Hong Kong Museum of Art, the Lingnan School of Painting
I visited Hong Kong Museum of Art on 3 April. I visited the Gallery of Chinese Fine Art that houses the museum’s collection of modern Chinese art and Guangdong painting and calligraphy. The gallery is divided into four main sections: paintings from Guangdong, calligraphy form Gunagdong, the Lingnan School of painting and modern Chinese painting. This field report mainly concerns about the Lingnan School of painting due to it plays an important role in the development of modern Chinese painting.
When I visited the Gallery of Chinese Fine Art where was quiet. There were just a few visitors. In the same day, the exhibition of Impressionism: Treasures from the National Collection of France was held. The exhibition was overcrowded and the visitors were willing to spend much time on queuing to see the paintings. I do think that Hong Kong people like to join the fun, most of them usually do not like to visit the Museum and enjoy the works. I think the promotion of Chinese fine art is not successful. Many people misunderstand Chinese fine art, for example they think that Chinese painting is boring because of the colours of the painting are black and white. Hong Kong people know a few contemporary Chinese artists such as Wu Guanzhong and Huang Youngyu. The Museum does not give a great deal of publicity of contemporary Chinese artists and their works. I think the Museum should be responsible to educate people how to enjoy the art. The Museum should undertake more activities about the Chinese fine art not only chairs but also interactive activities.More Chinese artists specially the contemporary artists should be promoted to the public.
The Lingnan School of painting is the third section of the gallery. It takes one third of the gallery and about twenty- five paintings are showed. Gao Jianfu, Gao Qifeng and Chen Shuren are “Three Masters of Lingnan”, they studied traditional Chinese, Western and Japanese painting so their works are combined with traditional Chinese, Western and Japanese painting style. The paintings that are showed appear the new painting style. The paintings of the School are different with the traditional Chinese painting. The traditional Chinese painting is usually ink-wash painting and the colours of the painting are usually black and white but the paintings of the School are colourful. The banana tree (figure 1) by Chen Shuren shows us how the artists of the School reform Chinese traditional painting.
The drawing line of traditional painting is unclear but we can see that most of the paintings of the School have clear drawing line. Also, traditional paintings have weak resemblance to real objects. The traditional artists do not concern about proportion ratio of the painting but the essence of the objects is concerned. However, I find that the paintings of Lingnan School are more emphasis on realism. The “Three Masters of Lingnan” adopt the Western ways of painting so the details of the objects are showed. The colour of the paintings is refined and they still keep the poetic feeling of the traditional painting.
I find that the paintings of the Lingnan School have different kinds of topic for example the flower and bird and animal painting, landscape painting. The artists like to paint the objects that we can find in daily life. I cannot find any portrait in the exhibition but mostly the paintings are flower and bird and animal paintings.
I think the most beautiful painting in the gallery is A Hundred Flowers by Ju Lian. (Figure2). “Three Masters of Lingnan” were influenced by Ju Lian. We can say he is one of the beginners of the Lingnan School of painting. In the painting, we can see that the colours are well-matched. Even Ju Lian used more than five different colours but the appearance is simple and refined. The composition of the painting is good. We can see that the peony is the focal point of the painting and other flowers serve as contras. Ju Lian lived in Late Qing Dynasty but the painting is still current.
In the Museum, the video that introduces Yang Shanshen’s painting and Zhao Shao’ang painting was showed. The video took more than one hour. I take really long to finish the two topics. In the video, Yang taught us how to paint a bamboo and some special skills are introduced. I think it is quite difficult for people to understand specially one who don’t know much about Chinese painting. The terms were hard to understand therefore not many visitors were interested in it. The second part of the video was about the painting of the Zhao Shao’ang who is also the famous artist of contemporary Chinese painting. In the video Zhao was interviewed and he talked about the elements of Chinese painting: subject matter, composition, bush work and colour. The events of Zhao are introduced in the video. I think this part of the video was more interested. Form the interview, we know more about the characteristic of traditional painting. After I finished the video, I wanted to see the painting of Zhao Shao’ang but I was disappointed that there was only one or two paintings by Zhao. I know that there is an exhibition of Zhao Shao’ang’s art works in Hong Kong Heritage Museum. I don’t understand why Zhao’s art works is showed in Hong Kong Heritage Museum but not in Hong Kong Museum of Art according to he is the important artist in contemporary Chinese fine art. I visited Hong Kong Heritage Museum before. The exhibition of Zhao is interesting and detailed. Maybe Hong Kong Museum of Art does not have enough space to show more art works of the artist. I still think that it is inconvenient for people to visit two different places.
In the gallery, I just find a few paintings of “ Three Masters of Lingnan” although the information boards in the gallery introduced that they are the most important artists of Lingnan School of painting. I cannot find any painting by Gao Qifeng. The standard of choosing painting of the Museum is fantastic. Moreover, some information boards are hung up on the wall. They introduce history of the Lingnan School of painting and basic information about the artists. I do think the introduction is not enough. Some keys words of the introduction has not explained to the visitors such as boneless style which is the main special feature of Ju Lian’s painting. After I read the introduction of Ju Lian, I just know the term “boneless” which is the painting technique but nothing more. I think it will be better if the Museum can post more information about the painting and the artists. I was disappointed when I walked around the gallery, I cannot find any pamphlet of “the Lingnan School of painting”. Even I went to information desk to ask for a pamphlet, the staff told me that there was no pamphlet for the exhibition and there was only some old pamphlets of Chinese calligraphy. I think most of people visit the museum, they want to get a pamphlet that gives them more information about the works. The Museum should not neglect it.
The visitors in the gallery were not patient to pay attention to every detail of the works. I guessed that most of the visitors went to the gallery after they visited the exhibition of Impressionism because they were taking prospectus of the exhibition. Most of the visitors were local people and some of them were students. They took notes and did some worksheets. Some of the visitors are tourists from Mainland China and other places. Some visitors talked loudly in the gallery and some took photo of the paintings. I do believe that they know that we should keep quiet in the museum. If we need to talk, we should talk in a light voice but talk not high-sounding phrases. Also we should not take photo of the paintings because it is not good for the works. there should be some “don’t take photo” notes near the entrance of the gallery, everyone should see them. Maybe education of “visiting museum” should be held.
When I walk around the gallery, I talked to the security of the Museum. She is around forty years old. She was friendly to introduce me to see different paintings and she told me that there were some famous artists visited the Museum. She said that in the gallery the paintings of Zhang Dai-qian is most welcomed. Also the horse painted by Xu Beihong is the most beautiful painting.
The exhibition of the Lingnan School of painting is not success because of the arrangement of the Museum is bad. The visitors cannot see many of paintings by the artists. Moreover, the promotion of the exhibition is not enough that not many people visit the gallery even on Sunday. The information provided by the Museum is not enough so people cannot learn much after visiting. I think the painting of the Lingnan School artists can catch up with the times, it should be a good first step to people to learn more about Chinese painting but the Museum does not pay attention about it.
附記：這是一篇考察報告功課，當中有不少文法錯誤，希望大家見諒，畢竟我是"中文"人，不習慣寫英文！
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