Why Hong Kong by Laurence C.S. Tam The debate about whether to build a Museum of Ink in Hong Kong has continued for quite some time. However, while many different opinions have been expressed, no consensus has been reached. Recently, a proposal for a new 'Museum Plus' (M+) concept has been brought forward encompassing four different sections, designated as follows: 1. Design, 2. Art of the Moving Image, 3. Popular Culture, and 4. Visual Arts, including Ink Art I will not attempt to discuss the merits or otherwise of this proposal here. The subject that does merit immediate attention, however, is that in laying out the four recommended areas of M+, the proposal particularly stipulates that 'ink art' should be included in the Visual Arts section. There is no specific art form or genre recommended for inclusion in any of the other sections: no suggestion that fashion design should be included in the Design section, for example, or Cantopop under Popular Culture, or experimental film in Art of the Moving Image. To me, this indicates clearly that the group responsible for the drafting of the M+ proposal is keenly aware of the cultural importance of ink art in Hong Kong. As a matter of fact, the contribution of Hong Kong in the area of ink art has been recognized internationally since the mid-twentieth century, and its impact and influence have reached far beyond Hong Kong itself. Thus, the creation of a museum devoted to ink art has special meaning significant to Hong Kong. Below, I will present my argument in support of this view. I am very supportive of the proposal of an ink museum, although I have reservation concerning the name 'Museum of Ink'. This is because such a name implies that the museum collections would encompass all ink-related art works, both ancient and contemporary. Although Hong Kong does have public collections of Chinese traditional ink art, representative in certain areas, but pale in comparison to those of the National Palace in Taiwan or the Shanghai Museum on the Mainland. On the other hand, if we designate the museum as the 'Modern Ink Museum' (Xiandai shuimo bowuguan), its meaning will be different. Such a designation would signify that the Museum's collections, exhibitions and related activities would be focused on modern and contemporary ink art. Through the establishment of such a museum, the image of Hong Kong art could be transformed from an 'offshoot' of the Lingnan School in south China to a 'driving force' in twentieth-century modern Chinese painting movements. It is because Hong Kong's indigenous New Ink Painting Movement indeed holds an important place as it marks a major point of innovation in the historical development of modern Chinese painting. To better understand this point, let us consider the following overview of the development of Chinese art. Looking back, we find that Chinese painting had already reached a pinnacle of development in the Song and Yuan dynasties. In the post-Yuan period, Chinese painting began to lose this momentum and entered a period of gradual decline which continued through the Ming and Qing dynasties. The revolution of 1911 signaled the end of the dynastic system and established China Republic. New waves of educational reforms were introduced under the leadership of Cai Yuanpei (1866-1940), the Republic's first Minister of Education. With Cai's support, Lin Fengmian (1900-1991) and Xu Beihong (1895-1953) in the North together with the Three Masters of Lingnan School in the South introduced Western painting theories and techniques into Chinese art, which acted as long overdue shots of adrenaline to the faltering Chinese art scene and opened a new chapter for Chinese painting. What they did can be considered to constitute the first of two major art reform movements which occurred in the Chinese art world during the twentieth century. This first movement of Chinese art reform developed from the idea of 'using the West to enrich the East' or 'borrowing from the West to revitalize the East'. Such an approach created the sense that modern Chinese art was merely riding on the coat-tails of Western art trends. An additional problem was that in the first movement of art reform, the traditional way of training painters through copying and imitation never underwent any process of review or correction, and in fact was further tolerated. In the aftermath of World War II, our countrymen were faced with the double burden of rebuilding China's urban infrastructures while facing the crisis of civil war. When the People's Republic of China was founded in 1949, artists, writers and intellectuals were instructed to adopt the themes of workers, soldiers and peasants in their creative work. With the onset of the Cultural Revolution in 1966, many artists who advocated for expressive freedom in their art, such as Shi Lu (1919-1982), were criticized and persecuted. While the propaganda paintings produced during the Cultural Revolution years certainly had a distinctive function and historical meaning, from the viewpoint of international art development, they can only be classified as a kind of Chinese 'mutation' of nineteenth-century European realism, representing a U-turn away from the international movements of Modernism. On the Hong Kong arts scene, on the other hand, the year 1966 had a different kind of significance. During this year the new theories on art and ink painting of the influential Hong Kong artist Lu Shoukun (Lui Shou-kwan 1919-1975), and the new style of ink painting which he had been developing since the 1950s began to make a strong impact on the Hong Kong public. In a series of public lectures on Chinese ink painting, Lu Shoukun called for a return to the emphasis on "following one's own mind" 師心 and "individuality" 自我 as the true foundations of the Chinese ink painting tradition. In contrast to the first art movement of 'using the West to revitalize the East' in the first half of the twentieth century, Lu aroused people's interest in and respect towards the Chinese painting tradition of the Song and Yuan periods and its related aesthetic theories. He called for his students and followers to share his mission of rebuilding and revitalizing Chinese art. Lu believed that in order to rebuild the glories of the art of Chinese painting, the foremost task was not to improve painting techniques but rather to establish a proper art education system and to promote a new artistic consciousness. Lu strongly criticized the shortcomings of traditional art education, such as 'following a master' and 'tolerating copying/imitation', which were still popularly followed at that time. He insisted that every painter should develop a unique identity and style of his own. To better promote his ideas he led his students to form the In Tao Art Association (Yuan Dao huahui), comprised of intellectuals and artists committed to modernizing and revitalizing the true spirit of Chinese painting. One year later, another group of Lu's students joined force and formed the One Art Group (Yi huahui). In the wake of these efforts, the New Ink Painting Movement emerged in Hong Kong, and exhibitions by Lu and other New Ink painters influenced by him showed the world a totally new face of Chinese painting. Effectively, the New Ink Painting Movement opened up a new chapter in the history of Chinese art with Hong Kong's emergence as the locus of development for Chinese contemporary ink painting in the second half of the twentieth century. Turning our gaze to the art scene of twenty-first century China, we see the emergence of a significant number of painters with unique personal styles, creating a vibrant scene for contemporary ink painting. This new phenomenon has helped to dispel the stagnancy in which the Chinese art world had been mired for centuries, and marks an exciting moment for contemporary Chinese culture. Looking back, we can see that the emergence of Hong Kong's New Ink Painting Movement of the 1960s not only changed the Hong Kong arts scene, but impacted the development of the entire Chinese painting scene over the last half-century and beyond. Through his New Ink Painting Movement Lu Shoukun promoted the reform of arts education, and encouraged the concept of individual creativity in art, and this in fact constitutes the second major reform movement in Chinese art of the twentieth century. This 'second reform movement' and the earlier movement advocating the reform of painting technique have clear differences between them. This time it was a major "transformation in Chinese aesthetic thinking". Hong Kong New Ink Painting Movement opened the door for the emergence of truly creative thinking for all Chinese painters. Its impact on the development of Chinese art from the latter half of the twentieth century onward becomes ever clearer with time. The above discussion constitutes an overview placing the work of some Hong Kong artists within the context of the development of Chinese painting in the second half of the 20th century, in order to demonstrate the important place our Hong Kong artists hold in this part of Chinese art history. The establishment of a Modern Ink Museum would thus fulfill the important function of demonstrating the unique contribution made by Hong Kong artists towards Chinese art and culture: in sum, it would establish a special cultural identity for Hong Kong. Hong Kong's arts administrators indeed have not overlooked the innovative work of Hong Kong ink painters. Hong Kong museums have in the past collected thousands of works by Hong Kong modern and contemporary ink painters, and there is a large number of works by Hong Kong's New Ink painters that are in private collections here. In a Modern Ink Museum these collections of modern and contemporary ink art can easily form the basis for a series of differently themed exhibitions presented from different angles. Perhaps some might also consider that having a multi-functional M+ complex with a special exhibition gallery specifically for Hong Kong new ink painting would be a way of achieving two goals at the same time, but this idea is misleading. Such an approach would sacrifice the acknowledgement of the historical significance of Hong Kong's contributions to the development of Chinese art and the chance to elevate Hong Kong's cultural image. Establishing an exhibition gallery for Hong Kong ink art within the M+ complex merely would constitute a specific kind of exhibition activity; whereas the opening of a Modern Ink Museum would make a definitive statement and heighten Hong Kong's cultural image on the international stage. There is a big difference between the two. At the beginning of this essay I pointed out that the most important criterion in deciding whether to establish a new museum was whether it would fulfill the function of establishing the cultural image of a place. If indeed we want to achieve both goals, one possibility is to establish a Modern Ink Museum that is independent from M+. Then, in the event that M+ wants to include ink art in their visual arts exhibition activities, the necessary artworks could be borrowed from the collection of the Modern Ink Museum. The exchange of loans of artworks between museums for exhibition purposes is, after all, a very common phenomenon. (Note: The above is an abridged version of an article in Chinese published in the 2007 February issue of Economic Journal Monthly.) Laurence C.S. Tam |