FROM THE NUDE TO LANDSCAPE: WANDERING OR JOURNEYING ?
By Jean-Paul Desroches
Translated by Iain Watson

At the end of his life, Sanyu ?? wore round glasses with heavy frames. He was recognisable from afar since, no matter the weather, he always wore wooden clogs. In Montparnasse, you could hear him coming from a distance with his sonorous footsteps. He walked along the boulevards, talking to trees. For hours, he liked to seat at a table in La Coupole with a cup of coffee, lost in his thoughts, occasionally drawing something. When some one came up to him, he replied briefly, juxtaposing rather than co-ordinating the words. If people tried to understand this mysterious creature, in the end he gave them one of his visiting cards which he had made himself, written in his fine calligraphy on an already punched metro ticket. In that way, he wanted to emphasise his relationship with Paris, his adopted city.

Affable without being obsequious, he wore a jade ring of an indeterminate colour. His simple clothes corresponded to his athletic look. It is clear that tennis, and above all ping-tennis which he invented, had greatly helped despite his sixty years and more, to keep him fit . Hence, for no reason whatsoever, would he ever have missed the International Tennis Tournament at Roland Garros. Every year, with several friends, he went there and between matches, ate with delight fat red cherries.

As a true citizen of China, he adored preparing exquisite food for his friends in his spacious atelier 28 de la rue de la Sablière where he lived for over twenty years and where he would die during the night of the 12th August 1966. Despite its ample proportions, the place was always filled with his work and potted plants. In fact, he slept in the mezzanine where he had installed a primitive kitchen. When his guests arrived, paintings and easels had to be pushed back against the walls in order to set the table. The only thing that remained always in place was a big black lacquer screen covered with ideograms. He had painted it years before and was very fond of it. Towards the end of his life, in order to feed his guests, given his perpetual poverty, he was obliged to be incredibly inventive. Pamela Forrest recounts that one evening, at the beginning of the 60’s, he put on the menu «Dragon’s Moustaches». This peculiarly named dish was in fact noodles vaguely spiced with pepper «à la Sichuannaise». In that way, he succeeded in concealing his poverty with a clever trick. All ended well, and the guests had been amply fed and happily, each one of them had brought a bottle of wine.

Sometimes, friends arrived without warning. There was nothing to drink, so he went to knock on Etienne and Natacha Levy’s door who solved the problem. It was in their place that he had his last exhibition. Around a hundred paintings and drawings were shown from the 17th to the 21st December 1965 in their house in the 14th arrondissement not far from Sanyu’s atelier. The recent works, vigorous large nudes alternated with flower paintings on the walls facing a wonderful garden. However, despite the warm ambiance, there were few buyers. Indeed, outside a small circle of fans during his lifetime, the painter was not understood either in the West or in China. He was no doubt ahead of his times!

He was just twenty years old when he left his native province for France. He arrived in post-war Paris with people desperate to enjoy life after the idiocy of the war. «The exasperated, tense man –lifts his head, opens his eyes, finds his joie de vivre again. Frenetic desires to dance, to spend, finally to walk head held high, to shout, to scream, to be spendthrifts. A hurricane of vital forces took over the world» –said Fernand Léger. This hedonistic climate could only seduce that young man greedy for experience. Very quickly, he found cosmopolitan Montparnasse where a new generation of artists rub shoulders on terraces of La Rotonde and Le Dôme, creating, according to Marcel Duchamp, «the first colony of international artists to have existed». Sanyu belonged to a group of young Chinese who had easy access to a programme of studies established in co-operation with the French government by Cai Yuanpei ???nyu (1848-1945). The latter, at the time the President of Peking University, had previously been the Minister of Education. A committed writer and respected thinker, he had studied in Germany and ranked art with religion. In 1918, he sent to France Lin Fengmian ???n _ (1900-1991), the following year Xu Beihong ???0-1 (1895-1953), and, in 1920, Sanyu. All three of them will leave enormous influence. Lin and Xu, with their state scholarships, will be employed by the State in the Peking Academy in 1927. In 1928, Lin is sent to the Academy of Hangzhou while Xu went to Nankin University. Each student normally stayed from seven to height years in Europe to complete his education – more than thirty will eventually study in Paris² . The golden Age of French influence (1927-1937) can be seen in the various facets of works of art belonging to every movement in fashion. Many, especially those of the first generation, opt for a classical style like Xu Beihong, Wu Zuoren
???_þ (1908-1997) or Yen Wenliang ???8-1 (1893-1988). Others were seduced by the avant-garde, as Lin Fengmian who found inspiration in the work of both the Fauves and Expressionists. Between 1928 and 1937, when is was president of the Beaux-Arts Academy of Hangzhou, he had an increasing influence over major painters such as Li Keran ???zho (1907-1989) or Wu Guanzhong ???7-1 (born in 1919). Later, he advised à Zao Wou-k’i ???n i (born in 1921) et à Chu Teh chun ???n i (born in 1920) to go and study in Paris where till this day, both artists still reside.

Xu Beihong, the high priest of academism, knew Sanyu extremely well. But they were totally unalike. Xu was a land working meticulous student who brilliantly passed the entrance exam to the Beaux-Arts in Paris, and studied in the atelier of Flameng (1856-1923) while going each Sunday to the sessions of Daguan-Bouveret (1852-1929), an old pupil of Corot and Gerôme. In 1921, he went to the Beaux-Arts Academy of Berlin staying there for a year and a half. Sanyu visited him for a time. In 1923, Xu came back to Paris and worked in the studio of Émile Bernard (1868-1941), the father of symbolism. In 1926, he travelled all over Europe, noting in his Journal all the great western artists which he discovered during his journey: from Phidias to Michael Angelo as well as Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Titian, not omitting Velasquez, Rubens and Puvis de Chavanne . In 1927, from now on installed in China, his style took on more formal aspects. As director of several official international exhibitions to show and promote Chinese creativity, he moved further and further away from Sanyu.

Sanyu was six years younger than Xu and practically the same age as Lin. Xu was born in Jiangsu, an eastern province, Lin was a southerner from Guangdong; as for Sanyu, he came from the town of Nanchong in Sechuan. While Sanyu spent his entire career in France, Xu and Lin only came to Europe to study. Sanyu, unlike his fellow countrymen who depended on scholarships provided by the Chinese government, for ten years lived off money provided by his family. He was lucky enough to have been born in a wealthy family. This freedom allowed him to choose his studies with no constraints. Unlike Xu and Lin, the idea of an official career never crossed his mind. So he opted for the large freedom offered by the Académie de la Grande Chaumière where pupils organised their own work schedules. Each week, new models were brought in and students could profit from the advice of the atelier’s own teachers and all this for a very reasonable fee. Once outside the door of number 10 of the rue de la Grande Chaumière, you were in an area stuffed with artists’ studios: at n° 8, Amedeo Modigliani spent the last three years of his life, at n° 17 rue Delambre, lived Tsuguharu Foujita, Piet Mondrian lived at 26 rue du Départ, Chaïm Soutine at 9 boulevard Edgar Quinet, Moïse Kisling at 3 rue Joseph Bara, Constantin Brancusi first at 8 then at 11 impasse Roussin, Fernand Léger at 86 rue Notre-Dame des Champs, Man Ray at 31bis rue Campagne Première, Pablo Gargallo, Joan Miró, André Masson, and Robert Desnos at 45 rue Blomet... Montparnasse, the epicentre of artistic life in Paris, provided a stimulating context for Sanyu who could try out western techniques and begin painting nudes. He took great pleasure in that bohemian life, the febrile activity in the cafés which shut down their curtains very late at night, where painters, models, poets and writers frequently met –all styles, schools and nationalities mixed together.

In this period of his life, Sanyu does not paint only nudes but « delineates » his entourage quite humorously. He draws, sketches incisive portraits often enhanced with subtle colours. A group of watercolours (n° ? to ?) at the beginning of the exhibition attests that happy meeting between the Chinese painter and the sensual liveliness of a Paris between the wars. Two portraits of Marcelle Charlotte Guyot de la Hardrouyère whom Sanyu met in 1925 at la Grande Chaumière. They became friends, then lovers for three years before getting married. And yet, three years later, they separated.

During these years, the poems of Tao Qian ??in (365-427 ) were translated into French by Liang Zongdai ???-42 (1903-1983) and were published by et Editions Lemarget in a limited edition with a preface by Paul Valery . Sanyu was chosen to illustrate the book. He chose three of the eighteen poems and made engravings. For two of them he relied on a traditional Chinese approach and produced a topographical scene in style close of Nizan ??an (1301-1374), while for the last one, he opted for a swirl of arabesques which calls to mind the modern vision of a Matisse. That first bold step proclaimed his determination to look to the future. In fact, the sketches and watercolours which Sanyu produced at la Grande Chaumière progressively were saturated with the styles of various modern movements. It is also possible that the use of a Chinese brush was also an important element for his style. His fluid lines which spring from a continuous movement without any correction contribute to the birth of a new language. Any descriptive element is banished in favour of a supple, quivering, synthetic contour. In short, it was what Chinese scholars call xieyi ??yi, «grasp an idea and transcribe it». Let us not forget that in mandarin Chinese, the ideogram hua ?a, etymologically speaking signifies «to delineate», « to confine». Hence, in the drawings exhibited in an entire room of the exhibition, Sanyu’s style can be seen to be both linear and curvilinear, suppressing any superfluous detail, leading inexorably to a minimalist script (n° ? to ?). This implies complete mastery in total opposition to automatism where the slightest distraction can be fatal, as well as draughtsmanship based on great economy of means where the thin line is enough to establish the shape, turning inert matter into shining pulp.

Sanyu was obsessed by horizontal compositions, without doubt because his solid, static vibrant nudes are linked to an almost universal theme whether it concerns Greek or Roman gods, Etruscan sarcophagi or medieval gisants, Aztec or Hindu divinities, or nearer to us, the nudes of Renoir, Maillol, Matisse or Picasso. The nude is an excuse to every and any metamorphosis. It is precisely with these nudes lying on the ground, on carpets or floating horizontally that he began to paint in 1929. Two adjacent rooms are hung with the major works of this period (n° to ?). One might even speak of a «pink period» in the sense that pink dominates. Oil and canvas take over from ink and paper. In a stripped down decor, he installed his massive women and colour fills the space produced by the halo of its shadow. A real force dyed with sensuality emanates from these early figures with their opulent forms. Little by little, they become more simple more rich and more consequent. Anatomy ends up incarnating abstract shapes, contrasted with the warm colours of the backgrounds. Often, decorative hangings –equally loved by des Foujita and Matisse- imply space. Chinese motifs – sapèques, svastikas, chimaeras, or miniature landscapes – are either painted or incised in the creamy texture without giving any «homely» element to an art now minimalist. On a few occasions, he interwove a certain erotic element into his thoughts about the nature of painting itself (n° ?). What he is playing at is the dissolution of established forms. And without going as far as Picasso, the symbolism of hypertrophied sexual organs which conclude his amorous parade nevertheless is present and has things in common with pages from the Cannes Notebooks of 1927 by the painter of the Demoiselles d’Avignon.

It is rather hard to define such a hybrid form in which the cultural heritage of the Chinese scholar poet is mingled with the discipline of drawing after nature. Even if Sanyu plunges into European Modernism, even so he does not turn his back on his profound true nature. Some of these faces framed by black hair cut, short like a boy’s with one enormous jet black eye, reminds us of the portraits of Kiki. That legendary Montaparnasse model fascinated artits. A remark in her diary that soon she will have to learn Chinese leads us to suppose that Kiki an Sanyu often met . Pablo Gargallo, like Man Ray, thanks to that muse, were able to link the Surrealists with contemporary art. As a reminder of that meeting in the exhibition there is the photo-collage of Man Ray Le violon d’Ingres where Kiki is seen from the back wearing a turban like the odalisque in the Bain turc by Ingres, hung next to two drawings and an engraving by Sanyu. A commentary would be superfluous (n° ? to ?).

Sanyu, who had already decided by now to live in France, continued his pictorial research outside the cultural panorama of China in the 30’s. Likewise, he stepped back from the voluptuous sensuality of his first sketches of the Grande Chaumière, just when he discovered the pleasures of Paris. He painted works which are calm, serene, practically meditations. He tried to break with precise description, introduced distortions and went a little further down the road of abstraction. Doubtless when painting his recumbent women he might have had in mind Cezannes’ maxim «Unite the curves of women with the backsides of hills». To what extent Sanyu like Henry Moore use that intuition!

For Sanyu, the female body was in the process of becoming a sort of alibi, a mere pretext, a variant of a landscape which simultaneously crystallised and sublimated his life style. So, it’s with the animal series shown in the elliptical gallery where there is an identical fusion with nature (n° ? to ?). The horses’ anatomy sometimes has bizarre affinities with that of the nudes without working the same range of colours. Indifferently, the horses like the cats can be pink –a way of underlining his break with realism. Painting is another world, it opens up other horizons. It allows fantasy an allegorical angle of attack following an age-old Chinese tradition. So the first syllable of the first name of his wife, Marcelle, is an homophone of the word for a «horse» ma ?_ in mandarin. Starting there, Sanyu will decline it in many ways, some totally feminine, others conjuring up moments of happiness and enlaced bodies. Still others will call to mind more precise personal events in his life such as the small oil in which next to the black silhouette of a solitary stallion. One day he felt the need to add a mare with a spotless coat and with the following commentary to elucidate the context: «It took me twenty years to finish this painting. In 1930, I just painted the black horse. I added the white mare in 1945. At that time, I was in love with a young woman. For her, I finished the painting and dedicated it to her. Later we separated and the painting stayed with me.» . Thanks to that avowal, we realise that under the formal Western aspect lies some one deeply penetrated by the traditional values of a scholar.

Sanyu, in that cultural displacement achieved in painting what François Cheng succeeds in writing in the sense that «it is a sacrifice to abandon one’s mother tongue, but to embrace an other provides the capability of naming things from scratch just as the dawn of the world.». Three paintings, a horse and two leopards, well illustrate that maxim (n° ? to ?). In the three canvases, Sanyu had rapidly brushed in wide brush a dark background, then like a seismograph, he has transcribed –using the point of a very fine brush- an incredibly subtle outline turning inert matter into living flesh. Just as with the rubbings from ancient steles, he used black in negative as positive colour and long before Matisse. One the paintings is dated 1931. At the end of these experiments, he was capable of giving an extraordinary status to the outline giving it a mysterious energy which confers on each animal a volume, a weight and a positioning in space.

The paintings of flowers and plants hung around a large six-leaved screen with lotus decoration in the following room bear witness to Sanyu’s life-long devotion to nature (n° ? to ?). Obviously, it is urban nature, a universe of pots and vases. The earliest examples date from 1929, the latest probably from the beginning of the Sixties . To establish a stylistic progression of this particular genre is not at all easy since it seems that in this sphere, the painter did not have such a radical evolution as in his nude paintings. It is more a natural and uncomplicated way of depicting a typical plant in his studio, a sort of silent companion, or of celebrating the ephemeral beauty of bunch of flowers brought by friends. These paintings, especially in the 1950’s sell better than the rest of his work and bring variations based on an identical theme in order to allocate is pressing need of money. They indistinctly meld the flora of the Extreme Orient with that of the West: peonies, chrysanthemums, or lotus flowers juxtaposed to gladioli, lilies or arum lilies. There is one infallible way of dating this production into two separated periods namely the type of support used: the typical canvas of the 30’s being replaced ten years later by hard board.

From 1945 onwards, Sanyu proclaimed publicly his faith in modernism, perhaps worried that he lost his on the artistic reality of the times. In a manifesto published on the 19th January 1945 in the Parisien Libéré entitled «A Chinese painter’s opinions of Picasso», he praises the daring of the Spanish master with lavish compliments setting him as the architect of modernity. In speaking about Picasso, Sanyu revealed his artistic vision at the moment when he began to paint once again large nudes on hard board. Eight of the most spectacular of these works hang in the penultimate room (n° ? to ?). There are two standards formats –square 60 x 60 cm for seated figures, and 60 x 120 cm for recumbent nudes. The empty backgrounds are always ivory while the flesh is painted in pale ochre. Hence one might speak this time of the pale ochre period. Each figure is solidly established by a thick outline of dense black. Those seated, standing, reclining figures suddenly take on a new monumentality. Their sectioned heads seem half hidden behind the ramparts of their bodies. This elliptical approach, worthy of Baroque masters, without doubt tried to render sculptural effects. It was all the more unique in Sanyu’s career as the works which follow use the opposite process with minimalist figures floating in landscapes of desolation.

Abstract expressionism came on the European stage with artists like Zao Wou-k’i and Chu Teh chun. Zao and Chu, capitalizing on their skill with ink, open the way towards an Eastern vision which takes form around exploding ink blots with subtle contrasting aureoles produced by interpenetrating colours. This had an immediate success. Sanyu who met Zao on his arrival in Paris in 1948, seems to have been influenced by these new forms and to have been forced to react. And yet, the two approaches are very different as Sanyu did not abandon figuration.

So, he tried to re-introduce in gigantic empty spaces painted in dark mysterious tones, compositions from the 30’s: nudes, horses zebras, or leopards, this time delicately reduced in scale. This massive enigmatic compositions form a coda to his work. Some like «Cat, bird, and fledglings in the nest» ( n° ?) from about 1953, bring to mind the famous scroll painting of Cui Bai ?? l (active 1060-1085), to-day in the Palace Museum of Taipei . There is an further reference in this painting contained in the calligraphy on the pot. It refers to an Confucian philosopher Cheng Hao ??he(1032-1085) who evoked the surrender of the universe to the natural order of things. It is a similar message to that distilled by the Nude on the beach in the middle of a pitch-black night only lit by the perfect orb of the moon (n° ?). In his last days, Sanyu restored the individual to his rightful place in the universe. Sanyu, a man of shadows, for the ultimate time in these ideogram-paintings formulated the eternal question: «Who are we, where are we going?».