Blocks of Memory Colored by Time

Publication Date：11/01/2002
By line：Raye Kao

Publish Date: 11/01/2002
Story Type: ARTS; PROFILES
Byline: RAYE KAO

For much of his career, Wu Hao has been well-known for his
mastery of blending Chinese and Western elements in his oil
paintings. For a relatively brief period, he departed from his
usual medium and produced a limited number of highly
regarded woodblock prints.

Like a cartographer mapping an explorer's route, artist Wu Hao has been coloring his life's journey with oil paints and woodcuts, as well as pigments stored in his memory. His childhood recollections of Chinese New Year in particular have been a constant source of inspiration, allowing him to draw from traditional Lunar New Year images for his creations. With a clever mixture of Chinese folk art motifs and Western painting tools and techniques, Wu's works represent a momentary state of mind--a mood that is often nostalgic, tranquil, and playful.

Wu's views of artistic creation seem to accord with the cumulative nature of memory--that expression in art develops with the gradual accumulation of personal experiences. "Many people tend to consider breakthroughs analogous to a subversion of past creations," he says. "But for me, life's too short to deny past efforts. The creation of art is a continuous process from which one acquires and collects experiences specific to the individual." He believes that the employment of color, texture, and other tools of expression are, and should be, strictly personal. "Instead of overturning the past, I prefer to proceed from previous experiences," he adds. "It's only through such a process that artists grow mature enough to establish their uniqueness."

That perception is often reflected in the artist's selection and presentation of human forms--most notably, the flat, frontal, disproportional figures that possess no distinctive sexual attributes or facial expressions. These figures are at times accompanied by animals, and reveal Wu's propensity to see the world through the eyes of an innocent. His use of vivid colors and delicate lines adds an even greater touch of innocence to his works. Even when he paints landscapes, animals, and still lifes, he expresses a tenderness that stems from nostalgia for his homeland. And over time, his sense of homeland has extended beyond Nanjing to Taipei.

Wu Hao was born in 1932 to an affluent family in Nanjing. Although his father was a businessman, Wu appears to have inherited his artistic talent from his maternal grandfather who specialized in Chinese painting. He developed an interest in the arts at an early age and took up drawing as a hobby. The Japanese invasion of China, however, put his family on the move for a number of years. And even after Japan was defeated in 1945, the civil war in China forced Wu Hao--who was preparing to enter a technical junior college in Suzhou at the time--to relocate to Taiwan in 1949 with a relative. To support himself, Wu volunteered to serve in the air force. During his free time, Wu got together with friends who shared his interest in the arts and painted images from real life. This small group eventually attended painting classes held by several artists, including Li Chung-sheng , who was an especially inspiring influence.

The novice painter received further encouragement to develop his hobby after winning two top prizes in art contests held by the Ministry of National Defense to encourage servicemen to develop an interest in the fine arts. In 1952, he was promoted to the position of warrant officer and assigned the duty of maintaining a bomb shelter built in Taipei during the Japanese colonial period (1895-1945). The shelter soon became Wu Hao's studio and a spot where many budding artists gathered. Four years later, this art haven witnessed the establishment of the Ton Fan Art Group that was to play a significant role in modernizing Taiwan's art horizons. During the same period, Wu found himself deeply attracted to the study of Chinese folk arts, the Buddhist murals found in the Dunhuang Caves of China's Gansu Province, as well as the works of Henri Matisse.

Inspired by these influences, Wu began in 1957 to experiment with oil paints using various styles--neoclassicism, cubism, surrealism, fresco painting, and Chinese folk arts. While he continued to win several national fine-arts awards, his oil paintings also began to appear regularly at the Ton Fan Art Group exhibitions held annually from 1957 to 1971, the year the association disbanded. In 1958, Wu began to show an interest in prints after attending the Sino-American Print Exhibition. That interest percolated until 1964, when he started to produce woodcuts for newspapers. "I tried woodcuts for fun," the artist recalls. "It also helped me financially. My first piece was based on techniques I learned on my own and my childhood impression of how Chinese New Year pictures were made."

In 1966, Wu Hao joined the Modern Print Society (MPS), formed in 1959, and began to concentrate on the creation of prints. Prior to the 1940s, prints in Taiwan were for the most part made from woodcuts, and the craft was largely considered a folk art used primarily to produce auspicious pictures and motifs for religious purposes. In the following decade, newspapers and other businesses started to use woodcut prints as illustrations and advertising.

The establishment of the MPS marked the beginning of an era in which printmaking was used outside its traditional role and launched as an independent art form. Founders of the MPS, Chin Sung, Chiang Han-tung, Yang Ying-feng, Chen Ting-shih, Li Hsi-chi, and Shih Hua, all had a hand in pushing for the revolution of the art, amid the modernization of the entire artistic landscape in Taiwan.

In subsequent exhibitions, Wu Hao's prints were admired by many Americans for their distinct Chinese folk-art flavor. During the 1950s and the 1960s, principal support for Wu and his contemporaries came from US military personnel stationed on the island. The soldiers provided a source of revenue at a time when Taiwan's economy was still underdeveloped.

Wu continued to create his delicate, intricate woodcut carvings even though it was a struggle to find money and materials. "It took me at least a month to carve a piece," he recalls. "To maintain the quality, I produced at most thirty prints from one woodblock and in batches of only ten prints at a time to cut costs. The materials used for producing prints were scarce and expensive back then. I had to ask friends to bring over material from Japan, especially the paper for making prints."

Wu has not used anything other than woodblocks in the making of prints, but his efforts have proven to be masterly. He has been invited to participate in both national and international exhibitions, and his works have appeared in shows in Japan, Italy, Germany, and Peru. In 1979, his print entitled Peace Countryside won a major award at the Sixth British International Print Biennial.

The award was a significant accomplishment in the artist's career as a printmaker as he had once again picked up his paint brushes five years earlier, and produced only a few woodcut prints since. Wu had carved about eighty woodblocks during the eight years he dedicated to the medium, and a large number of his prints were taken to the United States by servicemen returning home.

The artist had several reasons for his decision to return to oil painting. "Prints in the Taiwan art market are considered less collectable because they are made in a number of copies," he explains. "Also, fine quality wood was disappearing as piles of lumber were exported to Japan and other countries. What's more, woodcarving requires not only arduous labor, but also good eyesight. Over time, the task became too demanding for me to keep at it. Painting, on the other hand, is more flexible and boundless." The artist could have gotten around the physical demands of printmaking as more printing techniques were being introduced that relied on mechanized rather than human labor. But Wu preferred not to take advantage of such advancements because in his view the closer the artwork is to human hands, the higher its value.

By "value," clearly the artist refers to the intangible quality of an art piece. What sustains Wu in his long journey is his genuine love for art, rather than a desire for comfort or money. "Wu Hao has never been a prolific painter," says Celia Huang, manager of the Metaphysical Art Gallery in Taipei. "His artwork has commanded a stable market value at home and abroad all along. When the art market was at its peak, some collectors even lined up with cash in hand to buy his paintings. They admired Wu Hao's oil paintings for their gripping colors, childlike honesty, Eastern touch, subtle rhythm, and the fine, powerful lines that are almost indiscernible in Western oil paintings. But many buyers were disappointed because the painter refused to compromise his work by rushing for greater rewards."

Maintaining the quality of his work and the fun of artistic creation are not the only reasons for Wu Hao's slow output. He had served in the air force for sixteen years prior to taking a full-time post at the Mandarin Daily News as its cultural center's administrative director until his retirement in 1998. On average, he has solo exhibitions every other year. The next one is scheduled for December of this year. "Time is such a precious gift," the artist says. "I've always believed that if I can't change the situation, then I should create within it a more desirable one. Therefore, I've been making good use of my time in the creation of art in addition to working to support my family. I work as hard now as always. Age makes time even more precious than it already is." And without a doubt, age has not dulled Wu Hao's passion for creativity.