Spring Clouds

This is one of Chang Dai-chien’s most abstract paintings, though there is still an evocation of hills that grounds the image within the genre of landscape painting. In the far background of this modestly scaled work, there is a stroke of light blue that might be a distant mountain ridge. In the middle ground, two white clouds hover in the pictorial space. Another area of blue, perhaps another ridge, separates these clouds. On the right side, several areas of dark puddled forms branch out—maybe depicting trees for those who want to make sense of the image as a landscape. But the image simultaneously collapses into vague areas of ink and color abstraction. Chinese landscape painting often leads the viewer on a visual walk along the ancient paths of Chinese mountains. This painting instead walks a fine line of suggestiveness.