Walasse Ting endured poverty as a struggling young artist in Paris but became one of the world's most acclaimed painters. Now in his 70s, his interests encompass beautiful women, poetry, sex and listing his life's achievements. He also plans to paint 1,000 more pictures. Fionnuala McHugh meets a man with a mission.
It was in a state of mild anxiety that I went along to the Alice King Gallery in Prince's Building to interview the artist Walasse Ting. Our meeting would be his second interview with this newspaper in a week, the first abruptly terminated when Ting, on the line from Amsterdam, put down the telephone on a fellow journalist who'd asked the wrong question. Regular readers of this page will know it has often provided a haven for the difficult, the opinionated, for those marching to a different tune ... still, there are limits, and I was girding my loins for the fray with a deep sigh.
As it happened, Ting is fond of loins. Also of young women, sex, naughty words and apparently scandalous behaviour. At the front of the catalogue for his current exhibition, The Black and White World of Walasse Ting (which is on until May 25), he lists the prime activities of each of his 74 years. These range from the charmingly bucolic (three years old: 'first time catch grasshopper') to the puzzling (58 years old: 'first time discover look like panda') to the provocative (60 years old: 'first time make love with virgin'), plus some in between which can't be quoted in a family newspaper - you'll have to go to the gallery, I'm afraid, and read them for yourself.
I must say I laughed over his compendium, thereby gaining Ting's approval (he says he likes cheerful people - 'giggling' is one of his favourite words), and I'd be tempted to say we got on like a house on fire except that his house did catch fire a couple of years ago (72 years: 'first time fire burn house'), so perhaps it isn't an entirely happy simile. 'Arson,' explained Ting, matter-of-factly. 'A man renting another floor. I was asleep. If 10 minutes later, I would have died. If not for Andrea, I'm dead already.'
Andrea is Ting's 35-year-old Dutch girlfriend, currently convalescing in Amsterdam with a broken leg. They seem to be an accident-prone pair (73 years: 'first time fell down broke shoulder'), but Ting looks fit and handsome, and when we met he was wearing a jacket of ultra-dazzling colours; he has another 500 at home, part of an unsuccessful attempt to break into fashion.
As colour is usually his Big Art Statement, I wanted to know why his odalisques and sirens and seductive maidens were confined this time to black and white. 'Alice [King] said can we do this,' said Ting, with a shrug. 'I said okay. I painted a lot of black and white before but I never show it.' I asked, pen poised in art-critic mode, if he felt different working in black and white, and Ting, who had obviously decided that this interview was full of droll possibilities, replied, 'I'm colour blind. I hide inside the universe, inside the earth ... But of course, I take the aeroplane to Hong Kong.'
It was from Hong Kong that he set sail, fourth class, for France (22 years: 'first time take big boat to Paris'), having spent his childhood in Wuxi, where there are now plans afoot to set up a museum in his honour. I asked Ting what his father did and he cried, 'Never did a thing! Never washed a dish in his life!' He must have done something, I argued, and Ting replied, 'He smoked opium from 16 to 60, then the Communists came and he stopped. I had the worst time when my father died, I cried so much. He was 73, my mother was 74 when she died, my older brother died last year at 79, so I think: for me, three more years. In three years, I can paint 1,000 paintings.'