T'ang Haywen - The Colours of Ink by de Sarthe Gallery

T’a n g H ay we n The Colour s of Ink

Tâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ang Haywen painting in his studio, Paris, c. 1980

Paris Wanderer On T’ang Haywen

“...Haywen had been living in the not so chic 14th district in Paris for thirty, forty years, and that is 43 Rue Liancourt. I don’t know why for all these years, I could still remember his address and all those bits and pieces. It was a 19th century building, there is no lift, no courtyard on the ground floor, and no security desk, and you can enter the building freely by just pressing the doorbell. There is a simple toilet on every floor, and 3 to 4 tenants share this toilet. Sometimes I wonder how the toilet can be so clean as many tenants share it. I walk up to the 5th floor and open the door of Haywen, look to the left - it’s a three hundred something square feet room - there is a desk, a bed, a charcoal burning stove, an in-wall bookshelf; there are several paintings of his hanging on the wall. Looking at this familiar and unchanged place for more than twenty years, and seeing this old friend with an immortal sense of elegance – shutter flash – Haywen is captured in my camera. I then remembered, for more than twenty years, I have never posed with Haywen. This was the first and official time to photograph Haywen, it is quite a special photo, because three months later Haywen left us… However, that day after the photo shooting, we talked excitedly about preparing an exhibition for him in Hong Kong. After all, it was our dream for many years and I was being presumptuous to ask him to collect some oil paintings. He said he had very few oil works and they were scattered everywhere, but he would try his best to collect them back in Paris. We also talked about his current situation, he said he had been seriously

ill and had just recovered, but his spirit had never been better. He was preparing to go to Prague to paint the next winter, and mentioned he had a lot of new ideas after his sickness. I gave him some pocket money when I left. The next day, before leaving the hotel, I received a call from Haywen who said he will come to say goodbye. I remember that windy and rainy day. I told him, let’s meet at the hotel. He had a big envelope containing more than one hundred portraits, and though they were all numbered, he said each of them could represent an individual friend. I laughed and said, “I do not have one hundred friends!” then I boarded the coach. Looking back I saw Haywen standing in the rain and wind, who could have thought that this would be the last goodbye. After returning to Hong Kong, I could not reach Haywen, and received the news of his death three months later. Those portraits he gave me, I took them out and realized why he insisted to bid me farewell in the rain, it was because he did not want to owe me anything. Haywen, talking back to the unique photograph of yours – apart from the small kitchen and storeroom on the left that are unseen, your flat records all your substantial daily life in Paris. Yet, your spirit and art travel to all corners of the world, and that will be an endless pursuit!”

Excerpt from Intoxication by Yonfan Manshih © Oxford University Press (China) Limited 2012

巴黎浪族有關曾海文

“. . . 海文三四十年都住在巴黎不很時尚的十四區，那是 R u e L i a n c o u r t 四十三號。我不知為何那麼多年，總還記着他住址以及這些點點滴滴。那是一憧沒有電梯的十九世紀公寓，樓下沒有中庭，也沒有管理員辦公室，只要一按大門門鈴，就可以自由出進大廈。每層樓梯都有個簡潔的廁所，這廁所是每層三四住戶所共用。有時我奇怪這麼多戶共用的公廁，怎可能保持得如此乾淨。走上五樓，推開海文的大門，往左一望，一個三百多呎的房間，放着一張桌子、一張床、一個燒炭的火爐、有一個入牆的書櫃；牆上掛了幾張他的畫。我望着這個二十多年來熟悉卻又沒改變的地方，望着眼前這位仙風道骨的老朋友，快門一閃，海文就入了我的相框。我這才想起，二十多年，我從未和海文拍過合照。這是我首次正式為海文寫真，也算是一張特別的照片，因為拍完照片三個月後，海文就離開了我們。。。然而在拍完照的當天，我們還興高采烈地談着準備替他在香港開展覽。畢竟，這是我們多年的願望，我自作聰明地要他蒐集些油畫，他說他的油畫作品不多，零散各地，但是他會努力把這些畫作集中在巴黎。我

們又談到他的近況，他說前些日子大病一場，現在剛復原，但是精神卻前所未有的好。他準備冬天的時候去布拉格畫畫，他說生病之後有了很多新打算，我走的時候給他留了些零用。第二天臨離開酒店前，接到海文的電話，說要來送我。記得那天有風又有雨，我説，就在酒店見面吧。他帶來了一個大信封，告訴我裏面有一百多個肖像面譜，雖然每張編上了號碼，但是每張都可以代表他個別的朋友，我笑說：「你有一百多個朋友，我可沒有！」接着登上了旅遊車。車上回望了一眼站在風雨中的海文，誰會想到這竟會是最後一別。回到香港後，我一直聯繫不上海文，三個月後收到他過世的消息。我拿出他送來給我的面譜畫，才想起他特意堅持在風雨中來向我辭行，就是不想與我有任何虧欠。海文，講回替你拍的這唯一照片，除了左方看不到的一間偌小的廚房和儲物室之外，這地方就記錄了你在巴黎這些年物質生活起居的一切。但是你的精神與藝術，卻是走遍天涯海角，也追逐不完盡！ ”

摘錄自楊凡《花樂月眠》 © 牛津大學出版社（中國）有限公司2 012

Tâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ang Haywen, Paris, 1991

Interview with Tâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ang Haywen, by Jean-Paul Desroches

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Great painting is painting that is charged with energy.â&#x20AC;? - How does this quote from AndrĂŠ Masson relate to your process? Painting embodies energy. It acts like the cosmic force that creates the stars and makes the seasons change. This energy glows, and its radiance touches and moves the viewer. It is not a violent energy, but a subtle one, uniting tension and release at the same time. It is situated between those two poles. If it were just tension, we would be faced with pure aggression. If it were just release, in the name of freedom and spontaneity, we would be faced with decadence. So as you might suspect, the path to creation in painting unites these two apparently contradictory elements. The result is the source of creative energy. Can we apply what you just said to the precarious equilibrium that is practised in Chinese calligraphy? By which I mean, the constant back and forth between pictogram and ideograms. Painting navigates deftly between two worlds: that of the visible, and that of thoughts. Ideal painting would bring them together, striving towards total expression. Is this polarised dynamic present in other forms throughout your work? We are confronted with an essential fact of art. When we work, the constant question is: to work for emptiness, or to work for fullness? Like the body and the mind, music only exists because of silence. Before creation, there is the blank page. As soon as a painter begins to work, he creates emptiness and fullness inside the given space. A painter must follow his path, emptiness towards fullness, fullness towards emptiness, like the swing of a pendulum. Emptiness, in painting, is the vital space of the imagination in which resides the resonance of that which is painted. It is the infinite prolongation

of what we see. Emptiness amplifies fullness. But the emptiness is never systematic. We only obtain emptiness from fullness. Fullness is not saturation... it is nothing more than necessary condensation. At any rate, the birth of a work remains a mystery... the vacuum of paper, then the first smudge or the first line that engenders all the rest... then a new world emerges. Each painting is outside of us, seemingly bestowed with a sort of particular destiny. Do you mean that there is a sort of cosmic intelligence that exists outside of human will? In a way, yes. Let me tell you the story of the caterpillar. The nervous system of this insect is succinctly organised. Before becoming a chrysalis, the caterpillar uses leaves to protect itself. During this stage of its life cycle, it cuts six leaves, which roll up on themselves. It uses one of them. The others stay empty, but identical on the outside, just to trick any predators. This story shows how, in a specific case, intelligence exists outside of us, as if suspended in the cosmos. When a painter goes to work, he enters into contact with the unconscious that resides in himself, and if he is able to reach a sufficient depth, from this unconscious he receives movements that link him to cosmic intelligence. It is through the deepest interiority that he arrives at the vastest exteriority. Which is why a finished painting always surprises me. It goes beyond what I had predicted, and it is at that precise moment that I become aware that a step has been taken beyond the initial plan I had set for myself. When a painter has finished a work, and it is technically perfect, but without surprises, within pre-established standards of beauty, he has made a nice piece of decoration but created nothing. His work is probably useful, necessary even, to keep alive what others have discovered.

Do you mean that the painter, exceeded by his work, embarks like the poet on “a drunken boat” *1? Working, like nature, means being brought into the existential adventure towards the unknown. The painter does not exhaust himself in imitation. At first, there was “figurative painting” which is a faithful, or even idealised, imitation of the visible world. Following this descriptive movement came “figurative painting,” which is work that combines and recreates the fragmentary elements of nature and the imaginary world. As for painting that can be qualified as “figural,” it is derived directly from nature; it is a new branch from its trunk. It comes from cosmic dynamism, and refers to no existing form. It is an approach that is much more difficult to perceive. It is like a planted seed, that grows, develops, and bears fruit. The audience only assimilates the work at the moment of fruition; before, as long as the work is only a seed, it escapes them. I understand that the “drunken boat” arrives safely in port, but what do you think of these two ideas of “beautiful” and “new,” to which Western painting still seems very attached? Is this energy for you, or just waves on the surface? The painter’s most immediate task is the search for expressiveness. Beauty and novelty are not the painter’s first concerns. Beauty is just an amalgamation of conventions. The painter who looks for beauty falls fatally into the trap of prettiness, and the resulting work is weak. But the painter who avoids beauty at all costs risks getting caught in the opposite trap, that of ugliness. As for novelty, it creates the same confusion. Novelty for novelty’s sake is a trend, and as such, can only be ephemeral. For me, what is important is neither beauty nor novelty, but to work as nature does, spontaneously engendering beauty and novelty.

The work remains a personal adventure, and when I’m at work, all ideology is abolished for the pleasure of painting. The thought of creation is situated outside of the heat of the action. I work and I work with the material. The essential is to make the material a painting, knowing that the echo of a work is even stronger because its emotion is held back. Is it to give free rein to this vision that most of your works are painted in the open and mobile format of the diptych? Why diptychs? Really, the first time, I didn’t know. Was it chance? But this form immediately suited me because it meets the idea of a couple, that idea that “one” divides in “two” and that “two” fuse into “one,” the possibility of creating a third space, a new being. That fits perfectly into the way of the world whether it be our garden or a field of stars. What happens to the work after it is created? The work is not crystallised after its creation, it does not become mute or immobile. It’s the complete opposite; the work lives on, sustained by the energy that it contains. The work, once out of the painter’s hands, attains an autonomous life linked to the many gazes that will contemplate it. The spectator not only receives sustenance from the work, but sustains it, as if he or she were prolonging the act of the creator. What the spectator carries inside, unformulated, awakens in the presence of the painting. Then an original dialogue begins, based on aspects that are still unperceived. Each discovery brought about by contemplation enriches the painting and the person who contemplates it. The continuation of this dialogue justifies the painter’s efforts.

*1 The Drunken Boat is a poem composed by Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891) and sent to Paul Verlaine in 1871 as an introduction. The poem describes the drifting and sinking of a boat lost at sea. Shortly afterwards Rimbaud joined Verlaine in Paris and became his lover. This interview was first published in the catalogue of T’ang Haywen exhibition, first shown in 1983 at the Musée des Beaux Arts de Quimper, and then in 1984 at the Musée du Château de Vitré in France.

N a i s s a n c e d u D r a g o n ( B i r t h o f t h e D r a g o n ), 1970 , I n k o n Ky r o c a r d , D i p t yc h , S i g n e d l owe r r i g h t , 70 x 10 0 c m , C o l l e c t i o n o f M+ M u s e u m , H o n g Ko n g 12

戴浩石專訪曾海文

安德烈‧馬森（A n d ré M a s s o n）曾經說過：「凡是偉大的畫作，都是充滿力量的」，這番說話對你的創作有何影響？畫作包含著的力量有如宇宙能量，足以創造星辰，運轉四季，燃起炫目光芒，觸動觀賞作品的人。這股力量並不兇暴，而是含蓄的，凝聚能量同時迸發張力。力量就像在兩極之間，如果張力只能一直累積，就無異於挑釁侵犯；反之如果只會自由率性地放鬆釋放，那就只能是墮落頹廢。所以誠如你所想的，在繪畫創作的道路上，這兩種看似矛盾的力量其實是共生的。兩者結合之後，就成為了創作力量的泉源。你剛剛所說的危險的平衡也適用於中國書法上嗎？我是指，這點與中國文字來回勾畫的關係。畫作靈巧遊走於兩個世界之間：現實的世界和想像的世界。理想的畫作會將兩個世界連繫，全面帶出作品的思想。這種極致的動態表現曾經以其他形式出現在你的作品當中嗎？在藝術中，我們必須面對一個關鍵事實。創作的時候，我們總是會問自己：為空靈而創作還是為豐盛而創作？這就像身與心之間的關係，而音樂總是在寧靜的時候才能聽得見。創作前，展開的不過是一張白紙，但當作畫者執筆後，那空白之中就會填滿了空靈與豐盛。作畫者必須跟從自己的道路，由空靈走向豐盛，再由豐盛走向空靈，像鐘擺般來回不息。空靈就是畫中想像的領地，為著墨之處誘發共鳴，為畫中世界營造幽深意境。空靈將豐盛擴大，卻並無一定軌跡。空靈只能透過豐盛顯現，而豐盛並非滿盈…而是恰到好處的充實。

無論如何，作品誕生的緣由都是神秘的…一切就在白紙上灑下第一點墨、畫下第一道線的時候開始…一個新世界就這樣出現。每一幅畫作都是我們想像之外，就像冥冥之中自有安排。你是指有比人類更高的主宰存在嗎？從某個角度來看，是的。容我以毛蟲的故事為例子。毛蟲的神經系統很簡單，在化蛹之前，就用葉子保護自己。這階段的毛蟲會咬下六片葉子捲起來，但當中其實只有一片是有用的，其餘同樣捲起的葉子則只是作為對付敵人的掩眼法。這個故事告訴我們，智慧並不只存在於人類之間，而是在宇宙萬物之中。作畫者創作時會進入內心的潛意識世界，並在真正深入其中之後，感應到萬物間的智慧連繫，就像在心中最深處，發現最廣闊無邊的宇宙。所以完成後的畫作總是讓我感到驚喜，超越我的想像，而且往往就是在完成一刻，我才發現自己在某個地方偏離了原來的計劃。當作畫者完成一幅技術上無懈可擊卻欠缺驚喜的作品時，在既定的審美觀之下，他製造了一個優美的裝飾品，就僅此而已。他的作品也許是實用的，甚至是必須的，但作用也不過是在陳腔濫調地提醒著一個已知世界的存在。你是指出類拔萃的作畫者都像坐上「醉舟」*1 的詩人嗎？作畫與自然一樣，就是一場走向未知的存在主義冒險。作畫者不會忙於模仿，而會先嘗試創作「具象畫」，將眼前的世界真實、甚或理想化地描繪重現，之後再嘗試將自然化整為零，融入想像，創作出另一種「具象畫」。能夠稱之為「具象」的畫作，都是由自然而生，猶如樹幹上長出的新枝。創作源自宇宙物力，並無存在形態，展現的過程更難於領悟，就好比埋下的種子萌芽成長，開花結果，但觀畫者卻只能投入到結果一刻當中，而錯失了畫作還在成長、甚至還處於種子階段的過程。

我知道「醉舟」會安全泊岸，那你對「美」和「新」兩個西方畫壇仍非常重視的概念又有甚麼看法？它們對你而言是力量，還是不過流於表面的波浪？

*1《醉舟》是阿瑟‧蘭波（A r t h u r _ R i m b a u d）（18 5 4 - 4 8 91）於18 71年寫給保羅‧魏爾倫

作為作畫者，首要是尋找表達的方法，而非追求美和新。所謂的「美」，不過是一套約定俗成的規範，追尋美的作畫者難逃墮進其陷阱的厄運，令作品顯得薄弱虛浮，但如果不顧一切地逃避美，則又會掉進名為「醜」的相反陷阱之中。「新」的概念同樣混淆，為「新」而求新的不過是一股潮流，難以真正歷久常新。在我來看，重要的既非美，亦非新，而是順應自然，讓美與新自然流露。

本訪問內容原刊於曾海文展覽的場刊中。是次展覽 19 8 3 年於法國坎培爾美術館（ M u s é e

（Pa u l Ve r l a i n e）的自我介紹詩作，內容描述一首迷失的小舟在怒海上的顛簸浮沉。詩作寄出不久，蘭波即動身前往巴黎，成為魏爾倫的戀人。

des

Beaux-Arts

Q u i m p e r）首度舉行，並於19 8 4 年在法國維特雷城堡博物館

（M u s é e d u C h â t e a u d e V i t r é）再次展出。

作畫終究是一場個人歷險，只要執起畫筆，我就會忘卻了所有意識形態，全心投入到作畫的喜悅之中，讓創作的思維飄浮於描繪的動作之外。當埋首於顏料畫具之時，我知道關鍵是如何利用它們完成畫作，將情感勒於崖邊，讓作品引起更大的共鳴。是不是因為這個觀點，你才選擇以開放和流動的形式創作大部分雙聯作？為甚麼創作雙聯作呢？老實說，初時我並不知道，是機緣巧合嗎？總之我立刻投入到這種創作形式之中，受到它一雙一對的概念吸引，在「一」分為「二」，「二」合為「一」之間，尋找創造第三空間的可能，發掘全新的創作。世界其實亦在這套理念之中，不論是家裡的花園還是浩瀚的銀河，亦是一樣的法則。完成後的作品會怎樣呢？完成後的作品不會化為晶石，不會默默無語或自我封閉，而是完全相反，在憑藉本身能量的狀態下，繼續存活向前。一旦作品自作畫者手中獨立，便會將自我生命與無數思量目光連繫，在潤澤觀畫者的同時滋養自己的生命，仿如在延續作畫者的使命一樣。觀畫者內心一些未成形的想法，在畫作前得以甦醒，在尚待探索的層面上，展開一場獨特的交流。交流思量所得的每寸發現，都豐富了畫作，亦豐富了觀畫者的心靈，而交流的延續，就是作畫者努力的印證。

U n t i t l e d , 19 8 0 , A c r y l i c , i n k a n d wa te r c o l o r o n Ky r o c a r d , D i p t yc h , S i g n e d l owe r r i g h t , 70 x 10 0 c m , P r i va te c o l l e c t i o n , H o n g Ko n g 16

Entretien entre T’ang Haywen et Jean-Paul Desroches

“ La grande peinture est une peinture chargée d’énergie” - Cette réflexion d’André Masson peut-elle répondre à votre démarche ? La peinture incarne l’énergie. Elle agit comme la force cosmique qui crée les étoiles et entraîne les saisons. Cette énergie rayonne et son rayonnement touche et émeut le spectateur. Nous n’avons pas affaire à une énergie brutale mais subtile, qui unit en même temps tension et détente. Elle se situe entre ces deux pôles, s’il ne s’agissait que de tension, nous serions face à l’agressivité à l’état pur, si à l’inverse il ne s’agissait que de détente au nom de la liberté et de la spontanéité, nous serions face à la déliquescence. Ainsi que vous pouvez le soupçonner, la voie de la création en peinture unit deux éléments apparemment contraires. C’est de leur résultante qu’émane la force créatrice. Peut-on ramener ce que vous venez de dire à l’équilibre précaire qui s’exerce dans l’écriture Chinoise ? Je veux parler du va-et-vient constant entre pictogramme et idéogramme ? La peinture navigue bien entre deux mondes, tantôt le monde visible, tantôt le monde de la pensée. Une peinture idéale va les réunir, elle tend vers l’expression totale. Cette dynamique issue de deux polarités agit-elle sous d’autres formes au cours de votre travail ? Nous sommes confrontés à une donnée essentielle de l’art. Quand on travaille, à chaque instant la question se pose : travailler en faveur du vide, travailler en faveur du plein. C’est comme l’esprit et le corps, la musique n’existe que par le silence.

Le vide, dans une peinture, c’est l’espace vital de l’imaginaire où se trouve la résonance de ce qui est peint. Il est le prolongement infini de ce que l’on voit. Le vide amplifie le plein. Mais le vide n’est jamais systématique. On n’obtient le vide qu’à partir du plein. Le plein n’est pas une saturation, ce n’est qu’une condensation necessaire. De toute façon la naissance d’une oeuvre reste un mystère, le vacuum du papier, ensuite la première tache ou le premier trait qui engendre tout le reste… alors surgit un monde nouveau. Chaque tableau est en dehors de nous, apparemment doté d’une sorte de destin particulier. Voulez-vous dire par là qu’il y aurait une sorte d’intelligence cosmique hors de la volonté humaine ? En quelque sorte oui, et permettez-moi de vous raconter cette histoire, une histoire de chenille. Cet insecte a un système nerveux dont l’organisation est succincte. Avant de devenir chrysalide, la chenille, pour se protéger, a recours aux feuilles. Dans l’enchaînement du cycle de la vie, elle cisaille six feuilles qui vont s’enrouler elles-mêmes. Elle occupera l’une d’entre elles, les autres restant vides mais extérieurement identiques et tout cela pour tromper les éventuels prédateurs. Cette histoire illustre comment dans un cas précis l’intelligence existe en dehors de nous, comme en suspension dans le cosmos. Quand le peintre se met au travail, il entre en contact avec l’inconscient qui siège en luimême, et s’il parvient à atteindre une profondeur suffisante, il reçoit de cet inconscient des mouvements qui le relient à l’intelligence cosmique. C’est par l’intériorité la plus profonde qu’il rejoint l’extériorité la plus vaste.

Antérieure à la création, est la page blanche. Au moment où le peintre commence à agir, il crée les vides et les pleins à l’intérieur de l’espace donné.

Ainsi une peiture achevée me surprend toujours. Elle dépasse ma prévision et c’est à ce moment précis que je prends conscience qu’un pas vient d’être franchi par rapport au programme initial que je m’étais fixé. Quand un peintre a realisé une oeuvre, techniquement parfaite, mais sans surprise, dans les normes de la beauté préétablie, il a fait une belle oeuvre de décoration mais pas de création. Son ouvrage est probablement utile, voire nécessaire, pour maintenir vivant ce que d’autres ont découvert.

Un peintre doit suivre son chemin, le vide vers le plein, le plein vers le vide, comme le balancier d’une pendule.

Voulez-vous dire que le peintre, dépassé par son oeuvre, s’embarque comme le poète sur “un bateau ivre” ?

Travailler comme la nature, c’est être entrainé dans l’aventure existentielle vers l’inconnu. La peinture ne s’épuise pas dans l’imitation. Dans un premier temps “la peinture figurative” est une imitation fidèle, ou même sublimée de la nature visible. A ce mouvement descriptif, succède “la peinture de figuration”, c’est à dire l’oeuvre qui combine et recrée les éléments fragmentaires de la nature et de l’imaginaire. Quant à la peinture qu’on peut qualifier de “figurale”, c’est de la nature qu’elle dérive directement, elle est une nouvelle branche qui pousse sur un tronc. Elle hérite du dynamisme cosmique sans se reférer à une forme existante. C’est une démarche beaucoup plus difficile à percevoir. Elle est comme une graine semée, qui grandit, se développe et porte son fruit. Le public n’assimile l’oeuvre qu’au moment où le fruit est arrivé à maturité; avant, aussi longtemps qu’elle n’est que graine, elle lui échappe. ’entends bien que le “bateau ivre” arrive à bon port, néanmoins que pensez-vous de ces deux notions “beau” et “nouveau” auxquelles la peinture occidentale semble encore très attachée, s’agit-il pour vous d’énergie ou simplement de vagues de surface ? La démarche immédiate du peintre est la recherche de l’expressivité. La beauté, la nouveauté ne sont pas ses préoccupations premières. La beauté n’est qu’un amalgame de conventions. S’il cherche la beauté, il tombe fatalement dans le piège de la joliesse et le résultat est une oeuvre faible. Mais s’il s’écarte à tout prix de la beauté, il risque le piège inverse, la laideur. Quant à la nouveauté, elle engendre la même confusion. La nouveauté pour la nouveauté est une mode et comme telle ne peut qu’être éphémère. Pour moi ce qui est important, ce n’est ni la beauté ni la nouveauté, c’est de travailler comme la nature fécondant spontanément beauté et nouveauté. L’Oeuvre reste une aventure personnelle et quand je suis au travail, toute

idéologie se trouve abolie au profit du plaisir de peindre. La pensée de la création se situe en dehors du feu de l’action. Je travaille et je travaille avec la matière; l’essentiel est de faire de la matière une peinture en sachant qu’une oeuvre a un écho d’autant plus fort que son émotion est retenue. Est-ce pour donner libre cours à cette vision que la plupart de vos oeuvres sont peintes sur le format ouvert et mobile que constitue le diptyque ? Pourquoi des diptyques ? au fond la première fois, je ne sais. Est-ce un hasard ? Mais tout de suite cette forme m’a convenu car elle répond à l’idée de couple; l’idée que “un” se divise en “deux” et que “deux” fusionnent en “un”, avec la possibilité d’engendrer un troisième espace, un nouvel être. Ceci s’inscrit parfaitement dans la marche du monde, qu’il s’agisse de notre jardin ou du champ des étoiles. Qu’advient-il de l’oeuvre après sa création ? L’oeuvre n’est pas cristallisée après sa création, elle ne devient ni muette, ni immobile. C’est tout le contraire, elle vit nourrie par l’énergie qu’elle incarne. L’oeuvre sortie des mains du peintre accède à une vie autonome liée aux multiples regards qui vont la contempler. Celui qui regarde l’oeuvre, non seulement s’en nourrit, mais la nourrit comme s’il prolongeait l’acte du créateur. Ce qu’il porte en lui d’informulé s’éveille en présence du tableau, il s’ébauche alors un dialogue original fondé sur des aspects encore inaperçus. Chaque découverte suscitée par la contemplation enrichit le tableau et le contemplateur. La poursuite de ces échanges justifie les efforts du peintre.

Cet entretien a été publié pour la première fois dans le catalogue de l’exposition de T’ang Haywen présentée tout d’abord en 1983 au Musée des beaux arts de Quimper et ensuite en 1984 au musée du Château de Vitré , France.

A r t works

Untitle d 19 6 4 I n k o n Ky r o c a r d S i g n e d a n d d a te d l owe r r i g h t 70 x 5 0 c m

Untitle d c .19 6 6 I n k o n Ky r o c a r d Unsigned 70 x 5 0 c m

Untitle d 19 6 6 I n k o n Ky r o c a r d Unsigned 70 x 5 0 c m

Untitle d 19 67-19 6 8 I n k o n Ky r o c a r d D i p t yc h Unsigned 2 9.7 x 4 2 c m

Untitle d 19 67 Wa te r c o l o r o n Ky r o c a r d S i g n e d l owe r r i g h t 5 0 x 70 c m

Untitle d 19 67 Wa te r c o l o r a n d i n k o n Ky r o c a r d Unsigned I n s c r i b e d by t h e a r t i s t o n ve r s o: “ Pa r i s S e p t 67 ” 70 x 5 0 c m

Untitle d c .19 6 8 I n k o n Ky r o c a r d D i p t yc h Unsigned 2 9.7 x 4 2 c m

Untitle d 19 6 8 -1970 I n k o n Ky r o c a r d D i p t yc h S i g n e d l owe r r i g h t 2 9.7 x 4 2 c m

Untitle d 19 6 8 -19 6 9 I n k , o i l a n d wa te r c o l o r o n Ky r o c a r d D i p t yc h S i g n e d l owe r r i g h t 70 x 10 0 c m

Untitle d 19 6 8 -19 6 9 I n k a n d wa te r c o l o r o n Ky r o c a r d D i p t yc h S i g n e d l owe r r i g h t 70 x 10 0 c m

Untitle d 19 6 9 I n k a n d wa te r c o l o r o n Ky r o c a r d Unsigned I n s c r i b e d by t h e a r t i s t o n ve r s o: “ I n c e l l a 6 9 ” 70 x 5 0 c m

Untitle d 1970 I n k o n Ky r o c a r d D i p t yc h S i g n e d l owe r r i g h t 70 x 10 0 c m

Untitle d 1970 I n k o n Ky r o c a r d S i g n e d l owe r r i g h t 70 x 10 0 c m

Cie l Inte r ie ur (Inne r s k y) 1971 I n k o n Ky r o c a r d D i p t yc h Signed middle right I n s c r i b e d by t h e a r t i s t o n ve r s o: “c i e l i n te r i e u r ” 70 x 10 0 c m

Untitle d 1973 I n k o n Ky r o c a r d D i p t yc h Unsigned 70 x 10 0 c m

Untitle d 1973 -1975 I n k o n Ky r o c a r d D i p t yc h Unsigned 70 x 10 0 c m

Untitle d 1974 -1975 O i l a n d wa te r c o l o r o n Ky r o c a r d D i p t yc h S i g n e d l owe r r i g h t 70 x 10 0 c m

T’ang Boogie, 1973, short film on an original idea of T’ang Haywen’s. © A.D.A.G.P - Paris

Biography

T’ang Haywen 1927 T’ang Haywen was born in Amoy, now called Xiamen. Like Canton, Shanghai and Nanking, Amoy was open to trade after the Opium Wars. The treaties of Nanking in 1842, Tientsin in 1858, and Peking in 1860, had burdened China with heavy war fines, a British embassy in Peking, and the handing over of Hong Kong to England. Following this came new territories and preferential customs tariffs. Catholic and Protestant missionaries were allowed to spread their faiths in China and acquire grounds on which to build religious edifices. China will end up having two Christian presidents after 1911. Though the Opium Wars had been brought on by China’s prohibition of the opium trade, this fact was not acknowledged by the treaties. However, in 1844, another treaty between China and the United States declared the opium trade illegal. The wealth of Hong Kong came from opium. In his book Ma mère et moi à travers la première révolution chinoise (My mother and I through the first Chinese Revolution), Cheng Tcheng speaks about opium in these words: “As soon as the drug was introduced, the Chinese family started to weaken. The Opium War upset Confucius’ tablets”. The southern population, exposed to foreign influence under the treaties, always attempted to resist the centralizing power of Peking (Beijing), literally the capital of the north. T’ang’s father was fully involved in southern China’s activities. As a trader, he often traveled between the different Chinese communities of southeast Asia: Formosa, Vietnam, and southern Malaysia. A photograph of the family was taken during a trip to Formosa in 1932. The inscription translates as: Family photograph taken on the first day of the first month of the seventh year of the reign of the Showa Era in Taizhong park. In 1895, Formosa had become a Japanese territory. After this date, the calendar referred to the Showa Era. In 1945 Formosa became the Republic of China, Taiwan.

1937 T’ang’s father had started to build a large house just before his whole family had to move to Vietnam, where he opened a silk shop in Cholon with a cousin. The family settled down on 20 rue de la Pagode in Cholon, the Chinese district of Saigon. Around that time, they adopted a Vietnamese pronunciation for their family name. Their character - 曾 - was read Zeng in Chinese and Tăng or Tằng in Vietnamese transliteration. As do all Chinese, they attached a great importance to the real ideogram of their name. The ideogram identifies the bloodline and is often the name of a clan. In Chinese history this attitude suffers no exception. So, in order to take into account the pronunciation in Vietnamese of his Chinese name, the young Zeng Tianfu chose to disregard the accent and to use an apostrophe between the T and the a of his name. From his first day at Cholon’s School, he became T’ang Thien Phuoc. In addition, he adopted a forename, written in 1946 on the flyleaf of his French-Chinese dictionary: first in Roman letters, Tseng – hai – woon, then in Chinese characters. As he had chosen to write T’ang instead of Tăng or Tằng, T’ang chose to write Haywen with a y and to make an exception to the Pinyin rule of spelling Haiwen with an i and he might have chosen that spelling to facilitate its reading by Westerners. In fact, the signature associating T’ang in Roman letters to Haywen in Chinese characters, is doubly convenient: it maintains the pronunciation of the name used from infancy and the Chinese nature of the first name in the ideogram written form. *1

1948-1960 T’ang arrives in Paris. He receives a degree in French Civilization and attends literature and Oriental language classes. He is then relatively comfortable, thanks to his father sending a monthly allowance. His friend, Raymond Audy, remembers that at this time T’ang lived in a hotel on Rue des St Pères and owned quite a few tailored suits. T’ang starts travelling and writes to his family from Germany, Switzerland, and Italy. When his father realizes that he is not attending medical school, he stops funding him. As a consequence, T’ang has to move out of his hotel and lives successively on the Quai des Grands Augustins, the Villa Seurat, and the Rue Guilmant in Meudon. Finally, he settles into a modest flat on the Rue Liancourt in Paris. In 1954 or 1955, after France had given up Indochina, and following the death of his grandfather, his family had returned to Amoy (Xiamen) and settled in the now completed house. Xiamen is located a few kilometers away from the Island of Xinmen, then an advanced post of the Taiwanese army. The whole area of Xiamen was a war zone at that time. T’ang had already spent half of his life away from China and had no intention of returning. He was free from the constraints and obligations traditionally imposed by the Chinese family on their eldest son. If he returned to China, he risked the possibility of not being allowed to leave; he had lost his status when France left Indochina and was now a stateless man. Later, he obtained a Taiwanese passport, which became a problem when the United States recognized China. In 1958, in a letter to his brother, he announced his absolute resolve to become a painter: “I have found my vocation in painting… I didn’t think it would please our parents… In order to be true, success must be totally sincere. Once a painter has found himself, he can work for others, he has to, but he cannot do it before… I couldn’t or wouldn’t give up this vocation.” He then started to exhibit his work and travel extensively. T’ang was still writing to his family, although his letters became scarcer and were always written in French. In 1958, they were sent from San Marino or Prague. He had joined the Antique Drama Group of the Sorbonne as an actor and performed all over Europe. In 1954, in Freiburg, Germany and in 1955, in Epidaure, Greece, T’ang played the part of the Corypheus announcing the defeat of Xerxes.

1960-1970 T’ang travels a great deal to Italy, Scandinavia, and the United States, and exhibits according to various opportunities and offers. He paints every day and sometimes embarks on long extended trips. For example, in 1965, he stays in the United States for several months and travels 20,000 kilometers before stopping in San Francisco where he lives at a friend’s house overlooking the bay. He produces ink and oil paintings. Most of these works are destroyed the following summer in a fire which burned through the hills of San Francisco. In August 1965, he writes to his brother: “I traveled as far as New Orleans, in the great south. It reminded me a lot of Vietnam where we spent most of our childhood... In New York, I saw a color documentary about China (the English title was China), it was directed by an English journalist, Felix Greene *2. I thoroughly enjoyed it. The last part is taking place in Amoy. It describes the construction of the pier.” In 1964, he painted his Homage to Cézanne.

In Xiamen, the family suffers during one of the campaigns launched during the Cultural Revolution. T’ang’s father is forced to wear a sign describing him as an enemy of the people and has to stand for an entire day on a platform built in front of his house. He also has to give up most of his house to lodge people who stayed there at least until 1994. T’ang sends packages, clothes and medicine to his brother who suffers from asthma. He receives photographs of his parents, nephews and nieces, and half-heartedly answers the pressing questions from his brother about his life as an artist. He makes the acquaintance of the painter, Balthus, and visits him in Rome, where Balthus is Director of the French Academy, and in Switzerland at the Chalais de Rossinière. He stays in Venice, occasionally returning to Paris only to learn that some exhibition proposals have been cancelled because his mail has been left unopened for months. Or perhaps he learned that one of his works, consigned to an art dealer, has been sold; giving him a reason to take another trip. At the start of the 1970’s, Suzanne de Coninck, who had exhibited T’ang’s work in the Beaune gallery in 1968, meets Paul Mellon, an important American collector who would eventually donate a thousand art works to the National Gallery of Art in Washington. Mellon expresses great interest in the work of T’ang and wants to meet with him. Suzanne de Conninck calls T’ang to give him this news. Tang’s reply is that he is very sorry but he has to leave for Brussels to attend a friends’ dinner, but that he would be delighted to meet Mr. Mellon on another occasion. T’ang has a nomadic lifestyle and his friends do not know one another. They come from different backgrounds, are of different religions, and hold different political views. The tolerance and friendship extended to T’ang is due to his spontaneity, his cheerfulness, his intellectual curiosity and his open mind. He gets along well in groups and families. He is always welcome when he calls, as if he had just left the day before. Everything is a joy to him; he savors life and always responds to friends who call in distress. In London, he meets the Indian dancer Ram Gopal *3 and also Dame Elizabeth Frink, sculptor of the Horse and Rider, still standing in Piccadilly, opposite the Ritz Hotel. She often invites him to stay in her Dorset house. He also meets Lucy Williams who later exhibits his work at the Ellingham Mill Art Society. He befriends Elizabeth Dun and Geoffrey Barker, the agent in England for Lui Shou Kwan, founder of the modern movement in Hong Kong. In 1968, he paints, in diptych format, a group of three nude women with black hair and dark skin, inspired by Gauguin’s exotic ideal and reminiscent of a detail in his major work, Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going? – now in the collection of the Boston Fine Arts Museum. On the back of the work, he writes: where do we come from?

1970-1980 T’ang responds to an invitation from the Maharani of Porbandar and visits her in India along with a friend, the painter, André Dzierzynski. He moves easily between the Maharani’s dwelling and Goa beach where he meets an American Chinese movie director, Tom Tam, who later shoots T’ang Boogie *4 in Paris. The exhibitions follow one after the other, as do his trips. Mary Tregear, curator of the Chinese section of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, writes to him in France to prepare an exhibition of his work in 1975. He also exhibits at the Nane Stern Gallery several times, as well as in museums and other galleries in Switzerland, Italy, and Germany. Following a friend’s advice, he meets with Dominique de Menil in the United States and she buys one or two of his diptychs. T’ang is not career oriented and, as his friend, Father Jean Irigoyen, writes about him in 1994: “A consequence of detachment is poverty. It naturally leads to experience each instant fully, with the characteristic yearning of those who have everything but own nothing.”

1980-1991 A few misadventures occur with galleries and art dealers, and he is mugged in the streets of New York. But beautiful exhibitions also take place, specifically at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Quimper and at the Musée du Château de Vitré. He continues to travel, including to Hawaii and to Japan with Jean-Paul Desroches in 1984. This is where, during a walk in the Shinjuku Park, they decide to publish a book together. It is a children’s tale, le Rêve de Ximei (the dream of Ximei), written by Jean-Paul Desroches and illustrated by T’ang. At that time, the western world starts to take interest in modern China and especially the period between 1949 and the mid-70’s. China starts to resume its position on the international scene. T’ang, however does not plan to return to or even travel to China. He adopts French citizenship and this facilitates his trips thanks to his French passport. The distance between him and his family has become too great. They live in different worlds. T’ang has freed his mind and has fulfilled himself and tends to lean towards transcendence while, understandably, his family lives in a world where obligations created by blood ties and total pragmatism prevails. When his mother and father die, correspondence stops completely. From 1980, every year during the Holy Week, T’ang joins a group of friends at the Abbey of Fontgombault in the Indre area, where he listens to Gregorian chants and paints. He prepares himself for baptism with Father Le Van Thang of the foreign missions and becomes a Roman Catholic, changing his first name to François. One should not see this conversion/naturalization as a symbol of a rejection of China, nor as an abandonment of the Taoist ideal, because for him, God and Tao are the same. Some say that Tao is a natural syncretism; others simply say that it is easy to take the Chinese person out of China, but not China out of the Chinese person. It is possible that T’ang desired to belong to a group or a community. To many friends he keeps silent about this major event in his life and to some friends he sates how the differences have vanished and in 1987 becomes the godfather of a child. His energy decreases but he still travels. In 1990, he goes as far as the city of Kutaisi in Georgia. Then In June 1991, after a lunch with friends, T’ang feels dizzy. Hospitalized, he learns a few days later that he only has a few months to live. The photograph taken sometime before by Yonfan Manshih already shows him thinner and looking exhausted. T’ang spends the last months of his life at Saint Joseph’s Hospital where his friends visit him. Some call him François, others Haywen or simply T’ang. At this time, he thinks of himself as “being lucky.” A friend, daughter of the Taiwanese sculptor Yang Yingfeng, brings him Chinese meals. He calls people he has not seen in thirty years and sometimes they visit him. He plans to travel once more to Italy but his condition worsens and he dies on the 9th of September. *1 see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T’ang_Haywen : section “ the name of T’ang Haywen” *2 Felix Greene (1909-1985) was a British-American who first visited China for the BBC in 1957. Some have declared that he should be seen as a Fellow traveler, a term describing people who are sympathetic to the goals of the communist states. *3 Bissano Ram Gopal (1912-2003) Indian dancer and choreographer who performed as a soloist. Deemed a modernist, he blended the classical Indian dance with western choreography, and along with Uday Shankar was among the first to showcase Indian classical dance. Polish critic Tadeusz Zelenski called him “the Nijinsky of India”. *4 Tom Tam visits T’ang in Paris. They conceive an experimental film with T’ang’s work. The 16 mm camera, that shoots 24 frames per second, can also work in stop frame animation, which means that single pictures are photographed consecutively. Tom and Haywen select and record continuous series of large diptychs, from the darkest to the lightest, from the fullest to the emptiest. They reverse the sequence, and alternate a short series of black shots with shots of bare paper and stills, lasting for a few seconds. The edited film, T’ang Boogie is amazing and probably one of a kind. The images flash by in a succession of short bursts like ink jets on paper. The white paper shots resemble sparks of light. The art works are shown as single size still frames, 48 images flash by within two seconds, forwards and backwards. The eyes get used to it, the brain memorizes and recognizes the images. The animated ink of T’ang Boogie, translates into reality the random paths of ink that echo life itself. This metaphor frees T’ang from the affectation of virtuosity and preciousness. He contributes to a process that is using his work as raw material. There, in accordance with the artistic ideal of Taoism, he finds a very contemporary resonance.

曾海文 1927年曾海文生於廈門，長於一個戰亂時代。廈門早於鴉片戰爭後，便與廣東、上海及南京等同被列為貿易開放口岸。1842年的南京條約、1858年的天津條約及1860年的北京條約簽訂後，中國面臨嚴重衝擊，不單要負起巨額軍費賠款，還要讓英國大使長駐北京，將香港割讓予英國，隨後還被逼失去新界主權，須制訂最惠國關稅等。天主教及基督教傳教士在條約之下，亦得以來華宣教及覓地興建教堂，間接影響了1911年後中國兩位基督教總統的出現。鴉片戰爭由中國銷煙引起，條約之中卻對此隻字不提，直至1844年，中美簽署的另一份條約才頒佈鴉片貿易是違法的。香港的富裕，其實亦源自鴉片。盛成在其著作《第一次革命中的母與子》（Ma mère et moi à travers la première révolution chinoise）如此描述鴉片：「引入鴉片後，華人日漸衰弱。鴉片戰爭與儒家思想背道而馳。」條約之下，華南人民深受西方思想影響，一直與首都北京處於對立局面。曾海文的父親是商人，活躍於華南，與東南亞的福爾摩沙、越南及馬來西亞南部等不同華人社區交往頻繁。1932年，曾家前往福爾摩沙時合照留影，照片上的題字寫著：家族紀念照在台中公園昭和七年一月一日攝影。福爾摩沙自1895年割讓予日本後，一直沿用日本年號，直至1945年中華民國（台灣）於當地成立為止。

1937年曾家大宅動工不久，曾父便不得不決定舉家遷往越南，與堂兄弟於堤岸開辦絲綢店，於西貢唐人街堤岸的寶塔街20號定居，並將家族姓氏翻譯為越南文。「曾」在國語中唸「Zeng」，在越南文中則讀「Tăng」或「Tằng」。自古以來，中國人都十分著重自己的姓氏寫法，認為姓氏是血脈與氏族的象徵，曾海文也不例外。在考慮過越南文的譯音問題後，年輕的曾天福（曾海文原名）還是選擇忽視越南文的重音規則，在「T」和「a」之間使用撇號「’」作為譯名。在堤岸學校（Cholon’s_School）上課的第一天，曾天福便成為了「T’ ang Thien Phuoc」，而到1946年，曾天福又在自己的法中辭典扉頁上寫上一個新名字「Tseng – hai – woon」，在這串羅馬字母之後，還跟著「曾海文」三個中文字。正如「曾」變成了「T’ ang」，而非「Tăng」或「Tằng」，「海文」二字的翻譯也成了「Haywen」而非「Haiwen」，將應該根據漢語拼音規則使用的「i」變了「y」，方便西方人拼讀。在曾海文的簽名中，羅馬字母「T’ ang」與中文字「海文」的配合相得益彰：將祖姓的音與名字的形恰到好處地保留。*1

1948至1960年曾海文前往巴黎，修畢法國人文學位，並研習文學與東方語言，在父親每月的生活費支持下，生活尚算愜意。其朋友雷文‧奧迪（Raymond Audy）猶記得，當年曾海文居於St Pères街道一家酒店，還擁有幾套度身訂造的西裝。生活無憂的曾海文開始周遊列國，於德國、瑞士和意大利寄出家書。後來曾父發現兒子並無習醫後，便即時停止對他的資助。曾海文被逼遷離酒店，先後在大奧古斯丁碼頭、瑟拉別墅及默東的Guilmant街道留宿，最後遷往巴黎利昂庫爾街一家簡樸的房子。1954至1955年間，法國撤出中南半島，加上祖父離世，曾氏一家決定回流廈門，搬回已落成的大宅。廈門與新門島只有數公里之遙，一度是台灣軍隊鎮守前線，陷於烽煙戰火之中。曾海文半生飄泊在外，一直沒有回國的打算，中國家庭傳統加諸在長子身上的束縛與重擔他早已卸去，而他亦知道自己一旦回國，或許就再也不能離開。在法國放棄中南半島管治權後，曾海文喪失國籍，成為無國籍人士，縱然之後取得台灣護照，卻又因為美國選擇承認中華人民共和國的地位，而令其身份再次失效。 1958年，曾海文在給弟弟的其中一封家書上表明他當畫家的決心：「我已經立志要當畫家…我知道父母不會為此高興…只有全心全意的成功才是真實的，一個畫家在發現自我之後，就可以開始，也必須開始為他人作畫，這在發現自我之前是辦不到的…我不會亦不能放棄這個志願。」之後他開始展出自己的作品，並四出旅遊。雖然信件不多，且都以法文書寫，但曾海文還是與家裡保持聯繫，1958年就曾經自意大利聖馬力諾和捷克布拉格寄出家書。參與了索邦大學（Sorbonne）的古代戲劇組（Antique Drama Group）後，曾海文以演員的身份在歐洲巡迴演出，於1954年及1955年分別到達德國佛萊堡及希臘埃皮達魯斯，擔任劇組合唱團領隊，負責唱出有關薛西斯戰敗一段。

1960至1970年曾海文經常周遊於意大利、北歐和美國之間，把握不同的機會舉行展覽，每天沉醉於繪畫之中，偶爾在漫長的旅程中開始一幅全新創作。1965年，曾海文在美國逗留數月，走過2萬公里，最後借宿於三藩市一個朋友家中，在海灣景緻環抱下創作水墨畫和油畫，可惜的是當中大部分作品都在隔年夏天三藩市的山火中付諸一炬。在1965年8月給弟弟的信中，曾海文寫道：「我最遠去到了最南端的新奧爾良，那兒讓我想起了童年生活的越南…在紐約，我看了一部關於中國的彩色記錄片（英文名稱是「China」），由一位英國記者菲力斯‧格陵（Felix_Greene）*2 執導，我很喜歡。片中最後一段在廈門拍攝，還談到那邊的碼頭建造工程呢。」1964年，曾海文創作了畫作《向塞尚致敬》（Homage to Cézanne）。

而在廈門，曾家在文化大革命時遭到批鬥，曾父被逼掛上人民公敵的罪名牌，站在大宅前搭建的平台上一整天，還得讓出家中大部分地方予別人暫住。而這一暫住，就一直到1994年。曾海文給患有哮喘的弟弟寄送包裹、衣服和藥物，收到雙親和外甥的照片，虛應著弟弟對他藝術生涯的追問。期間，曾海文結識了羅馬法國學院（French Academy）院長巴爾蒂斯（Balthus）。除了前往當地和瑞士Chalais de Rossinière探訪他外，他其餘主要時間都留在威尼斯，只會偶爾回到巴黎，翻翻數月未拆的郵件，在當中有連串因收不到回音而發出的展覽建議取消信，或者是藝術商通知他寄存的作品已經賣出，讓他得以又展開新一次旅行。蘇珊‧可寧（Suzanne_de_Coninck）曾於1968年於博訥的藝廊展出曾海文的作品，其後她又於1970年代初結識了曾海文的另一位貴人。保羅‧梅隆（Paul_Mellon）是美國一位知名收藏家，後來向華盛頓國家藝術館（National Gallery of Art）捐贈了數以千計的藝術作品，對推動藝術發展不遺餘力。保羅‧梅隆對曾海文的作品非常感興趣，希望可以與他見面，而蘇珊‧可寧就充當中間人，可惜連繫之時，曾海文已經約好出席朋友於布魯塞爾舉行的晚宴，唯有期待將來還有機會與保羅‧梅隆先生見面。曾海文就像遊牧民族，朋友都來自五湖四海，擁有各自的信仰、政見，且互不相識，卻都受到曾海文的即興隨性和樂天開朗吸引，在他的睿智探索和開放思想中尋得投契的地方。不論朋友或家庭聚會，他都可以自然融入其中，任何地方都隨時隨地歡迎他，就像他總是隔天就見的老朋友。對曾海文而言，萬事萬物都充滿喜悅，生命都是可貴可喜的，只要朋友遇上難題，他就會義不容辭幫忙。在倫敦，他結識了印度舞蹈家瑞姆‧哥柏（Ram_Gopal）*3及伊莉莎伯‧弗林克夫人（Dame Elizabeth Frink），還經常應邀到訪後者位於多賽特的大宅。伊莉莎伯‧弗林克夫人是雕塑《馬與騎士》（Horse and Rider）的創作者，這一著名雕塑現時還屹立於倫敦皮卡迪利，就在麗思酒店（Ritz_Hotel）對面。此外，曾海文在這期間還結識了藝術生涯上多位重要人物，包括助他於Ellingham Mill Art Society舉行展覽的露思‧威廉絲（Lucy Williams），以及伊莉莎伯‧頓恩（Elizabeth Dun）及傑佛里‧柏卡（Geoffrey Barker），後者正是於香港發起新墨水運動的呂壽琨於英國的代理。1968年，曾海文以高更（Paul Gauguin）現收藏於波士頓美術館（Boston Fine Arts Museum）的名作《我們從哪裡來？我們是誰？我們往哪裡去？》（Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?）為靈感，創作了一幅描繪三個黑頭髮和深膚色女人裸體的雙聯作，回應高更畫作中所展現的異國主義，呼應畫中細節，包括在雙聯作背後題上「我們從哪裡來？」。

1970至1980年應博爾本德爾王妃的邀請，曾海文與畫家朋友安德烈‧捷爾任斯基（André_Dzierzynski）一同到訪印度，在探訪王妃時順道前往果阿邦海灘，就在那兒遇上了美籍華裔導演譚閩生，促成了日後於巴黎拍攝的《曾海文舞曲》（T’ ang Boogie）*4。曾海文的展覽接連不斷，旅程亦隨之而來，1975年牛津阿什莫林博物館（Ashmolean_Museum）館長瑪麗．崔吉爾（Mary_Tregear）特別寫信到法國，邀請曾海文於館內舉行展覽。他的作品亦相繼在Nane_Stern_Gallery，以及瑞士、意大利及德國等地的博物館與藝廊展出。在朋友建議下，他又前往了美國，與多明尼克‧門尼爾（Dominique de Menil）會面，成功為部分雙聯作作品覓得知音收藏。但對曾海文而言，事業發展並不是首要的，正如他的朋友尚‧伊利戈延神父（Father Jean Irigoyen）在1994年時提到：「超然不群的結果就是貧窮，窮得可以充實體驗每分每刻，與得到一切、卻未曾擁有任何東西的人同樣有著強烈渴求。」

1980至1991年對曾海文而言，藝術發展並非一帆風順，他曾經在藝廊和藝術品買賣上遇過挫折，還試過在紐約街頭遇劫，但當然也有不少成功例子，像是在法國坎培爾美術館（Musée des Beaux-Arts de Quimper）和法國維特雷城堡博物館（Musée du Château de Vitré）所舉行的展覽。曾海文的旅遊腳步亦不曾歇息，1984年，他與戴浩石（Jean-Paul Desroches）一起暢遊夏威夷和日本，在新宿御苑漫步期間，萌生起共同創作的念頭，結合戴浩石的文字與曾海文的圖畫，促成了兒童讀物《思明的夢》（le Rêve de Ximei）的誕生。當時，西方國家開始關注現代中國，特別是1949年至1970年代中的發展。中國在國際舞台崛起，曾海文卻從沒有想過要回歸祖國的懷抱，甚至連旅遊探訪的想法也沒有。取得法國公民身份和護照後，曾海文可以隨心所欲地周遊列國，與家裡的隔閡日深，就如活在兩個世界的人。曾海文思想奔放，喜歡追逐自我夢想，嚮往美好的一切，但不難想像曾海文的家人處於一個相反的世界，在那兒血脈成為責任的束縛，腳踏實地的理念緊鎖著人生。在曾海文父母離世後，兩個世界之間的通訊便全然中斷了。自1980年起，每逢聖週，曾海文便會與一群朋友一起前往安德爾區的豐特貢博爾修道院（Abbey_of_Fontgombault），在格里高利聖詠作伴下作畫。其後，曾海文接受法國外方傳教會的黎文勝神父（Father_Le_Van_Thang）洗禮成為天主教徒，起教名為「François」。這樣的轉變／歸化並非崇洋排華，亦並無違背道家宗旨，因為對曾海文而言，「神」和「道」是同出一轍的。不過與其說道家學說容易自然融和歸化，倒不如說中國人離鄉容易，卻總是難捨鄉情。或許曾海文心底渴望真正成為群體或社區的一分子，縱然對許多朋友，他絕口不提洗禮的事情，卻曾經對部分摯友透露自己很高興與大家的分界消失了，更於1987年成為了一個孩子的教父。年紀漸大，曾海文體力不及從前，卻仍然堅持旅遊，1990年還遠赴過喬治亞國的庫塔伊西。1991年6月，曾海文與朋友午饍後突然感到昏眩，送院數天後才發現自己只剩下幾個月壽命。其實早從楊凡在不久前拍攝的相片就已經可以看到，相中的曾海文尤其消瘦，精神大不如前。曾海文人生最後的一個月，就在法國聖若瑟醫院（Saint_Joseph_Hospital）度過，一眾來探望的朋友中，有人叫他「François」，有人叫他海文或就只是「T’ ang」，而正是這些人讓當時的他覺得自己「是幸運的」。其中一位朋友，台灣雕塑大師楊英風的女兒給他帶來中餐；30年不見的朋友在接到他的電話後，還會偶爾來看他。曾海文原本計劃再遊意大利一次，可惜病情惡化，最終在9月9日與世長辭。

*1 參考http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T’ang_Haywen，「曾海文名稱（the name of T’ang Haywen）」分節 *2 菲力斯‧格陵（Felix Greene，1909-1985）是英籍美國人，1957年因參與BBC的製作而首度到訪中國。有人稱他為「同路人（Fellow traveler）」，指他為親共分子。 *3 彼山勞‧瑞姆‧哥柏（Bissano Ram Gopal， 1912-2003），印度獨舞者和排舞師，遵循現代舞風，將古典印度舞步揉合西方編排，與烏代‧香卡（Uday Shankar）同為古典印度舞先驅。波蘭舞評家塔德烏什‧澤連斯基（Tadeusz Zelenski）稱譽其為「印度的尼金斯基（the Nijinsky of India）」。 *4 譚閩生到巴黎拜訪曾海文，以其畫作拍攝實驗影片。拍攝所用的用16mm攝錄機幅率為每秒24格，亦可製作定格動畫，即連續拍攝多幅獨立影像。譚閩生與曾海文特別選擇拍攝一系列大型雙聯作，由最深最沉到最亮最白，由緊密充實到空靈遼闊，將鏡頭順序隨意顛倒，插入短暫的黑畫面、白紙鏡頭和靜止畫面，持續數秒，剪輯成奇幻而又獨一無二的《曾海文舞曲》（T’ang Boogie）。影片之中，連串畫面飛閃而過，猶如在紙上噴灑墨水，白紙則在期間泛起光芒，串連的48幅均一尺寸定格影像在兩秒內順序或倒序閃過，待雙眼漸漸適應後，畫像其實早已深刻於腦海之中。《曾海文舞曲》中的水墨動態隨意遊走，反映現實生命的無常，亦令曾海文頓悟到工藝與技術都是過猶不及。曾海文的作品成了影片拍攝原素材，印證了道家藝術原則，在現代美術中引起共鳴。

Zao Wou-Ki, Song Huai-Kuei, and Michel Lee attending the opening of T’ang Haywen’s exhibition at Galerie Nane Stern, Paris, 1975

T’ang Haywen 1927-1991 Exhibitions 1955 1957 1958 1959 1960 1963 1964 1965

1966 1968 1970 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979

Galerie Voyelles, Paris, France. Galerie Belvédère, Hergiswill am See, Lucerne, Switzerland. Galerie Belles Images, Rabat, Morocco. Musée des Oudaias, Rabat, Morocco. Ecole des Beaux Arts, Casablanca, Morocco. Musée de Montréal, Canada. Galerie Bradtke, Luxembourg. Galerie Saint Ferdinand Pimlico, Paris, France. Galerie Raymond Creuze, Paris, France Alaska Methodist University, Anchorage, Alaska, USA. Galerie Welter, Paris, France. Gallery Galaxie, Detroit, Michigan, USA. Midsommagarden Kulturzentrum, Stockholm, Sweden. Antioch College, Yellow Springs, Ohio, USA. Artist in residence at Ekely, the house of Edward Munch, Norway. Young artists association, Oslo, Norway. International Art Center, Detroit, Michigan, USA. Galerie Schmitt, Metz, France. Galerie de Beaune, Suzanne de Coninck, Paris, France. Galleria Citadella, Ascona, Switzerland. Ateneo, Madrid, Spain. Galleria Rialto, Venice, Italy. Roland, Browse & Delbanco Gallery, London, England. Musée de l’Abbaye de Ste Croix, Sables d’Olonne, France. Galleria d’Arte San Luca, Bologna, Italy. Galerie de L’Armitière, Rouen, France. Kunstgarten, Skorby, Denmark. Ellingham Mill Art Society, Norfolk Museum, England. Galeria Tonino di Campione, Campione, Italy. Galerie Nane Stern, Paris, France. Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, England. Galleria Costellazione, Genoa, Italy. Jacques Baruch Gallery, Chicago, Illinois, USA. Galerie du Manoir, La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland. Galerie Nane Stern, Paris, France. Galerie 21, Zurich, Switzerland, T’ang ink and watercolor. Musée Savoisien, Chambéry, France.

1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1989 1990 1995 1996

1998 1999 2002 2005 2007 2011 2013 2014

Musée des Ponchettes, Nice, France. Schmuck Galerie, Augsburg, RFA. Galerie Nane Stern, Paris, France. Art in Academy, National Academy of Science, Washington, D.C., USA. Musée des Beaux Arts de Quimper, France. November. Mellioud Gallery, Houston, Texas, USA. Musée des Beaux Arts, Château de Vitré, France. January Musée des Beaux Arts de Vannes, France. May Galerie Schumacher, Zwingenberg, RFA. Burgerzentrum, Château de Borbeck, Essen, RFA. Galerie Nane Stern, Paris, France. Maison de l’Amérique Latine, Paris, France. Orangerie de Landecy, Geneva, Switzerland. “Tian An Men 4 Juin – 4 Décembre Je n’oublie pas”, 牢記六月四日天安門, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France. Galerie Le Sacre du Printemps, Brussels , Belgium. Aarhus Kunstmuseum, Denmark, “Empire of the Dragons”, two works exhibited. Musée Océanographique of Monaco, Retrospective. Tradition et Innovation, Xubaizhai collection, traveling exhibition, Hong Kong Museum of Art, Singapore Museum of Art, Museum Fur Ostasiatische Kunst, Koln, RFA. Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taiwan, “T’ang Haywen, The Tao of Painting”. Alisan Fine Arts, Hong Kong, “T’ang Haywen, The Tao of Painting”. Musée de Pontoise, “Masters of ink, Chang Dai Chien, T’ang Haywen, Zao Wou-Ki”, 10/99-02/2000. Musée Guimet, Paris, France, “Paths of ink”, June-September 2002. Shiseido Gallery, Shiseido Foundation, Tokyo, Japan, “T’ang Haywen”, August-September 2002. University Museum and Art Gallery, Hong Kong, “The Power of Ink: Tang Haywen (1927-1991)”. Museum of Eastern Asiatic Arts, Budapest, Hungary, “Encre et Tao: T’ang Haywen”. Cultural Center Yishu8, 北京藝術文化中心, Beijing, China, “T’ang Haywen, inks and watercolors”. Feast Projects, Hong Kong, Art Basel Hong Kong, “T’ang Haywen, A modern Chinese painter”. de Sarthe Gallery, Hong Kong, Art Basel Hong Kong. de Sarthe Gallery, Hong Kong, “Pioneers of Modern Chinese Painting in Paris”.

Collections The Menil Collection, Houston, Texas, USA. Musée d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris, France. Musée Cernuschi, Paris, France. Fonds de la Direction des musées de la ville de Nice, France. Musée des beaux arts de Quimper, France. Musée des beaux arts de Vitré, France. Musée de Brive, France. Musée de Pontoise, France. Musée de l’Abbaye de Ste Croix des Sables d’Olonne, France. Musée des arts asiatiques-Guimet, Paris. M+ Museum, Hong Kong, SAR, China.

Publications Invitation, Galerie Saint Ferdinand Pimlico, Paris,Texts by Marc Alyn and Alfred Simon, December 1960. Catalogue, T’ang, Editions de Beaune, Galerie de Beaune, Suzanne de Coninck, Paris, France, March 1968. Catalogue, T’ang, Editions de Beaune, Galleria Cittadella, Ascona, Switzerland, July 1968. Fascicle T’ang, Galleria Rialto, Venice. Text by Julien Alvard. October 1968. Catalogue, T’ang, Galleria san Luca, Bologna 1972. Texts by Julien Alvard and Pierre Georgel Monograph T’ang, by Eros Belinelli, edizioni Pantarei, Lugano 1974. Catalogue, de la Galerie Nane Stern, Paris, 1975, 1978, 1982, 1986. Catalogue, T’ang Haywen soixante dix lavis, acryliques et aquarelles Musée du Château de Vitré 1984. China-Paris Taipei Fine Art Museum, 1988, T’ang is mentioned in the main text of the catalogue. Fascicle. Atelier Pierre Olivier. Text by Lorand Gaspar, October 1989. Patmo, Lorand Gaspar, éditions PAP, Lausanne 1989, illustrations by T’ang Haywen. A Chinese Portrait, Yonfan Manshih Hong Kong 11/91. Portrait of T’ang Haywen. La Maison Près de la Mer, Hommage à T’ang by Lorand Gaspar, PAP Lausanne 1992, illustrations de T’ang. Catalogue, Empire of the Dragons , Aarhus Kunstmuseum, Denmark 09/95, one work in catalogue. Catalogue, Tradition and Innovation, Hong Kong Museum of Art, 11/95, two works in catalogue. Catalogue, T’ang Haywen, Musée Océanographique de Monaco, 10/96-02/97. Catalogue, Le Tao de la Peinture, T’ang Haywen une retrospective, Taipei 08/97. Catalogue, Maitres de l’Encre, Musée de oise, 1999-2000, catalogue. Livre T’ang Paths of Ink, Editions de la Pointe, Monograph, 2000. Livre Le Rêve de Ximei, a tale by Jean-Paul Desroches, 2003, illustrations by T’ang Haywen. Catalogue, Inks by Jean Degottex, Gao Xingjian and T’ang Haywen, 2005 University Museum and Art Gallery, Hong Kong. Text by Tina Yee-wan Pang, curator at the University Museum, Hong Kong. Catalogue, The Power of Ink: Tang Haywen (1927-1991), published by Alisan Fine Arts, Hong Kong, 2005. Catalogue, T’ang Haywen, le dernier voyage, Centre culturel Saint Louis de France, Rome 2006.

Catalogue, Encre et Tao : T’ang Haywen, un peintre chinois de génie du 20ème siècle by Györgyi Fajcsak , 2007. Catalogue, T’ang Haywen, inks and watercolors, 曾海文水墨水彩, Yishu8, Beijing, China, 2011. Intoxication by Yonfan Manshih, chapter Paris wanderer, on T’ang p.14-29, 2012. Catalogue, T’ang Haywen, A Modern Chinese painter, Feast Projects, Hong Kong, 2013. Catalogue, Pioneers of Modern Chinese Painting in Paris, de Sarthe Gallery, Hong Kong, p.94-101, 2014.

Press Connaissances de Paris et de la France, Présentation de T’ang by Laslo Fulop, 1972. Paletten Goteborg, Suède by H. Johansson, reproduction d’une oeuvre en couverture, 1984. Orientations, Hong Kong, interview de Christina Chu, conservateur de la collection Xubaizhai, 1994. The Nineties, Hong Kong, article T’ang Haywen the Van Gogh of China《中國的梵高 — 旅法畫家曾海文的身世》article by Hifumi Arai, 1994. Nice Matin, article T’ang un voyage vers l’extase by Frédéric Altmann, 17 Novembre 1996. Artist Magazine, article T’ang Haywen by Chen Yin Deh, Mars 1997. Asiaweek, Hong Kong, article To catch a butterfly by Susan Berfield, August 1997. China News, article Portrait of a Chinese butterfly by Félix Schoeber, August 1997. Far Eastern Economic Review, article A Chinese in Paris by Julian Baum. December 1997. Artist Magazine, article Maitres de l’encre by Wang Yuling, December 1997. L’Oeil, is, article l’esprit de l’encre, December 1999. Journal des Arts, Paris article l’encre , le pinceau et la feuille by Olivier Michelon. Octobre 1999. Connaissance des Arts, Paris article peintres de l’encre, décembre 1999. Le Monde de l’éducation, Paris, article modernité de l’encre de China par Anne-Line Roccati. January 2000. Le Figaro, Paris, article “ L’âme des poètes” by Jean-Louis Pinte. January 12, 2000. Paris Match in China, article T’ang Haywen by Jean-Pierre Deyan, February 2002. Asian Art, London, interview of Philippe Koutouzis by Olivia Sand, June 2002. Le Figaro, Paris, article T’ang Haywen, les signes de l’âme by Armelle Héliot, June 15, 2002. Figaroscope, Paris, article T’ang Haywen un rêve de peinture, July 2002. Global AIDS Link, Washington, cover page with Les Hommes, 1964, November 2002. Le Monde, Paris, article Les noirs d’encre de T’ang Haywen, by Emmanuel de Roux. June 2002. Le Monde, Paris, article Encres et Signes, 23 August 2002. Art Today, Taiwan, article Les Chemins de l’Encre《迢迢墨路 — 記居美博物館曾海文水墨畫展》August 2002. Apple Daily, Yonfan’s weekly column, article Paris wanderer,《巴黎浪族》13 May 2012.

Filmography - Stage 1955 1963 1973 1985

Antique Drama Group of the Sorbonne, The Persians, by Aeschylus. In July T’ang plays the part of the Coryphaeus in Epidaure, Greece. Tale of the magic brush, directed by Madeleine Ricaud for the French television (ORTF), T’ang plays the part of the wise mandarin. Furen Boogie, short film shot in Goa in 1972, directed by Tom Tam. T’ang Boogie, an experimental short film using the large diptychs of T’ang Haywen directed by T’ang Haywen and Tom Tam. 30th anniversary of the Antique Drama Group of the Sorbonne, Paris. The Persians by Aeschylus. T’ang plays the part of the Coryphaeus.

Published on the occasion of the de Sarthe Gallery exhibition: T’ang Haywen - The Colours of Ink 18 September – 18 October, 2014

香港中環雪廠街16 號西洋會所大廈 8樓 8/F Club Lusitano 16 Ice House Street Central Hong Kong T. 852 21678896 F. 852 21678893 E. hongkong@desarthe.com www.desarthe.com Catalog: © 2014 de Sarthe Gallery Design: Franky Yuen, de Sarthe Gallery Printing: Asia One Printing Limited Credits: © A.D.A.G.P – Paris for all reproductions of T’ang Haywen works Text on page 5. Excerpt from Intoxication by Yonfan Manshih © Oxford University Press (China) Limited 2012 Image on page 8. T’ang Haywen by Yonfan Manshih, 1991, image published in “A Chinese Portrait” Image on page 10. Untitled, c.1980, watercolor on rice paper, signed lower right, 12 x 18 cm Image on page 11. Untitled portrait, c.1968, ink and watercolor on kyro card, unsigned, 70 x 50 cm Image on page 12. Left bottom: Untitled, c.1969, ink and watercolor on kyro card, signed lower right, 70 x 50 cm Image on page 12. Middle right: Untitled, 1967, watercolor on kyro card, signed lower right, 70 x 50 cm Image on page 13. Untitled, c.1967, ink an watercolor on Kyro card, signed lower right, 70 x 50 cm Image on page 15. Untitled, c.1985, Gouache and ink on Kyro card, signed lower right, 70 x 50 cm Image on page 68. T’ang Boogie, 1973, short film on an original idea of T’ang Haywen’s. © A.D.A.G.P - Paris Special thanks: Jean-Paul Desroches Philippe Koutouzis Yonfan Manshih