In 1990, Hu's master's thesis About the Transiency of Art was labeled as "not in line with Marxist principles" and was rejected by Chi Ke, director of the Theory Teaching and Research Section of the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts.[9][10][11][12] He was denied the chance to defend his thesis and eventually failed to acquire his diploma and master’s degree certificate. At that time, young teachers (including those of the Theory Teaching and Research Section), postgraduates who had finished their program, and those who were studying at Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts jointly expressed their opinion to the Academy and higher-level authorities that academic freedom should be respected and learning should not be confused with administration.[12] Wang Huangsheng, a professor at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, said: "Therefore, Hu Zhiying got himself into trouble with his brilliant paper About the Transiency of Art, and the mere presentation of his personal meditation was considered a challenge to the so-called authority."[10]
The full text of About the Transiency of Art was published in Northern Art, journal of Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts in 2001. The title of his thesis was included in the Index of Theory of Plastic Art of 2001 by the Center of Data from Newspapers and Magazines of Renmin University of China.[11][9]
Career
In 2002, Hu received his Ph.D. degree from the College of Liberal Arts of Jinan University with the thesis On the Paramitality in Literature.[1][4][13] His poems are published in Chinese and Western Poetry,[14]Survivors Poetry,[15] etc.[16] Hu Zhiying is also a dissident in mainland China. His articles criticizing the autocracy of the Chinese Communist Party are published in "Beijing Spring",[17] "Huanghuagang Magazine",[18] and Taiwan's Chinese Culture Monthly.[19]
Hu teaches modern art and traditional Chinese calligraphy and painting at the College of Fine Arts of South China Normal University.[20] In the 1990s, he was invited to exhibit his work in Europe.[21][1] Since 2000, his works have mainly been exhibited in China and the United States.[22][4][23] He was invited to collaborate with the Orchestra of St. Luke's (OSL) in New York City in 2020.[24][25]
Art style
Technology and media
Hu uses materials from Western art and Chinese traditional painting and arts and crafts, such as oils, acrylics, Chinese ink, varnish, silver, gold powder, etc. The lines, strokes, and images in Hu's paintings include the Eastern methods of connecting reality and fiction, conflicting forms, changing visual effects, virtual space forms, and free artistic skills, which dispel real shadows into virtual shadows.[26][27][28]
Wang Huangsheng, an art critic and professor of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, said that Hu's paintings draw lessons from ancient Chinese arts and crafts materials and techniques such as lacquer and ink and wash. They contain images misappropriated from Chinese landscape paintings of the Song Dynasty; for example, the partial images of Ma Yuan's paintings are recombined in Hu's works.[29]
Art form
According to Adam Donald, "Hu Zhiying brings together traditional Chinese art with the eclectic styles of the West. He combines traditional Chinese symbolism and landscape with the elements of the various styles of Western art".[26][30][31]French art connoisseur and collector Didier Hirsch also expressed similar views in his article An Artist as Unconventional Personality: On Hu Zhiying.[32] Some critics, including the American critic and curator Robin Peckham, pointed out that Hu's works surpassed the artistic characteristics of reality and reached a religious situation, believing that this is the reason why Hu's art and literature are difficult to interpret.[28][27][33][34][35]
Didier Hirsch believes that Hu's style does not have the characteristics of the new trends of most Western and Chinese contemporary art, but is closer to those masters who left behind historical heritage.[32]
In 2020, Hu was invited to participate in an art and music cooperation project with the New York Orchestra of St. Luke's (OSL). He interwove his paintings Angel IV and Mr. Don Quixote X with musician Eleanor Alberga's symphonyThe World of Dreams: Shining Gate of Morpheus, aiming to stimulate the audience's imagination by integrating visual art and music and allowing images and sounds to blend naturally.[24][25]
Connotation and allegory
Critics, including Robin Peckham, generally believe that Hu's art does not belong to the popular art style in the current art criticism discourse system of realismcriticism.[28][36][34][37][35] Art critic and historian Gao Minglu called him "an independent meditator" in Freedom of a Lonely Passenger:
He has substituted the cultural theme of ultimate thinking for Bacon’s original theme. Hu Zhiying’s personal religious tendency leads to his reverence for Bacon’s persevering pursuit, and at the same time Hu’s inherent cultural conviction has determined the freedom and diversity of his choice of resources of image.[33]
Paul Bridgewater, director of an art gallery in New York City, analyzed Hu's art and wrote:
The installation art of Hu Zhiying is a journey of process and discovery. From his installation work since the '90's where he illustrates an understanding of traditional Eastern arts, where reverence of nature and solitude are explored through a masterful fluidity of art form with complex elements. But as a thinking artist, Hu begins to explore the ephemera of Western Culture. Western motifs insinuate themselves into his work. Hu investigates the overbearing elements of Western Culture, where production and consumption become process of themselves replacing the value of the human consumer.[40][41]
Hu's art has been described as having the spirit of Chinese culture in it, yet at the same time, presenting the original state of the world with disordered space and video code. His art aims to give an illusion of the misplacement or overlapping of time and space between the ancient and the present and to provide a sense of indirect presentation between the picture and its meaning.[42][21]: 62 [43]: 119
Exhibitions
Selected solo exhibitions
Hu Zhiying, Galleria Piziarte (Teramo, Italy, 2008)[44]
Art Exhibition of Hu Zhiying, World Fine Art Gallery (New York, 2009)[23]
TRANSIENCY AND INDULGE – HU ZHIYING. HUANG SHAOYIN'S DRAWING, K Space (Beijing, 2009)[45][46]
Hu Zhiying’s Paintings (1989–2009), the Wall Art Museum (Beijing, 2010)[22][47][48]
The installation The Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales (Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2016)[36]
Hu Zhiying’s Art (1987–2017) (53 Art Museum, Guangzhou, 2017)[49][50][51]
Selected group exhibitions
1990s
Big-Tail Elephant, The United Art Exhibition (Guangzhou, 1992)[52]
Shanghai First International Fax Art Exhibition (Shanghai, 1996)[53]
The World of Dreams: Shining Gate of Morpheus (music & art), Orchestra of St. Luke's (OSL) (New York, 2020)[24][25]
1+1+...=X, installation and performance, Sponsors: New York City Artist Corps; New York Foundation for the Art; New York City Department of Cultural Affairs (New York, 2021)[67][68]
According to Dr. Gao Ling, Hu's theme of art is generally regarded as unclear and obscure, and its aesthetic concepts are divorced from the appreciation habits and interest of the general public. Jia Fangzhou, a senior critic, pointed out that this may be connected with Hu Zhiying's internal needs, which shows that he has displayed a variety of styles. Since there are gaps in interpretations of Hu's art when reviewed from its cultural clues, artistic style, or artistic schema, grasping Hu Zhiying's art as a whole is often thought to be difficult by critics and art historians.[69][70]
When analyzing Hu's art from the perspective of both its schema and concept, Yang Wei noted that they are not connected, and instead are almost completely separate. Wu Hong, critic and curator of the Songzhuang Contemporary Art Archive (China), thought that Hu's art should take into account the logical and coherent relationships among the images from different periods used in Hu's art, and create a bridge between his art and the public's interpretation of it.[70][69]
The critic Bao Dong believed that the rationality of Hu's literary and artistic conception from Kant's philosophy is worthy of further discussion.[34]
Literature
Hu's On the Paramitality in Literature is a work on the study of rhymes in Chinese classical literature, his doctoral dissertation. Professor Zhao Yifan of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences mentioned in the preface of the book that On the Paramitality in Literature is an unfinished project, because it is an unseen, important, chaotic, and difficult subject, and its introduction of the Buddhist concept of "Pāramitā" into literary theory was questioned.[13]: 1–2 [20][1]
Professor Gao Minglu put forward different opinions on On the Paramitality in Literature. He believed the concept of the "other side," Pāramitā, is too easy to think of as the ultimate concern[note 1][note 2] in Christian spirit and Western classical philosophy; at the same time, it is difficult to get rid of the traditional way of thinking of the binary opposition between "reality" and the "other side" in the West.
[33]: 56
Note
^The ultimate concern of Western classical philosophy and theology points to the sacred world of divinity on the other side, so as to transcend the limited life of reality. Paul Tillich, an existentialist philosopher who has made great contributions in the field of philosophy and theology, is the representative figure who explores the ultimate concern.[71][72]
^The ultimate concern of Buddhism is to surpass the reality of life and reach the final state of "Tathatā" where everything is "Śūnyatā". The ultimate concern of ancient Chinese philosophy regards morality as noble and more important than life. The ultimate support of human spiritual world is to realize eternal and immortal life with the help of the textualization of spirit.[73]
^ ab"Index of Plastic Arts Theory". Beijing: Renmin University of China. 2001. ((cite journal)): Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
^ abWang Huangsheng (16 February 1997). "The Transiency of Cultural Power——Reading Hu Zhiying". Jiangsu Art Monthly. Jiangsu Fine arts Publisher House. Archived from the original on 2020-06-10. Hu Zhiying got himself into trouble with his brilliant paper About the Transiency of Art, and the mere presentation of his personal meditation was considered a challenge to the so-called authority.
^ abHu Zhiying (2011). Chronology, A Collection of Works by Hu Zhiying (Chinese-English). Fuzhou: Haifeng Publishing House. p. 225. His graduation thesis About the Transiency of Art (completed according to his plan of study) was negated by Chi Ke, director of the Theory Teaching and Research Section of Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, who put a political label on it. He was denied the chance to defend his thesis and eventually fail to acquire the diploma and the master's degree certificate. At that time, young teachers (including those of the Theory Teaching and Research Section), postgraduates who had finished their programme and those who were still studying at Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts jointly expressed their opinion to the Academy authorities and authorities at a higher level responsible for the work concerned that academic freedom should be respected and learning should not be confused with administration. (The full text of About the Transiency of Art was published in Northern Art, journal of Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts in 2001. The title of his thesis was included in the Index of Theory of Plastic Art of 2001 by Center of Data from Newspapers and Magazines of Renmin University of China.)
^Hu Zhiying (10 October 2001). 泛論馬克思主義作為一種理想主義之意義——兼及中國問題的思考. zh:中國文化月刊, Chinese Culture Monthly. Taiwan: 中央研究院 數位文化中心, 典藏臺灣, 數位典藏與數位學習聯合目錄, and Digital Taiwan─ Culture & Nature. 259 (10): 31-46. Archived from the original on 12 April 2020. Retrieved 4 October 2020.
^ ab"Hu Zhiying". South China Normal University. Archived from the original on 2021-05-19. Retrieved 2021-05-19.
^ abRobin Peckham (2010). "HU ZHIYING: THE FIFTH ELEPHANT?". LEAP. No. 2. Hefei: Anhui Provincial Federation of Literary and Art Circles. pp. 58–61. ISSN1003-6865.
^Wang Huangsheng (1997). "The Transiency of Cultural Power——Reading Hu Zhiying". Jiangsu Art Monthly. Nanjing: Jiangsu Fine Arts Publishing House (2). ISSN1005-6890. In his recent works, we often see symbols from landscape paintings of the Southern Song Dynasty, even those obviously from Ma Yuan's Walking While Singing ("Ta Ge Tu"), folk color composition of red, black, gold and silver, folk materials of lacquering, and loca abstract elements with strong expressiveness of brush and ink; hence perhaps we can classify them among eastern style cultural images. However, the problem is not so simple and clear. When we take something as the basis for our absorption and regrouping, the most difficult problem we meet is perhaps our suspicion about this basis, and we become hesitative and perplexed in our absorption and regrouping. Maybe it is a process of consciousness, and also a process of the emergence and development of culture. Hu Zhiying attaches importance to the process of consciousness and represents the state of culture through it. So in his paintings, consciousness is unfolded layer after layer and cultural images are displayed one after another; questioning, suspecting and colliding become the cultural consciousness itself.
^ abcGao Minglu (2017). "Freedom of a Lonely Passenger". Gallery. No. 226. Guangzhou: Lingnan Fine Arts Publishing House. pp. 50–53.
^ abcBao Dong (2010). "The Sublime Aesthetics of Hu Zhiying". Poetry Circle. No. 6. Harbin: Heilongjiang Provincial Federation of Literary and Art Circles. pp. 33–36. ISSN1674-9413. The concept of "reality" is even not considered in his works. For Hu Zhiying, "reality" is nothing but another word for "illusion", and the true destination of art is Paramitality (Jenseitigkeit). The term that comes from Kantian Philosophy implies the existence of the unknowable thing-in-itself and thus provides us with a transcendent viewpoint and makes it possible for us to get away from the world of experience, i.e., the phenomenal world.
^Bowker, John, ed. (2000), "Tillich, Paul Johannes Oskar", The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions, Oxford Reference Online, Oxford University Press.
