181 Liao Lu (1944-)
Seasonal Vegetables
1996
handscroll, ink and color on paper
33.5 x 267
Artist's collection
Liao Lu was originally named Ruan Jinxing but goes
by his Buddhist name. A native of Shanyu, Zhejiang, he lives in Shanghai,
where he learned to paint informally with the older artists Zhang Dazhuang,
Tang Yun, and He Tianjian. In the 1960s he was assigned to work at the Institute
of Applied Arts in Shanghai, from which he has since retired. Liao Lu is
intensely involved with Chan Buddhism, and specializes in painting images
of the most mundane but essential parts of daily life, specifically vegetables
and fruit. One can trace many of his subjects to the eighteenth century
Buddhist eccentric, Jin Nong, and his whimsy and rich color to Shanghai
school painters of the nineteenth century, particularly the Buddhist Xugu,
but his imagery is very much his own.
His most frequent subject is a fuzzy soybean called maodou, a particularly
simple but delicious Shanghai food. He manages, remarkably, to create the
slightly contradictory tactile quality of these beans, which are simultaneously
cool, moist, and fuzzy, with different shades of fresh green wash. In a
Chan-like gesture, the artist has mounted this work in the formal handscroll
format, which seems to elevate the existential status of his subject, the
lowly soybean.