AU’s Museum of Modern Art launched a new exhibition of “Dashing Hues: A Retrospective of Ting Yin Yung” on April 3, 2021. For the grand opening, Mr. Zhao Yang-Qiang, a Xiaosheng of Jing-Ju Opera Troupe of National Taiwan College of Performing Arts, and Miss Liu Jia-hou, a Huadan of Guo-Guang Opera Company, were invited to perform a well-known play of Kunqu Opera, “Peony Pavilion Sweet Dream in the Garden,” to echo Ting’s art works on famous Chinese folklore, “Farewell to My Concubine” and “Eight Immortals.”
Pan Fan, the curator of the museum, in his opening address remarks that Ting Yin Yung was born in Canton and learned Chinese ink painting at an early age as an art student. He later went to study at Tokyo Art College (currently Tokyo University of the Arts) in 1920 and there he became interested in the Fauvism imported to Japan from Europe at that time. Its painterly qualities and strong colors inspired him profoundly in his later work and he thus became one of the fervent advocates of fauvism in China.
Chinese painting was facing a crisis balancing modern innovation and traditional continuity in the beginning of the 20th century. Ting Yin Yung was eager to renovate Chinese painting by bringing western ideas and skills to traditional Chinese lines and inks. In 1949, he fled the war to Hong Kong. As a diasporic Chinese, he adapted “Badashanren,” a well-known Ming dynasty artist living in Ching dynasty, and rendered his works of art with a strong sense of nostalgia. Applying Chinese brush strokes and inks to Western oil painting, Ting endeavored to converge Eastern and Western aesthetics in his unique and original paintings. For this great achievement, Ying is often called the “Oriental Matisse.”
For this exhibition, AU works closely with Art Museum of the Chinese University of Hong Kong and University Museum and Art Gallery of Hong Kong University. The exhibition borrows the most representative art works of Ting Yin Yung from collectors in Taiwan and Hong Kong. More than 150 pieces of art works, including portraits, still life, landscape paintings and seal carvings are presented to the art lovers for only the second time in Taiwan (The first time was in 2003).
Dr. Jefferey J. P. Tsai, President of Asia University, attended the opening ceremony and remarks that the creativity in Ying’s paintings is inspiring for he is able to transform the contact between Eastern and Western painting into some new form of art with its unique style. His creative spirit echoes AU’s founding spirit of every change for the better.
At the opening, Yao Jin Zhuan, curator of Art Museum of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, professor Frank Vigneron, from Department of Fine Arts (CUHK), and Dr. Florian Knothe, curator of University Museum and Art Gallery of Hong Kong University, all sent their congratulations to the exhibition via video messages, as the pandemis made it impossible for them to come to Taiwan.
