Moonlight
Tang Song
唐宋
Production date
2010-2013
Media
oil on canvas
Measurements
170.5 cm x 379 cm
Notes
Tang Song has said that painting is a form of performance, and large canvases such as Moonlight evoke classical Chinese treatises that emphasised the breath and bodily action of the artist – their qi – in every brush mark. Traditionally, Chinese painting and calligraphy focused on movement and strength, the dynamic gesture of the artist’s hand holding the brush. It relates to the dialectical unity proposed by Daoist philosophy: Yin and Yang encompass movement and stillness, whiteness and blackness, hardness and softness, form and void. The result is wholeness, the oneness of the universe, ‘all under heaven’. The action of the painter reveals a constant oscillation between the poles of this unity, in a dynamism both physical and spiritual.
Accession number
2013.209