0669
Returned to lender
This work of art was on loan to the museum and has since been returned to its lender.Li’s transition to pure abstraction was abrupt: in 1998, after a long and successful career painting landscapes and figures, Li abandoned representation and began to produce grids like these. Li’s sudden renunciation of narrative content, subject matter, and autographic brushwork, as well as any wish to explain his artistic motivation, bespeaks an independent, even defiant personality in keeping with his career up to that point. Li’s grids are drawn freehand, and to execute such long, straight lines of consistent thickness demands extraordinary brush control and concentration. Li sees this painstaking process as an embodiment of time, like visual records of a meditative state.
Artwork Details
- Title: 0669
- Artist: Li Huasheng (Chinese, 1944–2018)
- Date: 2006
- Culture: China
- Medium: Four hanging scrolls; ink on paper
- Dimensions: Image (each): 11 ft. 11 3/4 in. × 56 1/8 in. (365 × 142.5 cm)
- Classification: Paintings
- Credit Line: Lent by the artist
- Rights and Reproduction: © Li Huasheng
- Curatorial Department: Asian Art