Overlook the Macau City – Macau in the Eyes of Cai Guo Jie

 

Paul Cézanne (1839-1906) spent his later years living in seclusion in Aix en Provence. From 1885 until his passing in 1906, he repeated the same motif, leaving behind a collection of no less than 80 paintings depicting Mont Sainte-Victoire. In a letter to his son before his death he wrote ‘I have found innumerable motifs here on the banks of the river; the same spot viewed from a different angle offers a subject of the utmost interest.’ For a few years Cai Guojie has continuously observed and depicted the beloved Macao. He has created works without a sense of repetitiveness and the motifs have become, in Cézanne’s words, ‘subjects of the utmost interest’. As Cézanne’s best friend Emile Bernard (1868-1941) said, ‘Expressing what exists is an endless task.’ A repeating motif imposes a greater challenge on the painter. However, the same scene can easily bring about thousands of variations if he is not only painting the mere appearance of the scene but an ever-changing dialogue between man and the world.

 

Cai’s exhibition ‘Overlook the Macau City’ displays a total of 14 landscape paintings of Macao scenery – Mong Ha Hill, the Inner Harbour, Ruins of St. Paul’s, St. Lawrence’s Church, Coloane Alto among others and even a panorama of the Macao Peninsula – all are familiar to the eyes of both locals and visitors. These paintings are different from his previous creations: in most of them the horizon is elevated to a considerably high level, and it even disappears completely in some of them, as in the painting named ‘Camões Looking East’. The viewer seems to have been lifted up in the air and placed at a high vantage point overlooking the subject. In addition, it is worth noting that the dimension of the paintings has been enlarged to a full sheet, the maximum size for watercolour paintings.

 

Landscape paintings can be traced back to the 16th century. Joachim Patinir (1475-1524) was one of the earliest landscape painters. His paintings are known for an elevated panoramic horizon overlooking the scene below, which was later called by art historians ‘landscape of the world’ (‘paysages du monde’). In the paintings of Jan van Goyen (1596-1656) and Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (1606-1669) later in 17th century, the horizon was lowered down to reflect the ‘landscape of man’ (‘paysages de l’homme’) – a view immediately visible to the painter from where he stands. The ‘landscape of the world’ is noble, magnificent, transcendent, extensive, boundless and evasive, while the ‘landscape of man’ is beautiful, amiable, real, fragile and limited.

 

It is clear in this series of paintings that Cai strives to present the ‘landscape of the world’. This kind of landscape is not directly derived from vision, but reflected on the canvas by different geographic elements collected through perception. With such landscape, painters aim to unveil their world-view, humans’ position and relationship with nature, integrating reality and imagination in a specific ratio. In fact, ‘horizon’ has another meaning of ‘scope’ – the breadth one can reach in one’s thoughts and views, and different horizons reveal different painters’ views on the world, on life and various circumstances. The word ‘hundreds’, as in ‘hundreds of cityscapes’, suggests ‘multitude’ not just in terms of quantity but also the countless dimensions of the constantly changing landscapes. The act of ‘looking down’ suggests Cai Guo Jie’s position and perspective in his artistic creation: Is it the most strategic ‘high ground’ as referred to in a certain military context? The painter’s spiritual longing for cultural heights? A certain ambition to gain a full view of the landscapes? A certain sense of humility expressed for humans before the vastness of the world? Regardless, we can say for certain that, the Macao depicted in the ‘landscape of the world’ presents the audience with a novel yet familiar perspective and endless room for imagination.

 

Bird's eye views and long-range views have enriched the spatial expressions of paintings, allowing colours, shapes, lines and strokes to speak in new ways and with more freedom. Modern painters such as Edgar Degas (1834-1917) and Claude Monet (1840-1926) have shown a special preference of high angles, reducing and eliminating the spatial depth by moving up or even removing the horizon line. Certain spatial depth can still be seen in the works ‘Panorama of Macao Peninsula’ and ‘Downward view from the Ruins of St. Paul’s’ with the horizon line kept at a mid-low level, while in ‘Looking around on Mong Ha Hill’ the spatial depth is already lost in the flying strokes, splashes and droplets of green, yellow, brown and grey. The shapes in the painting are already engulfed and wiped out by the waves of colours and lines before they can barely be identified. This has added a few variations and challenges to the world he has created, taking the world to a more abstract level. The painting materials have also played a part in the creation of this ‘intangible world’, which is not only due to the painter’s consideration in terms of its form, but is also a reflection of his spiritual needs. In the creation process the painter seems to allude to nature, as well as to elude reality.

 

Lastly, the painter’s aggressive autography hovers at the top of each and every painting, as if sitting atop, looking down and describing the ever-changing cityscapes, where the painter has indulged himself in unharnessed imagination.

 

Chen Kuang-Yi
Curator

PhD Graduate of History of Contemporary Art in University of Paris Nanterre
Associate Professor at Department of Fine Arts at National Taiwan University of Arts