Lou Zhenggang - Art

Art

Because Ms. Lou was extensively trained in classical Chinese calligraphy, expressions of that tradition formed the initial basis of her art. Even at this time, here style was distinctive: "Lou Zhenggang's earliest works earned praise from senior critics especially for their masculinity and grandeur, qualities seldom found in a female artist." As she entered her twenties, she began to develop a more personal style. Indeed, observers who cannot read Chinese can see in these early works a progression from a strong, formal, masculine style to a more fluid and relaxed approach. As she continued to develop confidence and to experiment with different techniques, her style grew even bolder and less traditional. In Japan, she studied painting with noted nihonga artist Matazo Kayama (加山又造 1927-2004), which led to a flourishing of colorful styles and abstract themes — something she could not have produced if she remained within the pure calligraphic traditions of her youth. She continued to expand her range, developing even more abstract works, including color paintings, silk screens, and classic black ink (sumi) artwork. By the age of 40, she had developed an entirely new painting style, one based upon but transcending calligraphic art, which won her considerable acclaim.

Read more about this topic:  Lou Zhenggang

Famous quotes containing the word art:

    I can’t tell you what art does and how it does it, but I know that often art has judged the judges, pleaded revenge to the innocent and shown to the future what the past suffered, so that it has never been forgotten.... Art, when it functions like this, becomes a meeting-place of the invisible, the irreducible, the enduring, guts, and honour.
    John Berger (b. 1926)

    Among the laws controlling human societies there is one more precise and clearer, it seems to me, than all the others. If men are to remain civilized or to become civilized, the art of association must develop and improve among them at the same speed as equality of conditions spreads.
    Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)

    The aim of all commentary on art now should be to make works of art—and, by analogy, our own experience—more, rather than less, real to us. The function of criticism should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means.
    Susan Sontag (b. 1933)