Blazing New Trails for Modern Art

Ran In-ting and Liao Chi-chun

Sharleen Su　/　photos courtesy of Chan Liu Art Museum　/　tr. by Brandon Yen

May 2023

中文日本語

The Japanese colonial era represented a watershed in the history of Taiwanese art. Although public taste at that time continued to gravitate toward traditional Chinese painting and calligraphy, several Taiwanese painters came under the influence of their Japanese teachers and embraced new styles and techniques. Their works ushered in a “New Fine Art Movement” in Taiwan. Among these artists were Chen Cheng-po, Liao Chi-chun, and Ran In-ting—all of whom became pillars of Taiwan’s art history. They had the courage to devote themselves to Western oil and watercolor painting in an age when popular art was dominated by wall paintings, carvings, and temple columns displaying auspicious and festive motifs. These young painters blazed new trails for modern Taiwanese art.

Art education in the Japanese era valued individuality and placed a high premium on the advancement of culture, encouraging Taiwanese artists to express their idiosyncratic visions. With the penetration of Western influence in Japanese Taiwan, many local painters began to adopt new materials and techniques, gradually developing their own characteristic styles. The talented artist Ran In-ting amazed the West with his watercolors. Liao Chi-chun’s gorgeous colors and his interpretations of a romanticized “Southern Country” astonished Japanese artistic circles. Though Ran and Liao were born in the same era, one was based in Northern Taiwan, while the other worked in the south. They led very different lives.

An artist of the world

Deemed one of the world’s greatest watercolorists, Ran In-ting (1903–1979) had tremendous personal charisma. He always dressed like a gentleman. He looked young and handsome, and his graceful demeanor was reminiscent of the cultivated elegance of European aristocrats. His successes at the extremely competitive Japanese Imperial Art Exhibition (Teiten) meant that he was destined for a glorious career in art. In 1971 European and American art critics acknowledged his achievements, selecting him as one of the ten major watercolorists in the world.

Ran’s visit to America at the invitation of the US Department of State marked the beginning of his important contributions to art diplomacy. He met US president Dwight Eisenhower, to whom he presented a painting of a snow scene on Yushan. This watercolor used to hang in the West Wing of the White House. Ran also met US president Gerald Ford, Japanese prime minister Nobusuke Kishi, Pope Paul VI, and many other eminent figures across the world.

Ran In-ting played a vital role in Taiwan’s art diplomacy, making friends with many influential political figures across the world.

(MOFA file photo)

Feeding the Ducks

Ran’s exquisite paintings capture the beauty of rural Taiwan. They are extremely well thought of.

Early years

Remarkably well connected, Ran was able to reach the pinnacle of success. His illustrious career, however, belies the loneliness of his early years. According to Zhang Yisheng’s biography of Ran, the artist was born in a remote place called Ashushe in Luodong, Yilan, in 1903. No other family lived in the immediate vicinity of his parents’ humble abode.

Ran was born into an impecunious family. When he started to draw, pens, brushes, and paints were all luxuries he could not afford. He would collect the shafts of brushes thrown away by other children in the neighborhood, as well as feathers shed by birds, joining these together to make new brushes and to draw on sand with them. Having little access to ready-made paints, he gathered wild plants to make natural dyes for himself. In later years, he continued to paint with inked sugarcane bagasse. His reliance on natural materials was in line with his carefree and relaxed temperament.

Ran’s eldest granddaughter, Catherine Chen (second from right), poses with her family in front of one of Ran’s paintings in the Chan Liu Art Museum in Taipei. They are very proud of Ran’s achievements. (photo by Lin Min-hsuan)

Bamboo-sheltered Dwellings by a River

Ran captured the sultry air and vibrant motions of the tropical island’s bamboo groves. His fine skills have greatly impressed foreign art critics.

A loving artist

“As I remember him, my grandfather was an amiable and easygoing person, very approachable, with a refined taste,” says Catherine Chen, Ran’s granddaughter. For Chen, Ran was a loving grandfather, a hospitable, humorous, and sincere soul. “He never expected others to reciprocate, and never spoke ill of people behind their backs.” While Ran may have come across as an eminent figure out of most people’s reach, he actually had a gentle heart and treated everyone fairly. He loved small animals and sympathized with the underprivileged. At his residence in Taipei’s Shilin District, Ran always put bird boxes on the trees in the garden, and he took in stray dogs.

Ran’s watercolors and ink-wash paintings are extremely well thought of. Often depicting rural life in Taiwan, they convey Ran’s deep feelings for his homeland. “He was so talented,” says Hsiao Chong-ray, art historian and emeritus professor of history at National Cheng Kung University. Hsiao marvels at Ran’s Feeding the Ducks, in the collection of the Chan Liu Art Museum: “There are so many ducks in the painting. Each and every one of them is carefully delineated.” This iconic ink-wash painting portrays an ordinary scene of duck farming on a river. It creates an impression of depth by spreading the ducks along a riverbank that snakes into the background. From the crowded foreground to the misty distance, every duck looks vividly alive. To paint the ducks in the background, Ran used diluted ink and gently dabbed the paper with his brush, but we can still clearly make out their heads and tails. Hsiao gives his verdict: “The painting is very powerful indeed. This is not easy to achieve! He really was a genius.”

After founding Harvest magazine in 1951, Ran and his then graphic designer, Yuyu Yang (Yang Ying-feng), traveled the length and breadth of rural Taiwan to investigate the customs and conditions of local farmers. Through the magazine, he aimed to promote agricultural knowledge and skills among rural folk. He wrote the word “Formosa” on every one of his artworks, as an expression of his love of Taiwan.

Summer Rain

Ran’s works carry deep feelings for Taiwan. Through his paintings, we can catch a glimpse of what the island was like in his time.

Hsiao Chong-ray speaks highly of both Ran In-ting and Liao Chi-chun, regarding these pioneering artists as harbingers of a new era in Taiwanese art. (photo by Lin Min-hsuan)

Tropical colors

Liao Chi-chun (1902–1976) was another renowned Taiwanese painter. “Liao’s work has a very southern feel, which means it’s very colorful. The vibrant colors have their origins in folk art,” Hsiao tells us. “Liao’s colors are folksy colors combined with impressions of Tainan as a historic town. He was one of the first few Taiwanese artists who were selected for the Teiten in Japan.” Liao’s Courtyard with Banana Trees—one of the most cherished treasures of the Taipei Fine Arts Museum—depicts an everyday scene in tropical Taiwan, bringing out Tainan’s old-style, unostentatious hospitality. This oil painting was selected for the Teiten in 1928. Before Liao, Chen Cheng-po (1895–1947) was the only Taiwanese painter to have received this honor.

Not much given to words, Liao Chi-chun chose to express the vitality of his inner world in his paintings. (courtesy of Liao Hexin)

Mt. Guanyin from Tamsui

Over time, Liao’s style changed from figurative to abstract. He thought this was an inevitable shift because painters were supposed to express their feelings in their art.

Life in art

Liao was a gentle soul. He never got angry or shouted at people. Yet his inner vitality is fully visible in his paintings. “In terms of purity of colors, and design, Liao is second to none. That’s for sure. His colors and shapes are remarkably free,” Hsiao comments on Liao’s works. “The colors are so beautiful as to appear almost magical. He was able to produce dozens of versions of the same view of Mt. Guanyin from Tamsui. They’re all different.”

While Liao’s early style was realist, he gradually shifted toward abstraction after visiting America. Hsiao points out that “in modern abstract art, form is content. Liao was a trailblazer in this area.”

“We often visited our grandparents when we were little. While we were there, Grandfather would always be working in his studio,” says Liao’s granddaughter Lin Yayun. She recalls that there were many easels in Liao’s studio, and that he never stopped painting. “He didn’t work on just one painting at a time; he had several there at the same time.” As a child, Lin often saw her grandfather poring over his own paintings in his studio, putting a mark on this canvas today, and a stroke on another the next day. “My impression is that Grandfather was very easygoing. Likewise, his paintings don’t entirely conform to conventions. They’re very lively, very colorful, because he didn’t finish a painting in one go.”

Liao’s Bitan depicts a celebrated landscape in New Taipei’s Xindian District. The flamboyant colors bear out the painter’s fame as a “magician of color.”

Liao’s granddaughter Lin Yayun and grandson Liao Hexin remember their grandfather with a lot of pleasure. (photo by Lin Min-hsuan)

Legacies

In 1947 Liao started teaching in the Department of Fine Arts at National Taiwan Normal University, where he inspired countless students and championed their works. As a teacher, Liao never foisted “standard answers” on his students because he thought there was nothing absolutely right or wrong in art. Many of his students initially felt that he wasn’t a rigorous teacher. Years later, however, they would come to appreciate the creative freedom Liao had given them. Liao devoted his life to art, putting his heart and soul into his paintings. He never painted for money. Whenever wealthy businessmen offered to pay huge sums for his paintings, he would reject them straightaway. On the other hand, he would give his works away to people who genuinely appreciated them.

Both Liao Chi-chun and Ran In-ting were extraordinarily talented artists ahead of their time. Their distinctive works graced the dawn of modern art in Taiwan and deserve to be remembered and celebrated. They poured their passion and energy into one picture after another of their homeland. Drawing on their unique life experiences, they bequeathed to us dynamic and vibrantly new visions of both this island and that bygone era.