【Art Today】Interview: Wu Deng-yi’s Contemporary Color Ink Achievements

Art Today May 2021 issue

Entering the Wu Dengyi Art Museum on the 32nd floor of Taipei 101 Building, you can see Mr. Wu Deng-yi’s color ink works. The rock structure of the paintings is both rigorous and light, combining the wonders of Dongting Lake and the casual freehand brushwork of literati landscapes. Between complete realism and freehand brushwork, the artist has uniquely combined the magnificent palace-style fine brushwork, abstract color ink and literati landscape, allowing viewers to enjoy the creator’s creation through the fine-grained method and the agile splashing ink in the medium-sized picture. It is a landscape space that is both dreamy, lyrical and determined. Breaking away from the distinct artistic styles of Eastern and Western painting, Mr. Wu Deng-yi’s color ink works start from the cross-field perspective of contemporary art. In addition to enjoying the visual beauty, how to penetrate and enter the world of Wu Deng-yi’s color ink art, this article will focus on the following three aspects share:

Journey of Colors  66x67cm  2020  Ink & Color on Paper

Originating creativity

How to understand the origin of art or creation? From the beginning of the artist’s life, it is definitely the key to open the first door. Wu Deng-yi was born in Puli, Nantou in 1951. He grew up in the pure natural landscape, which nurtured his infinite possibilities of free exploration. Wu Deng-yi showed his artistic talent during the free painting time of an art class every hour in the country. After graduating from junior high school, Wu Deng-yi went to Taipei. Through apprenticeship and diligent selfstudy, he absorbed nutrients from observing and imitating various styles and masterpieces of famous teachers, and studied various techniques in depth. In the 1960s, when Taiwan opened up to Japanese tourism, there was a huge demand for paintings by Taiwanese artists, which gave Wu Deng-yi a huge number of practical opportunities. After he studied hard and stabilized his techniques, he decided to break through himself in terms of artistic conception and creation concept. Since the 1970s, he has successively entered the National Taiwan University of Arts and Taiwan Normal University for further studies, absorbing Western artistic concepts. Although Wu Deng-yi strives for perfection in his creation, before the age of 70, he never pursued fame, but continued to pursue endless enlightenment in art and creation itself. Just imagine how a mortal can live with this? It is precisely because of his perseverance that can endure loneliness and continuous improvement of his skills that he can create a new world of color ink art in the landscape painting circle where the predecessors have produced many masters, and form a unique Wu Deng-yi color ink style.

Heavenly river with the sun  64.5 x 66cm 2020  Ink & Color on Paper

The west wind spreads to the east, and there is no limit

In the landscape and literature of literati in the East, there is a tradition of expressing feelings through objects, bringing out an abstract humanistic mood through figurative representations. Western art, on the other hand, depicts the indescribable state of mind directly through abstract painting, and uses automatic techniques to add an unconscious and random expression style. During his studies at National Taiwan University of Arts and National Taiwan Normal University, after Wu Deng-yi mastered the oriental creative techniques, he continuously absorbed the concepts of Western abstract painting and automatic techniques, especially the use of unique paper, which allowed the color ink to flow freely horizontally instead of precipitating downwards. Multi-layered colors are superimposed at the same time. Through this technique, the viewer can see the secluded forest in the thick ink without being gloomy, and immediately see the turning point at the junction of the dark and light. Visually create the strength of color ink and the texture like oil painting. In terms of color, he boldly uses red, blue, purple, green and other colors that are rare in landscape paintings, and in the form of color dots, color blocks, color spots, etc., stretches, wraps, and collides in the picture… Compared with the East Art uses ink lines to express dynamics. A major feature of modern Western abstract paintings is to bring out dynamics through color. Mr. Wu Deng-yi combined this with color ink, shaped the body with the chapping method, and injected spirit into the paintings with unique colors. Clouds and fog make room for it. Just as Guo Xi’s “Lin Quan Gao Zhi”: “It is said that there are those that are feasible, those that can be expected, those that can be traveled, and those that can be lived. All paintings so far have become wonderful works.”

Grand appearance of clear mists  63 x 65.5 cm 2020  Ink & Color on Paper

Combination of traditional and contemporary

Themes other than landscapes, taking《Grand appearance of clear mists》as an example, has the iconic witch-style landscape style, majestic landscape, bold contrasting colors and a brilliant atmosphere of flying clouds and mist. The difference is that at the bottom right of the screen, The face of a family general in Taiwan’s traditional folklore emerged, bringing the blessing of “protection” to Taiwan. The works use realistic and meticulous brushwork combined with landscape composition to bring out the hope of current events.

《The Jade Rabbit Dedicates the Prosperity and Luck》is based on abstract scenery, and is matched with elegant realistic and meticulous brushwork in a subtle atmosphere. It is rare for the artist to coherently update the concepts of figurative and abstract in calligraphy, ink painting, and images in a single picture. In his nearly 100-year creative career, the tradition and the contemporary are no longe different in terms of time, style, and concept for Mr. Wu Deng-yi. He can create a vast world containing all things at his fingertips.

 

The Jade Rabbit Dedicates the Prosperity and Luck  66 x 66 cm  2018  Ink & Color on Paper