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Arts & Communication

LETTER
Wang Yiming: Edges of the inaccessible

Grégory Jouanneau-Damance*
Department of Information and Communication Sciences, Sorbonne Paris Nord University,
Villetaneuse, 93430, France

1. Genius loci

Wang Yiming’s creative process is the fruit of a slow maturation coupled with a personal
and intimate journey that has led him to the edges of the world. According to him, it all
began in July 1987, when the young artist decided to devote all his savings to a long trip
to Tibet for 2 months. For him, it was a real dream that stemmed from his childhood
and the stories of his father who himself had visited Lhasa at the end of the 1950s. From
this confrontation with the deserted landscapes and the highest mountains, 40 watercolor
paintings were born, still figurative, and the paintings are sort of a logbook, in which the
painter’s future style can already be read. The strokes are lively, lyrical, and energetic, since
what matters above all in Wang Yiming’s eyes is to transcribe an emotion drawn from the
landscape. However, it had been more than 20 years before he returned to Tibet in 2011 –
the beginning of an extremely fertile period, culminating in the publication of a first series
of paintings, the Rainy Season at Shangri-La. These large-scale paintings were done directly
sur le motif and in extreme conditions, at an altitude of over 4000 m. Its title is explained
firstly by the impressionist sensitivity of the artist, who is fascinated by the climate of the
high plateaus bathed in an incessantly changing light. Second, the Shangri-La is a utopian
place, an ideal lamasery described at length by James Hilton in his novel Lost Horizons.
Everyone can enjoy total freedom and absolute happiness in this place, at the price of a
*Corresponding author:
Grégory Jouanneau-Damance single sacrifice – that of civilization. It is undoubtedly at this precise moment that the long
(gregory.jouanneaudamance@ walks of the artist, in the heart of the arid solitudes, really amplify their meaning: they
gmail.com) mark the beginning of a spiritual adventure where each step, far from the human societies,
Citation: Jouanneau-Damance G, makes it possible to find a lost link with the world, and with ourselves. Inevitably, we think
2023, Wang Yiming: Edges of the of the attraction of the painters and the romantic writers of the high mountains, and in
inaccessible.
Arts & Communication, 1(1): 358. particular of the pages of La Nouvelle Heloise which are devoted to them:
https://doi.org/10.36922/ac.358 “It seems that as we rise above the abode of man, we leave behind all banal and
Received: February 6, 2023 earthly feelings, and that as we approach the ethereal regions, the soul contracts
Accepted: February 9, 2023 something of their unalterable purity. We are serious without melancholy, peaceful
without indolence, content to be and to think: all too lively desires are blunted… We
Published Online: March 6, 2023 forget everything, we forget ourselves, we no longer know where we are” .
[1]
Copyright: © 2023 Author(s).
This is an Open Access article This famous quote by Jean-Jacques Rousseau seems to perfectly illuminate the approach
distributed under the terms of the of Wang Yiming, who soon joined, as if magnetized, the foothills of the Himalayas. In
Creative Commons Attribution 2015, he began painting a new series of canvases, The Mountain Kora, from the base
License, permitting distribution,
and reproduction in any medium, camp facing Mount Everest. As he got closer to the peaks, his works became less and less
provided the original work is figurative. Not only because the landscape, which was always shrouded in a sea of clouds,
properly cited. was withdrawn from his view but also because Tibet, in his own words, has ended up
Publisher’s Note: AccScience melting into an intimate, mental image. The black, strong strokes of the first period give
Publishing remains neutral with way, little by little, to shimmering patches of color; the abstract colors of a land where
regard to jurisdictional claims in
published maps and institutional the cobalt blue of the sky and the lakes contrast with the ochre of the deserts, the red of
affiliations. the walls, the yellow of the sun and the gray of the clouds. This creative process, from

Volume 1 Issue 1 (2023) 1 https://doi.org/10.36922/ac.358