TAIWAN GLOVE PUPPETRY SERIES

The next major influence came when the ROC left the United Nations in 1971, this unmooring from the international community caused artists to search for an identity and a sense of self, a search which continues up to the present. The Ton-Fan group reacted to Government disapproval of avant-garde art by championing it. The Ton-Fan group, founded in Taipei in 1956 by eight artists, brought abstraction to Taiwan.

Schools such as the May Art Association, a revolutionary art group, and Eastern Art Association, an avant-garde group flourished during this time.

TAIWAN GLOVE PUPPETRY SERIES

Along with Chinese influences the Nationalists also allowed the United States to establish a series of military bases in Taiwan, American pop culture and artistic ideas such as abstract expressionism were introduced to Taiwan by the Americans. The artists Huang Chun-pi, Pu Ru, and Chang Dai-chien who all came to Taiwan during this period are collectively known as the “three masters from across the strait.” The Nationalists also established the first art colleges and universities in Taiwan. When the Nationalists fled to Taiwan in 1949 they brought many of China’s most prestigious artists and a large portion of the former Qing Imperial art collection with them. In the 1920s the New Cultural Movement influenced a generation of artists who used art as a way to demonstrate their equality with, or even their superiority over, their colonizers. As was typical of colonial rulers the Japanese did not establish tertiary institutions for art education in Taiwan, all students wishing to pursue an advanced degree in the arts had to travel to Japan to do so. The Japanese introduced oil and watercolor paintings to Taiwan and Taiwanese artists were heavily influenced by their Japanese counterparts. Īrt was first institutionalized in Taiwan during the Japanese colonial period with the establishment of public schools dedicated to the fine arts.

For centuries much of the art produced was religious with highly decorated temples being the beneficiaries of local wealth and education. The Dapenkeng culture developed a unique style of pottery. Between 4000 BC and 2000 BC people in what is now Hualien produced and traded valuable jade ornaments and jewelry. Around 5,000 years ago jade and earthenware works started to appear. Stonecutters of the Changbin culture began to make art on Taiwan at least 30,000 years ago.

Liu Yong's The Setting Sun Shines on the Mountain Village (2019)

Taiwan glove puppetry