Zhang Daqian may not be a household name in the West, but in China — and the global art market at large — he’s on par with the likes of Warhol and Monet.
A master of classical Chinese painting who later reimagined modern art in his adopted American homeland, Zhang’s work spans the tradition from ink landscapes to abstraction. And while the widespread “Picasso of the Orient” comparison is stylistically misleading, it speaks to his ability to transcend genre — and his paintings now command sky-high prices.
In April, nearly 40 years after his death, Zhang’s 1947 painting “Landscape After Wang Ximeng” became his most expensive work ever sold at auction, fetching $47 million at Sotheby’s in Hong Kong.
In April, the 1947 painting “Landscape after Wang Ximeng” became the most expensive Zhang Daqian artwork sold at auction. Credits: Sotheby’s
This may only be the tip of the iceberg, said San Francisco State University art professor Mark Johnson.
“There is no question that Zhang Daqian is one of the most important artists of the 20th century. His work references global culture and, at the same time, is deeply embedded in Chinese classical culture,” Johnson said, calling him “the first truly globalist.” Chinese artist.”
in the world
Born in southwest China’s Sichuan in the early 20th century, Zhang (also romanized as Chang Dai-chien) was a prodigious talent from an early age. Taught to draw by his mother, he claimed that as a teenager he was captured by bandits and studied poetry using their looted books.
After studying textile-dyeing and weaving in Japan, he trained in Shanghai under the famous calligraphers and painters Zheng Shi and Li Ruiqing. Copying classical Chinese masterpieces was fundamental to his education, and Zhang learned to skillfully copy the great artists of the Ming and Qing dynasties (and later became a highly-skilled forger).
Chinese artist Zhang Daqian photographed outside the Grosvenor Gallery in London on August 10, 1965. Credits: Rolls Press/PopperPhoto/Getty Images
He made a name for himself as an artist in the 1930s before spending two years studying – and painstakingly copying – the colorful Buddhist cave murals at Dunhuang, Gansu Province. This experience had a profound effect on his art. As well as honing his decorative painting skills, Zhang soon began using a wider range of rich colors in his work, reviving their popularity in Chinese art “virtually single-handedly,” Johnson said.
“It basically revolutionized the possibilities of classical Chinese painting, because it revealed this incredibly gorgeous, rich and sensuous palette that had been eschewed for a drier or more scholarly look,” Johnson said.
A hanging ink-painted scroll titled “The Drunken Dance” (1943), an earlier, allegorical work completed by Zhang while living in China. Credits: Museum Associates/Los Angeles County Museum of Art
But while Zhang’s practice was grounded in Chinese tradition, the rise of communism in 1949 put him at odds with his homeland. In particular, Johnson said, the painter was uncomfortable with the new government’s disdain for ancient culture, which Chairman Mao Zedong saw as an obstacle to economic progress.
“(Zhang) was embedded in a completely different understanding of Chinese culture, rooted in this great classical lineage,” Johnson said. “And the Communist revolution valued a different kind of art.”
Zhang, like many other artists, left China in the early 1950s, living in Argentina and Brazil before settling in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California. In 1956, he famously met Picasso in Paris and exchanged paintings, a moment billed in the press as a great meeting between East and West. When Picasso asked Zhang to critique some of his Chinese-style artworks, the latter diplomatically suggested that the Spanish master lacked the proper tools and later presented him with a selection of Chinese brushes.
In addition to exposing him to wider artistic influences, Zhang’s new life abroad ushered in the most important stylistic shift of his career: a new, abstract style called “insect” or splashed-color.
This shift was also, in part, a result of his deteriorating eyesight. Zhang’s impaired vision due to diabetes made it difficult for him to see fine details. Decorative forms and defined brushwork were replaced by swirls of color and deep ink blotches. The mountains, trees, and river were still present, but their shapes were only hinted at, rendered in soft lines and blurred shapes as if a mist had descended upon the vista.
“You can’t deny the fact that he was there in America, in the ’60s,” said Carmen Ip, head of Sotheby’s Asia fine Chinese paintings department, via video call. “So he must have been inspired by Abstract Expressionism. But to him it was something he could also relate to the history of Chinese painting.”
A new generation of collectors
Zhang’s ability to bridge East and West helps explain the popularity of his work, which is held in institutions including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. But the meteoric rise in its market value over the past decade has coincided with an explosion in China’s spending power.
According to Ip, who has overseen several sales of Zhang’s work, demand for his paintings is largely driven by Chinese buyers who now have “more mature” collecting habits. “They understand the value of the work,” he said.
A later Zhang, abstract work titled “Mountain in Summer Clouds” (1970). Credits: Asian Art Museum
“Museums in China have been collecting (Zhang’s paintings) quite actively in the last few years,” added Ip. “But the majority of the market is in private hands.”
Sotheby’s declined to disclose who bought the “Landscape after Wang Ximeng” at April’s record-breaking auction, only confirming that it went to an Asian private buyer. But Ip said interest in the sale came mostly from Chinese collectors inside and outside the country.
What was surprising about the April sale wasn’t just the price tag — which topped 370 million Hong Kong dollars (or $47 million, more than five times the initial estimate) — it was the type of painting that broke the record. According to IP, it is historically Zhang’s later abstract works, rather than his traditional paintings made in China, that have attracted the most money.
“The results were surprising even to us,” said Ip. “If you see prices reaching the 200 million (Hong Kong dollar, or $25 million) level, they usually make a splash. So, we really didn’t expect that.”
Sincere form of flattery
Yet, in many ways, “Landscape After Wang Ximeng” is characteristic of Zhang’s ideals. As the name explains, the painting was a modern version of 12th-century artist Wang Ximeng’s masterpiece “A Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains.”
In faithfully recreating the original material, Zhang demonstrated his mastery of the Chinese canon. But by adding gold pigment flakes he gave the work a rich new quality.
“He was able to elevate (the original); he challenged it … he transformed the elements of painting, which pushed it to a whole new level,” said Ip.
Zhang Daqian’s “Recluse in the Summer Mountains” was exhibited at Sotheby’s auction house in Hong Kong in 2011. Zhang gave his daughter a six-panel curtain as a wedding gift. Credits: Kin Cheung/AP
“He’s not just painting or imitating — he learns from these ancient artists or masters. He has a great memory and his brushwork is great and skillful, so he’s able to transform them.”
Zhang often pays direct homage to his influence in this way. But his classical training made him so adept at copying that the copies he made and sold during his lifetime often turned out to be originals. Artworks for 17th-century masters such as Bada Shanren and Shitao have been revealed to be his handiwork. According to Johnson, Zhang even attended an exhibition of Shitao’s paintings in the 1960s, only to reveal at the opening symposium that he had painted some of the art on display.
Johnson argued, Zhang was not, to deceive himself. He enjoyed the challenge and often hid playful inscriptions in his forgery that hinted at deception.
“I was friends with a number of people who knew him personally,” Johnson said, “and they said he loved to just pick up a pen or a brush and just start sketching these masterpieces of classical Chinese art that he had completely in mind — compositions and A variety of brushstrokes. He loved crafts.”
“So is it bad?” Johnson asked about Zhang’s fraud. “Or is it part of this over-sophisticated identity drama?”
Top image caption: “Mist at Dawn” (1968) by Zhang Daqian.
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