T'ang Haywen (Zeng Haiwen)

Cataloging information courtesy of the T'ang Haywen Archives. This work will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné prepared by Philippe Koutouzis under the number IOC1-64/66.

Private collection, Switzerland (acquired directly from the artist)
Acquired from the above by the present owner

This work is in good condition. A thread line is visible along the top and bottom edge each, due to previous mounting process.There are a few straight-line creases due to folding from previous handling, which is visible in the catalogue illustration. The work is laid on rice paper, mounted on stretcher and framed.
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"My paintings are neither abstract nor figurative. They do not represent any worldly matters but intend to surpass the boundary of consciousness and to create a new form to denote the nature and its rhythm." – T’ang Haywen

An Exceptional Ink on Canvas by T’ang Haywen

The post-war wave of Chinese artists moving to France produced an illustrious body of works that defined an era. Masterpieces by Zao Wou-ki, Wu Guanzhong and Chu Teh-Chun have come to represent the group with popular museum retrospectives and astonishing auction prices, however, in recent years, critical attention has been directed towards other artists from the group, opening new dialogues on this unique chapter of Chinese art history. The Taipei Fine Arts Museum's The Tao of Painting exhibition in 1997 and Paris' Musée Guimet's Les Chemins de L'Encre (Paths of Ink) retrospective in 2002 have championed T’ang Haywen as a central figure of his generation of canonical artist expatriates. His individual approach to abstract art reflected both the contemporaneous Lyrical Abstraction in Europe and the essence of Chinese ink art. The artist’s command of both worlds and painting traditions is exemplified by the group of T’ang Haywen works in this season, especially the exceptional ink on canvas, Untitled (Lot 22).    

Born in China, T’ang went to a French school in Vietnam and later moved to France for medical studies following World War II. However, once in France, T’ang decided to pursue his passion for art, setting forth four decades of extensive travels and painting practice. Based in his apartment on rue Liancourt in Paris, T’ang journeyed from the US to Poland, from the Nordic countries to Tunisia, from India to Morocco. Along the way, the artist’s unique insight and ability earned him the friendship from artists and art patrons alike: the southern French aristocrat Gertrude Roquefort-Villeneuve, the Polish-French master Balthus, and Dominique Ponnau, the director of the École du Louvre.

After experimentation in oil – mostly of still-lifes and portraits – in the 1950s, T’ang decidedly turned to abstraction since the 1960s, where the merging of Eastern and Western art practices – be it process or material – remained central to the artist’s exploration. The ink-on-paper medium dominated T’ang’s oeuvre, with diptychs measuring 70 by 100 cm. as his most common and recognisable format. Works on canvas would only appear sporadically, yet espouse the same tenets of naturalness and spontaneity within the Taoist ideals as those in his works on paper. Untitled from the early 1960s, with its monumental size of 210 by 177 cm, is the largest work and ink on canvas to ever appear at auction.

The material – ink wash and minimal colour on thin cotton fabric – can find its parallel in paintings on fine silk in ancient China. The central composition in black echoes the monumental mountains in the Northern Song paintings, through which recluse painters discovered in nature the moral order that they found lacking in the human world and, in turn, imbued their mountains with such grandeur and power. A virtuoso in ink, T'ang applied liberally traditional methods on new media and subjects. For instance, the traditional Fei Bai (Flying white) method is evident throughout the present work: relatively dry brushes are swiftly dragged across the painting surface, leaving strokes of white spaces. A closer look at the periphery of the black composition reveals rich texture and technique: the daubs and strokes are varied in wetness and intricately layered, reminiscent of the famous texturing method employed by the Song master, Guo Xi (cir.1000 -1087), where the texture of rocks and mountains are rendered in minute and subtle brushstrokes resembling cirrus clouds. 

The affinity to Chinese ink art, however, does not deny the work’s core identity – abstraction. Every single stroke seems to have sprung into existence spontaneously from the core mass of black in the centre, simultaneously permeable and solid, momentary and permanent. The speed in Action Paintings and the tranquility in classical Chinese paintings are pitted against each other here on the painting surface; the faint daubs of red, coupled with T'ang's signature, only heighten the tension in the mysterious narrative.  Jean-Paul Desroches, Director of Musée Guimet, praised T'ang's paintings as such: "It does not lack language or feeling, but rather, it is completely self-possessed and unrestrained. There is some influence from French geometers, but even more Chinese perception. It is not tethered to a fixed reality, and it is very circumspect of the worship of the senses ... with regard to time, it captures a twinkling of eternity; with regard to space, it is nearly infinite; with regard to action, it is a gentle breeze, it is music, it is stillness."