Ancient Arts in a New Land : Bold Strokes : California Colors Transform Chinese Artist

By Chinese standards, at age 39 Joseph Du of Monterey Park is a young artist.

Regardless of his talent, he says, in China he probably would wait decades before he becomes as well-known as his own teacher, who is 70. “I have to wait and wait and wait. In China, they judge your works by your age.”

An art teacher at two colleges in Shanghai, he has authored a widely circulated paperback book on home design. He has contributed articles on art to one of China’s leading newspapers. Speaking in English and at times through a translator in Mandarin, he said: “I am only a little bit famous in China. I want to try to be a famous artist.”

Hoping to infuse artistic techniques from the West into his traditional Chinese painting, Du decided to leave his lifelong home of Shanghai 13 months ago. He left China’s largest city, reluctantly saying goodby to his wife and their 9-year-old son.

“There was nothing more I could do. Only teach and paint. As a Chinese artist, you have to do something different (to succeed). You have to develop your own style, new and with a different spirit. So I started to think about what is outside--the other countries, other landscapes,” said Du whose primary focus is landscapes.

Three years ago, a friend who oversees hotel and restaurant businesses in Shanghai and Beijing offered to help him get to the United States.

Last week, the slender man stood before the drafting table that dominates the living room of his small apartment in Monterey Park. Gesturing first with one delicate hand and then the other, he grabbed imaginary paint brushes.

“I have two hands. One for West. One for East,” he said with a grin.

That notion, Du said, epitomizes his artistic odyssey and the gradual transformation of Du Zhi-Wei, artist from Shanghai, into Joseph Du, artist from Monterey Park.

In traveling West, Du said he followed the dictum of the Ming Dynasty master of art, Dong Qichang, who advised painters to read 10,000 books and travel 10,000 li (about 3,000 miles). He came to seek his artistic fortune in a country that, he says, “can accept every new thought, every new style” and made his way to what he considers the ultimate of that traditionless spirit, Southern California.

Soon, Du said, he hopes he and his family will be reunited, either in the United States or in China, after he completes his art studies here. Although he has yet to begin formal training, he has been accepted as a graduate student at Pasadena’s Art Center College of Design.

When he arrived here, he studied English at a Los Angeles language school, extending skills he developed in high school and college. He also spent hours in the art museums of Southern California and on a trip to New York, he filled two weeks by going to the Museum of Modern Art daily.

Eventually, he decided to take his own work to Southern California galleries to see what reaction he would get. He had no contacts, so he searched the Yellow Pages for addresses. Then, he began to show his work, representing more than 25 years of training from the time his first formal studies began at age 13.

Gallery owners admired his paintings--Chinese landscapes done in browns and blacks and influenced greatly by classical Zen Buddhist and Taoist artists. But the gallery owners told Du that if he wanted to adopt Western techniques, he should experiment more with color, American colors.

Intrigued by California’s weather and the effects of sunlight on the landscape, he began to play with color. “California weather is so different from Shanghai. Always raining, raining in Shanghai. Here, too much sunshine, too much color.”

‘Too Much Sunshine’

He laughingly recalled the ultimate in his initiation into California color. Last summer, as he made his way through Glendale Galleria, he experienced a visual rush of rose and aqua emanating from the mannequins and the racks of pastel-colored clothing. These were like no colors he had seen in Shanghai. “I saw some fashion in the stores, and I thought: ‘This is the American color.’ ”

At an art supply store, he sought out acrylics to match the mall colors. Then, in his studio, he combined them with California sunshine and shadows and using Chinese techniques, began to experiment on traditional rice paper.

In his apartment, he pointed to the results: a waterfall he painted last month. The images came from China; the striking rose color and light from California.

In January, he had his first gallery show, at Garfield Art in Monterey Park. There, he sold his first painting ever and “it felt like I had sold my baby.” In China, he said, because his economic needs were met through his teaching salary and his wife’s salary as a secretary, he never sold his paintings--he gave them away.

Meeting Other Artists

Here, his works command $600 to $2,000 at galleries where he has also started to meet other artists. At the Garfield Art show, he met Herbert Ryman, a longtime film industry artist whose credits include Walt Disney classics “Pinocchio” and “Fantasia.”

“I thoroughly appreciate his talent and his work. And we have a great deal in common,” said Ryman, whose own paintings have been inspired by extensive visits to Asia.

Du’s work also has been exhibited in Beverly Hills and Laguna Beach. In October, an exhibition is planned at the International Student Center Gallery at UCLA.

“I just fell in love with his work right away,” said Grace W. Yu, vice president of a Santa Monica art poster company, Museum Editions West. “He has a very, very soft touch in his Chinese painting. There are many, many starving Chinese artists in this country. Joseph is already doing better than average. The good thing is, he is very bright.”

Yu helped Du to set up a class in traditional Chinese painting, and she said she expects to publish as a poster two of his Western-influenced paintings.

Isn’t Worried

“But I told him: ‘You still do whatever you like to do for your own sake.’ ”

Du said he isn’t worried about losing the dignity of his work to commercialism. Through the centuries, he said, China has benefited from outside influences on its art. He said his art is no more threatened by the addition of California colors to his palate than is his identity threatened by taking the name Joseph, suggested by a friend here.

He is strong, he said, through years of living in China and years of experience that included copying master Chinese art works in Shanghai’s art museum.

A life-changing experience occurred when he was 19 in 1968. The Cultural Revolution had begun, and although he wanted to attend college, he was unable because Shanghai’s universities were essentially shut down. Bright, artistic teen-agers like Du were sent to farm the countrysides.

‘We Became Strong’

By train, he went more than 1,000 miles inland where he worked for two years, farming rice and vegetables under difficult conditions that included seldom having more than one meal of meat each month.

“In my experiences, I was a peasant and I worked in the factories during the Cultural Revolution. So we became very strong.”

Eventually, he returned to Shanghai where he supervised workers in a television and radio factory. After the Cultural Revolution ended, the restrictions lessened and universities were reopened, Du applied as one of 10,000 seeking the 40 spots in art studies at Shanghai Teacher’s University. He was accepted. Besides studying the traditional Chinese methods, he also studied his favorite Western artists: Van Gogh, Matisse and Gauguin. After graduation, he began teaching there.

“I don’t want to be an American artist,” he said, “because inside of me is Chinese, my spirit is still in China.”

Calls Home

Each Saturday afternoon he calls home to keep in touch with his wife and son and he sends money when he can. Because the government provides his family with inexpensive housing, (the equivalent of $1 to $2 monthly rent, he says), his wife can maintain their small apartment on her secretarial salary.

Although the lure of home pulls him, likewise, he said, he is attracted to what he experiences here. “The road for every artist is very narrow, difficult.”

Sitting at his studio table, filled with traditional Chinese black ink and brushes made from goat and weasel hair, Du pointed to one of his recent paintings, hanging on the wall. It depicts, he said, his feelings.

Dreamy Blend

An acrylic on rice paper, the large painting is a dreamlike blend of Eastern and Western style, shading and color, including a hint of rose that he first saw in the Glendale Galleria. In the foreground, a white horse bends its head to drink from a pool of water. A round moon, low in the sky, shines faintly from behind trees encircling the water.

Inspired by a Chinese poem from 1,500 years ago, the image came to Du last month. Paraphrasing the poem and a related Chinese saying he said: “I raise my head and see the moon. I lower my head and think about home and drink the waters of my motherland, again.”