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Remembrance Series

Maker Chuang Che (b. 1934, Beijing, China)

Dateca. 1965

MediumInk and watercolor and mixed media collage on white painted canvas

Dimensionsoverall: 44 1/2 in. x 30 in. (113 cm x 76.2 cm)

Credit LineGift of Harriet C. Mills (Class of 1941)

Object number2013.53

Status

Not on view

RightsCopyright is retained in accordance with U.S. Copyright laws

Photo creditDavis Museum at Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA

More Information

Object Label

Two pieces of paper, one vertical in bold yellow and one horizontal in beige, divide the canvas. Likely cotton paper made in Puli, Taiwan, for Japanese shoji screens, the diaphanous rectangles reveal the texture of the canvas beneath them. Five Chinese characters in a style hovering between running and cursive script dominate the center of the collage, mirroring the abstract ink blotches at the bottom of the page. They cry out: “How I’m alone, so heartbroken in this endless grief!”—a line of a poem by the former Southern Tang monarch Li Yu 李煜 (reigned 961-975), as he reminisced about his fallen kingdom after becoming a captive. The artist’s signature hovers just under the poetry. As a son of the eminent Chinese art historian and calligrapher Chuang Yen 莊嚴 (pinyin: Zhuang Yan, 1899-1980), Che started to practice Chinese calligraphy at an early age. In 1958, after graduating from the National Taiwan Normal University with an art major, he joined the Fifth Moon Painting Group of Taiwan, which looked to American Abstract Expressionism as an inspiration. In Remembrance Series, Che synthesizes abstraction with Chinese calligraphy and explores his deep connection with his homeland.