Preface
‘By “modernity” I mean the ephemeral, the fugitive, the contingent, the half of art whose other half is the eternal and the immutable.’ It is a quote about the aesthetics of modernity by French writer Charles Baudelaire in his essay The Painter of Modern Life. He regards Modernity as sensing time in the ‘present’ – opposed to the pursuit of eternity typical of Renaissance paintings.
Since the mid-19th century, with the rapid development of industrialisation and urbanisation, ‘what is modern’ has been a core discussion topic across various literary and artistic fields. Retrospection of visual modernity in East Asia has become a prominent topic in cultural studies in recent years and also a common motivation for curating exhibitions. Only by adding the lost jigsaw of art in the process of modernisation can we have a precise understanding of the panorama of contemporary culture. Only by understanding the process of refining, transforming, improving and expanding Western modern art by the East over the past century, with the emergence of a new self- understanding and new cultural coordinates, can we then further explore the possibility of ‘multi- modernisation’ without following the West’s lead.
The exhibition, conceived in the concept of documenta and entitled Prelude to Macao’s Modernism, shows more than 150 works by over 60 artists from Macao or having an important connection with the city, allowing us to chart the development context of modern painting in Macao from the early 20th century to 1985. What does Modern mean now when we employ ‘modern style’ as the perspective into the exhibition? Does it simply mean to distinguish between the old and the new in form, style and technique? Or ideologically, does it mean the type of ‘modern’ that pursues anti- tradition? Or just as Baudelaire puts it, a sense of time characterised by the nature of ‘changing’?
Modernisation, Modernism and Modernity are concepts from different perspectives, but they all react to drastic social changes. To summarise the localisation process of Western painting in Macao as ‘modern style’ is not only intended to classify the style, but also as a deliberation on the development course of modern art in Macao from its inception, taking root to thriving, which ultimately points to Modernity itself.
The exhibition title uses ‘Prelude’ to mark the timing, denoting that Macao’s modern art was, to some extent, still in the ‘prehistoric’ stage as late as in the mid-1980s. On the other and, this sense of time proves Modernity’s non-synchronicity. In the middle to late 20th century, modern art declined in the West, being replaced by Postmodernism, which had already attracted much attention since the mid- 1960s. But in Macao, it was only until the 1980s that modern art became increasingly popular due to a wave of immigration, a more intense artistic atmosphere and an increase of information.
Using ‘Prelude’ in the title for periodisation (in Macao’s art history) is also meant to provide a new angle for looking at the development of art, thus turning the long river-like, progressive, linear, irreversible concept of time into the constantly extending, ever changing historical narration with multilineal development – just as the ‘prelude,‘interlude’ and ‘coda’ echo one another in a musical piece. If we understand Modernity in this sense, then Modernism not only refers to another style/period following Western Romanticism, but could be also a strategy for backward regions’ inclusion into the 20th century international artistic domain. Likewise, the Macao modern art, a blending of Chinese and Western styles, is not an accidental product resulted from serendipity due to the increased arrivals of Chinese and Western painters in Macao, but rather an introspection-based wish for development.
Apparently, modern art holds high the banner of formalism, but paradoxically, it is actually a new form of reaction against outmoded conventions. For example, the 2D sense of modern art comes from the rebellion against perspective. Compared to many other art movements having a set of clear-cut opposites of ideology, although Macao modern art’s development did not synchronise with that of the West and started much later and slower, its artists did not take a disruptive approach but rather consciously explored on the basis of ‘blending Chinese and Western styles and integrating the ancient and the modern’ at the outset. Take for instance, masters like Gao Jianfu and Situ Qi, who sojourned in Macao, valued more the exploration of the empty-full, form- spirit relationships in the framework of Chinese and Western art traditions, and modestly practiced the localisation of Western painting to benefit later generations.
Macao Western painting in the last century featured a fusion of Chinese and Western techniques and concepts, but in terms of content, its ‘modern feature’ is not outstanding. Western Modernism is the art about anxiety and artists’ self-expression often contains a variety of intense yet universal emotions, such as loneliness, bewilderment, despair, and even feelings towards the violence of war, etc.; however, this batch of Macao modern art works is still like a gentle breeze. By comparison, while modern landscapes such as high-rises and factories often appear in Western modern art – labelled as symbols of civilisation and progress or objects corrupting the heart – Macao’s Western paintings at that time are still dominated by quaint fishing villages and sceneries of streets and alleys. Except for a few works with a more definite sense of time, like Luís Demée’s ‘Sketch of Macao – Grand Prix Racing Day in 1954’, or propaganda paintings by Lok Cheong, Lio Man Cheong and Poon Kam Pek inspired by political trends at the time, many of the Macao Western paintings from the 20th century have a sense of time not in sync with the West and the Age. For example, the Macao depicted by George Smirnoff looks like a paradise in the secular world not in sync with the surrounding war. In other words, these Western paintings of Macao do not necessarily mirror the times or do not follow international trends, but have an independent pace of development instead, with a sense of time that is ‘present’ while still using Macao time and Macao context as a metronome.‘Integrating the Chinese and the Western’ are the keywords to understand Macao’s culture, and the time/period for such integration was long and early. The ‘integration’ is an acquired ‘process’ rather than an innate ‘personality’, whose drastic features should not be concealed by monolithic clichés. The exhibition starts by presenting the multilineal development of Western painting in Macao, supplemented by details of interactions and associations of Chinese and Western artists, art education at studios, and mutual learning among ethnically diverse communities. It tries to reveal different aspects of the discourse of ‘integrating the Chinese and the Western’. By and large, the Eclectic School’s aesthetic self-consciousness, the pursuit of realistic painting style by the Macau Artist Society, and local painters’ inheritance of and innovation on various artistic concepts, all reflect that Macao served not only as a conduit in the history of cultural exchanges between China and the West, but also an experimental site for civilisational collisions.
This exhibition shows mainly works from the collection of the Macao Museum of Art (MAM), enhanced by pieces loaned by supportive collectors. Over the years, MAM has collected works of Macao artists through acquisitions, donations and call-for-entries initiatives. On the other hand, we continue to carry out works related to research, exhibition and promotion to further understand the present and anticipate the future. The ‘Prelude’ just heralds the beginning of the music. Macao modern style, melodious and gradually developing into a symphony, still lingers today.
Un Sio San
Director
Macao Museum of Art