Bridging the tradition to the modern, the East to the West: C.C. Wang and his life in art

The turmoil that China endured during the twentieth century triggered a series of social and political revolutions. As China struggled to resolve domestic questions of dynasticism or democracy and nationalism or communism, Western industrialization and imperialism dragged China rapidly into the globalizing world. Likewise, Chinese painting had to confront the West, as Chinese artists dealt with the twentieth-century version of the recurring question of modernizing Chinese painting for its times: how does one reconcile an ancient painting tradition with all the possibilities Western interactions introduced? This dissertation focuses on one artist's lifelong struggle, often overlooked, to answer this question. By examining C. C. Wang (1907-2003) and his life in art, this case study reveals broader truths about how twentieth century Chinese diaspora painters, such as Wang, modernized the tradition of Chinese ink painting.

Wang's reputation as a connoisseur of ancient Chinese painting has overshadowed his own artwork, creating a dearth of research on his artistic development. Using public and private sources, this dissertation applied stylistic analysis to track this development. The analysis reveals an artist's lifelong endeavor to establish a style that would lift the Chinese painting tradition into a modern era, an endeavor inspired by modern Western art ideas and a desire to play a role in the larger movement of elevating Chinese painting. The argument is made that these efforts establish Wang as an influential twentieth century Chinese ink painter.

To clarify Wang's role within the broader movement of Chinese diaspora painters, this dissertation employs a comparison study of Wang with such established twentieth century ink painting artists as Zhang Daqian, Liu Guosong, and Yu Chengyao. It is

asserted that the 1949 diaspora forced this cohort of artists to adjust their style and to transcend traditional Chinese painting by integrating newly-salient ideas from Western art, particularly the abstract movement. Meanwhile, the essential Chinese identity in their art collectively became more significant. The solidarity of purpose and identity is a distinctive part of the answer this group of twentieth century Chinese diaspora painters proposed to their generation's inherited challenge of enriching the tradition.