Kaikodo Journal XVIII November 2000

Unperturbed: the Art of Huang Zhongfang (Harold Wong)

Corresponding to the exhibition held between November 11 and December 2, 2000. 22 paintings by the Hong Kong-based artist Harold Wong (22 color plates). Preface by Howard Rogers. 91 pages.
Includes the essays:
Chu-tsing Li:
    “Cultural Life in Hong Kong During the Late
    Twentieth Century: a Personal
    Reminiscence”
James Cahill:
    “Seeing Paintings in Hong Kong” (Ching
    Yuan Chai so-shih III)
Julia M. White:
    “From the Artist’s Collection”
Arnold Chang:
    “Reading Between the Lines—Recent
    Paintings by Harold Wong”
Harold Wong:
    “The Education of Harold Wong”

The evolutionary process by which Harold Wong’s distinctive style came into being and some of the forces that shaped that development are examined from a variety of viewpoints by several essays by eminent art historians, including one by the painter himself.  Professor Chu-tsing Li, Professor Emeritus at the University of Kansas, outlines some of the major features of cultural life in Hong Kong during the past half-century.  Having made significant contributions of his own to that development, Professor Li gives eloquent testimony on the cultural environment in which Harold grew to maturity.  Professor James Cahill, Professor Emeritus at the University of California at Berkeley, provides a fascinating glimpse into Hong Kong collecting circles as these developed from the 1950s onward. Dr. Julia White, at the time of this journal’s publication Curator at the Honolulu Academy of Arts and subsequently Curator of Asian Art at the Berkeley Art Museum and long-time friend of the artist, focuses on Harold’s own collection of paintings, identifying some of the classic masters admired and collected by the artist as well as the modern painters regarded by Harold as having measured up to his rigorous standards of taste and quality. Focus is shifted in an essay by Arnold Chang from the cultural environment of the artist to the artist himself, providing an articulate account of how one learns to paint in the traditional Chinese manner.  Harold Wong’s essay is a document very moving in its simple and direct account of how and why he became an artist and of the sometimes winding path he has traveled in pursuit of personal and aesthetic goals.