TAIPEI ( Taiwan News) – In a momentous celebration of William Turner's " Echoes of the Sublime," the largest global touring exhibition ever dedicated to the British master, has opened at the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall until Oct. 12.
Curated by Tate, Taiwan marks the third global stop for this exhibition, following Monaco and Shanghai, presenting 80 original artworks that offer an intimate look into the revolutionary vision of the "Painter of Light."
Turner, lauded as one of Britain's greatest painters, profoundly shaped Western art. His enduring influence is evident in the prestigious Turner Prize for contemporary art and his presence on the £20 banknote.
Born in London's gritty Covent Garden, Turner developed a fascination with light, often spending hours sketching the shimmering waves by the coast. He boldly used color and innovative techniques, pushing boundaries to capture light's nuances and even reportedly binding himself to a ship to experience storms, aiming to convey nature's raw power.
Despite early critical backlash, Turner persevered. His art fundamentally altered 19th-century aesthetics, leaving a deep and lasting impact on subsequent movements, including Impressionism, notably influencing artists like Claude Monet.
The exhibition's central theme, "the sublime," explores Turner's revolutionary approach to capturing awe-inspiring and overwhelming natural forces.
Across seven curated sections, visitors can trace Turner's creative evolution from his early, delicate depictions of British landscapes to his masterful play with light and shadow in Alpine scenes, and his poetic portrayals of Venice.
Unlike his contemporaries' classical precision, Turner emphasized the essence of storms, snowscapes, and the sea through light and atmosphere. His Venetian works, at times beautiful, at times melancholic, earned him praise for uniquely resonating with the city's distinct character.
A standout highlight of the exhibition is "The Blue Rigi, Sunrise," an iconic watercolor often hailed as "the world's most famous." This national treasure, saved by a UK-wide public fundraising effort exceeding NT$200 million, will return to Britain for a ten-year conservation period after its Taipei showing.
Additionally, this exhibition further underscores his continuing relevance by featuring works from 20 contemporary artworks engaging in a dialogue with Turner's legacy.
Katie Paterson's "Totality," a suspended sphere art installation, uses ten thousand human-observed solar eclipse images to reflect the vast cosmic cycles, projecting eclipses onto viewers as it rotates.
Richard Long's use of collected mountain stones, embodying landscape as art, directly echoes Turner's emphasis on outdoor sketching. Icelandic/Danish artist Olafur Eliasson, known for his work with glacial fragments, showcases nature's power and unpredictability through the interaction of ice and pigment.
Even Mark Rothko's minimalist compositions resonate with Turner's late-period meditations on light and space, bridging Romanticism and Modernism; Rothko famously quipped after a 1966 Turner retrospective, "This man Turner, he learned a lot from me!"
As Ruth Bradley-Jones, Representative of the British Office in Taipei, shared, Turner's seascapes deeply moved her even at age 10. She proudly displayed the current £20 banknote featuring Turner alongside King Charles III, underscoring his pervasive influence.
(Taiwan News, Lyla Liu video)
