Filozofski vestnih Letnik/Volume XXII • Številka/Number 2 • 2001 • 161-178 
THE NOTION OF "ORIENTALISM" IN THE 
MODERNIZATION MOVEMENT OF CHINESE 
PAINTING OF HONG KONG ARTISTS IN 1960s: 
THE CASE OF HON CHI-FUN 
EVA KIT W A H MAN 
Reflections on different perspectives of postcolonial writing 
I was born and brought up in a British colony that originated as a backward 
fishing port and then developed into a contemporary international city. It 
went th rough all the stages and stabilizations that Stuart Hall listed: 
industrialization; capitalism; urbanization; formation of a world market; social 
and sexual division of labor; distillation of civil and social life into public and 
private spheres; and identification of Westernization with the notion of 
modernity itself.1 Hong Kong was - and still is - struggling between an older, 
corporate, enclosed, defensive mentality that retreats into nationalism and 
national cultural identity, and a global postmodern one that at the same time 
overcomes and incorporates differences.2 Nothing about the culture of this 
colony is pure or homogenous, and the nature of hybridity discloses inner 
differences, contradictions, segmentations, and fragmentations. 
I remember I went to a protestant church every Sunday, learning from 
the Bible that I should not believe in any other God, and came home to eat 
lunch prepared by my grandmother that consisted of items from the rituals 
of worship presented to our ancestors. 
Questions about cultural identity such as "Who are we?," "Where do we 
come from?," "Which 'we' are we talking about when we talk about 'we'?" and 
so on did not bother us at the beginning. The Chinese colonized Other, most 
of whom were refugees from the mainland after Second World War, used to 
1 Stuart Hall, "Old and New Identities, Old and New Ethnicities", ed. Anthony D. King, 
Culture, Globalization and the World-system: Contemporary Conditions for the Representation of 
Identity. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), p. 45. 
2 Stuart Hall, "The Local and the Global: Globalization and Ethnicity", ibid., p. 32 
EVA K I T W A I I M A N 
know where they came from. But soon the people of Hong Kong experienced 
an identity crisis, before attaining a sense of belonging and before getting 
used to the contradictory tendencies that surround us, like the one between 
localism, new nationalism, and ethnic identities, contrasted with international 
communication highways.3 
The term "Hong Kong People" surfaced for the first time in local 
newspapers in 1967. Here I agree with Lawrence Grossberg that traditional 
and simple binary models of the political struggles of colonizer/colonized, 
oppressor/oppressed are no longer applicable to questions of personal 
identity. As former colonies become emergent spatial economies involved in 
particular forms of internationalization and globalization - which also involve 
new organizations and orientations - we need to ask why identity is the 
privileged site of struggle within the broader context of this new spatial 
economy. Grossberg describes the characteristics of this new economy as 
extremely variable, having an apparent autonomy and, simultaneously, also 
having an interdependence that intersects local, regional, national, and 
international flows, forces and interests.4 
In Hong Kong, we had a horrifying image of Communist China on the 
mainland, especially during the Cultural Revolution in 1960s when from time 
to time we saw bound dead bodies floating down Pearl River Delta to the 
border of Hong Kong. 
The reassertion of nationalist discourses relating to problems of identity 
was based less on the identification of nation and state than on the assumed 
identity between nation and ethnicity. Within the space of transition between 
the local and the global, the notion of globalization was introduced into the 
scene: a notion that connects the national to the international, and that 
provides a new transnational context. 
The question of "colonial" or "postcolonial" was also introduced. Here I 
accept Stuart Hall's distinction that colonization indicates direct colonial 
occupation and rule, and that postcolonial indicates independence from direct colonial 
rule. In postcoloniality, the growth of indigenous capital dominates forms of 
economic development; there is a neocolonial dependency on the Western 
capitalist world; and the politics that evolves from the emergence of powerful 
local elites manage the contradictory effects of under-development.5 
3 See what Catherine Hall said in "Histories Empires and the Postcolonial Moment", 
Iain Chambers and Lidia Curti (eds.), The Postcolonial Question: Common Skies, Divided 
Horizons (London & New York: Routledge, 1996), p. 65. 
4 Lawrence Grossberg, "The Space of Culture, the Power of Space", ibid., pp. 169-170. 
r' Stuart Hall, "When was 'The Postcolonial'? Thinking at the Limit", ibid., pp. 247-248. 
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TIIK N O T I O N OF »ORIT.NTALI.SM« IN TIIE MODERNIZATION MOVEMENT OF CHINESE PAINTING ... 
Working with this definition, Hong Kong in the 60s had begun to step 
into the postcolonial and global transcultural context. According to the 1961 
census, the population in Hong Kong was more than three million. Over six 
thousand industrial enterprises had been set up, with about 30 thousand 
employees. There were also new records set in heavy trading in the stock 
market. Wages increased, and inflation resulted. During the 60s, colonization 
made the notion of ethnic absolutism untenable: culture started becoming 
diasporic. 
Colonization operates as a system of rule, power, and exploitation, and 
also as a system of knowledge and representation, while in the postcoloniality 
, there involves all forms of transverse, transnational, and transcultural 
movemen t s that were always already inscribed within the history of 
colonization. Thus, hybridity, syncretism, multidimensional temporalities, 
double inscriptions of colonial and metropolitan periods, and forms of 
transculturation are all assumed in spaces where the so-called decolonization 
are in effect.'' 
So I agree that the postcolonial is a moment of culture that is preoccupied 
with questions of identity. It involves a history of the subject's recognition 
and reworking of memory, which is also simultaneously an active process of 
forgetting and remembering.7 
What about postcolonial writings and beliefs? What forms of strategy and 
problems do they have to consider? It is commonly held that when people are 
confronted with a particular form of modernity in the form of globalization -
that is, confronted with a culture and an economy and a set of histories 
inscribed elsewhere, and that is so monumenta l and transmitted with 
extraordinary speed - local and marginal subjects can only represent and 
reflect on themselves by their own hidden histories. Thus, the return to the 
local is often a response, since the space of marginality is also powerful." We 
have to agree in any case that ethnicity is the necessary space from which 
people speak, though when threatened by the global forces of postmodernity, 
this space can sometimes assume the form of fundamentalism. 
We can further explain the ultimate return of identity to history by citing 
Deleuze: "How is it possible to speak without presupposing, without 
hypothesizing and subjectivizing or subjecting what one speaks about? How is 
it possible not to speak on the presupposition of a thing, but to say the thing 
l! Ibid., pp.251-254. 
7 Catherine Hall, "Histories Empires and the Postcolonial Moment", ibid., pp. 66-76. 
8 Stuart Hall, "The Local and the Global: Globalization and Ethnicity', Culture, 
Globalization and the World-system: Contemporary Conditions for the Representation of Identity, 
pp. 33. 
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EVA K I T W A I I M A N 
itself?'"-' Nevertheless, we should bear in mind that this is not a question of 
history but of orientations and directions: i.e. a question of a geography of 
becomings.10 The complication is that ethnic culture is not a static entity. 
Ethnic culture is always under immediate narration and reconstruction and 
is animated by subjective desires and interests. Therefore, as many postcolonial 
scholars have pointed out, the notion of ethnic identity is always historicized, 
dynamic, and contradictory. Whoever speaks about ethnic identity tends to 
speak across boundaries and frontiers and tends to construct an ideal identity 
according to one's perspective. 
A number of postcolonial scholars have also discussed the problems of 
"troubled homecomings." These problems are related to a suspended space 
in which the subject inhabits an ambivalent position. First, the scholars said 
that because there is no original home, the subject is always articulating its 
absence and writing the impossibility of a return to a homeland. The writing 
is itself the suspended space of a return to selfhood through the dialogic, 
which is an interrogative encounter in the subject's language with an internal 
or external other. 
The subject's writing is the territory of loss and memory, and is also the 
site of an imaginary and unfulfilled journey home. Yet at the same time the 
subject indicates the desire to inhabit a new home in being and becoming, 
though the subject is not completely assimilated where it is hoping to go. The 
subject is alienated and displaced from both a native and adopted land, has 
an obscured and submerged cry, as it negotiates and articulates in the poetic 
text the dramatic experience of a precarious condition." 
In what follows, I would like to use the work of a brilliant Hong Kong 
painter to demonstrate the subject's dissonant and conflictual identities, to 
see how the subject seeks a way of survival by working out a different sense of 
"home" on the borderline between belonging and exclusion. The painter's 
work opens up a "distantiating" act of meditation and functions as the poetry 
of an alienated and displaced subject.12 If the work is viewed as a response to 
reality, then this reality should be understood as "becoming," as continuously 
mutating within and across the space of existence. The reality is defined by 
the in-between or milieu that it traverses.13 The new cultural identity involved 
'•' Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia 
(Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1987), p. 23. 
10 Lawrence Grossberg, "The Space of Culture, the Power of Space", Iain Chambers 
and Lidia Curti, p. 180. 
" Demetrio Yocum, "Some Troubled Home Comings", ibid., p. 221. 
12 Ibid., p. 222. 
13 See footnote 10. 
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T H E N O T I O N OF »ORIENTALISM« IN TIIE MODERNIZATION MOVEMENT OF CHINESE PAINTING . . . 
is also a construction that draws on new repertories, and we will see if its 
articulation can be read as both a descriptive and political practice conditioned 
by particular contexts and effects. 
Before we proceed, it is worth mentioning another point Stuart Hall made: 
colonization is part of an essentially transnational and transcultural global 
process; it produces a decentered, diasporic, or global rewriting of earlier, 
nation-centered imperial grand narratives; it supplements and simultaneously 
displaces the binary of center-periphery; and the global and local reorganize 
and reshape each other. The theoretical value of postcolonial writing lies 
precisely in its refusal of the distinction of here and there, then and now, and 
home and abroad. Hall also said that postcolonial writing represents a response 
to a genuine need to overcome a crisis of understanding produced by the 
inability of old categories to account for the world.14 We should note that 
identity is always partly a narrative and partly a form of representation. Identity 
is not something formed outside but is narrated in one's own self. Finally, we 
should also note Heidegger's saying that the nomadic writing of exile is both 
the space of alienation and reconnection, where the "far cry" still resounds, 
and that only our own strenuous hearing could make sense of the sounds.'5 
The Case of Hon Chi-fun: His Art and Aesthetics 
Hon Chi-fun was born in Hong Kong in 1922, the first child of a cab 
driver. He was given a set of books on Chinese painting techniques when he 
was ten by his father. He thought his father must have noticed his burning 
desire to get started in painting. Just before the Japanese invasion of China in 
1937, Hon learned classic Chinese painting techniques from a school teacher. 
He and his family relocated to Mainland China during the invasion and he 
got into farming. 
In the prewar per iod of the 40s, Western painters using Western 
techniques dominated Hong Kong's painting scene, and Westerners who ran 
local art organizations outnumbered the Chinese painters using traditional 
Chinese techniques. This situation existed until numerous Chinese painters 
immigrated to Hong Kong from southern China during the Japanese invasion. 
Hon returned to Hong Kong for a short while after the war, but quickly left 
for Shanghai and got into the import-export trade before moving south to 
Canton. Then he moved back to Hong Kong. This was the period in his life 
14 Stuart Hall, "When was 'The Postcolonial'? Thinking at the Limit", pp. 247-257. 
,r> Demetrio Yocum, "Some Troubled Home Comings", ibid., p. 225. 
1 6 5 
EVA KI R W A I I M A N 
when he had the most contact with China, but it was also a period of loss and 
ambiguity. In his autobiography he said about this period: 
"I seemed to have achieved nothing. I had to release my inner self and 
live out my true nature. I had to liberate, from pure hidden impulses or 
unintended scribblings, my passion to paint by actually taking up the 
brush to work."10 
During that period, Western artistic techniques had dominated the scene 
in Hong Kong for several years after World War II. Western painting, still life 
and realism in particular, flourished in galleries and museums. The work of 
local painters was not of the highest quality at that moment, as they had only 
minimal exposure to the great masterpieces as well as to intellectual discourses 
about "foreign" art. A few Chinese painters who had returned from studying 
Western art abroad taught the only painting classes. 
In Hong Kong in 1954, Hon, self-taught, was painting mostly landscapes 
and portraits in oil. He sketched freely throughout the territory, capturing 
breathtaking scenes of sunrise and sunset. He became a friend with Luis Chan, 
a local painter-pioneer, and the two soon accompanied each other on painting 
tours. Hon was greatly influenced by Chan, who was also self-taught, mostly 
by his boldly experimental and aesthetic thinking. Chan's oil painting did 
not practice realism. He described art as "creative imagination" and saw beauty 
as "the expression of consciousness and emotion." 
For Chan creativity was the spontaneous outgrowth of the artist 's 
communication with nature or objects, and one's style is a way to create one's 
artistic symbols. He had explored schools of modern painting such as Cubism, 
Expressionism, and Abstractionism, a practice that Hon also picked up, and 
later favored monotype printing, hard-edged colored-field landscape, and 
spray-gun painting. The two shared the view that art is the result of the subject's 
own interior life, and insisted on the absolute freedom of artistic expression. 
We should note that this freedom includes freedom from the burdens of both 
cultural heritage and nationalism. 
In 1963 Hon metLu Shoukun, another pioneer-painter, who told him all 
about the struggles of being a Chinese artist in the British colony. Hon admired 
Lu and learned much from his views about the Chinese classic masters and 
theories of ink painting, though not totally identified with all of his ideas. Lu 
believed that the growing prosperity of Hong Kong, which by the 60s had 
become a world-city, provided some favorable conditions for his new painting 
Chi-fun Hon, Space and Passion: The Art of Hon Chi-fun (Hong Kong: Yan-chi Choi, 
2000), p. 18. 
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TIIK N O T I O N OF »ORIT.NTALI.SM« IN TIIE MODERNIZATION MOVEMENT OF CHINESE PAINTING ... 
movement. The international art community was more interested in a new 
genre that developed from local cultural innovations than in weak imitations 
of Western schools. Lu classified modern ideas combined with the Chinese 
tradition as an "adaptation" that should not be separated from the "root" or 
foundation. 
In traditional Chinese aesthetics the "root" is the spiritual cultivation of 
the artist, which according to Lu, was based on ancient Confucian principles 
and teachings such as Chung Yung (The Doctrines of the Means) and Da Xua 
(The Teachings), both of which promote self-cultivation and self-discovery in 
terms of moral reason. By returning to the root, painters could find their own 
style that would also reflect their personality and ways of life. According to 
old Confucian teachings, this return to one's root or inner self could also 
transcend temporal, spatial, and cultural differences. Lu's vision did offer 
solutions to artists struggling with a crisis of cultural identity in Hong Kong, 
who were often confused and ungrounded in their hybrid cultural situation. 
The most important goal, Lu believed, was self-discovery. For only through 
self-discovery could one form original ideas, and this process should always 
come before artistic form. To achieve innovation in art, he always insisted, 
was to seek self-knowledge in one's cultural tradition, a foundation that artists 
could build on later. 
A deeper analysis will reveal a reading connection of Lu's theory of art 
with Hon's works, though Hon might not like to be claimed an identification 
of his work with Lu's ideas. In the 50s Hon's oil paintings focused mainly on 
scenery, and were generalized as "Western." Recognized as Fauvist, his strokes 
were imbued with a strong personal style, in addition to his use of bold and 
bright colors. In the 60s, Hon's style went through a great transformation. 
His colors became more explosive and bordered on an "inertia of the solid" 
while at the same time began to detach from a "reliance of the solid." Around 
1961-1962, Hon's artistic identity began to emerge. He entered the abstract 
period, using black-and-white to highlight the dramatic contrast between the 
solid and the void. Black Crack (Plate 1, 1963) and Colloquy in 1964 were 
representative of this period. These works had been viewed bearing an air of 
substance, g randeur , and depth while being abstract, "for the sake of 
expressing the heart of the Oriental individual" in the words of one critic on 
a local newspaper. 
Critics said that the "Oriental" quality in Hon's works was becoming more 
prominent. This "Oriental" quality apparently is constituted by a combination 
of huge swaths made by a big brush and calligraphy made by little brush. Hon 
worked Chinese calligraphy and poetry into his paintings. Later he even used 
tracings of stone inscriptions as a substitute for actual calligraphy, and he 
1 6 7 
EVA K I T W A I I M A N 
Plate 2, Bath of Fire, 1968, 132 x 132 x 3 cm, oil, acrylic and serigraphy on canvas 
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TIIK N O T I O N OF »ORIT.NTALI.SM« IN TIIE MODERNIZATION MOVEMENT OF CHINESE PAINTING ... 
experimented with collages of mixed media, like metal, sand, and stones. 
Desert Walk represented this latter period. Soon there was Bath of Fire (Plate 2, 
1968). The work was composed of square and circle patterns delivered 
predominantly in strong contrasting red and green, silk-screened with words 
and with an image of a recent photo of the artist. Critics described it as a fiery 
autobiography of the artist. From that point on, Hon began to venture into 
new high-tech materials like acrylic paints. 
After finishing Bath ofFirein 1968, Hon traveled to Europe and the United 
States. When he got back to Hong Kong, he simplified his work considerably. 
His paintings were almost without line, shape, form, or even color: as examples, 
Karma Focus (1971) or The Way of Lotus (Plate 3, 1974). For these paintings, 
Hon obviously employed - instead of the brush - more modern materials, 
like a spray gun. The spaces he illustrated were neither defined nor abstract, 
but were somewhat serene, with a detached aura and harmony. Critics said 
that in the 70s and 80s, Hon rejected the use of forms. He reduced objective 
images to their purest forms, to the circle, for instance. His personal style 
expressed his interior world as well as his feeling and understanding of nature 
and the universe. 
Plate 3, The Way of Lotus 1974, 132 x 132 em, acrylic on canvas 
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EVA K N W A I I M A N 
Whenever Hon Chi-fun's early works are discussed, they are related to 
the concepts of the modern and the "Oriental." Did his transition from his 
early "Western" painting of scenery to the abstraction of his circles in the 60s 
really ref lec t the so-called "moderni ty" of the 60s? Shortly a f te r , he 
incorporated Buddhist scriptures and Chinese poetry into his paintings likes 
Mountain Faith (1971). Do the concepts of the modern and the "Oriental" 
divide Hon's works into two categories? Can these two concepts be melded 
grounding on a deeper understanding of a unitary base? Nevertheless, we 
should bear in mind that this is not a question of history but of orientations 
and directions: this is a question of a geography of becomings. What could 
these concepts disclose about the nature of postcolonial expression? 
At some point in the 60s when Hon was riding the hightide of modernity, 
he said that the time of abstract expression in painting was over: "Painting 
these days is enjoying its pure, orderly and rational form; it no longer 
emphasizes the individual's spiritual world," he said in 1965. At that time, he 
longed for the construction of a new "absolute" identity, and he believed that 
to be modern is to be "perfect" in the scientific era. However, by purity, order, 
reason, and perfection, he was referring mainly to the spectrum of engravings. 
Hon rejected his favorite impressionism and zealously tried out all kinds of 
brand-new images. But he has never been without his personal view. Order 
and precision, according to him, are the result of personal longing, total 
commitment, and a reordering of chaos. He said that he experienced an 
unbearable sensation when he was producing those brand-new images, as he 
disclosed in an interview that at that time he was emotionally involved with a 
white woman from the United Kingdom, while still tied to a Chinese Marriage. 
Under traditional constraints and struggles, the sensation was what set in 
motion his assault on the limits of reality and his quest for a new world. 
In retrospect, Hon's tireless persistence can be interpreted as an artist's 
venture into the forbidden zone in order to fulfill a desire for rebirth. The 
attempt to meld what is defined and abstract, what is substance and spirit, 
could be seen as reflecting the yearning of the lonely artist's soul. So that 
Hon's artistic endeavors and his emotional upheavals are likewise two sides of 
the same coin. 
In his autobiography reflecting his life of the decade, Hon said: 
"Along myjourney of exploration, I somehow came across an unbearable 
sensation. Such sensations sparked off my impulse and my strong 
resistance against the constraint of reality. Constraints and resistance 
were interactive and mutually stimulating. I was driven to plunge into 
new horizons of creativity, and being encouraged to be even more so by 
friends involved in new thoughts and new art movements. We talked 
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T I I K N O T I O N OF »ORIT.NTALI.SM« IN TIIE MODERNIZATION MOVEMENT OF CHINESE PAINTING ... 
about Existentialism, the East and the West and the awakening of the 
modern age. The upsurge of thinking in my mind ignited my strong 
passion to reveal all in my heart. Those burning desires never ceased to 
stimulate my creativity, which all came through in my works, be they 
landscapes or experimental paintings, of realism or abstractionism. While 
I strove to get away from the past, my sub-consciousness was still 
considerably bound by tradition. My work was rather the motion of the 
still, and the stillness of those in motion - a true revelation of my inner 
self. Excessively occupied by such passion, I screamed alone, only faintly 
echoed by the darkness around me."17 
What is modern? When Hon was asked about his view of what was modern, 
he maintained that what was modern was a question of "being" and "to be". 
Creativity at that period was viewed as self-therapy, helping artists to seek 
alternative satisfaction and to survive in a time of trouble. Not that terribly 
important to Hon at that time, were prevalent trends in the West, like Abstract 
Expressionism, Op Art, Photo-Realism, and so on. The precision in his works 
was not meant to ape the modern trend. Hon said to be modern was simply to 
"live to the fullest," and that in the context of the production of art, "living to 
the fullest" was the artist's existential choice. 
In his seminal Bath of Fire of 1968, Hon had included the text: "I try to 
calm myself down, spirit in motion, hands in motion, looking up at the finite 
body with an infinite, me anxiously painfully undividedly persistently offering 
heaps of hope and burning faith." Only the artist himself knew exactly what 
the terms anxiety, pain, hope, and fire in this text meant according to his own 
experience. However objective one tried to be, reality would always be simply 
the point of departure - instead of the result - of the production of art. 
Some critics had long been able to point out the explosive strain and 
spontaneity in Hon's works. Critics said that his desire for change by the means 
of the control of reason - expressed by his use of black color in an early work 
Black Crack - was prompted by a powerful urge that he had suppressed. 
Critics thought that Hon's suppression - and outburst - o f inner urgings drove 
him to pour out his entire personality and life experiences onto the canvas. 
What kind of suppression might that be? According to Choi Yan-chi, Hon's 
present wife, it might be the desire to break through the old world's value 
system into the new, which could be another interpretation of the meaning 
of the modern. For Hon, being modern is a detachment. Take as an example 
his use, since the 60s, of the circle, which is a symbol of purity and the ideal. 
With a perfect understanding of its features, close observation of its texture, 
17 Ibid., p. 20. 
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EVA K I T W A I I M A N 
and accompanied by continual practice and refinement, Hon made the circle 
the reference point for absolute expression. It seems more appropriate to 
call his exper ience of the circle "an adven ture of the hear t . " In his 
autobiography, here is what he said about his use of circles: 
"Circles add for me a yet more spacious fourth dimension, occupying 
almost the entire painting while giving the work a symbol of existence. 
The circle may be you, or me or be the him or her, other than us. 
Overshadowing the boundless earth, the circle was like a hanging cloud-
immersing into infinity. I was determined to crystallize my emotions, 
and the instinctive enlightenment and everlasting sentiments in my 
paintings."1" 
To many critics and viewers, the superimposing forms and changing colors 
of the circle express Hon's feelings and understanding about nature and the 
universe. Rather, I would interpret his use of the circle as an idealized 
projection of his inner life. We can see this when we track the trajectory his 
early works Flower Enigma (1968), E is the name (1971), Chasm Forever (1971), to 
his later White Encounter (1987), and Here and Beyond (1985), which are closer 
to humankind in their expression of longing, interaction, control, and regret. 
We can see through this tracking that the mysterious circle carried with it not 
salvation of a secular religion, but the artist's inner peace after emotional 
explosion and unrest. 
The circle in Hon's works seems to be poised on a high level, looking 
back in contemplation at the turmoil of life, sustaining the painter's subjective 
intent, artistically and existentially. Confronted and confused by - and lost in 
- another world on his return from abroad, the painter had an urgent need 
for reconstruction, simplification, and order in both his life and his work. 
And the infinite possibilities of the circle provided an appropriately perfect 
solution. 
When Hon first drew the circle, he incorporated the Chinese character 
of "I" into more than ten of his works; within, without, above, below, in f ront 
of and behind the circle, named them as My Profiles (Plate 4,1969) The Chinese 
"I" became integrated into the structure and rhythm of his works. How the 
subject faces up to his current existence best illustrates H o n ' s interpretation 
of what was modern. He said: 
"In the beginning, there's got to be 'me'. With 'I' begets the group and 
the world. The issue is whether I can let go, if yes, there is progress, if 
no, I am at least true to myself. The circle is me; my form of existence, 
18 Ibid., pp. 22-23. 
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T I I K N O T I O N OF »ORIT.NTALI.SM« IN TIIE MODERNIZATION MOVEMENT OF CHINESE PAINTING . . . 
Pla te 4, My Profiles 1969, 40 x 40 cm, acrylic, serigraph, oil and paper on canvas 
the thing I worship. It embodies the contemporary environment and 
space. It is the perfection I'm after."1'-1 
In spite of Hon's insistence that his work is beyond what people meant by 
the abstract in art history, a lot of people still associate his work with Abstract 
Expressionism and consider it as the backbone of his "modernity." If the 
starting point of the abstract is what is an object's true feature and form, then 
Hon's work had been abstract for a while before being transformed into a 
more personal world. That is to say, a world endowed with deeper meaning 
and points toward a freedom that supercedes everyday existence. The painter 
knew well the limitation of desire. Yet he found it impossible to find a sense of 
peace in his environment, and this was why he longed for purification. 
But abstraction on a broader sense may also carry a wider meaning than 
its convention in art history, such as "leading to the emergence of a stable, 
orderly, and understandable form," "transforming time into space in order 
to keep time still," "leading to the formation of a new perfect order," and "the 
"-' Ibid., p. 23. 
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EVA K I T W A I I M A N 
exercise of strict contemplation to control feelings of subjective consciousness." 
The meaning of abstraction, then, in Hon's works, is not the disclosure of the 
true nature of the object, but identification with the artist's ideal. 
Besides the modern, people used to discuss the quality of the Oriental in 
Hon's works. They see the value of Hon's art in his exposure of the "Oriental 
heart." The following are some common main features: (1) Ink-wash effect 
and Chinese calligraphy;20 (2) Inclusion of ancient Chinese objects;2 ' (3) 
Oriental philosophy and words.22 But the one important point about being 
Oriental is that its implicit expression cannot be achieved in a contrived 
manner. The above list is derived mainly from the perspective of form. 
The nature of being "Oriental" should be a deeply cultural concept of 
thought. Speaking about aesthetic judgment in terms of traditional Chinese 
philosophy of Confucianism and Taoism, the interpretations of Neo-Confucian 
philosophers Mou Chung-san and Tang Jun-I, both senior and respectable 
contemporaries of Hon, are the most elaborate. 
In Chinese aesthetic experience, Mou said there is not necessarily an 
object or an objective: An objective appearance would disclose itself once 
there is an enlightenment of the subjective heart about what one wants to 
know. This is different from objective presentation as defined by "cognitive 
relationship" in Western epistemology. It is not a question of "presentation" 
but one of "realization" originating f rom the heart . Mou said that this 
rea l iza t ion comes abou t when the h e a r t is ful ly i l l u m i n a t e d . T h e 
"enlightenment" and "illumination" refer to a kind of "Eureka" on a spiritual 
level. Tang further believed in a kind of "entirety perception" in the interaction 
between heart and object, whether it is objective or constructive. The subjective 
heart slowly discards this "perception" and objectifies its content. Selection 
by the heart (artist subject) would ensue and then evaluative judgment follows. 
20 Ink-wash is supposedly in Hon's canvasses. There we find sweeping swaths of big 
brush displaying the ink in both dark and light shades and also the incorporation of 
Chinese calligraphy of poetry. The integration is perfectly harmonious, carrying with it a 
slight literary taste, and stands as an exploration of emptiness and darkness. Strokes are 
implicit and filled with Chinese imaginary. The concept of blankness is well used. In the 
balance between in and out, blankness introduces the shift of space. 
21 Ancient Chinese objects like carved stones of the North-Wei dynasty; metal prints 
and rubbings of stone inscription are placed onto the canvas. Special care is devoted to 
the treatment of space, and the displacement between the solid and the void. 
22 Hon's fondness for Oriental philosophy and Buddhist scriptures is more a fulfillment 
of the heart than mere garnishment. He once said the visual form and display of the sutra 
words like "sumi-e", "stream of forgetfulness" carry with them special beauty; but he 
nonetheless is more concerned about their symbolic implication, as spiritual tool of 
communication to ease the troubled mind. 
1 7 4 
T I I K N O T I O N OF »ORIT.NTALI.SM« IN TIIE MODERNIZATION MOVEMENT OF CHINESE PAINTING . . . 
Both selection and judgment are based on the criteria of the life activities 
and spiritual interest of the subjective self, depending largely on one's aspired 
form. 
Generally speaking, aesthetic judgment refers to the initial stage of contact 
between heart and object. Western aesthetics divides the cognitive stage into 
three: intuition, perception, and imagination. This is a conclusion based on 
the assumed relationship between the subjective according to Western 
epistemology. On the other hand, Chinese aestheticjudgment focuses mainly 
on the heart 's drive. The purer the heart's activities are (moral entity as in 
Confucianism), the more refined the object becomes. The sentiment of 
aesthetic judgment develops under the principle and process of "human 
nature over feeling." The art of creation reflects the spontaneous response 
from the heart, which is then objectified and externalized to become an object 
of art. Artistic creation is an accomplishment achieved in the unified and 
indivisible spirit between subject and object, reflecting the spiritual and 
emotional form of the subject's aspired life. This is also the truth about the 
unity of solid and void, spirit and form in Chinese painting. The following 
citation from Tang on Chinese art spirit best reminds me of Hon's painting. 
The citation also helps me to understand Hon's comments on his own work 
as being neither expressive nor abstract. 
"There is no talking of reality, as it is without relative objective existence. 
To be expressive, there has to be a subject to express. All kinds of Chinese 
art have a common point, not in the expression of objective beauty or 
calling from god, but to express the temperament and perspective of 
the individual." 
The subject "I," not simply a pouring out of personal emotional response, 
releases such an expression after the restraint of selection and evaluative 
judgment . After studying the precise and insightful related theories by Tang 
and Mou, one finds in Hon Chi-fun's circle an almost perfect illustration of 
these theories. Just as some critics have said, after years of interpretation and 
study, the circle to Hon has been transformed into a "suspenseful tug-of-war" 
between one's abstract thinking and spiritual yearning, embodying its own 
implication of thought and philosophy, including the basic and ultimate form 
of life, the path of the universe, and so on. 
1 7 5 
EVA K I T W A I I M A N 
The Revelation of Hon's Case as It Relates to National, 
International, Transnational, and Transcultural 
We assume that we need an identity to cope with a world that is so 
confusing. We want to have some stable points of reference, some still points 
in a turning world.23 We assume all this especially in a colony like Hong Kong 
that is entering the new international division of labor and international 
capitalism girded by the transnational corporation and product ion. The 
subject in this situation is situated in the context of cultural fragmentation, 
multiculturalism, and the re-articulation of indigenous cultures. The waning 
of boundaries makes identity the site of conflict. 
As critics and theorists of colonialism have pointed out, the logic of identity 
is very significant in a whole range of political, theoretical, and conceptual 
discourses. Identity is also an existential reality related to the subject 's 
conceptions of the self; in another words, identity seems to assume the notion 
of a true self, a sort of guarantee of authenticity concealed behind the various 
masks of the fictional selves that we present to the world. The question is 
whether we believe in a transcendental form of the self that is drawn into -
and is gradually transformed by - the contingent upheavals, vicissitudes, and 
ruptures of history. It is also assumed that identity is always in the process of 
transformations and constructions through human ambivalence and desires, 
and is therefore never completed and finished.2'' Nothing - be it intention, 
perception, experience, or practice or event - ever guarantees the outcome 
of identity or of history. 
How about the form of ethnicity that Lu had mentioned? It is assumed 
that ethnicity assures the crucial roles that history, language, and culture will 
play in the construction of subjectivity and identity. However, as the colonial 
subject in his struggles moves forward and assumes new forms, it does to some 
degree displace, reorganize, and reposition different cultural strategies in 
relation to one another.2r' 
The interpretation is that there is not a closed and limited construction 
of a pure authentic sign, but an endless and excessive transformation of subject 
- positions possible within the hybridized.21' Hon, as he himself said in his 
23 Stuart Hall, "The Local and the Global: Globalization and Ethnicity", Culture, 
Globalization and the World-system: Contemporary Conditions for the Representation of Identity, p. 
22. 
24 Stuart Hall, "Old and New Identities, Old and New Ethnicities", ibid., pp. 42-49. 
25 Stuart Hall, "New Ethnicities", Bill Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin (eds.), ThePostcolonial 
Studies Reader {London and New York: Routledge, 1995), pp. 223-227. 
2li Griffiths Gareth, "The Myth of Authenticity", Ibid., p. 241. 
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TIIK N O T I O N OF »ORIT.NTALI.SM« IN TIIE MODERNIZATION MOVEMENT OF CHINESE PAINTING ... 
autobiography, has a strong emotional and tragic sense of life, which, when 
manifested in his work, is wholly subsumed within the constraints of a formal 
painterly unity and aesthetic function. The code of pictorial representation 
and cultural conventions in Hon's works had been mange of the East and the 
West, both of which seem to have equal impact on his artistic and personal 
life. He used brushes as well as spray-guns, creating bold strokes with the 
former on top of the perfect order produced by the latter. 
I agree with Paul Crowther that the artist's own intentions, feelings, and 
attitudes, instead of merely being translated into painting, are not actually 
located in some opaque zone of subjectivity "behind' the medium, but rather 
embodied and mediated within articulated semantics. Crowther said that 
painting is a particular way of viewing the world, and that aesthetic experience 
fuels aesthetic form in a way that generates empathic responses, reintegrates 
the individual with the lifeworld.27 
Hon's works show the same sensibility in the sense that they came from a 
subjective space that had gone through its own struggles of displacement and 
reposi t ion, and to some degree had subverted conventional forms of 
representation, and also had followed an irresistible desire to represent 
p r o f o u n d spirituality, rel igion, and tenderness.2" T h o u g h when Hon 
mentioned his struggles with romantic relationships, his experience of modern 
Western culture and diasporic loneliness, he talked about them as if they 
were private events, yet they were all events within the context of a colonial 
space; and he carried this psychic state with him wherever he traveled. 
Hon's art, as he explained, is an ethical and religious elevation from 
emotional turmoil. His work's modern spirit lives on in the experience of 
rebelling against all that is normative and in the rejection of all that no longer 
speaks to existence. His work also lives on in the principle of unbridled self-
real izat ion, in the d e m a n d for authent ic self-experience, and in the 
subjectivism of a hyper-stimulated sensitivity. His work is also against the 
conventions and values of an everyday life, which has become rationalized 
under the pressures of colonial economic and administrative imperatives. 
Truth, Tightness, authenticity, and beauty all inform Hon's form of taste. 
Here he reminds us of what Habermas said: "The autonomy of the aesthetic 
sphere could become a deliberate project: the talented artist could lend 
authentic expression to those experiences he had in encountering his own 
27 Paul Crowther, Critical Aesthetics and Postmodernism (New York: Oxford University 
Press, 1993), pp. 108-112. 
28 Ibid., pp. 184-5. 
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EVA K I T - W A I I M A N 
de-centered subjectivity, detached from the constraints of routinized cognition 
and every day action."2'' 
Hon ' s paintings, analyzed above as having a deeper investment of 
"Orientalism," also reveal a spiritual sense of Chinese aesthetics: that is, 
manifesting a "history" of the colonized past. There seems to be an attempt to 
develop a notion of self and identity that links difference to the insistence of 
speaking in many voices, and to fix a notion of identity that is shifting and 
multiple. We can also see in H o n ' s ar t an act of resis tance and self-
transformation, a voice of becoming a subject in history rather than being an 
object. Inside his paintings are inseparable personal stories, issues of survival 
and resistance, of a modernized subject liberating himself from conservative 
norms via artistic sublimation, but utilizing colonial privileges and traditional 
aesthetic beliefs at the same time. 
Till now, we may have seen enough ambiguities in Hon's art, but as Larry 
Grossberg pointed out, it is true that after all, it is no longer a question of 
globality (as homelessness) and locality (as the identification of place and 
identity), national and international or transnational and transcultural, but 
of the various ways people are attached themselves affectively into the world.™ 
2" Jürgen, Habermas "Modernity versus Postmodernity", eds. Natoli, Joseph and Linda 
Hutcheon, A Postmodern Reader (New York: State University of New York Press, 1993), p. 
99. 
30 See note 4, p. 185. 
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