A Love Letter to Taiwan

Bright light streams through the windows into the second-floor gallery of the Museum of National Taipei University of Education (MoNTUE). Water of Immortality is standing quietly in one corner. The nearly life-size sculpture faithfully captures the subtle curves of the human body, and the beige color of the marble conveys a sense of warmth. Amid the shifting light and shadows, and against the greenery outside the windows, the sculpted woman seems almost to be alive.

An eventful history

The story began a century ago. In 1921 Water of Immortality was selected for the third Imperial Art Exhibition in Japan. It was rare in that colonial era for a Taiwanese artist to receive such an honor, and not only did the press lavish attention on Huang Tu-shui’s achievement, but the news also lifted the spirits of the public at large. Huang, who was beginning to make a name for himself in Japanese art circles, was even commissioned by Japan’s royal family to create artworks.

Water of Immortality survived the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, but though it should have been cherished as a national treasure, its history after Huang’s early death was far from fortunate. Huang’s widow, Liao Chiu-gui, arranged for it to be sent back to Taiwan, where it was gifted to the Taiwan Education Associ­ation in Taipei. After World War II, Japan handed Taiwan over to the Republic of China, and the associ­ation’s building was taken over by the forerunner of the Taiwan Provincial Assembly. Conservatism reigned in the postwar era, and complex ideological factors came into play. As a result, when the assembly later moved to Taichung, the sculpture was dumped near Taichung Station, and was even splashed with dark blue ink.

Chang Hong-biao, a surgeon from a prominent local family, was running a clinic near the station. An art lover, he could not bear to see the sculpture being exposed to vandalism, so he took it home. Shortly before he passed away, he had the sculpture carefully stored away inside his family’s factory in Wufeng.

Thanks to Lin Mun-lee, a researcher who specializes in art education, Water of Immortality is accessible to the public again.(courtesy of NCAF)

Rediscovery

Having seemingly vanished into thin air, the once-­celebrated Water of Immortality became a legend in art history. “Anyone who has studied the history of art in Taiwan will have heard of this work,” says Lin Mun-lee, a researcher who specializes in Taiwan’s art education and who currently chairs the National Culture and Arts Foundation (NCAF).

Lin, who is also a professor emerita of arts and design at National Taipei University of Education, as well as director of MoNTUE, organized an exhibition entitled The Everlasting Bloom: Rediscovering Taiwanese Modern Art at the museum two years ago. Among the artworks on display was Huang Tu-shui’s unique Bust of a Girl, which was warmly received by the public.

Encouraged by this success, Lin made plans for Lumière: The Enlightenment and Self-Awakening of Taiwanese Culture, an exhibition intended to celebrate the centen­ary of the Taiwan Cultural Association.

“Heaven helps those who help themselves,” Lin says. Helpers, including President Tsai Ing-wen, came from all quarters to build bridges for her. Eventually she met Chang Shi-wen, a son of Chang Hong-biao. Many ­people before Lin had heard that Huang’s sculpture was in the care of the Chang family, but all offers to buy it had been rebuffed. During their meeting, however, Chang felt that the time was ripe, and without a second thought he invited Lin to come and take the sculpture away.

And so it was that at 4.30 p.m. on May 6, 2021, inside a factory in Wufeng, encircled by some 20 members of the Chang family, along with Lin Mun-lee and Japan­ese conservator Junichi Mori, Water of Immortality—which had languished in a wooden crate for 47 years, wrapped in linen and plastic fabric—at last saw the light of day again.

Huang Tu-shui’s Indigenous Child (1920) was the first Taiwanese work to be selected for the Imperial Art Exhibition in Japan. Scholars believe that the sculpture was destroyed in the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923. Contemporary photos like this help us imagine what it was like. (courtesy of National Tsing Hua University Library)

A pioneering sculptor

Huang Tu-shui was born in Bangka (in today’s Wanhua District of Taipei City) in 1895, at the beginning of the Japanese colonial era. Despite living to be only 35, he was an important pioneer of modern sculpture in Taiwan. His works were selected for the Imperial Art Exhibition four times, and he is referred to as “a prodigy of Taiwanese art” and “a great sculptor before the dawn of Taiwan’s New Art Movement.”

Huang spent his childhood in Taipei’s Dadaocheng, where religious culture flourished. His uncle made religious sculptures, so he became familiar with wood carving at a tender age. After graduating from what is now Taiping Elementary School, he attended the Japanese-­language school set up by the Office of the Governor-­General of Taiwan—one of the highest seats of learning for locals (subsequently reincarnated as the University of Taipei and National Taipei University of Education)—and there he first demonstrated a talent for art and craft. After graduation, with the help of Japan­ese teachers and officials, he won a scholarship to study wood carving at the Tokyo Fine Arts School.

Japanese art education at that time was undergoing modernization and Westernization, and it was this edu­ca­tion that stimulated and inspired Huang’s cre­ativ­ity. For example, Huang, who like Michelangelo had an amazingly good visual memory, was keen to try his hand at marble carving, a medium which had a long history in the West but was little known in Taiwan. However, as he had enrolled in a wood-­carving course, he wasn’t allowed to learn stone carving. Moreover, Japan followed a strict apprentice system. If he had decided to study under another teacher, the learning process would have taken several years more. As he was not willing to spend so much time, Huang taught himself stone carving by observation, memor­iza­tion, imitation, and practice.

Huang started to work on Water of Immortality in 1919. “This is a complex work of art,” says Yang Wen-i, a former professor of calligraphy and painting at National Taiwan University of Arts. To express his ideas, Huang opted for a female nude, a noble motif frequently seen in Western art. It is also common practice in Western art to use female forms to personify or visual­ize abstract concepts.

But Huang did not give Water of Immortality a purely Western expression. “He was very versatile. Although he worked within Western traditions, he was able to draw resources from the East,” Yang says. The title of the sculpture alludes to the “sweet dew” in the vessel held by Guanyin, a bodhisattva associated with mercy and kindness. “Simultaneously using the concept of the female nude and resorting to the Buddhist image of the ‘sweet dew,’ he established connections between the West and the East. This was very ambitious.”

Water of Immortality, a static work that conveys a dynamic sense of beauty, demonstrates Huang Tu-shui’s skill as a sculptor and his hopes for Taiwanese art.

Water of Immortality, a static work that conveys a dynamic sense of beauty, demonstrates Huang Tu-shui’s skill as a sculptor and his hopes for Taiwanese art.

A love letter to Taiwan

Water of Immortality is often compared with the Italian Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus because, like the latter, it features a nude woman together with a gigantic seashell. Huang’s sculpture is therefore known as the Taiwanese Venus. Others regard Water of Immortality as a representation of the beautiful and seductive Clam Spirit of folklore. But as Yang’s analysis shows, the symbolic stature of Water of Immortality is such that the work defies any facile compar­ison with either Venus or the Clam Spirit.

Yang observes that Botticelli’s Venus is willowy and bashful. By contrast, Huang’s nude subject “has nothing to hide and is coming into our world, as if declaring that she has a right to do so.” In response to the Clam Spirit interpretation, Yang thinks that if Huang had wanted to go down that route, he wouldn’t have chosen a title that is reminiscent of Guanyin’s ­blessings.

Furthermore, sculptors traditionally use acces­sories and other objects to tell the stories of their human subjects. The seashell behind Huang’s nude woman, as well as the mussels by her feet, recall Taiwan’s maritime environment. The woman looks as though she is rejoicing in the sweet dew of heaven, having emerged from the sea, freshly reawakened. Yang looks upon the deified woman as a metaphor for Taiwan. For him, Water of Immortality lends itself to this interpretation: “Taiwan rising from the sea, with heavenly blessings.”

A hundred years on, Huang’s profound longings and hopes for his native island have been passed down to us. Water of Immortality is undoubtedly a love letter to Taiwan, crafted by a talented artist who was thinking fondly of his homeland. While admiring the sculpture today, we are reminded of these powerfully moving words of Huang’s:

“In modern-day Taiwan, there isn’t so much as a single Japanese painter, Western painter, or craftsman-­artist. But Taiwan is an earthly paradise blessed with heavenly beauty. When our fellow countrymen open their eyes and give free rein to their youthful ambitions, we will certainly see great artists born of this island. While looking forward to that time, we shall endeavor to improve ourselves. In order to foster the development of art, we shall loudly and bravely ask our fellow countrymen to wake up and be idle no ­longer. We look forward to the arrival of the age of ‘Formosa’ in art. Surely this is not an illusion of mine!”
—Huang Tu-shui, “Born in Taiwan”

Water of Immortality on display in the exhibition Lumière: The Enlightenment and Self-Awakening of Taiwanese Culture. The exhibition space evokes concentric circles, and Huang Tu-shui’s newly rediscovered sculpture takes pride of place in the innermost circle, an arrangement that reflects its vital significance.