Early Snow 1965

Chang Dai-chien made this landscape with ink and colour on paper, deploying a ‘splashed ink’ technique. In postwar Taiwan, the old artistic traditions were being renegotiated. Artists like Chang Dai-chien, who had fled the mainland after the Communist victory in 1949, had to negotiate the demands of both tradition and modernity. ‘Splashed ink’ painting was a technique which saw artists throw ink onto the canvas, manipulating the effects that it created. The method was considered individualistic and expressive, and it drew explicit parallels with the abstract expressionism then flourishing in the United States. Chang Dai-chien’s painting evokes a traditional landscape but is not constrained by it. Art historians consult a wide range of sources, including biographies, exhibition catalogs, and critical reviews, in order to understand the social and cultural context in which art is made. It is clear that Chang Dai-chien both drew on and diverged from established artistic styles, in order to forge a new path in a changed world.