Magnify/Collect:
Artist:
Mandy Sun
Title:
Street Scene I
Price:
Year:
2013
Medium:
Size - (USA):
150 W x 110 H x 0 D (cm)
Size - (metric):
59.1 W x 43.3 H x 0.0 D (inches)
Theme:
Edition:
Original
Artwork ID:
464223
PDF Copy:
Artwork Description:
Sketching landscapes directly from observation in Western Art dates back to the Renaissance. However, it wasnt until the 19th century that artists made a point of leaving their studios to set up their oil paints and easels in the open in order to paint romantic and expressive landscapes en plein air. Since that time, landscape painting has provided fertile ground for exploring colour and composition, expression and emotion, the everyday and the extraordinary. This painting entitled Street Scene 1 seems to belong at the heart of this tradition. Bai Fan has eschewed the crowds and bustle that many of us in the West now associate with modern, industrialised China to focus attention on a quieter collection of houses, an attractive portal into everyday Chinese living. It is the ordinariness of this urban subject, made even more apparent by the artists use of flat planes of colour and an intuitive perspective that gives this painting much of its charm and appeal. The use of colour is expressive without being offensive and the application of paint linear brushstrokes combined with bold dabs of colour intensifies the paintings visual impact. When painting outside, where the elements and light compete with an artists desire to capture the moment, the best impressions of colour are often best captured this way directly, as the light falls on the flat planes of stone and tiled roofs, with the minimum interruption of detail. There may have been several Western sources in Bai Fans mind, not least those French artists of the Neo-Impressionist and Fauvist movements, whose painterly styles heighten the expressive qualities of urban and rural landscape painting. In particular, the painting has some of the atmospheric qualities of cityscapes by the French painter Maurice Utrillo. But to me, there is a tradition into which this painting fits more neatly than any other and it is a tradition that we here at the Mall Galleries have led for over 50 years, against the tide of abstraction and other non-figurative artistic movements. The way Bai Fan has sought to apply direct and spontaneous brushstrokes onto the canvas directly from life, combined with the build up of strong, appealing blocks of colour to define form and architecture is reminiscent of the style of the New English Art Club, a society of artists founded in 1886 which still exhibits each year at the Mall Galleries in central London.
Keywords:
Original Painting, Undecided Painting
