Liu Dan

Chinese Porcelain Company, New York
Collection of HSBC, New York

New York, China Institute Gallery, Shu: Reinventing Books in Contemporary Chinese Art, December 13 - February 24, 2007, pp. 54-55, illustrated in color
New York, Chinese Porcelain Company, Contemporary Trends in Chinese Ink Painting, March 19 - 30, 2007, p. 2, illustrated in color

This work is in excellent condition overall. It is framed under glass and was not examined out of frame.There are a few minor pinholes on the edges of the paper. Otherwise, there are no condition problems with this work.
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An arresting combination of grand scale and minutely detailed perfectionism draws the eye to Liu Dan's painting Dictionary.  The artist's masterful execution is the culmination of a long career spent studying Chinese brushwork and rethinking the role of brushwork as an expressive medium.  As a child, Liu Dan studied calligraphy with his grandfather, from whom he also acquired an understanding of traditional Confucian values.  As a youth he was fortunate to study with the traditionalist painter and educator Ya Ming (b. 1924), who arranged for Liu to become a student at the Jiangsu Traditional Painting Institute when it reopened at the close of the Cultural Revolution.

During the 1980's and 1990's Liu Dan lived in Hawaii and then New York, where he gained new perspectives and matured artistically while remaining committed to traditional media.  Through increasing mastery of Chinese brushwork, however, Liu developed the highly unusual technique of deploying his medium in such a deliberately restrained manner that the brush is completely subjugated to form.  In the work of Liu Dan, individual brushstrokes are virtually imperceptible units used to build up the forms that constitute his paintings.  Liu believes that the emphasis on the artist's hand in later Chinese painting—the premium that "literati" painting places on the brush stroke—was detrimental to the development of the painting tradition.  And he takes inspiration and direction from the Northern Song (960-1127) emphasis upon compositional structure over brushwork.

This painterly method also parallels Liu Dan's philosophy concerning the content of his works.  As William Blake (1757-1827) wrote in his Auguries of Innocence, ideally one can "see a world in a grain of sand." Liu Dan's paintings bring this philosophy of the macrocosm expressed within the microcosmic to life, albeit in a way that the poet could not have imagined.  Liu has often referred to rocks, a frequent subject of his paintings, as the 'stem cells of landscape':  vast expanses of terrain are composed from small, basic units, both in painting and in the natural world.  While the basic idea is in keeping with traditional Chinese culture—which posits that in contemplating a scholar's rock, one may achieve the beneficial results of wandering the mountains—Liu's reference to contemporary science is apt.  Coincidentally, the ultimate basic unit of life, DNA, was discovered the year Liu Dan was born, in 1953.

Dictionary is an intriguing and subtle expression of the concept of aggregating and organizing individual units into a meaningful whole.  If a genetic metaphor fits for the painting of inanimate rocks and mountains, it is even more appropriate for considering the logic behind painting a dictionary.  A dictionary catalogues units of language, the underpinnings of human culture, and although its entries are dry and devoid of life individually, when put to use they are multiplied, meaningful, and expansive.  Similarly, these foundational reference texts tend to endure the tests of time, even as the humans who make use of them come and go.

The Chinese title for Liu Dan's painting translates as Minguo Dictionary, thus dating the depicted dictionary to the Minguo Period (1912-1949).  This was a precarious era during which waves of strife swept through China, and the dictionary's dilapidated binding and tattered corners attest to its travails.  The brocade cover, although frayed, suggests the value placed on language, and the characters catalogued in the Minguo Period dictionary are traditional ones, those in use in China for many centuries.  Later dictionaries published in mainland China feature the simplified characters developed under Chairman Mao in order to facilitate widespread literacy. Wholesale violence was done to the basic units of language in the name of the greater good, but in the process the written word lost a certain elegance and natural logic of form—and the expressive nuance and richness of the language was compromised.  Thus, the representation of the tattered Minguo Period dictionary on a monumental scale has great poignance.

Represented in the image are pages 372 (at right) and 425 (at left) of the dictionary, which define words with the 'water' and 'jade' radicals, respectively.  Chinese dictionaries are organized by the 214 so-called 'radical characters' which are used in combination with other characters to form specific words.  Given that Dictionary is made of ink and water and that jade is a prized artistic medium the history of which goes back to the Neolithic period (10,000 - 2,000 B.C.), the pages Liu has chosen to depict can hardly be considered arbitrary.  Indeed, the contemporary artist's reverence for, reference to, and perpetuation of tradition seems to be the visual pun of this extraordinary open book. 

A formal tour de force, Liu Dan's Dictionary overflows with interpretive possibilities in its many cultural and historical references.  It is a superb example of this singular artist's work.

-Britta Erickson