台灣藝術 · Táiwān yìshù
How do people in Taiwan talk about art? These six topics – from brushwork and colour to the artists themselves – are adapted from the Art Roundtable by Taiwanese company HTC VIVE, where you can chat with famous artists played by AI. Each topic comes with discussion questions and key Mandarin vocabulary with pinyin.
創作技法
Oil, watercolour, printmaking – every medium behaves differently. In Taiwan, many people also learn traditional ink painting (水墨畫) and calligraphy, using a soft brush on absorbent rice paper, where a stroke cannot be undone. The roundtable covers brushwork and texture, mixing colours, the rules of composition, and the characteristics of different media.
藝術史
Taipei’s National Palace Museum (故宮) holds one of the world’s great collections of Chinese art, and exhibitions of Western masters regularly come to Taiwan as well. The roundtable covers the Renaissance, the Impressionist revolution, the move from Post-Impressionism to abstract art, and East meets West – how Japanese ukiyo-e prints influenced painters such as Van Gogh.
色彩理論
Walk into a Taiwanese temple and you will see bold reds, golds, blues and greens on the roofs, beams and doors – colours associated with good fortune and celebration. The roundtable covers complementary colours, light and shadow, how colour tone creates mood, and building your own palette.
構圖與空間
Western painting often uses linear perspective to create depth, while Chinese ink painting values liúbái (留白) – leaving part of the paper blank so that the viewer’s imagination can fill it in. The roundtable covers the golden ratio, linear and atmospheric perspective, negative space, and balance in asymmetrical compositions.
藝術哲學
Why do artists create, and what is beauty? Chen Cheng-po (陳澄波), one of Taiwan’s first modern oil painters, studied in Tokyo and painted many street scenes and landscapes of his hometown, Chiayi. The roundtable covers art and nature, what drives artists to create, how the idea of beauty has changed over time, and how art reflects and shapes society.
圓桌上的藝術家
On the Art Roundtable you can put your own questions to AI versions of 15 artists, including Leonardo da Vinci (達文西), Michelangelo (米開朗基羅), Rembrandt (林布蘭), Monet (莫內), Van Gogh (梵谷), Frida Kahlo (芙烈達．卡蘿), Hokusai (葛飾北齋) and Xu Beihong (徐悲鴻). Tip: Taiwan and mainland China often write foreign names differently – Van Gogh is 梵谷 in Taiwan but 梵高 in mainland China, and Leonardo is 達文西 rather than 達·芬奇.
台灣本土藝術 · Táiwān běntǔ yìshù
The topics above mostly start from Western masters. This section turns to art that grew out of Taiwan itself: glove puppet theatre outside temples, Indigenous crafts, and Taiwanese painters and sculptors. This section was added by our centre and is not part of the Art Roundtable.
布袋戲
Bùdàixì is puppet theatre performed by hand: the puppeteer slips a hand inside the puppet’s cloth costume and uses their fingers to make it walk and fight. It came to Taiwan from Fujian with immigrants during the Qing dynasty and was often performed on stages outside temples. In 1970 Huang Chun-hsiung’s (黃俊雄) puppet show 《雲州大儒俠》 became a huge hit on television, and today Pili (霹靂) puppetry adds computer effects and has many young fans.
陳澄波
Chen Cheng-po (1895–1947) was born in Chiayi and belongs to Taiwan’s first generation of oil painters. He studied at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts, and in 1926 his painting 〈嘉義街外〉 (Outside Chiayi Street) was selected for Japan’s Imperial Art Exhibition – the first work by a Taiwanese painter to be chosen. He loved painting outdoors from life, and his street scenes and landscapes of Chiayi and Tamsui are full of bright colour and lively brushwork.
原住民藝術
Taiwan has 16 officially recognised Indigenous peoples, each with its own language, dress and crafts. Every pattern of Paiwan (排灣族) glass beads has its own name and meaning, and the beads are often given as gifts of blessing. The Atayal (泰雅族) are known for weaving cloth with red geometric patterns, and the Tao (達悟族) of Orchid Island (蘭嶼) paint their plank boats in red, white and black.
朱銘的雕塑
Sculptor Ju Ming (朱銘, 1938–2023) was born in Miaoli and began learning wood carving as a teenager. He is best known for his Taichi series – large figures that look as if they are practising tai chi, simple in form yet full of strength. At the Juming Museum in Jinshan, New Taipei, you can stroll across the lawns and see his large works outdoors.
Want to talk about art with AI in Mandarin? Pick an artist on the Art Roundtable and try asking in Chinese.
* The Art Roundtable is an AI service. The artists there are AI characters and their answers are generated by AI – they may contain mistakes and are not the real artists’ words. This page is adapted from that site.
Jade Mountain Mandarin School
匈牙利玉山中文學校
