Chen Chong Swee

Village Scene

1980

Chinese ink and colour

127 x 64 cm

This a landscape painting done in Chinese ink by Chen Chong Swee in a vertical scroll format. Chen Chong Swee adopted a typical high perspective for Chinese ink painting here, as you can the whole landscape stretching from the village in the foreground continuously through the coconut trees in the mid ground into the hills in the background.

Chen Chong Swee belongs to the Realist school of painters, preferring to stick to objectivity in depiction and accurate representation of the subject in his work. This painting is a good example from his realist output and his primary focus on local landscapes and subject matters. The emphasis on local scenery also stems from his philosophical goal of making art relevant to himself and the viewer.

A main compositional principle in this work is in the strong S-curve line made by the small winding path that leads from the village through the trees into the hills. There is another S-curve that follows the river next to the winding path as well. The strong use of S-curve in this composition suggests the gracefulness and peacefulness of the landscape.

Chen Wen Hsi

Herons

circa 1990

Chinese ink and colour

157 x 297 cm

This is a Chinese ink and colour abstract painting by Chen Wen Hsi. An abstract painting is also sometimes known as a non-representational artwork.

Chen Wen Hsi has broken down the complex form of the herons into simple flat geometric shapes much like how the German Expressionists and the Cubists had done in their paintings.

This painting is dominated by the heavy use of repeated lines and shapes which are arranged haphazardly across the painting.

Sec 2 | No Comments »

Liu Kang

Life by the River

1975

Oil on canvas

126 x 203 cm

In this painting, "Life by the River," Liu Kang depicts a busy village landscape where we can see people carrying out their daily activities in a rural environment.

This painting is a good example of Liu Kang’s Nanyang Style repertoire where he integrates the influences of Chinese landscape painting into a western Post-Impressionist painting style. The use of thick black outlines draws similarities with Chinese ink painting while the rather apparent division of spaces into separate persectives suggest the "moving" perspective common in Chinese art. A few traces of the use of white outlines also remain from his earlier style of painting which derives its inspiration from Indonesian Batik Art. Likewise, Liu Kang has kept to his style of painting in flat colours much similar to post-impressionist artists like Gauguin and Matisse.

A symmetrical composition has been adopted in this work - the gently curving bridge on the left of the picture is mirrored in the little river that flows on the right; the arrangement of the houses in the background; and how the group of villagers in the left foreground is counter-balanced by the 2 boats on the right.

Chua Mia Tee

Workers in a Canteen

1974

Oil on canvas

89 x 126 cm

Chua Mia Tee’s "Workers in a Canteen" shows a busy lunchtime scene in a worker’s canteen. There are many benches where many people in workwear are seated having their meal.

The painting was done in a fully naturalistic and representational Academic painting style. This is typical of Chua’s approach to his painting, where concerns about style are secondary to his main objective to paint in a social realism manner to reflect the conditions of the working class in his art. By doing so, some of Chua Mia Tee’s artwork has by now become an invaluable record of the early development of our nation building.

This painting is dominated by strong diagonal compositions. The benches and workers having their lunch are arranged diagonally from the bottom right to the top left of the picture. The worker with his back facing us in the foreground is aligned diagonally in the opposite direction - from the bottom left to the top right.

Sec 2 | No Comments »

Liu Kang

Artist and Model

1954

Oil on canvas

84 x 124 cm

Liu Kang belongs to the group of pioneer artist in Singapore. He came from China to Singapore in 1942.

Liu Kang’s style of painting was influenced by the European art he studied while he was in Paris, most notably with Post-Impressionism, especially in the art of Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin.

This painting, Artist and Model, was voted most representative painting in Singapore Art in a major retrospective exhibition held after his death in 2004. This painting was inspired during the Bali Field-trip in 1952, where Liu Kang and three other Singapore pioneer artists travelled to Bali in search of new inspiration.

In this painting, Liu Kang portrays Chen Wen Hsi sketching a native Balinese in front of a open landscape. This painting is characterised by the white outlines used in the painting. This idea of using the white outlines was borrowed from traditional Indonesian Batik Art where white lines were made as part of the wax-resist process. The influence of the Post-Impressionist style also comes through in the use of flat colours throughout the painting. The deliberate contrasting use of cooler colours like greens and blues for the background allows the people and objects in the foreground of the painting, which were rendered in warmer colours like red, orange and yellow, to stand out. Cool colours gives the suggestion of distance while the warmer colours makes things appear nearer and bigger.

Soon after the Bali Field-trip, later art historians identified those artworks that deal with local subject matters and which attempt to integrate both Eastern and Western art influences together as being done in a Nanyang Style.

Sec 2 | No Comments »

I know most of you know about this better than me. Anyway, you can help me choose the song to sing by voting in the poll on my blog! Do it now!

General | No Comments »

Affandi

Self Portrait, 1975.

Oil on canvas.

Affandi (1907 - 90) was one of the first few very important Indonesian modern art painters. He was known as an Expressionistic painter.

He painted by squeezing paint straight from the tubes and then smearing them with his hands if necessary.

This self-portrait was painted for the Singapore University in 1975 when he was conferred with a honorary degree then.

Sec 2 | No Comments »