Book Description
This collection of over 60 ink paintings by Gao Xingjian represents his philosophy and painting style. Gao believes that the world cannot be explained and that artistic creation offers the only way to escape into meaning. The images convey these aspects of an inexplicable world-the black-and-white inner world that underlies the complexity of human existence. Drawn in traditional Chinese black ink on rice paper, each painting is characterized by a spontaneous overflow of the ink, creating metaphorical abstract images.
About the author
Born in China in 1940, Gao Xingjian started painting as a child and at the age of ten wrote and illustrated his first short story. He graduated from the Beijing Foreign Language Academy in 1962 with a major in French. During the Cultural Revolution, Gao was sent to the countryside where he spent five years. From 1982 to 1986, he wrote a number of plays that were banned from the stage. Gao left China in 1987 to settle in France.
Gao Xingjian paints in Chinese ink on rice paper and has had over thirty international exhibitions in such cities as Beijing, Hong Kong, Taipei, Paris, Marseilles, Berlin, London, New York, Vienna, and Moscow. Until the Nobel Prize, he had lived off his paintings to support his writing.
