D_War and Peace Series

D01	War and Peace Rogier Van der Weyden: Descent From the Cross, ca. 1440. Prado, Madrid. Georges Braque: The Bird and Its Nest, 1955-56. National Museum of Modern Art, Paris. Paris-Match: Photo from the war in Vietnam. The evocation of a Christ figure from the fifteenth century, a stylized bird from the twentieth, and a newsphoto from the Vietnam war are used to create one of the most powerful religious paintings of our time. All the world's strife is summed up in the soldiers pausing in battle. Artillery and bombs boom behind them. The sky is blood red and foreboding. Death is close, uncertain... certain! Yet the figure of Christ flying through the sky is an omen for both peace on earth and for resurrection and immortal life for any who might perish beforehand. Christ has not yet ascended and been made whole by the Father, but he is on his way, and in time all humankind may follow and be healed from all the sins and pains of mortal probation. In Rogier van de Weyden the Flemish command of graphic detail achieved its most sublime expression. Rogier had a genius for dramatic staging, and his personages were imbued with extraordinary psychological depth. Rogier was a bridge between Flemish and Italian schools, and his work quite fittingly belongs within the images of a new renaissance of synthesizing art forces. The Christ figure is taken from the surviving center panel of a triptych painted for a chapel in Louvain. Even without the side panels, the painting is one of Rogier's most monumental conceptions. The space is a narrow stage on which the Calvary scene is enacted. Chen has discarded all except the figure of Christ, which he rotates 90 degrees. The Braque bird has the simple magnificence of a Japanese Ukinoe woodblock print. Its shape is not meant to suggest the cross - Christ is finished with that - but hope and mercy, for Him and for all. The use of the vertical grill in this picture is a brilliant ploy. It creates a moire effect, an optical illusion of a sensation of movement over which the viewer has no control. The eye cannot readily differentiate closeup microzones, and so the whole scene flickers and moves like a newsreel. The thin parallels suggest something else: the depersonalizing repetitiveness of war - bursts of machinegun bullets and an unceasing spewing of the same battles fought over and over again without surcease and without achievement. Without Christ, what hope would there be, for any of us? (by Lawrance Jeppson)
D02	After the Sunset Sandro Botticelli: Privavera (Spring): detail, "The Three Graces" ca. 1477-1478. Uffizi, Florence. Klaus Warwas (Germany): Force: German NATO Troops on a Maneuver in Oldenburg, from Photography Annual 1966. Using images from periods separated by nearly 500 years, Chen evokes the perpetual repetition of mankind's greatest failure: war. The specific act that suggested the painting to Chen was the Nazi invasion of Norway. While Nazi officers were toasting the peace with Norwegian officers, German soldiers were invading Norway. So after the sunset came war. The thematic impact of the composition is in no way reduced by the fact that the conflict has been represented by post-World War II delta jets and German NATO troops. The Three Graces theme - Aglaia, Euphrosyne, and Thalia: Brilliance, Joy, and Bloom - has descended from early Greek art and from literature as early as Homer. Symbolizing beauty, music, peace, prosperity, they are almost patron spirits of the arts. Primavera "centers on the Neoplatonic equation Venus = Humanitas, symbolizing the ideal harmonious equilibrium of nature and civilization." (Roberto Salvini.) Lionello Venturi referred to Botticelli's style as lyric vision. "Primavera" is musical, its unity of composition created through a succession of images that are as measured beats in poetry. Chen has used only a portion of the Three Graces from Primavera, but he has achieved a musical beat through the progression of his horizontal color bands (picked up and accentuated by the colors of the airplanes, the yellow orb, and the red sky.) The vertical stripes beat too... emphasizing the recurrence of strife and making the entire canvas pulse. (by Lawrance Jeppson)
D03	To Die in Spain Francis Bacon: "Three Studies for a Crucifixion," 1962 Pablo Picasso: "Crying Woman," 1937; Penrose Collection, London Paris-Match: Soldier dying in the desert in Six Days' War (photo) This acrylic painting is based upon Chen's own watercolor "War of Yom Kippur (No. 74)," done three years earlier and shows how he reuses and adapts elements. There are significant differences in the two treatments of the Crying Woman. In Kippur, the woman's hair is heavy and black and helps suggest a woman who is beaten, morose, and quietly dissolving inside. In Spain, her hair is yellow and the figure lighter and more expansive, as if the woman will reveal her sorrow through anguished screams. The two Bacon figures represent indifference. They too, are part of society, a bureaucratic society that goes about its business and ignores suffering. The compositional block of stripes on the lower left - yellow, green, red, and black - represent the elements of the desert: sun, grass, earth, water. (by Lawrance Jeppson)
D04	Hope for Peace Rene Magritte: "La Grande Famille", 1963 Leonardo da Vinci: "Madonna a l'oillet", Munich, Alle Pinakothek "La Vierge aux Rochers." Louvre, Paris Marc Chagall: "La Martyr", 1940 "La creation de l'Homme", 1956-57 "La Crucifixion Blanche", 1938 Painter, Architect, musician, hydraulic engineer, geologist, botanist, and anatomist, Leonardo da Vinci (1452 - 1515) is considered the greatest genius produced by the West in the last thousand years. Only 17 of his paintings survive, four of them unfinished. In this unusual blending of icons Chen has selected infant figures of Christ and John the Baptist from da Vinci; a large and transparent dove from Rene Magritte (1898 - 1967), whose surrealism, if religious, is not conventionally so; and a gaggle of other images, including peasant fantasy and a Christian crucifixion from Chagall (1887 - 1984), who was not Christian but Jewish. The common link, then, is not theology but a universal spirituality that is common to religion and humanity. The crucified Christ, still hanging on the cross, seems carried heavenward by the powerful wings through which float clouds. (by Lawrance Jeppson)
D05	Arts and Arms Andrea del Castagno: "Portrait of a Man", Mellon Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington D. C. A human truth: a change in clothing changes the man. The young man on the left: a scholar at a medieval university. Blue skies. On the right, the very same man, but with a steel helmet and a rifle. Bloody skies. Same eyes, same nose, same mouth, but who can deny that they have become two different men? After the battle of Anghieri, Andrea del Castagno (1421-1457), a Medici protege, painted effigies of the hanged rebels. Perhaps because he was familiar with war, a great deal of his subsequent production went into church frescos until he was carried off prematurely by the plague. Would he be pleased to see his young man in a German uniform? The scholar's robes are better. (by Lawrance Jeppson)
D06	World Family in Peace Matisse's "Dance," 1909. MOMA, NY Chen has been inspired several times to use Matisse's "La Danse" in paintings and prints, beginning with his "Five Races in Harmony." One night at Collioure, Matisse watched a group of rhythmical Catalan fisherman hoofing a spirited dance. This seed flowered as a series of dance compositions. "La Danse" was commissioned by the Russian collector Serge Schukin, refused to accept the painting for two years. Matisse was en route to dematerialize color by freeing tones from set meanings. His preoccupation was with rhythm. Gaston Diehl says that Matisse "succeeded in infusing the five figures with the same glow of driving energy, by dint of poised and cumbered arms and legs, and in merging them into an overall movement that develops with astonishing dynamism. And yet with all this, there is an increase of grace and natural simplicity." Having only a black and white illustration of "Le Danse," Chen was free to make an extraordinary dramatic interpretation that would simultaneously express his admiration for Matisse and demonstrate his own overpowering faith in the coming together of human beings in a united human family. His five differently-hued dancers symbolize the five races. The Red Buddha sits on a multicolored circular pedestal which plays harmonic melody with the circle of dancers and the circle of fire and light behind the Buddha's head. Chen's "World Family in Peace" sets forth Chen's vision of the integration of humankind and East-West resolution. (by Lawrance Jeppson)
D07	Seeing is Dreaming Piero Della Francesca: "Resurrection of Jesus". Borgo San Sepolcro, Pinacotheque Kandinsky: "Tempered Elan", 1944. Collection Nina Kandinsky, Paris Piero della Francesca (1416-1492) was the greatest Italian painter of the middle of the Quattrocento. Starting with Florentine ideas of perspective and space, he was the first to develop geometrical perspective in a systematic way, and his preoccupation with studies in perspective and mathematics led to his virtual abandonment of painting the last two decades of his life. His reputation languished until he was rediscovered in the nineteenth century. Historians call him a revelator of a new vision, a term which, with justification, has been used from time to time to describe new painters, including Tsing-fang Chen. Chen's quotation from the Italian is taken from the lower third of the fresco. In the original an imposing, wide-eyed figure of the wounded Christ carrying a battle banner stands with his left foot planted on a white coffin in a manner suggesting that He has conquered death. The soldiers who have been set to guard the tomb belonging to Joseph of Arimathea, where the crucified Christ was placed, have fallen asleep. They are unaware of the miracle of Christ. Chen fills their hibernation with surrealistic dreams. It is as much as they deserve, not because they have dishonored themselves by falling asleep on duty but because they have missed witnessing the greatest of all miracles, which they would have been powerless to stop. (by Lawrance Jeppson)
D08	Martial Law Da Vinci: "Saint Jerome", ca. 1482. Pinacotheque du Vatican Piero della Francesca: "Baptism of the Christ". London, National Gallery Chen turns to another Piero della Francesca masterpiece to find an element for this painting. There are five important figures in The Baptism of Christ: Christ, John the Baptist, and a group of three angels. These do not serve Chen's purposes, and he takes the sixth figure, an unimportant man in the background who is removing his shirt before his own baptism. This man is important because he is unimportant. He can represent the anonymous followers of Christ - and, secularly, pious, law-abiding citizenry. In AD 384 Pope Damasus instructed his secretary, Jerome, the da Vinci icon, to revise the Latin New Testament. Jerome learned Hebrew and spent many years in Jerusalem. He was also a Greek scholar. His Latin translation of the scriptures, the Vulgate Bible, became the standard for the Roman Catholic Church and influenced many later translators. Although the da Vinci interpretation makes Jerome look like a mendicant monk, the figure can stand for the enlightened intellectual world of our day. The martial-law figure looks more like a legalized terrorist, a soldier supporting an illegitimate or repressive state, cutting down leaders and common citizens with equal ferocity. (by Lawrance Jeppson)
D09	Under Violence Da Vinci: "Saint Jerome", ca. 1482. Pinacotheque du Vatican Rogier van der Weyden" "Pieta". Koninklyk Museum, Brussels Philosophically this is a similar picture. Jerome is more overtly linked with Christ, whose mission and teachings are trampled on when society is oppressed. The True Christ is the resurrected Christ. By trampling human rights society subjects Him to death again. (by Lawrance Jeppson)
D10	Sunset in the Middle East Chagall: "Feast Day (Rabbi with Lemon)", 1914. Galerie Rosengart, Lucerne Greco: "View of Toledo", 1610-14. Metropolitan Museum, NY A sunrise is more promising than a sunset, more promising and optimistic. The infinite, mirrors-like picture within a picture of the warlike rabbi holding a diminished replica of himself (in our mind's eye we can see the second rabbi doing the same in turn) suggests a cycle that cannot be broken with tools of hostility. Parachuting may be fine for carnivals and celebrators, but for warriors, even when they bear the vestments of God, diving through the sky can be associated only with war and force. Despite the lemons (whimsical or symbolic?), this is a picture of dangerous reality. It seems unlikely that Chen's convergence of cultures will be found floating in this wind current. (by Lawrance Jeppson)
D11	To Die in Spain Please refer to D03.
D12	Pray for Peace Filippo Lippi: "Virgin and Child with Two Others". Uffizi, Florence G. Rouault: "The old King", 1937. Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh Picasso: "Horse's Head", 1937 Chen again uses the shrieking horse's head from Guernica to symbolize the worst demons and catastrophes and evils that men set loose upon themselves. The Guernica lightbulb casting its white illumination represents peace. The desire for goodness, brotherhood, and peace is represented by the Madonna and her prayer. The king, a Rouault figure, is indifference - the non-caring neutral, whether in the War in Heaven or strife upon earth. Through a small window in the upper right we catch a snatch of Miro representing burning, war, and holocaust. Chen frequently works out his compositions by beginning with sketches and a watercolor, but as with any artist the definitive version may be substantially changed. (by Lawrance Jeppson)
D13	Pray for Peace color etching