The series of sculptures which Ju Ming based on the theme of 'returning to the living world' is forming a landscape of 'Living Aesthetics' embedded with unique quality of the East. Focusing on his life as an artist, with the root in the local complex as the starting point, the Taichi Series and the Living World Series are in fact connected with each other in nature: the Living World Series is the return of the Taichi Series, while the Taichi Series is the basis of the Living World Series. The Taichi Series is seemingly singular in nature but in fact is being represented in the form of 'plural number'; the Living World Series looks as if in a plural form yet it exists as a singularity. Consider the aspects of 'shape' and 'surface' in sculpture, though Ju Ming's sculptures have absorbed influences from modern sculpture of the West and made important exploration, the bigger achievement comes at Ju's unique 'art of playing with lines' in sculptures of various media. This is exactly what is 'most representative of the east' and distinguish his art from western sculptors.
Keywords
Living World Series, living world-ness, singularity and plurality, the art of using lines
Taoism puts great emphasis on leading a simple life as well as mediating to reach emptiness, tranquility and sitting in oblivion that are critical for understanding and experiencing the greatest state in the human lifetime in Taoism— forgetting about the self and the external world and becoming united with the heaven. This philosophy is somehow similar to what metal sculptors are pursuing, mainly refining the artistic conception during the design stage, dialectically and repeatedly chasing after purity both in forms and quality, and finally, creating an perfect artwork of self realization.
Taoism often views all changes in the world as constant inconstancy that flows perpetually. It is like seeing everything in front of us as a gigantic organic life community that is though complicated and in chaos but orderly, forming a distinct and natural principle of the cycle of life. If we draw a parallel between "tao", meaning the rule in Chinese, of harmonious coexisting of all creatures and the aesthetic value pursued by metal sculptors, then the practice of thinking calmly in Taoism is very similar to the artists' attempts of keeping a distance from the metal materials during the contemplation stage in order to attain a perfect and well-balanced result via exercising pure aesthetics and mature skills naturally. Lao-Chuang's aesthetic emphasis coincides perfectly well with the abstract form of contemporary metal sculpture, whereas the creative method of improvisational and directly welded sculpture work of contemporary metal sculpture also straightforwardly echoes the notions of flow and spontaneity of Taoism's cosmic life. That is why the artwork could be so rich and full of oriental humanistic ideas. In this paper, the authors listed the artists and their metal sculpture works that have been directly or indirectly influenced by Cubism, Constructivism and Futurism in the 20th century art movements. The author also discussed the aesthetic perspectives of these works echoing the philosophical ideas of Taoism.
Keywords
Lao-Chuang aesthetics, Metal sculpture, Contemporary sculpture, Abstract art, Improvisation
Despite his humble origins, Ju Ming’s ceaseless effort has earned him worldly fame and opportunities throughout the globe over the past half century. During this time, high modern, late modern, postmodern, post colonial and globalization phases have come and gone, and Taiwanese society has responded to these changes accordingly. Ju Ming's traversal between the local and global environments has doubtless enriched his perspective and artistic oeuvre, which has in turn challenged scholars to generate various ways to frame Ju Ming's sculptural art.
"Nativism? Modernism? Postmodernism?" adopts these periodizations to examine the impact of Nativism and Modernism on Ju Ming and how the artist established his own artistic identity, and examines how Ju Ming’s venturing into the Western world coincided with the rise of Postmodernism, followed by Postcolonial discourse. This paper will additionally focus on how Ju Ming's Living World Series corresponded to this global trend.
Finally, this paper proposes to discard the periodization of Nativism, Modernism and Postmodernism to allow a new perspective on how Ju Ming's personal choices coincided with these global shifts with increasing spontaneity. Through this examination, we may better understand the artist's autonomy, spontaneity and humanity as a means of recognizing his consistent philosophical perspective on art creation.
從立柱來看廟宇藝術——以艋舺龍山寺和大龍峒保安宮的三川殿立柱為例The Pillars of Temples'Art: Based on the Pillars of the San-Chuan-Dian of Manka Lungshan Temple and Dalongdong Baoan Temple
Hundreds of temples are hidden in the alleys and streets in Taiwan, which become centers of folk tradition’s culture beliefs. In addition to the historical and cultural significance, each detailed constructing structures of temples' art have their own model. With the atmosphere of the changing times, temples' structures constantly replace and update. After these new elements of the fusion of traditions, it evolved a complicated but interesting phenomenon.
When it comes to Temples' art, subjects are mainly focus on wood carving, stone carving and painting. In addition to decorating effects, architectural forms and decorative patterns have been the key issues of Masters of Carpenters' performance skills. The pillars of Temples, in addition to the indispensable component, but also a creating material for Masters of Carpenters to use in the building space of Temples' architectures. For example, the distance between pillars and pillars of permutations and combinations, would form a far-reaching extension of the visual difference of the building, not to mention the pillars of styles and their sizes and so on. This article is to explore Temples' space of the San-Chuan-Dian, also a case study of two Temples, Manka Lungshan Temple and Dalongdong Baoan Temple. This disquisition is to clarify the pillars of the San-Chuan-Dian and attempting to resolve the diverse faces of Temples' art.
楊英風的「生態美學」與臺灣當代藝術中的「社會介入」：關於「社會造型」的一些想法Yuyu Yang's "Ecological Aesthetics" and the "Social Intervention" in the Taiwanese Contemporary Art: Some Thoughts on the "Social Modeling"
In the Taiwanese art history and the artist communities, no artists like Yuyu Yang with a stark and manifest social responsibility, the construction of aesthetic conception and the perseverance of implementation. It can be said that the manifesto of "ecology aesthetics" concludes his claim, also achieves his work's orientation and style. Compared with this, the social intervention of Taiwanese contemporary art under the current of globalization is another cultural production of time atmosphere. If we take Taiwanese art history as a mutable axis of continuing evolution, growth and metamorphosis,Yuyu Yang is a representative of the 1970s and the 1980s. It can be an interesting and meaningful connection and dialogue compared with the 1990s' Taiwanese artists' creation on social issues. Yang's conception of modeling contains a strong social consciousness and the mission of the public aesthetic mission. He purported that we should extract the traditional Chinese culture and then transform it into plastic elements. This traditional and modern modeling is a catalyst of influencing cultural environment, reaching the goal of art education. When a plastic modeling is put into the society, it will be like language or sings, functioning the aesthetic judgement, dialogue and connection... and finally forms the social modeling. Seeing and thinking are two sides of a coin, so the meaning of modeling is beyond its boundary. There are many functions of an artist's plastic creation; it even obtains a collective social connotation. Artists' professional contribution to the society is actually the social modeling. If we deem the complicated social modeling as a broad sense modeling or maximized modeling, which models the society. In this case, it is not so far between the two sides.
Keywords
Taiwanese art, Yuyu Yang, ecological aesthetics, social intervention, social modeling
Many reasons will cause degradations of wooden artifacts. For example, wood-decay fungi are parts of living cycle of nature world, but when they grow on artifacts, they become the bad things that conservators have to stop. Wood-decay fungi will not only affect wooden structure but also cause discoloration. When accompany with insect infestation, it will certainly accelerate degradation. The best way to prevent wood-decay fungi from growing is to control the temperature and relative humidity in the environment, which may be achievable in well-funded museum. However, many private museum and historical sites, which might be facing financial or environmental limits, found the environment hard to maintain. Therefore degradation caused by wood-decay fungi still exists and needs to be treated.
After conservations, including surface cleaning, consolidation, filling, retouching etc., wood structure will be stable again, and the broken area will be difficult to be distinguished with bare eye. And the artifact can keep carrying the responsibility of education, exhibition, collection and research.
The conceptual and technical development of photography in modern Taiwanese history can be traced back to the colonial rule of western powers and Japan and has been an integral part of modern art history and visual culture for more than a century. In those 100 years, whether anthropological photography, realistic photography, photoreportage, commercial photography, salon photography, pictorialism, rural photography, eco photography and even the popular digital photography of today, the visual history created by Taiwanese photography reflects the process of visual reconstruction based on the change from the colonial to post colonial era. Photography that should reflect the historical materialism of Taiwan, especially in the post war period and the beginning of the totalitarian rule of the KMT, came under the absolute control of unprecedented political forces and was therefore reduced to the role of“ other” having lost the power to observe, criticize, interpret and create thought provoking images and stripped of its visual identity.
Beginning in the 1980s realistic photography began to ask "What is Taiwan?" and engaged in a visual exploration that was long-term, involved multiple points of view and akin to field research in nature. On the one hand this involved recording the omnipresent otherness of "colonial ruins," on the other it used the visual process of rural and local people to reconstruct images and historical memory based on the elimination of otherness. This became the earliest experience in the search for a Taiwanese identity in the post war period. After the end of Martial Law and especially since the beginning the New Millennium rapid democratization, the removal of totalitarian control of society and changes in the way people reflected on Taiwanese values had a huge impact on Taiwanese photography. As a result Taiwanese photography entered an era in which it became far more critical on political, societal, communal, cultural and gender issues. At this point, photography became much more than a tool of consumption and was transformed into a vehicle for the showcasing of new ideas on the reformulation of history, opposition to otherness and the establishment of cultural subjectivity and identity in the post war period.
Keywords
Taiwanese modern photography, memory, de-othering, subjectivity, historical discourse power
As one of the members of the "Ton-Fan Group" (literally, the Orient Painting Society), Taiwanese veteran artist Chu Wei-Bor (1929- ) viewed the "Oriental Spirit" as the most important inspiration for his creation. Throughout Chu Wei-Bor's artwork over a period of six decades, it is apparent that the impact of facing Western art triggered his self-consciousness, which led him to turn to an Oriental philosophy which is the only way to shape his artistic thinking. The employment of the appropriation and transformation of symbols and imagery serve as a mean to convey his Oriental philosophy as a spiritual process. This paper is intended to explore the potential of Chu Wei-Bor's works on "Imagery Thinking" with other similar aesthetic concepts and clarify his focus on the subject works in terms of spirit awareness. The concept of "Realm Patterns" is proposed for interpreting the artistic performance of "Oriental Spirit" in Chu Wei-Bor's complex art work namely, "A square has no corners" in Tao and "Sunyata" in Zen. The language of his artwork can be considered as his respond and demonstration regarding the synthesis of the Traditional Orient and the Modern Occident. This is also a phasic conclusion of the six decades in the artist's career.
Keywords
Chu Wei-Bor, Realm Patterns, Space Aesthetics, Cultural Imagery, Complex Art
It could be found that Hakkanese architecture in Taiwan preserved many features of Hakka identity. Twin ridge beams is one of those features, which had been discussed in many treatises. By comparing the twin ridge beam structures in Taiwan and mainland China, and by investigating the architecture of Hakkanese, focus on its modernization. We realized the practice of twin ridge beams must relate to the folk custom of Hakka people. Moreover, double roofs and related wooden structures of ancient Chinese architectures are a kind of interior spatial forms, which shown how traditional Chinese insisted on the principle of harmony and symmetry in indoor space. It became a method of interior design and could be found all over south China. The question of structural degradation between double roofs and twin ridge beams may be made an intensive study in such context.
