Oil on canvas

50 × 60.5 cm. 19 5/8 × 23 7/8 in.

Signed in Chinese and dated on upper right
PROVENANCE
Art Beatus Gallery, Vancouver
Important Private Collection, Asia

Note: A label of Vancouver Art Beatus Gallery is affixed on the reverse

Time Through the Ages, Life Treasured in the Objects
Aesthetics of Chen Danqing's Still Life

A century ago, Van Gogh painted a pair of his old shoes in 1886. Since then, he had created seven shoe-themed works, even lamenting “Dirty shoes and roses can both be good in the same way!”.

In the 21st century, Chen Danqing, an artist who graduated and taught in the Oil Painting Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts shocked the art world with the Paintings of Tibet series in 1980. He settled in New York in 1982 and often went to art museums to rebuild his new creative consciousness through copy-style secondary creation. Among all the artworks, he was deeply inspired by Van Gogh's Shoes in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. From the late 1980s to the 1990s, he created several works on the theme of men's leather shoes. It was during this period that he selected three pairs of ancient and modern women's shoes as objects, and completed the special Lotus Shoes on a Table.

History and Aesthetics of the Time

Looking back at the process of Chen's creation, he favored still life painting since he was a child. Just like his 1998 Album series, Lotus Shoes on a Table is a dialogue between tradition and contemporary carefully planned by the artist. In the painting, two pairs of small foot lotus shoes are placed side by side, both in the Qing Dynasty Yuanbao bottom style, and a pair of silk-based modern pointed-toe women's shoes is next to them. The visual contrast of size and appearance indicates the abandonment of the tradition of wrapping small feet. The painting is the analysis of the aesthetics shift as well. The exquisite embroidery and decoration on traditional women's shoes all show the classic beauty and the imprint of the times on personal belongings. Looking at the new shoes, the texture of the silk indicates the charm of Jiangnan, while the black trademark on the inside seems to imply the context of the times when the shoes were produced as commodities. The shoes should be personal belongings. However, in Chen's contrast setting, are injected with more aesthetic and historical context. In the setting of the painting, a sense of depth is created, making the objects in front of you convey the feeling of flowing in time and space. The three pairs of women's shoes are placed on the old-style cushions on the wooden table. The slightly unbalanced sight crosses the sense, guiding the gaze to extend from the concentrated contrast of the shoes to the spatial framework of the scene, exploring the meaning behind it from the outside to the inside. Through this space-time dialogue in the still life painting, Chen reveals the charm across the ancient and modern, presenting us the special meaning of the sign of life.

Price estimate:
HKD: 250,000 – 450,000
USD: 32,200 – 58,000

Auction Result:
HKD: 684,400