| F01 |
American Dream
Giorgione: "Sleeping Venus", 1905
Cezanne: "Apples and Oranges", 1900 - 05
Vasari wrote "Giorgione began to give
his works more softness and greater relief, in a beautiful manner. He
was accustomed to take live and natural thing as models, to imitate them
as best he could with colors, and to shade them with harsh and sweet tints
according to what the live thing showed."
When Giorgione was carried off by
the plague, the background landscape of "Sleeping Venus" had
not been painted. This was executed by Titian. Thirty years later Titian
painted his own version, "Venus of Urbino", with identical pose
and some change in details. Since that day the painting has been copied
by bumblers and old masters alike. Ingres sought in nude studies forms
of great perfection, and his copy of the Giorgione /Titian hangs in the
Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore. Reclining nudes pepper the works of Luini,
Cranach, Velasquez, Fragonard, Rembrandt, Goya, Manet, Modigliani, and
many others.
Chen has placed his Venus on a couch before a huge picture window revealing
the Brooklyn Bridge and the Manhattan skyline. In the foreground there
is a Cezanne-like still life of multicolored apples. The rigid angle of
the window, the horizontal thrust of the roadbed on the bridge, and the
vertical skyscrapers suggest Chen's sign of the Western cross: mathematics
and getting ahead. The curves of the sun, the bridge support cables, the
drapery, and bedclothes, the fruit all harmonize with the soft cadences
of the Venus figures.
Her world is one of comfort, property, and privacy. America, the most
developed country, has achieved them most. "Everyone dreams of these,"
Chen says, "and why not!" Science and technology are laudable
and can help lead to spiritual maturity if pursued in wisdom.
In the sky above Manhattan a helicopter flies. This may also be an anopheles
mosquito - a threat to so much unguarded flesh and dreams which become
too worldly. (by
Lawrance Jeppson)
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| F02 |
Venus and Shogun
Titian: "Venus of Urbino", 1638. Uffizi,
Florence
Kuniyoshi: "Tamaya Shimbei and Ugai Kujuro", Ukiyo-e
Shunko: "Actor Sakata Hangoro III", Ukiyo-e
Bonnard: "Nature Morte Jaune et Rouge", 1931. Grenoble, Musee
des Beaux-Arts"
Titian's (1488-1576) Venus is a lovelier woman than Giorgione's (1477-1510)
painted 30 years earlier. Giorgione was Titian's master, and when he limned
the first full-length nude to appear in Venetian paintings, this set juices
running in Titian's veins that eventually accounted for no fewer than a
dozen reclining nudes.
In Titian's original a shapely courtesan posed for the body, but the Duchess
of Urbino posed for the face. A modern scholar making a detailed study of
the iconography of the original has established affinities with Eleanora
gonzaga, the duchess. A painting of a villa interior showing a servant helping
a lady remove clothes from a chest occupied the space where Chen has placed
the Japanese figures.
When Titian painted versions of his reclining nudes he changed surroundings
and backgrounds for each, while maintaining the basic female figure. So
Chen's adaptations and interpretations follow a 450-year precedent.
The three leering kabuki figures which Chen uses suggest a story from the
Jewish Apocrypha. Three elders spied on Susannah, the wife of Joiachim,
and accused her of adultery, a capital offense. Her advocate proved her
innocent and turned the tables on her accusers, who were put to death instead.
In the Catholic religion Susannah became the patron saint who saves from
infamy and reproach.
Is this picture a warning against censors who object to the depiction of
natural beauty? The juxtapositioning can also suggest the 19th century shoguns
who wanted to open Japan to all desirable things from the West.
The still life is purely a Chen addition suggesting refreshing good fruit.
(by Lawrance Jeppson)
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| F03 |
Venus Today
Titian: "Venus of Urbino", 1538, Uffizi,
Florence
Gauguin: "Fatata te Miti (By the Sea)", 1892. National Gallery
of Art, Washington D.C.
Picasso: "Still Life", 1918. National Gallery of Art, Washington
D.C.
The replacement of heavy Italian drapes by a shoji screen painted with a
Mondrian (1872-1944) screen suggest that the Venus of Urbino has taken her
couch to Japan. The Paul Gauguin Tahitian landscape with figures and the
Pablo Picasso still life remind us of the frenzy these past few years that
the Japanese have shown for buying the best works of these painters, when
they could be found.
Apart from iconography, the four major elements of Chen's painting are filled
with lovely color games and interesting compositional structures. (by
Lawrance Jeppson) |
| F04 |
African Venus
Titian: "Venus of Urbino", 1538. Uffizi,
Florence
H. Rousseau: "The sleeping Gypsy", 1897. Museum of Modern Art,
NY
Chen has really gone exotic! For the best past of five centuries artists
have been painting replicas or interpretations of Titian's "Venus of
Urbino". Probably no interpretation in all this time has been so far
out.
Tsing-fang and his wife Lucia have an interest in African art, which Lucia
sells in her gallery. So the use of a Black African Duchess in tribal paint
and African cushions should not surprise us. Yet we are startled.
Henri Rousseau (1844-1910) was a customs bureaucrat and musician who described
himself as realist painter, although this can only describe his figurative
approach, not his fanciful mixing of images. Although he began showing in
the Salon des Independants in 1886, he was more than 50 years old when he
received his first substantial recognition by showing "The Sleeping
Gypsy" in that Salon in 1897.
In Chen's painting the white moon in a blue sky and the white mane and tail
of a docile lion seem like icons of magic, which are accentuated by the
wild pattern of white paint on Venus's body and the extravagant striped
curtain and cushion. It is difficult to cease staring at this picture and
searching for the interlocking of elements that make it interesting. (by
Lawrance Jeppson) |
| F05 |
Venus Fauvist-Cubist
Titian: "Venus of Urbino", 1538. Uffizi,
Florence
Picasso: "La Statuaire", 1925. Collection Mr. And Mrs. Daniew
Saidenberg. NY
In this version of the "Venus of Urbino" the nude figure seems
to be more like another Matisse than Picasso, as do the quilt and wall paper.
But the big window is indisputably Picasso. With two obvious heads and the
silhouette of a third, these might be an echo of Susannah and the Elders
if these faces were not so benign. (by
Lawrance Jeppson) |
| F06 |
Venus A La
Matisse
Titian: "Venus of Urbino", 1538, Uffizi,
Florence
Matisse: "Decorative Figure". National Museum of Modern Art, Paris
We would be surprised if Chen did not do a Matisse version of the "Venus
of Urbino". Short of detail and verisimilitude, this Venus looks to
be a quick study, easier and flashier to paint.
Matisse (1868-1954) was a brilliant decorative and poetic painter who often
is characterized by a flagrant disaccord between line and color.
Matisse played brilliantly in the rehabilitation of ancient and primitive
cultures and introduced exoticism into many of his works. "To his thinking,
the artist has an inalienable right to seek to broaden his own experience
by delving into all the art forms and styles he may come across in the course
of his travels and studies." (Gaston Diehl: Henri Matisse.) Like Cezanne,
Gauguin, and Seurat, Matisse used references to the past to expand his horizon
and elaborate a new pictorial language. Like Chen after him he sought the
solidarity that links all men and all things. Even though Matisse was well
traveled, because of a much more profound understanding of the East, Chen
has carried his creative unification of mankind far beyond Matisse's boundaries.
(by Lawrance Jeppson)
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| F07 |
Odalisque in Paris
Renoir: "Odalisque" (1870)
Modigliani: "Nude on a Blue Cushion" (1917)
Braque: "The Pink Tablecloth" (1931 or 1933)
Since the avant-garde Impressionists started to paint Paris, the city
of light, and its modern life where men and women socialized in this urban
democratic society of restaurants, coffee rooms and dance halls, the capital
of France became more and more the international center of modern art
attracting artists from every corner of France and foreign countries.
In the course of more than four decades, arts have witnessed the Belle-Epoque
(1871-1914) in progress and prosperity, especially in Paris with a mixed
ambiance of monarchism, bourgeoisie and exoticism.
In this painting "Odalisque in Paris", T. F. Chen tried to
express some aspects of such an ambiance by combining Renoir, Modigliani
and Braque together with modifications.
French colonization of North Africa had enriched French art. Already
new themes and tastes appeared in paintings by Delacroix and Images. Following
them, Renoir's "Odalisque" in 1870, depicted a seductive girl
with defiant gaze, in an exquisite knicker with golden brocade, a multicolored
striped sash and gauze blouse. Chen appropriated the lady while replaced
the decorative of the interior by Modigliani's Nude and Braque's Still
Life "The Pink Tablecloth", with some modifications for the
harmony of the whole painting.
The contrast between Renoir's dressed Odalisque and Modigliani's naked
woman is obvious, yet both are erotic and sensual in the sense of Baudelaire's
"Fleurs du Mal", the morose beauty of a melancholic "fin-de-siecle".
In front of them rises a table with fruits, bread, jar, music notebook
and pipe etc. melancholic in synthetic Cubistic style, a still life Georges
Braque who was a pioneer in art movements with Picasso and Matisse.
The motive of reclining women has been a European tradition since the
Italian Renaissance. Still life became a major theme only after Cezanne's
exploration. Braque was next to Cezanne and both had produced many masterpieces
in still life. In this "Odalisque in Paris", still life seems
as important as figures reflecting one aspect of the conflict in the Belle-Epoque,
between old and new, tradition and modernity, academic and avant-garde,
authority and challenge. (by T. F. Chen)
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| F08 |
Eternal Art Patron
Caravaggio: "Bacchus" (c.1595)
Gauguin: "Portrait of Fritz SchuoKlud" (1894)
Degas: "The Dance Class" (1873-76)
Between dancers exercising in the background and a cellolist performing
on the ground floor, sits Bacchus, the young God of Wine. As Dionysus
in Greek mythology, the Roman Bacchus blessed the grandiose festivals
of the Empire as Patron of the Arts.
In our age of mass media, entertainment business becomes an important
enterprise as Hollywood and Disneyland attest. Yet talent young artists,
no matter in which field, always need the support of patrons for the flowering
of their arts. It's always the case that governments and official institutes
are undependable and bureaucratic, therefore private entrepreneurs sometimes
play the role of the art patron, but only lucky ones can be benefited.
It's a pity that there are many Mozarts unencouraged and wasted by the
circumstances.
Imagine, if we can shift 1% of national defense budget for the arts,
how much can we do for the artists who will reward the society with music,
sculpture, mural, dancing, harmony, joy and inspiration¡K.. Such
a policy will become an eternal art patron, isn't it?
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