In the summer vacation, Liao Hsiu-ping introduced a sculptor from the South. Though talking very little, yet the kind of naivety, naturalness, and straight-forwardness so typical of country folks nevertheless beamed eloquently from his face. Such square and honest personality, uncontaminated by our profitoriented society, reminded me of those elderly people back home I had come to know when I was still little.
After calling out a simple “Mr. Wang”, he silently took out from a plastic bag two small wooden sculptures. Both work swere outspokenly Chinese in form, and both jolted the beholder to reflect and experience a touch of bitterness by their sheer contents. After I had fully savoured the two pieces and looked at pictures(of other works), I listened to Mr. Pan Yuan-shih’s further description of the artist……
”After leaving elementary school and at the age of 14, Chen Cheng-hsiung started earning his living as an apprentice at a shop dealing in buddhist sculptures. Having finished his apprenticeship, he then followed his master to offer artisan service for temples that requested their work. Thus, two years went by and Chen not only picked up the fine technique of his master, but had ample opportunities to closely observe and study the art of sculpture preserved there in those old temples of Taiwan. Consequently, he became a leading figure in the field of buddhist sculptures.
When Chen began producing sculptures other than Buddhist figures, he was doing that on an experimental basis and not taking it seriously. However, a certain Dr. Hsu, who was making a house call to look at Chen’s sill mother, was so fond of those works that he encouraged Chen to participate in art exhibitions and open contests. Chen’s long record of winning awards thus began and he has since collected many prizes from at home and abroad….”
Once I learned about the life story of the artist, his never-give-in spirit of struggle, and the uneven path of his self-study, his works became more touching than they first appeared. A principle in aesthetics dictates that art works would acquire added contents and effect, when the life and struggle of the artist evoke admiration from within the viewer. That is what is termed “the personality contents of a work via its creator” in aesthetics. Van Gogh, for instance, thanks much of his popularity to the fact that the story of his life and personal tragedy was well known. Our sympathy and admiration for the person Van Gogh makes our appreciation of his works blended with an emotional transmission, rendering thereby his art even more grasping and powerful.
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In this light, Chen Cheng-hsiung only had an education at the elementary level and was neither disciplined by academic art school, nor tutored by any established artist. All he ever had to rely on was experiment and hard study on his own. His works, however, could make those by some of his academy-trained counterparts a shade paler, and that in a number of aspects such as contents, style, compostition, and movement. This is not due to diligence alone, but must be accounted for by an innate artistic talent also. What I receive from Chen’s works, in terms of the “personality contents”, is that both diligence and talent prevail.
Sculpture in the orthodox viewpoint of Chinese art history has never been given mush formal recognition. That is partly because sculptors were in the part generally viewed as meer labouring craftsmen by the reigning intelligentsia (gentlemen-scholar-turned officials), and not equal artists| as those scholar-painters, supposedly possessing high aspirations and capable of handling literary contents in their artistic creation. On the other hand, traditional Chinese sculpture has been heavily dependent of, and consequently subordinated to, the religious institution. The latter in turn has imposed strict regulations concerning stylistic form and norm. Regardless whether it is the place for a certain object to be at, or its clothing, style, symbolism, etc., all would have to abide by the tradition, allowing absolutely no expressions of individualism or originality. Otherwise, not only the worshipers would find the piece difficult to accept, even the clergy-men would have difficulty understanding it. That explains why there are long listings of painters in the Chinese art history, and names of sculptors remain absent.
Chen Cheng-hsiung’s engagement in fashining buddhist sculptures over the last 2-3 decades makes it even more remarkable that one can hardly find in his art sculpture any trace of stylized forms associated with buddhist sculpture. For example, buddhist sculptures will demand a smooth and polished treatement of the surface, but Chen’s art works have deliberately made room for those positive and strong edges as marked by the knife while wielding. As a result, the creativity in Chen’s life comes across as a galloping force in a tangible way.
Theme and motif of his works primarily revolve around the living situation of fishermen and country folks. Those are fragments of his childhood recollection and furtherest- reaching experiences of his life. His humble origin accounts, for the facial expressions of his figures, almost unexceptionally distressed, reflective, and tolerant, to show a complicated state of mind. Although his woks are full of energy and mobility, but his kinetics differs from that of Western sculptures which operates outwards from within. Instead, his works show lives silently bearing outside pressures, or accepting the predestined fate, receiving and storing all sufferings and hopes in one’s heart. Consequently, his sculptures are quite reflective and agonizing, with a touch of fatalism so typical of the Chinese people, permeating. Representative of his works of this type are pieces such as “A Fisherman Remembers….” “Forgiveness”, etc.
To give expressions to his struggles with and sufferings of life, Chen’s figures usually possess strong and exaggerated limb. Knotted eye-braws wrinkled faces, lips tightly shut….all pointing to scars as marred by the passage of time. The use of the “contrapposto”, in which the two havles of the body are turned in different directions, gives a satisfying expression of movement. These and many others are important elements employed by artists as conduits for psychological descriptions. Chen Cheng-hsiung, without the help of a teacher, managed to master these all. Particularly worth mentioning is his approach in addressing group figures. He applies a single event to unite the various figures in a group. Despite the highly individual expression and posture of everyone in the lot, their concern and the direction of their movement nonetheless concentrate on the singular chosen event. The result is a successful unity and powerful assimilation. Rembrandt did this in his famous “Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp” and “The Night Watch”. Likewise, Chen Cheng-Hsiung attained similar effect through the group figures in respectively the “Fishermen” and “In Front of the Temple” and deserves our respect.
The art of sculpture has been traditionally weak in the history of Chinese art, and many of our contemporary sculptors are turning towards decorative or formal sculptures. At a time like this, works reflecting profound thoughts of life by Chen Cheng-hsiung indeed stand out and evoke ideas.