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拍品专文
Painted in the late 1970s, Rice paddies of Central Sichuan belong to a pivotal moment in Wu Guanzhong’s career, following his return to artistic practice after years spent in the countryside. It was during this period that the artist began fully integrating the modernist principles he had absorbed during his studies at the Hangzhou National College of Art and later in France with his observations of the Chinese landscape. Many of the subjects that would come to define his mature oeuvre – including Guilin, the Three Gorges, the water towns of Jiangnan and the terraced fields of Sichuan – emerged at this time. Rice paddies of Central Sichuan stand as an important testament to the maturation of his oil painting practice.
In March 1979, Wu travelled to Chongqing at the invitation of the Fine Arts Department of Southwest Normal University, where he lectured and led groups of teachers on sketching excursions to locations including the Daba Mountains and Dazu. The present work was created during this significant journey. The terraced fields depicted here are among the most distinctive geographical features of southwest China, particularly in the regions of Sichuan and Yunnan. Carved into the mountain slopes along contour lines, these stepped paddies become filled with water during the planting season, transforming the landscape into a vast constellation of reflective surfaces. At dawn and dusk, shifting clouds, mist and changing light animate the terrain, creating scenes of remarkable lyricism and poetic beauty. The subject was notoriously difficult for Wu to capture. Successful depictions required the precise convergence of season, weather conditions and irrigation cycles, while the finest vantage points frequently demanded arduous travel through mountainous terrain. According to The Complete Works of Wu Guanzhong, fewer than fifteen oil paintings depicting water-filled rice terraces are known, making the present work a particularly rare and significant example.
In his essay ‘Rice Paddies’, published in Wu Guanzhong: Beyond Painting, the artist recalled:
‘Terraced fields are planted with rice and filled with water, creating a luminous expanse. In Sichuan they are known as “mirror fields”. Who do these vast mirrors reflect? They reflect the sky. To regard them simply as water is to overlook their subtle reflections of the heavens, where clouds and light drift together. For half my life I pursued that silvery-grey luminosity of water and sky upon my palette.’
Elsewhere, he wrote:
‘Painting rice paddies depends upon the season, the terrain and even cloudy weather, avoiding the interference of direct sunlight. They are prose poems; one must eliminate all noise. Only a handful of my oil paintings of rice paddies truly satisfy me. Most were painted during the 1970s and none came easily; they are among my final statements on the subject.’
(Wu Guanzhong, Wu Guanzhong: Beyond Painting, Beijing, 1999, p. 1).
Throughout his career, Wu maintained that oil painting and ink painting each possessed unique and irreplaceable expressive potentials. When allowed to inform one another, the two traditions could produce particularly rich artistic results. While creating the present oil painting, he also executed an ink version of the same subject, and the work reveals the sophisticated translation of traditional Chinese brushwork into the language of oil painting. The sinuous lines defining the terraces recall the gaogu yousimiao (‘high antiquity floating silk line’), a classical ink technique originally employed in figure painting to render flowing drapery with elegant, thread-like contours. Wu transformed this calligraphic vocabulary into paint, allowing the embankments of the rice terraces to weave rhythmically across the composition. What would otherwise be solid contours of earth become animated with a fluid, almost musical cadence.
Despite its intimate scale, Rice paddies of Central Sichuan possesses a remarkable sense of spatial depth. The composition unfolds clearly from foreground to distance, animated by brisk and lyrical brushwork. Touches of verdant green and chromium yellow punctuate the terraces, enlivening the landscape with flashes of vegetation. At the centre, a cluster of small trees highlighted with ivory white and delicate pink emerges vividly from the painting’s prevailing silvery-grey tonality. Beyond, distant mountains dissolve into passages of silver-blue and pale turquoise, revealing the influence of Impressionism and its use of colour to construct spatial recession. The reflective surfaces of the flooded paddies are captured with extraordinary subtlety, evoking the ‘mirror fields’ that so captivated the artist. In its colour, brushwork and orchestration of space, Rice paddies of Central Sichuan distil decades of observation and artistic experimentation, exemplifying Wu Guanzhong’s singular achievement in fusing the formal innovations of Western modernism with the poetic spirit and aesthetic sensibility of the Chinese painting tradition.
In March 1979, Wu travelled to Chongqing at the invitation of the Fine Arts Department of Southwest Normal University, where he lectured and led groups of teachers on sketching excursions to locations including the Daba Mountains and Dazu. The present work was created during this significant journey. The terraced fields depicted here are among the most distinctive geographical features of southwest China, particularly in the regions of Sichuan and Yunnan. Carved into the mountain slopes along contour lines, these stepped paddies become filled with water during the planting season, transforming the landscape into a vast constellation of reflective surfaces. At dawn and dusk, shifting clouds, mist and changing light animate the terrain, creating scenes of remarkable lyricism and poetic beauty. The subject was notoriously difficult for Wu to capture. Successful depictions required the precise convergence of season, weather conditions and irrigation cycles, while the finest vantage points frequently demanded arduous travel through mountainous terrain. According to The Complete Works of Wu Guanzhong, fewer than fifteen oil paintings depicting water-filled rice terraces are known, making the present work a particularly rare and significant example.
In his essay ‘Rice Paddies’, published in Wu Guanzhong: Beyond Painting, the artist recalled:
‘Terraced fields are planted with rice and filled with water, creating a luminous expanse. In Sichuan they are known as “mirror fields”. Who do these vast mirrors reflect? They reflect the sky. To regard them simply as water is to overlook their subtle reflections of the heavens, where clouds and light drift together. For half my life I pursued that silvery-grey luminosity of water and sky upon my palette.’
Elsewhere, he wrote:
‘Painting rice paddies depends upon the season, the terrain and even cloudy weather, avoiding the interference of direct sunlight. They are prose poems; one must eliminate all noise. Only a handful of my oil paintings of rice paddies truly satisfy me. Most were painted during the 1970s and none came easily; they are among my final statements on the subject.’
(Wu Guanzhong, Wu Guanzhong: Beyond Painting, Beijing, 1999, p. 1).
Throughout his career, Wu maintained that oil painting and ink painting each possessed unique and irreplaceable expressive potentials. When allowed to inform one another, the two traditions could produce particularly rich artistic results. While creating the present oil painting, he also executed an ink version of the same subject, and the work reveals the sophisticated translation of traditional Chinese brushwork into the language of oil painting. The sinuous lines defining the terraces recall the gaogu yousimiao (‘high antiquity floating silk line’), a classical ink technique originally employed in figure painting to render flowing drapery with elegant, thread-like contours. Wu transformed this calligraphic vocabulary into paint, allowing the embankments of the rice terraces to weave rhythmically across the composition. What would otherwise be solid contours of earth become animated with a fluid, almost musical cadence.
Despite its intimate scale, Rice paddies of Central Sichuan possesses a remarkable sense of spatial depth. The composition unfolds clearly from foreground to distance, animated by brisk and lyrical brushwork. Touches of verdant green and chromium yellow punctuate the terraces, enlivening the landscape with flashes of vegetation. At the centre, a cluster of small trees highlighted with ivory white and delicate pink emerges vividly from the painting’s prevailing silvery-grey tonality. Beyond, distant mountains dissolve into passages of silver-blue and pale turquoise, revealing the influence of Impressionism and its use of colour to construct spatial recession. The reflective surfaces of the flooded paddies are captured with extraordinary subtlety, evoking the ‘mirror fields’ that so captivated the artist. In its colour, brushwork and orchestration of space, Rice paddies of Central Sichuan distil decades of observation and artistic experimentation, exemplifying Wu Guanzhong’s singular achievement in fusing the formal innovations of Western modernism with the poetic spirit and aesthetic sensibility of the Chinese painting tradition.