Summoning the Seasons: The Art of Li Xubai
(Autumn 1999)
Kaikodo is delighted to present this exhibition of paintings by Li Xubai. Born in Fuzhou, Fujian province in 1940, Li has lived and worked in Hong Kong and now resides in Toronto, Canada. A single painting by the artist was included in our 1997 exhibition “The Flowering Field”, organized jointly with Luen Chai of Hong Kong, and we are indebted to Li Xubai for allowing us now to display this large and splendid group of his paintings.
The Chinese have long regarded literati painting as an act of self-cultivation, with attendant assumption that the image resulting from this act is imbued with the character and personality of the artist. The moods, ideas and feelings found in the paintings of Li Xubai are thus to be taken as emanations of the artist himself, an individual who considers himself first and foremost a poet, given equally vivid expression in the disciplined structures of his paintings and the telling vocabulary of his poems.
