums as well as traveling under the auspices of SITE. The definition was as follows:

1. The Photo-Realist uses the camera and photograph to gather information.
2. The Photo-Realist uses a mechanical or semimechanical means to transfer the information to the canvas.
3. The Photo-Realist must have the technical ability to make the finished work appear photographic.
4. The artist must have exhibited work as a Photo-Realist by 1972 to be considered one of the central Photo-Realists.
5. The artist must have devoted at least five years to the development and exhibition of Photo-Realist work.

Style: Photorealist painting cannot exist without the photograph. In Photorealism, change and movement must be frozen in time which must then be accurately represented by the artist. Photorealists gather their imagery and information with the camera and photograph. Once the photograph is developed (usually onto a photographic slide) the artist will systematically transfer the image from the photographic slide onto canvases. Usually this is done either by projecting the slide onto the canvas or by using traditional grid techniques. The resulting images are often direct copies of the original photograph but are usually larger than the original photograph or slide. This results in the photorealist style being tight and precise, often with an emphasis on imagery that requires a high level of technical prowess and virtuosity to simulate, such as reflections in specular surfaces and the geometric rigor of man-made environs.

Artists: The first generation of American photorealists includes such painters as Richard Estes, Ralph Goings, Howard Kanovitz, Chuck Close, Charles Bell, Audrey Flack, Don Eddy, Robert Bechtle, and Tom Blackwell. Often working independently of each other and with widely different starting points, these original photorealists routinely tackled mundane or familiar subjects in traditional art genres--landscapes (mostly urban rather than naturalistic), portraits, and still lifes.

Though the movement is primarily associated with painting, Duane Hanson and John DeAndrea are sculptors associated with photorealism for their painted, life-like sculptures of average people that were complete with simulated hair and real clothes. They are called Verists.

Since 2000: Though the height of Photorealism was in the 1970s the movement continues and includes several of the original photorealists as well as many of their contemporaries. According to Meisel's Photorealism at the Millennium, only eight of the original photorealists were still creating photorealist work in 2002; nine including Howard Kanovitz.

Artists Charles Bell, John Kacere, and Howard Kanovitz have passed away; Audrey Flack, Chuck Close, Ben Schonzeit and Don Eddy have moved in different directions other than photorealism; and Robert Cottingham no longer considers himself a photorealist.

Newer Photorealists are building upon the foundations set by the original photorealists. Examples would be the influence of Richard Estes in works by Clive Head and Anthony Brunelli or the influence of Ralph Goings and Charles Bell in works by Glennray Tutor.

Photorealism is also no longer mainly an American art movement. Starting with Franz Gertsch in the 1980s Clive Head, Raphaella Spence, Bertrand Meniel, and Roberto Bernardi are several European photorealists that have emerged since the mid-1990s.

The evolution of technology has brought forth photorealistic paintings that exceed what was thought possible with paintings; these newer paintings by the photorealists are sometimes referred to as "Hyperrealism." With new technology in cameras and digital equipment, artists are able to be far more precision-oriented.

 

 

Classical Realism

Classical Realism (not to be confused with "New York Classicism") refers to an artistic movement in late 20th century painting that places a high value upon skill and beauty, combining elements of 19th century neoclassicism and realism.

Origins: The term "Classical Realism" was originally used in the title of a 1982 exhibition by Richard Lack (1928 - ), a pupil of R. H. Ives Gammell (1893-1981). The movement traces its lineage from Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904) through William Paxton (1869-1941) of the Boston school.

By 1985 Richard Lack had begun publishing Classical Realism Quarterly, with articles written by Lack and his students, aiming to inform the public about traditional realist painting.

In a separate vein, another major contributor to the revival of traditional drawing and painting knowledge is the painter and art instructor Ted Seth Jacobs (1927 - ), who taught students at the Art Student's League and the New York Academy of Art in New York City. Their lineage is rooted in the Académie Julian, the Golden Age of Illustration in New York, and the School of Paris. In 1987 Ted Seth Jacobs created his own art school, L'Ecole Albert Defois in Les Cerqueux sous Passavant, France (49). Many of Jacobs' students such as Anthony Ryder and Jacob Collins became influential teachers and acquired their own student following.

Style and Philosophy: Classical Realist style is characterized by a love for the visible world and the great traditions of Western art, including Classicism, Realism and Impressionism. The movement’s aesthetic is Classical in that it exhibits a preference for order, beauty, harmony and completeness; it is Realist because its primary subject matter comes from the representation of nature based on the artist’s observation. Artists in this genre strive to draw and paint from the direct observation of nature, and eschew the use of photography or other mechanical aids. In this regard, Classical Realism differs from the art movements of Photorealism and Hyperrealism. Stylistically, classical realists freely borrow techniques from both Impressionism and Academic art.

Classical Realist painters have attempted to revive methods of artistic training and techniques that pre-date Modern Art. To this end, they seek to create paintings with a high degree of craftsmanship. Popular subject matter within this genre includes figurative and still life paintings.

A central idea of Classical Realism is the belief that the Modern Art movements of the 20th century caused a disruption in the understanding of art production as it was first conceived in the Classical period, resurrected in the Renaissance, and carried down through the academies to the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Classical Realist artists attempt to revive the idea of art production as it was traditionally understood: mastery of a craft in order to make objects that gratify and ennoble those who see them. This craftsmanship is then applied to drawing, painting or sculpting contemporary subjects which the artist observes in the modern world.

Schools: The Classical Realist movement is currently sustained through art schools based on the Atelier Method. Richard Lack is generally regarded as the founder of the contemporary atelier movement. His school, Atelier Lack, was founded in 1969 and became a model for similar schools. These modern ateliers are founded with the goal of revitalizing art education by reintroducing rigorous training in traditional drawing and painting techniques, employing teaching methodologies that were used in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. These schools pass on a method of instruction which melds formal academic art training with the influence of the French Impressionists.

Under the atelier model, art students study in the studio of an established master to learn how to draw and paint with realistic accuracy and an emphasis on rendering form convincingly. The foundation of these programs rests on an intensive study of the human figure, renderings of plaster casts of classical sculpture, and the emulation of their instructors. The goal is to make students adept at observation, theory, and craft while absorbing classical ideals of beauty.

 

 

Self Portrait

 

Taiwan's Glory * 台灣之光 * Taiwan's Glory