Mad Grass Painting

By Greg Thomas, 25.10.2022

Hock Aun Teh, Two Drunken Scots Singing and Dancing Through Streets, 2022. Photo Alan Dimmick.

Zhang Xu was a Chinese poet and calligrapher of the Tang Dynasty who, according to legend, would use his hair as a paintbrush when drunk, then wake up unable to recapture the free-flowing spirit that had produced the work. “Zhang the madman” was one of the best-known calligraphers of the Tang dynasty, excelling in cursive or coashu script, in which, according to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, “the number of strokes in characters are reduced to single scrawls or abstract abbreviations of curves and dots.” Of the three subcategories of caoshu listed, kuangcao (“wild” or “crazy” cursive) is the one which has most informed the abstract painting of Hock-Aun Teh, with its huge sinuous brushstrokes, drawing the eye down the canvas in dancing saccades, riots of vivid colour.

Teh was born in 1950 to Chinese parents, in a jungle village in Malaysia without running water. There he spent “a happy childhood running wild and barefoot with the other village boys, catching birds in the bushes and treetops...now I look back on it, I realise that I grew up in a state of perfect harmony between Man and Nature.”¹ Before attending Glasgow School of Art from 1970 until 1974 – the first Asian graduate of the Drawing and Painting Department – he was schooled in his home country in Chinese ink painting and watercolour.

An introductory article on Teh’s work by Julian Spalding accompanies the artist’s reflections in the catalogue for his GSA show. Spalding points out that, as far as Tang Dynasty artists go, Teh’s first preference is not for hair-painter Xu but for the other master of so-called “mad grass” calligraphy, Huai Su. A Buddhist monk, Su “developed a dazzlingly original, daring style in which the brush marks stretched the meaning of the words till they almost disappeared in abstract flourishes that expressed feelings not literal meanings.” This nudges the viewer towards the interpretive approach that best suits Teh’s work. Figurative suggestion is less to the fore than some impression of asemic script: pseudo-grammatical markings with an arcane symbolic relationship to the landscape, natural phenomenon, or human event that inspired the piece in question—whether it’s called ‘Rhythm of January’ (2021) or ‘Two Drunken Scots Singing and Dancing Through Streets’ (2022).

Nonetheless, the story of Xu and his hair-painting story gets across something of the febrile energy that also defines Teh’s painting. Nature and Man [sic.] are the muses here: these ideals have not, seemingly, been subject to much critical deconstruction. They stand as great, immutable forces in the artist’s statements on his work. In the latter case, the painter notes his particular interest in “any human gathering which involves intense emotions, such as weddings and all other celebrations.” There are pieces here whose titles allude to performances and ceremonies (such as ‘That’s What Beijing Opera Is All About’ [2022]) and one dedicated to the lifting of Covid-19 travel restrictions: a deep blue canvas with green and scarlet slashes and waves that positively hums with excitement.

Abstract Expressionism is the lodestar as far as western influences go: both in its presentation of the artist as heroic, solitary warrior after emotional truths and in its utilisation of pseudo-linguistic marks (think of Mark Tobey, himself influenced by Asian calligraphy). Teh openly admits that he was impervious to the western “transition to video art and performance art” that marked the early 1970s, and his single-minded commitment to a more traditional medium (“I wanted to be a painter, no matter what!”) might have paid off in the long term, with the recent emergence of a new generation of abstract painters in Britain, such as Jadé Fadojutimi, Rachel Jones, and Sin Park. For these artists, as seemingly for Teh, abstract painting is not, ultimately, about transcending the everyday, but about recording life in all its vibrant and messy specificity.

Hock-Aun Teh’s exhibition Expanding Traditions is exhibited at the Reid Gallery at Glasgow School of Art until 29 October

¹ This and all subsequent quotes are from the catalogue Hock Aun Teh: Expanding Traditions, Glasgow School of Art, 2022.