Appendix the Dao of Ink and Dharma Objects—On Jizi's Paintings

Appendix The Dao of Ink and Dharma Objects—On Jizi’s Paintings Gao Congyi The stance that the ancient Daoist philosopher Laozi took of his brush and ink were still on the distant horizon. Even in the world after he realized the “Way” ( dao), as everyone so, the paucity of his artworks in his early period allowed knows, was a rejection of the world. A modern Western ex- him, after weighing the matter over and over, to destroy ample would be Ludwig Wittgenstein who, after his Tracta- them voluntarily. Isn’t this also a kind of suicide? This was a tus Logico-Philosophicus, saw the “Way” ( dao), left the elite kind of cultural suicide that is different from the suicides of celebrity circle of Bertrand Russell, John Maynard Keynes the novelist Lao She (1899–1966) and the translator and art and others, and ran off to a far away mountain village to be- critic Fu Lei (1908–1966), who took their own lives. Chinese come an elementary school teacher and church gardener for intellectuals like Lao She and Fu Lei did not “endure”, while more than 15 years. Until his 27 June 2009 exhibition “The those like Jizi “endured” until after 1977, “endured” until the Way of Ink and Dharma Objects,” Jizi’s exhibition”, Jizi’s “science spring,” and “endured” until the “art spring.” personal life had been hidden from the world for almost 70 The 1980s were a watershed for the Chinese society and years. As for the contributions of his artistic career, Jizi had also for Jizi. The period just before the mid-1980s was the been painting in silence for almost 50 years! After hearing first period of his painting, the period of brush and ink land- this marvelous absurdity, one cannot but feel that it was a scapes. Snow Yak, a painting that combines the noble and tragic and poignant fate, a really telling sign of a painter who the beautiful, while harmonizing dynamism with sentiment, gave his life to art. is a masterpiece of traditional realism and even more a self- A sharp difference between Jizi and his ancestor Laozi portrait of Jizi’s spirit. Dark brown, as the substrate of the and the Westerner Wittgenstein is that the “disappearance” style of primary colors, displayed the dark memories (black) of the artist Jizi carried with it a sense of “being enforced” of the tragic period and a spiritual schemata of the warm and and the “tragedy” of the nation and its people during that surviving human vision (red). The top of the painting has era. At the time of the 1976 Tangshan earthquake, just be- mountain clouds in contact with the snowy aura (white); in fore the death of Mao Zedong, Chinese intellectuals, includ- the middle of the painting, high mountain yaks stand in the ing artists, had only some modes to choose from: they could snow. There is no need to say more—an agreement is here, be (Mao’s) students, (state system) slaves, hidden from the a spiritual binding. In the painting lone yaks have embarked world, or martyrs to their own ideology. One could not talk on the spiritual peak! Too many hardships, too well honed, about an independent cultural life, and artists were the first too thickly accumulated caused Jizi not only to be unable to to inhabit this strange world, painting chaotically and indis- remain in a pure and beautiful spiritual homeland but also to criminately, with their dreams of making artistic contribu- be unsatisfied with just treating with contempt the strictures tions sabotaged. Jizi chose to survive by disappearing. On on art. He was not only different from those national artists the one hand, he wore commoners’ clothes, absolutely did who painted sweet and vulgar figures but also different from not exercise his “right to speak”, and avoided making his those bewildering abstractionists. Jizi was like those high “alienation” a calamity. On the other hand, he crossed over mountain yaks who had arrived at the foothills where the to doing paintings of the sea, gradually realizing that worldly snow ends and whose eyes longed for the summit—a secret appearances are like “watching clouds form white garments admonition to climb to the summit engraved in his mind. that then became black dogs.”1 The towering decisiveness After departing from the “Brush and Ink landscapes”, during his so-called “Snow and Ice landscapes”, Jizi had two natural objects for his choice of themes: the Great Wall 1 The allusion to clouds changing their transitory semblance from in northern Hebei Province and the snow regions of Tibet. white garments to black dogs is taken from a poem by the Tang Dynasty poet Du Fu (born 712). Selecting these two great objects was at a minimum the re- D. A. Brubaker, C. Wang, Jizi and His Art in Contemporary China, Chinese Contemporary Art Series, 109 DOI 10.1007/978-3-662-44929-5, © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2015 110 Appendix sult of three bits of good luck. First, selecting the Great Wall encounter as mutually presented and clarified. “Beauty” is in Hebei was for Jizi, a Hebei native, looking homeward, the way that truth ( dao) dwells in the world. From the dwell- a predetermined existentialist encounter. Second was the ing of the “Way” ( dao), Jizi’s brush and ink open out on lines from Mao Zedong’s poem “Snow”: “The vast frozen an incomparable purity, glory, and spirituality. For the past land is covered with ice. And the snow flits far-flung in the thousand years, Chinese painting formed a compositional sky. On both sides of the Great Wall. The empty wilderness paradigm known as the “three distances”5: the level distance survives.”2 This poem is a symbol of the highest cultural vi- (drawing an extensive space both horizontally and laterally); sion, and it prepared the way for the acceptance of realism in the high distance (looking from the base of a mountain to the historical studies. And third, the Great Wall meanders through peak); and the deep distance (glimpsing at other mountains the hills of Hebei, possesses a timeless ontological status, from atop a mountain). The level distance is used the most, and is a symbol of the “Way”. The Great Wall also signified with high distance second. Though there is this third method, that the painter was crossing a Rubicon, bidding farewell to the deep distance, it is rarely used and basically absent from the success and possibility of private enjoyment, and instead paintings. Jizi’s “The Dao of Ink Landscapes” fundamentally making himself set out again to create from heaven ( qian) uses this deep distance method for construction, for patterns, and earth ( kun)3 a realm of noble intentions and purity. The and to fill a void. We can say he is the master of this deep two works Snow on the Great Wall and Waves Breaking on distance method. The method is an arduous one that opens Shore are expressions of and witnesses to this realm. In Snow up mountains and forests so merit goes to the pioneer. The on the Great Wall the Great Wall meanders, but where does mixing of heaven ( qian) and earth ( kun) and the solemnity it end? In Waves Breaking on Shore the sea of mountains and of the dharma objects ( fa xiang) are the wealth and honor of the waves of clouds are frightful; where can we find a moor- he who integrated them. ing? The Tibetan snow region arrives responding to karma This is no accident. From the perspective of the philoso- and says put brush to paper. First, the Tibetan snow region phy of art, the above-described level distance and high dis- has mysterious and sacred aspects; second, in his “Snow and tance methods rely even more on a person’s eyes and ex- Ice Landscapes” period, Jizi’s choice of the Tibetan snow ternal visual experiences to discriminate between two great region could not be more natural; and third, the image of a humanistic aspirations: the graceful and lasting appeal of hidden, snowy region that is too mysterious and sacred pro- quietude and the lofty realm of movement. The deep dis- vides the symbolic answer to the questions “where does it tance method is quite different. Although we cannot say that end?” and “where can we find a mooring?” If, for example, this method has no relation to a person’s sight and external we say that the Great Wall of homeland Hebei is a brush visual experiences, deep distance first and foremost depends and ink symbolic language for time, and the surging and on a person’s spiritual wisdom and inherent transcendental frightening cloudy mountains are an artistic representation intuition. The level distance and high distance methods are and generalization of life’s quirks, then the far off snowy more about “leaning about painting from nature’s creations”, regions of Tibet are the brush and ink symbolic language for while the deep distance method is more about “finding the space, a figurative representation of a spiritual homeland. source for a painting in your mind.”6 This without doubt puts The distinction between the Hebei Great Wall and the Ti- quite a demand on an artist. In thousands of years of art his- betan snow regions is time and space, the symbolic image tory, the artists who could “find the source for a painting in of the road and the destination, and also the symbolic image their minds” are few in number. Many of them were Shitao’s of the last farewell. From the unification of time and space (1630–1724) “eminent monks who excelled with the brush” in the symbolic imagery of the Hebei earth and the Tibet (according to Huang Binhong 1865–1955).

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