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In his lifetime, artist Ding Yanyong was called both the "Oriental Matisse" and the "Modern Bada Shanren," after the Chinese individualist painter born Zhu Da (1629-1705). The combination of the epithets obviously reflects Ding's (1902-78) ability to straddle the East and West, but given a little historical distance, Matisse and Bada feel much like boundaries that circumscribe the artist. Hence, the title of exhibition at the Hong Kong Museum of Art, which marks the 30th anniversary of the artist's passing, "No Frontiers," feels inappropriate.
Cultural transmission in recent centuries has conventionally been understood to have predominantly gone one way, West to East; "No Frontiers," however, suggests that Western Modernism is actually analogous to Chinese artistic traditions — and, to take things to a whole other confusing level, that this became recognized in the 20th century due to Japanese Modernism.
Encouraged by an uncle who graduated from the Faculty of Agriculture at the Imperial University in Tokyo, Ding left his home of Guangdong for Japan in 1920. He first enrolled in the Kawabata Painting School headed by Fujishima Takeji (1867-1943) — a romantic painter who turned to Ultranationalist Realism in the 1930s — before switching to the Tokyo School of Fine Arts (1921-25), where he took Henri Matisse as his primary artistic model. Ding's stylistic affinity to the French artist throughout his career can be seen in the bold, flat colors and the simplified lines that remained with the Chinese painter long after, as in "Portrait" (1969).