Solemnly Quiet Existence: Sympathy and Innocence in Hoo Mojong’s Painting

I still remember the impression of seeing Hoo Mojong’s works for the first time.  Though it was only a photo of a black-and-white print presenting a father and a daughter leaning close to each other, the simple and straightforward brushstrokes depicted the expressions especially vividly, and I was deeply touched by their codependency and the melancholy and profound emotion, unable to forget about it up till now.

Later, I became familiar with Ms. Hoo.  Every time I visited her studio and looked around the paintings of various sizes hung on the walls, I would still be touched by those rich and heavy colors and those simple and unadorned objects opening to you in a solemnly quiet way of existence.  Vegetables, fruits, bread, flowers, clothes, laborers, kids, women, and etc, all these commonest and plainest objects and people show the most essential and emotional side through a certain unique perspective, melancholy, lonely, fragile, but also warm, generous, and powerful.  When I stare at these paintings for a long time, a sort of sympathy, sentiment and a feeling of satisfaction slowly arise in the bottom of my heart, wishing to express gratitude for the favor of the Creator, who bestows lives and is relied on by all the lives.  I really cherish such experiences, as there are actually few art works that could really reach out to people’s inner worlds and influence people's souls, although art forms and types emerge one after another in today’s art circumstances.  Unrelated to those so-called mainstream or tendencies, Hoo’s works are unusual, could be traced to the same origin as the beliefs on life and art and the eternity of nature, and deliver humanity’s sympathy and innocence through highly condensed simple and plain visual images.  It is exactly the sympathy and innocence that touch us, enabling us to transcend daily triviality, flippancy, humbleness, weakness and weariness, enabling us to touch a sort of reality exceeding objects’ appearances, which is like an experience close to truth.  Simple things contain mystery and profundity, which seems to be a quite metaphysical view, however, her works often bring me such comprehension.

I. Journey of Life

In daily life, Hoo is an unaffected and candid person, unskilled in words or sociality.  She usually talks very briefly about the numerous hardships and difficulties encountered in her life.  If listening to her carefully, you may discern the rises and falls in her life, but couldn't touch the detailed information.  If somebody wants to probe into her past, she always waves one hand to dismiss the topic, and says, “I don’t remember the past, as I never remember those bad things, and would like to look forward.”  However, as I became more familiar and talked more with her, she still revealed some sentiment about the rough and difficult past years, “Those days were hard, very difficult.”  But she never elaborated on how difficult the past was.  As a matter of fact, she is a witness of great epochs with abundant experiences in life and a great many stories to tell.  According to her plain appearance, we could easily deem her as a hermit separated from the secular world.  It’s appropriate to describe her with such an ancient saying – “The greatest sound is silence.”  Certainly, I have my own reasons to say so.

Now, I would briefly review Hoo’s life and art experiences, and all the information comes from many conversations with her.

Born in Ningbo, Zhejiang province in 1924, Hoo spent her childhood and youth in Ningbo.  Her grandfather was a famous doctor of traditional Chinese medicine in the local area, generous and forthright, willing to do charities, which had a great influence on the formation of her personality.  Her grandfather had a great collection of books at home.  In her childhood. Hoo loved reading those books, and finished reading lots of famous classic novels, including Romance of Three Kingdoms, A Dream of Red Mansion, The Journey to the West, and etc.  The peaceful life suddenly stopped with the War of Resistance against Japan breaking out.  Ningbo was bombarded by the Japanese army, and the young girl actively participated in rescue work.  Later, as the war became increasingly more intense, the whole family fled to Shanghai to avoid the war.  She recollected, if there were no War of Resistance against Japan, her family would have lived along in Ningbo in a peaceful way without the following days of being homeless and destitute.  After going to Shanghai, life became difficult for the family.  To share the burden of this family, the strong girl worked in a factory at day and insisted on learning painting in night school at night.  She worked to provide for the family, and learned painting out of love for painting and also for the sake of pursuing her career.  She explained the reason of learning painting, “I always have such an idea, a woman needs her own career.”

At the end of the 1940s, Hoo went to Taipei with friends.  She stayed in Taipei briefly, and then went to a faraway country – Brazil.  She lived in Sao Paulo for more than one decade.  Not knowing much about this period, we only know she married in Brazil, had kids, and her painting career also developed well.  She opened a class to teach painting, cultivated quite some outstanding students, and also held a solo exhibition in Gallery Sao Luis – a famous gallery in Brazil.  Pitifully, most of her paintings created during that period in Brazil were scattered, and we don’t have the opportunity to appreciate them.  However, we may discern her strong and straightforward painting style from the few existing oil paintings of figures and still lives.

In 1965, Hoo formally moved to Paris.  Whereas, she actually held her first solo exhibition in Paris in 1960.  She recollected, with a transit visa, she was only allowed to stay in France for 48 hours.  One of her friends from Taiwan brought her to visit professors in École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts (National School of Fine Arts in Paris).  The professors appreciated and commended her paintings, and immediately approved her to study in their school.  She was very excited, as it was very difficult for students to pass professional examinations to enter the National School of Fine Arts in Paris.  It was unexpected and also rare for her to obtain the approval to enter the school so easily.  Because the visa was only valid for two days, her friend brought her to the concerned department, and the man in charge of the department directly gave her a long-term visa after seeing the material signed by professors.  As she hadn’t dealt with many things in Brazil, Hoo still went back, however the first trip to Paris obviously created a good beginning.  In 1965, after dealing with her family business, she finally flied to Paris, pursuing her ideal for a higher art realm.

Nevertheless, after going to Paris, Hoo decided to take the path of teaching herself instead of going to the National School of Fine Arts in Paris, because she felt the study of systematic skills was not important for her any more, but needed to establish her own individuality and style.  The “Grande Chaumière” in Paris was an institute advocating free art, therefore she attended courses there.  For quite a long time, she went there to sketch almost every day.  Soon enough, the diligent and talented painter began to shine in the art circle in Paris full of artists.  In 1968, her oil painting Doll Series participated in Salon Femme Peinture and won the first award, symbolizing the European art circles’ affirmation of her painting talent.  Later, she began to be invited to participate in exhibitions in various European countries.  In Europe in the 1960s and the 1970s, it was very difficult for a Chinese artist to exhibit his/her works in professional galleries and art institutes, and it was even more difficult for a woman artist like Hoo to occupy a position in Paris so full of competitions.  Pan Yuliang, a predecessor woman painter in Paris, once went to her studio, watched her paintings, and said, “It will be very difficult for you to take such a path of pure art.”  However, this stubborn painter still never had any hesitation in taking this art journey full of hardships and loneliness but also gaining happiness and satisfaction.

How to survive in Paris was a challenge.  Professional painters had to make a living through selling paintings, and it was very hard to sell oil paintings, whereas prints’ large quantity resulted in cheaper prices, therefore prints sold better.  She frankly said, she especially learned how to make print in order to make a living.  She said, there were two print studios at that time, one was abstract style, the other was realistic style, and she entered the studio of abstract style.  At first, she didn’t know anything about print, so she watched them making prints, watching and learning at the same time.  After learning all the skills, she started to make prints according to her own ideas.  Her teachers were surprised to see her first set of prints, thought high of her prints and praised her in front of familiar people.  Later, she got enough space, then bought a print machine to make prints.  During that period, she made lots of prints, which also sold well to make a living for her.  Perhaps out of inherent keenness and talent, Hoo’s prints had a unique style, not only maintaining the strong representational expressionistic style of her oil painting, but also possessing print art’s concise and summary characteristics in form, which became a distinctive type in her creation.