The Vision of Silence - Commentary to Hoo Mojong’s Painting
By Qi Lan & Xu Ke

The disposition of history is strict proof, but the disposition of art is free symbol. We believe that, the artist and the theoretician have two entirely different art histories in their mind. Once I asked a friend: “How do you regard the contemporary critic to your appraisal?” His reply is full of the wisdom: “The theoretician utilizes the historical method, it perhaps could induce lightly to summarize an era, but the artist has to settle down and get on with his pursuit in the historical slit”. “Settles down and gets on with pursuit in the historical slit”, this speech used for Hoo Mojing could not be more appropriate. She stays with silence in the era slit, only the person who is careful with sensitivity as her, or at least the talented person who has sympathy to art, will be able to discover surprised - - a kind of soul-stirring late in life, lonely, pure, succinct, plain, and some big pile commendatory terms by the mainstream critics are all suitable to her. If you are the person with high aspirations, do not consider to only watch the fun places, the “difference” itself in art is a kind of loneliness, which is firstly the courage to dare being lonely, and also to pursue like to make belief by one’s own free will. It happens to discover, Hoo Mojong is just because of that artistic ethics which is getting rid of day after day, to be especially enchantment. She is independent because of the “difference”, is beyond the mainstream value and the popular esthetics because of the “difference”, she is the one closest to the art.

Nietzsche has a classical opinion: “Art is, the talent sets rules; the mediocrity just follows.” If it cannot affirm temporarily whether Hoo Mojong is a true talent, it should clarify firstly whether we has the distinctive judgment to talent.

Talent, how serious phrase! If it is not understood for humanity's individual fortuitousness, we will complain that the God is unfair. Similarly, art, in particular these arts bring pleasantly surprising to the people, we’d rather understand it for historical fortuitousness. Precisely so, these occasional and edged people, out of the rule and the doctrine we accustomed, bringing us pleasantly surprising, write on the history of art. We must thank them at least about that - - their individuality and fortuitousness, supplement or revise our knowledge on the generalized history, letting the history become charming, also letting our historical emotion become vivid and rich. Therefore, the artistic criticism and even historical writing, in this history written by talent’s fortuitousness, obtain the method with strict system, then chose and explain talents by the method. If you only need to have the approximate impression to art, such as the school, the style and so on superficial knowledge, this method is not any improper, it can bring you without doubt the security sense of the historical cognition. This method, comparing the present popular philosophy and echoing the political metaphor, approaches more much to art - - but it too unsuitable to silent and edged Hoo Mojong.

Since the movement of western painting, Hoo Mojong has been an exceptional case in painting art in China, she deviates the evolution path of Chinese mainstream painting, drifts away in modern and contemporary language scenes, beyond the system of discussion and introduction we used, letting our criticism words fall into a black hole. It does not exaggerate, the dislocation of her creation and the mainstream value we quote as examples, decided her edged and hard creation experience. In the absolutely self-ruled kingdom of painting, she remains hard a field which is far away politic ideology and popular esthetics, if you have no false pride as mainstream, when you face her works, you will not sympathize, but respect! She creates difficultly, which makes our discussion and introduction to her also difficult.

Hoo Mojong was born in Ningbo in 1924; her grandfather was a famous Chinese medicine doctor who enjoyed doing charitable things. His generous straightforward disposition influenced young Hoo Mojoing very much, also cast her strong character facing independently to the difficult position in the future. The grandfather collected quite abundant books, Hoo Mojong liked reading his books since the childhood. Anti-Japanese War period, the whole family of Hoo Mojong moved Shanghai, she worked to make money by day and studied at night. She recollected her study experience of early period: “My family had no constant wealth, but very joyful, my painting was just hobby, it’s only spent my spare time. Before the Liberation, I arrived at Taiwan, and migrated to Brazil in 1950, besides for the livelihood, the spare time was for creation.” In 1950 in Brazil, relying on her own artistic feeling and unceasingly hard working, she obtained the recognition and a contract from Sao Luis Gallery which is the most professional and strengthened gallery in Sao Paulo. Hoo Mojong’s early works are already very difficult to reappear in front of the audience because a massive of them are collected in South America, and lost everywhere she moved to. But we may extrapolate approximately her creation style of early time from the "Toy Series", and the massive copper engraving works of same time like "Conversation", "Puppy", "Pondering" e, "Squatting", "Under Tree", "Fishing Net" and so on, also providing us the precious reference about Hoo Mojong’s creation of early time to a certain extent.

Hoo Mojong belongs to the second generation of Chinese artists studied in Europe, from her artistic style and esthetics interest, Hoo Mojong’s early creation is the extension of the “movement of western Painting” in China. From 1965 to the 1990s, her works are influenced obviously from the “Post-impressionism” and the “School of Paris”, the form constitution is succinct, pursuing the meaning of plan, the language of painting is situated between writing and manufacturing, the color is graceful with slight melancholy, the mood is sensitive but restrained, it has a quite warm disposition of the early “expressionism” (which kind of style is usually belonged to the Chinese “Para-post-impressionism”). Although Hoo Mojong has never entered into any formal art college and university, but on her own talent and diligent, she honored the grand award of oil painting in the “Sharon for Female Painters” in Paris in 1968, afterwards displayed her works in a tour exhibition in various countries of Europe.

The life experience of Hoo Mojong is winding. In the early years, she went through many places in China, Taiwan, Brazil and Spain, and settled down in Paris in 1965, lived abroad in France for more than 30 years, returned to homeland to settle down in 1996. The legendary life experience, the personal experience to different art traditions from various places of the world, as well as the research and practice to painting forms, presented her creation the style of freeing herself from the artists of her same generation in China after compromising various styles. The life in overseas year by year severed her creation from the development vein of Chinese mainstream oil painting, so we are unable to use the visual experience of the “Chinese style” to unscramble her works; Next, during more than 30 years living in France, she has been catching up with the Western contemporary art, such as pop art, abstract expressionism, new realism, performance art, installation art, multimedia art and so on currents advancing to everywhere in the world as a raging fire. However she did not fall under the currents’ influence, still keeping on exploring the language of easel picture, which would not let us place her on the context of the popular “internationalization” or the “modernization” nowadays.

Since the movement of western painting, the Chinese easel picture has been dually controlled by the ideology and the sociology, neglecting the value of artistic individuality because of overemphasizing the macroscopic esthetics, therefore, to inspect the changing of Hoo Mojong’s work and style, is vitally significant for supplementing and enriching the case of “individual value” in Chinese oil painting history. Hoo Mojong’s creation experience surmounted for a half century, from the “movement of western painting” to the “Post Modern” in China , Hoo Mojong is parallel with this development clue, but without the point of intersection. If to submit to the development history of the art of easel picture in China by this clue, Hoo Mojong is unable to enter the category of historical inspection, her value manifests on own initiative “individual value”, this value usually belongs to the attribute of “outstanding person” and “difference” in the modernism elaboration, not only the art attribute, but a sort of cultural standpoint and posture, un-relying on any approval of political or sociological value for its highly “independent” and “different”, with doom of loneliness, because its value orientation and practice way have already run counter with the contemporary sociology and commercial strategy. Only to break through the sole value judgment and the empty macroscopic description, to carry the study onto the “individual value”, we then would be able to understand the more vivid, more real and richer art history. This is not only a respect to the artistic creation, but also the respect to the history.

The most mature and most numerous works of Hoo Mojong is her still life series. Her drawing has continued the research attitude in color from the “Impressionism”, and absorbed the constitution relations from the “Post-Impressionism” on her own initiative. She studied earnestly the dimension structure of still life tirelessly and the relation of light and color, compressing the thickness of object and the vertical feeling of space in a succinct structure as relief, to suggest the spatial perspective by the relation of color changing and the order of plan, the modeling is rigorous, the structure is intense, the color is pure, the brushwork is vigorous and dignified. Hoo Mojong pays great attention to the meaning of form, to excavate sedulously every object’s unique disposition; her work shows a strong strangeness and mystery by visual feeling, with a kind of relatively warm quality of expressionism. Her creation is following all along this kind of idea: to pay the attention on the most familiar physical images of daily life, enabling them to tend to be perfect in writing and describing unceasingly. These ordinary things which are closely linked with the daily life have been entrusted the spiritual significance beyond physical images in the repeatedly facsimile. Cezanne once said, “a painting firstly is, and also should, express the color. The history, the psychology, they could still hide inside it”, “I planned to only use the color to express the perspective, in a picture the most main thing is to show the distance, it might see a painter's ability by this point”. The image is bigger than the language, Hoo Mojong and Cezanne are the same, they all are the painters good at form but not good at narrating or the emotion divulging, their emotion hide behind the physical images, silent and deep.

The "Toy Series" was created in the end of 1960. Many of the works are subjected as mother and child, and children playing, most of the characters are drawn by rough lines. She discarded boldly to portray the details, the modeling is succinct like sketch, there disclose the foreign atmosphere influenced from her life in South America. The characters are in twos and threes, hugging and playing in spacious environment, the backgrounds are applied colors nearly equally, the colors are bright, contrasting visually with the main dignified characters. Although the works are titled "Toy", the pictures do not appear toys. It reduces the narrative, and develops enormously the imagination and symbolic blank, showing a kind of simple life from the simple form, which is a light joy, or a little bit of anxious. By this series, she was honored the grand award of “Sharon for Woman” in Paris in 1968, also got rising reputation in the art world in France and even the Europe.

In 1965, Hoo Mojong in her more than 40 years arrived Paris she yearn for all, but she gave up the admission notice from the national institute of fine arts. At that time, she thought the significance to study some master and some school systematically was already dwindled to her who experienced unexpected life and traveled widely, so she decided to study by herself and create independently. Almost every day she went to the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere to do drawing, sketch and oil painting.

In 1970, because of the artistic achievement obtained in Europe, the French Ministry of Culture arranged a private studio for Hoo Mojong, she also started to create some big size work, the "Still Life Series" is the representative work at that time, and continued until now. This series is including fruits, vegetables, flowers and trees and bread and so on. At the beginning, people often appreciate them as traditional still life, these works’ constitution is elegant, the color is subtle, most of them are the direct sketch, the language is plain, the mood is affable, flowing a breath of common people. This kind of drawing has a distinctive style, which is different with the interest from middle class of Paris's -like and with the disposition of East's literati. Chen Shiwen once mentioned in an article about the Chinese students living condition in France, “the majority of the Chinese students only work, unusually have opportunities to study, …We talk about the difficult life frequently, also talk about question of drawing, of art”. This was precisely the living condition of Hoo Mojong studying alone in Paris in 1960. She usually handed a bread to go out, drew in the art academy all day. “Hold” is the plot Hoo Mojong stresses repeatedly in the work, also a real portrayal of her life, the hope for the happy life. She made the hand appearing unceasingly become more and more powerful; sometimes, the golden yellow apple and the hand with shallow brown skin, the bright red apple and the hand with yellowish white skin are full of the entire pictures unexpectedly; sometimes the rough and big hands grasp tightly the bread in front of the chest, the bread and the fruit become the absolute major character inside the hands; there reveals indistinctly in her still life work a worship to food like religion. Very many people all are interested those subjects in Hoo mojong’s diligently drawing, and do not understand why she can draw the identical subjects, she said, “what to draw is not important, more important is to express artist's thought and feeling, I draw those things are familiar to me, those I can see every day, they are only the carrier of my thought”.

Someone said Hoo Mojong’s "Still Life Series" has reflection from Cezanne and Gauguin, yes, Hoo Mojong said these two masters are all her favorite. But to sum up simply the creation of Hoo Mojong as inheritance from the masters is not fair. She seeks and gains widely, never limits herself in one school and one style. Hoo Mojong strengthens with care the characteristic of still life, even regards the still life as the character to draw, changed the static nature as “setting in order” of the traditional still life work, made the picture obtain a multiple compound connotation of emotion. She puts the fruits and vegetables, the flowers and trees, the bread and so on in a real life scene, or leaves simply the scene out, even lays them into the nature, and molds them different characters with different colors. In the "Still Life Series" painted in 1970s to 1980s, the portrays of fruits and vegetables are exquisite with attention to the integrity and power of individual form, the tone is harmonious, the edge is smooth, the manufacture feeling was strong. The "Seven Baskets of Apples", is a big work Hoo Mojong painted, she used the faint yellow oil wiping the surface of apple, applied yellowish brown to the basket, leaving the ground by bulk brown, the entire work unified in the gentle yellow tone, sending out a bright golden light. The “seven baskets of apples” are arranged longitudinally, weaved from left to right, the big piece ground forms as a dense order with “seven baskets of apples”, the shape is succinct, the rhythm is intense; she used the simplest objects to build a warm, quiet afternoon with fruit fragrant filling in the air. There appears frequently a straw hat, or a man’s back, or a pair of legs bending lightly in the "Still Life Series" of early time, the relation of guest and host of objects forms a nice contrast, the narrate on picture forms a kind of hidden correlation with the suggestion outside picture.

After 1980s, the style of Hoo Mojong had obvious break, those marks with metaphor went into seclusion slowly, the “still life” had gradually the independent disposition in the painting. She used firm explicit edge lines to portray objects, but the form order broke the strict and tense feeling of early time, becoming more freely. She is bold with the color, is rapid with the brush, and rubs and sweeps repeatedly, piles up one on top of another many times; the oil is thick and the luster is saturated. It is more important that, Hoo Mojong has achieved the high degree of proficiency level. She broke the straight style of her early creation, but managed in portraying quality feeling with diligent care, the form and structure was solid like relief, she has completed the replacement by the material characteristic from the subjective sense of reality to the objective sense of reality, namely to make an illusion by brushwork but not by texture - - to make a sense which is beyond the objective things and approaching to psychological reality - - this is similar with the style of Chardin - - the real sense is not reflected on visual, but is transmitted from the purest quality of material, then summoning our real sense of touch, this is the mystery of painting material, and more is the sense of beauty from the technique itself. She likes painting combinations of still life such as apple and bananas, apple and eggplant, pumpkin and lotus seeds, peach and onions, with various shape and changeable colors. Sometimes she would suddenly enlarge some object’s dimension, strengthen the contrast of visual and psychology, the objects on the painting are set in a constitution which is intense and even nervous, filling uncertainty and disquiet.

Since 2000, her "Plants Series" has gradually increased, they do not look like the bottle flower in the western-style painting, but like potted flower in the Chinese garden. Hoo Mojong also draws "People" and "Scenery", the people’s figures are simple and artless with vigorous and healthy bodies. Her "Scenery" are not many, resembling o see the world by naive child’s eyes, the interesting is beyond expectation. In 1996, Hoo Mojong returned to Shanghai to settle down. Because at that time, the China foreign cultural exchange was comparatively few with today, and she is not good at social relations, usually being alone to do painting at home, so her name is not well known. Perhaps some people think Hoo Mojong’s coming back is not at a perfect time, she has not caught up with oils painter who went France to study and came back China in 1940s to 1960s when they controlled of the forces of domestic art field, also not with the “new wave of fine art” of Chinese contemporary art which galloped in Chinese art world. Hoo Mojing takes such matter very easily, she experienced countless sceneries and waves - - at present, as an able woman tied down to a routine post, “looking back on dreary place, there’s no a day of wind and rain as well as fine”. We believe, only those people whose lifetime was full of frustrations on the edge of history, can comprehend the true value of history, and take their own individuality value as the most powerful testimony for history. There’s an ancient saying, “the talent does not mind talking on eloquence, to do and say nothing is full of meaning to taste”. If the silent and uncommunicative Hoo Mojong listened that saying, she might sigh with deep emotion!

The silence is the personality of Hoo Mojong. facing her work, the critics of mainstream often burst out phrases. she walks lonely, except paintings, does not make unnecessary speech, which caused that kind of extension topics taking effect usually, such as ultra visual and sociology to be unable to launch. In her works, the extension words are reduced by pure and plain shapes and inner and deep quality, waiting quietly for the sight from the people with high aspirations, as introverted poet, hiding the speech which must say in the deep thinking in a deep place which only him/herself can see. “A really ancient well does not have wave”, Hoo Mojong, she is a deep well you could not see the bottom, which when you speak to, you will be very difficult to hear the echo. She is deep and past her prime like ancient well - - but pure and clear!