Huang Ching-cheng

Huang Ching-cheng's life and work is also at the center of a documentary, “The Forgotten: Reflections on Eastern Pond” (2008) by Yu-Shan Huang.

In 2005, Huang Ching-cheng's life and work became the theme of a feature film by the Taiwanese film director Huang Yu-shan. The film, released in 2005 and titled The Strait Story, was discussed in two academic publications.

On the other hand, there were those who tried to work. Thus, several of Huang Ching-cheng's colleagues who had participated in the MOUVE artists’ group founded a new group, the Era Art Association, in 1954.

By the mid-1950, martial law came into effect. Now, Huang Jung-ts’an (Huang Rong-tsan / Huáng Róngcàn 黃榮燦), an artist who did realist woodcuts and who was a friend of the painter Chun-chen Li (Li Zhòngshēng 李仲生), was arrested. He was accused of “espionage in 1951 and (…) executed the next year.” According to Hsiao, this

In 1943, Huang Ching-cheng was offered a teaching position at the Beiping Art School in Peking which was then a city occupied by the Japanese army. Planning to go to Taiwan first, the artist boarded “the passenger liner Takachiho Maru in Kobe, Japan" together with Guixiang Li. The ship was torpedoed by an American submarine as it approached Kīrun. About 1,000 passengers died. Few survived. Huang Ching-cheng was 31 when he died. Huang's premature death was a considerable loss that was felt in the art world of Taiwan.

The rebellious Jui-lin Hung, a leading figure of the MOUVE group, who had returned before 1943, became a miner and for several years could not afford oil colors and canvas. The painter Chen Cheng-po was shot by the KMT army in Chiayi in 1947, becoming one of the many victims of the so-called February 28 Incident. Under these conditions, “(t)he development of new art movement(s) was in fact not a smooth one,” as Chiung-jui Hsiao writes.

MOUVE, which Huang Ching-cheng had been founding together with several young Taiwan-born artists in Tokyo, was now, “at first glance, avant-garde, fresh air, so to speak, and the group’s members were painting in a new way. But it was a small group after all, no match for the power of the mainstream, especially the ‘Taiyang Art Association.’ Lu Chi-cheng and Chen Chunde soon took refuge to ‘Taiyang,’ and thus in the following year (1941) there was a pause in the group's activities.” Another reason for this ‘pause’ may have been Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and thus, the outbreak of the Pacific War. "At the end of 1940", the group – and that meant: the majority of its members – had already left Japan. “With the advent of the Pacific war” when “MOUVE was taken to be an English name” by the authorities, the artists were forced “to change its name.” The name was now changed to “Sculpture and Painting Association” (zàoxíng měishù xiéhuì 造型美術協會). Because some old members had left, it was a smaller group now. Under the new name Sculpture and Painting Association, the group soon “made a come-back with another exhibition,” however. Those who participated in this group exhibition (in Taiwan rather than Tokyo) were “Yün-teng Lan (Lán Yùndēng藍 運燈), Yen Shui-long (Yán Shuǐlóng顏水龍) and Cho-sao Fan (Fàn Zhuōzào范倬造), in addition to the remaining original members."

A year later, in May 1940, the ‘MOUVE’ group organized “a ‘MOUVE Exhibition’ of three artists” – Wan-chuan Chang (張萬傳), ( Yong Xie 謝國庸), and Huang Ching-cheng – in the Tainan Public Hall (Táinán gōnghuì táng 台南公會堂.), Tainan (台南), South Taiwan. In the same year (1940), Huang received an award of the Japanese Sculptors’ Association and it was “recommended” that he should “become a member of the association.”

In 1939, sculptures by Huang Ching-cheng and by another Taiwanese artist, Hsia-yu Chen 陳夏雨, were accepted by a jury and “included in the Imperial Exhibition” (Teiten Empire Exhibition or Imperial Exhibition, in Japanese: 帝展.) of that year.

On 19 March 1938, the artists who had formed the new group, Wan-chuan Chang (Zhāng Wànchuán 張萬傳), Jui-Lin Hung (Hóng Ruìlín 洪瑞麟), Dewang Chen (Chén Déwàng 陳德旺), Chi-ch’eng Lu (Lǚ Jīzhèng 呂基正), Chunde Chen (Chén Chūndé 陳春德), Huang Ching-cheng, and Liu-jen Teng (Děng Liùrén 等六人) had their first group exhibition. Except for Huang, who was a sculptor and painter, they were all painters.

In 1937, Huang Ching-cheng teamed up with graduate students at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts to form an artist group that would organize joint exhibitions. According to G. Huang (Huáng Guāngnán 黃光男) and X. Liao (Liào Xīntián 廖新田), these young artists "seceded from the Tai Yang artists’ association" when they formed their own group. Huang and Liao notice the group's "non-mainstream atmosphere."

Huang's desire was to be an artist, however. In 1936, being just 24, Huang was admitted to a Japanese art academy, the Tōkyō Bijutsu Gakkō (東京美術学校) or Tokyo School of Fine Arts, an art academy that had a good reputation.

When Huang Ching-cheng had departed for Tokyo in 1936, the Second Sino-Japanese war was less than a year away, and the terrible Nanking massacre would happen in November 1937. Chauvinism and militarist sentiments were on the rise. The situation deteriorated with the outbreak of the war against China (1937), and even more so since 1939/40 when the democracy that still had existed up to a point in the late 1930s, was rapidly suspended.

Huang's interest in music and more specifically, in music from the West, is partly explained by his close relationship with a young pianist, Guixiang Li (李桂香, also: Kwei-Hsiang Lee). There was more to it, however. Generally speaking, Ludwig van Beethoven and Auguste Rodin stood for modernism at the time, as Y.-L. Hsueh points out. More specifically, under the conditions that existed in Tokyo in the 1930s and 40s, Beethoven and his music stood for cosmopolitanism and a thirst for freedom.

Huang Ching-cheng (Chinese: 黃清埕/黃清呈; pinyin: Huang Qingcheng; Wade–Giles: Huang Ch'ing-ch'eng; 1912–1943) was a Taiwanese sculptor. He is counted among the important pioneers of Taiwanese modern art. Lai Hsien-tsung mentions him in one breath with Ju Ming. Huang's sculpture "Study of a Head" (頭像 ‘tóuxiàng’) was the first modern work of art in Taiwan that was declared a part of the island's cultural heritage that is protected by a new law passed in 2009. It is exhibited in the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts.

Today, many art historians and artists in Taiwan agree on Huang's pioneering role, as a modernist Taiwan-born sculptor. Together with two other sculptors, Tien-shen Pu (Pú Tiānshēng蒲添生) who was born in 1912 like Huang, and Hsia-yu Chen (Chen Xiayu 陳夏雨) who was five years younger, Huang Ching-cheng belongs to the young generation of early Taiwan modernists who followed in the footsteps of Tu-shui Huang and who surpassed him in a way. Insofar, few would disagree with Ya-li Chen that “Huang Tu-shui(黃土水), Huang Ching-cheng, Chen Hsia-yu(陳夏雨) and Pu Tien-sheng(蒲添生) were the most important sculptors in Taiwan” during the Colonial era that came to an end in 1945. Huang's creative role as one of the few Taiwan-born pioneers of early modern sculpture assures him a permanent place in the history of modern art in Taiwan.

Huang was born in Chidong Village (池東村), Xiyu, Hōko Prefecture. This island group had been ceded to Japan by the Chinese government in 1895, like the rest of Taiwan and the Ryu-Kyo Islands, after the First Sino-Japanese War. Huang's father owned a pharmacy. Huang, who was raised in a fairly wealthy family, showed an interest in creative activity at an early age. As a boy, he already did small figures made of clay, his elder brother later remembered. He also painted, showing considerable talent which prompted a teacher to encourage him. Because the pharmacy was located in Kaohsiung, a major location in South Taiwan which was already a fairly big city, he was sent there in 1925, to attend Kaohsiung Senior High School. He dropped out, however, because he dedicated too much time to painting. Therefore, his father had him educated by a private teacher. Because his father wanted him to become a pharmacist, he was sent to a teacher of pharmacology in 1933. Then, he went on to Tokyo, for advanced studies in pharmacology.