The Asian-Fusion Art of Dexiang Qian
By Dr. Debra Miller
Although Dexiang Qian was born in Zhijiang, an ancient city in the Hunan province of China, his recent art is not purely Chinese, but a seamless synthesis of East meets West. In his paintings of native Asian subjects and traditions, he employs a medium and methods that are Western European in origin, derived from the classical style of the Italian Renaissance, and ultimately from the Northern Renaissance invention of detailed, realistic compositions in oil. His precise and time-consuming use of an indirect oil painting technique, and occasional borrowings of figures and motifs from the Italian Old Masters, result in luminous works that are very contemporary in their homage to our increasingly global culture of the 21st century. It is a globalization that the artist, who has active studios and homes in both Beijing and Philadelphia, understands well.
Among the award-winning Asian-Fusion paintings by Dexiang is Dinner, Bread, and Tea, which was voted “Best in Show” in The Legacy of Leonardo, the annual members’ exhibition held at Philadelphia’s Da Vinci Art Alliance in July 2009, when the artist exhibited his work there for the first time. The masterful oil painting merges the Christian theme of the Last Supper, based on a detail of three apostles from Leonardo Da Vinci’s renowned mural in Milan, with an Asian tea ceremony. In their combination, Dexiang apprehends the significance of each in its own respective culture, and the universal symbolism attached to food and its formalized presentation.
In Battista and Singer, which took 3rd Prize in Da Vinci’s open juried exhibition of 2009, Heroines and Harlots: Women in History, Dexiang juxtaposed three-quarter-length profiles of a Chinese and a European woman, each in the historic costume, hairdo, and accoutrements of her native land. Art aficionados will recognize the source for the portrait of Battista Sforza, Duchess of Urbino, and the atmospheric landscape in the background, which Dexiang appropriated from the 15th-century Italian Renaissance painting by Piero della Francesca, now in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. As in the tempera painting by Piero, Dexiang’s glowing oil palette is perfectly balanced between the warm and cool hues of the brown earth and the sunlit blue sky; but Dexiang also shows a balanced contrast between the women’s Eastern and Western style of dress, and their distinctive skin tones and physiognomies. The setting’s dreamy moisture-laden atmosphere and the figures’ distant gazes evoke a sense of temporal removal from our Post-Modern civilization, just as their static poses fix them for eternity; they are now feminist icons of their diverse genealogies and vanishing eras, and sisters in the long and evolving history of womankind.
Even in his paintings that focus specifically on the figures and folkways of Chinese national minorities, in compositions free from European forms and motifs, and using a particularly Asian mode of vision, we sense Dexiang’s respect for the Western tradition of oil painting. He clearly delights in the chiaroscuro modeling of three-dimensional forms, the projection and recession of those forms in space, the depth and lucidity of their colors, and the visual naturalism of the scenes he portrays. All of his figures, be they of Eastern or Western descent, are recognizably accurate, self-possessed and upright, full-bodied and strong. They consistently display an inner calm and nobility, whatever their economic or social class, and whichever continent or period they inhabit. While Dexiang Qian convincingly characterizes the differences and peculiarities of each figure’s society, he reminds us that our humanity binds us all together, and he celebrates that spirit of humanity throughout his work. The art of Dexiang Qian represents the best of both worlds, and encourages us to value the traditions and accomplishments of one another. It is an art with a message we should all embrace and value.
