Singapore's Xiu Hai Lou Collection and what it tells us about late 19th-20th century Chinese art
Private collector Yeo Khee Lim (1917-1998) amassed one of the earliest and most comprehensive collections of late 19th-20th century Chinese art since he started collecting them in the 1940s and 50s. The stories in the collection - of literati painters, the Shanghai School, the Lingnan School, the Teochews and the Nanyang painters who passed through and lived on our shores - have been told before in exhibitions put up by Yeo himself and later by the National Gallery and others. But in a recent NTU conference on the life of Yeo Khee Lim, the importance of the prized collection comes back to the fore.
Singapore has a number of important Chinese ink painting collections. The Xiu Hai Lou (袖海楼) Collection is celebrated as having the broadest art historical time frame from Ming Dynasty to the modern period. It is named after a line in the 11th-century poem on the contemporary Penglai Pavilion by Su Shi, who was also the most important theorist of the literati painting (文人画). The line captures a sight of the vast Eastern Sea as if the waters are held within one's sleeves and the historic Penglai continues to stand as one of four best known pavilions in China today.
The name Xiu Hai Lou was also the studio name of the Changi seaside bungalow of the collector, Yeo Khee Lim (杨启霖, 1917-1998). The history of the Xiu Hai Lou Collection itself predates practically all public art museums in Singapore, except for the University of Malaya Art Museum which was founded in 1955. Yeo also started collecting in the 1940s and 50s.
... even at this early point of the availability of important works in the Singapore collection, the Xiu Hai Lou looked sufficient to facilitate an outline history of Chinese art from the late 19th century to the 20th century.
A primer on Chinese art from the late 19th century to the 20th century
A recent conference on the biography of Yeo Khee Lim at the Nanyang Technological University highlighted Yeo's life story of how he had worked resourcefully to first become a supervisor in a godown and then eventually establish his own Tong Fong Company in 1974. By then, Yeo had already amassed a very impressive collection and the first catalogue of the Xiu Hai Lou Collection was published in the same year in collaboration with the artist-writer Chen Chong Swee (陈宗瑞, 1910-1985).
Entitled Yinghai yizhu (瀛海遗珠, lit. Hidden Pearls in Boundless Ocean), the catalogue comprised 63 works of many prominent artists including Ren Xiong, Ren Bonian, Wu Changshuo, Gao Jianfu, Xu Beihong, Qi Baishi, Huang Binhong, Lin Fengmian, Liu Haisu, Zhang Daqian, and others. By this list alone, even at this early point of the availability of important works in the Singapore collection, the Xiu Hai Lou looked sufficient to facilitate an outline history of Chinese art from the late 19th century to the 20th century.
An advocate of realism in painting, Chen Chong Swee generally aligned himself with Xu Beihong's propagation of realism in art. In ink painting, realism was an important aspect of a modernity that linked several directions in art beginning with the turn of 19th to 20th century Shanghai School. Again, the Xiu Hai Lou Collection can facilitate such studies with examples in the collection.
Many of the works in the collection were actually painted in Singapore, whether by artists who migrated here, or by those who sojourned here like Xu Beihong.
As the collection is sited in Singapore, a consideration of the artworks in the multicultural context of Singapore was highlighted by Chen who emphasised the need to go in-depth into multiple cultures, aesthetic traditions and sources. Many of the works in the collection were actually painted in Singapore, whether by artists who migrated here, or by those who sojourned here like Xu Beihong.
It was interesting that both Gao Jianfu and Xu Beihong had exhibitions in Singapore when they passed through here on their way to India in 1930 and 1939 respectively. Their exhibitions in Singapore made a huge impact on the cultural scene here. Apart from realism attracting a larger and cross-cultural audience base, the changed political contexts also explained the even larger audience for Xu in 1939.
In positioning the Xiu Hai Lou Collection, Chen spoke of the need for intercultural depth in a postcolonial Singapore context. The perceived divide in the mediums of ink and oil continues to be a topic of postcolonial concern even today.
Some 25 years after Chen's point made in 1974, Kuo Pao Kun would famously say that "biculturally or multiculturally, the deeper you go you actually find that all these recesses are connected. The deeper you go, the more connected you are... Or to put it in another way, the higher you reach into the respective cultures, the more you see all the branches and leaves touching each other. But the stalk, the stem, the trunk are very separated. But if you go deeper, the roots touch. You go higher, the branches touch, the leaves touch."
Insight into the Shanghai School
An art collection that goes far back in history should be forming one of the roots to facilitate the kind of multicultural and intercultural depth and "touching of the roots" that Kuo articulated. The National Gallery Singapore organised the "Rediscovering Treasures: Ink Art from the Xiu Hai Lou Collection" exhibition in 2017. That the word "rediscovering" in the title is used 43 years after the Yinghai yizhu exhibition is indicative of how such an important collection as a cultural resource had not entered into the art history discourse here in a more consequential way along the intercultural learning that Chen Chong Swee envisaged.
Important works in the Xiu Hai Lou Collection for this period include paintings by the key masters of the Shanghai School including Wu Changshuo, Ren Xiong, Ren Xun and Ren Bonian.
The National Gallery Singapore curators Cai Heng and Jennifer Lam explored important art historical themes, and also developed a useful framework, or an ecosystem of Singapore collecting to look at the Xiu Hai Lou Collection in a broader collecting landscape here. The Shanghai School was key in the Xiu Hai Lou Collection, according to Cai Heng, who analysed the works in relation to the Shanghai School, Lingnan School (for which Gao Jianfu was a founder), tensions between traditions and change, and developments within Singapore.
The Shanghai School in the narrower sense refers to ink paintings and their socioeconomic environment in Shanghai during the period 1843-1927, i.e., the opening of the first treaty ports to the passing of Wu Changshuo. This time frame coincided with the opening of Shanghai to the world albeit in humiliating treaties, stimulating modernity in art, along with a literati tradition that would now be more open to the market and popularisation of tastes in the metropolis. Important works in the Xiu Hai Lou Collection for this period include paintings by the key masters of the Shanghai School including Wu Changshuo, Ren Xiong, Ren Xun and Ren Bonian.
This is where a large number of artists and works in the Xiu Hai Lou Collection, including Xu Beihong, Liu Haisu and Lin Feng Mian may also be included in this Shanghai School in the broader sense, and moving beyond ink in the medium.
The Shanghai School in a broader sense, given the city's leading role in ink innovations (also in oil, print, and other art forms), is a term designating larger geography, even including some Northern artists, as they either spent important times in Shanghai or were influenced by Shanghai practices.
Time frame-wise, the downstream Shanghai School is extended to the 1950s, when Yeo Khee Lim started collecting, making the Xiu Hai Lou Collection also a living archive. This is where a large number of artists and works in the Xiu Hai Lou Collection, including Xu Beihong, Liu Haisu and Lin Feng Mian may also be included in this Shanghai School in the broader sense, and moving beyond ink in the medium.
This leads to the important lynchpin role between Teochew and Singapore art in the person of Fan Chang Tien (范昌乾, 1907-1987). Yeo Khee Lim and Chen Chong Swee were also Teochews.
A nod to Teochew culture
Another important aspect of the collection is to connect the materials to the Teochew (潮州 / 潮汕) culture, a region within the Guangdong province. Due to close aesthetic relations with Shanghai largely because of modern art education, the Teochew artists were close to, if not included, in the Shanghai School.
An early example of a Guangdong/Guangzhou artist in the collection is Su Liupeng (1791-1862), whose Seeking Advice in the Mountains (1844) is one of the best-known works in the Xiu Hai Lou Collection. Another very early example of a Teochew artist in the collection is a landscape painting by Huang Bi (黄碧, ca.1720-1780), whose works were appraised by his contemporary commentators to demonstrate both Guangdong and Fujian characteristics. Huang Bi was featured in the Yinghai yizhu catalogue.
This leads to the important lynchpin role between Teochew and Singapore art in the person of Fan Chang Tien (范昌乾, 1907-1987). Yeo Khee Lim and Chen Chong Swee were also Teochews.
Fan Chang Tien, who studied art in Shanghai, was a proponent of a Lingdong or Teochew School in art back in the Teochew region in China in the 1930s. A student of the eminent Wang Geyi who studied under Wu Changshuo, Fan combined the literati tradition and realism through keen observations, particularly after his arrival in Singapore in the 1950s. Fan was the mentor to practically a whole generation of modern and contemporary ink painters in Singapore including Ling Cher Eng, Nai Swee Leng, Tan Oe Pang, Chua Ek Kay, and Henri Chen. In the Xiu Hai Lou Collection, there are also many examples of works by Chen Wen Hsi, another Teochew who became a very prominent artist in Singapore.
The Xiu Hai Lou Collection also prompts questions about the relation between language and visual imagery.
Apart from the visual arts, Yeo Khee Lim was keenly interested in and supported Teochew opera and other Teochew cultural forms. However, the Xiu Hai Lou Collection extends way beyond the Teochew culture or region to encompass a much broader geography not only within China but also transnationally.
In the locality of Singapore, art practice and appreciation of paintings by Chinese artists such as Gao Jianfu and Xu Beihong flourished, along with the development of migrant-transitioning-to-citizen artists including Chen Chong Swee, Fan Chang Tien and Chen Wen Hsi who played key roles in evolving Singapore art.
Yeo Khee Lim also expressed his sentiments for multiculturalism in, for example, a diary entry in 1989 when he recalled what the Malayan Chinese community leader Tan Cheng Lock (1883-1960) said about Chinese chauvinism*: "In the realm of politics, the East Asian culture is about the Kingly Way 王道 (benevolent governance) and not hegemony; I remember in 1951, the prominent Tan Cheng Lock of Malacca told a Chinese chauvinist that time and space will defeat you." Yeo then repeated the last two lines of his Chinese entry in English: "Time and space will defeat you."
The Xiu Hai Lou Collection also prompts questions about the relation between language and visual imagery. Do the visual images have a genealogy independent of languages?
The linguist Max Weinreich famously said that "a language is a dialect with an army and navy", suggesting that the distinction between language and dialect is politically or administratively determined. The collection shows the Teochew, Shanghai, and Singapore axes through the various schools of painting, along with the nuances of interfaces between paintings and local languages and cultures. Indeed, the "Building Pillars Across Seas: A Study of Yeo Khee Lim and His Life International Symposium" at Nanyang Technological University took a weighty Teochew perspective in looking at the Xiu Hai Lou Collection in context.
*Yeo Khee Lim's diary entry of 13 Aug 1989. Nanyang Technical University Chinese Heritage Centre digital archives. The original Chinese lines: "在政治领域，东亚的文化传统主张王道而不是霸道; 记得1951年，马六甲名人陈桢禄先生对一位华族沙文主义说：时间与空间会打败你们的."
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