The Root of A Painter

When I read a book called Art and Culture Politics in Postwar Taiwan, I noticed a sentence that the author, Jason Kou, quoted. It said “Art cannot be confined within frontiers—it lives only if continually subjected to foreign invasions, to migrations and transplantations. But if art’s vitality comes from the cross-bleeding of styles, its stability comes from roots that grow deep into a native soil.” Those words were used to conclude the work of the painter, Chen Chikwen.

I agreed with those words, based on my knowledge of Chen Chikwen’s life and his work. His early work was western style. Then in his middle work, he began to try more stylistic choices and try modern Chinese sensibility. His late work became deliberate and innovative. He extended the Chinese tradition to create a modern Chinese approach to painting. He, at last, made his art in the roots of Chinese.