Wu Guanzhong: Better in Black and White

The promise of Chinese ink paintings inflected with a contemporary sensibility had me running to the current exhibition at the Asia Society: "Revolution in Ink: The Paintings of Wu Guanzhong" (on view through August 5).

Wu (1919-2010) taught at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, meaning his work was largely in offical favor, though he did encounter harsh criticism during the Cultural Revolution for looking back to China's past for inspiration and eschewing Social Realism.

The works in this show (mostly from the mid-1970s-2004) demonstrate a clear effort by Wu to bring together classical Chinese landscape motifs with modes of Post-War Western art, specifically Abstract Expressionism.

For the most part, these efforts are (an often cringe-inducing) failure.

Wu Guanzhong "Pines" (

In works like "Pines," Wu ruins his otherwise evocative naturalism--the various gray/black shades of the tree branches, touched with daubs of green needles are lovely--with jarring Pollockian splotches and skeins of florescent pinks and yellows.

Wu Guanzhong "Lion Woods" (1982)

He makes the same move time and again (see "Lion Woods" (1982) at right), marring what would be laudable achievements of form and subtle tonality with completely unnecessary toadying to contemporary tropes. It's an embarrassing insecurity--that his work needs a Western veneer to have value. It's like a Soviet Bloc dissident of the early '80s feeling he needs to sport a mullet to be cool.

Wu Guanzhong "A Big Manor" (2001)

When Wu is able to restrain his palette--resist the urge for an ungainly culture clash--the work in black-and-white only is wonderful, as in "A Big Manor" from 2001--clearly contemporary, but clean--untainted with chromatic distractions.

Wu Guanzhong "The Grand Canyon in America" (1990)

And when he works in earthen tones--there are, alas, just two such examples in the show--the results are stunning. "Grand Canyon," from a trip Wu took to the United States in the late 1980s, (almost) makes up for his mistakes.