Poet, calligrapher and painter Jao
Tsung-I is exhibiting more than 80 paintings and calligraphic works
featuring Dunhuang culture at the Shenzhen Art Museum. (Photo: Shenzhen
Daily)
Photo
Gallery
By Fu Yingqing
BEIJING, Feb. 3 -- Poet, calligrapher and painter Jao
Tsung-I is exhibiting more than 80 paintings and calligraphic works featuring
Dunhuang culture at the Shenzhen Art Museum.
A versatile scholar, Jao, 92, has contributed many
fields in the humanities, including archaeology, literature, philosophy,
musicology and history.
"It is significant to hold the Dunhuang exhibition in
Shenzhen," said Jao during the opening ceremony on Jan. 16.
According to his latest published research, "Preface
of Li Zhengwu Han Tomb," Shenzhen was a crucial geographic location for China's
Marine Silk Road back in the Han Dynasty (206 B.C.-220 A.D.). The Marine Silk
Road was almost in the same period as the development of the Silk Road in the
northwest part of the country. Human settlements appeared in the Shenzhen region
as early as East Han Dynasty (25-220 A.D.).
"I feel deeply connected with the city of Shenzhen,"
said Jao.
Located in Northwest Gansu Province, Dunhuang is a
noted tourist attraction surrounded by high sand dunes. The Mogao Grottoes are
at nearby Qianfodong. The town and its surroundings were long a gateway between
central Asia and China. The frescoes in the caves, painted from the fifth
through the 13th centuries, show Indian, Greco-Roman and Iranian influences.
After moving to Hong Kong in 1949, Jao started his
Dunhuang research in the 1950s when Dunhuang was still unknown to the academic
field in China. Jao was able to purchase a whole set of negatives taken by Marc
Aurel Stein. Between 1900 and 1930 Stein carried out four expeditions to Chinese
Central Asia, conducting excavations along the whole of the Southern Silk Road,
at Dunhuang and Turfan, as well as surveying, photographing and conducting
ethnographical surveys.
Jao was deeply intrigued by the Dunhuang scripts
shown on the negatives. In the 1960s, an opportunity came allowing Jao to
undertake research on Dunhuang at the Paris Science Museum.
Among piles of Dunhuang scripts, Jao discovered a
series of drawings consisted of a unique art style, which he called "Dunhuang
Sketches". The drawings were based a brush technique in Chinese painting. It
produces a finely controlled, supple ink outline drawing without any colour or
wash. It is commonly used for figure painting, in which precise description is
important.
Inspired by Dunhuang Art, Jao later created his own
style of painting and calligraphy.
In the field of painting, he draws on the brush and
ink technique of the great masters. He travels extensively to sketch nature. His
figure painting draws on inspiration of the Dunhuang caves while his flower and
bird paintings have evolved with a distinctive flavor of his own.
His calligraphy exhibits a unique quality with
reference to inscriptions on tombstones of the Han (B.C. 206-220 A.D.), the
Northern Wei (386-534) and the Tang Dynasty (618-907) as well as manuscripts of
the Song (960-1279) and the late Ming Dynasty (1368-1644).
Among the 80 exquisite pieces included in the
exhibition, "Buddha in Gold-line Sketch Style" is a combination of the Dunhuang
sketches and Jao's calligraphy work. Pieces also include the "Lotus in Red Ink,"
"Landscape in Tang Dynasty" and the "Buddhist Poem of Monk Zhiqin."
One of his masterpieces is his calligraphic work,
"The Poem of Gao Shi." Gao Shi (702-765), was a military veteran and also a
famous poet in the Tang Dynasty. Gao's poems are simple, powerful and heroic.
Jao successfully integrated the spirit of Gao's poetry with his own calligraphy
based on the Tang style.
Born into a wealthy family in Chaozhou, Guangdong
Province, Jao is largely an autodidact, who began to publish scholarly works at
a young age. Later, he was invited to work as lecturer and researcher in a
number of colleges on the mainland.
After 1949, he taught at the University of Hong Kong
after where he learned Sanskrit from the Indian diplomat and Chinese expert V.V.
Paranjpe, who in turn learned ancient Chinese from Jao. In 1959, Jao published
"Oracle Bone Diviners of the Yin Dynasty," which later earned him the Prix
Stadislas Julien from the Academic des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres.
From 1963, Jao traveled to research and teach, in
India, France, Singapore, the United States and Japan. He was awarded an
honorary degree of Doctor of Letters by Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes,
France, and Officer de L'ordre des Arts et des Letters by the Ministry of
Culture, France in 1993. The Hong Kong Arts Development Council bestowed on him
the First Emeritus Fellowship in 1997.
Since 1978, he has held more than 20 solo exhibitions
in Hong Kong, South East Asia, Japan and China, and has published over 10
albums. He has obtained honorary doctorates from various Hong Kong universities:
The University of Hong Kong (1982); Lingnan University (1995); Open University
of Hong Kong (1999). Jao was also the recipient of the Grand Bauhinia Medal
granted by the Hong Kong SAR government, and the Prize of Special Contributions
to the Protection of Dunhuang Relics by the People's Government of Gansu
Province and the National Bureau of Relics, China, in 2000.
He is currently Wei Lun Honorary Professor of Chinese
Language and Literature at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Many of his works are pioneering. For instance, he is
the first scholar to render the Babylonian epic Enuma Elish into Chinese, after
learning the Akkadian language from Jean Bottéro while he was a visiting scholar
in Paris, He was also the first to make a comparative study of the oracle bone
script and the Indus script.
Yu Qiuyu, a popular mainland writer, once said
publicly that "with the presence of Jao Tsung-I, Hong Kong would not be a
cultural desert," reacting to the common opinion that the region is a
utilitarian cultural desert.
Venue: "Dunhuang and I - Exhibition of Painting and
Calligraphy of Jao Tsung-I"
Time: Throughout Feb.12.
Address: Shenzhen Art Musuem, 32 Donghu Street 1,
Aiguo Road, Shenzhen
Tel: 0755-25426069
Fax: 0755-25426070
http://www.szam.org/
Time: from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. (closed on Monday)
Buses: No. 3, 17, 360 and 320 (get off at the
Shenzhen Reservoir station)
(Source: Shenzhen Daily)
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