Artist Biography & Facts

Haiwen Tang

Ink and paper lie at the origin and are a vital force in the painting tradition of East Asia, as well as being common denominator among overseas Chinese artists.  Nowhere else is this more evident than when considering the work of artists who traveled to France in the early to mid-20th century, such as Lin Fengmian, Pan Yuliang, Sanyu, ZaoWou-ki, Chu Teh-Chun, Wu Guanzhong and T’ang Haywen, or US-based Chao Chun-Hsiang. 

At no point in their artistic careers did they abandon from Chinese ink painting; on the contrary, they injected new meaning into this medium.  These artists not only drew inspiration from this traditional medium, but also developed the use of oil paint in their practice.  These Chinese artist sought to advance this tradition by combining their understanding of both Western and traditional Chinese art, their own personal life experience, and a fresh perspective to explore new styles of ink.  Like runners in a relay race, they took the baton passed on by their forbearers, contributing their own strength to break boundaries.

The revolution of 20th century ink painting in mainland China began in the 1920s.  In 1926, not long after returning from his study in Europe, as Lin Fengmian wrote, in The Prospect of Chinese and Western Arts, that in fact, the shortcomings of Western Arts are exactly where the strengths of Eastern Art lie, and the strengths of Western Arts are also where the shortcomings of Eastern Arts lie.  Complementing each other produces the world’s new arts.  Lin also pointed out that “Development of national culture comes from the creation of a new era by the absorption of other cultures while drawing from one’s own culture, and the whole process goes on and on.” (wrote Lin Fengmian in New Theory of Chinese Painting 1929).

Lin’s plan to reform 20th century Chinese art was through teaching about Chinese and Western art side by side.  In his own artistic career, Lin Fengmian attempted to reform ink painting through incorporating elements from western painting, such as light, colour, and perspective, combining this with the essence of traditional Chinese visual art, such as calligraphic strokes or the misty quality of layering ink washes.  Lin Fengmian’s heavily painted work on square format began in the 1940s, bringing a fresh creative spirit to Chinese ink painting in the 1950s and 1960s.  

The revolution of Chinese ink painting was not limited to China.  Overseas Chinese artists also began to quietly developed ink painting in cities abroad.  In France, Chinese artist T’ang Haywen changed the face of Chinese ink painting.  He crossed the boundaries and explored the full potential of the expressiveness of ink medium, elevating it into a universal language. 

T’ang Haywen and ZaoWou-ki arrived in France in the same year in 1948, and Chu Teh-Chun arrived in 1955.  Unlike Zao and Chu who studied under Lin Fengmian at the National Hangzhou Art School (now ‘China Academy of Art’), T’ang Haywen had not received formal artistic training before his arrival in France.  He had however learned ink painting and calligraphy as a child from his grandfather in China and then later studied painting at the L'Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris.  He immersed himself in art by visiting museums and galleries. 

In spite of their different backgrounds, T’ang, Zao and Chu all worked to deconstruct the confines of tradition in the new environment of a different culture.  His early works share a common starting point of figurative painting, only later heading towards non-representational art to express their artistic sentiments.  It was not oil painting but rather ink painting that T’ang Haywen chose as his artistic path, and from the 1960s he focused on developing this medium. His innovation made him a pioneer of modern Chinese ink painting outside China.  Zao Wou-Ki, Chu Teh-Chun and Wu Guanzhong worked in both oil and ink throughout their careers.  Particularly in the 1970s, Zao and Wu began to pay special attention to ink painting. 

T’ang Haywen saw Chinese ink painting as a mode of free expression.  In fact, he did not deliberate over which categories his works should fall into; he once said “My painting is neither figurative nor abstract, nor does it belong to the neo-figurative school.  Such classifications seem to me too limited.  I seek an art free from constraint, within which I feel free to evolve.”2

In a discussion on Eastern and Western concepts of abstraction, curator Jeffrey Wechsler, an expert on Asian American artists commented, “the spiritually based East had all the technical and philosophical inclinations toward abstraction for centuries; but the Eastern artists did not move into pure non-objectivity because they saw no need to do so.  The more individualistic and literal-minded Western aesthetic viewed abstraction more a pictorial achievement, a further step on an assumed road of artistic progress.”  Such perspective suggests that when approaching the artwork of T’ang Haywen, we cannot simply brand his paintings as abstract art; rather we should understand them as an extension of an Eastern approach to painting, with its emphasis on sentiment and spirit – yet different from traditional ink painting.

It was T’ang Haywen who ventured into new territory with the medium and format, painting on 3 millimeter thick paper board.  A comment from Chu Teh-Chun expresses how difficult to find Xuan paper in Paris in the 1960s and 1970s.   “I wanted to get back into calligraphy and painting, but at that time there was nowhere in Paris or even in the whole of Europe where I could buy the sort of Xuan paper needed for doing calligraphy and ink and wash painting. […]  Then, one day in 1976, Jingzhao came back home with some meat she had just bought, and I suddenly noticed that the type of French paper used for wrapping meat is very similar to Chinese Tiger-stripe-patterned Xuan paper […]  I fetched my ink and brush and began writing on the non-greasy side of the paper – wow, the result was amazing!  The way the ink spread across the page and soaked into the paper, it honestly could have passed for Xuan paper. […]  I went out and bought a big bunch right away, headed straight back to my studio with my brush in hand and poured my heart and soul onto the page in the form of Tang poems and Song lyrics.”

The passion of T’ang initiated him to overcome the limited resources and invent a new format for his creation.   Indeed T’ang was using sheets of 70 x 50 cm and assembled them in a diptych format of 70 x 100 cm.  Smaller sheets formed diptychs of 29.7 x 42 cm.  Untitled at this auction was completed on a sheet of 100 cm. high and 70 cm. wide cardboard.  This size work, in which two images join to form the main picture in a single-sheet format, is quite rare.

With its bright yellow background, and T’ang Haywen’s gem blue, brown and white lines, the points of colour in Untitled form its picture.  One row of brown lines suggests range upon range of mountains, suggesting the unlimited inspiration the artist draws from natural vistas.  Tang’s unique spiral brushwork displays energy, vitality and speed.  Free brush strokes and vivid colours charge the picture with freedom, sunshine and brightness.

T’ang Haywen was an avid philosopher.  He had a profound understanding of Taoist thought and later in his life became a follower of Catholicism.  T’ang’s works are an exploration of his subconscious mind, embodying his understanding of life.  They occupy the space between the known and the unknown, the familiar and the mysterious, and amidst their tranquility they impart to the viewer with a sense of mystery. 

Chinese literati injected their aspirations into landscape painting; T’ang however freed himself from landscape, expressing his emotion through brushstrokes.   T’ang’s paintings are the territory of mysterious profundity showing the essence of Chinese philosophy – heaven and man are one, nature and man come together, and heart and mind-unite, that shows a desire to, but hardly distinguishes a private space.

At that time and through the play of ink, T'ang had already moved from the pure representation of objects or landscapes to compositions where formal appearance became less and less important.  However, he had not yet transformed the space of his painting from the single format to the diptych format which would characterize his work.  In a vertical space, reminiscent of classical Chinese painting, T'ang uses the atmospheric perspective to describe a succession of blue and green hills crossed by white valleys rising towards the crest of two dark blue mountains.  The image, idea and feeling of a landscape is shaped by the flow of volumes, fulls and voids, from bottom to top and diagonally to the vanishing point of the veiled sun appearing in the distance between the two mountains.

The pictorial artifice of a blood-red frame - a flaming sky or even a stage curtain - adds to the depth of the composition and acts as a window overlooking the landscape.  A watercolour from the same period uses this theatrical mean, which perhaps prefigures the space of the diptych, the largest window that T'ang will soon open on the landscape.  This bird eye view of hills and mountains does not obey Western principles of perspective.  It can be read from bottom to top and suggests the distance and relief of the landscape, but the spots, thick lines, sweepings and splashes in oil and colour seem more in line with Western abstraction, even though T'ang would probably have denied it.

Indeed, in 1972 he wrote: "I think that total abstraction is a dead end justified only by theory, expressed only by the disembodied verb... it is from a certain material figuration that painting can develop, renew itself without being lost and be deployed in the fields of affectivity and spirituality".  The message is clear and ambitious: reality will always be present as an absolute referent of painting and it is the painter's feelings and spirituality that will make, irrigate and characterize his painting.  It will therefore be up to us, the spectators, to join him in his jubilations.  Tang was born around 1928 and died in 1991.

Born in Xiamen, China, Tang left for France to seek his education in arts in 1948.  He had held some sole exhibitions all over Europe: Oudaias Museum in Rabat, Morocco in 1959, Midsomma Garden Culture Center, Stockholm, Sweden in 1965, Sables d'Olonne, France in 1972, Ponchettes Museum in Nice, France in 1980, Chateau de Vitre, France in 1984, and Paris, France in 1987.  Tang was passed away in Paris in 1991.  Two of his works were selected into 'The Empire of Dragon' at Arthus Museum, Denmark in 1995.