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Today is August 18, 2021. My name is Ann Shi. And here we're interviewing Mr. Arnold Chang on behalf of

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the Houston Asian American Archive at Rice University. Thank you so much, Arnold, for joining us today. It's an honor to be with you and I am looking forward to an interesting conversation. Wonderful!

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To start, we’re starting from the very beginning of your existence. Can you tell us when and where were you born? I was born on February 19, 1954, in Mount Sinai Hospital on the

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Upper East Side of Manhattan, New York City. Thank you for so much details. And can you tell us a little bit about your family history and how they made it to the US?

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Sure. Well, my parents were both born and raised in China. My mother has an interesting backstory because she was half Chinese and half Scottish.

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So my maternal grandmother was a Scot. If you want, I can show you some images. So my maternal grandmother, as I was saying, was

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actually born in Scotland. And her name was Mary Brown Brooks. And she met my grandfather when he was studying

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in Edinburgh. And then they got married, and he actually — then they went back to China. So it's very unusual situation back in those days for

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interracial marriage, and then for her to actually move back to China. And so my mother was born in China. My father was also born in China, they met back in China, but were actually — my father came to the US

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to study at Cornell University, and they were actually married in the US. So let's see if I can — okay. So here, here are my

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parents, Gerard and Sheila Chang, that's their wedding picture. So see, she was, you know, half Scottish, half Chinese and spoke flawless unaccented English, because she was brought up in international

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schools, and really — her Chinese — spoken Chinese was good. She spoke several dialects, wasn't that literate in Chinese because she learned mainly in English, and was an English major, and so forth.

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So they made an interesting couple, and they actually didn't get married ‘till my mother came, after 1949 when the communists took over.

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Just before that, she managed to get on the last boat, to the US, and my father had been studying in Cornell, and he went back to Shanghai and they met up there.

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And then he came back to the US and eventually they got married in America. So that's the beginning of where we start in this country. So unlike other, I guess, first-generation immigrants, one

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of the — for Chinese immigrants in particular, one of the advantages, I think, was that my mother was already fluent in English. So they were able to negotiate and navigate things in a little bit different

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way. My father was an engineer. And he continued to work as an engineer; but also he wasn't particularly fond of that and they ended up

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— whoops, sorry — ended up... Oh, here's my mother. Had to show some of the — she was interested in— very capable woman, she made her own clothes.

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I don't know if she made all of these but she had some beautiful Chinese dresses and outfits. And when they had their restaurant, she wore a qipao every night to, you know, act as

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kind of a hostess for the restaurant. And because she spoke English perfectly, it was, you know, she had an advantage. So they actually in… here's in later years, she's still looking pretty good.

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So this is, this is my mom and my two brothers and I. I'm not letting you ask questions, but I thought this is just as well. So, we grew up in New York City.

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That's me at about age 10. And you can see I'm a New Yorker from top to toe, totally, very Americanized. And I think that's a, that's an important part of the story is that generation,

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my parents' generation, like other immigrants of the time, I mean, that the — I think the emphasis was on assimilating, becoming Americans. Coming to America in order to leave behind a lot

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of what was, at that time, very troublesome in China, with the revolution, and the communist takeover, and so on, and so forth. And they really wanted their children to become

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assimilated into American culture. And I think that's something that immigrants from all different places share that, at that particular time. On the other hand, we were not really

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exposed to Chinese culture. And I think, you know, now as — I think people have a different idea. We didn't speak Chinese at home. Also, my — Mary Brown Brooks,

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my grandmother came to the United States in-just before I was born. She came I think, in 1953, I was born in '54. And she stayed with us.

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Unfortunately, left her husband behind in China. That's a whole 'nother story. But again, not a completely unusual experience for people

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to be separated like this. So both my — I only met my one grandmother, the Scottish grandmother; and my other three grandparents, I never had an opportunity to meet.

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So, you know, that I think that's the backstory to everything that, that I continue, you know... As I grew up, I was — we grew up very much, you know, as New

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York kids. And that's... Yeah, that's where we start. Well, thank you so much for sharing those wonderful pictures. And we're very lucky and privileged to be able

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to archive these unique memories. Can you share a little bit more about your grandparents on your mother's side; as interracial marriages were very unusual back then, as you pointed out, were there any resistance about your

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parents getting married because of their racial identities? Well, you know, I think, as I said, and I think this also is true of so many immigrants at the time is that — my, even though I grew up, really my

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maternal grandmother was the one who pretty much took care of me, because both my parents were working. My mom was amazing. She was working full-time from even before I

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was born, and my father was working full-time. So he had an engineering job, and then they opened a restaurant. And so, you know, always working. And we had a housekeeper who was an Irish, an old

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lady who was Irish, who I don't really remember very well. Because then my grandmother came, and she pretty much took care of me. But yes, I'm sure you know — but my point was that in those days, they never

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talked about it. You know, if I knew then what I know now, I would have asked a lot more questions. But as a kid, you don't really, you don't really know what to ask.

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And I think about it, it was an extraordinary experience that this little Scottish lady married a Chinese person, I'm sure there was a — it wasn't a popular decision, and I think from both sides.

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And my mother being Eurasian, she certainly suffered a lot of prejudice also from both sides, from, you know, from the Chinese

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side of course, and also from the Western side, where you know, in those days, it was, she was just — I think at a certain amount of — felt a bit ashamed of being, you know, half-half.

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And now hopefully, there's more of a sense of how this could be an advantage. And then as the next generation, we are also obviously, technically three quarters Chinese but

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also have Caucasian, one quarter Caucasian. So you know, we are the next stage of that development, which I guess in our family, it was relatively early, starting with my grandparents' generation.

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So I think there are a lot of young Americans who have a kind of bicultural or mixed her-ethnic heritage nowadays that are sort of, it's something that's much more out in the open and

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embraced, hopefully by the majority of people. But it — for my mother, I think was very hard. She did write a memoir, and mentions a lot about how it was very tough for her growing up in China.

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And as far as what my father's family thought about them getting married, I really have no idea because — so we were not, I never met my other

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grandparents. Wow, thank you for sharing! That's me in high school. Wow! Definitely that's a lot of memories . Can you take — can you take us back into your

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memories growing up as a New York kid? What was the neighborhood like? Or what was growing up as an Asian kid in the neighborhood like?

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Well, you know, I'm very grateful that I grew up in New York City, which is such a cosmopolitan place. And, you know, we grew up — we didn't — unlike a lot of Chinese immigrants, we were not the sort of

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Chinatown kids, we didn't grow up in Chinatown. We were Upper East Side, we, you know, we didn't — we were — my parents were from Shanghai area. And so it was a little, it wasn't the Cantonese experience or

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the standard, or typical Chinatown experience. So we were really not aware of being Chinese in particular.

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We were just kids and went to public school in New York City, which was very diverse, we had all kinds of kids. So I didn't feel a great deal of prejudice growing up.

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But, in fact, it was maybe because of that that I took an interest later in my Chinese heritage, because we didn't grow up having to go to Chinese school or any of that kind of thing.

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And we just fit in with our classmates. So you can see I went to the Bronx High School of Science, which is one of these schools that you have to take a

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special exam to get into, and it would focus on math and science. And I think I really did not enjoy the Bronx High School of Science and perhaps that's why I ended up in the arts and humanities. Oh, by the

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way, this was photos of my parents' restaurant in the Upper East Side. So even in the restaurant business, they were, it was one of the first upscale Chinese restaurants.

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It wasn't the kind of chop suey, chow mein joint. It was called the Shanghai East and was quite popular. And because my father was very artistically oriented, and an engineer, he

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designed the whole place and it was very attractive, with a fountain in the front and these Chinese embroideries on the wall with mother of pearl frames, or mother of pearl inlaid wooden frames.

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And it is one of the nicest kind of Chinese restaurants of the time. And it was very popular. So, you know, when you say that, as a Chinese person

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that your parents were in the restaurant business, it means different things depending on where their restaurant was and who their clientele was. This was, you know, Upper East Side. A lot of, you know, successful people, some

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famous people came. And so again, that — and I think my father's artistic sensibilities were also something

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I inherited. And just to make a quick Houston connection. In the 70’s, they moved to Houston, Texas. And they opened in the original Galleria.

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And you can see some of the same decor they had brought with them from New York, and they had another successful number of years in Houston. During the time the Houston Galleria restaurant opened, was the one in New York still open, or that

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completely moved over to Houston? Yes, they completed — so that was in the seven, early 70’s, I think ‘73 or so. So all when we were all off to college and moving on with our lives, they moved.

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They closed the restaurant in New York, moved upstate New York briefly, and then decided to move to a fresh location, and decided on Houston, Texas. So I was already in,

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probably in college at this time, when they opened this place. And my older brother helped in the restaurant, and he still lives in Houston. And he's a commercial realtor in Houston, Texas still, so I

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do have some connection with Houston. That's wonderful. Thank you so much. To unwind a little bit, um, can you also tell us a little bit

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about your earliest memories of, from childhood growing up in New York, particularly on the Upper East Side? Well, so many memories, um... Basically, I mean, it's hard to pick out specific memories.

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But I can say this, that when you grow up as a kid in New York City, you see the best of everything and the worst of everything. Sometimes within blocks of each other, sometimes within, you know,

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minutes of one another, you see something great and something horrible. I feel like it's tough to survive in New York City; but if you can survive in New York City, you can pretty much go anywhere

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and manage to survive. So I guess that's what we learned growing up was survival. Also, because both my parents work full-time, sometimes

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at various times, more than two jobs at a time, we had a lot of freedom as three brothers growing up with just our Scottish grandmother to try to take care of us.

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So we were very, very independent from an early age. And I think growing up in New York City really taught me some good survival skills, which have helped me throughout my entire life, no matter what I do.

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And what was the demographics like, on the Upper East Side back then? Well, I think the Upper East Side, you know, New York then and now is, was very much — there were lots of different areas that were based

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largely on, I would say, probably based more on income than other things. So where we grew up in, I think, it was mostly quite mixed, but mostly white people of various types.

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We didn't even think about it so much in those terms. I was just recently looking at a photo of my class photo from seventh grade, and I was really impressed with how diverse the

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population of students were in public school. You know, a lot of black kids and a lot of white kids, and a lot of big kids and a lot of little kids, a couple of Asians, and so we didn't really feel — I don't think we were particularly

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cognizant of those kinds of issues. And I think if I had grown up in Chinatown, or in other communities within New York, it might have been more obvious that there

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were these different communities. But we were pretty much — didn't involve ourselves much with I mean, you know, Asian

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community, per se. And because my Scottish grandmother was there, and didn't speak Chinese really, we all spoke English at home. My two older brothers never learned Chinese.

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I had to learn Chinese in college. And, you know, I wish I learned started earlier, because it's pretty hard to learn at a later age.

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But that's the way it was. And even though my parents had this wonderful Chinese restaurant, when we were kids, we didn't eat Chinese food. So, very, I think

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it's kind of unusual. But I think there were, there would be a lot of kids, Asian American kids, who can relate to that kind of mindset even now.

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Although I think now it's much more... I think there's much more of an effort to embrace one's roots, and I think the emphasis on being bilingual is probably, I

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mean, people understand the benefits of that, and being bicultural, I think it's nothing to be ashamed of. I think in a lot of cases, younger generations are more

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aware that it's a positive thing. Yeah, definitely. And to follow up on the restaurant business your parents run, did you have — did you and your brothers have to help out at the restaurant after school?

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That's actually a good question. We did not. We never worked in the — well, up until later, when they moved

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to Houston, in the, that's in the 70s. So we're already, you know, college age or older. We did — I actually, when I got married, I got married early in 1976, I met my wife in

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Taiwan. We were married in Taiwan. That's another part of the story. But we actually moved to Houston and worked there for a summer before I started graduate school.

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And then my older brother — as I said, all of us, at one point or another, worked at the restaurant in Houston. But none of us growing up ever worked in the restaurant in Manhattan.

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But when we were kids, I was 15 to — 15, let's say I was 15, my other brother Ronald was probably 17, and Donald was 18.

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We actually ran our own restaurant in the summers on Fire Island, which is a summer resort kind of place, where we actually ran a luncheonette. And people think it was like a hotdog stand.

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No, we actually had a restaurant that the three of us, with help from all of our friends, we ran this, you know, with backing from our

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parents, we bought a little restaurant. This was my older brother's idea because he used to go to Fire Island for the summers. And this luncheonette became available.

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And we bought it and actually ran it for several summers. So one thing I learned there was that restaurant work is really hard. And that's not something that I looked forward to

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doing. So I had to figure out a way to earn a living without having to work so hard. But it, I suppose it did give us an appreciation of what our parents had been through. So as I said, we were very independent.

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And really, I started off, you know, thinking I was just going to be a dishwasher, but we all ended up learning how to cook. And this was not a Chinese restaurant. This was a, like

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hamburgers and breakfasts and, like, more like a coffee shop kind of deal. And we stayed open on weekends, from up until like 3 a. m. sometimes, on Fridays and Saturday nights.

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So we had three shifts, at the end of the late night shift, we would meet up with the early morning shift coming in to set up for the whole day. So it was like really

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crazy. And because there were three brothers, it worked out pretty well, because each of us kind of took a shift. And so we didn't have to deal with each other so much. But yeah, I mean, it was a real, it was no joke.

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It was real hard work. And so, you know, we grow, grew up with a good work ethic. Yeah, that's definitely a virtue to grow up so independently. Can you also share some of the food or recipes

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that you grew up eating? And if you guys ate at the restaurant after… ? We all, as I said, we almost never ate Chinese food. My mom was a supermom, and because she grew up,

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even in China, you know, when she was in China, she had — Her father was fairly prominent. He was an official, but connected with the Kuomintang, the KMT side.

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So when things changed, that wasn't a good thing. But growing up, it was, as, you know, she was, she had a pretty comfortable — well she had went through rough times, because of the Sino-Japanese war and all of that.

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But during the good time, she was, she had, they always had servants and things like that. And she was educated in international schools, Canadian school and so forth.

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So that's why her English was good. And she learned to cook more in Western style, but also Chinese. And so we grew up — again, because my grandmother was there — we ate pretty much American food, whatever that is.

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And we rarely ate at the restaurant, if ever. So my mom would... Well, her typical day was this: three of us went to school in the morning, she would get up and fix us breakfast,

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and give us, fix us lunches to take to school with us. Then she would go back to sleep for a little while, then she would get up and then go to the restaurant to work for the lunch shift.

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And then she would come back at about four o'clock, and cook us dinner every night. And then go back to the restaurant and work till like 9 or 10 o'clock. My father in the meantime, at one point,

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had had a full-time job and then went to the restaurant. But later on, he was focused on the restaurant and then he basically worked all the time. So it was interesting. It was interesting. So in terms of what we ate, I don't know.

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We ate American food basically, and sometimes on a bad day, TV dinners. But they, mainly my mom was able to cook for us every night. This was, actually she was quite remarkable in that regard, and then go back to work.

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So we had a housekeeper for a while and then we had my grandmother who didn't know how to cook. And so my, basically my mom was taking care of the three boys and

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her mother, in a sense. And the sad part, of course, is that my grandmother never saw her husband again. So she stayed in America from '53 until her death.

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Wow, thank you for sharing. And what were some of the childhood games you remember playing with your two older brothers or your neighborhood kids?

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Oh, yeah, well, we were typical New York kids, played out on the street and in school and school yards. And basically, you know, there wasn't internet, there wasn't

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all this distraction. You have to find it, kind of find your own things to do. So I remember in particular, my older brother Donald

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was very outgoing and athletic, and they used to play hockey, roller hockey, so with roller skates, and played hockey in the street, and they would sort of set up garbage cans.

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And they would skate back and forth and the cars would have to wait for them, you know, to clear up. These were really quite interesting. e played all those kinds of things.

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We did handball and basketball and you know, just totally American stuff... And fought a lot. Great, thank you for sharing.

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And you mentioned that your mother doesn't speak Chinese, but you have a Chinese name Zhang Hong and... My mother spoke Chinese, she didn't, she wasn't very literate in terms of reading and

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writing. But she spoke really well, Mandarin Chinese, Shanghainese. And my Chinese name Zhang Hong comes from my father. So, you

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know, we still have a lot of relatives in Taiwan and in the mainland. And later on, gradually, a lot of them started to come out, when after things opened up a bit, so.

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But growing up, we were actually totally shut off from China, we — they couldn't even communicate and didn't even know what was going on for quite some time, couldn't even write letters I recall.

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So we were really disconnected from the Chinese side, almost completely. And that's why I say it was very sad for my grandmother who never saw her husband again. Yeah,

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very much indeed. And what are some of the family values that your parents and grandparents emphasized during your upbringing? Can you tell us about the family values that your

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parents or your grandparents emphasized? Family values? Well, like all Asian parents, education, hard work. But like all American kids, we valued

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independence and freedom. So somehow, we had to make that work. And, you know, because my father wasn't around that much, he was always working.

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His personal influence was not that great. My mother was the one who really spent a lot of time with us, took us on trips, went to all the school plays and events.

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My father was really not that much a part of our day-to-day lives. Because if you think about it, the restaurant business is such that when you have, like as a kid, when you have vacations,

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when there's a holiday or something, you don't have to go to school, but that's when the restaurant is the busiest. So, you know, it wasn't like we could take family vacations together — my mother would take us on vacation from time to time.

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And I have, yeah, we had a good time, we had a nice time growing up. But in terms of values, it was nothing hard and fast.

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It was just like, do your best. But because we were so much on our own, I think we had to figure out a lot of things for ourselves. And I don't think that's necessarily a bad idea.

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It wasn't, there wasn't any kind of tiger mom situation or anything like that; it was like, you know, to do your best and work hard. That's about it. And during your upbringing, has there been any time that you had differences

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or conflicts with your parents due to the different values as first and second generations? Oh, of course. Well, I actually got along pretty well, because I was the youngest of three.

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So I think my middle brother Ronald was, had got the worst of it because he was a little bit more rebellious. And, sort of, because of personality-wise, also, I think he and my father kind of were always at

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loggerheads. They didn't kind of agree on things and, you know, absolutely. Remember we were growing up in the 60s and the 70s. So there were issues of drugs, there were issues

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of, you know, sex. And you know, I mean, it was a period of when America was just like going nuts, and the political situation with the Vietnam War and so forth, and

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so there were bound to be issues. But I kind of kept my head down and watched what my two other older brothers were doing and try to avoid getting in trouble, and tried to learn from their experience.

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I also did well in school. So that was, that kept me, you know, basically out of trouble. But as far as — it was interesting because I'm

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the one who ended up becoming interested in China, and Chinese heritage and Chinese culture. And in, as I grew up in later times, I, because of

00:36:13.130 - 00:36:34.380

that, I was a little bit, grew a little bit closer to my father than my other two brothers. And did you grow up with any spirituality or religion? No. Basically, no, this is a simple answer.

00:36:35.160 - 00:36:52.820

Um, we kind of... Yeah, kind of never really. I think at some point, when we were little, they sent us to Sunday school and all that.

00:36:53.180 - 00:37:11.730

And that's not a subject that we really got into very much. But I remember going to Sunday school and really finding it to be quite ridiculous, because what they would do is they would tell Bible stories, and just, you know,

00:37:11.730 - 00:37:26.580

read about this, and that. And I was a little bit more of a thinker, and I would have been happy, I think, even as a young child, to have engaged

00:37:26.580 - 00:37:41.180

in questions about spirituality and the universe, and, you know, real deep issues of why we're here and all that. I didn't want, I didn't need to hear stories about what was going on in biblical

00:37:41.180 - 00:37:55.590

times, which didn't really seem to get to the essence. So I grew up, you know, interested in religion. And, you know, did my own study of it — and again, because we were talking the 60s, and the 70s.

00:37:55.590 - 00:38:12.470

So this was a time... actually, it's interesting. I put this photo on up now, because 1963 was the first time I became exposed to Chinese art, because there was an exhibition of

00:38:12.770 - 00:38:23.540

Zhang Daqian, who is, of course, the great 20th century master. And he was actually had a one-man show in this gallery, this Western gallery on 67th Street which

00:38:23.540 - 00:38:35.350

was very near where we lived and very near the restaurant. And when I saw that exhibition, this — my father actually took me to this exhibition. So this ties in, this is sort of my origin story.

00:38:35.710 - 00:38:50.750

So every time when people ask me, you know how I got to — it comes back to 1963 and this exhibition, because my father took me — just me — to the show. And it was one of the few things I can remember that

00:38:50.750 - 00:39:08.120

I did with my father, personally. And so there's all these issues of identity plus art, and all everything sort of came together, beginning here up, you know, that's in retrospect. You can look back and this is clearly where the rest of my

00:39:08.170 - 00:39:19.540

life all started. But if you think about what was going on in 1963, 1964, so I'm like 9, 10 years old, it was a pivotal period.

00:39:19.870 - 00:39:32.990

1963, you know, I see this Zhang Daqian exhibition, John F. Kennedy was assassinated; 1964, The Beatles come to America.

00:39:33.610 - 00:39:47.560

The '64, the World's Fair is in Queens and we used to go to — so all of this stuff is happening when I was 9 or 10 years old. And it

00:39:47.560 - 00:40:05.370

really started me thinking in various ways about all different kinds of things that I hadn't. Actually not, you know, looking back that's pretty young to be starting to think about these things, but that's where it all started.

00:40:05.540 - 00:40:21.610

So in the period that we grew up, a lot was happening in the world. And so in terms of religion, you know, we didn't go to church regularly, we didn't have a particular religious tradition; but I became, you know, thoroughly

00:40:21.610 - 00:40:33.290

spiritual from from a young age. And then, you know, you went through the period of the, with the Beatles, and all this stuff coming on.

00:40:33.290 - 00:40:46.060

And, you know, drugs entered the picture, and we started eastern religion, and transcendental meditation and Swami Satchidananda. All this stuff was going on, while we were growing up.

00:40:47.060 - 00:41:07.500

And I was, I think, more affected, probably in a good way, than my two brothers were; where I, you know, had, did my share of drugs, but it wasn't to escape, it was to explore deeper levels of consciousness.

00:41:07.760 - 00:41:23.280

And it sounds, you know, kind of pretentious; but really, that was what it was about. And, you know, it ties in with my love of art, and my

00:41:26.250 - 00:41:45.180

particular interest in Asian art, which was also combined with interest in eastern religion, and so on and so forth. Wow, thank you for taking us back into that time of history in the US as well. And I'm also wondering, since

00:41:45.650 - 00:42:04.280

you mentioned you went to Bronx High School of Science, which is an elite high school, and also your parents — you, like, turned into the arts during that period. Did you have any kind of discussion with your parents, as we all

00:42:04.280 - 00:42:16.030

know, Asian parents, particularly want their kids to become lawyers, doctors, and business people? Were there any part of that discussion? Right, that was, yeah, that's a good question.

00:42:16.950 - 00:42:33.230

And there were ongoing discussions about all aspects. But I should start by saying that, you know, when you were in New York City, I think now still, at a certain point in junior high school — middle school, they call it now, you took a

00:42:33.680 - 00:42:47.000

series of examinations for what they called specialized high schools. So you had Stuyvesant which is very well known now, Bronx Science, Brooklyn Tech,

00:42:48.460 - 00:43:02.550

Music and Art, and the performers' high — High School of Performing Arts, okay. So you could take tests to get to try to get into these schools.

00:43:02.700 - 00:43:16.300

And I remember that I took the test for — well, there's one test that is for Bronx Science and Stuyvesant, it's a more academic career kind of, math- and science-oriented.

00:43:16.950 - 00:43:31.290

And then I also I took that test and was accepted into Bronx Science. And, but I also took the— acceptance test for Music and Art, with an interest in art, because I always was interested in art.

00:43:31.690 - 00:43:47.280

And I also got into Music and Art. So there really wasn't much discussion with my parents. And they might, you know, my father probably wasn't really aware

00:43:47.700 - 00:44:01.070

of the consequences, or, you know, wasn't that involved in the process. But my mother said, you know, "Do what you think is right.'' And I said, you know, that's a pretty hard decision for a

00:44:01.070 - 00:44:17.330

young person. But I thought about it. And because Bronx Science had a much better academic reputation, I did what I thought was the right thing, and decided not to go to Music and Art, but to go to Bronx Science, because I

00:44:17.410 - 00:44:31.310

thought it would give me better, you know, better education, and set me up better for the future. Many of my closest friends went to Music and Art, and

00:44:31.310 - 00:44:49.260

most of them actually in music rather than art. So most of my close friends were musicians. And I went to Bronx Science and really did not like it. And the reason being that, even though I

00:44:49.260 - 00:45:02.850

was reasonably good in math and science, it wasn't my real interest. And I was surrounded by kids who were, you know, much more serious about...

00:45:06.330 - 00:45:20.310

you could call them geeks or whatever. But they were much more interested in science and math, and some of them even passionate about it. So they were taking things like astro-geophysics, and computer

00:45:20.310 - 00:45:35.720

programming, and all this kind of stuff, which was, at the time, Bronx Science offered these incredible electives. But I was taking things like creative writing and art. So I realized that, you know I got through it, no problem.

00:45:35.720 - 00:45:51.110

But I also felt that the instruction there, surprisingly, was pretty poor. I didn't think the teachers were that good. And I, my feeling was, you start off with the brightest kids, you're going to end up with

00:45:51.110 - 00:46:02.700

the brightest kids. So I wasn't impressed at all. And gradually, I kind of set my heart on doing things differently.

00:46:02.700 - 00:46:12.980

You asked about how my parents reacted to that. When I actually started off in the University of Colorado where I went in Boulder, as a

00:46:12.980 - 00:46:28.540

studio art major. And, you know, I think my parents were never very — particularly my father was not pleased with the idea of going into the arts.

00:46:28.610 - 00:46:42.700

And what, you know, like all Asian parents, and most parents, wanted me to do something more practical, and, you know, do art as a hobby. They also do it as a hobby; but you have to have a

00:46:43.260 - 00:46:57.710

— and I think this is true today. I meet so many young college students who are in the same position, who are really passionate about the arts, but they're majoring in something else, to please their parents, and their — but

00:46:57.950 - 00:47:11.950

really, their interest is in the arts. And it was like that now. Part of the story I didn't tell was that my father, when he was young, he was very interested in photography back

00:47:11.950 - 00:47:27.260

in China. And he was a very good photographer, and even apparently won, you know, some contests and things like that. And he loves photography. But his father said to him, you know, "This is a waste of time and

00:47:27.260 - 00:47:43.500

money, and you have to do something practical." Right? So he went into engineering, got a master's degree from Cornell, and absolutely hated it. And so, you know, when I got this

00:47:43.530 - 00:48:02.140

feedback from my parents, I said, you know, just — or I don't know, if I actually said it, but what I was thinking was, "Look, you guys came here to this country to make a better situation for your children.

00:48:02.890 - 00:48:15.130

And what does that mean? You know, my dad was not able to pursue his passion in photography and had to do other things and work like a dog. And I greatly respect that.

00:48:15.130 - 00:48:25.360

And my mom and dad are both working all the time, to give us a better life. So what is a better life? Right?" So that and the American

00:48:25.360 - 00:48:38.560

side of me is saying, you know, you try to find something you're passionate about and go for it. And I really felt that if I didn't go for it, I'm not only, you know,

00:48:40.960 - 00:48:57.350

I'll not only have regrets for myself, but I feel like I not only let myself down, but I even let my father down, even though he didn't consciously see it that way. If you know what I'm saying. It's like he gave me an opportunity that he didn't have,

00:48:57.810 - 00:49:12.130

and to not take it would have been wrong. And so I didn't have any prob– trouble having different opinions from my parents. I was very strong-willed in that

00:49:12.130 - 00:49:28.260

sense. And I think at the end, I mean, at the end of the day, I was fortunate enough to have it pay off. And I got away with it. But I don't know that, you know,

00:49:28.500 - 00:49:40.760

things could have gone another way. And maybe I was foolish to try to do something in the arts, but I found a way that would allow me to explore and develop my passion and still

00:49:41.500 - 00:49:54.890

survive and make a living. So that was a good question. And that's a really inspiring answer as well, I'm sure for both first and second generations.

00:49:55.550 - 00:50:08.230

And as we are slowly getting onto your trajectory of life in the arts, which started from the exhibition in 1963 of Zhang Daqian.

00:50:08.230 - 00:50:27.010

Can you tell us more about this exhibition? Well, okay, so as I said, my father took me to this exhibition and I had never really been exposed to Chinese art. Like we had, I think, in our home, we had one or two, you know,

00:50:27.010 - 00:50:35.930

mediocre paintings hanging on the wall, never paid too much attention. But I went to see the show. And I'd always liked dabbling, since I was a really little

00:50:35.930 - 00:50:50.790

kid, I always liked dabbling in art. I would take my crayons or whatever, and just get lost in the process of drawing. I never took official art lessons or anything, but I just loved

00:50:51.950 - 00:51:11.040

the getting, just letting myself disappear into drawing and painting and stuff like that. And that I felt that there was a — it took me to a different place. And that place is, it felt like home, that felt like who

00:51:11.040 - 00:51:23.260

I was — the little kid. Even now when I do my work, I feel like I'm connected to that little kid who sat on the floor with pencils and crayons and just scribbled. So when I saw this

00:51:23.400 - 00:51:40.260

exhibition by Zhang Daqian in 1963. At that time, he was living in Carmel, California. And he is a real pivotal figure in Chinese art, because he had, he came from a traditional Chinese

00:51:40.320 - 00:51:57.030

painting background, but later in life developed a very unique, semi-abstract style. And he was doing these wonderful landscapes with bright colors. And he was a very interesting character because

00:51:58.380 - 00:52:12.120

he dressed up in traditional garb and was very charismatic. Anybody who knows about Chinese painting will know about Zhang Daqian. Even, he's one of the most famous

00:52:12.820 - 00:52:29.350

Chinese artists, so even people, any Chinese will have heard the name Zhang Daqian. And he also did paintings like this, this giant Lotus painting on six panels, a huge painting with broad, energetic, bold strokes.

00:52:29.790 - 00:52:49.620

And this kind of thing blew me away, because I had never seen anything quite like it. And ironically, this painting later on, when I was at Sotheby's, and I was able to actually sell this painting, which had been acquired in that

00:52:49.670 - 00:53:00.960

1963 exhibition by the owner of Reader's Digest magazine, which you may not have heard of; but it was at the time was a very well known periodical.

00:53:00.960 - 00:53:14.420

And they bought it for their corporate collection. And years later, when I was at Sotheby's in the 80s, they decided to sell it. And I couldn't believe it, because this was a painting that I saw when I was nine

00:53:14.420 - 00:53:28.300

years old. Um, so Zhang Daqian has a very special place in my heart. And then over the years, I handled, you know, hundreds of paintings by Zhang Daqian.

00:53:28.350 - 00:53:41.660

And he was also known as a forger. So he's a very interesting character. And that's a whole 'nother lecture or series of lectures about his life and his work.

00:53:41.810 - 00:53:58.610

But all I can say is that it affected me, at a young age, like nothing else really had. And it's, I can say that that, again, was a stepping stone, that's what really put me on the path that I ended up pursuing.

00:53:59.510 - 00:54:16.950

So tied up with identity, tied up with my relationship with my father, tied up with my love of art, and so forth. So I went to University of Colorado, to study studio art, and what I found then and we can — when we talk more

00:54:16.950 - 00:54:30.900

about my own work, we can talk about this more fully — but what I realized at the time — you have to take into account what was going on — at that time, when I was studying, supposedly studying studio art in college.

00:54:31.730 - 00:54:46.620

They never really taught you how to do anything. There wasn't, it wasn't like, I never really got a serious course in how to draw, how to paint. It was, everything was just be yourself, be creative, you know, be original.

00:54:47.230 - 00:54:59.560

And certainly Zhang Daqian was all of those things, but he had a basis for developing into a personal style. And when I started,

00:54:59.850 - 00:55:15.310

you know, I realized that there was a different approach to Chinese painting than there was to, you know, whatever it was — Western or whatever they were teaching back in the day. And that's why I got deeper into

00:55:15.350 - 00:55:32.360

Chinese painting. I got to meet him shortly before his death. Um, it turns out that his youngest daughter was

00:55:32.470 - 00:55:45.680

my classmate at UC Berkeley in grad school, also studying Chinese art history. And through her, I got the opportunity to meet him shortly before his death.

00:55:45.910 - 00:56:00.980

So it was quite, quite an honor. And really was a fabulous experience for me. Can you share some

00:56:00.980 - 00:56:20.260

more memories about this meeting, if that's okay? Well, he was — by this time he had moved to Taiwan. And, you know, I was already working at Sotheby's, so this was 1988 or so.

00:56:20.990 - 00:56:37.460

I'd already been working there for — I started — well, we can talk about the next time. I started my career at Sotheby's really in 1978, '79, and built up the Chinese painting market and

00:56:37.460 - 00:56:53.000

sold lots of Zhang Daqian paintings. Anyway, so because I had met his daughter in grad school, she went on, she returned to Taiwan to work in the Palace Museum in Taipei.

00:56:53.870 - 00:57:08.550

And I was going to Taiwan quite frequently, because that was part of my job. And she arranged the meeting to meet the great master. And I was thrilled.

00:57:09.260 - 00:57:26.220

So if it weren't for the daughter, I think it wouldn't have been that easy for me to meet him, because he was — by that point, he was kind of had — I will almost go as far as to say, kind of had “handlers.” Because,

00:57:26.710 - 00:57:44.050

you know, he was already in the sense a political, I won't say “pawn,” but he — one of the things about Zhang Daqian, he also left China when the communists took over. And he was feverishly anti-communist.

00:57:44.420 - 00:57:59.250

And so the Taiwan government was, you know, very supportive of him and arranged for him to go back to Taiwan and set up this place for him with gardens and all this. So I went to visit him.

00:58:01.300 - 00:58:13.830

And I think it was really because the daughter arranged it that I had access. And it was like having an audience with the pope or something. So you go there, and you wait for him in this little room.

00:58:14.130 - 00:58:25.850

And he comes down, he was really short. He was, you know, probably under five feet tall I think, very small, but he had this giant personality. And then my classmate

00:58:25.850 - 00:58:44.090

Sing, who was his youngest daughter, throughout the entire process, she stood — he came down and sat down — she stood next to him with a cup of tea. And she wasn't allowed to speak or anything.

00:58:44.220 - 00:58:56.830

It was like really, he was living like in the old times, and he was like the center of attention. And the child was, you know, was meant to

00:58:56.830 - 00:59:11.410

serve him. And it was kind of weird because she was my classmate. But we just had a little chat, and he showed me around and, you know, he had a Koi pond and it was a nice little garden, and it was just — I was kind of

00:59:11.940 - 00:59:25.130

starstruck in a way. But at least got a few photos and as I said, he didn't live, he only lived maybe half a year later beyond that.

00:59:25.130 - 00:59:40.720

So I was glad to have that chance. Wow, that's such a valuable experience. And remember he was almost blind towards his old days, he was later...

00:59:41.430 - 00:59:57.990

It's a funny photo — you can see he's wearing these glasses with thick lenses. So he was still painting and you could see it was really an effort. And you know, partly that accounts for his more abstract style,

00:59:58.190 - 01:00:11.460

because he couldn't do detailed work. But it was an effort. And at that time he was working on this huge painting that later — is now in the Palace Museum.

01:00:12.040 - 01:00:31.140

So yeah, it was quite an experience. And to continue talking about your journey with art, you spent one year in Taiwan during your junior year. And that's how you met Zhang Daqian — if that's right?

01:00:31.830 - 01:00:45.170

And can you tell us a little bit more about how… ? Sorry, I didn't meet him that year in Taiwan. I met him much later when I was already at Sotheby's.

01:00:45.980 - 01:01:02.790

So in Taiwan, I went for, you know, junior year abroad and studied in "Shi Da"— "Shi Fan Da Xue" , studied Chinese. Bear in mind that I didn't start learning Chinese till college.

01:01:04.460 - 01:01:18.260

So it was a lot of work. And I only spent one year in Taiwan, mainly studying Chinese and also studying paintings with a conservative

01:01:18.260 - 01:01:37.700

master there; and met my wife which was the most important thing. And then I came back to Boulder, Colorado to finish up my BA; and I finished a bit early, and then went back to Taiwan without really

01:01:40.200 - 01:01:52.630

having any expectations; but then got there and decided that I was going to marry my girlfriend. And so the rest is history there. That's a whole 'nother story.

01:01:52.850 - 01:02:11.540

But, um, yeah, so then we moved back to America, I came with my bride, and you asked about whether there were any conflicts with my parents. In fact, that was a big conflict.

01:02:12.680 - 01:02:29.140

Surprise, maybe surprisingly, that I decided to marry this girl in Taiwan, who they'd never met. And I was at the time, I was living with my aunt, who was my father's younger

01:02:29.770 - 01:02:45.490

sister. Okay, so she was the one who moved to Taiwan, most of his family stayed in the mainland. And, she, I — when I was, when I went to study in Taiwan, I was hoping to

01:02:45.490 - 01:02:59.530

have a typical, you know, study year abroad, live with a family and be forced to speak Chinese, and be immersed in the Chinese culture.

01:02:59.530 - 01:03:14.820

When I arrived in Taiwan, my aunt had already gotten in touch with the guy who is in charge of the program, and, you know, took — from her point of view, she was trying to be helpful.

01:03:15.330 - 01:03:29.620

But she said, "No, no, no, no, he can't live with some strangers. I have an apartment, he is going to stay with me in Taipei." And, you know, I didn't know what's going on. I didn't know that she'd already talked to him and set this whole

01:03:29.620 - 01:03:48.390

thing up. So I ended up living with my aunt, who spoke only English with me, which kind of defeated my whole purpose of going to Taiwan from here. And so she was instrumental in telling my father

01:03:49.650 - 01:04:04.320

that I shouldn't marry this girl because, you know, I don't know, she was a writer, and she had a great imagination. So she was making up all kinds of stories about how my

01:04:07.970 - 01:04:22.330

wife was, you know, a gold digger or something like that, you know, just totally crazy. And so my parents objected — my father in particular objected to me marrying.

01:04:22.840 - 01:04:35.980

And plus, I was very young, we were both super young, which that I can see is more of a justification. But in fact, it wasn't that complicated. You know, I met this girl.

01:04:37.140 - 01:04:52.650

We did fall in love, but I had told her from day one that it's very likely that I'm going to go back to America and you know, that'll be it. So I'm not leading you on or anything. And as it turned out, you know, six months later, I flew

01:04:52.650 - 01:05:12.570

back to Taiwan. But um, so that was actually, there was some tension there because they really didn't think that I should get married. And I have the American side of me came out again

01:05:12.890 - 01:05:26.330

and said, "Well, you know, if you want to disown me, you can disown me. But this is what I'm going to do." And as far as my — me and Jr-jye, my wife were concerned, it was like, "Look, she was in Taiwan.

01:05:26.330 - 01:05:42.120

Taiwan at that time was a fairly oppressive society. She couldn't just leave. She has a mindset of somebody who really ought to be — I felt ought to be in America, she

01:05:42.120 - 01:05:54.810

would do much better and prosper and enjoy her life better." And I said, "Look, so we'll get married, worse comes to worst, it doesn't work out, then we get divorced, no big deal." That was my attitude towards it.

01:05:55.170 - 01:06:08.840

And I, you know, that's how we took it. And I think in some ways, because we were so nonchalant about it, neither of us had built up expectations. And as a result, you know, we're still together, like, what, 46 years later or

01:06:08.840 - 01:06:22.590

something like that. So it worked out great. But yeah, that was actually more of a moment of tension than anything previous is, is ironically, when I was trying to

01:06:23.470 - 01:06:41.770

get closer to Chinese culture and Chinese heritage. So, you know, you never know how it's going to turn out. Yeah, that's such a beautiful love story of yours as well. And as we're jumping ahead a little bit, if that's okay.

01:06:42.400 - 01:06:56.310

So you and Jr-jye, your wife, has one son and two grandchildren. Yeah. And can you tell us a little bit about how you bring up your son?

01:06:56.460 - 01:07:11.160

And what kind of values that you try to instill him with as third generation? Good. That's a good question. Um, and it's a funny, funny situation.

01:07:12.640 - 01:07:27.050

I think I started off by saying, well, you know, the next generation is much more cognizant of the benefits of biculturalism, and bilingualism, and so on

01:07:27.050 - 01:07:43.160

and so forth. So, my wife, who's from Taiwan, of course, speaks good English. But, you know, we initially, you know, spoke mostly Chinese at home. And, in fact, when our son was born, we made a decision that we would,

01:07:43.690 - 01:07:57.790

you know, exclusively speak Chinese at home so that he would grow up speaking Chinese. And so when he was little, I think Chinese was his first language. And, so far so good.

01:07:58.590 - 01:08:14.380

Long story short, at some point in junior high school, he met a girl from, who had come from Shanghai. And at some point, she made fun of his Chinese.

01:08:17.330 - 01:08:34.540

And so from that moment on, he refuses — to this day, he's now in his 40-something — he refuses to speak Chinese. And he still understands.

01:08:34.950 - 01:08:46.550

His wife, I mean, my wife still speaks to him a lot in Chinese, he understands; but he literally refuses to speak Chinese. So what are you gonna do?

01:08:48.410 - 01:09:00.600

And then he married a Caucasian girl. And they're happily married. She's wonderful. She would love to learn Chinese. But because he doesn't speak Chinese, neither

01:09:01.020 - 01:09:13.560

do the grandkids. My wife does her best to try to talk to the grandkids in Chinese, but it's a real uphill battle. So I think that's — it doesn't,

01:09:14.060 - 01:09:31.620

it's still problematical even in the second and third generations, it's still problematical. And I guess, it depends on the personality of the kid. And you know, I don't begrudge my son

01:09:32.030 - 01:09:41.420

for, I think it's kind of weird, but it's okay. If he doesn't want to speak Chinese, that's fine. And of course, he's not particularly

01:09:41.420 - 01:09:58.480

interested in Chinese things. So he sees he's more, you know, more interested in exploring the Scottish side of our genealogy which is actually interesting, 'cause I don't know much about that side myself.

01:10:02.000 - 01:10:18.620

Yeah, that's really interesting. And I trust it does not — like not everyone has been as dedicated as you are in learning and investigating about your Chinese side of the culture and being so

01:10:18.910 - 01:10:36.930

dedicated to the heritage of ink painting? Well, I think, I guess, all I can say is, you know, to parents is… From my point of view, it's — I think it's not

01:10:36.930 - 01:10:53.220

a good idea to try to force it. I know a lot of Chinese American kids who are forced to go to Chinese school, and, you know, Chinese summer camp and this and that; and some of them

01:10:53.990 - 01:11:10.730

are, you know, happy with that; but some of them, I think, end up possibly resenting that they have to go to extra school and do extra. And it's not easy to learn Chinese, it's particularly not easy to do

01:11:10.730 - 01:11:24.270

it in Chinese school. I did, we did send our son to Chinese school for a short time. And, you know, it's also the way that they teach is not necessarily that professional, and they would

01:11:24.870 - 01:11:40.280

teach it as if they were teaching to, you know, people in Taiwan or in China. It's much harder to do, and my feeling, what my feeling was that that also created a resentment that

01:11:40.430 - 01:11:57.910

kind of backfires. The other possibility that I've seen is that the Chinese kids end up having kind of a split personality, where they learn to be Chinese at

01:11:57.910 - 01:12:09.020

home, and speak Chinese and act Chinese. But when they're around their friends, they're a completely different person. They're totally American.

01:12:09.890 - 01:12:23.440

And that, I think, can also be dangerous, because their parents think they're communicating. But in fact, the kids are largely in a completely different world, that's sort of

01:12:23.440 - 01:12:39.470

what I've seen. And I think that in some ways, is, you know, could be more of a problem later on. I don't know what you think. Thank you so much for sharing that.

01:12:40.680 - 01:12:51.680

And as we are seeing on the screen now, there's two ink masters C. C. Wang and James Cahill, if that's correct. Can you tell us… ?

01:12:52.230 - 01:13:04.010

James Cahill. Obviously, he's the white guy; and C. C. Wang. So I went to grad school. After my BA in

01:13:06.870 - 01:13:20.280

East Asian Studies and Chinese Language at Colorado, then I went off to grad school. So in between, I got married. And we were in Houston briefly. And then we went off to Berkeley, and I studied with the great James Cahill,

01:13:20.660 - 01:13:32.520

who then introduced me to the great C. C. Wang. So you know, it all kind of comes together. Interestingly, that exhibition that I pointed out in 1963, on Zhang

01:13:32.750 - 01:13:45.950

Daqian, there was a little brochure that came with the show when I saw it. And James Cahill had written the foreword to that,

01:13:46.720 - 01:13:59.390

he had written the introduction that's in the brochure. So it kind of came full circle. I had no idea who he was, until, you know, what I didn't realize, I didn't remember

01:13:59.840 - 01:14:09.980

that, that until later on. When I was studying with him, I went back and looked at that brochure, which I kept all these years, he had written about Zhang Daqian. So they were all friends.

01:14:10.900 - 01:14:26.220

And C. C. Wang, of course, was a friend of Zhang Daqian as well. So that's sort of how I got my specific training in Chinese art history. I got my master's degree from Berkeley and studied

01:14:27.470 - 01:14:39.210

with Cahill. So I learned, you know, Western methodology of art history, he was an absolutely fabulous teacher. But then I was going to go into the Ph.

01:14:39.290 - 01:14:54.790

D. program at Berkeley. But in the meantime, he introduced me to C. C. Wang who was out on the west coast. And he gave a few, couple of classes at the Chinese Cultural

01:14:54.790 - 01:15:07.720

Center in San Francisco, which I took. And once I met C. C. Wang, I was like, blown away. It was like, the way he taught — or something about it was

01:15:07.720 - 01:15:19.870

just, he seemed to know all the things that I was interested in that I really needed to know. So I dropped my plans to continue at UC

01:15:19.890 - 01:15:31.670

Berkeley at least temporarily, moved my wife, my poor wife back to New York. We had no job, we had no savings, we — blah blah blah, you know how it is.

01:15:32.440 - 01:15:45.490

But we managed to pull it off because I wanted to study painting with C. C. Wang. And that was again, a decision that I think, in some ways, took a lot of guts, and was

01:15:45.490 - 01:15:58.940

certainly the right decision. So my initial thought was, okay, I'm going to study with him, learn about painting. And then — and connoisseurship, because it's kind of a package deal.

01:15:59.320 - 01:16:09.910

And then, you know, after six months or a year, I'll come back and re-enter the program at UC Berkeley and get my Ph. D., and probably be a professor or

01:16:09.910 - 01:16:24.240

something like that. Anyway, I never went back to Berkeley, because I kept learning from C. C. Wang, and I ended up really studying with him for 25 years, until his death in 2003.

01:16:26.540 - 01:16:44.220

In the meantime, I got a job at Sotheby's. This is a photo actually from the 80s of the Sotheby's crew in Hong Kong. So I ended up working there, I started in

01:16:45.170 - 01:17:00.270

1978, and, or '79 maybe. They had taken in a consignment of Chinese paintings from an estate. And at that time, in the art market — now we're going into another, whole other

01:17:00.270 - 01:17:12.830

area if that's alright — in the art market, in terms of the market, Chinese art was a — you know, there was a market for Chinese art. But what it meant back in the 70s, was porcelain,

01:17:15.160 - 01:17:30.550

ceramics, bronzes, cloisonnés, jades; Chinese painting was not really a significant portion of the Chinese art market. And when they did have paintings,

01:17:30.550 - 01:17:45.300

they, you know, they would put them in the back of the catalogue. And they really didn't have — there wasn't a solid structure for pricing or anything, and they didn't have any experts who were specializing in painting.

01:17:46.490 - 01:18:01.910

So gradually, when I got there, I got there initially to catalog a group, a small group of paintings, I think 10 or 12 paintings that had been in the state, Ming and Qing paintings that were of good quality. And I remember I got paid

01:18:02.190 - 01:18:17.240

$50 per painting, to catalog them, which meant, you know, description and the signature and the seals and all this kind of thing. And that was great. That was great. Because at that, and not — by then I'd already moved back to

01:18:17.240 - 01:18:34.220

New York, and was living with my then pregnant wife in the Bronx, in an apartment that costs $150 a month. And so $50 per painting was pretty good money for me in those days.

01:18:34.350 - 01:18:50.950

And from there, I managed to, you know, just keep, I just hung out there. And I go to C. C. Wang's place, twice a week, at least twice a week from morning to night, copying paintings from his collection;

01:18:50.950 - 01:19:05.650

and then I would also work at Sotheby's, and gradually became... they hired me I think in 1980, full-time, and we eventually gradually established a separate Chinese painting

01:19:06.020 - 01:19:22.320

department. And I was actually in charge of Chinese paintings worldwide. We had two auctions in New York and two auctions in Hong Kong each year. And so there was an international team that went to Hong

01:19:23.250 - 01:19:33.360

Kong, most of them dealing with ceramics and other things, but I was in charge of the painting section and that lasted for about 15 years or so.

01:19:34.000 - 01:19:47.660

And that's where I got my experience. And fortunately, C. C. Wang, even when I got there, C. C. Wang was a consultant for Chinese paintings

01:19:48.720 - 01:20:01.780

to Sotheby's. So for the next 10, 15 years, I was studying with him and getting paid to learn from him; and he was getting paid to teach me. So it was a really fabulous arrangement.

01:20:02.380 - 01:20:15.630

And we gradually built up a market for Chinese paintings. And when I say built up a market, you know, it was, initially it was trial and error. It's like nobody knew what anything was worth.

01:20:16.320 - 01:20:30.320

So you know, you start with you just take them in, and, you know, put an estimate and see what happens. So gradually, for each artist, for each period, we establish a kind of a price scale.

01:20:30.320 - 01:20:43.690

So a Qi Baishi painting, you start, you know, you have three paintings and put an estimate, see what they sell for. Okay, so gradually a shrimp painting is $3–5,000. And, you know, if you have more shrimps, it's more money.

01:20:43.920 - 01:20:57.730

And if it's some other subject, and — you know, we kind of did that for each artist, believe it or not. So Xu Beihong horse is how much money. Back and forth, back and forth, and you keep updating your database.

01:20:57.760 - 01:21:12.820

And then a Ming painting, you know, what is the range of the big name artists. And then of course, dealing with questions of authenticity and quality, you know, so it was a combination of relative, or a combination of subjective judgments,

01:21:14.430 - 01:21:31.010

combined with objective data. And over the course of many years, we really did start to do, or to come up with a system that is, that forms the basis of the entire Chinese

01:21:31.080 - 01:21:46.780

painting market now, which has, over time has moved almost entirely to Asia, to Hong Kong and China in particular. But we started from zero, and in some ways, you know, I mean, it was a great opportunity.

01:21:47.200 - 01:22:04.460

And so I feel like I happened to be in the right place at the right time. And that's why I, you know, I traveled all the time, we generally what we did was we divided the market into, I would say, three cat— three big categories, the

01:22:05.780 - 01:22:22.600

decorative paintings, which were sort of like ancestor portraits, and just, you know, pretty paintings, decorative things that with or without signatures; may be not real, it doesn't matter. But just sold as decoration we would include in auctions that

01:22:22.600 - 01:22:34.790

specialized in decorations, and furniture and things like that. And then we have the classical paintings, pre-modern, you know, Song Yuan Ming Qing, by

01:22:35.050 - 01:22:45.220

known artists, and that was one category. We sold those in New York, ideally twice a year. And gradually that evolved into what's called Asia Week.

01:22:45.220 - 01:23:02.120

So each Asia Week, we would have a specialized auction of Chinese paintings. And then twice a year in Hong Kong, we'd have a specialized auction of modern paintings, meaning 20th century, mainly 20th century Qi Baishi, Zhang Daqian, Fu

01:23:02.120 - 01:23:16.450

Baoshi, Xu Beihong, all the big names. And then gradually interspersing that with contemporary artists, of traditional contemporary nature. So we really, I really

01:23:16.450 - 01:23:32.850

had a great time developing these things and to a certain extent, trying to use the auction market as a way of educating the public in a new

01:23:32.850 - 01:23:46.210

field; and doing the best I could with the help of C. C. Wang, certainly on the classical things, in terms of authenticity, in terms of quality. And gradually building it all up to the point

01:23:46.630 - 01:24:04.000

where, where there was a solid market, and then watching how that market grew in tandem with the economic conditions in Asia. So at first we were selling mainly to

01:24:05.040 - 01:24:24.460

Americans; and you have to remember that Taiwan had currency restrictions; and China was totally closed off in, during the 80s. So this whole thing blossomed in the decade of 80s really, where there was a growing supply of things because older

01:24:25.030 - 01:24:40.350

collectors were, you know, passing on or getting old; and their children for the most part who were in America, were not particularly interested in this field. So things were coming out and things were leaving China through Hong

01:24:40.350 - 01:24:55.000

Kong or whatever, smuggled or just taken out, and people were starting to sell. So that's, there were a lot of modern Chinese paintings in America. So what we did was we, what I would do is take

01:24:55.390 - 01:25:10.760

the best modern paintings and put them in Hong Kong; take the best classical paintings and put them in New York. So back and forth, back and forth, I was traveling all the time, you know, I was away sometimes more than six months of the year, flying to Hong

01:25:10.760 - 01:25:27.140

Kong at least twice a year, and going to places like Singapore and Japan and Taiwan. So as the economies increased, we started to see more Hong Kong buyers coming to New York, to buy Chinese paintings; and

01:25:27.140 - 01:25:43.460

then gradually, Taiwan started to open up, they put it into — a lot of the currency restrictions that made it easier for people to move money, so they could buy things in New York. And then finally, you

01:25:43.460 - 01:26:00.140

know, gradually, by the time I left in 1993, China still had not opened up. So it was very difficult for the Mainland Chinese to come in. But so we, you know, we had a lot of — in Hong Kong,

01:26:00.140 - 01:26:13.510

of course, you had also buyers from Singapore. Gradually for a while, Taiwan was the biggest buyers, or the most, largest, serious buyers.

01:26:13.780 - 01:26:30.860

And with the changes in the economy, there are also some, to some extent changes in taste. For example, you know, most Westerners could have a sense of quality in Chinese painting, but not necessarily

01:26:30.860 - 01:26:44.060

very specialized. And calligraphy was kind of more difficult. But when the Taiwanese started to buy, you know, the market expanded to include calligraphy, and

01:26:45.450 - 01:27:01.080

so it was a really exciting period. And for me personally, the point was that I got to look at Chinese paintings every day. And I got to see a broad range of works by different

01:27:01.920 - 01:27:18.380

artists: good, bad, genuine, fake. But really, you know, I had such an opportunity, working with collectors, working with museum curators, and seeing, you know, just a full range of things.

01:27:19.220 - 01:27:35.150

And unlike scholars, most scholars, in the auction business, you are limited to what is available to you in the market. So I had to deal with — as a scholar, you can focus on

01:27:35.330 - 01:27:48.580

the things that interest you the most, and you can ignore other things, you become very specialized. In fact, you're encouraged to become very specialized. In the auction world, you have to be able to judge

01:27:50.380 - 01:28:02.870

the relative quality and price of all different kinds of things. Even if they're paintings that you hate. You know, there are artists that I really don't like, but I can tell you which are the good ones and which are the bad ones.

01:28:03.080 - 01:28:15.230

And I can give you a sense of how much they’re going for. So it forced me to broaden my horizons and learn about all different kinds of painting that I might not have, I definitely would not

01:28:15.230 - 01:28:33.660

have known about, had I pursued a purely academic career. So you know, I have a different background than hardly, there are hardly any other people like me in the field who have the

01:28:33.660 - 01:28:47.240

kind of breadth as, and a certain amount of depth because I also do paintings. And so yeah, I think in that sense it's a story

01:28:47.770 - 01:29:03.990

worth recounting. I certainly made lots of mistakes, but everybody makes mistakes. Thank you, Arnold, for sharing your stories. Next can you talk about your decade-long career at Kaikodo

01:29:04.070 - 01:29:17.130

gallery? Sure, sure, I'd be happy to. So I think last time I showed this image of myself with my two most important mentors and teachers, C.

01:29:17.130 - 01:29:30.690

C. Wang seated there, and Professor James Cahill. So I had the unique opportunity to study with these two great, great minds and great, important people in the field of Chinese painting.

01:29:31.610 - 01:29:47.810

And I got a perspective that maybe is different than a lot of people, because I had both the Western art historian training and also a more traditional training in connoisseurship

01:29:49.310 - 01:30:04.940

and painting with C. C. Wang. This photo actually takes us into the next section, because this is a photo of, that was taken in Kaikodo Gallery, which was on the east side, East 64th

01:30:05.750 - 01:30:18.430

Street — actually not too far away from where I grew up, and where my parents had their restaurant. So we are gone full circle again. This was a gallery I'll show a few shots of it, that

01:30:18.710 - 01:30:35.970

specialized in Asian art, and both traditional or ancient Chinese porcelains and ceramics, and as well as Japanese art. And also we did shows of contemporary Chinese

01:30:36.830 - 01:30:51.940

painters. But before I get there, just a few pictures that are interesting. This is still back at Sotheby's, so you know, my career sort of overlaps.

01:30:52.480 - 01:31:09.530

And I think one of the interesting things about having been in the art business and working at Sotheby's is that I had a great opportunity to meet a lot of people who are involved in the field of Chinese painting in a lot of different ways, including curators and

01:31:10.350 - 01:31:23.970

artists, professors. And here's a picture of C. C. Wang and Xu Bangda, who was one of the great experts in Beijing, who was also a

01:31:24.200 - 01:31:32.910

classmate of C. C. Wang back in China. So I had a really unique opportunity to not only meet a lot of people, but

01:31:33.090 - 01:31:49.190

learn from them. So this continued, for example, with Mr. Wang Fangyu and his wife here, also with Xu Bangda. So what we're seeing here is a Sotheby's exhibition in New York. And all these people would come to see the

01:31:49.320 - 01:32:07.770

paintings and it was also kind of a social event; for the openings, you can see people are drinking and whatever. We had, it was this chance for people to get together. And when dignitaries from overseas came, they would also

01:32:07.880 - 01:32:25.660

attend. And Wang Fangyu was based in Jersey and he was one of the great scholars of Chinese art in America at the time, and a collector of, particularly of the artist Bada Shanren. And so to, just to be, have

01:32:25.980 - 01:32:42.520

access to these people, I learned so much. And even though I started at Sotheby's at the age of like 24, I was in a position where I could learn from them and be a student, but also had

01:32:42.520 - 01:33:00.720

more access than your average student would have. This is a Sotheby's preview in Hong Kong actually. So in Hong Kong, they didn't have a — we didn't have a separate location, but we rented out large spaces

01:33:02.020 - 01:33:12.310

in the hotels. This one I think was in the Furama Hotel and held exhibitions there. And you see James Cahill right there with the artist Zeng Youhe1; and

01:33:12.310 - 01:33:27.860

over in the distance is Jim Lally who was in charge of Chinese art at Sotheby's at the time, and later became one of the prominent dealers in New York. So this is the environment out of which I came and I was just

01:33:27.860 - 01:33:41.950

so fortunate. At any time there was — because I was offered classical Chinese paintings in particular, you know; anytime a professor was in town, they'd bring their students.

01:33:42.310 - 01:33:57.620

And, you know, Richard Barnhart, I mean, I don't want to drop a lot of names; but everybody would come through. So I really had an opportunity to talk to these people one on one, and got to learn quite a

01:33:57.990 - 01:34:14.560

bit from each and every one of them. And I wanted to mention that I was able to meet, through Sotheby's, Zhang Xueliang, who was a very important historical figure, a warlord in China, and anybody

01:34:15.180 - 01:34:29.970

who studied modern Chinese history is aware of him. And he was under house arrest in Taiwan. But he was also a big collector of Chinese paintings. And so I had a relationship with him that was really unusual.

01:34:30.000 - 01:34:41.990

Because, you know, we didn't talk politics or anything like that; we talked about painting. So that was, that was really exciting. And I was able to work on it, to

01:34:41.990 - 01:34:54.720

help him to sell some of the things from his collection. First, originally, you know, very quietly under the radar; and then at the very end of my career at Sotheby's, we had the very first sale of

01:34:54.960 - 01:35:10.030

Chinese paintings in Taipei, and we sold the Zhang — what was left of the Zhang Xueliang collection, and every piece sold. It was really exciting. So back to Kaikodo here, here's just a couple of shots of

01:35:10.800 - 01:35:21.690

what the gallery looked like. It was a beautiful townhouse on East 64th Street. And so there were actually three floors of gallery space, and an apartment upstairs 1 Also known as Tseng Yu-Ho and later as Betty Ecke.

01:35:21.690 - 01:35:37.290

where the owners stayed when they came to New York, Howard and Mary Ann Rogers, who were both scholars of Chinese art and had both studied with Cahill in Berkeley. So this, you know, this is how we showed some of the

01:35:37.290 - 01:35:51.580

ceramics. And this is a beautiful exhibition of a Taiwanese artist named Yu Peng于彭 , who unfortunately passed away at a very early age. But he was doing very interesting contemporary work.

01:35:51.960 - 01:36:03.070

And we almost also combined the contemporary with the classical. So it was a really different kind of experience. And I think, at that time, we were

01:36:03.070 - 01:36:23.610

the only ones who were showing contemporary Chinese paintings from Taiwan, from Mainland China, and also artists working in the US. This is a view of — from the second story balcony

01:36:24.170 - 01:36:36.880

looking down. And you can see, there's a Bada Shanren landscape right there hanging between the windows, large painting. So we showed, at one time we showed, we had an exhibition of C.

01:36:36.880 - 01:36:51.880

C. Wang's work, but it also included works-classical works from his collection. So it was always an educational kind of experience. And we also produced a catalogue, every,

01:36:51.880 - 01:37:04.380

for every exhibition, that was very scholarly in nature. So I always tried to combine a more scholarly approach, educational approach, in

01:37:04.380 - 01:37:18.830

addition to doing the marketing. And I was at Kaikodo for about another 10 years. So I was at Sotheby’s for like 15 years and then Kaikodo for another 10 years. So it's a good thing I got started early, and allowed me

01:37:18.830 - 01:37:33.100

to have a broad range of experiences. And we met people there like Sherman Lee on the right and the artist Li Huayi — he was attending here the exhibition by the artist Li Huayi there on the left.

01:37:33.300 - 01:37:47.060

So a very rich experience. So I guess what I'm trying to get at is that, there are very few people who have approached Chinese painting from so many different angles.

01:37:48.560 - 01:38:03.130

And I think that gives me a little bit different perspective than a lot of other people. Yeah, that's terrific. I wonder if we could also talk about your role as an artist. As you were talking there's a

01:38:03.350 - 01:38:21.090

whole unique position with your training in literati traditions as an artist with the way that your connoisseurship that you developed in studies of art history; and you're also a contemporary artist. Can you speak about the

01:38:21.170 - 01:38:38.240

overlap of a contemporary artist and the literati tradition has impacted your work? Sure. Yeah, if you don't mind that, I go through a little bit of my own development as an artist,

01:38:40.150 - 01:38:57.730

which is parallel to all of these things we've been talking about. So I actually first started learning — I mentioned that I had seen an exhibition by the great artist Zhang Daqian when I was nine years old; and so I had a, you know, an

01:38:57.840 - 01:39:13.370

interest in Chinese painting from that time on. But by the time I got to high school, and I showed a picture of me in the Bronx High School of Science, I really felt like I needed to have another outlet for expression.

01:39:13.370 - 01:39:31.800

And I asked my father if he could find me a Chinese painting teacher; and he located this man, Wang Chi-yuan, who was — who happened to have a studio, and he taught in what was called the School of Chinese Brushwork, but it was

01:39:31.800 - 01:39:44.870

actually his apartment, in a building that was literally across the street from where we lived. So it was very convenient. And my father knew of him because he had, he was a friend of Zhang Daqian,

01:39:45.100 - 01:39:57.130

and had shown exhibitions with Zhang Daqian. So my father thought he would be a good teacher, and I thought that was great. So, you know, this was obviously an extracurricular after-school kind of

01:39:57.210 - 01:40:13.350

thing. And instead of learning violin or piano, I was set on learning a little bit about Chinese painting. Well, Mr. Wang was, at that time, you know, in the 70s, I guess, maybe 80s, and he taught me.

01:40:14.650 - 01:40:28.240

I went there expecting to learn how to paint flowers, or to learn how to paint landscape, whatever; but because he saw me even though I had really long hair, he — and he had virtually no hair, it's kind of interesting.

01:40:28.480 - 01:40:41.720

And his — I had no speaking ability in Chinese whatsoever, and his English was very poor. So it was a kind of interesting lack of communication, but somehow we managed to get along.

01:40:41.720 - 01:40:57.260

And he thought, because I was of Chinese heritage, I would have to learn calligraphy before I could learn to paint. And I said fine, because I had no idea what that really meant. That, you know, that learning calligraphy was not

01:40:57.280 - 01:41:07.980

something that happens overnight. So I said, "Sure." I figured we'd do that for a few weeks. And then I'd be painting still lifes and things like all the other students — who are all Caucasian, by the way.

01:41:08.690 - 01:41:23.590

And turned out that he wanted to teach me calligraphy, but I didn't know Chinese. So Wang Chiyuan was, at the time, was well-known, because he developed kind of hybrid style.

01:41:24.120 - 01:41:30.890

and later on, I learned more about him. At the time, I didn't know too much. But when he was back in China in the 30s and 40s,

01:41:31.350 - 01:41:43.620

he was actually considered to be very avant-garde, because he was looking to the West. He thought that the Chinese tradition was kind of outmoded, and was, you know,

01:41:44.030 - 01:41:57.730

a lot of copying and wasn't very modern; and didn't really reflect modern society. So what his approach was to use Chinese materials, but paint

01:41:57.730 - 01:42:09.550

in a more sort of Western, I would say, Western inspired mode. So you know, you'd have a painting here on the left, that kind of looks like a Cezanne landscape, but done with ink and brush

01:42:09.980 - 01:42:21.650

on xuan paper. And then you had like, on the right a scene of, I guess it's the East River, using Chinese materials.

01:42:23.230 - 01:42:39.090

But he taught me to do calligraphy. And it's... So obviously, I did it by copying his models, but I don't know that there are very many people who learned to write with a

01:42:39.170 - 01:42:54.500

brush before they actually knew any of the language. So I couldn't speak and I couldn't read. But I just copied these characters and I didn't really know what I was doing. But, interestingly, I just really enjoyed the feel

01:42:55.570 - 01:43:09.050

of brush and ink reacting to the absorbent paper. So again, it's a kind of funny way in, but in some ways by not knowing the

01:43:09.050 - 01:43:23.240

language, I was learning to appreciate the aesthetic quality without being caught up in the meaning of what I was writing. Of course, you know, he did give me

01:43:23.240 - 01:43:43.990

translations and things; but I just got into copying. And I would spend hours, literally hours just writing calligraphy. And so I gained an appreciation for the quality of brush and ink even before I knew the

01:43:43.990 - 01:44:04.040

language, and that, I think in terms of the sense of balance, the positives and negatives, and just the flow of the ink on paper, I think it enabled me when I started to learn more about

01:44:05.360 - 01:44:23.720

art history and also more about painting technique. It really helped that I had already, I already dabbled in calligraphy; and so I think in that sense Wang Chi-yuan did me a favor. And so I started off by

01:44:23.720 - 01:44:39.350

doing these kind of hybrid things myself, you know, that sort of looked like what I thought Chinese painting looked like and combining it, using the traditional materials and sometimes just playing around

01:44:39.350 - 01:44:52.060

by myself, which was more of a kind of a Western approach — just using what I thought I was seeing, and try to make something out of it myself.

01:44:52.450 - 01:45:06.890

But then I went to Taiwan, and studied with this man named Guo Yanqiao, who's not a famous painter, but he was a very, very, very traditional painter. So I started off with an artist who was, well, who was not really

01:45:06.890 - 01:45:21.150

rejecting tradition, but who was trying to — Wang Chi-yuan, he was trying to combine east and west and do something that was more modern than he thought that traditional painting was kind of old fashioned. And then I went to Taiwan

01:45:21.150 - 01:45:36.230

and studied with an artist who really thought that traditional painting should — was great the way it was, and that it didn't need to be really modernized that much. And that if you really wanted to understand Chinese culture, you

01:45:36.230 - 01:45:47.640

should learn the traditional way. And his painting was very much like the late Qing Dynasty styles. But he was a

01:45:47.640 - 01:45:58.760

very good painter and solid, and he taught me to, you know, I copied his works. And then I started to learn more about landscape painting. And again, it was another step.

01:45:59.120 - 01:46:10.730

The calligraphy here’s not mine, I could never write that well. That was the teacher's writing on it; but the paintings were copied from the models that he gave me, and that's the traditional way to learn.

01:46:10.730 - 01:46:26.650

So I think there's a lot of young artists of Asian descent who haven't really had this kind of traditional training. So I was lucky to have that when I went to Taiwan; and then of course, I met C.

01:46:26.650 - 01:46:39.890

C. Wang. And the difference here was, what he taught was — he basically said, "Don't copy my work. I mean, you can copy my work.

01:46:40.030 - 01:46:54.760

But really, what you want to do is not paint like me. You want to find your own voice, you want to find your own style. And the best surest way to do that is to copy from the old masters."

01:46:56.020 - 01:47:10.660

So C. C. Wang had this amazing collection of original paintings — Song, Yuan, Ming, Qing dynasties. And he would allow us to copy from the originals. So

01:47:10.660 - 01:47:28.130

this is a painting of one leaf from the wonderful album of Dong Qichang's landscapes that's now in the Nelson gallery — in Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City. It's a very famous album, and very famous, this is a

01:47:28.220 - 01:47:38.010

particularly famous leaf; it was on the cover of a major catalog. While at the time, it was still in C. C. Wang's collection. So this is how it all ties together.

01:47:38.340 - 01:47:56.170

Because C. C. Wang was — he, in fact, he's known more as a collector and a connoisseur than he is as a painter. I think in some ways it's unfortunate because he's actually underrated as a painter, because the other things that he did sort of overshadowed his own

01:47:56.210 - 01:48:11.180

artistic work. But anyway, he had this fabulous collection of old master works. And he shared it with the students and allowed us to actually study the

01:48:11.180 - 01:48:26.870

originals and actually copy them. So I would go to his house like twice a week from morning to night and copy paintings. One day I would do large hanging scrolls, and then the second day I would do smaller album or

01:48:27.010 - 01:48:43.950

handscrolls. So, in a sense, what, I was learning directly from the old masters, which is what C. C. Wang thought was really the right way to do it.

01:48:44.040 - 01:49:00.990

So if you think of Qi Baishi, Zhang Daqian, or a lot of these contemporary artists who have, who are great artists who have students. Basically, they taught their students to paint like them. So you have, like, you know, a lot of painters who are doing works in

01:49:00.990 - 01:49:13.890

the style of Qi Baishi, and then they had students who studied their work, and sort of have a lineage of a particular style. C. C. Wang wasn't like that. He said, "Look, this, this is where I learned from.

01:49:14.640 - 01:49:31.480

And if you dutifully copy the old masters and absorb it, gradually you'll find your own style, if you stick with it, if you have the ability." So it's a more traditional approach, which

01:49:31.620 - 01:49:50.200

ironically, because I was in New York, working with C. C. Wang, I've got more of a traditional approach than virtually anybody else, even if you weren't — particularly if you were in China, trying to learn Chinese painting style, you wouldn't have had access to the

01:49:50.260 - 01:50:01.140

originals in such a way. And also China tended, at this point was kind of looking to the West, for, you know, they were changing their educational system and so forth.

01:50:01.330 - 01:50:17.470

So you didn't have this, necessarily have this one-on-one kind of apprenticeship almost. And the point for C. C. Wang was that painting was not,

01:50:17.830 - 01:50:30.750

paint — learning to be an artist was not really the goal, per se; it was a kind of package deal. The reason you learn to paint is because it helps you to understand

01:50:30.980 - 01:50:44.640

Chinese painting. So if you want to learn about earlier Chinese painting, really it is very useful to know the techniques. And the best way to learn the techniques is to copy directly.

01:50:45.800 - 01:50:58.970

So it was you learn to paint in order to appreciate painting; you appreciate painting, and you collect painting, and you study painting, also, as a way of becoming a better painter.

01:50:58.970 - 01:51:13.860

So the training was not so much, obviously there was technical, you know, technique involved in how to hold the brush and this and that, and different techniques of color and all these things. But it was really more about training your eye.

01:51:15.180 - 01:51:33.360

And so that's, that's what I got from C. C. Wang. It was a package deal, which was in effect, very, as close as we could get to a kind of literati training, where it was a, you know, a combination of looking

01:51:34.590 - 01:51:47.430

at paintings, studying paintings, collecting paintings, and actually creating your own works. And so that was a really fabulous opportunity that very few people at that time had.

01:51:48.410 - 01:51:58.500

And those that did have the opportunity, there were very few people who took advantage of this opportunity. And that's why C. C. Wang taught me so much because I was

01:51:58.810 - 01:52:14.880

willing to learn and I was willing to put in the time and the effort. Does that make sense? Yeah, totally. That's also really fascinating. Literati culture being, like, performed on you as a contemporary

01:52:14.880 - 01:52:33.640

artist. How do you see it being carried on in the future generations? Well, I think, you know, it's interesting because as an American, learning this, being exposed to this kind of literati culture, it was quite unusual.

01:52:33.640 - 01:52:47.750

But I was fascinated by the whole process. The other thing about when we talk about so-called literati painting, it's a little bit different than — well, the definition of literati painting is very,

01:52:48.980 - 01:53:02.520

you know, it changes over time beginning in Northern Song in the 12th century. You can track it, and the definition kind of changes. But the whole idea is that this is painting that was

01:53:03.670 - 01:53:19.930

done by the intellectual class, by people who were smart and educated. It wasn't seen — there wasn't such an emphasis on — or how should I say?

01:53:23.950 - 01:53:38.080

It wasn't simply a question of craftsmanship, at least in theory. So these were the artists who were the movers and shakers of the time: they were the poets, they — it was,

01:53:38.740 - 01:53:52.960

painting was an act of cultivation. It was part of a whole process by which one became educated and became sensitive to aesthetics, rather than just being a

01:53:52.960 - 01:54:04.080

profession that you did in order to paint pretty pictures and hang them on the wall, or to do decorations. And in some cases, like Dong Qichang, you could say it was almost anti-decorative.

01:54:05.560 - 01:54:21.100

So obviously, as time changes, as the times change, that society changes, and so on, so forth. So this also represented a certain elitism in traditional China.

01:54:22.010 - 01:54:41.490

And that's something that had to be, you know, dealt with. But from my point of view, was the actual aesthetic quality of it, is what I wanted to maintain, what I continue to want to maintain and find a way to sort of

01:54:41.490 - 01:54:57.020

separate the aesthetics from the, you know, the class system, or the social, socio-economic, or political, you know, try to separate the aesthetic out to a certain extent.

01:54:57.020 - 01:55:14.360

And the fact that here I am, an American-born person working in this tradition proves that there is a sense where you can, you know, emphasize the aesthetics rather than some of the other

01:55:15.290 - 01:55:26.380

negative elements. And, as I said, it was an art form, particularly for me, landscape painting and calligraphy. But landscape painting

01:55:26.640 - 01:55:47.950

was a form that, it's more of an intellectual pursuit. And in that sense, I think it resonates with 20th and 21st century people, because it's not just a technical skill. And this was something that the Chinese developed over

01:55:47.950 - 01:56:04.880

hundreds of years, much earlier than the similar development in the West. And I was fascinated by that. And also the idea that, you know, at least in theory, these artists were not producing to sell; they

01:56:06.250 - 01:56:20.380

were amateurs, and this was the pastime that they did as part of their cultivation. The reality of that, of course, is complicated, and they did sometimes sell and they exchanged paintings for various things.

01:56:21.170 - 01:56:38.810

But the ideal, I think, is also something that I find very appealing. That you're not just doing it to please the market, you're not just marketing yourself and trying to

01:56:38.810 - 01:56:49.030

make, you know, trying to please the audience. Well, you're going for a particular type of audience. And in that sense, it is elitist.

01:56:49.970 - 01:57:07.610

But, you know, I find that actually quite appealing. I don't, I think it's, you know, nowadays where everything is mass culture, and everything is about branding and marketing, it's nice to find a tradition

01:57:08.350 - 01:57:27.640

where, you know, it's about deeper kind of quality. So at least that's how I see it. Thank you for sharing. And also thanks for the training of C. C. Wang and other masters, you're also an artist

01:57:28.230 - 01:57:42.190

who are really established. Just to point out a few, you've been included in major exhibitions at the Guggenheim, and having exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the British

01:57:42.220 - 01:57:57.410

Museum, and the MFA in Boston, and your work has also been in permanent collections of many museums. Can you talk about your artist's mission and what questions you're trying to raise for the audience?

01:57:59.050 - 01:58:19.570

Sure. So the previous slide, this image is a direct copy of a late-17th century painting by Dong Qichang. So you start — as with calligraphy, you start by imitating the

01:58:19.570 - 01:58:33.490

model. The idea is you do and you copy enough paintings and try to observe — you're not just copying the, to make it look as close as you can; I mean that helps because what you're trying to do is

01:58:34.890 - 01:58:51.370

imagine how the artist started and stroke by stroke, follow his example. And that allows you to internalize the process, hopefully. And really, as I said, it's your eye training, and you're

01:58:51.370 - 01:59:09.350

also, through the copying of good examples, you're actually training your hand and your eye to work together, to establish certain ways of developing

01:59:09.350 - 01:59:21.840

shapes and forms. So the idea is that you're — the next step, and I just, you know, it's not something that happens overnight — is that you create your own compositions that somehow

01:59:22.490 - 01:59:39.930

capture something of the spirit, of an individual old master or certain groups. So this painting on the right is by Ni Zan, a 14th century, one of the great masters; and on the left is a work that I did that sort of emulates the style

01:59:40.460 - 01:59:54.500

without copying a particular work. It just kind of capturing what I saw at that time as part of the essential qualities of his, of the drawing itself, that the way he actually used the brush.

01:59:55.090 - 02:00:10.590

And so in various examples, you know, I'm not exactly thinking of a particular artist, but I — and it really doesn't matter who they are. But I'm just finding, sometimes after I do the painting, that

02:00:10.590 - 02:00:23.290

it's evoking a certain quality that one can associate with a specific old master. So I'm not even necessarily going to say which they are, but the idea

02:00:23.290 - 02:00:40.720

is that as I gradually learned to develop my own compositions, there's always behind my, because my eyes and my hands have already been trained. There's, I have this — and because I spent every day looking at

02:00:41.110 - 02:00:55.310

Chinese paintings, I have this vast database that informs every stroke that I make. Now, this is a double-edged sword. Because once, you know, you learn by copying, but the

02:00:55.310 - 02:01:10.700

problem with that, potentially, is that then you learn a particular mode of composition. And it's very difficult to break out of… you know, there's a paradox there, you

02:01:10.700 - 02:01:26.190

want to absorb the tradition, you want to capture the essence of the tradition. But then ultimately, you do want to extend the tradition or create something that is unique to yourself,

02:01:26.270 - 02:01:43.610

you want to find your own voice within the tradition. And that takes, that's the next step that takes a really long time. So here is a painting on the left by Wu Bin, also a 17th century artist, and

02:01:43.610 - 02:01:58.350

my work on the right, which was not a copy of a Wu Bin, but it captures some of the qualities of Wu Bin. So that I'm just showing that how you kind of evolve your own style, by learning more and more about

02:01:59.230 - 02:02:14.920

the art of the past and finding a particular lineage, finding those artists that you resonate with, that you're attracted to, and then developing a personal style, that takes

02:02:14.920 - 02:02:27.900

quite some time. And so these are works that actually museums started collecting quite early on. 2004, Minneapolis,

02:02:30.420 - 02:02:42.900

Chicago Art Institute. And these are all you know, they're related. They're all either kind of similar traditional structure or... Traditional is, is not a very useful

02:02:42.900 - 02:03:00.750

word, but you can see that they're based on classical models. And then this is the first exhibition you mentioned, which was 1998, I believe at the Guggenheim. They had two exhibitions: one

02:03:00.750 - 02:03:14.610

uptown; in those days, they had a Guggenheim downtown. So the one uptown was I think called "5000 years of Chinese art" and it featured classical works and in all media, including paintings. And then down in the Soho

02:03:15.830 - 02:03:31.650

gallery, they had another show that was featured modern and contemporary Chinese painting. And in that show the painting you can see at the far wall was chosen

02:03:32.470 - 02:03:45.710

by the curators. And it was interesting because at this time, they wanted to show the continuity with the past; they wanted to find artists who were working in a traditional

02:03:46.100 - 02:03:59.110

manner. And in fact, they didn't find too many artists in the mainland whose work they really thought was still within the traditional mode.

02:03:59.110 - 02:04:15.610

So I was actually the only, I was the only non-Chinese born artist who was in the show, along with my friend Li Huayi who was from China, but also was living in San Francisco

02:04:15.610 - 02:04:31.500

at the time. So our two paintings were next to each other. And that was quite an honor for me to be included in that really seminal exhibition. And this painting actually ended up later selling to the

02:04:31.820 - 02:04:43.960

Harvard University Museum. And it also went to Bilbao, Guggenheim, in Spain. So I actually gave me an excuse to see the amazing

02:04:45.430 - 02:05:04.250

Bilbao architecture and they're on the right, and my painting and Li Huayi's painting again are next to each other in Bilbao Guggenheim. And then as you mentioned, "Fresh ink." This was the museum, Boston Museum of Fine

02:05:04.250 - 02:05:25.380

Arts in 2010, I believe. I had an exhibition, a very interesting exhibition curated by Sheng Hao, and who, he invited 10 artists to do contemporary works that were somehow based on objects

02:05:26.370 - 02:05:42.500

in the permanent collection of the MFA. And there you see all the artists on the right: Liu Xiaodong, Yu Hong, and Qin Feng, Liu Dan, Li Jin, and Qiu Ting.

02:05:42.820 - 02:05:56.180

And then there's Malcolm Rogers, the Director. So each of us was given the task of finding a painting, or to do a new painting that was based on something in their collection.

02:05:57.080 - 02:06:12.970

And I chose actually to do a work that relates to Jackson Pollock. And in the exhibition, it's not very great, good, not very clear photos; but they actually allowed us to

02:06:12.970 - 02:06:29.220

show that — in the middle there is the actual Jackson Pollock painting, which ordinarily is hung on the wall, but we wanted to show it flat, to indicate how he would have seen it when he was producing it.

02:06:29.940 - 02:06:48.090

And then on the right side is my handscroll, which was not — again, I was looking at the Jackson Pollock, and thinking to myself,

02:06:48.090 - 02:07:02.700

"Wow, it's a horizontal work, it really looks like a handscroll." And so I did a work, but I was very insistent upon not trying to do an “inky Pollock.” That would be too easy to sort of splash ink around.

02:07:02.700 - 02:07:16.310

So I said, I'm going to do a real Chinese landscape painting, but somehow relates to the essence of what I'm seeing in the Jackson Pollock.

02:07:16.730 - 02:07:31.560

So again, I'm demonstrating this is the same way that when we do a work in the style of so-and-so. Style of Wang Meng, the style of Ni Zan. It's, you know, people misinterpret that thinking it's just a

02:07:31.560 - 02:07:47.350

copy, but it's not. What you're doing is studying the works of the master and somehow absorbing it and reinterpreting it into your own style. So in this case, I was looking at a Jackson Pollock

02:07:47.430 - 02:08:03.990

painting, "Number 10," that is, you know, painted on canvas, in layers. And as you know, Jackson Pollock would walk around, he would put the canvas on the floor of his studio, and walk around it.

02:08:04.470 - 02:08:18.170

And people think he splashed the paint; but actually it's very, very controlled. And he used a stick, and there's photographs of him doing it and films of it.

02:08:18.170 - 02:08:31.710

And he really had a great amount of control and used gravity to create the lines that you see, and then overlaying it with different layers. Now in Chinese painting, it's also layered.

02:08:32.860 - 02:08:46.810

But rather than, because it's an adsorbent paper, the layers blend together in different ways. So with Pollock and paint, he would do one layer at a time, let it dry, and then overlay it with

02:08:47.010 - 02:09:01.330

another layer. And so — but the process for Chinese painting is not entirely different. So I work on a table flat. And so I'm also concerned

02:09:01.420 - 02:09:15.610

about layers, but — and I do one layer at a time, let it dry, and then do another layer. But in the end, because it's an absorbent medium, the layering disappears or blends together in a different way.

02:09:16.710 - 02:09:33.950

So that was my take on responding to Jackson Pollock. And so I also wanted to point out to audiences that Chinese painting is in a way, it's, when we call it

02:09:33.950 - 02:09:47.610

landscape, it's not really like most western landscape. It's not a picture, in most cases, it's not a picture of a particular scene, or a particular place. Landscape is just an excuse to

02:09:47.610 - 02:10:05.310

have subject matter in what is essentially an abstract painting, that is really about the touch, the feel of the line itself, and the balancing of positive and negative space.

02:10:06.010 - 02:10:17.690

So, I don't know how would, people who saw the show, I don't know if they got all of that. But that's what I was thinking. And it also led me to another observation.

02:10:17.930 - 02:10:34.520

When you think about the Jackson Pollock working on, as he did, putting the canvas on the floor and walking around it. When he's working, he doesn't necessarily have a sense of what's up and what's down.

02:10:35.050 - 02:10:46.970

Because he can walk around the thing, walk up, walk on top, walk on the side and work and gradually — but at some point, he has to decide how it's going to be hung.

02:10:48.350 - 02:11:01.600

So at some point, there's going to, he's going to make a decision. Now, in planning for that scroll that I just showed, I did this brushwork study, which in fact, it looks like two paintings; but

02:11:01.740 - 02:11:21.520

it's actually the same painting, upside down. So what I was trying to indicate here is that the abstract quality is there, and it reads as a landscape, whether you turn it, you know,

02:11:21.910 - 02:11:41.070

from whichever orientation you look. And that was also included in the Museum of Fine Arts show. And that led me to the next development, which was to paint works that don't have a clear-cut

02:11:41.820 - 02:11:55.460

orientation. And I call these omni-directional paintings. So you can look at these paintings. And first of all, it's just ink on paper.

02:11:56.740 - 02:12:14.630

And you can say that they're abstract, totally abstract, or — but they do have, I think they communicate a sense of textures, natural textures, and natural forms. So in this sense, if you wanted to say it's abstract ink painting, that's

02:12:14.630 - 02:12:32.120

fine; but if you want to call it landscape painting, I think that's also acceptable. And again, what I'm trying to demonstrate here is if you can appreciate this kind of painting for what it is, then go back and look

02:12:32.720 - 02:12:50.140

at Wang Meng, the 14th century painting, go back and look at Dong Qichang, 17th century painting, with that kind of mindset. Don't look at it as a picture of scenery; look at it as an ink play and as a work

02:12:50.680 - 02:13:02.710

that's really about textures and feelings, and you know, you can even say "qi" you know, the essence of movement and life. And these for

02:13:02.710 - 02:13:18.350

example, can be seen — you can turn them this way, or orient them any way. And they work as paintings, as kind of — because you still see the abstract quality of the ink; but

02:13:18.630 - 02:13:34.770

somehow they feel like, they represent sometimes tree forms, sometimes rock forms, sometimes water. And so this is a direction that my work has taken

02:13:35.560 - 02:13:51.760

since the MFA show. And I think it's a positive direction, because this is one way to break out of the mold of traditional compositions. So again, if you're working in a

02:13:51.790 - 02:14:09.280

traditional medium, to try to find a way to retain the qualities that you really appreciate in the classical works, and do it in a way that is more personal.

02:14:09.440 - 02:14:28.820

You can say it's more contemporary, but in my sense it's just more personal. So obviously, I'm a 21st century person, 20th, 21st century person. So you can say that this represents a 21st century understanding; but I'm not trying to be

02:14:31.020 - 02:14:46.730

contemporary for the sake of being contemporary. I'm just trying to find a way to extend the tradition in perhaps a little bit different way than it was in the past. So to that end, the image on the left is actually

02:14:48.350 - 02:14:59.980

an aerial image from an airplane. Unfortunately, I took it off the internet at some point, and I didn't actually get who the photographer was. And the one on the right is one of my

02:15:00.060 - 02:15:16.510

paintings. So I'm clearly influenced, you could not have gotten that view of an aerial view prior to airplanes, obviously. But of course, you could climb a tall mountain and look down.

02:15:16.510 - 02:15:30.580

But really, when you think about it, if you look at that aerial view of the photograph, you look down and you see different colors, you see different textures, you see what looks like a river, but you see these things,

02:15:31.210 - 02:15:45.900

and you don't really know exactly what it is. And you also don't necessarily know what's tall, you know, what are the peaks and what are the valleys; it just blends together into a kind of matrix and kind of pattern.

02:15:46.640 - 02:16:02.440

And that's what I — again, not copying any particular image, but the essence of that trying to recreate that in a way that emphasizes the brushwork quality of traditional Chinese painting.

02:16:02.440 - 02:16:16.750

So that's one direction that I've gone in. And then also, I think, one area where Chinese painting can be developed is with color. And here are just a couple

02:16:16.750 - 02:16:34.750

of examples where I'm playing with the palette, and still trying to, you know, more or less work within a traditional mode, manner, but emphasizing the color more than what you see in most Chinese paintings.

02:16:39.340 - 02:16:57.690

Okay, that leads me to Michael Cherney. Would you like... Should I just keep going? Yeah, absolutely. I was gonna ask about Michael Cherney and how you met him. And how the two of you

02:16:58.440 - 02:17:09.540

establish this connection among two very different mediums across technology and time. Yes, please totally take us away. Okay, thank you.

02:17:09.700 - 02:17:26.380

So, um, well, I'll show a picture of Michael Cherney in a minute, but we actually met... Supposedly, he tells me that we had met one earlier time, but it didn't count because I didn't remember. We actually met in China, in Chengdu

02:17:27.220 - 02:17:41.910

at this exhibition called the third Chengdu Biennial. I think it was 2 — forgot what date. Anyway, where we were both invited to participate in this exhibition.

02:17:43.030 - 02:17:58.490

That was a huge show, I think hundreds of artists that were supposedly working in ink — but their definition of ink was very broad and included all kinds of different things.

02:17:58.890 - 02:18:12.450

Long story short, I was invited and Michael Cherney was invited. And we met each other there and had discussions. Now in this exhibition, you see my four works hanging there,

02:18:13.010 - 02:18:25.020

hanging scrolls. From the photos, they look pretty much like your typical, conventional Chinese landscape; and in some ways they are. But it was interesting,

02:18:25.020 - 02:18:41.460

because of all these artists that were shown from all over China, and some from overseas, a few from overseas, I think my works were among the most traditional in the entire show. And I — it was interesting, because the

02:18:41.540 - 02:18:57.420

feedback — there was a symposium and so forth — and I actually got criticized, because my works were so old-fashioned to these artists and the people there.

02:18:57.790 - 02:19:17.190

And it was interesting, because they, I think they assumed that I was just this foreigner, who had done a little bit of traditional Chinese painting, and, you know, hadn't, didn't realize that Chinese painting had gone beyond

02:19:18.090 - 02:19:34.500

these kind of ink landscapes; when in fact, they didn't realize that, you know, my training in Chinese painting was quite deep. I'd already been doing this for four decades, and I knew exactly what I was doing.

02:19:34.500 - 02:19:53.040

And if they really understood traditional Chinese painting, they would see that even in these works that appear to be traditional subject, traditional format, I'm doing something within that that is not just copying what came before.

02:19:53.100 - 02:20:09.070

But anyway, Michael Cherney did photographs. He's a photographer, but his photographs are not ordinary photographs. That’s key. It's an interesting process where he takes, he shoots, he travels all over

02:20:09.070 - 02:20:20.680

China and takes photos on black and white film. And then he develops a film into black-and-white 35 millimeter slides, it's a long

02:20:20.680 - 02:20:33.520

process. And then he looks at the slides on the light box with a loop, a magnifying glass. And he picks out little details, which he then digitizes and prints on

02:20:35.150 - 02:20:46.880

"xuan zhi" paper, s- called "rice paper" — that's not a good name — but paper that's used for, usually for painting or calligraphy. And he prints them out and mounts them in traditional formats.

02:20:47.260 - 02:20:59.730

So his works were also included. And even though we were working in very different media, I said, you know, at the very essence, there's a similarity to our aesthetic.

02:21:00.550 - 02:21:16.310

And we began to think about, is there some way that we could combine forces and do some kind of collaboration? And the reason why I thought it was interesting that we try that is that, prior to this,

02:21:17.780 - 02:21:28.990

prior to our working together, our works had been exhibited in a number of different exhibitions. In other words, different curators had organized

02:21:31.520 - 02:21:44.230

exhibitions with different themes, and they included both Michael Cherney's work and my work, before we even knew each other. So some, there were some kind of resonance, there were some kind of connection that I

02:21:44.300 - 02:22:01.990

thought we could pursue. So this is a photo on the right, by Michael Cherney, where you can see this is one of his solo works, where he's printed it on xuan paper, and mounted it as a hanging scroll.

02:22:02.130 - 02:22:23.240

And you can see that he is using photography to try to capture the essence of ink painting. So he's not really looking at it the same way other photographers are. Sometimes he does things that are rather

02:22:24.240 - 02:22:41.610

blurry. And because what he's doing is, he shoots on film and blows it up. So he captures the — because he doesn't shoot digital, he doesn't get pixelated, he's capturing the grain that's inherent in the process.

02:22:41.850 - 02:22:58.430

And that to him has a similar feel to ink painting, the use of ink on absorbent paper. So this is the two of us actually in Cleveland Museum. So we started to do works that combine photography

02:23:01.560 - 02:23:20.780

and painting, so, you know, we tried several different ways to do it. But the way that works best is that, Michael would find a section of a photo, an excerpt from one of his photos, and print it on to xuan

02:23:20.780 - 02:23:36.120

paper, leaving a lot of space around it. He used... I asked him first of all, "Can you print on the kind of paper that I like to use to paint on?" Because I tend to paint on rougher paper than what he was

02:23:37.040 - 02:23:54.910

generally using. And so he did some experimentation. He has a big Epson inkjet printer that he uses to print. And he doesn't use photography ink; he uses a certain kind of pigment, which ultimately is very similar to what we —

02:23:55.230 - 02:24:08.300

it's like you're grinding ink and using the ink stick. It's a very similar kind of pigment. So he's able to produce images on a Chinese painting paper, that really capture the

02:24:08.470 - 02:24:23.330

feel of ink painting. So he would do these excerpts, print them on paper, and leave a lot of paper around it. And so I would, I proceeded to paint around the

02:24:23.600 - 02:24:42.450

photos, and create images that are a combination of photography and painting. And one of the things that attracted me to that approach is that as I've mentioned, I didn't want to do something

02:24:42.910 - 02:24:56.870

that is contemporary just for the sake of being contemporary. I don't want to necessarily invent something new just for being new. This was a way that was clearly contemporary because of the technology — one

02:24:56.870 - 02:25:13.550

couldn't have done this anytime sooner than the late 20th, early 21st century. But it allowed me to not compromise my sense of traditional brushwork and technique.

02:25:14.690 - 02:25:30.170

So I was able to use what I had learned, and in combination with the photos, to do something that is clearly unprecedented and new. And that I felt that I wasn't compromising, and it was still

02:25:30.170 - 02:25:47.960

a way to do something contemporary, clearly contemporary. And so we, since that time, we've had several exhibitions together, where we combine, we show the collaborations, and we show our individual works at the same time.

02:25:47.960 - 02:26:04.390

And that's been a really good way of getting shows in a variety of contexts. So we've shown in the Asian Art Museum, Cleveland Museum of Art, Kalamazoo Institute, the Crow Collection in Dallas, Texas,

02:26:05.790 - 02:26:18.890

and Hong Kong University. So it's been a way, I think, makes it more interesting than either of us showing our individual works. Here's a photo of us giving a little talk in the

02:26:19.760 - 02:26:35.530

Cleveland Museum of Art, which gave us a two-person show. And behind me in the photo, the series of photos of, those are Michael Cherney's photos of mountains, the Five Peaks.

02:26:35.650 - 02:26:51.600

And you can see they really look like ink paintings. And we combine them with my own work and a lot of our collaborations as well. And it's been a good formula for allowing us to be

02:26:51.600 - 02:27:04.520

seen in many different contexts. And I think it also challenges the viewer to try to understand, you know, what is contemporary ink painting about?

02:27:05.150 - 02:27:21.560

And also to question, especially for Chinese audiences, what is Chinese art? Because here, we're doing works that are clearly within the Chinese

02:27:21.610 - 02:27:38.860

tradition, but done by two Americans. So our first show was in the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. So clearly, we are defining ourselves

02:27:39.700 - 02:27:55.250

and the curators are defining us as Asian art, Chinese art. But I think, and in the US, that really isn't a problem. I don't think that people have any problems seeing us as representing

02:27:56.770 - 02:28:09.960

a certain Chinese cultural tradition, even though both of us were born in America. Now I should mention that Michael Cherney has lived in China for

02:28:09.960 - 02:28:23.210

30 years. So in many respects, he's much more Chinese than I am. But the two of us working together, I think, it is challenging for some Chinese audiences.

02:28:23.210 - 02:28:35.840

Because if you think about it, there haven't been very many, if any, artists like us, or certainly contemporary artists. There are contemporary artists who are influenced by Chinese art.

02:28:36.580 - 02:28:53.990

But I don't know how many contemporary artists born outside of China — or, you know, cultural China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, whatever, Singapore — how many artists are actually doing what can be considered in the great tradition of

02:28:54.030 - 02:29:07.220

Chinese painting. This is a work that the Metropolitan Museum acquired, which is an album that we did; and unlike some of the others, it's more like a call-and-response where

02:29:09.720 - 02:29:23.960

it's one photo and one painting, one after the other. And they can be viewed, opened up like this. It's an album, it's an accordion-fold album, so you can look at it completely

02:29:23.960 - 02:29:39.490

open, or you can look at them as pairs. And so we've developed a wide variety of images. And we continue to work on these. This is — these are fun — this is I guess you could say it's a

02:29:39.580 - 02:29:52.600

pair. This is called "Perspectives #1," and "Perspectives #2." And what's going on here is that the triangular portion is a photo. And if you look at the top,

02:29:54.310 - 02:30:12.300

that's Michael's photo of how, a scene that he saw. And what he does is, he's particularly, within his work, he finds images that he feels can be enhanced by the addition of painting around it.

02:30:13.040 - 02:30:29.810

And he also does his own works, which stand on their own. Now, this one, he sometimes sends me more than one copy of the photographic image so that I can try different things. In this case, what I did was I turned it upside down.

02:30:30.940 - 02:30:43.140

And so you're actually seeing the same image, the same one triangle facing down and one facing up. And you can see how I played with it and

02:30:43.660 - 02:31:01.500

created two completely different landscapes, based on the same photo. And that’s the kind of thing, it's a lot of fun, because for the viewer, you kind of have to do a, your brain has to do a shift in order to read it

02:31:02.760 - 02:31:16.440

as a landscape, and it's fun to see them together. And we've done a number of different kinds of images. Here, in some cases, adding color.

02:31:17.430 - 02:31:31.400

This is the one, this is one instance, where Michael actually shot in color. And then in the top version, I completed it with just ink; and

02:31:31.400 - 02:31:47.120

then the bottom version, I also added color to the painting. So we've done all kinds of... I think that's all I have, so I'll stop sharing. We've done all kinds of, a variety of different

02:31:47.120 - 02:32:04.260

approaches. Use, you know, and challenge each other to come up with something, each one is unique. So, since then, I've, you know, I've been, we've had a

02:32:04.260 - 02:32:16.680

number of shows, we continue to have shows, and we both show separately and collaboratively. And I'm sort of continuing along these two routes.

02:32:16.680 - 02:32:33.600

One is to develop my own personal style, and keep moving forward. And then the other is to work with Michael. And as he's developed, he's developing his own work, we still do

02:32:33.600 - 02:32:50.390

collaborations. It's great to have a kind of partner in crime. This past year has been tough with the pandemic, because I am used to having him fly back and forth between here and Beijing.

02:32:51.180 - 02:33:07.440

And often he'll take, you know, he was able to take my paintings back to do mounting; and we were able to discuss things and he would put, you know, he always puts the seal onto the — we have a combined seal that's both our names, which is only used for the

02:33:07.440 - 02:33:20.440

collaborative works. And Michael is responsible for putting that seal on. So it's a seal of approval. So the process starts with him; and then I continue; and then we get

02:33:20.440 - 02:33:35.020

together and decide, okay, this is good; and then he puts the seal on. So for year and a half, we haven't been able to do that. We had a show that was postponed that

02:33:35.470 - 02:33:50.210

we were hoping was going to take place in China, which would have been the first time that we had a major show in a museum in mainland China. Hopefully that will eventually happen. But in the meantime, we just continue to work

02:33:50.210 - 02:34:02.710

independently. And maybe we can, you know, continue to do some good stuff. Wow, that was absolutely fascinating.

02:34:03.870 - 02:34:22.000

And I'm also curious about some of the concepts that you and him are trying to explore, as it carries a deeply philosophical concept that arrived from Taoism, "一生二，二生三，（三生万物） ". And it explores the relationship of man and nature,

02:34:22.000 - 02:34:35.360

and multiplicity of dimensions. Can you share some of the conversations you have with him on that concept? Yeah, I guess, exactly.

02:34:35.360 - 02:34:53.910

That's the type of Chinese title we use for some of these exhibitions and the catalogs we've done. The idea is that we're combining two separate traditions, one being painting, the other being photography, and ending up with something that is

02:34:56.120 - 02:35:12.810

something... it's a third type of work, which is neither photography nor painting; but really integrates the two

02:35:14.150 - 02:35:32.740

art forms into something that stands on its own. I mean, that's the hope. And also the idea of two cultures coming together. The Chinese culture and Western culture, and also, you can extend that to the photography —

02:35:32.940 - 02:35:47.520

photographic tradition and the painting tradition, which one comes, you know, from the east and west. All these things combined, basically creating the same — creating a

02:35:47.610 - 02:36:06.620

third thing, and two people coming together, two artists coming together to merge into kind of a different entity that combines both of our input. And it's interesting, because our personalities are, in some

02:36:06.620 - 02:36:16.230

ways, quite similar; in some ways, quite different. And that works too to our advantage as well. So when we give presentations together,

02:36:16.230 - 02:36:34.020

it's always fun. Because Michael is very earnest, and he always writes out a script, and sticks to the script, and is very clear; and I basically, like I'm doing today, I just, you know, just wing it and say whatever I'm thinking.

02:36:34.610 - 02:36:53.610

And people can get a sense of how our personalities and who we are, creates these unique works. Because if you imagine what he has to do, his part of the process is really — takes a long time.

02:36:54.590 - 02:37:08.890

He has to go to travel all over China, he's got to set up those trips, he's got to, you know, get his camera ready and the film. And he has to go all over and take photos, which then are in

02:37:08.890 - 02:37:20.100

the camera there on the film. But he doesn't actually see the result until he sends them. In fact, he sends those films to Colorado, because

02:37:20.800 - 02:37:37.570

nobody, almost nobody anymore, prints black and white slides. And there's this one guy, apparently, in Colorado who still does it. So well, you imagine he travels to, you know, Mount Hua, Mount

02:37:37.640 - 02:37:49.390

Huang, wherever he's going. He has a Tibetan friend who accompanies him. And they go on these, treks, these journeys, and he flies, he takes all lots of photos.

02:37:49.830 - 02:38:04.670

And then he's got to send this off and wait for the film to be processed. And usually when he was coming back and forth, he could at least have them sent to New York and pick it up. And then he's got to take it back with the slides, you

02:38:04.670 - 02:38:20.580

know, put them on a lightbox and look at them and try to decide which images he wants to print. And then he's got to print them, digitize them and print them on paper. It's actually a time consuming and labor intensive process

02:38:20.580 - 02:38:34.130

with a lot of, it's not easy to use this big printer on this kind of paper because there's a lot of waste. And so he's got to get the image just right. And he's got, you know — so from start to finish, his process,

02:38:34.680 - 02:38:46.840

you know, is months and months and months in the making. Then he takes those images that he thinks that I can expand on. And he either carries them to me, or he Fedexes them to me.

02:38:47.390 - 02:39:00.970

And then I receive them, I look at them. And my process is the opposite. It's like I ponder which ones will work. Sometimes I, you know, I have dozens of

02:39:00.970 - 02:39:17.110

images that are still possibilities that he sent me. But I pick out the one that I feel like I can do something with. And my process, once I've decided that I'm going to do that, I just start painting. So my side of it can take, you

02:39:17.110 - 02:39:33.740

know, just a few days. But the difference is once he gets that image, he can print multiple copies. But for me, once I start painting, it's hit or miss, you can't erase, you can't cover up.

02:39:34.850 - 02:39:53.300

So the process is actually different. And I think it ends up creating something that's very unique. Has there been any chance of disagreement between the two of you?

02:39:54.170 - 02:40:06.400

Disagreement? Minor dis— well, not too much, not too much. But basically, we both have to agree on which images we like.

02:40:06.770 - 02:40:25.220

So far, it's worked out pretty well. No. And people have also asked, "Do I see the original full-size photo from which these excerpts are taken?" And initially, Michael sent those to me as well.

02:40:25.460 - 02:40:39.150

But I decided that I don't really want to see what the actual place looks like. I would rather just be guided by the, you know, by what I see, and just do it visually.

02:40:39.670 - 02:40:56.450

And in some cases, I wouldn't call it a disagreement, but it's funny. Because in some cases, I have taken this image and turned it or painted around it; and then after Michael

02:40:56.450 - 02:41:07.460

sees it, he realizes that I turned it upside down. And to me, it's not upside down, it doesn't matter whether it's upside down or not.

02:41:07.760 - 02:41:23.550

So that one with the two triangles, I mean, that was me a little bit, you know, playing a trick on him to just get him, you know, to look at it. And because he knows what it's supposed to look like.

02:41:24.140 - 02:41:36.920

So it's maybe an effort to see when you turn it upside down if you hadn't seen the original image, it works. So I think you know, sometimes I am kidding around with him in that sense as well.

02:41:38.750 - 02:41:53.200

But it's, all for me, it's all just visual. Yeah, your friendship and relationship with Michael Cherney, kind of reminds me of the story between Zhang Daqian and Lang Jingshan.

02:41:53.310 - 02:42:11.340

I'm not sure if that rings a bell? Sure sure. Lang Jingshan was a photographer who was a very good friend of Zhang Daqian. And what he did is a little bit different, is that he used darkroom

02:42:11.340 - 02:42:27.640

techniques. But what he did, he used photography — and in a way it's kind of similar. He was using photography to kind of reproduce, or to capture the sense of Chinese paintings;

02:42:28.230 - 02:42:42.680

and using a lot of darkroom techniques, he would, you know, combine the trees and the rocks in a certain way that looked like Chinese composition. And he would also include his friend Zhang Daqian, and the image of Zhang

02:42:42.680 - 02:43:00.490

Daqian dressed up in traditional garb, as an element of the composition. So that's certainly something that both Michael and I are aware of, and you know, our approaches is not the same.

02:43:00.490 - 02:43:13.750

But it's certainly anybody who does photography, or does Chinese painting is informed by that kind of thing. But yeah, the idea that there's this collaboration is also, I think, one

02:43:13.750 - 02:43:25.160

can identify with that. And they were also working in California a lot of the time, so that's fun. Yeah, thank you for sharing.

02:43:25.740 - 02:43:39.790

Next, I'm wondering if I could pick your brain on a few bigger picture questions? Thank you. So what would you think the future of "bi mo" will be

02:43:39.850 - 02:43:54.950

going forward in the future of contemporary ink paintings? Oh, well, you know, the kind of funny thing is that I'm just doing this because

02:43:55.510 - 02:44:07.350

I fell in love with Chinese paintings at an early age, and I've just pursued it from as many different angles as possible, right? I've been in the market, I've taught, you know, I've exhibited and all

02:44:07.700 - 02:44:18.590

this kind of thing. Um, and I really enjoy making paintings that I personally like to look at, right? So that's my chief goal.

02:44:18.900 - 02:44:35.470

Whether or not the — how the future of ink painting goes, is really not something that I can determine.

02:44:35.470 - 02:44:52.180

I mean, all I can do is put out the kinds of things that I like to look at. And when I was in Kaikodo and when I was in Sotheby's, I was able to introduce modern and contemporary works that I found to be interesting

02:44:53.160 - 02:45:09.430

and worthwhile. And so, you know, giving an informed opinion about what, which, a possible direction. But obviously, there are many many artists who are working

02:45:09.430 - 02:45:20.870

in a wide variety of styles, combining different media and so forth. And it's, you know, it's going to be up to future generations to decide

02:45:23.170 - 02:45:39.630

what the direction should be. I can say that clearly, most younger artists are not as obsessed with traditional painting, as I was, at my age;

02:45:39.930 - 02:45:56.230

but at the same time, I wasn't doing it in order to become a successful artist, there was no market at all. So that wasn't even in my thinking. So now, I think artists today have a different challenge: is,

02:45:57.940 - 02:46:11.070

you know, What are you trying to express? And who do you think your audience is? And, you know, whether or not my work or Michael's work or our combined work has

02:46:11.110 - 02:46:28.510

a place in that discussion, I don't know. I would, I don't think that we're going to be mainstream, but I would like to at least — if nothing else — be a footnote to the history that this was going on, and you had these two

02:46:28.990 - 02:46:43.150

American guys who were actually doing something that looks a lot like traditional painting, okay. So that at the very least, we've made that statement and we continue to grow. But I've seen a lot of

02:46:45.390 - 02:47:01.940

artists who do all kinds of wonderful things. And I'm very, very encouraging of artists to try all different kinds of approaches. I will say one thing: the aspect of

02:47:02.060 - 02:47:24.700

my work that is not seen as much in contemporary ink painting is the emphasis on the quality of brushwork meaning the line itself. There is something — one of the things that attracted me to

02:47:24.700 - 02:47:41.230

the tradition, is that even though I can identify, you know, a Song Yuan Ming Qing painting by, you know, period style, there's a certain — let's just talk about landscape, but same is true for bird-and-flower, whatever.

02:47:41.230 - 02:47:58.490

There are definitely different styles from different periods and it evolves, but there is an underlying emphasis on brushwork and the quality of line that sort of creates lineages

02:47:59.550 - 02:48:15.460

across time. And I found that to be very, very interesting. You know, you can't really — we talked about traditional Chinese painting, but actually that's a very, very broad subject. There are regional styles, there are period styles, there's, you know,

02:48:15.460 - 02:48:32.530

there are different traditions, there's religious tradition Buddhist art and other kinds of art. Because my work is more related to the so-called "literati tradition", you know, we tend to talk about those artists; but there's all kinds

02:48:32.530 - 02:48:45.250

of other possibilities. And I'm not certainly not discounting that. But what I do find, for me, after my study of Chinese art, what I really, really appreciate most is that

02:48:46.040 - 02:49:00.350

quality of brushstrokes, brush-line, and I am particularly enamored of dry brush. And if you look at a lot of the contemporary work today, they're making — mainly

02:49:02.080 - 02:49:14.900

it's about ink. So in Chinese, right, brushwork, the word we translate, as brushwork is "bi mo." "Bi" is brush, "mo" is ink.

02:49:15.500 - 02:49:27.540

Okay, and so ink painting. So now that you notice that they've started to talk about this as "shui mo" — water ink, water ink painting.

02:49:28.170 - 02:49:44.180

And I think that's telling, because there's less emphasis on the "bi." It's more about washes, and you can use ink to create all kinds of, you know, interesting patterns and things; but there's less of an

02:49:44.180 - 02:50:00.690

emphasis on the "bi," the brush itself, which is the bone of the drawing. And so I would like to see, hopefully, at least some artists continue to explore that particular

02:50:01.690 - 02:50:16.460

aspect of Chinese painting. Because for me, that's the thing that is most distinctive about Chinese painting. You know, whatever kind of painting you're talking about, whether it's watercolor, oils,

02:50:16.650 - 02:50:32.520

acrylics, you know, even graffiti, you know, with spray paint, you can talk about composition, you can talk about all these, you know, abstract forms and subject matter, and so on and so forth.

02:50:32.570 - 02:50:48.810

But it's only with Chinese painting that you can talk about brushwork in a very deep sense. Even Japanese painting, for the most part, that they also have brushwork, but it's different.

02:50:48.810 - 02:51:04.530

You can distinguish between most Japanese painting, and Chinese painting and calligraphy as well. And there's something, the thing that makes Chinese painting so Chinese is this quality of

02:51:04.890 - 02:51:20.860

the brush. And even in Michael Cherney's photographs, sometimes I get the sense that he is embracing that aesthetic in ways that a lot of contemporary ink painters are not

02:51:21.070 - 02:51:30.250

necessarily seeing. So, do you know what I'm saying? There's more of an emphasis on new subjects and new approaches, and that's fine.

02:51:30.720 - 02:51:49.270

That's fine. But the use of the brush itself, I think, is something that one can only learn over years and years of experience — which is maybe ironic coming from somebody who grew up in New York.

02:51:49.410 - 02:52:09.620

But I happen to have had a very good teacher. Yeah, that's definitely what I'm going to ask next about your — another hat of yours as a teacher and art educator. I also want to be mindful of your time in case you're okay

02:52:09.620 - 02:52:26.650

to continue. I can continue, but I don't want to bore people. Well, they can shut it off if they're bored. Thank you. So yeah, you have taught Chinese paintings and art history in numerous institutions like the

02:52:26.800 - 02:52:44.490

Columbia University, the Arizona State University, and the Connecticut College, and so on. Can you talk about how you consider the best way to introduce Chinese brush paintings to students at an earlier age as

02:52:46.460 - 02:53:01.880

well? Oh, well, I think, yeah, as you say, I've taught different classes at different institutions, and I taught also students privately. And all I can do is try to

02:53:02.440 - 02:53:20.870

expose those students, whether it's in a classroom setting or whether it's in a personal setting, to the kind of things that I'm talking about, to think in terms of how...

02:53:21.120 - 02:53:33.990

Okay, so art history is one thing, and art historians basically are telling you the history of the art form. And it's actually very funny

02:53:33.990 - 02:53:50.830

because I did study art history with Cahill and others. And at some point, I kind of — when I was doing it, I didn't quite realize what it is, what is art history? So I realized that, oh, these people, these great scholars,

02:53:51.150 - 02:54:05.590

that's what they do. They look at the history of art, and their creative act is somehow trying to figure out what went on, and

02:54:05.590 - 02:54:20.910

how it relates to what was going on in history, and put it together, and their creative act is in the way that they interpret the history. And it took me a while to realize, well, you know, that's not really what I'm interested

02:54:20.910 - 02:54:33.880

in. I'm interested — I'm not in— Yeah, it's kind of funny, but I didn't really think about what art history was. It was something — now I'm not interested in art history, per se; I'm

02:54:33.880 - 02:54:48.270

interested in the art. And so I tried to understand the art from as many different angles as possible. And that's why I think my experience is relatively unique.

02:54:48.820 - 02:55:05.540

And that's why... that's what, you know, I try to convey, my — the whole total of my experience when I teach. And certainly, if you want to learn about Chinese

02:55:06.050 - 02:55:23.300

painting, it helps to at least know how to paint. I mean, I think that's kind of basic. But that's, in the West, we tend to separate all these things out, where, you

02:55:24.790 - 02:55:35.850

know — not entirely. But the art historians make art history, and artists make art, and collectors collect, and dealers buy and sell. Whereas, as I mentioned earlier, with C.

02:55:35.850 - 02:55:53.740

C. Wang's generation in that whole literati culture, that was a package deal. You know, I think, a lot of artists, a lot of professors or museum people who have, who are in the field of Chinese painting, sometimes have been accused of, because they buy and

02:55:53.740 - 02:56:09.590

sell or this kind of thing, because it's an ethical consideration. But in the Chinese way, that doesn't make any sense. C. C. Wang didn't like to be called a dealer, even though he sold lots of paintings to lots of institutions and individuals.

02:56:10.010 - 02:56:21.260

But to him, it was like, of course, you buy things to learn from them; you sell things, to get money to buy other things to learn from. I mean, in essence,

02:56:21.260 - 02:56:33.370

that's what he's doing. He was also making money other ways, through real estate and so forth. But everything was geared towards acquiring paintings that you could

02:56:33.370 - 02:56:50.100

learn from. I mean, that's an oversimplification, but I think that's true. And so for me, having grown up in the market, and dealt with collectors and dealt with all kinds of, you know, museum people and professors, I think

02:56:51.420 - 02:57:08.480

I have a kind of different perspective, because it's kind of broader. And I like to convey that to students. Also, for students, it's — what is the point of learning art history?

02:57:10.140 - 02:57:23.620

Are you looking for a job? Then you can either teach, or you can go into museum, or you can go into, I don't know, the auction business or gallery or something like that.

02:57:23.870 - 02:57:42.690

So I'm able to kind of offer some advice, because I've done all these different things. And I think that's useful. Because just studying Chinese painting for the sake of it, is,

02:57:43.900 - 02:58:01.840

I mean, that's a hard thing to do, because it really requires a lot of effort. And in terms of practicality, there's not much there. Now, I'm starting to sound like my parents who would have said that, you know, there's, you know, there's

02:58:01.840 - 02:58:13.670

no future in terms of employment; and they would have been right. I mean, I was unique, and I managed to find a way. But it really is something to consider.

02:58:14.370 - 02:58:28.070

On the other hand, if you really are passionate about something like Chinese art, Chinese painting, certainly it helps to do it. To learn how to paint, not necessarily become an artist, but

02:58:28.440 - 02:58:43.170

to really understand how things are made, and to develop one's understanding and one's appreciation. It certainly helps to actually try to do painting.

02:58:44.070 - 02:59:01.970

So it's been fun for me, for example, when I taught at Columbia for a couple of semesters, I thought what I was actually teaching was painting techniques to a small group of students, including professors of

02:59:03.030 - 02:59:17.860

Chinese painting and Japanese painting. And it's really interesting to find — I won't mention any names — but it's interesting to find that the people who are teaching

02:59:18.860 - 02:59:41.220

this art form, are not very good at doing it, or have no clue at all how these things are made. And I find that a little bit challenging. So it's sort of like, when I was in college, I took

02:59:42.010 - 02:59:55.230

courses in religious studies and things like that. It's like, if you're going to be a professor of, you know, Buddhist studies or something like that. You know, sure, there's lots of stuff, you can read the text, you

02:59:55.290 - 03:00:09.280

can, you know, talk about the practices and the art and all that. But if you're not a practicing Buddhist, do you really understand what it's about?

03:00:09.480 - 03:00:26.610

And I feel a little bit like that for art history in general. And, of course, there are a lot of art historians who also have practiced art. But, so I guess what my, because of my background, and I don't have

03:00:26.900 - 03:00:39.070

a PhD. So I — even if I wanted to, it'd be very hard to, you know, go into a major academic institution full-time for that. But I have other

03:00:39.620 - 03:00:56.310

types of experience that maybe I can share and help to broaden the knowledge of the students. Was that the question? I don't remember.

03:00:58.160 - 03:01:13.730

Yes. And definitely, it leads me, leads to the next question that I have in mind, which is surrounding your experience at University of Colorado, where you spoke of the teaching was focused on creativity and promoting

03:01:13.730 - 03:01:30.450

creativity, and free form instead of any techniques on — which contrasts deeply with your later, very rigid and literati culture tradition training on techniques.

03:01:31.450 - 03:01:48.280

How do you think is the right way to balance the two where it doesn't limit the creativity with the amount of copying? As you talked about it as a double-edged sword as well, and like having rigid training at the same time?

03:01:49.540 - 03:02:04.420

Yeah, that actually is a really great question. Um, and I think the answer is, it depends on yourself. It depends on who you are. So I'm not — I guess there was a period in my life

03:02:04.600 - 03:02:18.820

where I was really so into learning what C. C. Wang was teaching, and so grateful that he was really opening up the door, this treasure chest to really understand

03:02:19.400 - 03:02:40.330

the essence of Chinese painting; that I became rather — what's the word? It was like, I was a religious convert, who was so, so blessed to have found this essence, that I

03:02:40.330 - 03:02:56.270

wanted to tell everybody about it, and I became very opinionated in the sense that I thought, Oh, this is what you really need to know. And I think it was — I probably turned off a lot of people because I kind of came off as a know-it-all or something, as

03:02:56.650 - 03:03:11.770

this young person. But over time, I've realized that there isn't any one answer to those kinds of questions; but I think if you're talking about being a practicing artist, you have to

03:03:11.770 - 03:03:23.080

find what works for you. What seems to resonate with who you are. And there are different kinds of artists. There's different kinds of art.

03:03:24.040 - 03:03:41.440

And I think the goal even is not to be the greatest artist ever. The goal is to find your mode of expression that suits who you are, your personality, your feelings.

03:03:42.880 - 03:04:02.770

And that's why I was so grateful to have found this path for myself, because it suits my temperament, my abilities. As I was trying to explain a little bit about the idea of literati painting, it's not so much based

03:04:03.370 - 03:04:15.440

on your talent, per se, you know, your natural creativity. It's something that can be learned. And that's what made it different from my

03:04:15.440 - 03:04:29.960

experience, this brief experience trying to learn how to do art in college. It's like, there, because the emphasis was on creativity and originality, it was geared towards

03:04:30.470 - 03:04:46.040

people who have that kind of talent, that kind of personality, that kind of self-assuredness and who just have an ability, or an instinct and a need to express themselves.

03:04:47.390 - 03:05:04.030

I was more of a kind of intellectual type, who didn't have a problem — a lot of artists are, you know, self-contained, and they don't like authority.

03:05:04.420 - 03:05:16.730

And they just want to, you know, find their own way. And there's nothing wrong with that. But I didn't have the capacity to do that, whether you call it talent, temperament, whatever.

03:05:16.750 - 03:05:32.330

I was much more inclined, like doing calligraphy, even though I didn't know what it was. But just doing it, because it felt really cool to do that. And I knew that gradually, step by step, I would improve.

03:05:32.330 - 03:05:45.290

That's why when I found a teacher who said, "No, that line's no good. No, that tree is not correct," that was something that I thought with my limited talent I could work with.

03:05:45.290 - 03:05:57.770

And I knew that, if I kept at it, I would get better. So I mean, it's almost like an athlete, there were some people who are naturally gifted, they have the body type, they have the strength, they have the speed.

03:05:58.260 - 03:06:17.600

And, you know, their challenge is to rein it in, and to learn, to find somebody they respect and learn to get better. But for other kinds of athletes, you know, they don't have that natural gift

03:06:19.080 - 03:06:30.910

so much. But they work hard, they study, they learn the basics, and they have enough talent that they can actually succeed. And they may not be

03:06:31.410 - 03:06:48.960

Michael Jordan. But if you know, they can actually end up being good enough to be his teammate, that kind of thing. And you just have to know who you are. And actually, the process of learning all of this has allowed

03:06:49.010 - 03:06:58.820

me to discover who I am. So I always say that, for me, painting is not about self-expression. It's about self-discovery.

03:06:59.630 - 03:07:14.060

And not everybody feels that way. And there are a lot of younger artists that I've met who I think are really good. And you can tell right away that they have their own way of doing things. So, you know, some people come to me

03:07:14.890 - 03:07:28.630

and want to learn and I can tell right away, they're, you know, I know they won't sit there and copy Dong Qichang for a year. Well then, I'm not the right teacher. That doesn't mean they're not a good artist.

03:07:28.980 - 03:07:40.940

In fact, they may be a much better artist than me. But I'm looking for those who don't instinctually have that kind of confidence in what they're doing. And they want to learn step by step.

03:07:42.190 - 03:07:52.100

So I think each person is different. And that's what is so wonderful about this particular tradition. It was for people who were educated, and you didn't

03:07:52.880 - 03:08:08.360

have to be the greatest artists; but you could learn to see better in terms of, you know, looking at art and stuff. And then from that arise some greats.

03:08:08.760 - 03:08:27.310

And there are some, you know, some artists who are naturally gifted, who self-taught and they're great. And that's more of the case, that's more of the — in the West, that sort of what we think of as

03:08:28.100 - 03:08:44.760

being the archetypical artists, is that they're, you know, they're, sometimes they're a little crazy, or, you know, they're all — like Van Gogh or somebody. That to us is what we're looking at, we tend to look at as the

03:08:44.980 - 03:08:58.690

great artist type. Jackson Pollock, you know, he's a womanizer, he's a drunk, this kind of thing; whereas I'm looking at somebody, you know, like Wang Yuanqi, who was a, you know, who was an upright citizen, did

03:08:59.100 - 03:09:11.270

his thing, and then gradually, when he retired, he spent more time writing poetry. And those are different kinds of people, and they create different kinds of work.

03:09:11.270 - 03:09:22.810

So that kind of work resonates with me. So it kind of makes sense. So there's lots of different kinds of Chinese painting that different people like.

03:09:24.990 - 03:09:38.340

And the tradition is long enough that you can find your own lineage. That make sense? Thank you for sharing that really, really inspiring answer.

03:09:40.340 - 03:09:54.510

And last but not least, I really would love to touch on your collector's hat as well, as you have a collection yourself. Can you share some of the pieces in your

03:09:54.510 - 03:10:09.940

collection, and perhaps your collecting strategy as well, like what you look for in a painting? Okay, I actually have a very modest collection, let's get one thing straight. And the reason for that is that, you

03:10:10.050 - 03:10:27.610

know, when I was working either Sotheby's or Kaikodo, you know, my job was to source things and find the works and find homes for them, and get the best price.

03:10:28.620 - 03:10:46.450

Therefore, you know, I mean, the sort of tough part about it was, because I saw so many paintings, there were very few, you know — and I've seen a lot of really bad

03:10:47.010 - 03:11:05.000

paintings, and some good ones — there were very few instances where, I guess my tastes were pretty high, because I didn't want a lot of the mediocre stuff. So there were very few opportunities whereby I could see

03:11:05.000 - 03:11:19.490

something I thought was really good and could afford it. Because if I bought, for example, in Sotheby's, if I bought something, I wouldn't have to leave a bid, just like anybody else. You know, there were no insider trading,

03:11:20.960 - 03:11:34.430

where — or I couldn't make an offer to somebody who wanted to sell, because my job was to put it in the auction. Now, occasionally, there were things that I liked, that nobody else bid on or whatever, and I was able to acquire.

03:11:34.770 - 03:11:53.680

But having said that, I was able to live vicariously, to collect vicariously, by advising people with a lot more means to collect the top pieces. And so I got, I had a lot of fun helping

03:11:55.430 - 03:12:08.840

private collectors, and sometimes museums, to find things for their collections. So the really, really good pieces, I would recommend to the people

03:12:08.900 - 03:12:20.900

who trusted my judgment. Well, and that's true when I was at Sotheby's, that's part of the job, in fact. But of course, they have to bid like everybody else and fight it out.

03:12:21.500 - 03:12:39.550

But I thought that, you know, I am very happy that I had a part in putting together, you know, some serious collections for other people. And yeah, my personal might

03:12:39.990 - 03:12:52.650

— once in a while, I was able to find something, and during the brief time when I was not working for Sotheby's or Kaikodo, I was able to find a few things, and some contemporary things which were not necessarily expensive.

03:12:52.700 - 03:13:12.750

But I wouldn't call myself a collector. I was a — I live, as I said, I collected vicariously, so that I could learn from the pieces that other people collected. And I have ongoing relationships with some major private collectors,

03:13:13.930 - 03:13:30.500

and that's fine. Thank you very much. And I guess we're approaching the end of our interview. And thank you so much for your patience and generosity. And can I ask you one last question about the future plans?

03:13:30.570 - 03:13:46.650

Like, what do you plan to achieve in the next five to ten years? Like, as an artist and all the other hats? I just... my first priority is to

03:13:46.650 - 03:13:57.380

not get COVID, which we've been able to succeed thus far. And just, I don't really have any concrete plans. I think I'll just keep working.

03:13:57.870 - 03:14:13.770

And the only thing I could say is that, as I mentioned, you know, I do my art because I like it, and because I feel like it's helping me to find, to discover some things about myself.

03:14:13.770 - 03:14:27.680

And, you know, that kind of thing. Obviously it would be nice to have the recognition, the exhibitions, that's nice. But I know that because I have consciously chosen

03:14:28.260 - 03:14:46.640

to work in a traditional format in a traditional medium, that it's really up to future generations to decide where I fit in, whether I'm just an anomaly of

03:14:46.640 - 03:15:02.840

a Westerner who happened to learn Chinese painting, and being okay; or whether, really, there's a place within the history of Chinese painting, or, you know, a small place that I can have, that I have something that I can pass on

03:15:02.840 - 03:15:19.440

that's meaningful, that other people find useful. And that's going to be determined by, — clearly that's going to be determined by audiences in China. So for up until this point, we, I haven't — I've

03:15:19.980 - 03:15:35.920

shown a few times in group shows in China. But I think, you know, there's a tremendous number of painters in China. And so I think I

03:15:36.110 - 03:15:56.360

would — my hope is that eventually that maybe people, audiences in China, mainland China in particular, have an opportunity to sort of see what I've been doing. But I have, whatever, I'm just doing my thing.

03:15:59.680 - 03:16:14.980

I trust there will be a mainland China audience who would love to see your works here at some point in the future. And all the best of luck for you to achieve what you are aiming for in your artistic career.

03:16:16.130 - 03:16:26.220

Okay, time will tell. I appreciate your interest. But it's just fun to share my experiences because if nothing else, it's been a rather unique path.

03:16:26.600 - 03:16:42.460

I mean, in retrospect, when you look at it, what the way I've been describing it, it looks like a very straight line and obvious; but at each step along the way, you know, there might have been a different turn, so. At least I'm trying to make sense of

03:16:44.480 - 03:16:50.840

where I've been and how I got to where I am and we'll see where it leads. It's not over yet.