Lot 20
Group Portraits-Lovers in the City
Michell HWANG (HWANG Ming-che) (Taiwanese, 1948)
1996
Oil on canvas
181 x 121 cm
Estimate
TWD 1,100,000-2,400,000
HKD 282,100-615,400
USD 37,900-82,800
Sold Price
TWD 5,192,000
HKD 1,332,649
USD 170,761
Signature
Signed on the reverse Lovers in the City in Chinese, size 100F, Hwang Ming-che in Chinese, dated 1996
ILLUSTRATED:
Michelle Hwang, Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai, 2001, color illustrated, p. 110
Styles of Radical Will- The Multiform Nineties: Taiwan's Contemporary Art, Soka Art Center, Taipei, 2007, color illustrated, p. 64
+ OVERVIEW
Michell Hwang, first-generation splendid modern artist after WWII, is well-known in the Chinese artistic circle because of unique artistic terms, glossaries and paintings with dense color of the oriental demeanor and mystery. The art of Michell Hwang has experienced the countryside realist painting in 1970s, the humanistic leniency in 1980s, and the semi-abstractive, colorful metropolitan lifestyle in 1990s. After entering 2000, he has jumped from planes to the exploration for three-dimension. In recent years the paintings and sculptures of Michell Hwang have surpassed the boundary between the West and the East in terms of abstract art and image. The boundary of material and texture presents an unprecedented vision of coolness. Michell Hwang grew up in Yilan, Taiwan, well-known for the education on rigorous Confucian ethical code. This way, his works always deliver a kind of religious experience. In the "Group Portraits-Lovers in the City", the face that cannot be judged as human or animal and overlapping bodies carry the connotation of symbolism and expressionism. From his irst art show in 1985, Hwang's paintings have focused on the theme of man and woman – all the men take the form of sad king, oriented towards expressionism; the women have grown from young ladies in the early stage to a figure like the Virgin Mary, with the atmosphere from shy to loyal. Michell Hwang addresses parallel layout of high tone colors in his paintings and builds texture and layers by interweaving and overlapping descriptive strips. "Line" is from time to time the most highlighted, emphasized property in the art of Hwang for no matter plane or solid. These flying, dynamic, and yet vital lines constitute a unique flavor amidst ration and sensibility. The changes cultivated by splendid colors, quick or slow lines, thickness and thinness, turning, and other sharp contrasts compose an ever-changing, mysterious world.
The 20th & 21st Century Chinese Art Japanese & Korean Contemporary Art
Ravenel Spring Auction 2008
Sunday, June 1, 2008, 12:00am