ten years of hong kong painting

TEN YEARS OF
HONG KONG
PAINTING
Art and the development of art in a society is a barometer
of the state and development of society as a whole. This
has been true throughout history and is true for Hong
Kong today. The economic and social development here
of the last thirty years has been nothing short of
phenomenal. With this economic and social development
have come the work of local poets, writers, painters,
photographers, dancers and film-makers who have grown
up in Hong Kong and to whom Hong Kong is home.
Cultural development has thus gone hand in hand with
economic and social changes.
Painting is one of the major artistic mediums adopted by
Hong Kong artists. As with other art forms, the world of
Hong Kong painters over the last ten years can tell us a
great deal about the make-up of Hong Kong. The
pluralistic nature of Hong Kong painting closely mirrors
the diversity of the society at large. The East/West
dialogue which is evident in post-war Hong Kong painting
can also be found in almost every stratum of the
community. The uniqueness of Hong Kong necessarily
dictates the uniqueness of Hong Kong painting in
particular.
Michael Chen
Galleries Director
Hong Kong Arts Centre
There really is no one prominent style or school of
painting in Hong Kong. Whenever there is a strong
movement calling for the formation of a 'Hong Kong
School', there is an equally strong force resisting just
such a move. And because of the unique historical and
geographical contexts of Hong Kong, painting here has
always been a curious mixture of the East and the West.
In the same way as places such as Singapore or Taiwan,
where the indigenous cultures have yet to exert a decisive
influence, Hong Kong has always been subjected to the
external pull of both China and the West. As such, a
Hong Kong artist might want to identify himelf/herself as
a Chinese artist (one who uses brush and ink to paint the
traditional subject matter of landscape, flower and bird), or
as a Western painter (one who not only uses oil or acrylic,
but possesses a Western outlook in his/her art as well). In
addition to the 'Chinese School' and 'Western School' of
painters, there is an increasingly popular hybrid school
which advocates a mixing of the two seemingly opposite
streams of aesthetics. Despite the absence of a definitive
mainstream, these affiliations have created currents and
undercurrents which have made Hong Kong painting a
diversified and lively scene.