The Star Online: Lifestyle: Arts & Fashion

Posted: 06 Aug 2011 11:28 PM PDT

A centennial show pays tribute to an artist who was constantly searching for a new idiom.

LIU Kang: A Centennial Celebration, now on at the Singapore Art Museum (SAM), takes off from where his 1981 Retrospective, held at the same venue, left off.

Between that year and his demise on June 1, 2004, at the age of 93, Liu continued to paint, hold smaller displays and write profusely on art. His eldest son, Dr Liu Thai-Ker, a prominent architect-planner in Singapore, conceded as much during the recent opening of the exhibition which celebrates 100 years of the artist's birth.

Dr Liu, 73, says the centennial show plugs the gaps since his father's last major exhibition in 1981. In 2003, Liu Kang had donated some 1,000 works in oil, pastels and other media to SAM.

A 300-page book, Liu Kang: Colourful Modernist, and a compilation of his essays (a Chinese-to-English translation), accompanies the exhibition, which features about 100 works in oil, pastels, pencil, crayons and pen, and screenings of interviews with the artist. Colourful Modernist has some 200 illustrations and hitherto unpublished archival photographs of the artist.

Liu Kang had several other shows during his lifetime. There were the touring exhibitions in Taiwan and Hong Kong in 1983; the Liu Kang At 87 show (SAM, 1997); Liu Kang At 88 (Singapore Soka Association, 1998); Liu Kang At 90 (Museum of Tolerance, Los Angeles, 2000); his first China show in Beijing in November 2000, and Liu Kang: Drawn From Life (SAM, 2002).

It was all Liu Kang this and Liu Kang that, very monolithic. Apart from what is known about him – he is a colourful modernist – the centennial book does attempt to open new flanks of discovery.

While the book of essays purports to present "fresh insights about the artist's engagement with European and Chinese modernisms in the Singapore context", perhaps it is time to take a more in-depth look at his works, vis-a-vis those of his contemporaries, like Cheong Soo-pieng, Chen Wen-hsi and Chen Chong Swee, and see how their styles might have impinged on one another's, and his meeting with Adrien Jean Le Mayeur de Merpres and his muse, Ni Pollock, in Bali.

We could compare Liu Kang's proclivity for "flattening, merging planes" with Soo-pieng's stylisations of elongated limbs and torsos, or look at his more Post-Impressionist and classical mould and lively colour blocks in relation to Henri Matisse. Or focus on the developments of his works during his Parisian days.

Then, there are the raw, visual elements – the innocence of Bali, with its celebratory rituals, and the rustic charms of Sarawak's tribal culture in some pieces.

Most certainly, it would be useful to look at Liu's life and career in tandem with that of his bosom buddy and brother-in-law, the oft-neglected Chen Jen Hao (1908-76).

The love story with his wife Chen Jen Ping (they married in May 1937 in China after a 10-year courtship), of whom Liu did six portraits between 1927 and 1992, deserves more attention, too. One should look at Liu's works against the spirit and atmosphere of locale – China, Paris, Bali, Malaya and Singapore – and how these places impacted the artist, and vice versa.

This "value-added" wish list, however, does not detract from the well-crafted mapping of the centennial show, from the way the paintings are hung to blown-up images of his sepia sketches on the wall, touch-screen info kiosks, and interviews with the artist projected continuously on screen.

Of the exhibits, visitors naturally go ga-ga over his masterpiece, Artist And Model (1954), which depicts Chen Wen-hsi nonchalantly painting a bored-looking, half-naked Balinese model, against the backdrop of a mountain. Another 1954 work, Batik Workers, also uses white outlines, supposedly inspired by the wax-resist technique of batik art.

In Adjusting The Waistband (1997), Liu Kang inserts a necklace with a tasselled pendant right at the cleavage of his half-naked model. As early as 1965, he had used a batik-cloth collage in his painting, A Family.

The obvious standouts include My Room In Paris (1931), Offerings (1957), Souri (pastel, 1952), Siesta (pastel, 1952; oil, 1957), Life By The River (1975) and Liu Hai-su Tenth Trip to Mount Huangshan (1989).

Liu's Samsui Women (1951), a theme also tackled by Lai Foong Mooi and Datuk Hoessein Enas, is a "busy" mosaic composition that shows the delicate counterweight of construction workers on the top right and bottom left of the painting.

He infused Cubistic cuts in his Volcano: Gathering Firewood (1956), while in Abstract Fish (1961) and Abstract: Yellow Eye (1972), both done years apart, the play of geometry – tubular and sharp-edged, textures, overlapping planes and coloured shapes – proved a welcome diversion as well as a challenge.

Liu was obviously well trained in the School of Paris tradition, as can be seen in his still-lifes. He studied at the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere (1928-32) and his works were accepted by the prestigious Salon d' Automne. (So, too, were Jen Hao's.)

Liu's contributions to the development of Singapore art were immense, as artist, art teacher (1933-37, 1938-71), art activist and commentator. He co-founded the Singapore Art Society in 1949 and was its president from 1968-79. He was also president of the Society of Chinese Artists for more than a decade.

Liu Kang was born Liu Yang, in Yongchun, Fujian province, in 1911. When he was six, the family moved to Muar, Johor, where his parents ran rubber plantations. He was educated in Johor, and then Singapore, before returning to China, where he studied at the Shanghai Art Academy (later known as Xinhua Art Academy), under Liu Hai-su (1896-1994).

After studying in Paris, he returned to China and taught at the Shanghai academy. When the Sino-Japanese War broke out three months after his marriage, he fled to Singapore/Malaya, where he taught. When Japan invaded Singapore in 1942, he moved back to Muar, where he set up a coffee-shop.

Although steeped in Chinese culture, Liu was sensitive to the cultural synthesis and distinctive way of life in Singapore, and consciously searched for a new idiom in art with his contemporaries.

He was awarded the Public Service Star and the Meritorious Service Medal in 1970 and 1996, respectively, by the Singapore Government.

Liu Kang: A Centennial Celebration is on at the Singapore Art Museum (singaporeartmuseum.sg) until Oct 16.

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Kredit: www.thestar.com.my

Ahad, 7 Ogos 2011