An artistic exile

by Geremie Barmé

"This book, a blend of biography of criticism, tells the story of Feng Zikai (1898-1975), one of the most gifted and important artists to emerge from the politically tumultuous decades of the 1920s and 1930s. Barme provides a closely woven parallel history, that of the life of writer-artist Feng, who was also an essayist and a translator, and that of China's turbulent twentieth century. He investigates Feng Zikai's aesthetic vision, its development, and how it relates to traditional and contemporary Chinese cultural values and debates.". "Although Feng was known for his so-called casual drawings, he was reluctant to classify his art. According to Barme, much of his writing and painting was rooted in a philosophy of self-expression. Difficult to classify in relation to existing Chinese political and social nomenclature, Feng remains, to a large extent, an enigma. He was sympathetic to the average man and the impoverished peasant, yet he was a romantic, and often identified with the incr