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Intro and set up, Chapter 1, Ch. 1 you may want to focus on the notion of…

- - - - Many of the refugees from China were artists, creating a significant and vibrant having founded private art schools and ateliers, Hiking groups to facilitate plein air sketching, and creating informal networks of exchange. Developed a hybrid culture between British and Chinese due to its prolonged exposure, which began to assert itself economically as a truly international, European-facing Asian city in the 1960s-80s.
    - - After 1949, taiwanese art scene consisted of the army entertainment corps, amateur painters, as well at the antient treasures and artefacts that would go onto form the palace museum. Clinging to the wish to be viewed as the legitimate China-in-exile, the Nationalist regime who held on to martial law until the 80s provided art/ propoganda schools such as National Taiwan Normal University, and staunchly supported only figurative classical ink monochrome, for fear or staying from chinese roots or allowing anti-traditionalist communist elemets so creep in. Furermore, Taiwan was given a value into the west through the America's South Pacific presence, allowing for a transfer of culture, giving Taiwan a vent/ valve into Western and Global artistic culture.
- - - - the greater meaning and feeling behind hte painting - the "inscape" was the critical part of its resonance, but over time it was felt that the rich and unique inscapes and methods of Shi Tao were replace by those reproducing the his work and that of other masters over the dynastiys that tere was little original left. This was the feeling at the start of the 19th century, and critical to understanding the balance of traditin and modernism these artists wish to express
- - - - Hong Kong Landscape 1960
        
        Conceptual
        
        Lui’s work was modern in his reapplication of Classical ideas and traditions to suit his individual vision expression.
        
        stulistic
        
        B)4
        
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        Hong Kong Landscape's visual style also drew from Western modernism, particularly Turner's treatment of tone and atmospheric effects.
        
        In addition to Lui's sketchy, expressive lines, his use of unstructured, dark, wet ink wash recall the dark mountains of xxxxxxx, but establish a mood through their tonal coloring of the scene.
        
        Through the light to dark tonal variation of the sky, and contrast between sky and mountains, Liu evokes the wet, misty atmosphere of an overcast Hong Kong day, negative space appearing as breaks in the clouds.
        
        This technique is more reminiscent of the work of J.M.W turner, as seen in Lui's study of his Snowstorm at Sea(1842), in Waves (xxxx).
        
        The expressive interpretation of waterscape and weather events expand across the paper, not confined to any area of the composition to communicate the untameable power and essence of the abstracted landscape.
        
        B3)
        
        The conscious construction obviously constructed of these lines prevents viewers from de-coding the view, drawing attention to the artist's emotional and spiritual interpretation of the landscape.
        
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        Material
        
        B2)
        
        Materially, Lui adheres to traditional standards far more than Liu, embracing the ancient materials of ink and paper that he first learned to paint with.
        
        The combination of thin black lines and generous grey tonal washes adhere to the visual and material standards of
        ink monochrome, almost refering to the fine line Gong Bi technique.
        
        Perhaps this material difference is because when Lui arrived in Hong Kong, he was greeted by a scene of other artists in a similar position to himself, allowing him to comfortably adopt. Additionally, he may not have felt as alienated from Chinese traditions and culture, having grown up with the unifying and reforming impulse of the republican reforms history and culture of the mainland, moving only xxx miles down the coast, and from some vantage points on the South Side of Hong Kong Island you can see the mainland.
        
        Furthermore, a mountain-scape that pulling middle distance did not display a radical break from literati tradition, exemplifying the observation of the landscape that Shi Tao proposed.
        
        B3)
        
        However, Lui did employ accurate linear perspective in the way the mountain and town narrow into a valley and recede away from the viewer on either side.
        
        This sense of depth and optical recession suggests that this landscape, recognisably Shau Kei Wan, was based on an observational sketch.
        
        Displaced mainland artists in Hong Kong formed Hiking clubs, allowing artists to form a personal and deep engagement with the mountains and waterscapes of Hong Kong, but also to record them en plein-air.
        
        Combining the Western Modern innovation of observational sketching with the visual language of Guo Hua allowed Lui to create a vision of Hong Kong that recorded both the actual appearance and encode the emotional impact of the scene simultaneously, fulfilling the Classical standard of transferring the Dao of the land to the viewer via a new method. The actual experience of viewing the village occurs simultaneously with Lui's mental image of it highlighted by the negative space between the expressive washes, as if caught in a sun-ray.
        
        B 1) Lui Shou-Kwan’s Hong Kong Landscape also displays between attraction to modernity and rejection of tradition can be seen in the material, stylistic, etc
        
        Similarly, in Lui Shou-Kwan’s Hong Kong Landscape presents an alternative vision of a modern landscape, despite appearing less materially and stylistically removed from tradition that Lui Kuo-Song's work.
        
        Lui's self taught education balanced elements of traditional study with a personal and interest-driven direction, allowing him to take advantage of Hong Kong's Lui Shou-Kwan’s education was largely self-studied, but did consist of reading theory and copying masterworks which was typical, allowing Lui to embody a similar half-position as Liu, one foot in independent expression and the other grounded in tradition. In 1960, Liu founded the New Ink Movement in Hong Kong, a group dedicated to revitalising and modernising the ink and wash tradition of Guo Hua and beyond. The group advocated for the integration of Western and Chinese artistic elements to better express both what one observes and the artist's own impression, What XXXXXX would describe as "Inscape".
      - A) The Yellow Dust Covers the Dream of My Home Town 1961
        
        Stylistic
        
        3A)
        
        Liu’s stylistic representation of landscape is equally unconventional. The Dust Blocks the Dreams of the Far Away Homeland is entirely abstract, no concrete shapes or forms that may be conclusively linked to real world equilivants.
        
        However, its title, however obliquely, refers specifically to Liu's "hometown" of Anhui and places it between figuration and abstraction, and between the tradition of imagined landscape painting and a emotional record of the recollection of such a place. The dark and sickly color pallet of black, white, grey and yellow swirled together like a storm clouds, speaks to the sorrow of a recolecting place where one may never return, or indeed may never want to return to, as well as the loss of family and mother.
        
        By expressing on a deeper level Liu's personal and complex feelings in regards to modern China and Taiwan, he achieved the deeper level of expression in simplicity of Shi Tao, and the "inscape" of Duan Lian, fulfilling the ancient function of landscape in a way the recent stale tradition did not.
        
        This reference to a specific location re-contextualises Liu's greyscale, abstract swirls through the lens of ink monochrome landscape: the congregation of dark line elements in the bottom right corner evokes the classical convention of downward-looking feeling of high distance perspective, the interaction of . The yellow strokes disrupt a clear designation of this work as a monochrome landscape, but compounds its resembelance to an actual landscape as sunlight through clouds, or yellow foliage.
        
        This intermingling of modern personal expression and tradition was
        
        4A)
        
        Liu's hybrid, non-objective approach to landscape was also modern as is opposed the limits set by the nationalist government.
        
        The Nationalists government were conscious of any threats to their position as the true China, including abstract art. They feared that the anti-traditionalist appearance of works like Yellow Dust Covers the Dream of My Homeland were inroads for the anti-traditionalism of Communism, and undermined their image. Such work was often snubbed or entirely excluded by institutions such as the National Exhibition system, which they thumbed their noses at in their bold embrace of their own artistic agency, criticising the government as “strangling the national culture, and attacking art with national essence.”
        
        2A) Material
        
        This fervent belief in not being limited by materials was furthered in the "Brush and Ink" revoloution Liu proposed, advocating for painters to abandon the perpendicular brush, the strict technical and material conventions that the master-student/copying painting education system purposed, instead to treat materials as merely materials. .
        
        Materially, The Dust Blocks the Dreams of the Far Away Homeland was modern in its use of Western materials such as plaster and oil painting, taking a mixed-media foreign not only to the traditional reliance on ink and paper, but evoking the mixed media and disregard of earlier conventions may have been more remeniccient of the American Abstract Expressionism of the 1940s-50s, recalling Jackson Pollock's use of house-paint.
        
        Creating a rough, marbled texture, who's peaks, troughs, and swirled gradients of color resembled a landscape themselves.
        
        As to Liu "a brush was just a brush and a line was just a line," he escaped from the notions of calligraphic nobility, upstanding character, and literati intellectuality such perfect and controlled brushstokes symbolised
        
        Shi Tao's landscape theory never specified technical constraints, only that each stroke be deliberate and contain a connection to one's surroundings. Liu felt that purely visual repetition the nationalist ink-monochrome prescribed lacked this entirely, so holding onto such material traditions was pointless. Other classical masters such as Bada Shanren, used leaves, brooms, etc. to express without constraint.
        
        1A) Liu Kuo-Song and the 5th Moon group, in their wanted to reform Chinese painting in this way,
        
        conceptual
        
        so what does it all mean for modernism and personal feeling
        
        6A)
        
        Finally, We can see Lui Kuo-Song's conceptual exploration of modernity in landscape in the varied influences and experiences he combines in Yellow Dust Covers the Dream of my Hometown . This was made only 3 years after the 5th moon group was founded, and they were still getting established.
        
        With this added context, even the use of traditional symbols would speak to their modern predicament, as the context they signified was xxxx miles away.
        
        finding themselves in a Modern and unfamiliar geographical and emotional landscape.
        
        not necessarily out of nostalgia, but to express the wide range of feelings that defeat in war, a rapid flight, and arrival in a new land might evoke from sorrow, to anger, to resignation.
        
        Yen Chuan-Ying states that in the 1960s, it was common for Taiwanese artists to reach for familliar and classical artistic expressions to feel connected to the mainland
        
        Furthermore, it speaks not only to the future "modernist with Chinese characteristics" approach the group would take after the early 1960s, but speaks to the real position many of the Chinese diaspora found themselves in:
        
        While some may interpret the classical elements in Liu's work as conflicting with the group's modernising and western goals, this balance and intentional application speaks to a greater artistic freedom and indivualised landscape-language.
        
        5A)
        
        Materially, stylistically, and functionally, this work resembles this ancient craft by entirely contemporary means. Liu's work, in its aversion to the Classical Chinese painting tradition appeals to an even older thread, displays how the “Chineseness” of work depends on the deeper "Inscape" and feeling, over prescribed styles of materials.
        
        Dreamstones, named for the ancient kingdom of Dali were traditional handicrafts in which a slab of Yunnan marble would be selected, framed and displayed in a way where its naturally occurring, non-objective pattern resembled that of a landscape. They were often associated with Daoism for their display of harmony even in unexpected places.
        
        It may be suggested that in the modern approch to material, abstraction, and non-objective imagined landscape in Yellow Dust Covers the Dream of my Home Town resembles a Dali Dreamstone.
- - - - material
        
        c3) fragmentation of technique seen in both, but LSK priotitizes line vs LKS priotitizes wash
        
        technical treatment of Ink vs wash - modernizeing in their breakdown of line and wash into line vs wash
        
        Lui and Liu take similarly innovative approaches modernising material and techniques by breaking them down to their fundamental levels, focusing on line and wash respectively
        
        Liu retains his critical stance on the perpendicular brush technique, asserting that "Abstract representation doesn’t view the world objectively, but through shapes and colours”
        
        His selective application of the appearance of traditional forms while maintaining a free, spontaneous, mixed-media approach allows him to continue to assert his individual artistic vision
        
        whereas Lui foregoes most texture, tone, and Cun strokes in favour for the quick, strong and expressive line, forgoing the symbols that would signify foliage. The formalist, suggestive, style can be described as Xie Yi (written style), its linearity and tonal play here anticipating his 1962 experiments with full abstract landscapes compositions.
        
        Through his 1961 innovation of fibrous "Kuo-Song paper," Liu is even able to reverse the accepted reality of white background black stroke, and could unravel in a method he called “pulling tendons”.
        
        By removing the fibres from the paper to create negative space in the collage, Liu keeping the spirit of landscape painting while creating tension in his ability to totally reverse all accepted techniques
        
        c2) traditional vs non traditional
        
        Which is earth
        
        decision to commit to traditional materials.
        
        Despite this apparent revision of his “Brush Revolution,” Liu displays how one can achieve the cosmic unity of an "inscape" without the controlled literati standards of brushwork.
        
        Furthermore, the collaged planet underscores the experimental approach Liu still adopted.
        
        Liu, on the other hand, tempers the radical non-traditional abstraction of Yellow Dust Covers the Dream of My Homeland with an acceptance of traditional techniques and materials, despite his commitment to material experimentation and abstraction.
        
        Lui adopts ink, brush, and paper in his depiction of a non-objective cosmic planet-scape, balancing a sense of formal abstraction with reference to Song-style techniques. The low horizon of of the bottom block of the compassion evokes a middle-distance perspective, while the thick and textured brushstrokes suggest a river or snow drifts.
        
        He moves beyond the ink monochrome techniques prescribed by the Nationalist government both technically in his achievement of abstract verisimilitude with earlier landscapes, but also in his application of it to literally universal subject-matter.
        
        In this embrace of traditional materials, Liu is far more able to subvert and expand expectations and conventions of landscape painting.
        
        In 1961, Liu took a professorship at Hong Kong’s Chinese University fine arts department, putting him in the orbit of Lui Shou-Kwan's New Ink Movement and their softer approach to tradition. This may have inspired his
        
        Lights of Hong Kong Island
        
        .
        
        Lui's aforementioned exaggerated exaggerated traditional technique and materials are further distilled in The Lights of Hong Kong Island.
        
        This casts The Lights of Hong Kong Island as on the precipice of a full-bown modern landscape breakthrough, displaying that all the elements of modernism are contained in traditional techniques.
        
        The only lines he uses to strongly and stiffly establish the skeleton of the landscape and peaks of different mountains.
        
        Simultaneously rich and spartan, the essence of Victoria Peak is captured alongside such details that capture the feeling of Hong Kong. The flicked mountain ridges, busy overlapped houses, and a deluge of boats in the harbour push them beyond their traditional means of expression.
        
        The sloping ink wash highlights contrasts these expressive lines, washing both the ocean and the sky in a free, spontaneous, Turner-esq connection foreground and background, creating an atypical tonal neutrality across the whole piece unusual for Guo Hua.
        
        The material differences between the Light of Hong Kong Island and Which is earth typify the range of responses to assimilate landscape painting into the modern day
      - style
        
        c4) Figurative vs abstract
        
        Lui and Liu's stylistic approach to modernity in landscape is impacted by their material and technical choices, primarily expressed through their respective focus on realism and abstraction
        
        It's depiction of the spiritual and energetic "Inscape" of Hong Kong's dark mountains, overlapping boats, stacked houses, and overcast skies present a modern and authentic attempt to iconise an entirely new landscape.
        
        Which is earth
        
        The implied distance and universality of the space fulfils Shi Tao's One Art Theory, and provide rich capacity for formal experimentation in simple shapes and negative space of the cosmos provides a rich space for Liu to experement.
        
        Which is Earth on the other hand dances between hinted figuration and total abstraction.
        
        In 1969 the Americans put a man on the moon, and the expansive and infinite space inspired Liu's Space Series, typically featuring the curvature of a planet beneath a distant celestial body.
        
        Liu's abstraction therefore thumbed its nose at the constraints of the Nationalist government, showing that the "chineseness" of a landscape was not predicated on its content, as “to aim for realness in painting is to draw like a child.”
        
        The graphic shapes of the form almost evoke an Rothko in ink, underscoring the commitment of the 5th Moon group to integrating international influences.
        
        The Lights of Hong Kong Island flexibly combines observational sketching, classical visual cues, and Lui's unique personal vision to create a localised, individualised.
        
        One could even posit that the integration and tension between the stylistic and objective, and natural and urban elements of The Lights of Hong Kong Island resembles a modern Qingming Shanghe Tu.
        
        The newness of the Hong Kong landscape in the cultural conscious of China ensures his style and subject are free from the mindless copying of earlier styles, as Liu stated that "he who delights in learning from the ancients…is a fool".
- - - - Both Liu Kuo-Song and Lui Shou-Kwan grappled with how the Chinese landscape tradition could be brought into the 20th century. Liu's early feelings of alienation from the mainland may have influence his creation of an overarching greater one, whereas Lui felt more comfortable to pick and choose within tradition, making a new home whose depiction expanded his artistic vocabulary. Both artist's relationships with tradition and their reactions against it express individualised and congruent experiences of Modernity in the “new China”.
        
        Their ability to metabolise both the world of established traditions and their modern experiences allowed them to push Modern Chinese landscapes beyond its restraints, so individualised material, stylistic, and conceptual visions could be accepted within the genere.
      - Despite his early calls for total Westernisation, Liu increasingly craved a return to the traditional legacies of Chinese culture as “imitating the new cannot replace imitating the old”.
      - In the doubling of the planets, the question of which "earth" is real recalls the cultural predicament that still plagued Taiwanese culture as to weather the Southern Chinese sensibilities they inherited in 1949 was permanent.
      - Therefore, he maintained his individual artistic voice as a China-born Taiwanese national by foregoing all major visual and formal techniques to create a new form of monumental landscape that existed in an entirely conceptual space.
      - However, Liu himself asserted that an artist cannot help but internalise his landscape, therefore the inscape of Which is Earth? inevitably speaks to the pervading uncertainty of Liu's experience as a Taiwanese artist.
      - As the Taiwanese art world began to establish itself outside of reproduction, Liu may have grown in confidence at his ability to express an essential, universalised landscape that might span the distance between Taiwan and the Mainland.
      - This may have been particularly particularly as the government's insistence on classical ink-monochrome painting relaxed.
    - - Lui subtly worked within the boundaries established by landscape painting to express his personal vision of Hong Kong.
      - By extending and adapting tradition for the preset day, he allowed for its continued survival into the future
      - Lui was older than Liu, and was therefore able to quickly settle and establish himself as an authority in the Hong Kong art scene, taking on many significant students such as Irene Chou, Wucious Wong and Gu Mei, and commercially performed well.
      - His memories of his time in the Mainland, as well as his lifetime spent in Hong Kong may have pushed him to connect the two and reconcile the Inscape with the landscape itself.
      - facilitated by his technical traditional background and centred through observational sketching, centring his personal and therefore modern vision of Hong Kong as his home.