Wu Tien-chang, The Rule of Mao Zedong, 1990, oil on canvas, 310x400cm.
Wu Tien-chang  The Rule of Chiang Ching-kuo, 1990, oil painting, 310x360cm Collection of Mr.Glory R. J. Yeh.

Diversity and Openness - Contemporary Taiwanese Art 1980-1990

Lin Ming-hsien, Examiner of National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts

Discussion of Taiwan’s contemporary art is mostly associated with the so-called ‘new generation’ of artists who emerged on the art scene in the 80s and 90s. The majority of literature that mention a ‘new generation’ of artists in the post-war years refer to these young avant-garde artists born round about 1950 or after. They embraced modern artistic ideology and created a new landscape celebrating the diversity of contemporary Taiwanese art. Their works were unlike the modern art of the 60s and 70s or the rustic realism of the early 80s. These young artists had progressive new ideas and new styles. Taiwan in the 80s was undergoing extreme transformations. Authoritative rule was relaxed. The martial law was about to be lifted. Many of the young artists had just started working or recently returned from their studies overseas. They were eager to project their observation of drastic social transformation. Contemporary artistic trends and thoughts from Europe and America were introduced and blended with local subjectivity, ideology, and style. Their acute observation and enthusiastic creativity matched instantly with the rapidly shifting social context. The result was works that successfully captured the distinctive features of the era and represented the spirit of the times. And in their response to the swift social transformations, these young artists developed original and mature approaches to art that brought them immediate public recognition. Their numbers were large. Their ideas varied. Their techniques diverse. Nevertheless, their creative approaches can be broadly categorized into two themes: firstly, pure thinking and discussion of aesthetics without reflection on social phenomena and issues; secondly, the artist’s response to social changes and external influences. Thus, in an effort to offer an overview of contemporary Taiwanese art, this essay explores the five aspects of social change these artists (i.e. ‘new generation’ of post-war artists born between 1950 and 1965 and continues to produce art works) followed with interest.

Historical and Political Observations

Taiwan underwent an extended period of authoritative rule and martial law, during which the island was closed to the outside world. Consequently Taiwanese people remained wary of politics and preferred not to discuss political issues. The 80s was a period of rapid economic growth and gradual opening up of society. It was a critical era marked by structural reforms. These ten years of democratic progression was marked by social movements on the streets, political movements, and the lift of martial law. The public was on the one hand full of expectations and hopes for justice and on the other hand caught in a chaotic state of intense emotion, violence, conflict, and exasperation. While authoritative rule was being relaxed, challenging the present political situation became a major topic and a way to empower the society. Following the lift of martial law in 1987, art and culture were constantly employed to push for social and political reform. Artists openly examined and expressed their perception of political affairs and issues. Art was their way to respond to politics. Since then art no longer served purely aesthetic means. It became a verbal channel through which artists voiced their concern and interest in certain issues with out previous restraints.
For example there was Yang Mao-lin’s “Behavior of Game Playing: Fighting Section” in 1987. His close-up portrayal of physical conflict between various figures drew analogy from the political situation at the time. The “MADE IN TAIWAN” series in 1990 presented complicated social and historical contexts in the simplest form. His“Yun Mountain Memorandum” Series and “Lily Memorandum” Series in 1993 featured national and cultural identity issues and an alternative search for historical roots.
The artist Mei Dean-E  was a deft creator of many media who constantly mocked and ridiculed current political affairs. In his “The Three Principles of the People Reunify China”） in 1991 pictures of Sun Yat-sen (founder of modern China) and Mao Ze-dong were juxtaposed against each other to make a jigsaw puzzle. The idea was to highlight the confrontation and dilemma across the straits. “The Silk-Road Broche China” series in 1993 and “Identity” in 1994 marked Taiwan’s pursuit for diplomatic recognition over the years.  
Wu Tien-chang boldly criticized political figures in the post-martial law era. He made his personal interpretation of four prominent political leaders in mainland China and Taiwan by using neo-expressionist techniques in his “Four Eras” series, “The Rule of Chiang Kai-shek”, “The Rule of Chiang Ching-kuo”, “The Rule of Mao Ze-dong”, and “The Rule of Deng Xiao-ping”. Such works shocked a society in which the rule of martial law had just ended.
In his “Revolt in the Soul and Body” Series the artist Chen Chieh-jen explored the relationship between to shoot/be shot, and to observe/ be observed through photographs of historic events. The violent images of brutal killing were digitally manipulated to present ‘the aesthetics of cruelty’. The modified pictures were the artist’s re-interpretation of ‘history’ and ‘fact’.

Social and Political Reflections

Severe setbacks in foreign affairs in the 70s led to introspection of Taiwan’s position in the modern world and subsequently the Nativist Movement. It was the age of accelerated economic growth and rapid transition from an agricultural society into an industrial and commercial society. Social mechanisms failed to catch up with the swift changes or to establish an appropriate set of rules to follow. The ensuing chaos and disorder inspired a new generation of artists to reflect on the current state in search of new directions and explore new possibilities. A few adopted a more critical approach. Thoughts on modern consumerism were expressed through re-interpretation of traditional folk aesthetics.
Examples include Guo Jen-chang’s comparison between historic and current figures through linear depictions. His ridicule of the characters exposed both past and present social, political, and cultural turmoil and confusion. In a way he developed a unique personal logical thought of reasoning. His fusion of Chinese and western, past (traditional) and present (modern) techniques and strategies created a dramatic tension that enhanced the sense of collision in his paintings. Since the 90s he has been blending traditional Chinese mythology with oriental and western religious figures in his “St. Taiwan,” and using popular folk beliefs such as the “Eight Generals” in his “Icons and Images of Taiwan” to uncover contemporary political, economic, social, and cultural phenomena.
Others have made new interpretations of traditional culture. For example, Lin Ming-hong made traditional floral pattern textiles commonly found some thirty years ago into art. His “An Coexistence of 37 Days” stimulated enthusiastic responses and discussion. The seemingly outdated floral motifs used by the commons held the aesthetic and cultural value of a bygone era. They reside in the ‘collective memory’ of Taiwanese people. These floral motifs were incorporated frequently in Lin’s works, which he transformed traditional patterns of peonies into fashionable artworks. His works revived memories, connected with the audience, and generated an alternative yet distinctive visual and ‘cultural’ experience.
Another example was the artist Wang Jun-jieh, who started to create video art in the late 80s. He presented consumerist issues at all levels of the media through artistic techniques. For example his “Thirteen Days of Lamb Buns” unmasked the confusing disorder of advertisements in an impossibly exaggerated manner. His series of works from “A Fluorescent Journey into Western Paradise”) in 1997 and “Holy Light 52” in 1998 to 1999 presented an even more extreme taunt of consumer products and the whole underlying process.

Exploring the Sexes and Sexual Passion

In the pursuit for gender equality in complex human interactions in our modern society, sexual desires and sexual issues are naturally issues of general concern. In the past few relationship and sexual desires were not commonly featured in art due to the conservative social atmosphere. However, with the end of the martial law and a more liberated society came an open interest on gender and sexual issues. The paces of political and artistic liberation were almost synchronized. Artists were eager to explore relationship issues and sexual passion in their works.
The majority of female artist Wu Mali’s works were about people, land, and history. The historical significance and existence of women in Taiwan also intrigued her. She constantly produced works that illustrated racial, gender, and power issues and identity issues related to homeland and nation. Her “Stories of Shin-juang Women” and “Taiwan’s Hotels” sought for the historical and social position of the female sex. Her “Bird in Sky” featured the distressed lives of veterans soldiers (who relocated to the island from the mainland with the Nationalist government after the war). This piece of work not only illuminated the ridiculous and awkward national identity issue in Taiwan, it was also about the historical position of the male sex in Taiwan.
Lin Chu made skillful use of classical compositions from the western Renaissance period and realistic approaches to create surreal visions. She pieced disintegrated parts of the human body together with images of life. Her paintings were full of depressing and gloomy mysticism. Hallowed figures such as the Guanying Bodhisattva and the Virgin Mary appeared regularly in her works. Half-mortal, half-immortal figures were the elements of her creation. Images associated with motherhood were another constant element. There was always a touch of indescribable weirdness, conflict, and collision in her works. The perfectly pale marble-like female skin, the irrepressible feelings of longing, sorrow, and violence within the seemingly peaceful facial expressions, the broken limbs and body organs intertwined into an endless maze, the exposed intestines, the physically impaired and beheaded bodies, some gorging on one another, left viewers trembling with fear.
Shie Hung-jiun explored the female condition suppressed by the patriarchal social ideology with metaphorical language in her “Childhood Memories”. Since 2000 she has been working on a series of paintings featuring the true form of life. The idea included a comprehensive examination of the mysterious ‘female space’ through her own pregnancy from the beginning of a new life in her body. It is also about the interchange of energy between mother and daughter, between subject and object, and between their coexistence.
Concern for the Environment and Lives
Taiwan’s social makeup underwent critical changes in the 80s. Major transformation in life styles and social circumstances followed. The new issue for the new generation of artists then was how to exist in the new natural and cultural environment and how to cope with the new situation and new influences. They each made their own response and comment on these practical issues and came up with their own way to deal with the situation and the pressure.
The artist Lee Ming-tse made his interpretation of a variety of topics. But the subject matter of his paintings was still strictly focused on folklore, legends, and novels of chivalry and fantasy. The artistic conception and composition of traditional Chinese ink and water painting of the literati was used to depict scenes from everyday life. Most of his works were composed two-dimensionally. Multi-perspectives were used in the same layout, a technique found in traditional Chinese ink and water painting. The relationship between time and space was not defined. Scenes and figures from past and present were used interchangeably to create a sense of misplacement. The result was an open air theater-like effect with a sense of history. Take for example “Lilypond at Tzuo Yin”, in which his reminiscence of the home country guided viewers through a landscape that was both past and present, here and there. It was perhaps a guise for the artist’s tendency to be caught up in his own illusions and fantasies.
Cold color tones were regularly used in Cheng Tsai-tung’s works to create gloomy shadows and a bleak sense of appeal. Bright colors served as decorations for surreal settings. His earlier works focused on his own growth. In the late 80s he started to pay more attention to his surroundings and the relationship between context and self. Examples include “Taipei Basin Trilogy”, “A Stroll Around Taipei” Series in 1991, “Taipei Oblivion ” Series in 1992, “Peitou Scented Moon” Series in 1993 and “Return to Taiwan” Series in 1997. Cheng used his paint brush to take down these biographical travel notes with his signature touches. They were his alternative interpretation of the relationship between ourselves and the environment we live in.
Kuo Wei-kuo’s works in the early 90s presented personal experiences with respect to social suppression and restraint. Examples include “Luminescence and Tension”, “New Paradise”. “The Scenery of Desire in the Dark” series in 1996 illustrated the decadence, overindulgence, and lack of morals at the lowest strata of the contemporary society. The “Diagram of Commotion and Desire” Series in 1997 was a realistic depiction of the invisible confinements of real life. It was his surreal record of the lasting charm of childish fun and patient endurance of life’s hardships. In his sincere wish for a total makeover, Kuo made his self-identity the center of his work. He examined himself in his self portraits and saw his inner self through his self portraits. He observed and drew features that were beyond imagination. The “Diagram of Commotion and Desire” Series was his ironic analysis of self and family. It was a tearfully loving lament of the present times.
Yuan Goang-ming was an early pioneer in video art in Taiwan. He was also a well-known Taiwanese artist in the international media arts community. His “I Scream, Therefore I Am” in 1996 and “The Reason For Running” in 1998 were attempts to continuously search for an outlet and a reason for self-existence. “The Reason For Insomnia” was about the artist’s longing for sleep. It was about the struggle between the physical and the spiritual caused by want of sleep, falling asleep, and dreams. It was also about the frustration of his inability to balance physical needs and wants. His digitally manipulated “City Disqualified” turned the usually busy and bustling streets in Taipei’s Ximen District into an unimaginably void landscape. That was his comment on the importance of cities and their relationship with the environment.
Lu Ming-te was the first accomplished Taiwanese artist to study media art overseas. His works focused on the relationship between human beings and the natural environment. For example in his “An Illustrated Handbook of Ecology Series” every life form in the illustrated guide was engaged in mutual interaction in an infinite space. They shared a tacit understanding of the importance of coexistence, an implication of the peace and harmony of the human society. The inspiration for his science-fiction work, the “Evolution and Apocalypse Series”, came from the mythology of the galaxy with chapters from the Book of Revelation of the New Testament thrown in. The idea was to explore the points of human collision in an infinite space and time based on the evolution of human civilization. Other examples include the “Urban Imagery Series” with a deliberate emphasis on the cultural properties of regional urbanism and the “Picture and Words Recognition Series” with personal comments and predictions on the impact of changes in the information and media content on art.

Expression of Form and Color

In addition to an avid interest in social, political, and cultural issues, there were also artists who persisted in their expression of pure artistic conception. Abstract art played a critical role in Taiwan’s post-war art history. The abstract paintings created by the new generation of artists in the 80s and 90s were unlike that of the modern abstract art pioneered by Lee Chun-shan and his compatriots in the 50s. This new generation of young artists was educated overseas. They were exposed to the self-reflections and monologue of western abstract aesthetics. While they assimilated and absorbed western avant-garde art styles they were also eagerly investigating the many possibilities of artistic expression. Consequently their abstract works paid more attention to the formal significance and spiritual symbolism of the substance itself in terms of their expressive style compared to earlier generations.
One example was Zhuang Pu. Upon his return from Spain in the early 80s he continued to feature modular and serial structures commonly found in minimalism and post-minimalism in his works. He repeatedly used plain and simple motifs to construct works that were complex yet unified in form. Over the years he continued to explore new ways to apply his signature approach, print marks, which recently developed more concretely into a visual ‘signal’. In his new work titled ‘Light’, launched in 2008, print marks were not only the basic formal unit for expressing the trail of light, but also projects digital mosaic-like effects. His style enhanced the visual implications and symbolic associations of the presentation. The mosaic effects bore resemblance to lags in digital images. In a way Pu’s canvas seem to be his response to issues presented by contemporary video image in this digital age.
Another example was the artist Chu Teh-i’s, whose paintings embraced both sentimental lyrical abstraction and rational geometric abstraction. From his “White in White” and “Black in Black” in the mid-80s to the later “Form Color and Color” and “Color Field and Form” series, rectangles were always featured in his works and consequently emerged as his signature style in constructing form and color. In the 90s brightly colored new materials such as lead sheets and plastic formica board started to appear in his works. The introduction of such highly saturated and vividly colored industrial substance was perhaps the result of the artist’s contemplation and response to modern life and space.
The majority of artist Jun Tsun-tsun LAI’s earlier works were abstract paintings produced with automatic techniques. Her “Being and Transformation” Series in the minimalist style used simple primary colors to portray her reflections on life. Lai’s works took on her personality and perceptions on miscellaneous personal experiences. However, following a series of personal ordeals and trails, the focus of her artistic works has more recently turned from painting to public art.
Yang Chih-hung was adept at expressing his inner thoughts through the image and ideas of symbolism. The many intricate layers of his innermost emotions pulse with every pull and drag of contrasting forces, one fast, the other slow. Subtle implication of imagery signs and patterns from nature can be found in his abstract symbols. Thus the ‘inner nature’ we observe in Yang’s paintings refer not to known and recognized natural scenery but to the voluntary landscape within the artist’s mind. In her seemingly realistic depictions Emily S. C. YANG highlighted the contrast between light and shadow to present her objects with fiercely abstract touches. Her works embraced the dual properties of abstract and realism. Two mutually exclusive set of ideas, realistic vs. abstract, three-dimensional vs. two-dimensional coexist within our visual perception. She challenged commonly accepted principles of vision with her highly perceptive ‘eye’ and encouraged viewers to come up with alternative visual experiences of her works.

The new generation of Taiwanese artists created richly diverse works in the 1980s and 90s. They were concerned about an extensive array of issues, engaged in a wide variety of expressive approaches, and adopted a free and open attitude to artistic creation. It was a rare phenomenon in Taiwan’s hundreds of years of fine art history. These young new artists made distinctive depictions of the social and cultural context of change in the post-war years either through active involvement in the investigation of social issues or through purely artistic expressions. Their experimental efforts bridged the gap between domestic and international art trends and dialogues, made up the difference between time and space, and thus allowed contemporary Taiwanese art to move more in tandem with the rest of the world. This group of elite artists, born after the war, not only served as pioneers and reformists on Taiwan’s contemporary art arena, they also pointed the direction for Taiwanese art in the new century.

Kuo Wei-kuo, Drifting Red Rose, 2008, oil on canvas, 150x199.5cm.
Lin Chu, St. Mother and Child, 1995, oil painting, 162.0cm x130.0cm.