Artistic impressions

As a colony, I can understand why Hong Kong, over the past century or so, had been regarded as a 'cultural desert' and its inhabitants 'cultural idiots'. Culture was, then, reserved for the masters, not the shackled.

But as local art historian Eliza Lai Mei-lin pointed out at a fascinating lecture at the Asia Art Archive recently, that epithet ceased to reflect reality after the second world war when a number of significant artists from across the border came to the territory to work, teach and influence.

The 1960s and 70s was an important period in Hong Kong's visual art history that was being shaped not only by the Lingnan School of painting (of Guangdong province) but also by the way local artists first learnt then broke away from its traditions. And that's not to mention the effects of artistic influences from the West and politics on the mainland.

Lai spent a great deal (perhaps a tad too much) of time talking about painter Lui Shou-kwan (1919-1975), a significant Chinese painter who advocated individual expression rather than simple reproduction. It was a novel, if not unorthodox, approach to art learning at the time when, for centuries, the way to master Chinese painting was to replicate the teachers. Lui's students include renowned artists such as Irene Chou (who passed away earlier this month), Wucius Wong and Koo Mei.

One of the most interesting developments during the 1970s was the New Chinese Ink Painting Movement spearheaded by the likes of Laurence Tam Chi-sing, a former school art teacher and curator of the Hong Kong Museum of Art, who believed art was not just about techniques but creative thinking. This movement gave birth to contemporary Chinese ink where the medium was no longer just for painting landscapes, flowers, birds and calligraphy.

And Hong Kong played a vital role in the development of Chinese art as a whole. Not controlled by the mainland government nor weighed down by the burden of traditions, artists here were free to explore and experiment. During the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) when propaganda art swept across the country, Hong Kong artists were able to express themselves in abstract painting; a practice that would not have gone down well in red China, neither artistically nor ideologically. Hong Kong a 'cultural desert'? I don't think so.