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ALBANY, N.Y. -- A black swan arches its neck beside a thicket of bamboo. A young woman stands amid a swirling shower of autumn leaves. A cricket clambers atop a fallen urn. A fisherman sits patiently on a rock.
These are all scenes from traditional Chinese paintings, whose subject matter has historically been limited to five categories: animals, flowers and birds, landscapes, figures and religion.
Within those relatively expansive parameters, however, brush strokes can be delicate or bold, color muted or intense, compositions minutely detailed or expressive nearly to the point of abstraction.
Myriad variations on these themes, as well as more modern work that fuses traditional elements with Western techniques, are on view in "Chinese Masterpiece Painting," a selection of 41 paintings from the vast private collection of the Dai family.
The show opens Wednesday in the Key Cultural Center at the Albany Institute of History & Art and runs through May 24.
The free exhibition is sponsored by the Taiwanese American Cultural Society of the Capital District, in conjunction with Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month. "I felt it was a really important opportunity for our community to see three centuries of Chinese art with work by some truly great artists," said Christine Miles, director of the Albany Institute, which donated the gallery space for the exhibition. "Part of our interest in having it here was being able to offer that cultural experience to the entire community, but also for the Chinese community in the area, which has grown substantially over the last decade."
Collected by Australian resident Tony Dai and four generations of his ancestors, including high-ranking Qing dynasty officials, the collection may be worth as much as $15 million.
It encompasses classical and more experimental work by more than 70 Chinese artists of the 19th and 20th centuries, including Zhang Daqian, known as "China's Picasso"; Xu Beihong, the first chairman of China's Central Art Academy; Qi Baishi, a cow herder and carpenter who become a self-taught artist; and Huang Zhou, who was persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party during the Cultural Revolution but rose to become vice-director of the Chinese Painting Research Institute in the early 1970s.
The collection also includes calligraphy by Dao Guang, the sixth emperor of the Qing Dynasty, and Yuan Shikai, a Chinese prime minister and army commander who helped crush the Boxer Rebellion.
Until recently, the paintings had been viewed only by family members and close friends of the Dais; Tony Dai's mother, Mei-Ling Dai, was inspired to open the collection to the public after falling deathly ill with scleroderma in 1997. Her eventual return to health left her aware of the transience of life and possessions, her son said, and she felt that hoarding the family's wealth of art was selfish.
"So she decided not to keep those paintings just to ourselves anymore," said Tony Dai in a recent e-mail interview from Australia, where the family has been living since leaving Shanghai in 1990. "She wanted to share them with everyone."
Since 2003, the Dais' collection has been exhibited in Australia, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Canada and the United States, and has been viewed by more than 100,000 people, Tony Dai said. He exhibits the collection through the Australia Chinese Culture and Art Association, of which he is president. Dai will speak on Chinese art appreciation at 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, May 21, at the Albany Institute.
The exposure of the Dais' paintings has likely played a role in pumping up the market for Chinese art. awaiting attribution A painting by Fu Baoshi, whose work is included in the collection, sold at auction last year for $2.5 million. Art auction houses -- which disappeared when collecting art was denounced as a bourgeois activity during the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and '70s -- have sprung up throughout China in the last several years.
"A lot of paintings were actually saved by this family, because most of the traditional Chinese art was destroyed during the Cultural Revolution," said Leigh Wen, a Loudonville artist and native of Taiwan, who offers a workshop on Chinese brush painting at 3:30 p.m. Saturday in conjunction with the exhibition.
When Taiwan and China split in 1949 and Mao Zedong declared the country the People's Republic of China, the evolution of painting in China virtually stopped, Wen said.
"Because of communism, painting was stalled for many years.
Artists were only allowed certain styles and subjects," she explained. "It's only in the last five years that China has been catching up and blending traditional and Western styles."
c.2006 Albany Times Union
