1980-1991 A few misadventures occur with galleries and art dealers, and he is mugged in the streets of New York. But beautiful exhibitions also take place, specifically at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Quimper and at the Musée du Château de Vitré. He continues to travel, including to Hawaii and to Japan with Jean-Paul Desroches in 1984. This is where, during a walk in the Shinjuku Park, they decide to publish a book together. It is a children’s tale, le Rêve de Ximei (the dream of Ximei), written by Jean-Paul Desroches and illustrated by T’ang. At that time, the western world starts to take interest in modern China and especially the period between 1949 and the mid-70’s. China starts to resume its position on the international scene. T’ang, however does not plan to return to or even travel to China. He adopts French citizenship and this facilitates his trips thanks to his French passport. The distance between him and his family has become too great. They live in different worlds. T’ang has freed his mind and has fulfilled himself and tends to lean towards transcendence while, understandably, his family lives in a world where obligations created by blood ties and total pragmatism prevails. When his mother and father die, correspondence stops completely. From 1980, every year during the Holy Week, T’ang joins a group of friends at the Abbey of Fontgombault in the Indre area, where he listens to Gregorian chants and paints. He prepares himself for baptism with Father Le Van Thang of the foreign missions and becomes a Roman Catholic, changing his first name to François. One should not see this conversion/naturalization as a symbol of a rejection of China, nor as an abandonment of the Taoist ideal, because for him, God and Tao are the same. Some say that Tao is a natural syncretism; others simply say that it is easy to take the Chinese person out of China, but not China out of the Chinese person. It is possible that T’ang desired to belong to a group or a community. To many friends he keeps silent about this major event in his life and to some friends he sates how the differences have vanished and in 1987 becomes the godfather of a child. His energy decreases but he still travels. In 1990, he goes as far as the city of Kutaisi in Georgia. Then In June 1991, after a lunch with friends, T’ang feels dizzy. Hospitalized, he learns a few days later that he only has a few months to live. The photograph taken sometime before by Yonfan Manshih already shows him thinner and looking exhausted. T’ang spends the last months of his life at Saint Joseph’s Hospital where his friends visit him. Some call him François, others Haywen or simply T’ang. At this time, he thinks of himself as “being lucky.” A friend, daughter of the Taiwanese sculptor Yang Yingfeng, brings him Chinese meals. He calls people he has not seen in thirty years and sometimes they visit him. He plans to travel once more to Italy but his condition worsens and he dies on the 9th of September. *1 see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T’ang_Haywen : section “ the name of T’ang Haywen” *2 Felix Greene (1909-1985) was a British-American who first visited China for the BBC in 1957. Some have declared that he should be seen as a Fellow traveler, a term describing people who are sympathetic to the goals of the communist states. *3 Bissano Ram Gopal (1912-2003) Indian dancer and choreographer who performed as a soloist. Deemed a modernist, he blended the classical Indian dance with western choreography, and along with Uday Shankar was among the first to showcase Indian classical dance. Polish critic Tadeusz Zelenski called him “the Nijinsky of India”. *4 Tom Tam visits T’ang in Paris. They conceive an experimental film with T’ang’s work. The 16 mm camera, that shoots 24 frames per second, can also work in stop frame animation, which means that single pictures are photographed consecutively. Tom and Haywen select and record continuous series of large diptychs, from the darkest to the lightest, from the fullest to the emptiest. They reverse the sequence, and alternate a short series of black shots with shots of bare paper and stills, lasting for a few seconds. The edited film, T’ang Boogie is amazing and probably one of a kind. The images flash by in a succession of short bursts like ink jets on paper. The white paper shots resemble sparks of light. The art works are shown as single size still frames, 48 images flash by within two seconds, forwards and backwards. The eyes get used to it, the brain memorizes and recognizes the images. The animated ink of T’ang Boogie, translates into reality the random paths of ink that echo life itself. This metaphor frees T’ang from the affectation of virtuosity and preciousness. He contributes to a process that is using his work as raw material. There, in accordance with the artistic ideal of Taoism, he finds a very contemporary resonance.
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