Introduction: All Things Bright and Beautiful

A year ago, on hearing again an old Sunday school song beginning with ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’ I had the idea of asking a few of my favorite artists to paint works that were small and exquisite , hence relatively affordable and not demanding of much wall space.

In this quest to present small works by great names, I asked the artists if they could extract the distinguishing elements of their style and to reduce them down to a small frame using the prototype of a Song dynasty fan painting or album leaf.  In his Eskenazi exhibition in London in 2007, Li Huayi included several fan-shaped paintings including two mounted as fans. This was therefore a format he was familiar with and the two fan paintings in this exhibition depict vast landscapes in miniature, hence ‘great and small’.

Responding to these perimeters, Arnold Chang has painted a gem-like and complex wandering landscape maze on a small panel and an intriguing whorl of branches on another that can, to be viewed from all directions, following the viewer, re-orientating like an Ipad.

Liu Dan contributed a sketch of poppies from the period he lived in New York, capturing the spontaneity and naturalism of his very large paintings of poppies. The other work painted over the past year, is a scholar’s rock in the rare and startling hue of blue.

I saw a painting by Zhu Wei in an exhibition in Beijing a year ago of large ‘famille rose’ peaches and was ecstatic when he said that he was inspired by a porcelain vase of peaches at the Shanghai Museum.  That magnificent famille rose from the Yongzheng period is the very vase sold by Sotheby’s in Hong Kong in 2003 which Joe-Hynn Yang and I had discovered as a lamp and which was then purchased by Alice Cheng and donated to the museum.  Zhu Wei agreed to paint again this auspicious theme but would divide them into different views or aspects, presenting them in nine segments, with eight shown in this exhibition.

Over a festive meal and karaoke in Beijing last Spring, I asked Li Jin if he could contribute a few small paintings of everyday activities as his wonderfully ebullient personality would make the simplest act whimsical and endearing. The six works here are lively and sophisticated windows into his sensual life.

I was astounded by the brilliant installation of Qin Feng’s calligraphic screens at the Fresh Ink Exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in November 2010 and asked him if he had much smaller interpretations. Indeed he had several from the Civilization Landscape Series. The three included in this exhibition possess an energy and swiftness not constrained by their smaller size

Xu Lei’s complex ink work is as exceptional in a small format as it is in his larger work .  Here again his often seen horse peers from around a screen creating a small mysterious poem.

Meng Zhao’s ceramic sculptures of fantastic rocks drew a following of rock enthusiasts in his 2009 New York exhibition. I asked him if he would sculpt smaller works for a few of my friends and he has created a collection of celadon Yingqing- inspired brush-rests, depicting waves and rocks, works of art and practical at the same time.

Praying that the alteration of the hymn that inspired this exhibition is taken in the right spirit, I offer:

All things bright and beautiful
All creations great and small
All things bright and wonderful
Oh Gosh, I want them all.

Mee-Seen Loong
New York , March 2011