Where East meets West in the Art of Wu guanzhong History Essay

Where east meets west in the art of Wu Guanzhong

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Background

Wu Guanzhong long utilized the more splash-ink style, and the more he encountered western abstract art he integrated these techniques. The changes in his technique are apparent when he became more abstract and used more color than before and splash ink was similar to drip paintings by Jackson Pollock and other abstract artists. Guanzhong used both ink and oil to depict Chinese landscape, and when he used oil the artworks were based on Chinese ink painting. In his 1982 painting “Chinese Cypress” Guanzhong used ink and colors on paper, which was common in traditional Chinese paintings. Eastern art mirrored western techniques in the abstract line-based paintings where oil was used.

Visual

Guanzhong focused on landscapes mainly based on Chinese stylistic traditions, but he adopted more vibrant colors and even more abstract work when he was inspired by western artists and painters. The use of oil and ink further shows his use of western techniques while still painting the Chinese landscapes. The oil painting techniques are Western, while the brush strokes are Chinese, which produced a blend of rational and modern art. Jackson Pollock‘s artwork was in the Abstract Expressionism style and even his greatest works are abstract drip paintings. Greenberg (1961) argued that American artists followed the formalist example of earlier artists, but Pollock also is recognized for his work in advancing universal creations. Pollock became one of the most renowned modern American painters in postwar US when American art became more influential compared to Parisian art.

Social background

The 20^th century painter Guanzhong was born in 1919, and mostly focused on landscape paintings in his early work, but production declined dramatically during the Cultural Revolution in 1966 to 1976 when there were restrictions in China. Pollock focused on producing art and artistic meaning in their works and not merely what people recognized similar to other abstract artists. Abstract Expressionism is more like action painting as there was more emphasis on the creative work and was lined to revolutionary political agency and freed from past ideas (Rosenberg, 1952). Nonetheless as new American painting styles emerged the...