Paintings

The paintings on the Gallery, are scans from copies from a book entitled:
“Special Exhibition of the paintings and Calligraphic Works by Cheng Man Ching”.

Preface

Any work of art is in its essence a phase of inner life immortalized in the form of beauty, truth, and moral excellence, and the lack of any one of these elements renders it imperfect. It requires a painter of exceptional talent and consummate skill to achieve their integration in a form in which the rhythm of life and spirit finds highest expression; failing which, art becomes merely a graphic representation of nature and man destitute of life and spirit. Realizing this, the bona fide artist is therefore ever in pursuit of the threefold perfection of art in terms of, to repeat, beauty, truth, and moral excellence.

When Chinese painting first evolved from the domain of artisanship into the realm of art, primacy was given to representational accuracy of objects as they existed in form and color. In the next stage of development copygraphic likeness and objective portrayal receded in importance, and the criterion of excellence came to depend on capturing a sense of the subject’s vitality and its meaning to be felt through the quality of the brush line. When Su Tung.po remarked nine centuries ago:___________ “He who judges painting as likeness Babbles views ranking with childishness"___________, he was but voicing the heightening concept of his day that painting should transcend mere transcription from life, and that it should be adjudicated by the intellectual and emotional responses it evoked beyond and above form and color. In modern terminology, he was trying to establish a correct relation between form and intent. A certain amount of delineatory accuracy is necessary, but it is not so for its own sake. Art in its highest reach is always form plus. It is this plus that constitutes the raison d’etre of form in art.

In the Sung Dynasty, the golden age of Chinese art, painting reached a still higher level of development and served as a viable channel for the expression of ideas, moods, and personality of the painter who thus became predominantly creative rather than delineative. The ultimate desideratum was the complete identification of the painter with his subject so that while painting, in a moment of spiritual exaltation, he should assume the nature and breathe the spirit of the objects he painted whether they be trees, flowers, birds, animals, rivers or mountains, thereby achieving an interflow of life and spirit between the experiencer and the experienced. The marvel is that the moment an artist succeeds in interpreting the spirit of his subject and identifying himself with it through painting, the same moment the painting interprets and portrays the quality and mood of the painter via the medium of his very subject. This singular harmony resulting in a state of mind which modern psychologists term empathy enables the best Chinese paintings to breathe the personality of their authors insofar as art can do it.

In contemplating the great Chinese masterpieces which are as yet unsurpassed in excellency by later generations, one cannot but be impressed by the masters’ perceptivity, poetic imagination, sincerity and depth of feeling for nature as well as for their own skills in technique. Their performance is all the more remarkable in that, unlike western painting which allows corrections and re-drawing of lines, in Chinese painting once a stroke is set down, it is committed for all time. Granted that the great masters were born geniuses, still, the secret of their success in the quest for perfection lay in the practical day-by-day discipline through which their perceptive powers were sharpened, their imagination enriched, and their feeling for nature enlivened. Merely to be born gifted without the desire and perseverance to acquire method and technique is tantamount to possessing valuable gems which remain uncut and unpolished with their inherent beauty and brilliance dimmed or wasted. Through listlessness and laziness even a potentially great painter becomes at best a dilettante. He who spurns the road never reaches the goal.

Mr. Cheng Man-ching, a scholar of versatility and talent, was a popular professional artist in his younger days. In his special branch of painting (floral or Hua-Hui) amongst his contemporaries he had few equals. At the height of his popularity with the public, to the surprise of all, he withdrew from the art world and devoted himself to the study of Chinese medicine and became a practicing physician. When asked for an explanation, he, I was told, replied simply that not having to depend on art for a living he would be in a position to make the most of his best and thus serve art rather than exploit it.

Having studied painting for several years with Mr. Cheng, I may be said to know what are his outstanding characteristics. His rootage lies deep in the Chinese classical tradition of painting, but his fruits are pleasingly fresh and original. While he has made an exhaustive study of the works of the great masters, and has deep admiration and keen appreciation of their excellence, he does not ape them.

The following collection represents some of Mr. Cheng’s paintings of almost half a century’s striving. His compositions whether simple or complex are characterized by a sense of balance and clarity which imparts the feeling that he knows exactly what ideas he has in mind and what mood he wishes to impart. He expresses his concepts with forthrightness and without hesitancy and devoid of artifice, showiness or slickness. His brush strokes, powerful or delicate, are executed with evident strength but disciplined restraint, and with attention to detail. Where a lesser painter would need several strokes to obtain the desired effect, he often accomplishes his purpose with one. A rhythmic vitality emanates from each floral in this collection so that it seems not a painting but a living projection of the painter; for when he wields his brush, it is no longer an instrument but part of himself. He has conveyed the spirit and life of nature by means of a subtle combination of brush, ink, water, and paper, in a style natural and spontaneous, but reached through a noteworthy degree of artistry and power.

As life is an unfolding process, so is art. Mr. Cheng has shown in this volume his mastery of the technique and his force of creative vitality. It is now his obligation to reveal in his next his scope and further unfolding.

Madame Chiang Kai-shek