Ink Paintings
by Gao Xingjian, the Nobel Prize Winner
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Author: Gao Xingjian
ISBN-13: 978-1-931907-03-3
ISBN-10: 193190703X
Order No. 1007
8.5 x 11, Hardcover
92 pages, 2003
Art
$34.95
20% off: $27.96
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Ink Paintings by Gao Xingjian is a remarkable and extraordinary art book by the Nobel Prize Winner for Literature in 2000, the only Nobel laureate who is also an established painter.
This book brings together over sixty ink paintings by Gao Xingjian that are representative of his philosophy and painting style. Gao believes that the world cannot be explained, and that artistic creation offers the only way to escape from the madding crowd. The images in his paintings show exactly those aspects of the world that he believes to be inexplicable -- the black-and-white inner world that underlies the complexity of human existence. All his paintings are drawn in the traditional Chinese black ink on rice paper because he feels that "the brushing and spread of the ink on rice paper holds a definite kind of enjoyment" for him. What is special about Gao is that he always listens to music while painting, waiting for the music to strike a chord in his heart before setting out.
Gao's painting is characterized by the spontaneous overflow of the ink and
his seemingly abstract images which are nonetheless figurative or
metaphorical. People admire his meditative images and evocative
atmosphere by which Gao intends his viewers to visualize the human
conditions in extremity.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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Gao Xingjian, the man who wears many hats
- painter, novelist, playwright, translator, director, and
critic -- is the first China-born recipient of the Nobel Prize
in Literature since the prize's inception more than one hundred
years ago.
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Born in Jiangxi Province of eastern China in 1940, Gao began painting as a
child and at the age of ten wrote and illustrated his first short story. He
graduated from the Beijing Foreign Language Academy in 1962 with a major in
French. During the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), Gao was sent to the countryside
where he spent five years. Upon returning from the countryside he worked as
a professional playwright in Beijing. In 1982, his stage play Alarm Signal marked
the beginning of experimental theatre in China. The following year, his play,
Bus Station, was forbidden production by the Chinese authorities. In 1985, a
new play, The Primitive, renewed the heated controversy over his work. Since
rehearsals for his next play, The Other Shore, were terminated by the government
in 1986, no work by Gao has been seen in China.
In 1987, Gao left China to settle in Paris where he began a fruitful period of literary and artistic creation. He has created an abundance of original works including paintings, novels, essays and stage plays. Gao Xingjian paints in Chinese ink and has had over thirty international exhibitions in such places as Beijing, Hong Kong, Taipei, Paris, Marseille, Berlin, London, New York, Vienna Luxembourg, and Moscow.
His major novels include Soul Mountain and One Man's Bible. The Other Shore, Bus Station, and Snow in August are among his major plays. In 1992 he was named a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government, and in 2000 the Swedish Academy awarded him the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Gao Xingjian is now a French citizen living in Paris.
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