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In the mood of ink:
How the City Art Gallery shaped our perception of
New Ink art as the mainstream ‘Hong Kong Art’
from the late sixties to early seventies and its
political connotations
CAH 4514 Project
Chan Wing Hang Michael
Law Kam Ho Richard Charles
Lee Pak Ka Sophia
Under the supervision of:
Dr. Chan, Pedith
Acknowledgements
The first and most important debts of gratitude must go to our esteemed project
supervisor, Dr. Chan, whose guidance and kind support were essential to the completion of
this project. We are very grateful for her generosity and patience (or it would be more
correct to say ‘tolerance’) to our not-quite-strictly-followed work schedule. We would also
like to express our gratitude to Dr. Lee, Vivian, Dr. Kwon, Hyuk-chan, Dr. Wong,
Marianne and Mr. Ocón Fernández, David for their comments and questions after our oral
presentation.
Content
Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 1
Chapter 1: Overview
Hong Kong Art in the Sixties ......................................................................................... 6
From City Art Gallery to the Museum of Art ............................................................. 9
Lui Shou-kwan & the New Ink Movement .............................................................. 11
Wucius Wong & the Art Gallery ................................................................................ 15
Chapter 2: Analysis of Exhibitions from 1967 to 1974
Analysis Overview ......................................................................................................... 20
Analysis of Exhibitions .................................................................................................. 21
Findings .............................................................................................................................. 40
Chapter 3: Political Connotations for the Emergence of New Ink
Art in the Sixties & Seventies
Review of the Power of Museums............................................................................... 50
Socio-political context of HK (Sixties to Seventies) ............................................. 54
Colonial Government’s Policy Change Following the ’67 Riot .......................... 57
City Art Gallery and ‘Hong Kong Art’ ...................................................................... 59
New Ink Art & ‘Hong-Kong-ness’ .............................................................................. 62
Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 72
Bibliography .................................................................................................................... 75
Appendix ........................................................................................................................... 82
1
Introduction
M+ Museum is part of Hong Kong’s latest and largest cultural project, the West
Kowloon Cultural District. As a museum that is ‘focused on twentieth to twenty-first
century visual culture, encompassing the disciplines of visual art, design and architecture,
and moving image from Hong Kong, China, other regions of Asia and the rest of the
world’,1 Hong Kong’s New Ink artworks from the late sixties and early seventies would
surely form quite a significant part of the collection to represent ‘Hong Kong art’ of the
period. One wonders if the City Art Gallery, the predecessor of the Hong Kong Museum of
Art and the only official art museum in the city at the time, helped shape this perception
‘New Ink art’ [新水墨] as the mainstream ‘Hong Kong art’ through its exhibitions and
whether this could this be anyhow related to Wucius Wong’s [王無邪] position as Assistant
Curator from 1967 to 1974 at the institution, who was also a New Ink artist trained by Lui
Shou-kwan [呂壽琨]. The Art Gallery division of the City Museum and Art Gallery is the
main focus of this study and shall be hereinafter referred to as ‘City Art Gallery’ or ‘the Art
Gallery’. This study intends to find out if the City Art Gallery was selectively promoting
the New Ink Movement during the period of 1967 to 1974 and thuus contributed to the
impression that New Ink art is the mainstream ‘Hong Kong art’ in the sixties and seventies.
1 ‘Learn About the Collection’, West Kwoloon Cultural District, Accessed May 13, 2015.
http://www.westkowloon.hk/en/mplus/learn-about-the-collection.
2
Sociological studies have proposed that museums have the power to legitimise the
interest of dominant social classes by justifying their ‘tastes’ and limiting the public’s
access to the ‘superior’ items owned by members of the higher social class;2 and that
displays in museums could not just change the public’s perception of a certain art school or
art movement by attributing political and cultural values to the works through exhibition
and acquisition,3 but also, through different display tactics and preferential treatment,
influence the shaping of a community’s political identity and demonstrate state power.4
Although the primary subject of study of this project is Hong Kong art in the late sixties
and early seventies, this study differs from the standard study of art history with reference
to artist biographies but adopts a sociological approach to look at the emergence of Hong
Kong’s New Ink Movement through gathering and analysing empirical data of exhibitions
at the City Art Gallery and examining the socio-political context at the time.
The first chapter of this paper presents an overview of the Hong Kong art scene in the
sixties, a brief history of the City Art Gallery, followed by a short introduction to Lui Shou-
kwan and his New Ink Movement and lastly Wucius Wong and his duties at the institution
in based on Government documents accessed at the Public Records Office and his own
account. Publications by art historians such as Petra Hinterthür, David Clarke and Zhu Qi
2 Paul J. DiMaggio, ‘Cultural entrepreneurship in nineteenth-century. Boston: the creation of an organizational
base for high culture in America’, Media, Culture and Society 4, no.1, (1982): 33-50. 3 Gergor Langfeld, ‘How the Museum of Modern Art in New York Canonised German Expressionism’,
Journal of Art Historiography 11, (Dec 2014): 1-13. 4 Tony Bennett, The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics, (London: Routledge, 1995).; Carol
Duncan, Civilizing Rituals: Inside Public Art Museums, (London: Routledge, 1995).; and Timothy W Luke,
Museum Politics: Power Plays at the Exhibition, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002) are
some of the more comprehensive studies on the topic.
3
[朱琦] are some of the more comprehensive writings on the history of Hong Kong art and
they were reviewed for some of the more conventional views on the development of Hong
Kong art in the sixties and seventies. Exhibition catalogues from the period were also
examined for the purpose of understanding how Lui, Wong and New Ink art in general
were received.
This study focuses on Wucius Wong rather than Lui Shou-kwan, who was one of the
Gallery’s advisers and seemed to have commanded more influence on the City Art
Gallery’s policies on exhibition and collection than Wong. Despite the great prestige that
was associated with the title of adviser, advisers did not exercise actual power on
exhibition-making and acquisition. In a restricted memorandum entitled ‘Appointment of
Advisers and Honourary Curators’, it was proposed that ‘[advisers] may be asked to advise
on the purchase of Art Gallery and Museum material, equipment and supplies, in the
identification and preparation of exhibits, and the production of catalogues and
publications’.5 Yet Wucius Wong, as the Assistant Curator at the City Art Gallery, had
actual administrative power on exhibition-making and collection, so the main focus of this
paper is the City Art Gallery during the ‘Wucius Wong years’ (1967 – 1974).
The second chapter concerns ‘Hong Kong art’ exhibitions organised by the City Art
Gallery during the time when Wucius Wong was the Assistant Curator. To find out if the
City Art Gallery did present an image that the local art scene was dominated by New Ink
5 Committee Paper 17/4/62
4
artists in its exhibitions, proportion of New Ink artists at each local art exhibition and how
they were described in the exhibition catalogue were analysed. In order to prove that Wong
did contribute to the elevation of New Ink art’s status, exhibitions that preceded and
succeeded the period when he was the Assistant Curator were also considered. It is natural
to presume that Wucius Wong, a New Ink artist himself, because of his personal preference
and his affiliation with artists and art groups that practiced New Ink art style, would
naturally have, whether consciously or unconsciously, exerted his influence at the City Art
Gallery as Assistant Curator over exhibition selection to favour his fellow New Ink artists.
One expects after analysing the local art exhibitions, the result would demonstrate that the
City Art Gallery was more inclined to showcase New Ink artists during the years of 1967-
1974, when Wucius Wong was in power at the Art Gallery.
The third chapter of this paper concerns the political significance of this particular art
style and argues that the City Art Gallery gave official recognition to Lui Shou-kwan and
Wucius Wong’s New Ink Movement instead of the traditional guohua [國畫], Chinese
national painting, societies or the Lingnan School [嶺南畫派] prevalent at the time to
promote a certain artistic identity for the Colony for the interest of the Colonial
Government, particularly after the Leftist Riot in 1967.6 Since the ‘height’ of this art
movement’s development coincided with the Colonial Government’s localisation policy as
6 This point was raised by Cheung Wai-yee 張惠儀. The third chapter of this paper explores deeper into the
issue by examining the relation between New Ink art and Hong Kong’s identity propagated by the Colonial
Government in the late sixties. Please see Cheung Wai-yee張惠儀, Xiang gang shu hua tuan ti yan jiu 香港書畫團體研究 (A Study on Art Societies in Hong Kong), (Hong Kong: The Chinese University of Hong
Kong, 1999), 93.
5
well as Wucius Wong’s employment by the Art Gallery, one doubts if the promotion of
New Ink art may have been part of the Colonial Government’s plan to promote a local
sense of community identity. Writings by Cheung Wai-yee [張惠儀], Chin Win [陳雲],
Christina Chu [朱錦鸞], David Clarke, Eva Man [文潔華], Frank Vigneron, John Carroll,
Lee Chun-yi [李君毅], Matthew Turner and several articles by Wucius Wong were studied.
6
Chapter 1: Overview
Hong Kong Art in the Sixties
Most publications on the history of Hong Kong art tell of the story that modern Hong
Kong art emerged in the late fifties, continued to develop in the sixties, and reached its
blossoming in the seventies. As Eva Man, in her paper ‘Experimental Painting and Painting
Theories in Colonial Hong Kong (1940 - 1980): Reflections on Cultural Identity’, declares,
‘The mid-sixties […] marked the beginning of Hong Kong art’ and the New Ink Movement
in the Colony ‘gave rise to “Hong Kong Painting”, which aimed at the founding of local
artistic identity’.7
Eva Man is not the first to equal ‘Hong Kong art’ with ‘New Ink art’, early art
historians such as Petra Hinterthür had similar ideas. Hinterthür’s book Modern Art in
Hong Kong is the first English publication on the topic and according to Hinterthür, New
Ink artists and their art groups such as the Circle Group [中元畫會], In Tao Art Association
[元道畫會] and One Art Group [一畫會] represented the ‘New Spirit’ of modern art in
Hong Kong.8 There is even one entire section devoted to introducing Wucius Wong and his
influence to the development of the ‘New Spirit’. Zhu Qi shares Hinterthür’s vision and
classifies, in his book History of Hong Kong Fine Art, the period of the late fifties to sixties
in the history of Hong Kong art ‘A Period of the Spread of Modernism’ [現代主義傳播
7 Man Kit Wah, Eva, ‘Experimental Painting and Painting Theories in Colonial Hong Kong (1940-1980):
Reflection on Cultural Identity’, Filozofski vestnik 17, no. 2 (Feb 1997): 86. 8 Petra Hinterthür, Modern Art in Hong Kong: Asian Art Library, (Hong Kong: Meyer Pub, 1985), 83–138.
7
期].9 In the introduction to the chapter Zhu writes ‘Hong Kong’s modern art forces appears
in the late fifties’, and ‘Hong Kong Artist Association’, [香港藝術家協會] led by key
figures such as Douglas Bland, Lui Shou-kwan and Kwong Yeu-ting [鄺耀鼎], ‘was the
first wave of forces modernising Hong Kong art’, which is followed by the ‘second wave of
modernising forces’, the Modern Literature and Art Association [現代文學美術協會]
founded by Wucius Wong, Yip Wai-lim [葉維廉] and Kwan Namm [崑南]. The third wave
was initiated by the set-up of the ‘The Circle Group’ in 1964, which Zhu calls ‘a milestone
in the development of modern Hong Kong art’.10
A fairly recent publication on the same
topic, An Anthology of Visual Arts: Visual Arts of Hong Kong and Creative Era, reports a
more or less similar story: the period from the sixties to the nineties is described in the book
as a period of ‘blossoming’ [百花齊放], characterised by waves of emergence of art groups
and societies, such as the ‘In Tao Art Association’ in the late sixties and the ‘One Art
Group’ in the early seventies.11
These groups, as Lam Suet-hung [林雪虹] points out,
‘under the promotion of official cultural institutions’, they ‘precipitated a Modern Ink
painting movement’, thus becoming ‘the mainstream’ and the Movement was ‘the brightest’
throughout the sixties and seventies.12
9 Zhu Qi 朱琦, Xiang gang mei shu shi 香港美術史 (History of Hong Kong Fine Art), (Hong Kong: Joint
Publishing 三聯書局, 2005), 157-171. 10 Ibid. 11 Lam Suet-hung 林雪虹, Shi yi wen ji: Xiang gang shi jue yi shu yu chuang yi shi dai視藝文集: 香港視覺藝術與創意時代 (An Anthology of Visual Arts: Visual Arts of Hong Kong and Creative Era). (Hong Kong:
MGuru, 2008), 28-37. 12 Ibid., 30.
8
David Clarke, on the other hand, looks at the artworks done at the time from a
different perspective. He uses the term ‘hybrid’ to describe these artists’ work, and
attributes the reason for this ‘hybridity’ a result of Hong Kong artists being caught between
Western modernist and Chinese traditionalist culture narrative.13
He later goes on to talk
about Wucius Wong and Lui Shou-kwan, two of the important figures from the New Ink
Movement, who were creating ‘consciously modernist’ art that combined Chinese and
Euro-American ideas.14
Clarke points out New Ink artists made use of Chinese materials to
position themselves as a ‘continuation of the Chinese ink painting tradition’ whereas at the
same time they tried to downplay their adhesion to traditions by ‘employing stylistic
devices derived from Abstract Expressionism and European gestural abstraction’.15
After reviewing these publications one would have a vague idea that the history of
‘modern Hong Kong art’ began in the sixties, as exemplified by the emergence of the New
Ink Movement, a group of artists who were consciously distancing themselves from
traditional Chinese art and inventing a ‘modern’ pathway of its own by drawing on
references to modernist art movements in Europe and America. These artists formed art
groups and societies that propelled the development of New Ink art, giving rise to a ‘Hong
Kong art’ style. Few of these authors (with the exception of Man), however, mentioned in
details the role played by the City Art Gallery in the establishment of this local artistic
13 David Clarke, ‘Varieties of Cultural Hybridity: Hong Kong Art in the Late Colonial Era’, Public Culture 9,
no. 3 (1997): 395-415. 14 Ibid. 396. 15 David Clarke, ‘Hong Kongness, Chineseness and modernity: issues of identity in Hong Kong art’. Hong
Kong Cultural Studies Bulletin 4, (1995): 82.
9
identity other than that the new City Hall provided exhibition venue for local artists to
showcase their works.
From City Art Gallery to the Museum of Art
For a long time in the fifties, St. John’s Cathedral in Central was the only available
exhibiting venue for local artists in Hong Kong.16
The situation improved slightly with the
arrival of foreign organisations such as the Goethe-Institut, Alliance Française, American
Library, and Bank of America.17
As early as 1952 it was suggested in a Museum Sub-
Committee Paper that the existing exhibiting space and storage space at the City Hall were
inadequate and there was a need for a new venue for exhibition and storage double the size
of the existing facilities.18
The new City Hall began construction in 1960 and by 1962 it was completed and
housed the City Hall Museum and Art Gallery, the city’s first official museum. 19
The
institution was comprised of the City Hall Museum, a museum on local history and
ethnography, and the City Art Gallery, the only official art exhibiting venue in the Colony
at the time. The design of the City Hall was to be a ‘symbolic focus […] to draw together
the people of Hong Kong into an integrated community,’ and ‘a Hong Kong citizenship
16 Recounted by Wucius Wong, please see Zhang Yue-zhong 張月忠 ed, Wang wu xie ji王無邪集
(Collection of Essays by Wucius Wong), (Guangzhou: Flower City Publishing 花城出版, 2014), 167. 17 Ibid. 18 See Memorandum for Members of Museum and Art Gallery Sub-Committee of the City Hall (Policy)
Select Committee, Committee Paper 17/17/62, p.1. Also see Committee Minutes 12/2/62. Paras. 22-24. 19 ‘About the Museum’, Hong Kong Museum of Art, Accessed May 13, 2015,
http://hk.art.museum/en_US/web/ma/home.html.
10
based on loyalty to the local community and characterised by a fusion of European and
Chinese traditions’.20
At a time when there were few official exhibiting spaces in the city,
the City Hall Museum and Art Gallery at the newly built City Hall was a most welcoming
sight to local artists. It was suggested that local artistic effort should also be encouraged by
‘regular exhibitions, competitions, projects and commissions, etc.’21
The City Hall soon
became one of the key outlets for local artists to showcase their works. As a matter of fact
in its first year of operation the institution organised the exhibition ‘Hong Kong Art Today’
[今日的香港藝術], displaying works done by contemporary Hong Kong artists. At a time
when there was an absence of venues even for the display of art, the City Art Gallery
naturally assumed the leading and authoritative role in setting artistic standard by deciding
who and what was worthy enough to be displayed to public.
The issue with the lack of exhibition and storage space was later referred to the
Government. In a 1965 committee paper the Colonial Secretary assured members of the
Museum and Art Gallery Select Committee the Colonial Government ‘accepted as a matter
of policy that it is desirable to have a rather larger Museum and Art Gallery than can be
accommodated in the City Hall’ and consequently it was agreed expansion outside the City
Hall ‘may proceed’.22
The institution was renamed the ‘City Museum and Art Gallery’ in
1969 to emphasis its city-based status.23
The City Museum and Art Gallery was separated
20 Hong Kong City Hall, 1962-1982: twenty years in retrospect 香港大會堂, 1962-1982: 回顧二十年, Hong
Kong: Urban Council, 1983, preface. 21 Committee paper 17/6/62 22 Committee paper MAG/5/65 23 Tam, Mei-Yee 譚美兒 ed, Xiang gang Yi shu: Kai fang dui hua zhan lan xi lie 2008-09 nian du te kan香港
11
into the Museum of History and the Museum of Art in 1975, the former moved whilst the
latter stayed in the City Hall until the construction of the present Museum of Art in Tsim
Sha Tsui was completed in 1991.24
Lui Shou-kwan & the New Ink Movement
Lui Shou-kwan’s father was a traditional painter in Guangdong and Lui Shou-kwan
must have seen a lot of classical Chinese paintings since his youth, therefore it is rather
unsurprising that Lui painted traditional Chinese paintings in the earlier years of his artistic
career.25
He moved to Hong Kong in 1948 possibly to escape the civil war and the
Communist party’s rapidly expanding influence in Southern China. He continued to pursue
his passion in art at his leisure time and participated in exhibitions from time to time. In
1954 he joined the ‘Hong Kong Art Society’ [香港美術會], and two years later he was one
of the founding members and the honourary adviser of the ‘Hong Kong Chinese Art
Society’ [香港中國美術會] with famous Chinese painters such as Chao Shao-an [趙少昂],
a follower of the Lingnan School, and Li Yan-shan [李研山], a renowned guohua painter.26
It was also in that year he published his Study on Guohua [國畫的研究], where he outlines
the basic principles of traditional Chinese painting. He also co-founded the Hong Kong
藝術：開放．對話展覽系列 2008-09特刊 (Hong Kong Art: Open Dialogue’ Exhibition Series 2008-09 A
Launching Publication), (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Museum of Art, 2008), 22. 24 Man Kit-Wah, Eva, ‘A Museum of Hybridity: The History of the Display of Art in the Public Museum of
Hong Kong, and Its Implications for Cultural Identities’, Visual Anthropology 24, no. 1-2 (2011): 92. Also
see Tam, Hong Kong Art, 74-77. 25 Flora K. Chan 陳鳳姬 ed., ‘Chronology of Lui Shou-kwan’, in Hong Kong in Ink Moods: Landscape
Painting by Lui Shou-kwan, (Hong Kong: Fung Ping Shan Museum, the University of Hong Kong, 1985),
20-26. 26 Ibid.
12
Artist Association in 1955 with Kwong Yeu-ting and Douglas Bland, two very prominent
artists in Hong Kong at the time.27
By the late fifties and early sixties Lui sought to modernise traditional Chinese art
and emphasised the importance of learning from traditions and of returning to one’s ‘root’ –
based on ancient Confucian teachings – before pursuing any new forms of painting.28
In the
catalogue to his 1964 solo exhibition Lui was described as ‘not imitating the work of
American action painters but rediscovering the abstract and expressionist elements of early
Chinese painting’.29
He proposed the concept of shui-mo [水墨 ], ink, an idea first
formulated by Wang Wei [王維], an artist from the Tang Dynasty. His New Ink experiment
aimed to be a continuation of the modern ink experiment initiated by earlier Chinese artists
such as Fu Bao-shi [傅抱石], Xu Bei-hong [徐悲鴻] and Lin Fengmian [林風眠]. The idea
of ‘ink’ focuses on the reflection of the artist’s inner spiritual self more than physical
representation, thus ‘ink’ has evolved in recent decades to include a much wider range of
work produced in different media such as performance and installation.
John Warner, who served at the City Hall Museum and Art Gallery as the Head
Curator, was greatly impressed by Douglas Bland and Lui Shou-kwan’s works when he
first arrived in Hong Kong.30
He later became acquainted with Lui Shou-kwan and Wucius
Wong and was introduced to Lui’s idea of revolutionising traditional Chinese ink and
27 Ibid. 28 Lui Shou-kwan, Shui mo hua jiang 水墨畫講 (Ink Painting Lecture), (Hong Kong: Lui Shou-kwan, 1972),
31-33. 29 Lui Shou-kwan 呂壽琨近作展, (Hong Kong: City Museum and Art Gallery, 1964), 1. 30 Tam, Hong Kong Art, 13.
13
became an admirer of Lui.31
As soon as the Museum opened in 1962 Warner organised the
‘Hong Kong Art Today’ exhibition, showcasing works by contemporary Hong Kong artists
at the time. Artists active in the scene at the time such as Lui Shou-kwan, Wucius Wong,
Cheung Yee [張義] and Kam Ka-lun [金嘉倫] were all included in the exhibition.32
The
exhibition was a controversial one as works by prestigious traditional Chinese painters and
calligraphers were not included in the exhibition.33
In the same year Lui was recommended
by Warner to become one of the advisers to the Museum, and according to the Committee
Paper 17/36/62 the panel of advisers would ‘advise the Museum and Art Gallery Sub-
Committee on the planning and development of the Museum and Art Gallery’ and ‘advise
the Sub-Committee on the purchase and acquisition of Museum and Art Gallery
collections’,34
this had no doubt given Lui great prestige and influence in the art scene.
Lui’s status was further consolidated when he was selected to be one of the eight Hong
Kong artists to be featured at the ‘Commonwealth Art Today’ exhibition in London.35
By the late sixties and early seventies Lui’s New Ink Movement reached its height. In
1966, Lui began to teach painting at University of Hong Kong’s Faculty of Architecture.
He also offered Ink Painting courses at the Department of Extra-mural Studies of the
Chinese University of Hong Kong to train art students and spread his New Ink idea. Two
years later his students at the Extra-mural Studies of the Chinese University organised the
31 Ibid. 32 Ibid., 21. 33 Ibid. 34 Committee Paper 17/36/62 35 Committee paper 17/11/62
14
‘In Tao Art Association’ and had their first joint exhibition. Some of the more famous
members of the group included Laurence Tam [譚志成], who later became the first curator
to the Museum of Art in 1991, and Irene Chou [周綠雲]. In 1970, exactly two years later,
this time another group of students from the Extra-mural Studies from the Chinese
University held a ‘Traditional Chinese Painting Exhibition’ [中國傳統畫展] and set up the
‘One Art Group’, Lui Shoukwan, Laurence Tam and Wucius Wong were invited to become
advisers to the art group. Lui’s students, similar to Lui, also advocated the importance of a
return to ‘traditions’. In the catalogue of the 1971 exhibition ‘Chinese Ink Paintings’, it
explains ‘new ink painting’ as ‘a school of painting which […] has absorbed a considerable
number of means of expression from the West, thus forming a new tradition of its own’,
and it was ‘attempting to combine elements from both Chinese and Western painting’36
. Li
Chu-tsing [李鑄晉], in his short article in the catalogue, calls New Ink painting a ‘new
tradition’ and he praises New Ink painters of making a ‘noble and worthwhile attempt’ to
‘grasp the essence of modern life and thought as the basis for [their] own creations’ by
accepting the ‘spiritual heritage’ of different cultures, and that New Ink artists ‘represent
the most innovative arm of modern Chinese painting’.37
Mid-seventies were seen by most art historians as the moment when the Movement
began to decline – Wucius Wong left the City Art Gallery in 1974 and Lui Shou-kwan died
in 1975. Despite that, Lui’s students and the New Ink Movement continued to be very
36 Chinese Ink Painting 中國水墨畫大展, (Unknown: Chinese Ink Committee, 1972), introduction. 37 Li Chu-tsing, ‘The Emergence of a New Tradition’, in Chinese Ink Painting 中國水墨畫大展, (Unknown:
Chinese Ink Committee, 1972).
15
influential in the art scene throughout the seventies until a new generation of artists
overtook their popularity.
Wucius Wong & the Art Gallery
Wucius Wong was Lui’s most successful student and he later became one of the key
advocates of Lui’s New Ink Movement. Wong was born in China, grew up in Hong Kong
and studied in the United States. It was in the United States where he absorbed most of the
Western culture. He tried to practice ‘Western style painting’38
but soon realised he could
never fully follow the ‘Western traditions’ without sacrificing his individuality.39
Wong felt
entrapped between the Western modernist narrative and the Chinese traditionalist narrative,
and neither could he claim master to.
A Chinese painter who was endeavouring to invent a new ‘modern’ version of
national painting, Lui Shou-kwan, caught Wong’s attention. Wong first noticed Lui’s
works in an exhibition organised by the Hong Kong Artist Association in 1956.40
In the
October of 1958 Wong visited Lui’s studio and became one of his students.41
It was also in
the same year when Wong founded the Modern Literature and Art Association [現代文學
38 Wong often generalised Euro-American art styles as xihua [西畫]. In a foreword he wrote for his own
retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Art in 2006, (see anthology pp. 414-421) Wong recounted his artistic career and art training in the U.S. It is likely this ‘Western style painting’ he often mentions in his essays refer to modern American art style, in particularly Abstract Expressionism and Gesturalism.
39 At the East-West crosswords – The Art of Wucius Wong東西問道: 王無邪的藝術, (Hong Kong: Hong
Kong Museum of Art, 2006), 144. 40 Zhang, Collection of Essays by Wucius Wong, 258. 41 Paintings, Drawings and Prints by Wucius Wong 王無邪： 繪畫、素描、版畫展, (Hong Kong: Hong
Kong Museum of Art, 1979), 2.
16
美術協會] with leading figures in the arts and cultural scene at the time such as Lui Shou-
kwan, Cheung Yee, Kam Ka-lun, Van Lau [文樓], Hon Chi-fun [韓志勳] and Liu Kuo-
sung [劉國松].42
Wong learnt from Lui the traditions of Chinese painting and his idea of
modernising traditional Chinese art with a return to ‘root’. He believed that the only way
forward for Hong Kong artists, was an acknowledgement and review of their own ‘Eastern
identity’, or Chinese cultural foundation. In his view, only after artists recognised what
their true ‘root’ is can they begin to invent a path of their own, free of the constraint of
following either narrative.43
His writing on ‘Hong Kong art’ will be explored more in detail
in the final chapter.
When Warner met Lui Shou-kwan he also became acquainted with Wucius Wong,
whom Warner praised ‘a highly intelligent and gifted artist’.44
When David Lam [林鎮輝],
one of the Museum Assistants, resigned in 1965, Warner encouraged Wucius Wong to
apply for the vacancy. 45
Yet because the Government did not recognise American degrees
at the time Wong was not recruited then. Two years later in 1967 the Museum posted for a
Class I Assistant Curator, this time Wong applied and was hired. An appendix to a 1965
document titled ‘Museum Organisation and Staff Structure’ outlines the basic museum staff
structure offers some insights on Wucius Wong’s duties at the Art Gallery.
42 Cheung, A Study on Art Societies in Hong Kong, 50. 43 For more details of Wong’s thoughts please see a 1972 article written by Wong himself, titled ‘香港現代水
墨畫’, in Zhang, Collection of Essays by Wucius Wong, 101-103. 44 Tam, Hong Kong Art, 14. 45 ‘Interview: Wucius Wong’, Asian Art Archive. Accessed May 13, 2015.
http://www.aaa.org.hk/Collection/CollectionOnline/SpecialCollectionItem/6722
17
This diagram is made based on the original diagram from the appendix to a 1965
document
Another appendix to the document details the duties of Class I Assistant Curator of
the Art Gallery section. The Assistant Curator was responsible for the ‘direct organisation
of the Art Gallery (Chinese Fine Art, Decorative Art and Antiquities and Local art)’.46
Two
years later in a document on ‘Staff reduction’ a similar structure was shown. It is very
likely that was the official staff structure of the City Museum and Art Gallery when Wucius
Wong was recruited.
46 Para. 131 of the Appendix C of the document.
18
This diagram is made based on the original diagram from the appendix to a 1967
document
Wong recounts his duties at the Art Gallery included ‘various areas such as Hong
Kong art, modern art, exhibition planning, design, public relations and educational services’
in an article ‘The City Museum and Art Gallery and Me’ he wrote for the ‘Hong Kong Art:
Open Dialogue’ Exhibition Series 2008-09, he also points out ‘exhibitions related to Hong
Kong art with my direct involvement included the “Hong Kong Art Exhibition” as part of
the “Music and Fine Arts Festival” in 1967, the “Circle Art Group Exhibition” in 1968,
“Contemporary Prints by Chinese Artists” in 1973, and “Contemporary Hong Kong Art
Exhibitions” in 1969, 1972 and 1974’.47
The 1974 exhibition Wong refers to later became
the ‘Hong Kong Art Biennial Exhibition’ in 1975.48
47 Tam, Hong Kong Art, 21. 48 Ibid.
19
The second chapter turns to investigate if the common view of Hong Kong art in the
sixties as dominated by New Ink art could have been the result of the City Art Gallery’s
preference of selecting New Ink artists in its ‘Hong Kong art’ exhibitions, which may in
turn be related to Wucius Wong’s personal affiliation with the New Ink movement and their
art groups.
20
Chapter 2: Analysis of Exhibitions from
1967 to 1974
Analysis Overview
During the period of 1967 to 1974 when Wucius Wong was the Assistant Curator at
the City Art Gallery, a total amount of 90 exhibitions with a wide variety of themes were
mounted. For the purpose of current study, only those exhibitions directly related to ‘Hong
Kong art’ were considered. Of all the exhibitions the City Art Gallery held over the period
of 1967-1974, five that were greatly related to Hong Kong art were singled out for analysis.
Year Chinese Title English Title
1967 一九六七年香港音樂美術節 Music & Fine Arts in Hong Kong 1967 Fine Arts Exhibition
1969 當代香港藝術 1969-70 Exhibition of Contemporary Hong Kong Art 1969-70
1970 七零年代香港青年藝術家展 Young Painters of Hong Kong 1970
1972 今日香港藝術 Art Now Hong Kong
1972 一九七二年當代香港藝術 Contemporary Hong Kong Art 1972
Table 5.1: ‘Hong Kong art’ exhibitions analysed in this chapter
Apart from exhibitions in Hong Kong, the City Museum and Art Gallery also
organised an exhibition of Hong Kong art at the ‘70 Expo in Osaka, where Hong Kong had
21
its own pavilion, as well as the travelling exhibition ‘Art Now Hong Kong’ which toured
around major cities in the United Kingdom. To understand how the notion of ‘Hong Kong
art’ has changed throughout the sixties and early seventies, exhibitions on the theme before
and after the period of 1967 to 1974 were also considered, so as to compare and contrast the
changes of how ‘Hong Kong art’ was represented by the City Art Gallery. The 1962 ‘Hong
Kong Art Today’ and the 1975 ‘Contemporary Hong Kong Art Biennial’ [當代香港藝術雙
年展] were selected for the comparison.
Analysis of Exhibitions
All of the exhibitions listed on table 5.1 were examined through reviewing their
exhibition catalogue. Four important pieces of information were researched: first, how
‘How Kong art’ was presented in the exhibition catalogues; second, the artists selected to
represent ‘Hong Kong’; third, the proportion of different categories of artworks and artists;
fourth, the proportion of New Ink artists in the exhibition. Cheung Wai-yee’s A Study on
Art Societies in Hong Kong is one of the key references consulted to decide which artists
belonged to the New Ink Movement and whether they were affiliated with Lui Shou-kwan
and Wucius Wong through those artist groups. The main purpose of this study is to find out
if New Ink artists were given preferential treatment than non-New-Ink artists in ‘Hong
Kong art’ exhibitions.
22
Before 1967
1962 Hong Kong Art Today
This exhibition was organised under the curatorship of John Warner. As stated in the
catalogue, this was an open exhibition – all local artists were invited to send their works to
participate in the exhibition. Some artists exhibited were handpicked by the Art Gallery,
whilst some others were selected from the pool of applications the City Art Gallery
received. The exhibition was considered a representation of ‘a cross section of the best
work’ in Hong Kong’s art scene.49
The selection of entries was made by the
‘straightforward and honest’ selection panel based on their preference for ‘what they
consider to be valid forms [of art] of to-day’, and that they preferred ‘material quality,
49 Hong Kong Art Today 今日的香港藝術, (Hong Kong: City Museum and Art Gallery, 1962).
23
intelligent experiment and originality’, rather than ‘outworn cliché, dull technical skill and
cheap imitation’.50
It is clear the panel preferred to select experimental artworks rather than
the traditional, established art styles to represent ‘Hong Kong art’, and thus the
controversial exclusion of traditional masters from the exhibition.
As for the exhibition itself, there were in total 65 artists and 120 pieces of artworks.
Participating artists include Lui Shou-kwan, Chao Shao-an, Kwong Yeu-ting, Wucius
Wong, Hon Chi-fun, Douglas Blend, Lee Kwong-wing [李國榮], Luis Chan [陳福善], and
Cheung Yee. As for the artworks, almost half of the exhibited entries were oil paintings (58
entries), while Chinese paintings took up just around one-tenth (16 entries) of the total.51
Eight particular artworks by different artists were selected to be sent to the ‘Commonwealth
Art Exhibition’ in London, including ‘Chinese paintings’ by Kong Pak-yu [江伯魚], Lai
Ming [黎明], Chao Shao-an [趙少昂], and Lui Shou-Kwan; oil paintings by Douglas Bland,
Julia Baron, and Pang Jen [彭楨]; and a gouache by Luis Chan.
50 Ibid. 51 The Chinese translation for ‘Chinese painting’ on the catalogue is guohua [國畫]. The term, however,
is not clearly defined, nor does the catalogue indicate any work that falls under that category.
24
Chart 2.1: Proportion of artists by category in 1962 Hong Kong Art Today
As shown in the figure above, oil painting was the predominant art form at that time,
as suggested by its landslide majority in the exhibition. Its substantial amount reflects the
selection panel’s pro-European, or pro-Western taste, as oil was a traditional medium in
European art. At the same time, the proportion of ‘Chinese paintings’ in the exhibition,
though significantly lower than that of the oil paintings, was still the second largest group
of works to be exhibited. Despite the fact that the exhibition was dominated by oil paintings
done by British painters, most of the works sent to London to represent Hong Kong were
done by Chinese artists, probably because foreigners would be more fascinated by ‘exotic’
Chinese works by Chinese artists to get a glimpse of the ‘mysterious’ China.
48%
13%
11%
10%
7%
11%
Proportions of Artists by category
Paintings (Oil) Chinese Paintings
Mixed Medium Prints
25
Wucius Wong Period, 1967-74
1967 Music & Fine Arts in Hong Kong - Fine Arts Exhibition
This exhibition was part of the celebration programme for the City Hall’s fifth
anniversary. 140 works displayed in the exhibition were selected from a large number of
entries. The introduction to the exhibition stressed on the ‘hybridity’ of ‘Hong Kong art’:
‘It was the original intention to divide the paintings exhibition into Chinese style and
Western style paintings’, but the selection panel could not distinguish the two styles
clearly.52
This perceived ‘diversity’ was prized as the ‘vitality of the artistic spirit’ in Hong
Kong.53
There were six categories: Paintings (Oil, Acrylic, etc.), Paintings (Chinese Ink),
Drawings and Watercolours, Prints and Monotypes, Sculptures and Ceramics, and Chinese
Calligraphy. A total number of 148 works were done by the 106 artists exhibited. The
proportion of works belonging to each category is shown in figure 2.2.
52 Music and Fine Art in Hong Kong 1967 一九六七年香港音樂美術節, (Hong Kong: Urban Council,
1967). 53 Ibid.
26
Figure 2.2: Proportion of works by category in 1967 Music & Fine Arts Fine Arts
Exhibition
As shown in figure 2.2, more than half of the exhibited artists belonged to the
Painting and Chinese Inks sections. Almost one-third (33 people) of the total number of
participating artists were from the Painting section, whilst one-fourth (26 people) were
Chinese ink artists. More than half of the Chinese ink artists (14 people) were traditional
Chinese ink masters, for example Lin Jen-tung [林建同], Leung Pak-yu [梁伯譽], and
Wong Po-yeh [黃般若]; around one-fourth of the ink artists (6 people) were modern ink
artists, such as Lui Shou-kwan, Wucius Wong, Cheung Shu-sun [張樹新], Kan Kit-keung
[靳杰強], Ng Ku-hung [吳孤鴻], and Evelyn Butt [崔鎰]. Four artists from the Chinese
Inks section were some of the lesser-known artists and there were too little information
31%
25% 11%
13%
9%
11%
Music & Fine Arts in Hong Kong 1967 Fine Arts Exhibition
Paintings (Oil, Acrylic, etc.) Chinese Inks Sculptures & Ceramics
Prints & Monotypes Drawings & Watercolours Chinese Calligraphy
27
available to determine whether they were practising traditional ink or modern ink, they
were: Cheng Din-ming [鄭電明], Alexander Lau [劉秋父], Wai Fai-sing [韋輝成], and
Jerry Lee [李中展]. The ‘artists from other disciplines’ were Ho Tao [何弢] and Tong
King-pun [唐景彬], architects who painted with ink.
Figure 2.3: Artists in the Chinese Inks Section in the 1967 Fine Arts Exhibition
From this exhibition, one can see the ‘variety’ and ‘vitality’ of ‘Hong Kong art’ in
1967 were still dominated by oil paintings and, to a lesser extent, Chinese ink works.
Chinese ink has gained a greater proportion in terms of the number of exhibited artists,
accounting for one-fourth of the total in the exhibition. This exhibition also marks the
Artists from other
Disciplines (2) 8%
Artists with No Available
Information (4) 15%
Traditional Ink Artists (14)
54%
New/ Modern Ink Artists (6)
23%
Fine Arts Exhibition Chinese Inks Section
28
beginning of the emergence of Modern (New) Ink art, which accounted for almost one-
fourth of the ink section.
1969-70 Contemporary Hong Kong art
This exhibition is the third in the series of contemporary Hong Kong art exhibitions
organised by the City Museum and Art Gallery. The entries were selected by a panel of
judges that included Cheung Yee, Ho Tao, Pierre Ryckmans [李克曼], J. C. Y. Watt [屈志
仁] (in attendance), and Wucius Wong (in attendance). In the catalogue, J.C.Y. Watt, the
Assistant Curator of the City Museum, remarks the ‘great diversity among the entries in
both the styles and the techniques employed’.54
But such diversity, he then adds, ‘bespeaks
at once the strength and weakness of the art of Hong Kong’, and ‘underlines the absence of
a living tradition and the artistic discipline (not technique) that is closely associated with
54 Contemporary Hong Kong art 1969 一九六九年當代香港藝術展覽, (Hong Kong: Urban Council, 1969).
29
any active tradition’.55
He then points out there was a ‘significant increase in the proportion
of paintings in the Chinese manner and employing Chinese materials’.56
Of all the
exhibitions organised by the City Art Gallery, this one was the first that witnessed the
number of works in the ‘Chinese Inks’ category superseding that of the oil and acrylic
paintings.
Figure 2.4: Artists by category in Contemporary Hong Kong Art 1969-70
Figure 2.4 shows the proportion of artists belonging to each category in the exhibition.
Chinese Inks and Paintings altogether occupied more than half of the total. 28% (36 people)
of the total participants were Chinese ink artists and 27% (36 people) of them were artists
who painted with oil or acrylic. 44% artists of the Chinese Inks section were New Ink
55 Ibid. 56 Ibid.
27%
28% 10%
15%
12%
8%
Contemporary Hong Kong Art 1969-70
Paintings (Oil, Acrylic, etc.)Chinese InksSculpturesPrintsDrawings, Watercolours, Collages
30
artists, seven of them belonged to the In Tao Art Association and nine did not join any art
group. Yet four out of those who did not belong to any art group, Chan Yim-man [陳棪文],
Lee Chee-cheung [李志章], Leung But-ying [粱不言], and Leung So-ying [粱素瀅],
formed One Art Group that year with Irene Chou and Chui Tze-hung [徐子雄] from the In
Tao Art Association.
Figure 2.5: Artists in the Chinese Inks section
This exhibition reveals that the local art scene was less dominated by Western oil and
foreign artists at least by the late sixties and that there was a growing interest in Chinese ink.
31%
25%
19%
25%
44%
Contemporary Hong Kong Art 1969-70
Traditional Ink Artists (11)
Artists with No Available Information (9)
Artists from In Tao Art Association (7)
New/Modern Ink Artists with No Art Group (9)*
31
This exhibition is also significant in that it marked the rise of New Ink art, which took up
almost half of the Chinese Inks. It is worth-noting that eleven New Ink artists were related
to Lui Shou-kwan as his students or followers, and some others were Wucius Wong’s
fellows that belonged to the In Tao Art Association, such as Irene Chou, Chui Tze-hung
and Ng Yiu-chung [吳耀忠].
1970 Young Painters of Hong Kong
32
Table 2.6: New Ink artist at 1970 Young Painters and art groups
This exhibition showcased works by nine New Ink artists: Irene Chou, Chui Tze-
hung, Ng Yiu-chung, Laurence Tam, Wong Wang-fai [汪弘輝], Kan Tai-keung [靳埭強],
Leung Kui-ting [梁巨廷], Cheung Shu-sun, and Cheung shu-sang [張樹生]. All of them
were New Ink artists who promoted or adopted the style of modern ink painting. As shown
on table 2.6, five of them, Chou, Chui, Ng, Tam and Wong belonged to the In Tao Art
Association, Chou and Chui were also members of the One Art Group with Kan Tai-keung.
All of the artists featured in the exhibition were students of Lui Shou-kwan and
contemporaries of Wucius Wong.
33
The exhibition carries great significance since its title was ‘Young Painters of Hong
Kong’. This exhibition was not an open exhibition and all the artists were selected by the
City Art Gallery to represent Hong Kong’s upcoming younger generation of painters – it
reflects how the Art Gallery chose to present the ‘Hong Kong art’ then, no doubt a picture
dominated by New Ink artists. Even though Kan Tai-keung, Leung Kui-ting, Cheung Shun-
sun, and Cheung shu-sang were exhibited in the previous 1969 Contemporary Hong Kong
Art Exhibition with their other non-ink works, only their ink works were displayed in this
‘Young Painters’ exhibition. This exhibition gave New Ink Movement great prestige and
served to further consolidate New Ink art’s dominance in the coming years.
1972 Art Now Hong Kong
The exhibition was divided into three sections: Ink Painting, Painting, and Prints &
Sculpture, with Ink Painting being the largest section of the exhibition, as stated in the
catalogue. There were six artists in the Ink Painting section: Leung Kui Ting, Lui Shou-
kwan, Ng Yiu-chung, Laurence Tam, Wong Wang-fai, and Wong Po-yeh; five in the
34
painting section: Douglas Blend, Kan Tai-keung, Kwong Yeu-ting, Gilbert Pan [潘士超],
and Wucius Wong; Six in the Prints & Sculpture section: Cheung Yee, Ha Bik-chuen [夏碧
泉], John Hadfield [夏德飛], Hon Chi-fun, Kwong Yeu-ting, and Van Lau [文樓].
Figure 2.7 Artists by category in 1972 Art Now Hong Kong
In the Ink Painting section, five out of six of the exhibiting artists were New Ink
artists, with the notable exception of Wong Po-yeh, a guohua master. Out of the 6 ink
paintings shown in the catalogue, five were painted in New Ink style and only one (by
Wong Po-yeh) not in New Ink style. This shows the City Art Gallery’s effort in presenting
an image that New Ink had gradually became the majority amongst ink artists. It is
important to note that there are other New Ink artists featured in the painting section –
Wucius Wong was showing his oil paintings whilst Kan Tai-keung his ink and colour on
47%
35%
18%
Artists by category in '72 Art Now H.K.
Paintings Ink Paintings Sculptures
35
paper. Ng Yiu-chung, Laurence Tam, Lui Shou-kwan, Wong Wang-fai and Wucius Wong
were all members of at least one New Ink art group. Together with Leung Kui-ting and Kan
Tai-keung, these seven New Ink artists accounted for almost half (41%) of the total number
of exhibiting artists.
1972 Contemporary Hong Kong Art
The 1972 Contemporary Hong Kong Art was a biennial showcasing contemporary art
done by local artists. The jury panel of the biennale included Hon Chi-fun, Nigel Cameron
[金馬倫], and Gunther Hollmann [荷爾曼]. At the end 95 artists and 140 art pieces were
selected to be displayed in the biennale, divided into six categories: Paintings, Chinese Inks,
Prints, Sculptures, Chinese Calligraphy, and lastly, ‘Drawings, Watercolours, Collages’.
One-fourth (24 people) of the total artists were featured in the painting section and almost
one-fifth (18 people) in Chinese Inks section, as figure 2.8 illustrates.
36
Figure 2.8: Artists by category in 1972 Contemporary Hong Kong Art
Wucius Wong wrote the introduction of the catalogue, where he mentions that the
exhibition ‘represents a biennial survey of the Hong Kong art scene’, and that in this
exhibition, the ‘evolution of a “Hong Kong style” has finally become evident’.57
There
were 18 artists in the Chinese inks sections and 11 of them were either students or followers
of Lui Shou-kwan – accounting for 77% of the total Ink section. Traditional Chinese ink
masters such as Leung Pak-yu, and Wong Po-yeh, were shunned from the exhibition. This
was unusual considering the fact that traditional ink artists used to have at least a few places
in previous exhibitions. Artists in the Chinese Inks were younger compared to those
exhibited in previous exhibitions. Other than Chinese Inks section, one third of the artists
(Eight artists) in the painting sections were artists who adopted New Ink style: Wucius
57 Contemporary Hong Kong art 1972 一九七二年當代香港藝術展覽, (Hong Kong: Urban Council, 1972).
25%
19%
9%
18%
18%
11%
Artists in '72 Contemporary H.K. Art
Paintings (Oil, Acrylic, etc.) Chinese Inks
Sculptures Prints
Drawings, Watercolours, Collages Chinese Calligraphy
37
Wong, Liu Kuo-sung, Leung Kui-ting, Chui Tse-hung, Lee Ching-man [李靜雯], Yu Sai-
kin [余世堅], Kan Tai-keung, and Szeto Mo-yeh [司徒無弱]. According to Lau Kin-wai
[劉健威], works by those artists resembled New Ink art and thus the overall exhibition gave
an impression of being dominated by New Ink art.58
Figure 2.9 demonstrates that half of the
New Ink artists featured in the exhibition were either from One Art Group or In Tao Art
Association, both founded by students of Lui Shou-kwan.
Figure 2.9: New Ink artists by art groups
This exhibition reveals several important points about the art scene at the time: first,
Chinese Inks continued to be one of the most popular mediums used by Hong Kong artists;
second, the New Ink Movement began to shine, as reflected in the proportion of New Ink
58 Lau, Kin-wai 劉健威. ‘Xiang gang shui mo hua yun dong yan jiu’ ‘香港水墨畫運動研究’ (The Study of
Hong Kong’s New Ink Movement) (master’s thesis, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1992), 4. 3.
28%
22%
33%
17%
50%
New Ink artists by art groups
Artists with No Art Group(New Ink) Artists with No Available Information
Artists from One Art Group(一畫會) Artists from In Tao Art Association(元道畫會)
38
artists in the exhibition, New Ink artists gradually replaced the traditional ink painters and
became the mainstream in the Chinese Inks section. This ‘biennial survey’ recognised and
confirmed the rise of New Ink art, and, in Wong’s words, ‘the evolution of a “Hong Kong
style”’.59
After 1974
1975 Contemporary Hong Kong Art Biennial
In accordance with previous exhibitions, the Contemporary Hong Kong Art Biennial
in 1975 also aimed ‘to provide a forum for Hong Kong art and to keep the record up to-
date’.60
This year, 269 artists participated in the biennial by submitting their works; almost
750 paintings, prints, sculpture and calligraphy were received. The panel of judges for the
biennial were Bonnie Chan [陳佩文], Chung Wah-nan [鍾南華], Gunther Hollmann, Lui
Shou-kwan, Clifford Shun Wah [周國勝], and Sun Chung [莊申].
The artworks were divided into six main categories: Paintings, Prints, ‘Drawings,
Watercolours, Collage and Others’, ‘Chinese Inks (Contemporary) and Chinese Inks
(Traditional)’, Calligraphy, and Sculpture. 112 artists and 175 entries were exhibited.
Chinese inks artists accounted for the largest part of the exhibition, taking up 29% (32
people) of the total. Drawings, Watercolour and watercolours came second with 22% (25
59 Contemporary Hong Kong art 1972 一九七二年當代香港藝術展覽, (Hong Kong: Urban Council, 1972). 60 Contemporary Hong Kong art 1975 一九七五年當代香港藝術展覽, (Hong Kong: Urban Council, 1975).
39
people). For the first time the number of artists in the Painting section was lower than that o
the Chinese Inks section and occupied only 12% (14 people) of the total.
Figure 2.10: Artists by category in 1975 Contemporary Hong Kong Art Biennial
Even within the Chinese Inks section, this exhibition sub-divided it into two sub-
sections: Contemporary and Traditional. The Contemporary sub-section consisted of 22
artists (68% of the Chinese Inks) and the Traditional sub-section only 10 artists (32%).
Among the 32 artists, ten of them were members of One Art Group, including Chan Flora
Kay [陳鳳姬], Cheng Wei-kwok [鄭維國], Lee Ching-man, Kan Tai-keung, Irene Chou,
Chui Tze-hung, Ng Yiu-chung, Poon Chun-wah [潘振華], Lui Shou-kwan (advisor to the
group), and Wucius Wong (advisor to the group). Other exhibiting artists in the section
were less well-known and this is their first public appearance in this series of exhibition,
such as Alvin Yin [殷捷], But Aser [畢子融], and Wong Sing-chung [黃聖聰]. For
12%
29%
9% 19%
22%
9%
Artists by category in '75 Contemporary H.K.
Paintings (Oil, Acrylic, etc.) Chinese Inks
Sculptures Prints
Drawings, Watercolours, Collages Chinese Calligraphy
40
traditional inks, 3 out of 10 of the artists were members of One Art Group, including Lee
Chi-cheung [李志章], Jat See-yu [翟仕堯], and Ho Choi-on [何才安].
The significance of this exhibition can be summed up in a few points. First, it was the
first time the Chinese Inks section was divided into two sub-sections: ‘Contemporary’ and
‘Traditional’. The separation of the two implied that modern ink was in its state of maturity,
with distinct characteristics that could be clearly differentiated from traditional ink. The
large number of New Ink artists, as well as New Ink entries, indicated the dominance of the
art style at the time. In addition many young New Ink artists made their appearance and this
could be the result of Lui Shou-kwan, Wucius Wong, and other New Ink pioneers’ effort in
promoting the art style. Second, two out of three awards in the Chinese Inks section were
given to New ink artists whilst no traditional ink artist was awarded. Third, there was a
significant drop in the proportion of oil and acrylic paintings when compared to previous
exhibitions. Its popularity was overtaken by Chinese Inks, as evident in the proportion of
artists by that category in this exhibition.
Findings
From the analysis of exhibitions above, several changes and characteristics about the
exhibitions were identified. These exhibitions, as stated in several catalogues, were up to-
date ‘records’ reporting and documenting trends in the Hong Kong art scene. With the City
Art Gallery being the only official art museum at that time, these exhibitions would to a
great extent affect people’s impression of ‘Hong Kong art’.
41
1. The Decline of Paintings and the Rise of Chinese Inks
From the examination of the exhibitions, there was a distinct decrease in the number
of oil or acrylic exhibits and an increase in Chinese ink exhibits. This tendency is shown
below in figure 2.11 and figure 2.12.
Figure 2.11: Painting artworks from 1962 to 1975
58
48
39 36
23
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
Nu
mb
er o
f E
ntr
ies
Exhibitions held during 1962-1975
Artworks exhibited in 'Paintings' category
Paintings(Oil,Acrylic,etc.)
42
Figure 2.12: Painting artists from 1967 to 1975
Figure 2.13: amount of ‘Paintings’ and ‘Chinese Inks’ artworks in exhibitions from 1962 to
1975
33 35
24
14
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
1967Music & Fine
Arts
1969Contemporary
HK Art
1972Contemporary
HK Art
1975Contemporary
HK ArtBiennial
Nu
mb
er o
f O
il A
rtis
t
Exhibition held during 1967-1975
'Painting' artists from 1967-1975
Paintings(Oil,Acrylic,etc.)
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
Nu
mb
er o
f E
ntr
ies
Exhibitions held during 1962-1975
Amount of 'Paintings' & 'Chinese Inks' artworks
Paintings(Oil,Acrylic,etc.)
Chinese Inks
43
Figure 2.14: amount of ‘Paintings’ and ‘Chinese Inks’ artists in exhibitions from 1962 to
1975
Figures 2.11 illustrates the amount of oil paintings displayed in exhibitions held
during the period of 1962 – 1975; figure 2.12 the amount of artists who exhibited their oil
or acrylic paintings in exhibitions from 1967 to 1975; Figure 2.13 and 2.14 are, respectively,
figure 2.11 and 2.12 combined with data of the same kind for Chinese ink. Figure 2.13
reveals oil or acrylic paintings were on decline throughout the late sixties and early
seventies, which coincided with the rise of Chinese ink works in exhibitions. Despite a
dramatic fluctuation in 1972, the number of Chinese ink works was generally on the rise in
the period. Figure 2.14 displays a similar trend in that the number of Chinese ink artists
soared and surpassed that of oil painters in 1969. Although figure 2.13 shows in 1972 the
amount of Chinese ink works seems to be significantly lower than that of the oil paintings,
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
1967Music & Fine
Arts
1969Contemporary
HK Art
1972Contemporary
HK Art
1975Contemporary
HK ArtBiennial
Nu
mb
er o
f A
rtis
ts
Exhibition held during 1967-1975
Artists in 'Paintings' & 'Chinese Inks' category
Paintings(Oil,Acrylic,etc.)
Chinese Inks
44
figure 2.14 could serve to explain the difference between the number of Chinese ink artists
featured in the exhibition and those using oil or acrylic was actually not as drastic as it
might seem. On the whole during the years of 1967 to 1974 when Wucius Wong was the
City Art Gallery’s Assistant Curator Chinese ink artworks featured in exhibitions continued
to rise in number.
2. The rise of New Ink art in the late sixties and early seventies
Figure 2.15: Ink artists in exhibition from 1967 to 1975
As mentioned previously, New Ink art came to occupy a larger proportion in
exhibitions after 1967 and there was indeed a rising trend in terms of statistics. Figure 7.5
displays the overall trend of New Ink artists featured in exhibitions from 1967 to 1975. In
the 1967 exhibition, 14 ink artists were traditional Chinese ink artists, accounting for 54%
0
5
10
15
20
25
Nu
mb
er o
f A
rtis
ts
Exhibitions held during 1967-1975
Ink artists exhibited, 1967-1975
Traditional Inks
New Inks
45
of the total ink artists. In 1969 the situation began to reverse, just 44% of the ink artists
were traditional ink artists. Since then number of New Ink artists featured in ‘Hong Kong
art’ exhibitions was always higher than that of the traditional ink artists. The 1972 Art Now
Hong Kong exhibitions, as mentioned earlier, had its ink section almost exclusively
dominated by New Ink artists. The Contemporary Hong Kong Art exhibition held in the
same year showed a similar trend, with 14 out of the 18 ink artists being New Ink artists.
Traditional ink masters such as Lin Jen-tung, Leung Pak-yu, and Wong Po-yeh, did not
have a presence at all in the exhibition. By 1975 in the Contemporary Hong Kong Art
Biennial New Ink artists dominated two-third of the ink section and only one-third of the
artists included in the exhibition were practising traditional ink. By 1975, New Ink art had
dominated the Chinese inks section and been accepted as the ‘orthodox’ mainstream ‘Hong
Kong art’.
3. The inclination towards specific New Ink art groups
After analysing the five exhibitions held from 1967 to 1974, as well as the
Contemporary Hong Kong Art Biennial in 1975, it is found that New Ink artists from
particular art groups had a higher likelihood to be featured in exhibition to represent
‘Contemporary Hong Kong art’, especially those who were students of Lui Shou-kwan or
contemporaries of Wucius Wong.
46
Figure 2.16: The proportion of Lui’s students or Wong’s fellows in the 1969 Contemporary
Hong Kong Art 1969-70 exhibition
The Contemporary Hong Kong Art 1969-70 exhibition in 1969 marked the
emergence of New Ink art, for New Ink artists occupied almost half of the places in the
Chinese Inks section. Amongst all the Chinese ink artists included in the exhibition, almost
one-third of them were taught by Lui Shou-kwan or related to Wucius Wong.
The favouring is most apparent in the ‘Young Painters of Hong Kong’ exhibition in
1970. A lot of exhibiting artists were students of Lui Shou-kwan from his Painting courses
at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the University of Hong Kong, such as Irene
Chou and Chui Tze-hung, both of them were members of the One Art Group, and Lui
Shou-kwan and Wucius Wong were both advisers to the art group. More than half of the
exhibiting artists, including Chou, Chui, Laurence Tam, Ng Yiu-chung and Wong Wang-fai
were members of the In Tao Art Association, another art group formed by Lui’s students
from the ink painting course at the Chinese University. The 1972 Contemporary Hong
Kong Art exhibition showed such an inclination as well – more than half of the Chinese ink
31%
69%
Chinese Inks section in 1969 Contemporary H.K. Art 69-70
Students of Lui /Fellows of Wong
Other Artists
47
artists featured in the exhibition were artists from the In Tao Art Association, as shown in
figure 2.17.
Figure 2.17: Chinese ink artists in the 1972 Contemporary Hong Kong Art exhibition
From these results, it is clear that artists trained by Lui Shou-kwan and from art
groups related to Lui Shou-kwan and Wucius Wong, in particular the In Tao Art
Association and One Art Group, had a higher chance to be featured in exhibitions on
contemporary Hong Kong art organised by the City Art Gallery.
Summary
After the analysis, it is found that Chinese Ink rose in popularity in the exhibitions
organised by the City Art Gallery from the early sixties to mid-seventies, and this coincided
with the decline of the oil and acrylic paintings, traditional Western painting medium. New
Ink art gradually became the mainstream in the Chinese Inks section, and New Ink artists
Chinese Inks section in 1972 Contemporary H.K. Art exhibition
Artists belonged to In
Tao
or One Art Group
Artists Without Art
Group
48
that were related to Lui Shou-kwan and Wucius Wong enjoyed a continuous presence in the
Contemporary Hong Kong art exhibitions during the period. This privileging became
evident in 1975 when the first Contemporary Hong Kong Art Biennial was held, even one
year after Wucius Wong left the City Art Gallery. This indicates the perception of ‘New Ink
art’ as mainstream Hong Kong art’ had been successfully established during the years when
Wucius Wong was at the City Art Gallery. It is also noteworthy that it was not until 1967
did City Art Gallery begin to focus on exhibiting ‘Contemporary Hong Kong art’ –
although there were indeed exhibitions showcasing contemporary works by local artist,
they were either artist solo-exhibitions or small-scale art group exhibitions. Could this be
somehow related to the political turmoil in 1967? Next chapter attempts to analyse New
Ink art’s rise from a political perspective.
49
Chapter 3: Political Connotations for the
Emergence of New Ink Art in the Sixties
& Seventies
This chapter proposes connotations for the emergence of New Ink art in the late
sixties and early seventies with reference to the political condition at the time. After
demonstrating City Art Gallery had been selectively exhibiting New Ink artists and helped
contribute to New Ink art’s dominance in the art scene in the late sixties, this chapter argues
the City Art Gallery’s promotion of New Ink art could actually be part of the Colonial
Government’s political agenda. The first part of this chapter reviews scholars’ writings on
the power of museums in prizing certain art forms and establishing identities for political
purpose. After that is the general background information of the socio-political context in
Hong Kong at that period, an introduction of the Leftist Riot in 1967 and the changes
following that. Next the focus shifts to the Colonial Government’s localisation policy in the
wake of the Riot and the City Hall Museum and Art Gallery’s amendment of its Statement
of Aims in 1967; the last part of this chapter explores the connection between art groups
and politics, the linkage between New Ink art’s ‘hybrid’ characteristic and Hong Kong’s
troubled identity, and proposes the City Art Gallery’s preference towards New Ink art was
in effect part of the Colonial Government’s scheme in establishing a local artistic identity.
50
Review of the Power of Museums
The power of museums as powerful cultural institutions in shaping identity and
legitimising certain forms of culture for political advantage to those who control them has
been well-explored by multiple scholars. DiMaggio studied the programmes at the Boston
Museum of Fine Arts and the Boston Symphony Orchestra and those organisations’
connection to the city’s upper social class in nineteenth-century Boston.61
He revealed how
the city’s social elites used the Museum and the Orchestra’s programmes to showcase as
well as limit access to their cultural capital and establish a base for ‘high culture’ in
nineteenth-century America to counter the political threats presented by the city’s rapidly
growing immigrant and working class population. Gregor Langfeld, on the other hand,
investigated how the Director of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, now
one of the most authoritative and dominant art institutions in the world, changed the
public’s resentment towards German Expressionism in the late thirties.62
German
Expressionist art was shaped by the director of the Museum and his associates as the
‘orthodox’ modern German art the American public could sympathise with and relate to
through portraying it as an art style associated with values of freedom and individualism.
DiMaggio and Langfeld demonstrated the social function of art and demystified the rise of
art styles.
As for displays in museums, Carol Duncan studied the eighteenth-century Louvre and
its transformation from a royal collection to a national art museum during the French
61 DiMaggio, ‘Cultural entrepreneurship in nineteenth-century Boston: the creation of an organisational base
for high culture in America’, 33-50. 62 Langfeld, ‘How the Museum of Modern Art in New York canonised German Expressionism’, 1-13.
51
Revolution, a move which signified the end of the ancien régime and the rise of the public
in France. 63
Collection display method and iconography at the new Musée du Louvre had
to be modified to reflect and accommodate the museum’s new bourgeois audience, as well
as to demonstrate the glory of the state in its setting. The Louvre’s success made it a
prototype of modern museums. Across the channel, alarmed by the rise of republicanism
and in awe of its old rival’s achievement, the English Parliament approved the founding of
the National Gallery in London, the first public art museum in England, to appease the
rising middle class’ demand of a more open and liberal government. Apart from Duncan,
Timothy Luke focused on symbolic politics and emphasises the significance of museums as
‘sites of public instruction and collective imagination’.64
Luke examined themes and
representations in controversial exhibitions such as ‘The West as America’ show at the
National Museum of American Art in Washington, the National Air and Space Museum’s
show for the fiftieth anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and the U.S. Holocaust
Memorial Museum’s approach to interpret and display the Holocaust. Both Carol Duncan
and Timothy Luke looked into the politics in museum exhibitions and showed that museum
possess the power to affect our values and define realities through exhibition.
Meanwhile, Victoria Alexander inspected more than four thousand exhibitions at
large American art museum from 1960 to 1986 in her research on the conflict of interests
63 Duncan, ‘From the Princely Gallery to the Public Art Museum: The Louvre and the National Gallery,
London’, in Civilizing Rituals: Inside Public Art Museums. 64 Luke, Museum Politics, xxv.
52
between museum funders and museum curators on exhibition mounting.65
Alexander
examined the connection between funder and exhibition types and also the changes in the
exhibition data pool she compiled before and after a shift in the types of funding available
to the museums, as well as interviews with museum curators and qualitative information
from the museum’s annual reports. Alexander’s research suggests that art is shaped by
organisational processes and that museum funders do exert a certain level of influence on
exhibition formats.66
As for museums in Hong Kong, John Carroll and Janet Ng both studied how the
history of Hong Kong was narrated for political purpose.67
Based on museum exhibits and
publications, Carroll found that the three major museums in Hong Kong, the Museum of
History, the Museum of Coastal Defence, and the Heritage Museum, whitewashed Hong
Kong’s past to depoliticise the present by downplaying Britain’s role in Hong Kong’s
political segregation with China and Hong Kong’s economic and social development. For
example, the Museums were careful in its exhibitions to avoid criticising the British on the
Opium Wars. Carroll also pointed out the museums and heritage preservation in post-
colonial stress on Hong Kong’s ‘hybrid’ condition and cosmopolitanism as well as the
65 Victoria D. Alexander, ‘Pictures at an Exhibition: Conflicting Pressures in Museums and the Display of
Art’, American Journal of Sociology 101, no.4 (Jan 1996): 797-839. 66 Alexander drew inspiration from previous sociological analysis of art such as Diana Crane, The
Transformation of the Avant-garde: the New York Art World, 1940-1985, (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1987).; Arthur Danto, The State of the Art, (New York: Prentice Hall Press, 1987).; and Raymond
Williams, The Sociology of Culture, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981). 67 John M. Carroll, ‘Displaying the Past to Serve the Present: Museums and Heritage Preservation in
Post-Colonial Hong Kong?’, Twentieth-Century China 31, no. 1 (01 November 2005): 76-103.; and Janet Ng, ‘Walking Down Memory Lane: On the Streets of the Hong Kong History Museum’s Paradigm City’, in Paradigm City Space, Culture, and Capitalism in Hong Kong: 43-64., (Albany: SUNY Press, 2009).
53
city’s ‘Chinese’ root to emphasise Hong Kong’s bond to Mainland China. Janet Ng, in her
study of the History Museum’s presentation of the history of Hong Kong, observed a
similar phenomenon.68
Through analysing the museum’s main exhibition, ‘The Story of
Hong Kong’, Ng argues Hong Kong’s history has been sinicised by the museum’s
emphasis on the history of pre-colonial Hong Kong and its connection to Mainland China.
Ng analysed also the carefully designed and de-politicised artificial colonial street scenes
which resemble a ‘theme-park ride’ that plays with nostalgia and celebrates a certain ‘value
and attitude that would be the Hong Kong spirit’.69
Ng touches upon the issue of museum’s
ability to manipulate identity formation and propagate capitalist ideology – to turn the
pursuit of social order into a social value. Carroll and Ng’s studies show museums in Hong
Kong have to fulfil the Government’s political agenda and be consistent with the state’s
propaganda machine.
All these studies have reviewed the connection between museums as cultural
institutions and their potential ability to establish identity through its exhibits and museum
experience to achieve certain political effects desirable to the interests of the dominant
political parties or ruling class. Later part of this chapter shall analyse the City Art
Gallery’s inclination towards showing New Ink Movement artists and their art from such a
perspective, as what was displayed in the Art Gallery would surely affect the public’s
perception of the Colony and its artistic identity, especially when the institution was the
68 Ng, ‘Walking Down Memory Lane: On the Streets of the Hong Kong History Museum’s Paradigm City’,
43-64. 69 Ibid., 56.
54
only official venue for the display of art in the Colony for quite a long time throughout the
sixties until the end of the first half of the seventies.
Socio-political context of HK (Sixties – Seventies)
Because of its proximity to Communist China and its political status as a British
colony in the Far East, Hong Kong was a place of constant political conflicts and social
struggles.70
The founding of the People’s Republic in China contributed to Hong Kong’s
‘new prominence, both in the British Empire and across the globe’.71
The Colony was at the
forefront of the clash between capitalist and communist ideologies and an important base
for propaganda machines from both sides and a vital foothold of great strategic significance
to Western capitalist powers to gather intelligence and organise covert activities against
Communist China.72
A variety of magazines such as America Today, Four Seas, and
pamphlets were published by U.S. information service to counter communist influence in
the region.73
The little British colony was swirled into the political struggles between pro-
Communist and pro-Nationalist camps and this caused divide and social upheavals in the
society such as the 1956 Riot [雙十暴動].
70 Please see John M. Carroll, A Concise History of Hong Kong, (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007);
Wang Gung-wu 王賡武 ed., Xianggan Shi Xin bian Shang 香港史新編上 (Hong Kong History: New
Perspectives, Vol 1), (Hong Kong: Joint Publishing三聯出版 , 1997); Liu Shu-yong 劉蜀永, Jian ming
xiang gang shi 簡明香港史 (A Short History of Hong Kong), (Hong Kong: Joint Publishing 三聯出版,
1998).; and also Ian Scott, ‘Legitimacy and its Discontents: Hong Kong and the Reversion to Chinese
Sovereignty’, Asian Journal of Political Science 1, no. 1, (June 1993) for a better understanding of the
socio-political context of the time 71 Carroll, A Concise History of Hong Kong, 140. 72 Ibid., 141. 73 Ibid.
55
At the same time, the U.S. and the U.N. embargos against China caused Hong Kong
to shift its role from trading to manufacture for Western markets and contributed to its
economic prosperity, supported by the Government-inspired Federation of Hong Kong
Industries set up in 1960.74
Until 1953 only less than one-third of the city’s exports were
produced in the city, the figure climbed significantly within less than a decade, and rose to
more than two-third by 1959.75
Hong Kong’s economic miracle and relative political
stability in the region gradually cultivated a sense of pride amongst the citizens. 76
At the
same time China’s closed border and self-imposed isolation from the rest of the world
provided the British an opportunity for exploitation. As Carroll reports, a committee
appointed by the Education Department in 1952 recommended an emphasis on Chinese
culture. Bernard Luk argues this was the Colonial Government’s tactic ploy to establish an
abstract Chinese identity that vaguely resembles that of the émigré. That curriculum helped
foster a sense of Hong Kong ‘being at the periphery of both the Chinese and Western
worlds’, 77
similar to the term ‘marginal man’ Robert Park coins, ‘A man living and sharing
intimately in the cultural life and traditions of two distinct peoples […] a man on the
margin of two cultures and two societies, which never completely interpenetrated and
fused.”78
Hong Kong people wandered between Chinese traditions and Euro-American
influences, thus becoming a ‘marginal group’. This was likely the beginning of the
74 Report of the Advisory Committee on the Proposed Federation of Industries, (Hong Kong: W.F.C. Jenner,
Govt, 1958). See also Matthew Turner, The Making of Hong Kong, (Hong Kong: Federation of Hong Kong
Industries 30th
Anniversary), 1990. 75 Carroll, A Concise History of Hong Kong, 143-144. 76 Cheung, A Study on Art Societies in Hong Kong, 46–48. 77 Carroll, A Concise History of Hong Kong, 147-148 78 Robert E Park, ‘Human Migration and the Marginal Man’, American Journal of Sociology 33, no. 6 (May
1928): 892.
56
emergence of an alternative identity for people in Hong Kong. Whilst it is not accurate to
say a conscious ‘Hong Kong identity’ had formed then, it is roughly at this point did Hong
Kong people begin to differentiate themselves from Mainland Chinese. The Star Ferry Riot
in 1966 was a sign that locals began to identify themselves with the city and there was a
growing awareness on social problems such as housing and corruption.79
Indeed, the sixties
was, in Turner’s description, a ‘coming of age of the “Hong Kong people”’.80
Since the early sixties the Colony witnessed a growing disparity between the rich and
the poor and also an influx of refugees. Dissatisfaction with the Government’s inaction had
ignited several strikes and demonstrations throughout the Colony. In May 1967, a dispute
over wages and working hours erupted into waves of protest and demonstrations incited by
left-wing activists in the Colony, a half-year-long incident that took its inspiration from the
Cultural Revolution in China. During the six months, leftists attacked the police and
planted bombs throughout the city, some of the more radical left-wing schools asked their
students to support the leftist’s cause by producing bombs in school laboratories.81
At the
end of it several hundreds were injured and thousands were arrested.82
The month-long
struggles against the Colonial Government’s oppression and the capitalist ideology did not
79 Carroll, A Concise History of Hong Kong,149.; also Matthew Turner and Irene Ngan ed, Hong Kong
Sixties: Designing Identity, (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Arts Centre, 1995), 57. 80 Matthew Turner, ‘60s/90s: Dissolving the People’, West Coast Line: A Journal of Contemporary Writing
and Criticism 30, no. 3, (Winter 1997), 90. 81 Carroll, A Concise History of Hong Kong, 150. 82 Ibid.; Also see Chiu, Wing-kai趙永佳, Lui, Tai-lok呂大樂, and Yong, Sai-shing容世誠, ed., Xiong huai
zuguo: xiang gang‘ai guo zuo pai’ yun dong胸懷祖國： 香港「愛國左派」運動 （Embrace the
Motherland: Patriotic Leftist movement in Hong Kong）, (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press 牛津出版
社, 2014). and also Yip, Man-hei 葉文喜, ‘The changing patterns of the “Hong Kong Identity”, from the
1966 Riot to the 1997 handover’, (master’s thesis, The University of Hong Kong, 2002), 36-41.
57
undermine the Government’s authority and capitalism but, ironically, reinforced their
legitimacy, and reminded Hong Kong people that it served Hong Kong people little purpose
to resist the Colonial rule.83
The incident also contributed to the public realisation of a sense
of ‘special community’ that is separated from Mainland China as well as the British
Colonial Government.84
Colonial Government’s Policy Change Following the ’67 Riot
After the Riot in 1967, the Colonial Government implemented several changes on
general administrative and cultural policies. As scholar M. K. Chan notes, ‘1967 marked a
crucial turning point in the development of the colonial regime’s irreversible awareness of
and irrevocable commitment to a more conscientious and responsive social policy’.85
The
Riot was a rude awakening to the British Government and the Hong Kong Colonial
Government, and alarmed them of the urgency to improve relations and communication
with local communities, implement mass education scheme and establish a sense of
belonging to the Colony.86
According to Matthew Turner, the rhetoric of ‘citizenship’,
‘community’ and ‘belonging’ was deployed, since 1967, by the Colonial Government as
83 Chin, Wan 陳雲. Xiang gang you wen hua – xiang gang de wen hua zheng ce (shang juan)香港有文化 –
香港的文化政策(上卷)（Hong Kong and Her Culture: Hong Kong's Cultural Policy (Vol.1)）. (Hong
Kong: Acadia Publishing花千樹出版社, 2008), 76.; (Carroll, A Concise History of Hong Kong, 158.;
Turner & Ngan ed, Hong Kong Sixties: Designing Identity, (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Arts Centre, 1995),
57. 84 Carroll, A Concise History of Hong Kong, 158. 85 Chan Ming Kou, 'Labour vs Crown: Aspects of Society-State Interactions in the Hong Kong Labour
Movement Before World War II', in Between East and West: Aspects of Social and Political Development in Hong Kong, edited by Elizabeth Sinn, Yuk-yee (Hong Kong: Centre of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong, 1990), 142.
86 Carroll, A Concise History of Hong Kong, 158.
58
anti-Communist counter-propaganda.87
First of all, Governor David Trench introduced the
City District Officer system to foster communication between government and people.88
The name of the position ‘Secretary for Chinese Affairs’ was changed to ‘Secretary for
Home Affairs’ in 1969.89
At the same time, the Colony was, as Chin observes, referred to
as ‘the territory’ instead of ‘the colony’ or ‘the Crown colony’.90
Even though these name
changes were subtle they nonetheless showed the Colonial Government’s effort in
patronising the public. Apart from those, the Government pushed for compulsory education,
welfare and other legislations such as the weekly day off bill in 1970,91
as well as
transparency in governance.
The Colonial Government believed the main cause of the riot was the idle youth in
the Colony that was susceptible to the Leftist groups’ political indoctrination,92
therefore
the Government exploited the educational and recreational side of arts and culture to
occupy and distract citizens from political activities and at the same time to foster a sense
of ‘Hong Kong community’ pride. Some of the examples include the Hong Kong week in
the October of 1967, co-organised by the Government and the Federation of Hong Kong
Industries to promote local products and provide entertainment to demonstrate the
‘community was as one’; 93
Television Broadcasting Limited’s (TVB) first broadcast in
November the same year and its famous long-running entertainment programme ‘Enjoy
87 Turner, ‘60s/90s: Dissolving the People’, 81. 88 Carroll, A Concise History of Hong Kong, 159. 89 Ibid. 90 Chin, Hong Kong and Her Culture: Hong Kong's Cultural Policy (Vol.1), 76-77. 91 Carroll, A Concise History of Hong Kong, 195. 92 Chin, Hong Kong and Her Culture: Hong Kong's Cultural Policy (Vol.1), 78. 93 Turner,‘60s/90s: Dissolving the People’, 81.
59
Yourself Tonight’ [歡樂今宵]; the Hong Kong Festival; the ‘Keep Hong Kong Clean’
Campaign; the Government’s enthusiasm in local history and heritage; and the annual
Chinese Manufacturers’ Exhibition of Hong Kong Products that was the Colony’s largest
festival other than Chinese New Year.94
It is likely these grand festivals and entertainment
were promoting an identity of collective consumption to combat the Communist China’s
socialist propaganda.95
It is at this instance when the formation of a truly ‘local’ identity based in Hong Kong
was made possible – through a series of social policies, slogans, de-politicised activities
and administrative reforms adopted by the Colonial Government for the purpose of
‘community building’.96
Cheung also mentions the formation of a new, vague form of
identity, or ‘Hong-Kong-ness’, that claims lineage to neither China nor Great Britain was
part of the Colonial Government’s political scheme for governance.97
Eva Man remarks the
localisation policy ‘laid the groundwork for Hong Kong’s search for its identity through
art’.98
The relation between the emergence of New Ink art and politics shall be more
analysed in greater detail in later part of this chapter.
City Art Gallery and ‘Hong Kong Art’
The City Museum and Art Gallery was under the jurisdiction of the Hong Kong
Urban Council and a Museum Committee ruled over matters such as collection policy and
94 See Chin, Hong Kong and Her Culture: Hong Kong's Cultural Policy (Vol.1), 78. Also Turner, ‘60s/90s:
Dissolving the People’, 81-82. 95 Carroll, A Concise History of Hong Kong, 81. Also Turner, ‘60s/90s: Dissolving the People’, 82. 96 Turner, ‘60s/90s: Dissolving the People’, 97. 97 Cheung, A Study on Art Societies in Hong Kong, 46. 98 Man, ‘A Museum of Hybridity’, 102.
60
funding.99
As mentioned previously, the Colonial Government shifted its focus to arts and
culture after the Leftist Riot in 1967, the Urban Council, as part of the official
administrative structure responsible for the development of arts and cultural in the city,
would naturally follow the Government’s political agenda. Even though the Council had
independent budget authority and supervisory power, 100
the change in government policy
would surely have influenced the City Art Gallery to readjust its policy and aims to satisfy
the Colonial Government’s political needs.
After going through government documents on the development of the City Art
Gallery from the Public Records Office, it was found that a committee paper MAG/20/67
was issued on the 8th
September, 1967, a document that listed the institution’s statement of
aims for the coming year. It was generally the same as the previous year’s. Yet curiously
just 18 days after the document was issued, another committee paper MAG/24/67 was
issued, it says ‘In accordance with the decision of the last meeting of the Museum and Art
Gallery Select Committee (Committee Minute MAG/4/67) […] revised aims for 1968 are
suggested’. It is unfortunate that the minute MAG/4/67 could not be accessed, nonetheless
these two documents reveal that the Museum Committee amended, or in its own words,
‘rephrased’, the institution’s Statement of Aims for the coming year. The ‘rephrased’
version, paper MAG/24/67, includes more items than the previous version. Most notably
item (c) was expanded and became two new items in the new version: item (e) and item (f).
The original item (c) reads: ‘To develop as a first priority’ the section of the Museum
99 Tam, Hong Kong Art, 22. 100 Man, ‘A Museum of Hybridity’, 99.
61
devoted to local archaeology, history and ethnography’. The item (e) and (f) in the new
version are, respectively, ‘to give priority to the section of the Museum devoted to local
archaeology in order to discover and describe details of the early life of the area’, and, ‘to
give priority to the section of the Museum devoted to local history and ethnography in
order to describe the immediate local scene – its people and environment’.101
The new
proposed statement of aims stresses more emphasis on ‘local’ and seems to show the
institution’s renewed enthusiasm in the Colony’s past. It should be noted this was the only
time, throughout the institution’s operation from 1962 to 1972, that the statement of aims
was modified. It is reasonable to presume, in terms of its time of occurrence, this change of
the City Hall Museum and Art Gallery’s statement of aims was the institution’s response to
the Colonial Government’s localisation policy.
Even though the statement of aims does not specifically mention any policy related to
the Art Gallery, since this document was an institutional-wide document, it would surely
have somehow affected the Art Gallery’s policy as well to shift its focus on ‘local’ art. It
would not be correct, however, to say that the City Art Gallery had begun to promote local
art all of a sudden since 1967. The term ‘Hong Kong art’ was used as early as 1962 when
the institution opened, in the exhibition ‘Hong Kong Art Today’. Even so, as previously
analysed, in the 1962 ‘Hong Kong Art Today’ exhibition most of the artists included were
Westerners and most of the works presented were oil paintings. This situation began to
change when Wucius Wong came to the City Art Gallery in 1967. As the sixties
101 Committee paper MAG/24/67
62
approached to an end, the City Art Gallery seemed to be more enthusiastic about
‘Contemporary Hong Kong art’ and New Ink artists gradually came to occupy a formidable
proportion in those contemporary local art exhibitions, marginalising the influence of
traditional guohua groups in the art scene.
For the administration, as previously mentioned, there was a pressing political need to
suppress the leftist groups’ operation and popularity in the Colony and cultivate a sense of
belonging to the Colony by promoting ‘Hong-Kong-ness’, particularly after the Riot in
1967. This leads one to wonder if the growing dominance of of Lui Shou-kwan and Wucius
Wong’s coterie at the Colony’s official art museum may somehow be related to the
Colonial Government’s political goals after the ’67 Riot. The next section explores the
connection between New Ink art’s characteristics and the ‘Hong-Kong-ness’ the Colonial
Government intended to promote.
New Ink Art & ‘Hong-Kong-ness’
Since Wucius Wong served as the Assistant Curator at the City Art Gallery at that
period, his essays and articles on New Ink art would have had an impact on how the
Colonial Government’s understood and perceived New Ink art. As such Wucius Wong’s
writings would be the main source of reference here for the analysis of New Ink art’s
characteristics and investigation of how they could be politically amenable for the
Government to downplay Hong Kong’s connection to China for the purpose of by to
helping to distinguish a ‘Hong Kong artistic identity’.
63
In the catalogue introduction Wucius Wong wrote for the 1972 exhibition
‘Contemporary Hong Kong Art’, Wong remarked how the ‘Hong Kong style [in art]’ has
finally emerged. This ‘style’, according to him, ‘rests on the various points where this East-
West cultural interfusion takes place’ and that this blending of Eastern and Western ideas
contributed to ‘mark the characteristics of our “Hong Kong Style”’.102
It should be noted
this 1972 exhibition which Wong claimed to have displayed ‘Hong Kong Style’, as
analysed previously, presented an impression of being dominated by New Ink artists. Wong
seemed to have a tendency to portray ‘Hong Kong art’ as equivalent to New Ink art and
vice versa.
In his article ‘The Founding of Hong Kong Art’,103
published in the same year, he
lays out some of the, in his view, defining qualities of ‘Hong Kong art’. ‘Hong Kong art’,
he comments, ‘must be rooted in Hong Kong’, ‘not imitating art from elsewhere’, and that
‘Hong Kong artists must never repudiate their associations with Hong Kong, even when we
attempt to seek recognition from a return to traditions’ because ‘Hong Kong’s soil is where
our artistic development is grounded’.104
Wong later claims that ‘adhering to traditions
from the past would mean a betrayal to today’s modernity; whereas adhering to today’s
modernity would mean a betrayal to traditions from the past’.105
He suggests that Hong
Kong artists ought to choose a pathway that blends, or at least acknowledge the influences
of both Chinese traditionalist narrative and Euro-American modernist narrative. Up until
102 Contemporary Hong Kong art 1972 一九七二年當代香港藝術展覽, (Hong Kong: Urban Council, 1972). 103 Zhang, Collection of Essays by Wucius Wong, 165-170. 104 Ibid.,168-169. 105 Ibid.
64
this point Wong has not directly linked Hong Kong art with New Ink art, but in another
article also published in 1972, ‘Hong Kong Modern Ink Painting’,106
Wong mentions there
were different groups practicing different art styles in Hong Kong, meanwhile Wong
asserts continuously in the article that the ‘Modern Ink’ style was the only suitable and
orthodox pathway for Hong Kong artists to pursue and build up an artistic identity for Hong
Kong. Wong explains ‘Hong Kong, due to its peculiar geographical location, made it
susceptible to different influences’.107
He first divides Hong Kong art into two main
categories, first the ‘Western panting’ (Xihua, 西畫 , by which he probably meant art
executed in the Euro-American modern art style) group and then the guohua (traditional
Chinese painting) group. They can be further sub-divided into ‘Traditional western
painting’, ‘New western painting’, ‘Traditional national painting’ and ‘New national
painting’. According to Wong, ‘New national painting is modern ink painting’.108
Wong
later goes on to propose two ‘possible directions’ for modern Hong Kong art: Hong Kong
artists could choose to declare their allegiance to ‘Western art trends and movements’:
though it would require tremendous effort to immersing oneself in Western culture and its
‘soil’; or, Wong presents the better alternative: Hong Kong artists could choose to absorb
influences from both ‘the West’ and ‘the East’, ‘establish its root on the soil we are
standing’ and review the ‘Eastern traditions’ to invent an artistic pathway that is ‘different
from the West’.109
He then announces ‘New National painting, i.e., modern ink painting, is
106 Ibid., 101-103. 107 Ibid., 101. 108 Ibid. 109 Ibid., 102.
65
an artistic pathway that is different from the West’.110
A similar rhetoric is repeated in the
article ‘Hong Kong Art’s Seventies’ in 1974, where Wong proclaims the Seventies as ‘a
decade of re-beginning, a decade of progress’ and that ‘The new traditions in Hong Kong
art in the last twenty years gradually became a unique Hong Kong art’.111
This ‘Hong Kong
art’, he declares, ‘is not a remote regional art form,’ but rather, ‘the result of a mix of
Chinese culture and Western culture that belongs to China and also to the world’.112
This
seems to be a reference to New Ink art and a confirmation of its canonical status as the
standard, orthodox ‘Hong Kong art’, reinforcing the impression that New Ink art dominated
the Hong Kong art scene in the sixties and seventies.
When reviewing how Wong described Hong Kong art, and New Ink art in general,
one would almost be tempted to link those qualities with Hong Kong’s political identity.
Wong also relies heavily on the East-West dichotomy to explain features of Hong Kong art,
this is particularly evident when one examines the 1972 Contemporary Hong Kong Art
exhibition catalogue, ‘Hong Kong’, he says, ‘is the frontier of East-West cultural
interfusion which, although causing harmonies as well as disharmonies, shapes the
environment and gradually becomes the spirit and strength of Hong Kong art as we see it
today’.113
Perhaps it would even be true that Wong took pride in Hong Kong art being, in
his words, ‘neither Chinese nor Western’ and at the same time ‘Chinese and also
110 Ibid. 111 Ibid., 176. 112 Ibid. 113 Contemporary Hong Kong art 1972 一九七二年當代香港藝術展覽, (Hong Kong: Urban Council, 1972),
introduction.
66
Western’.114
As Frank Vigneron has noted, this ‘East meets West’ stereotype is an old
cliché stemmed from the colonial notion of ‘East versus West’ dichotomy, first studied in
detail by the founder of post-colonial studies, Edward Said, in his book Orientalism.115
Turner believes this ‘East meets West’ myth was necessary to Hong Kong, a society that
had little legitimacy and a hybrid culture, to provide proof for its perceived ‘unique-
ness’.116
As Turner remarks, Hong Kong’s cultural identity during the sixties ‘emerged from
a clash of discourses – citizen and compatriot, Chinese and Western, morality and
utilitarianism’.117
Whilst Wong constantly invoked this ‘East-West’ stereotype to present
Hong Kong art in the seventies, he also realised this is one of the problems that Hong Kong
artists were facing at that time. In his writings he often presents New Ink Art as the optimal
style for Hong Kong artists to acknowledge Hong Kong’s ‘hybrid’ condition and create
something anew. At the same time he consciously differentiates New Ink art from the
traditional guohua, a painting style that Lui Shou-kwan and him denounced as a ‘distorted
eight-legged style’ and ‘shadows of the past’.118
Lui’s New Ink experiment aspired to
become a modern continuation of the artistic experiments that sought to integrate Western
painting styles to the national art in Shanghai during the 1920s and 1930s.119
The ‘traditions’
Lui advocated was abstract and based on, Eva Man observes, recognisably Chinese painting
114 The original Chinese phrase, ‘非中非西，亦中亦西’, is the title of an article Wong wrote for an
exhibition of his recent works in 2002. 115 Frank Vigneron, I like Hong Kong: Art and Deterritorialization, (Hong Kong: The Chinese University
Press, 2010), 13. 116 Turner, ‘60s/90s: Dissolving the People’, 88. 117 Turner, ‘60s/90s: Dissolving the People’, 84. 118 Lau, ‘The Study of Hong Kong’s New Ink Movement’, 3. Original quote: ‘呂壽琨和王無邪提出水墨畫
觀念的共同動機都在於，把水墨畫跟「國畫」區別出來，因為後者是「腐化的八股形式」和「代
表了過去傳统的影子」’ 119 David Clarke, Hong Kong Art: Culture and Decolonization, (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press,
2001), 10.
67
tools and materials that ‘carry a particularly strong flavour of tradition’ and thus create ‘a
sense of cultural continuity’.120
In a 2001 essay ‘Crossing the boundaries in Ink’121
, Wong
praises New Ink Art can ‘serve as a linkage to the thousands of Chinese painting traditions’
and at the same time ‘incorporate new vocabularies to display modern spirit’, be a
‘metaphor of Eastern origin’, yet ‘not bounded by painting medium exclusively used by the
East’.122
When viewed from this perspective, New Ink Art is an adaptable art form that can
signify ‘Eastern’ identity without being entirely ‘Eastern’ and thus sacrificing its
‘individuality’ that Hong Kong artists so required. It should be noted by ‘Eastern’ Wong
practically meant ‘traditional Chinese’. It is interesting that New Ink art’s pursuit of
individuality and unique-ness somehow mirrored Hong Kong’s cultural and political
identity in the sense they are neither entirely ‘Eastern’ (Chinese) nor ‘Western’ (British).
Indeed, the rhetoric of ‘East meets West’ was employed by the Colonial Government
as early as 1960: at the foundation ceremony of the City Hall, Sir Robert Black said Hong
Kong was ‘uniquely placed to bring together the cultures of East and West’ and that the
new City Hall was hoped to bring ‘exhibitions of arts connected with literature and painting
both Chinese and Western’.123
This Hong Kong as a ‘meeting point of East and West’
narrative was useful to the Government to avoid triggering identity problem on nationality
whilst at the same time consciously separating Hong Kong from the ‘East’ (China) and the
120 Man, ‘A Museum of Hybridity’, 102. 121 Zhang, Collection of Essays by Wucius Wong, 402-404. 122 Ibid., 402-403. Original quote: ‘水墨畫之涵有東方性暗示，與『國畫』不同，『國畫』是定了型的東
方性繪畫，水墨畫則意味獨創的精神。’ 123 Speech by Sir Robert Black at City Hall Foundation Ceremony, February 1960, from City Hall 1962-82,
1982, as quoted in Turner, ‘60s/90s: Dissolving the People’, 91.
68
‘West’ (Great Britain). Indeed earlier exhibitions around 1967 and 1969 praised the ‘variety’
and ‘diversity’ in art as the ‘vitality of Hong Kong art’, as mentioned in the second chapter.
Also, scholar Philip Robertson has studied the documentary films produced by the
Government Information Services in the sixties from a perspective of film and cultural
studies, and found that the Colonial Government legitimised its governance by claiming to
bring ‘modernity’ to the Colony. Indeed, the Colonial Government adopted the theme of
‘Enjoyment and Enterprise through Harmony’ for the Hong Kong Pavilion in the ‘70 Osaka
Expo. In the pavilion, images for Girl in the Crowd, a fictional story of a young Chinese
woman in the Colony played by Chan Mei-ching, were displayed. 124
It was a story of how
an ex-fisherwoman was transformed by Western training and practice to become an
attractive women working in a factory, in a short, slim dress.125
‘Modernity’ and ‘progress’
were promoted by the Colonial Government as the result of Hong Kong’s interfusion of
‘Eastern’ and ‘Western’ qualities and its ‘hybrid’ condition.
Artist and scholar Lee Chun-yi attempts to provide an alternative understanding of
New Ink art by analysing it from a post-colonial perspective, and argues New Ink art was a
visual representation of Hong Kong’s ‘third space’ identity, as New Ink was deliberately
distinguishing itself from the Chinese traditionalist narratives and the Western modernist
narrative.126
The concept of ‘third space’ is proposed by Homi Bhabha, a prominent figure
124 Turner and Ngan, Hong Kong Sixties: Designing Identity, 44. 125 Ibid. 126 Lee, Chun-yi 李君毅 ed, Xiang gang xian dai shui mo wen xuan香港現代水墨畫文選 (An Anthology of
Hong Kong Modern Ink Painting), (Hong Kong Modern Chinese Ink Painting Association香港現代水墨
畫協會, 2001), 77-85.
69
in post-colonial studies. ‘Third space’ does not denote an actual physical ‘space’ but rather
a conceptual ‘cultural space’ of a colonised group that exists between the traditional culture
it once belonged to and the colonial culture, the culture of the politically dominant group in
the society.127
The culture in the ‘third space’ maintains its individuality by consciously
resisting or absorbing influences from both cultures. Lee believes this notion of ‘in-
between-ness’ is an inherent quality of New Ink art, a characteristic that sets itself apart
from both traditional Chinese culture, the culture of its Chinese population, and Western
culture, the coloniser’s culture. Eva Man holds a similar view in that the localisation policy
and cultural democracy implemented by the Colonial Government after the Leftist Riot in
1967 intended to promote an image of modern Hong Kong as a ‘third space’.128
David
Clarke also argues the City Art Gallery’s ‘institutional privileging’ to New Ink art was
likely due to New Ink art’s apolitical way of combining Chinese and Western styles which
made it ‘amenable to use as civic ideology’.129
This also fits the popular imagination of the
Colony’s cultural identity: a rejection of identification with Mainland China, which Turner
describes as ‘a culture of diaspora, in which multiple norms, values and forms of
behavioural […] could be syncretically overlaid or hybridised’.130
It seems the New Ink
Movement’s radical intention to reinterpret and reinvent ‘traditions’ and combine ‘Western
elements’ to show signs of ‘modernity’ were compatible with the Colonial Government’s
attempt in creating an image of ‘modern Hong Kong’ which was founded on the ‘East-West’
127 Eva Man provides a more comprehensive understanding of the term ‘third space’, in her words: ‘the
colonised group is caught between the traditional culture to which it had once belonged and the colonial culture’. Please see Man. ‘Experimental Painting and Painting Theories in Colonial Hong Kong (1940-1980)’, 114.
128 Man, ‘A Museum of Hybridity’, 102. 129 Clarke, ‘Varieties of Cultural Hybridity’, 414-415. 130 Turner, ‘60s/90s: Dissolving the People’, 85.
70
cliché. It is possible New Ink art was singled out for support by the Colonial Government
as a form of soft propaganda to transmit the vaguely defined, dubious ‘Hong Kong’ identity
that is built on the ‘East-West hybridity’.
Apart from that, as previously mentioned, the youth in the Colony were incited by the
leftist groups in the Colony to become supporting forces of anti-Colonial-Government
political activities in the sixties. A more direct way for the Colonial Government to
undermine the influence of the leftist groups in the Colony would be to avoid supporting
any leftist elements in the Colony altogether and provide support to their opposing side
instead.
In a 1998 article entitled ‘The Maturation and Coming of Age of Hong Kong Art’,
Wong recounts there were ‘leftist artists’ and ‘non-leftist artists’ in Hong Kong since the
fifties. Leftists were pro-Communist supporters whereas its opposite camp, the rightists,
was pro-Nationalist supporters.131
The leftist artists supported and practiced the realist style
promoted by the Communist regime on the mainland. Some of the more famous examples
include Yu Ben [余本] and Wong Po-yeh.132
Non-leftist artists were greater in number and
included key figures of the Lingnan School such as Chao Shao-an and Yang Shan-shen [楊
善深], as well as other prominent artists such as Ding Yan-yong [丁衍庸], Kwong Yeu-
ting and Lui Shou-kwan. Cheung suggests that the Colonial Government chose to promote
131 Zhang, Collection of Essays by Wucius Wong, 234. 132 This is also observed by Cheung Wai-yee, see Cheung, A Study on Art Societies in Hong Kong, 55.
71
artists such as Wucius Wong, Lui Shou-kwan and Cheung Yee because they were
attempting to reinterpret and modernise Chinese art traditions, and could somehow act as a
counterforce to the traditional guohua artists and groups for instance Wong Po-yeh and his
Geng Zi Art Association [庚子畫會], which had close connection with the art scene in
Mainland China and thus a reasonably higher likelihood in becoming a political threat to
the Colonial Government.133
Other than combating pro-left ideology, Cheung proposes the
promotion of ‘modernism’ created also an impression of modernisation and
internationalisation for the Colony,134
which was compatible to the Colonial Government’s
deliberate attempt in establishing a ‘modern Hong Kong’ image. Cheung notes the Hong
Kong art scene in the eighties was characterised by Lingnan School’s return in exhibition at
the Museum of Art, this might be the Colonial Government’s continuous effort to promote
‘non-leftist’ artists in the eighties even after New Ink art went out of favour.135
133 Ibid. 134 Ibid., 51. 135 Ibid., 93.
72
Conclusion
This paper has discussed the emergence of New Ink art, first its process of how it
attained canonical status in the history of Hong Kong art through exhibitions organised
when New Ink artist Wucius Wong was its top authority, the Assistant Curator. After
researching exhibitions as early as 1962 and as late as 1975, it is found that the notion of
‘Hong Kong art’ had gradually changed from being dominated by Western paintings to
Chinese ink paintings, as exemplified by the rise of the ‘Chinese Inks’ section in
exhibitions in the late sixties and in particular New Ink. This research also reveals that
Wucius Wong’s contemporaries, artists trained by Lui Shou-kwan had a higher frequency
of being included in exhibitions throughout the late sixties and early seventies. By the mid-
seventies, with much more exposure in public exhibitions than other artists, artists of the
New Ink Movement were shaped as the mainstream ‘Contemporary Hong Kong art’ and
became the face of ‘Hong Kong’s artistic identity’.
After revealing how the City Art Gallery contributed to the New Ink Movement’s rise
to fame in the late sixties and early seventies, next this paper explores the connection
between the City Art Gallery, the emergence of New Ink art and politics. Some of the
characteristics of New Ink art were examined in an attempt to find out the relation between
New Ink art and the ‘Hong-Kong-ness’ the Colonial Government tried to promote through
multiple cultural events and administrative reforms after a months-long riot incited by the
leftists in the Colony to shaken the rule of the British Colonial Government in 1967. This
73
paper reviewed the socio-political condition of the time, the Colonial Government’s
propaganda programme, and Wucius Wong’s writings on the characteristics of New Ink art
and Hong Kong art in general and argues that New Ink art’s attempt to mix and reinterpret
traditional Chinese art with aesthetic elements from Euro-American modern art movements
made it politically amendable to the Colonial Government’s articulation of a ‘modern Hong
Kong’ image and establishment of community pride based on the ‘East meets West’
stereotype, as well as a means to suppress the influence of leftist groups in the Colony to
prevent citizens from being recruited by to incite more anti-Colonial-Government activities
in the Colony.
This study has demonstrated the emergence of the New Ink movement was not
necessarily solely an ‘accident’ – credit to a few genius artists and their outstanding artistic
achievement as traditional art-historical approaches would suggest – it could have been a
practical decision to undermine the leftist groups’ popularity and operation in the Colony. It
should be noted it is not the intention of this study to depreciate New Ink art’s inherent
artistic values, nor does this paper intend to simply dismiss the emergence of New Ink art
as artificial. This study intends to provide an alternative perspective to understand the
development of New Ink art as well as the political history of Hong Kong, and call
attention to the power of art museums in affecting our perception of history and identity.
The M+ Museum, scheduled to open in 2018, is Hong Kong’s latest and one of the
most ambitious cultural projects in recent years to promote Hong Kong’s visual culture, and
74
New Ink art is no doubt part of the visual culture that M+ intends to showcase. M+ reports
its core aims is to ‘document the past, inform the present and contribute to the future of
visual culture’ and the Museum will take an ‘inter-disciplinary approach’ and creates ‘a
meeting point for a diversity of perspectives, narratives and audiences’136
. This study has
explored the connection between art, art museum and politics – how museum shape our
perception of history and how could politics stir and influence this process. This paper
wishes to end with a sceptical note on the M+ Museum’s noble mission and its power to
shape the history and identity of Hong Kong’s ‘visual culture’ in future.
136 ‘About M+’, West Kowloon Cultural District, Accessed May 13, 2015,
http://www.westkowloon.hk/en/mplus/about-m.
75
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82
Appendix
Appendix A
Complete table of exhibitions organized by the City Art Gallery / Museum of Art from
1962 to 1989
Red ones are related to Contemporary Hong Kong art
Blue ones are related to the Lingnan School
1962
1962 Modern Sculptures of Barbara Hepworth
1962 Paintings from the Government Collection
1962 Hoffnung's Cartoons
1962 Chang Da-chien Exhibition
1962 Looking at Birds by Eric Hosking
1962 Hong Kong Art Today
1962 Round the World in 60 prints
1962 Graphic Illustration
1962 French Black & White Prints of the 20th Century
1962 Travel Sketches by H.G. Hollmann
1962 Japanese Children's Art
1962 The Camera Looks at London
1962 International Artists' Prints
1962 The Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright
1962 An Exhibition of Original Lithographs, Etching, Woodcuts by Leading
Contemporary Artists
1962 Hong Kong Stamp Centenary Exhibition
1962 The Sunday Pictorial Exhibition of Children's Art
1962 Children's Art from Britain
1963
1963 Chinese New Year Wood-block Prints
1963 Otto Eglau's Etchings: Drawings & Watercolours
1963 The Wonderful World of Colour (Photography)
1963 Japanese Woodblock Prints 1740-1840
1963 Modern British Graphic Work
83
1963 Hong Kong 1850-1910
1963 Old Coins Discovered in N.T.
1963 Children's Art from Japan
1963 Paintings by Douglas Bland
1963 Hong Kong Children's Art Exhibition 1963
1963 18th Salon Photographic Exhibition
1964
1964 J.M.W. Turner 1775-1851 Watercolours
1964 German Painting of the 20th Century (in Reproduction)
1964 Kew Botanic Gardens
1964 French & British Posters
1964 Collection of Works by Local Artists
1964 Shakespeare Quarter centenary Exhibition
1964 Paintings from the Permanent Collection
1964 A Century of Hong Kong (1845 - 1945)
1964 Recent British Sculpture
1964 Exhibition of Recent Work by Cheung Yee
1964 Lui Shou-kwan
1964 Children's Art from Hong Kong Schools 1964
1964 Contemporary Indian Paintings
1964 Local Archaeology
1965
1965 United States Print-makers
1965 Su Liu Peng Exhibition
1965 George Chinnery Exhibition
1965 British Watercolours & Drawings of the Twentieth Century
1965 Tung Collection of Paintings
1965 Henry Moore Exhibition of Sculptures, Photographs, Reproductions
1965 Contemporary Art in Asia
1965 Fan Paintings of the Ming Dynasty
1965 American Handicrafts - "Fiber, Clay & Metal"
1965 Ceramic Display
1965 Children's Art Exhibition 1965
1966
1966 Julia Baron Exhibition
1966 Experiment - Photographic Exhibition
1966 English Domestic Silver
84
1966 Michael Griffith - Scuptures, Paintings, Drawings
1966 Oil Paintings and Prints by Kwong Yeu Ting
1966 Homo Legers
1966 Art Gallery Collection of Paintings by Local Artists
1966 Pictures from the Chater Collection
1966 Ceramic Display (new arrangement)
1966 Paintings & Calligraphy by Su Jen-shan
1966 Exhibition of Paintings, Calligraphy and Porcelain of the Ming Period 1368-1644
1966 Ceramic Display (re-open)
1966 Da Vinci to Sputnik: The Qantas Collection of Models of the Great
Breakthroughs in Flight
1966 The City Hall Art Gallery's Collection of Paintings and Sculptures by Local
Artists
1967
1967 Advertising Design: U.S.A.
1967 20th Century Japanese Prints
1967 The Blue Rider
1967 Reproductions of Early Chinese Paintings
1967 Rubbings of Han Period Stone Carvings
1967 Music & Fine Arts in Hong Kong 1967 Fine Arts Exhibition
1967 Ceramic Display (re-open)
1967 Contemporary American Prints
1967 Contemporary Asian Prints
1967 Hong Kong Currency
1967 Hong Kong through the Years: Press Pictures of the Year
1967 Historical Pictures and Prints from the Law & Sayer Collection
1968
1968 Traditional & Modern Maori Art
1968 The Artists' Eye of Hong Kong
1968 Fu Pao-shih
1968 The Artists' Eye of Macao
1968 The Circle Group - Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture
1968 Decorative Posters of Today
1968 The Art of Angkor
1968 Travel Posters of the World
1968 World Exhibition of Photography
85
1969
1969 Models & Sketches for Sculpture
1969 Wong Po Yeh
1969 Prints, Drawings and Ink Paintings by Hong Kong Artists
1969 Things Seen, Things Felt, An American Poster Happening
1969 Children's Art Exhibition 1969
1969 Design: The Beginnings
1969 Fifteen Artists from Berlin
1969 Exhibition of Contemporary Hong Kong Art 1969-70
1970
1970 Henry Moore Exhibition
1970 Recent Prints by British Artists
1970 100 Prints of the "School of Paris"
1970 Exhibition of Paintings of the Ming & Ching Periods
1970 100 Years Ago - A Picture-story of Hong Kong in 1870
1970 A Han Tomb in Lei Cheng Uk
1970 Ho Tung Collection of Oil Paintings &Watercolours
1970 Young Painters of Hong Kong 1970
1970 Four Hong Kong Artists - KWONG Yeu-ting, Douglas Bland, LUI Shou-kwan
and CHEUNG Yee
1971
1971 Madhubani Folk Paintings from India
1971 Contemporary Hong Kong Art 1971
1971 Chinese Antiquities & Temporary Display of Transitional Porcelain
1971 Paintings & Calligraphy Han Inscriptions(Rubbings)
1971 Design 71
1971 Archaeology in Hong Kong
1971 Children's Art Exhibition 1971
1971 Durer and His Times
1971 Kwangtung, Macao and Hong Kong Currency
1972
1972 Contemporary French Prints
1972 Excavation on Lamma Island Site 85
1972 History of Chinese Calligraphy
1972 Contemporary Australian Prints
1972 Exhibition of Paintings, Sculptures and Prints by Members of the ISPAA
86
1972 Art Now Hong Kong
1972 A Decade of Children's Pictures
1972 Contemporary Hong Kong Art 1972
1972 Hong Kong - The Changing Scene (Photographic Exhibition)
1972 Graphics Now! USA
1972 Father Raphael Maglioni's Archaeological Finds in South China
1972 Foundations for Art & Design
1972 Historical Paintings of China, Hong Kong and Macau
1972 The Impressionists
1972 The Post-Impressionists
1973
1973 Chinese Paper-cuttings
1973 Contemporary French Tapestries
1973 Indian Miniatures
1973 Contemporary Prints by Chinese Artists
1973 Graphic Art in Germany Today
1973 Vienna School of Fantastic Realism
1973 Contemporary French Art Photographs
1973 History of Chinese Calligraphy
1973 Seventh Children's Art Exhibition
1973 Ch'i Pai Shih: An Exhibition of His Painting, Calligraphy and Seal-carving
1973 Fabric Vibrations
1973 Old Views of Hong Kong
1973 Kwangtung Painting
1974
1974 "Woman": Second World Exhibition of Photography
1974 A Century of Chinese Painting
1974 Chinese Puppets
1974 Modern Decorative Arts of Japan
1974 Early Man at Work (Part of Museum)
1974 Picasso - Original Prints 1959-1969
1974 Luis Chan - Retrospective Exhibition of Watercolour 1938-1962
1974 Hon Chi Fun - Paintings and Prints 1968-1974
1974 Contemporary Italian Sculpture
1974 The World Through Posters
1974 Surface in Art
87
1974 Collection of Contemporary Art
1974 Selected Finds from the Han Tomb at Lei Cheng Uk
1974 Shelter Sketch Book - Drawings by Henry Moore 1940-1942
1975
1975 Chinese Blue & White Porcelain
1975 Contemporary Hong Kong Art 1975
1975 19th Century Drawings & Watercolours
1975 Calligraphy by So Sai Kit
1975 Foreign Artists in China
1975 Paintings by Chinese Artists
1975 Sung Ceramics
1975 Graphic Art by Eskimos of Canada
1975 Bramante - Architect of the Renaissance
1975 Display of Ch'ing Porcelain
1975 Animals & Birds in Chinese Paintings
1975 Ming Ceramics
1975 Video Art
1975 Creative America: Ceramics Sculpture
1975 Han Pottery
1975 Folk Crafts of the Middle Kingdom
1975 T'ang Pottery
1976
1976 Tingqua - Paintings from His Studio
1976 Thirty-six Views of Mt. Fuji
1976 The World of Douglas Bland
1976 Ling-nam Painting - 17th to mid-20th Century
1976 China Trade Painting
1976 15 Years of Acrylic and Oil Paintings in Hong Kong
1976 Exhibition of Works by Urban Council Art Award Winners 1976
1976 The World of Lui Shou Kwan
1976 Modern Prints by Chinese Artists
1976 International Children's Art
1977
1977 Monochrome Ceramics of Ming and Ching Dynasties
1977 Fan Paintings by Late Ch'ing Shanghai Masters
1977 Austria Presents Hundertwasser to the Continents
1977 Contemporary German Art: Woodcuts, Etchings and Lithographs
88
1977 Blue & White Porcelain of Ming & Ch'ing Dynasties
1977 South East Asian Wares
1977 22 Kwangtung Paintings
1977 Historical Paintings - Hong Kong, Macau & Canton
1977 Contemporary Hong Kong Art 1977
1977 Ukiyo-e Woodblock Prints
1977 Shek-wan Pottery
1977 Chinese Snuff Bottles
1977 Recent Acquisition
1978
1978 Ming & Ch'ing Porcelain from the Collection of the TY Chao Family Foundation
1978 Kwangtung Calligraphy
1978 Cheung Yee Sculptures, Prints, Drawings
1978 Chinese Ceramic Art from Han to Ch'ing Dynasties
1978 Leung Kui Ting: Paintings, Drawings, Prints
1978 Hong Kong Artists: The Early Generation
1978 The Art of Kao Chien-fu
1978 Kwong Yeu Ting: Paintings, Prints, Drawings
1978 Pictures of the Floating World: Prints by Leading Masters
1978 Chinese Bamboo Carving
1978 Snuff Bottles of the Ch'ing Dynasty
1978 Japanese Calligraphy & Ikebana
1978 Exhibition of Works by Urban Council Art Award Winners 1978
1979
1979 South-east Asian & Chinese Trade Pottery
1979 The Art of Chao Shao-an
1979 Chinese Bronzes and Enamelled Wares
1979 Contemporary French Lithographs
1979 Chinese Lacquer
1979 Koo Tsin-yaw: Painting, Calligraphy, Seal Carving
1979 Selected Shek-wan Pottery
1979 Exhibition of Paintings, Drawings and Prints by Wucius Wong
1979 Contemporary Hong Kong Art Biennial Exhibition 1979
1979 Contemporary Japanese Painting
1979 Cybernetic Art of TSAI Wen Ying
89
1979 Their Joyful Moments: Hong Kong Children's Art Exhibition for the International
Year of the Child
1980
1980 Chinese Antiquities: 2000 Years of Chinese Ceramics from Han to Ching
Dynasty
1980 Hong Kong the Changing Scene : A Record in Art
1980 Daily Life in France 1840-1870: Original Press Lithographs by Honore Daumier
1980 Fung Hong-hou: Calligraphy, Painting, Seal Carving
1980 Colour in British Painting
1980 Chinese Metal Craft
1980 Ming & Qing Porcelain
1980 A Selection of Museum Acqusitions
1980 Six Masters of Early Qing and their Followers
1980 Contemporary Philippine Art
1980 An Anthology of Chinese Ceramics
1980 Contemporary Singapore Painting
1980 The Art of Chen Shuren
1980 Urban Council Fine Art Award Winners 1980
1981
1981 Transitional Wares and Their Forerunners
1981 Pearl River in the Nineteenth Century
1981 Chinese Antiquities
1981 Eduardo Paolozzi: Sculptures, Drawings, Prints
1981 The Art of Yang Shen-sum
1981 Hong Kong Art 1970-80
1981 Contemporary Hong Kong Art Biennial Exhibition 1981
1981 Yixing Pottery
1981 Contemporary Bangladesh Art
1981 The Art of Gao Qifeng
1981 Early Chinese Ceramics
1982
1982 Guangdong Calligraphy
1982 Walter Gropius: Buildings, Plans, Projects (1906-1969)
1982 The Chinese Response - Paintings by Leading Overseas Artists
1982 Chinese Bamboo Carving
1982 British Drawings & Watercolours
90
1982 Late Qing China Trade Paintings
1982 S. E. Asian Wares
1982 Contemporary Vision of Landscape
1982 Sculptures from Thailand
1982 Japanese Contemporary Pottery
1982 Danish Posters
1982 Portuguese Woodcarvings
1982 Picasso - In time
1983
1983 S. E. Asian Wares
1983 Urban Council Fine Arts Award Winners 1983
1983 Ancient Chinese Bronzes in the Collection of the Shanghai Museum
1983 In the Footsteps of Buddha
1983 Third Commonwealth Photography Exhibition
1983 Early Masters of the Lingnan School
1983 Gems of Chinese Art from the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, The Avery
Brundage Collection
1983 Ming & Qing Ceramics
1983 New American Paperworks
1983 Scenes of Two Cities : Hong Kong & Macau
1983 Chinese Jade Carving
1983 Contemporary Hong Kong Art Biennial Exhibition 1983
1983 Contemporary Hong Kong Prints
1984
1984 Interaction in Ceramics: Oriental Porcelain & Delftware
1984 Chinese Teaware
1984 Twenthieth Century Chinese Paintings
1984 Contemporary Open Air Sculpture Exhibition(Piazza of the HK Coliseum)
1984 Bird & Flower in Chinese Antiquities
1984 Hong Kong Pottery Today
1984 Guangdong Paintings - Museum New Collection
1984 Hong Kong Children's Art Exhibition
1984 New American Porcelain
1984 Fabric and Form - New Textile Art from Britain
1984 The Art of Chinese Bamboo Carvings
1984 Purple Clay Wares of Yixing
91
1984 Luis Chan - Fifty Years of Artistic Career
1984 Pre-Raphaelite Art from the Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery
1984 Hong Kong Design Exhibition 1984
1984 The Wonders of the Potter's Palette: Qing Ceramics from the Collection of the
Hong Kong Museum of Art
1984 Urban Council Fine Art Award Winners
1985
1985 Landscape in Chinese Antiquities from the Collection of the Hong Kong Museum
of Art
1985 Portuguese Tiles: 15th-20th Century
1985 George Chinnery - His Pupils & Influence
1985 Chinese Tea Drinking
1985 Decorative Motifs in Chinese Art
1985 Contemporary Australian Ceramics
1985 Hong Kong 1985 International Youth Year Poster Design Exhibition
1985 Kagoshima Children's Art Exhibition
1985 City Hall in My Eyes: A Drawing/Painting Competition for Children
1985 Contemporary Hong Kong Art Biennial Exhibition 1985
1985 Anthology of Chinese Art: Min Chiu Society Silver Jubilee Exhibition
1985 Contemporary Japanese Crafts
1986
1986 Purple Clay Wares of Yixing
1986 The Art of Henry Moore
1986 A Gentleman's Companion
1986 From the Realm of the Luminous: Art Relics of the Ming Dynasty
1986 My Impression: The Art of Henry Moore in Hong Kong - An Exhibition of
Pupils' Pictures
1986 Chinese Export Watercolours
1986 The Grandeur of the Chinese Empire Art of the Han & Tang Dynasties
1986 Purple Clay Wares of Yixing
1986 Urban Council Fine Arts Award Winners 1986
1986 Poetry through Material, Light and Movement
1986 History Lore and Legend - Shiwan Pottery Figures Donated by Mr. Woo Kam-
Chiu
1986 The Elegant Brush - Chinese Paintings under the Qianlong Emperor 1735-1795
92
1986 Tea Wares by Hong Kong Potters 1986
1986 Contemporary Art from the Frederick R. Weisman Collection
1987
1987 Chinese Antiquities from the Brian S. McElney Collection
1987 The Art of Van Lau
1987 Water-pot, Wine-pot and Teapot
1987 Modern Art from the Collection of Mary & George Bloch
1987 Gateways to China: Trading Ports of the 18th &19th Centuries
1987 Chinese Antiques - Collection from the Hong Kong Museum of Art
1987 The Transforming Age - 20th Century Chinese Painting from the Collection of
the Museum of Art
1987 Yixing Tea Ware of the Qing Period
1987 Ink Painting of Hong Kong Artists
1987 Contemporary Hong Kong Art Biennial Exhibition 1987
1987 Chinese Porcelain: The S.C. Ko Tianminlou Collection
1987 Then and Now: American Portraits of the Past Century from the National Portrait
Gallery, Washington, D.C.
1988
1988 Glaze Colours
1988 Summer in Hong Kong: An Exhibition of Pupils' Paintings
1988 Ink Paintings by Hong Kong Artists (UK)
1988 The Art of Xu Beihong
1988 Chinese Cloisonne: The Clague Collection
1988 Innovations in Contemporary Yixing Pottery
1988 Spaces and Places - Eight Decades of Landscape Painting in Alberta
1988 Contemporary Hong Kong Pottery - from the Collection of the Museum of Art
1988 Urban Council Fine Arts Award Winners 1988
1988 Shiwan Pottery - Donation from Mrs. Kwok On
1988 Japanese Quest for a New Vision: The Impact of Visiting Chinese Painters 1600-
1900
1988 Ink Paintings by Hong Kong Artists (Sheung Wan Civic Centre)
1989
1989 Power & Gold - Jewellery from Indonesia, Malaysia& the Philippines
1989 The Sculpture Walk, Kowloon Park
1989 Floral Deities
93
1989 Calligraphy & Seal-carving of Jianqinzhai -Donation from Mr. Wong Hon Kiu
1989 Imperial Porcelain of the Yongle and Xuande Periods Excavated from the Site of
Ming Imperial Factory at Jingdezhen
1989 The Reader's Digest: Collection of Modern Masters
1989 Views from Jade Terrace : Chinese Women Artists (1300-1912)
1989 Tea Wares by Hong Kong Potters 1989
1989 Contemporary Open-air Sculptures of Hong Kong
1989 Vision of Cathay : Pictures of China by Western & Chinese Artists in the 18th &
19th Centuries
1989 Chinese Glass of the Qing Dynasty
1989 Contemporary Hong Kong Art Biennial Exhibition 1989
1989 Chinese Traditional Performances
1989 Artists & Art - Contemporary Chinese Paintings
1989 Chinese Export Porcelain: Chine de Commande from the Royal Museums of Art
and History in Brussels
94
Appendix B
Exhibition data compiled for exhibitions from 1967 – 1974
Year Chinese Title English Title Curator/s Involved
Panel of Judges
1967 July 7.14-8.13
一九六七年香港
音樂美術節 Music & Fine Arts in Hong Kong 1967 Fine Arts Exhibition
Organiser/s: City Hall
Artists Participated in Chinese Inks Section 新水墨畫會未成
立
Total Number of Works: 148 Artists: 106 Paintings (Oil, Acrylic, etc.) 33 Artists 48 Entries Paintings (Chinese Inks) 26 Artists 31 Entries Sculptures & Ceramics 12 Artists 17 Entries Prints & Monotypes 14 Artists 24 Entries Drawings & Watercolors 9 Artists 16 Entries Chinese Calligraphy 12 Artists 12 Entries
English name Butt, Evelyn Chan Chiu-yin Chang, Constance Cheng Din-ming Cheung Shu-sun Chow, Johnson Ho Tao Kan Kit-keung Lam Kei-hoi Lam Jik-jun Lam Tak-ming Lau, Alexander Lee, Jerry Lee Yun-woon Leung Pak-yu Leung Yip-kwun Lin Jen-tung Lui Shou-kwan Ng Ku-hung Ng Yop-ching Tong King-pun, Jim Wai Fai-sing Wu Yue-kee Wong Pang-yok Wong Sik-yee Wong, Wucius
Chinese name 崔鎰 陳秋言 章尚璞 鄭電明 張樹新 周士心 何弢 (建築師) 靳杰強(存疑) 林紀凱 林質錚 林德銘 劉秋父 李中展 李潤桓 粱伯譽 粱業坤 (今畫會) 林建同 呂壽琨 吳孤鴻(存疑) 伍揖青 唐景彬 (建築師) 韋輝成 胡宇基 (今畫會) 黃般若 黃碩瑜（錫儒）
傳統水墨／其他 14/26 陳秋言 章尚璞 周士心 林紀凱 林質錚 林德銘 李潤桓 粱業坤 (今畫會) 林建同 伍揖青 胡宇基 (今畫會) 黃般若 粱伯譽 黃碩瑜（錫儒） 新/現代水墨 6/26 張樹新 靳杰強(存疑) 吳孤鴻(存疑) 王無邪 崔鎰 呂壽琨 暫無資料 4/26
95
王無邪 鄭電明 劉秋父 李中展 韋輝成 其他 2/26 何弢 (建築師) 唐景彬 (建築師)
96
Year Chinese Title English Title Curator/s Involved Panel of Judges
1969 當代香港藝術
1969-70 Contemporary Hong Kong Art 1969-70
J. C. Y. Watt (屈志仁) Assistant Curator
Cheung Yee 張義 Ho Tao 何弢 Pierre Ryckmans 李克曼 J. C. Y. Watt 屈志仁
(in attandance) W. C. K. Wong 王無邪
(in attandance)
Artists Participated in Chinese Inks Section 靳杰強呂壽琨王德蓉
汪弘輝 4 人各展出２
幅作品，其餘皆為一
幅。
Total: 129 Paintings (Oil, Acrylic, etc.) 35 Artists 39 Entries Chinese Inks 36 Artists 40 Entries Sculptures 13 Artists 20 Entries Prints 19 Artists 25 Entries Drawings, Watercolors, Collages 15 Artists 19 Entries Chinese Calligraphy 11 Artists 11 Entries
English name Butt, Evelyn Chan Ping-kwong Chan Ping-yuon Chan Seung-ling Chan Yim-man Chan Tak Chang, Constance Chang Kar-wei Chow, Johnson Chow Lu-yun Chui Tze-hung Chui Tzu-ching Ho, Philip Pak-lee Hong, James Kan Kit-keung Lee Chee-cheung Leung But-yin Leung Pak-yu Leung So-ying Lee Kowk-fai Leong Chong-hin Leung Yip-kwan Lin Jen-tung Loo, D.T. (Mrs.) Lui Shou-kwan Ng Ku-hung Ng Lo-chuen Ng Yiu-chung Poon Wai-kong Shen Hsueh-man Tam, Lawrence C.S. Wong, Micy Wong, Viviane
Chinese name 崔鎰 陳丙光 陳炳元 (中元畫會) 陳相玲 陳棪文 陳德 (可能是陳勉良) 章尚璞 章家慧 周士心 周綠雲 徐子雄 崔自清 何百里 (今畫會) 項永昌(存疑) 靳杰強(存疑) 李志章(入會時間存疑) 粱不言 粱伯譽 粱素瀅 李國輝 粱仲憲 粱業坤 (今畫會) 林建同 譚曼于 呂壽琨 吳孤鴻(存疑) 吳老泉 吳耀忠 潘偉光
97
Wong Wang-fai Wong Yuen-sum Yu Sai-kin
佘雪曼 譚志成 黃美斯 王德蓉 汪弘輝 黃潤森 余世堅
Excerpts from catalogue
1. For the first time in this series of exhibitions, the number of paintings in this category, which we group under the heading “Chinese ink”, is greater than that of oil paintings, even if the difference is only one. (Introduction)
分類 - 畫會
暫無資料 9/36
傳統水墨／水墨 11/36
元道畫會 7/36
一畫會(未成立) 6/36
新/現代水墨,無畫會 9/36
陳炳元 (中元畫會) 陳相玲 崔自清 粱仲憲 吳老泉 黃潤森 潘偉光 黃美斯 王德蓉
陳丙光 章尚璞 周士心 項永昌(存疑) 李國輝 林建同 佘雪曼 何百里 (今畫會) 粱業坤 (今畫會) 陳德 (可能是陳勉良) 粱伯譽
章家慧 周綠雲 吳耀忠 譚志成 汪弘輝 譚曼于 徐子雄
陳棪文 周綠雲 徐子雄 李志章(入會時間存疑) 粱不言 粱素瀅
靳杰強(存疑) 吳孤鴻(存疑) 余世堅 崔鎰 呂壽琨(七人畫會) 陳棪文 李志章(入會時間存疑) 粱不言 粱素瀅
98
Year Chinese Title English Title Curator/s Involved
Panel of Judges
1970 七零年代香港青
年藝術家展 Young Painters of Hong Kong 1970
Artists
張樹新 靳埭強 梁巨廷 周綠雲 譚志成 吳耀忠 汪弘輝 徐子雄
元道畫會 周綠雲 徐子雄 吳耀忠 譚志成 汪弘輝 一畫會(70 年 10 月成立) 周綠雲 徐子雄 靳埭強(第 6 屆會長) 新.現代水墨/ 無畫會 梁巨廷 張樹新 張樹生 靳埭強 (以上四人為中大校外設計班導師)
99
Year Chinese Title English Title Curator/s Involved
Panel of Judges
1972 今日香港藝術 Art Now Hong Kong
Organiser/s: City Museum and Art Gallery Hong Kong
The exhibition was divided into three sections:
1) Ink Painting 6 Artists
2) Painting
5 Artists
3) Prints & Sculpture 6 Artists
Artists: English name 1) Ink Paintings Leung Kui Ting Lu Shou-kwan Ng Yiu-chung Tam Chi-shing Laurence Wong Wang-fai Wong Po-yeh 2) Paintings Douglas Blend Kan Tai-keung Kwong Yeu-ting Gilbert Pan Wucius Wong 3) Prints & Sculpture Cheung Yee Ha Bik-chuen John Hadfield Hon Chi-fun Kwong Yeu-ting Van Lau
Chinese name 粱巨廷 呂壽琨(顧問) 吳耀忠 譚志成 汪弘煇 黃般若 白連 靳埭強 鄺耀鼎 潘士超 王無邪(顧問) 張義 夏碧泉 夏德飛 韓志勳 鄺耀鼎 文樓
中元畫會
傳統水墨／水墨
元道畫會
一畫會
無畫會
張義 文樓 韓志勳 王無邪 潘士超
黃般若 吳耀忠 譚志成 汪弘輝
呂壽琨(顧問) 王無邪(顧問)
粱巨廷
100
Year Chinese Title
English Title Curator/s Involved Panel of Judges
1972 一九七二年
當代香港藝
術
Contemporary Hong Kong Art 1972
Wong, Wucius (王無邪) Assistant Curator
Mr Hon Chi-fun (韓志勳) Mr Nigel Cameron (金馬倫) Mr Gunther Hollmann (荷爾曼)
Artists Participated in “Chinese Inks” Section
Paintings (Oil, Acrylic, etc.) 24 Artists 36 Entries Chinese Inks 18 Artists 19 Entries Sculptures 9 Artists 17 Entries Prints 17 Artists 23 Entries Drawings, Watercolors, Collages 17 Artists 31 Entries Chinese Calligraphy 10 Artists 14 Entries
English name Butt, Evelyn Cheng Wei-kwok how Lu-yun Jat See-yeu Kan Kit-keung Lau Kam-yin Lee, Victor Lee Wai-on Leung So-ying Lui Sze-ki Lui Shou-kwan Mok Tat-wah Ng Yiu-chung Poon Chun-wah Tam, Lawrence C.S. Tse Cheong-wing Wong Man-lung Yu Tung-ching
Chinese name 崔鎰 鄭維國 周綠雲 翟仕堯 靳杰強 劉錦賢 李其國 李維安 粱素瀅 廖仕基 呂壽琨 莫達華 吳耀忠 潘振華 譚志成 謝昌榮 黃文龍 余冬青
元道畫會 3/18 李維安 吳耀忠 譚志成 一畫會 6/18 鄭維國 周綠雲 翟仕堯 粱素瀅 潘振華 黃文龍 新.現代水墨/ 無畫會 5/18 靳杰強 劉錦賢 李其國 崔鎰 呂壽琨 暫無資料 4/18 廖仕基 莫達華 謝昌榮 余冬青
101
Appendix C
Government documents referred to in the paper
Committee Paper 17/4/62
102
Committee Paper 17/17/62
103
Committee paper MAG/5/65
104
Committee Paper 17/36/62
105
Committee paper 17/11/62
106
Committee paper MAG/24/67
107
‘Appendix B’ from a 1965 document
108
‘Appendix C’ from the 1965 document
109
Appendix F to a 1967 document
110
Committee paper MAG/20/67
111
Committee paper MAG/24/67
