Object Details
Artist
Fu Ershi
Date
1978; 20th century
Medium
Hanging scroll: ink and colors on paper
Dimensions
Image: 27 x 17 1/8 inches (68.6 x 43.5 cm)
Credit Line
Acquired through the Membership Purchase Fund
Object
Number
80.067.002
Fu Ershi is a contemporary Chinese painter excelling in both landscape and figure paintings. His fat(…)
Fu Ershi is a contemporary Chinese painter excelling in both landscape and figure paintings. His father, Fu Baoshi (1904–1965), was one of the most important Chinese painters in the twentieth century and was known for borrowing from Japanese art, particularly nihonga (Japanese-style painting), during the reformation of Chinese modern painting. Likely influenced by his father, Fu Ershi also applied Japanese elements in this painting including the use of pale color, simple composition, and gentle, calm atmospheric effects. The subject of the painting recalls the “Odes to the Red Cliffs,” the eleventh-century poet Su Shi’s series of rhapsodic essays on boating excursions with a few friends to this site on the Yangtze River. The essays had been warmly received in both Japan and China over centuries. Fu’s painting presents a contemporary interpretation of this theme exemplifying how reciprocal influences between China and Japan helped to shape today’s East Asian cultural images and artistic styles. (“Tradition, Transmission, and Transformation in East Asian Art,” curated by Cornell PhD student Yuhua Ding under the supervision of Ellen Avril and presented at the Johnson Museum January 23-June 12, 2016)
