EP 33:  With the spirit of a poet, ROBERT C. MORGAN’s book, Chinese Ink Painters: The Presence of What is Not, examines works by seventeen artists engrossed in a single medium.  He writes: “It is my contention the contemporary version of what today is called ‘Chinese Ink Art’ is fundamentally intuitive. It results from a series of hybrids whereupon calligraphy lent itself to various aspects of Taoism, what westerners often referred to as ‘abstraction.’ This historically aesthetic tendency combined over time with selected aspects of traditional ink painting, which had been expropriated from previous schools in past centuries. Rather than academic training, my discovery of this tendency happened through spontaneous meetings with visiting Chinese artists in the early 1990s in New York City. Many of these talks led to visits in China, primarily in cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Hangzhou where my interest in conversing together with my Chinese friends and their colleagues extended beyond my expectations. The essays in Chinese Ink Painters came as a result of their generosity in what they were willing to share, namely their profound ideas.

The artists discussed are: Lan Zhenghui, Qui Deshu, Qin Feng, Li Gang, Liu Zijian, Sang Huoyao, Yuan Shan, Zhang Zhaohui, Zhang Jian Jun, Lin Yan, Wang Chuan, Bingyi, Zhen Guo, Zheng Lianjie, Shen Chen, Cai Xiaosong, Zheng Chongbin, Zhang Zhaohui.

ROBERT C. MORGAN is an art critic, curator, and Professor Emeritus in art history at the Rochester Institute of Technology. He has published many monographs, books, anthologies, and curated exhibitions. In 1999, he was appointed to the jury for the UNESCO award presented at the 48th Biennale di Venezia. The same year, he was awarded the first Arcale award in international art criticism by the municipality of Salamanca (Spain). In 2011, he was inducted into the European Academy of Sciences and Arts in Salzburg. He has taught in the Graduate Fine Art Program at Pratt Institute and at the School of Visual Arts in New York and writes for The Brooklyn Rail. In 2017, Morgan was given a fifty-year retrospective at Proyectos Monclova in Mexico City with a comprehensive catalog of his work as an artist.

First edition paperback, September 2022, 120 pp., sewn, bound and printed in Italy, a two-color cover, a black and white photograph of the author on the frontispiece, and 11 black and white illustrations.