Thinking of Neil
I saw
Neil’s paintings before I met him. That was in the spring of 1981. I was still
living in Beijing, China.
After ten years chaos of the Culture Revolution, the exhibition of the Boston
Museum of Art Collection was opened in Beijing
at the National Art
Museum. In my memory, this was the first time a
western art show was held by the Chinese government. Since the Korean War,
Chinese had been told that America
is number one enemy. I had never seen any original American artist’s work.
Neil’s painting was among this collection. The piece was
a huge landscape painting with a variety of medium green and blue tones. From a
distance it looked clearly to be a realistic landscape, but when I looked
closer, I saw only the fluid brush strokes leaping all over the canvas. I could
feel the brush movements. The brush strokes had no modification and the
painting looked to form a coherent whole. The color was pure, fresh and thin.
He treated the spaces almost in a flat way. The painting had the harmony and
calm effects but not in the way of romantic idyll. I have never seen any artist
approach a painting like that. I was very impressed. I knew he must have more
meaning behind the landscape, but I wasn’t sure.
One day, a few months earlier, I received a phone call
from the US. It was my younger sister
Rulian:” Hi, I have good news for you! Today I talked to the chairman of the
Graduate School Of Fine Arts at UPenn. I showed to him
your slides and resume. He liked it. He decided to give to you a teaching scholarship…
His name is Neil Welliver.” I was jumping, screaming and couldn’t control my
excitement. I never dreamed in my whole life, I would have a chance to go to America. In China, it was strictly prohibited for a citizen to travel
to a foreign country. At the end of the call, Rulian said: ”Hurry
up and study English!”
After almost a year of a very complicated and difficult
process of obtaining my passport and visa, finally I arrived in to the United States at end of September 1981. The school semester had
already started. On Octebor7th, for the first time, I walked into
the Fine Arts building at 34th street. Soon I saw a short, sturdy man with white hair and
gray moustache, I guess that most be Neil. He walked towards me and shook my
hand: ”Welcome to UPenn.” Under his broad forehead, a
pair of intelligent, sharp eves looked straightforward into my face with a
little amusement. In that moment, I felt familiar with that temperament; it was
so much like my professor Ye in China. They are decisive, frank and dominant even the gray
moustache was the same. My nervousness was a little relieved. But I could only
smile back to him. My poor English just couldn’t come out of my mouth. Neil
pointed to my friend who came with me: “ Her sister
cheated on me.” with a smile.
My sister Rulian was an English teacher in China. She has perfect English. When at the end of their
meeting, Neil asked: “ How is her English?” Rulian
replied: “Not as good as mine.” Actually I had no English. In high school I
learned Russian. In college and Graduate School I studied traditional Chinese painting and learned
Ancient Chinese. I rushed to find an English tutor and started from ABC, but
the effect was very little.
Neil was very
patient. He comforted me: “I was in Taiwan and Asian for a year. The local people do not speak
English, but we got along very well. We would use gestures to communicate.” He
recorded his instruction and criticism
on a tape. I could listen slowly and repeated. Every two weeks, he flew
from Maine to UPenn. When he came to my studio, either I had to
find an interpreter or he would bring some one to help. A few times he couldn’t
find a Chinese interpreter, so he then brought a Japanese who interpreted by
writing Chinese characters for the translation. At the same time, Neil helped
to arrange an English tutor for me. The pressure and environment pushed me and
after a few months, I could start to talk to Neil directly.
One day Neil saw my paintings hanging all over on my
studio wall, these paintings I brought with me from China. “ You have very good
technique. You can do every thing. If you are an illustrator, you could earn
millions of dollars. But if you want be a serious artist, you have to
concentrate in one direction. Your work is too sophisticated,
you should go back to bedrock and think like a child.” Neil’s topic was
a strong challenge for me. I have been trained as an artist since I was very
young. I studied mostly from traditional French and Russian academicals systems
with traditional Chinese arts. I was a professor at the most prestigious arts
college in China. Right now, I need to back to the beginning. It was
not only struggle to re-judge my knowledge, moreover to know whom
am I. Sounds like Neil read my mind, he explained: “In China, artists are highly respected as scholar, but not in America. Here artists are the same as workers.”
Most
of the time I practiced my self-portraits at the studio. “We need to
find a short–cut for you to understand the modern art.” Neil said. Then he
brought a painting of ancient Chinese Buddha. I was inspired by the very simple
and striking face of the Buddha, I had never looked at
this familiar feature in that way before. After I painted countless
self-portraits, one day Neil saw one of my paintings, he was happily commented:
“That is it! This one could go any gallery.” It was a painting simply divided
in four parts, each part had a different angle of my head. That was a big
encouragement for me.
Neil gave to me
one of his picture albums (Neil Williver painting 1966-1980) and a magazine
(The Pennsylvania Gazette April1979). From the articles, I learned Neil’s
career and his principal motif. How he changed from abstract style to
realistic; how there is the connection between Abstract Impressionism to his
current style. The large scale, the pure and expressive way to use color and
the fluid brushwork are the elements of the Abstract Expressionist. Neil used
them with his strong personal choice—Maine landscape that he loves and
lives in. Those combinations created a new school of “Painterly Realistic”. He
told me, in the early years, his work was cruelly criticized by the newspaper
and critics. His son was crying. I could imagine in that period, the art world
was dominated by abstract arts. Neil took the risk of being negatively treated
by critics and went on a lonely and hard way. He said: “ At
the Yale, I was not the smartest in my class. I was just stubborn and keep
doing what I believed. Some of my classmates were very smart, but are not doing
art any more.” Probably that is true for any field. To be successful takes
talent, strong personality, and hard work. Even though a majority artists are
following the esthetic standard that the world already accepted. Only a few
artists could achieve mastery through a comprehensive study of the subject.
They create the new visual images and establish new esthetic standards. They
are the masters. Masters are inherit the past and usher in the future. Neil is
the one among them.
When I first came into contact with contemporary arts, it
was a culture shock. I couldn’t find a connection with them. I doubted my
feeling and intuition which I usually depending on to observe the visual art. I
had no feeling with William de Kooning’s wild strange looking woman. I couldn’t
understand how Jackson Pollock’s big dripping paintings are so important. But I
liked Neil’s paintings immediately. Maybe it was the realistic effect of his
work. Even though, they are not the same as the traditional realistic art that I learned
before, but at least they have some of the common ground I could stand on to
begin with. From there, I gradually found the connection between Neil and de
Kooning, Pollock, Mandrians, from the technology to the theory and philosophy.
Neil’s art guided me to understand the modern art historically and rationally.
I feel lucky to have studied with Neil. I am very proud to be one of his
students.
In early May of this year, I was visiting in Philadelphia and had lunch with a few old friends in the White Dog
restaurant. One of them named Marcy also
studied with Neil a few years earlier than me. I asked her: “How is Neil?”
“Oh, Neil passed away recently.” She replied with sad
tone.
I was shocked.
Last time I saw Neil was in1990 at the same restaurant for his
retirement party. Shortly after that, I moved to LA.
Every year I sent my hand made Christmas card to him. At
the end of June, I received an invitation for Neil’s memorial service. On the
bottom and right corner of the invitation there was handwriting:
Dearest Rulan,
Neil loved your Christmas Cards.
Mimi
My tears started
form my eves.
On July 22, Neil’s 76th
birthday. Rulian and I attended Neil’s memorial service at St.
Margaret’s Episcopal Church at Belfast, Maine. This is my
second time to visit Maine, both for Neil. Way back in the summer of 1982, Neil
invited us to his Lincolnville home. We stayed overnight in his huge, rough,
wooden house for a few days; we visited his studio had a first hand experience
seeing his working environment; we hiked with him in the woods and barbecued
together in his backyard. On the last day of our visit, he carried his baby
son, John, on his back and took us in to town then treated us to a lobster
dinner. On the way, he bought a drawing book for me as a gift. Today this book
with burgundy fabric cover is still sit on my desk.
Rulian lives in the Boston area. In recent years, she occasionally saw the
reports of Neil in the paper. She sorrowed: “ I
couldn’t recognize Neil in the picture, he changed so much.” But in my mind,
Neil’s image is always an energetic, vigorous and handsome man.
Neil not only led me into the modern art world, moreover
he brought me to America.
Neil will always be missed.
Rulan Geiger
September 5,2005