2013.164: Tour Group in a Landscape

Identification and Creation

Object Number

2013.164

People

Yu Peng 于彭, Chinese (Taipei, Taiwan 1955 - 2014)

Title

Tour Group in a Landscape

Classification

Paintings

Work Type

hanging scroll, painting

Date

1990

Culture

Chinese

Persistent Link

https://hvrd.art/o/319299

Location

Location

Level 2, Room 2600, East Asian Art, East Asian Painting and Decorative Arts

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Physical Descriptions

Medium

Hanging scroll; ink on paper, with artist’s signature and seal

Dimensions

painting proper: 48.7 x 44.3 cm (19 3/16 x 17 7/16 in.)
full mounting: 198 x 65.2 cm (77 15/16 x 25 11/16 in.)

Inscriptions and Marks

• Signed: Upper left, black ink: Painted by Yu Peng in 1990 (Chinese brush-written characters)
• inscription: brush-written in upper left of painting: Signed: "Painted by Yu Peng in 1990"
• seal: artist's seal: Square red intaglio seal, lower left corner: "Yu Peng"

Provenance

Recorded Ownership History

Yu Peng, Taipei (1990-1990s), sold; to Chu-tsing Li, Lawrence, Kansas (by 1990s-2012), gift; to his son B U.K. Li, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, (2012-2013), gift; to Harvard Art Museums, 2013.

Footnotes:
1. Dr. Chu-tsing Li (1920- 2014)

Acquisition and Rights

Credit Line

Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum, The Chu-tsing Li Collection, Gift of B U.K. Li in honor of Chu-tsing Li and in memory of Yao-wen Kwang Li and Teri Ho Li

Accession Year

2013

Object Number

2013.164

Division

Asian and Mediterranean Art

Contact

am_asianmediterranean@harvard.edu

Permissions

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Descriptions

Description

In Tour Group, figures stare out of the painting as if posing for a photograph. Surrounding them are the elements of a classical garden, including lotus ponds, scholars’ pavilions, trees, and rocks. The shapes of the rocks and plants merge with the equally strange shapes of the human figures drawn in childlike fashion. In the “distance” at the top of the painting, a dark and remote landscape looms.
Yu Peng’s childhood interests in puppetry and ink and oil painting led him to develop a style so eccentric that he was denied admission into any fine arts school. His search for his cultural roots took him from his native Taiwan to mainland China, where he visited Beijing, Hangzhou, and the Buddhist caves at Dunhuang, in Gansu province. He found elements of folk art that he incorporated into his paintings.
Exaggeration, spatial fragmentation, and deliberate clumsiness yield a comic theatricality. While creating a kind of “archaic awkwardness,” or gu zhuo, that was a hallmark of literati painting, they also subvert the refinements of that genre, reflecting the displacement of the Chinese painting tradition in the modern world of Taiwan.

Publication History

• Robert D. Mowry and Claudia Brown, A Tradition Redefined: Modern and Contemporary Chinese Ink Paintings from the Chu-tsing Li Collection, 1950-2000, exh. cat., Harvard University Art Museums/Yale University Press (Cambridge, Mass., 2007), cat. 63

Exhibition History

• A Tradition Redefined: Modern and Contemporary Chinese Ink Paintings from the Chu-tsing Li Collection, 1950-2000, Harvard University Art Museums, Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Cambridge, 11/03/2007 - 01/27/2008; Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, 06/28/2008 - 09/14/2008; Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, 10/11/2008 - 01/04/2009; Spencer Museum of Art, Lawrence, 02/11/2009 - 05/24/2009
• 32Q: 2600 East Asian, Japanese, Chinese and Korean, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, 12/04/2023 - 06/03/2024

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