Reaching Likeness Through Unlikeness

REACHING LIKENESS THROUGH UNLIKENESS

The interpretation and application of busi zhi si in contemporary drawing

PhD of Fine Arts

LI WENMIN

2009

College of Fine Arts University of New South Wales THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES

Thesis/Dissertation Sheet Surname or Family name: LI

First name: WENMIN Other name/s: Abbreviation for degree as given in the University calendar: PhD of Fine Arts

School: COLLEGE OF FINE ARTS Faculty: SCHOOL OF ART

Title: REACHING LIKENESS THROUGH UNLIKENESS Abstract

This research started with the question of how a contemporary artist could draw an object with its form and essence in a similar way to that of Chinese traditional artists. It is based on the exploration of the interpretations of busi zhi si 不似之似 (likeness of unlikeness), which has searched for the answers to a question how it is possible to interpret and apply the concept of “likeness” and “essence” of an object as depicted by Chinese traditional artists. More importantly, it has led to a process in which a contemporary artist endeavours to apply a particularly traditional concept to contemporary drawing practice properly. It is this approach towards Chinese aesthetics and philosophy with proper attitudes, which has greatly oriented the research in terms of its methodology.

The focus of this research has been on the application of the designed methods, including the implementation of the methods in drawing, evaluation of the outcomes and reflection of the evaluation in practice. This written work serves as documentation and explanation of how this process has been carried out, as drawing has been the major component of the research. Chinese traditional learning method has been interpreted philosophically in this research in order to set up the practical methods to reach the main goal of depicting the essential likeness of the object. However, due to the various mediums being employed, distinctive from Chinese traditional medium, the Chinese learning methods have been interpreted as being imitations of the traditional way of depicting the objects. Three aspects in depicting the object, which are observation, outer likeness and interpretative likeness, have been studied in relation to Chinese aesthetics.

This process of research has provided a means to build a bridge between Chinese and western aesthetical grounds on depictions of the likeness and essence of an object. The promising future of this ongoing research therefore seems to be more exciting to drawers with particular interests in applying aesthetic concepts in practice.

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Abstract

Table of Figures...... 3

1 Introduction ...... 5

2 Preparation ...... 22 2.1 Shi Tao’s busi zhi si...... 22 2.2 Interpretation of busi zhi si...... 24 2.3 Interpretation of the tradition...... 27 2.4 Similarities between Chinese traditional painting and contemporary drawing...... 35 2.5 Likeness and essence in western drawing in the twentieth century...... 38

3 Theoretical Foundation...... 52 3.1 Principles ...... 52 3.2 Methods ...... 60 3.3 Other relevant aspects...... 85

4 Implementation ...... 93 4.1 Imaginative drawing in observation ...... 93 4.2 Shadow – capture of outer likeness ...... 98 4.3 Interpretative likeness...... 111

5 Evaluation ...... 121 5.1 Case study ...... 125 5.2 Unity of subjectivity and objectivity ...... 145

6 Reflection ...... 153

7 Conclusion...... 179

Selected Bibliography ...... 186

Chronological Chart...... 195

List of Plates ...... 196

Table of Figures

Figure 2 Shi Tao Sou jin qi feng da cao gao (Seaching for distinctive mountains to draft) (part), ink on paper, 42.8 x 285.5 cm, 1691, 26 Figure 3 Paul Nobel Mall 20012 (left),Russell Crotty Hercules Over Knolltop Estates (Previously Chapparall) 2002 (right), 50 Figure 4 Illustration of copying method in Chinese traditional painting. Pictures are from Chao Xun’s copies of The Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting, 1995, (left) and from W Li, 2002 (right) 54 Figure 8. Xu Wei Huang jia tu (a painting of a Yellow Crab) ink on paper, 114.6 x 29.7 cm, date unknown, picture is taken from X Li & X Li, Xu Wei 74 Figure 9. William Kentridge, I am not me, the horse is not mine, video installation, 2008 102 Figure 10. Paul Chan, 6th Light, 2007, video installation, 102 Figure 11. Kara Walker, From the Bowel to the Bosom, 1996, cut paper silhouettes, 103 Figure 13. Kara Walker, Darkytown Rebellion, cut paper and projection on wall, (4.3 x 11.3 m) overall, 2001 104 Figure 13. Details of Bird, mixed media on cardboard, 92 x 60 cm, 2006 105 Figure 14. Details of Going home, mixed media, 92 x 60 cm, 2006 105 Figure 15 Traced shape of a chair (left) & details of Hail storm, Pencil on paper, 107 Figure 17. Chinese Shadow show, picture is from http://www.yoto.cn/article/皮影戏 108 Figure 17. Back and front sides, details of Leaves, mixed media on silk, 120 x 120 cm, 2007 110 Figure 18. Details of Leaves, mixed media on silk, 120 x 120 cm, 2007 110 Figure 19. Zhou Chunya, Green Dog 2001 seriesA, oil on linen, 250 x 200 cm, 2001 113 Figure 20. Zhou Chunya, Green Dog series 1, oil on linen, 200 x 150 cm 2006 113 Figure 21. Wang Yuping, Bird and human, oil on linen, 109 x 78 cm, 1998 113 Figure 22. WangYuping, Fish, oil on linen 160 x 170 cm, 1999 113 Figure 23. Ye Yongqing, Swallow, size unknown, 2006 (left) 114 Figure 24. Ye Yongqing, Untitled, size unknown, date unknown (right) 114 Figure 25. Indian Myna 117 Figure 26. Details of Indian Myna in my drawing Bird 117 Figure 27. Details of trees and Indian Myna in my drawing Going home 119 Figure 28. Qi Baishi, details of Swimming prawn with narcissus 82 x 36 cm, ca 19101916 128

Figure 29. Qi Baishi, details of there is no ichthyosaur but many prawns and crabs 133 x 34 cm, 1926 128 Figure 30. Qi Baishi, details of A painting of a group of prawns, 160 x 35 cm, 1932 129 Figure 31. Qi Baishi, details of A painting of a group of prawns, 115 x 35 cm, 1939 129 Figure 32. Qi Baishi, details of Prawns, 35 x 35 cm, 1947 130 Figure 33. Qi Baishi, details of Prawns (album), 38 x 24 cm, 1954 130 Figure 34. Theo van Doesburg, Composition (The Cow) Pencil on paper (c. 1917) 135 Figure 35. Piet Mondrian, Studies of trees, charcoal and black crayon on paper, c.1909, 1911, 1912, 1913 135 Figure 37. Qi Baishi, Red leaves and autumn cicada, 98.6 x 32.5 cm, 1945 143 Figure 38. Regina Silveira, The Saint's paradox (maquette), wood, paint, and photographic cutout, 22 x 37 x 25 cm, ca. 1990 157 Figure 38 Larry Gakan Black cat, steel, size and date unknown 159 Figure 39 Larry Gakan Soul singer, steel, size and date unknown 159 Figure 40, Larry Gakan , Hand in hand, steel, size and date unknown 159 Figure 41. Details of Flowerfullmoon, mixed media on paper, 250*114 cm, 2008 161 Figure 42. Details of Bird nest, mixed media, 250*114 cm, 2008 161 Figure 43. Details of Falling leaves, mixed media, 65*225 cm, 2008 162 Figure 44. Details of Bada Shanren, Bird and grapevine (Leaf album), 1695 169 Figure 45, Details of Bada Shanren, Bird and Rock, 1650–1705 169 Figure 46. Details of Myna bird in Bird in pink, mixed Media on silk, 13*8.7 cm, 2007 171 Figure 47. Details of a Baby cockatoo in Baby Bird, mixed Media on silk, 29.6*21 cm, 2007 171 Figure 48. Study of bird with different marks 173 Figure 49. Study of bird with different marks 174 Figure 50. Detail of Falling Leaves 174 Figure 51 Details of Indian Myna bird and crows in my drawings 175 Figure 52 Falling leaves, 65*224 cm, Mixed Media on paper, 2008 177

Gazing, soul-cleansed, at Thee from clouds upsprung,

One may mark with wide eyes the homing flight of birds

Some day must I thy topmost height Mount,

At one glance to see Hills numberless dwindle to nothingness.

荡胸生层云，决眦入归鸟。会当凌绝顶，一览众山小。

Du Fu, Gazing at the Great Mount 杜甫《望岳》

1 Introduction

The impetus of this research emerged in the heat of practice. While completing my

Master of Fine Arts (Drawing), the question of how to introduce the particular quality of traditional Chinese painting into my drawing practice arose. My being Chinese and exploring drawing in a western contemporary context also stimulated this initiative and I realised that I could not isolate myself from my Chinese heritage and cultural background.

This research explores the relationship between Chinese painting and contemporary drawing. Here, Chinese painting refers to the particular style that has been applied in

China. This is commonly known as Chinese brush and ink painting, or Chinese traditional painting, and has often been the subject of research. How does a contemporary artist draw an object with its form and essence in the way of Chinese traditional Chinese artists? Is it possible for a contemporary artist to interpret and apply the way that Chinese traditional artists convey the object with an appropriate understanding? These questions have led me to a question whether it is possible to understand the concept of ‘likeness’ and ‘essence’ of an object as depicted by Chinese

5 traditional artists.

The particular concept chosen for study from Chinese traditional painting is busi zhi si

不似之似 (likeness of unlikeness), which is commonly accepted to be crystalised by

Shi Tao or Daoji (ca 1638–1720). Shi Tao’s busi zhi si has particular significance in the history of Chinese painting and, the term busi zhi si was used to sum up different concepts and arguments in Chinese art history on how to depict the essence of an object. By putting two opposite terms ‘likeness’ and ‘unlikeness’ together, busi zhi si creates a new means of expressing the concept of ‘likeness’ artistically.

How to depict an object’s likeness and essence has always been a crucial issue in

Chinese art history. Chinese traditional painting rests on this unique philosophical foundation. In this philosophical tradition, the world at the most fundamental level is a part of the Dao. The Dao is believed to be the origin of the universe, with no form or appearance, but existing in every thing.1 The imagery of an object in Chinese painting therefore must deliver a representation of the outer likeness of the object as well as a perception of the present but formless Dao (i.e. the essence within). Shi Tao’s busi zhi si extends the importance of the relationship between likeness and essence within the object, imagery in painting and the Dao. There has not been any other major development on the same issue in Chinese painting since then.

The notion of busi zhi si appears in several passages from inscriptions by Shi Tao. For instance, the following undated inscription is written on a painting:

1 Laozi, Dao De Jing, Chapter 1, quoted from Yang Rungen, Finding Laozi, Huaxia Publisher, Beijing, 2003, p.1.

The heaven and the earth fusing with each other,

Define the four seasons with wind and rain;

Light and dark, high and low, far and close,

2 Busi zhi si si zhi (The likeness of unlikeness is like it).

Here si as 似 means likeness, while busi as不似 means unlikeness. The first zhi as之 is a preposition between two nouns, serving as of and the second zhi means it, the object. As such, busi zhi si can be translated as likeness of unlikeness, which leads to my interpretation of it to mean essential likeness. Despite the fact that the above statement was made by Shi Tao in the late seventeenth century and early eighteenth century, this conceptual relationship between the object, the imagery and the world was not new at all, but its articulation at that time represented the maturity of Chinese aesthetics. It reflects the continuous pursuit in Chinese painting, which has always been directed by the strong philosophical and aesthetic values of the relationship between the object, the imagery and the nature.

This research has focused on a process of interpreting busi zhi si in drawing practice.

The following three major aspects have been emphasised in order to answer the big question of how to interpret and apply the concept of busi zhi si in drawing practice:

2 W C Li, Shi Tao, Jilin Art Publisher, Changchun, 1997, p.233. The original is “天地浑融一气,再分风雨四时。明暗高低远近，不似之似似之”. In another painting dated 1702, Shi Tao wrote: “Grand mountains permit (us) to travel but not to paint, because our paintings will be like them so that the mountains will blame us. Irregular changes and wonders may cause confusion, only likeness of unlikeness can show our respect at the moment.” The original is “名山许游未许画，画必似之山必

怪。变幻神奇懵懂间，不似之似当下拜”. Translated by the author.

1. How do theory research and practice operate in this practice-based research?

2. How can a contemporary artist introduce a particular concept into a different

art genre in practice (i.e. a particular Chinese traditional concept into

international drawing practice)?

3. What methods can we apply to draw the object? How do these methods reflect

traditional Chinese aesthetics?

This written work serves as documentation and explanation of how this process has been carried out, as drawing has been the major component of the research. Any interpretation and application of busi zhi si in this research requires not only an adequate understanding but also a drawing practice to support it. The theory has been studied for the purpose of forming the methods for practice, and the evaluation of the outcomes. As a result, theory plays a role in assisting the practice in this research rather than acting as merely a form of historical review. In other words, although practice seems to dominate the goal of the research, it is the relationship between practice and theory that is far more important than either individual subject. This means that to learn to draw is essential, but it inevitably demands the aid of an appropriate understanding of traditional Chinese aesthetics. Therefore, the process involves the interdependent relationship between practice and theory. That is, the practice should reflect the results from theory, which in turn, should meet the demands from practice continuously at all stages of the process.

It also should be stressed that, in this research, individual appreciation of the Chinese artistic tradition is important in achieving the goal of interpretation. This research started from the personal desire to embrace a particular Chinese art concept in

8 drawing practice, before turning into a more general attempt to draw links between

Chinese traditional painting and contemporary drawing. It deals with the understanding of busi zhi si and the question of how to interpret it in this current drawing context. This paper suggests that an appropriate understanding of this tradition is an inherent cornerstone, particularly in a situation where the interpreters are from different cultures. The use of the word ‘appropriate’ here is meant to show genuine respect for the tradition as well as to distinguish this understanding from some superficial imitation or facsimile of a cultural style, or the ‘selling’ of cultural icons and symbols to the world. It is not easy to define what is appropriate and the actual circumstances of each individual will undoubtedly cause some sort of personal bias. Each individual perceives the world differently because of the influences of personal experience and his or her contemporary context. It should be pointed out that from the start to the finish of this research, there has been a great respect paid to the traditions of Chinese painting by me.

However, it is important to note that each individual’s interpretation, with its possibly incomplete understanding, should be acknowledged. These views contain the interpreter’s personal historical information and significance and allow for the identification of various contemporary approaches. The acknowledgments of the limitation of this research have been made so as to guide the studio-based practice towards further investigation. These are the concerns of research that is located in both Chinese and western art worlds.

To introduce a means of depicting the ‘likeness’ and ‘essence’ of an object in western drawing is not a new concept. Looking through western art history, we can trace this

9 concept back to the ancient Greeks when artists represented the works of the soul by accurately observing the way that feelings affected the body in action.3 The likeness of form was a means of achieving likeness of spirit or soul for the Greek artists. Greek mimesis was renewed and reinvented in Renaissance theory and practice, from depicting perfect and immortal beauty to valuing realistically anatomical depiction.

This can be best exemplified in the drawings of da Vinci and Michelangelo, in which meticulous study and depiction of the scientific understandings of the human body and the rest of the world are carefully rendered. It was not until the nineteenth century that varieties of lifelike academic drawings, which developed from the Renaissance tradition, were challenged by the Modernists. It was no longer merely objective reality but perception that holds the world together. Brendan Prendeville’s Realism in 20th

Century Painting has provided a comprehensive study of intersubjectivity. The example of Cezanne’s work in this book explains that the intersubjectivity refers not only to things in the “external world, but everything (that) pulses with human sensation. This is reality in terms of the intimate knowledge each of us has of it, a

‘subjective reality’.”4

A new dynamic concept of reality became an essential characteristic of philosophy and art in the twentieth century. Drawing joined the ongoing changes in modern and contemporary visual art. The progress of exploration in art from naturalistic to abstract depiction, to some extent, reveals the desire in the minds of artists to identify a reality in the world. From the 1970s, after being neglected for some decades, there was a resurgence of representational drawing. Prendeville believes that if the term

3 J Gao, The Expressive Act in Chinese Art, (Dissertation for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Aesthetics), Uppsala University, Uppsala Castle, 1996, p.124. 4 B Prendeville, Realism in 20th Century Painting, Thames & Hudson Ltd, London, 2000, p. 9.

‘realism’ is considered as a central principle and not a set of styles or practices, it describes artists’ efforts to represent things as they really are. Realistic attitudes and expectations “can be seen as having been pervasive in western culture up to the present day”.5 Although this statement refers to painting in the twentieth century, we can draw parallels with drawing in the same tine. We see how drawing has adapted to all the shifts and new conditions in the world in which we live. It is also inevitable that new times require new forms of art, including drawing, to make sense of changing situations, philosophies, and understandings of the world.

Drawing has been broadly defined in contemporary art practice since the second half of the twentieth century. One of the latest books surveying contemporary drawing,

Vitamin D: New Perspective in Drawing, has observed that drawing in various forms exists in our life everywhere.6 Tony Godfrey accepts this premise as the foundation of his book, Drawing Today: Draughtsmen in the Eighties, in which he describes drawing as the physical evidence of any two objects or two materials that touch. The nature of drawing in contemporary art is no longer that which it used to be before the

Second World War. A loose definition of drawing is given as “a group of related marks, probably linear, left by an object or objects touching a surface; the surface itself will normally remain partially visible around these marks. Such a combination of marks and surface will seem to intimate some meaning.”7 Although this is not the common definition of drawing today, it covers most of the drawing activities in the contemporary art world. Chinese traditional painting can be included in this criterion

5 ibid, p.10. 6 E Dexter, Vitamin D: New Perspective in Drawing, Phaidon Press Inc, New York, 2005, p.6. 7 T Godfrey, Drawing Today: Draughtsmen In the Eighties, Phaidon Press Limited, New York, 1990, p.12.

11 of drawing.

Despite the increase in drawing activities in the last few decades, little research has been carried out on Chinese traditional painting in relation to contemporary drawing, particularly the way to draw the likeness and essence of an object. Some important books on drawing in the late twentieth century have discussed some aspects of

Chinese traditional painting in relation to western conventional or contemporary drawing. For instance, Philip Dawson explains the nature of the use of lines and tones in Chinese and Japanese painting in comparison to western drawing.8 However, more attention has been given to analysing the great changes in drawing since the twentieth century, changes such as the diverse conceptions and executions of drawing activities.

These features are increasingly being discussed—such as in Drawing (1969), and in some recent surveys in Drawing: A Contemporary Approach (2004), Drawing from

Modernism (2004), Vitamin D (2005) and Writing on Drawing (2008). Some Chinese contemporary artists have been included in these books as examples of participation in these international art changes (e.g. Cai Guoqiang’s gunpowder drawings).

However, there has not been any significant investigation into the relationship between Chinese painting and international drawing activities. This research aims to explore the connection between Chinese painting and contemporary drawing. It sets out, from a practitioner’s viewpoint, to interpret and apply one particular concept of

Chinese traditional painting to contemporary drawing practice.

There are some other factors that explain the situation from which this research emanated. We can easily find many examples, along the history of exchange of

8 P Dawson, Drawing, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987, pp. 81–91.

12 culture between China and the other regions, showing how China used to offer the world her advanced civilisation, such as the silk trade between the Romans, or Marco

Polo’s great journey to China.9 Throughout history there was recognition of the incredible complexity of unique Chinese aesthetics by the West. It was in the mid- thirteenth century to the mid-fourteenth century that the cultural communication between China and Europe became richer. That communication had flourished from continuous expeditions and contacts. Zheng He’s seven expeditions expanded Chinese global contacts, while the arrival of Matteo Ricci heralded a period during which western learning was continuously introduced into China through Jesuit missionaries.10 Some scholars of Chinese art history believe that westerners in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were interested in Chinese cultures. 11 The earliest

Chinese classic texts showed that they worshipped the same universal force (known as

God in the West). Later, in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the structure of Chinese language was discovered to be a key to some other languages; and Chinese landscaping offered solutions to resolve the spatial issues in garden design.12 However, this two-way cultural communication was altered into a different situation in which western culture became more influential, and China was no longer seen to be one of the leading nations in the world. In fact, China started to experience weakness in military battles and scientific technology from the mid-nineteenth century.

9 R Wittkower, ‘Introduction’, in East-West in Art, Indiana University Press, Bloomington & London, 1966, p.14. 10 Hs Ta, ‘European influences on Chinese art in the later Ming and early Ch’ing Period’, in The Translation of Art: Essays on Chinese Painting and Poetry, James C.Y. Watt (ed.), Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 1976, p.153. 11 J Spence, ‘China’s modern worlds’, in Julia F. Andrew and Kuiyi Shen (eds), A Century in Crisis: Modernity and Tradition in the Art of Twentieth-Century China, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, 1998, p.10. 12 ibid.

For several centuries, the Chinese have been in a situation in which the impact of western aesthetics informed on Chinese aesthetic activities, which were shifted from a more equally interactive exchange of cultural and economic activities. The impact of western aesthetics on Chinese artistic activities took place during the same period.

Western techniques, such as light and shade, and the Renaissance perspective, have all gradually made their way into Chinese art practice.13 China therefore has experienced revolutionary changes in both art education and art practice since then. Chinese traditional aesthetics and method of painting was questioned and abandoned to some extent. So this research aims to bring Chinese traditional aesthetics back into the international art world. The uniqueness of the long-developed cultural heritage and aesthetic concepts can continue to be understood and appreciated by artists from other cultural backgrounds.

Another factor is that since the late twentieth century, western artists have shown great interest in Chinese painting and calligraphy. The recent tendency of introducing cross-cultural aesthetic values into art practice has meant that more and more contemporary artists have started to pay attention to Chinese traditional painting.

Artists started to apply elements and concepts from Chinese painting in their practice.

David Hockney has also produced a program to explain the unique aesthetic depiction of space in Chinese painting compared with western Renaissance perspectives.14 The

Australian artist Brett Whiteley has also demonstrated his interest in Japanese and

Chinese traditional painting in his work. However, many western artists who are interested in Chinese traditional painting have not undertaken further research on the

13 ibid. 14 D Hockney, A day on the Grand Canal with the Emperor of China, Milestone Film & Video, New Jersey, 1988.

14 process, especially in relation to how they interpret and apply the concepts in their practice. For instance, in David Hockney’s program, he specifically explains the use of space in Wang Hui’s (1632–1717) magnificent painting Imperial inspection tour of the South. However, little aesthetic background has been provided in his description.

At the same time, we may note great influences on the depiction of space in his work during the 1980s and 1990s, which can be seen as an example of learning from the

Chinese traditional artistic approach of emphasising time and space in experience in a more explicit way. Therefore, it is essential for the researcher to believe that this research has become necessary for some artists who may share same interest in

Chinese traditional painting, as there has not been much academic research in relation to contemporary drawing.

It is also necessary to clarify that the current acceptance of the translated term

‘painting’ in Chinese traditional painting can be misleading in terms of the nature of the Chinese traditional brush and ink art when used in the context of western art. In the beginning of the twentieth century, changes to the Chinese educational system and civil service examinations and the departure of many students for study abroad challenged the Chinese belief in China’s cultural dominance. Traditional brush painting could no longer be considered as the only way for a Chinese artist to make art. A new Chinese term for traditional art became necessary, as the old word for painting was no longer sufficiently clear. Modern painting with ink and/or water- soluble pigments on Chinese paper or silk is now usually called ‘guohua’ (national painting) to distinguish it from ‘xiyanghua’ 西洋画 (western oil painting).15 To hua画

15 J F Andrew, ‘A century in crisis: Tradition and Modernity in the Art of 20th Century China’, in Julia F. Andrew and Kuiyi Shen (eds), A Century in Crisis: Tradition and Modernity In the Art of 20th

(to paint, to sketch or to draw), to a traditional Chinese artist, means to make art on paper and/or silk with brush and ink or colours. This is different from shu 书 (to write) in calligraphy. The literary translation from Chinese to English of the word ‘hua’ as painting has narrowed down the nature of Chinese traditional brush and ink art. To understand and accept this historical fact in Chinese painting could lead us to a common background that both Chinese painting and contemporary drawing share.

Not only can this research provide a constructive connection between Chinese painting and international contemporary drawing to artists outside China, it also has significance to Chinese artists in their drawing practice and their pursuit of re- evaluating cultural heritage in painting. Chinese contemporary artists have typically been trained in western traditional academic drawing. This training system gained a foothold in China through educational reforms in the early twentieth century. It was accepted as a skill to be taught in school, one that was useful in industry and commerce. Li Shutong, a legendary figure in modern Chinese art history, taught his students to draw directly from plaster casts and still life, combining the detailed naturalism of the academic school with early impressionism.16 These artists became the “protagonists of the Western-style art education system and of a firm technical foundation”.17 Ever since, western academic drawing has been used as a model for contemporary art training in China and realism has been emphasised.

The drawing training system is emphasised here because this restricted education in

Century China, Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1998, p.4. 16 M Ch Kao, ‘Reforms in education and the beginning of the western style painting movement in China’, in Julia F. Andrew and Kuiyi Shen (eds), A Century in Crisis: Tradition and Modernity In the Art of 20th Century China, Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1998, p.156. 17 ibid, p.157.

China has had a great impact on Chinese artistic values and judgments in drawing.

Normally, professional artists do not use drawing as their major genre of art expression; drawing is still generally regarded as a foundation exercise, as preparation for other works. This concept has been slowly changing as communication has been increased with artists from other cultures. China’s economic openness with the West since the 1980s has also resulted in a more culturally aware China, particularly in the last decade. This, to some extent, has provided the institutional ‘old-fashioned’ drawing training system with an opportunity to catch up with training and practice to the rest of the world. Conferences, seminars and workshops have been actively held across the nation. Art schools have been eagerly participating and cooperating with western art schools in terms of exchanging students and staff, holding workshops and exhibitions, introducing new curricula, etc. All these things demonstrate a heightened awareness of how to deal with the tradition of academic drawing in relation to the rest of the world. Therefore, to introduce the interpretation and application of busi zhi si into drawing practice may prove fruitful in helping Chinese artists understand contemporary drawing in a different way.

Along with the dominant tradition of training in academic drawing and its influence on Chinese contemporary drawing, there is another important issue concerning how

Chinese cultural heritage is viewed in contemporary China. Chinese artists have typically responded in two ways to their cultural heritage: they either reject or embrace this heritage.

Some contemporary Chinese artists react by rejecting Chinese artistic tradition. As Xu

Hong tells us, the level of sophistication achieved by the great masters of traditional

17 painting makes it difficult for contemporary artists to go beyond their achievements.18

Xu also points out that since the 1980s, many contemporary artists have regarded

Chinese tradition as a burden that restrains the development of creative practice. In particular, decades of ideological constriction leave little space for both Chinese artists and their viewers to experience freedom in both mind and vision.19 It is an interesting but logical turn of events that some artists began to feel the lure of what was previously forbidden in society, such as using ironic political subject matter to show their attitudes of rebellion. Ironically, this has now become a trend that can be found in many contemporary Chinese art works. While not overtly rebellious, this art is highly cynical, ‘kitschy’ and fashionable. However, there are also artists who are now re-focusing on the uniqueness of Chinese tradition. Their exploration of tradition seeks to intensify the uniqueness of Chinese art on a global level. Increasingly, artists have recognised that any contemporary Chinese art must create a dialogue between both China’s own cultural legacy and the rest of the world. One of the leading artists from China to receive international recognition, Gu Wenda, is known for his application of traditional elements. This enables him to “challenge traditional art such as ink painting, seal script and calligraphy in an attempt to make them relevant to a twenty-first century global audience”.20 This research aims to set up a framework within which tradition can be re-entered and re-interpreted. It is possible that this may appear to be a new concept to Chinese contemporary drawers, who have had much more experience with academic drawing tradition than Chinese tradition.

18 H Xu, ‘Modern Chinese Art’, in Caroline Turner (ed.), Tradition and Change: Contemporary Art of Asia and the Pacific, University of Queensland Press, Brisbane, 1993, p.126. 19 ibid. 20 M Bessire, Wenda Gu: Art from Middle Kingdom to Biological Millennium, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2003, p.15.

This research therefore intends to build a bridge between Chinese painting and contemporary drawing in practice. The practice will show how to draw the connection between different cultural backgrounds and how to find a means of combining

Chinese traditional aesthetics and contemporary drawing.

In order to answer the question of how to interpret and apply the concept of busi zhi si in drawing practice, this research must answer the three questions posed above. Firstly, this research starts from this particular interpretation of busi zhi si in this research and hermeneutic perspective of tradition as preparation for further study. Chapter Two focuses on the perception that learning and dedicated thorough knowledge is the foundation of understanding Chinese painting. It collects as much information as possible to appropriately understand and interpret the concept of busi zhi si. However, the acknowledgement of the possibility of limitation of understanding is also maintained, since it is almost impossible to overcome the distance between the contemporary interpreter and their intended historical subject, according to modern hermeneutics. Therefore, the individual interpretation formed in its particular historical context is emphasised. It then seeks to identify some similarities between

Chinese painting and contemporary drawing, which leads to a concise review of pursuit of likeness and essence of the object in western drawing of the twentieth century.

Chapter Three enters into theoretical frame in which principles and methods are formed in order to direct the application of the concept in drawing practice. The focus is on two major principles: one is ongoing philosophical and aesthetic research on the concept and its relevant theories, the other, is imitating the traditional methods in depicting the objects, in the way of the traditional apprentices. Copying was the basic and most essential method of apprenticeship in China. Instead of copying the marks in old works stroke-by-stroke, the fundamental principle in learning is to imitate the traditional methods in this research. The main purpose of Chapter Three is to provide further explanation on the origin of the method. The Six Canons from the sixth century, which has not only been eminent in Chinese art theory, has also helped establish the methods and three main focuses of this research: observation, outer likeness and interpretative likeness. Some Chinese traditional methods have been selected in relation to these three main focuses. These have been crucial throughout the entire research process because the practice has been based on these principles and designed methods.

Another three chapters follow, which focus on the practice and its interdependent relationship with theory study. Chapter Four documents the process of how drawing practice follows the designed methods from the three main aspects: observation, outer likeness and interpretative likeness. Chapter Five investigates the previous implementation of the methods in my drawings in order to guide the future practice.

In this chapter, a case study is also presented. Qi Baishi, who is acclaimed as a significant modern artist, inherits the aesthetic concept of busi zhi si. Therefore, the intention of learning from Qi’s work is to help understand the concept of busi zhi si and its application. This chapter also deals with a more specific study on the

20 understanding of the relationship between subjectivity and objectivity in the likeness and essence of the object both in Chinese traditional painting and western drawing.

Finally, Chapter Six, the final stage of study, explains how the reflection of the earlier implementation and investigation occurred in the later stage of research. Although it focuses on the same three aspects as in Chapter Four, there have been some new and more profound understandings of how Chinese traditional artists convey their beliefs and artistic pursuits, which have greatly enriched the interpretation and application in the drawing practice underpinning this research.

Hard is the journey, Hard is the journey,

So many turnings, And now where am I?

So when a breeze breaks waves, bringing fair weather,

I set a cloud for sails, cross the blue oceans!

行路难，行路难，多歧路，今安在。

长风破浪会有时，直挂云帆济沧海

Li Bai, Hard is the Journey 李白《行路难》

2 Preparation

2.1 Shi Tao’s busi zhi si

To begin this research, it is important to state the grounds on which the interpretation of the concept, the applied methods and the mark-making process will take place. The first step is to set-up a basis from which the concept of busi zhi si can be applied in drawing practice. There are several aspects that should be explained so that this attempt to lead practice through theory can be accomplished. First of all, it is necessary to understand the importance of busi zhi si in its context and in the context of this research. Next, it is important to interpret the term that has directed and been applied in this drawing research. Another important aspect is to note the relationship between Chinese painting and contemporary drawing. Finally, we will discuss the concept of likeness and essence in western drawing since the twentieth century where this research is located.

It is important to acknowledge that we cannot fully appreciate the artistic values of a

22 work or a statement without putting it into its historical context. Shi Tao’s busi zhi si has its significance in Chinese art history in relation to practice. Shi was a prominent artist himself. His art appeared to derive from his complicated life experiences and his achievements in painting were highly respected, both in his lifetime and by later generations of artists. His art speaks equally and strongly of his life as an experienced professional artist, a Buddhist and later, a Daoist. His creative identity, which joined these aspects together, revealed a stunning dedication to his art. Shi Tao’s painting actually attained the high aesthetic ideals expounded in his treatises and inscriptions on his paintings that reflect Chinese traditional philosophy. We find some phrases similar to busi zhi si in the Dao De Jing. These include, “the image of the imageless

(wu xiang zhi xiang 无象之象)” and “the form of the formless (wu zhuang zhi zhuang

无状之状)”.21 Living in the early Qing Dynasty, the last dynasty in China, Shi Tao had the advantage of being able to study all the previous art theories. Therefore, his practice and theory were established on the basis of the work of other earlier masters.

Shi Tao was also regarded as one of the eminent theorists in China. Interestingly, his highly regarded treatise Hua Yu Lu, is dense and complicated in meaning. There are two particular statements that have influenced this research, which are “I use my own method” (wo yong wo fa我用我法) and “I maintain / have myself, therefore I am being” (wo zhi you wo, zi you wo zai 我之有我，自有我在).

In Shi Tao’s time, many of his contemporaries tended to copy the forged work of earlier masters. More importantly, these artists did not inherit the traditional way of

21 Laozi, Dao De Jing, Chapter 14, from “Finding Lao Zi (fa xian Lao Zi)”, Yang Rungen, Huaxia Press, Beijing, 2003, p.77.

23 learning but practised with little experience in connecting with nature, or without exploring their own distinctive styles and techniques. In Shi Tao’s essays, he tries to explain how an artist can achieve the essence of painting in many ways. These include an emphasis on individuality, exploration of techniques and perceiving the Dao in art experience. Shi Tao noticed a number of common contemporary traits, so he stressed the notion of busi (unlikeness) to free and shift the focus of artists. Shi Tao was the one in particular who took a stand against the former tendency of copying the ancient masters’ techniques stroke-by-stroke. “With Tao-chi’s works we enter a world of spirit, high intelligence and an extraordinary inventiveness never far removed from nature”.22 His statement of wo yong wo fa (I use my own method) best reveals his conception of wo zhi you wo, zi you wo zai 我之有我，自有我在 (I maintain / have myself, therefore I am being).23 From these statements, we may note that Shi Tao was a revolutionary artist. Shi’s method advocates the concept of maintaining oneself, exploring oneself and freeing oneself from established conventions and techniques.

Therefore, to interpret Shi’s statement is to learn from the tradition but also to bravely apply tradition in an innovative approach.

2.2 Interpretation of busi zhi si

In a similar way, this research has adapted the concept of maintaining the importance

22 M Loehr, The Great Painters of China, Phaidon Press Limited, Oxford, 1980, p.302. Tao-chi is an alias for Shi Tao. Tao-chi was his name as a monk. He also used many other names such as Kugua Heshang (Bittermelon Monk), Qingxiang Laoren (An old man in Qingxiang) etc. Also see Li, Shi Tao, p.7. 23 W C Li, Shi Tao, p.233. Both quotes are from Shi Tao’s Hua Yu Lu, Chapter 3, “The essay on Changes”. Translated by the author.

24 of individual interpretation that is based on the study of aesthetics. In my interpretation of busi zhi si, the ultimate goal of my drawing is to achieve a particular likeness, which is termed essential likeness. Here, essential likeness comprises outer likeness and interpretative likeness (Figure 1).

Essential Outer Interpretative = + likeness likeness likeness

Busi zhi si Essence/Being Si (Likeness) Busi (Unlikeness) = + (of the object)

Figure 1

The essential likeness is equal to the essence or being, which directs my understanding and perception of the object. The outer likeness is considered to be the same as the si of the object. This interpretation directs my methodology and the exploration of seeking a means of object resemblance. The outer likeness then becomes the basis on which the interpretative likeness in the drawing is added.

The understanding of interpretative likeness in this research plays a vital role that determines to what extent one can achieve the essence of the object. In Shi Tao’s inscription in 1702, mentioned earlier, he stated, “… the likeness of unlikeness is like it”.24 Here, we should comprehend that Shi Tao’s likeness and unlikeness both carry

24 T Shi, inscription on painting Pomo shanshui, quoted from W C Li, Shi Tao, 1997, p.233.

25 the same intention of being alike to the object. In other words, the way he wanted to convey the relationship between images and objects, or art and nature, is to some implicit likeness of the object, rather than complete unlikeness. It is not the complete unlikeness that the artist sought, but his understanding and perception of the object, which the objective physical appearance cannot reveal.

Figure 2 Shi Tao Sou jin qi feng da cao gao (Seaching for distinctive mountains to draft) (part), ink on paper, 42.8 x 285.5 cm, 1691, picture is from http://www.bb.ustc.edu.cn/jpkc/xiaoji/mszp/tutorial

It could be easier to understand the meaning of Shi Tao’s busi zhi si by looking at his works. In his works, none of his depicted landscapes could be found exactly in nature.

While there are no such landscapes in existence, viewers could still recognise the likeness of a particular landscape from carefully placed details such as the rhythm of the composition or botanical and environmental details. Shi Tao’s travels among mountains for most of his life provided him with the opportunity for careful observation, intensive experience and an integrated perception of any of the landscapes he rendered. The landscapes in Shi Tao’s paintings originated from nature, but they were produced in a manner to evoke the viewers’ memories of some characteristics of the landscape, including details, composition, space and atmosphere from their experience. It is landscape both in Shi Tao’s mind as well as in the viewers’.

Therefore, to those who have been to the actual places, his depicted landscapes seem to be more real than the original. Shi Tao conveys a sense of the real experience of

26 travelling through a location, offering a richly prolonged visual experience to the viewer. In this way, his paintings not only resemble the object, but may be perceived to the same degree or manner by us when we experience the object for ourselves.

However, this rendering and representation also requires the artist’s individual interpretation of the particular likeness of the object. That particular likeness is the aspect that Shi Tao focused on; this is the unique characteristic of the object, the nature or essence of the object that the artist has perceived, combined with the artist’s experience, his or her artistic values and judgments, and many other underlying rationales.

In order to achieve the same purpose as Shi Tao’s painting and concept, this paper splits the general understanding of likeness into two groups: outer likeness and interpretative likeness. Shi Tao’s unlikeness is interpreted as interpretative likeness of the object. His painting is a culmination of detail and experience, as well as real life.

This equals interpretative likeness. Moreover, the connection between the unlikeness and essential likeness in this paper helps to clarify the intention of emphasising the perceivable and comprehensible quality of the object through its outer appearance. To draw an object therefore is not only about how it looks, but also about the representation of its quality. In short, it is the intention to draw the essential likeness of the object by capturing the outer likeness with the interpretative likeness. Therefore, the essential likeness is a strengthened likeness, the same notion of capturing the essence or being of the object that the old masters pursued.

2.3 Interpretation of the tradition

The word ‘tradition’ comes from the Latin word traditio, which means “handed down

27 as belief or practice in a community”.25 It is explained as “the passing from generation to generation of tales, beliefs, practices, etc.; a long-established belief or customs; anything bound up with or continue(ing) in the life of a family, community, etc.”.26

There seems to be tension between respect for tradition and an individual interpretation. To show respect requires maintaining that tradition but, at the same time, a contemporary individual interpretation seems to threaten the maintenance of the tradition, because this interpretation is not supposed to merely repeat the same material as that tradition. The foundation of this research is the use of drawing mediums to apply the concepts of Chinese brush and ink painting. Therefore, it is necessary to acknowledge the individual boundaries of interpreting the tradition and to know how to maintain the tradition within the interpreted application. It is also necessary to value the individual’s perception in the interpretation while maintaining respect for the tradition. This respect embraces the action of personal understanding and perception, but with an intentional balance between tradition and contemporary interpretation.

As any interpreter cannot escape from being influenced by their own experiences and the context of their life, the values of their particular interpretations may have some historical significance. In modern hermeneutics, any interpretation represents one of the many possible meanings of a given text in various contexts.27 Different people

25 C T Onions, The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, edited at the Clarendon Press, 1966, p.935. 26 The Chambers Dictionary, Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd, 2002, p.759. 27 P A Boeckh, ‘Theory of Hermeneutics’, in K Mueller-Vollmer, (ed.) The Hermeneutics Reader, The Basil Blackwell Ltd, Oxford, 1986, p.134. The term is derived from Hermeniea, which is obviously related to the name of the god Hermes … From the original significance of Hermes, who clearly is one of the deities of earth, there developed the concept of him as the messenger of the gods, the go-between of gods and men. The concern for interpretation has become common in recent decades and is shared

28 perceive what happens in the world differently. This research acknowledges this general difference in interpretations of the past and its historical significance in a contemporary context. The importance of context for interpretation has been one of the motivations that have underpinned this research and its conclusions.

Johann Martin Chladenius believes that an individual perceives any situation differently from another, being influenced partly by different places or the position of his or her body, partly by his or her various associations with the subjects, and partly by individually made selection of objects. Therefore, our mind and our particular distance from the objects will make us come to perceive things differently. An individual interpretation is determined by ‘viewpoint’.28 Chladenius’ viewpoint refers to those conditions that are determined by our mind, body and personal experience, which cause us to perceive something in one way but not another.29 Therefore,

Chladenius believes that if one wants to achieve one’s own interpretations, one must be careful not just to know various views pertinent to the interpretation, but the collection of as many details and precise observations as possible.30 As such, this research is designed to set out, from a historical perspective, a philosophical and aesthetic foundation for tradition and to explore its relationship with western art history and contemporary context.

by diverse fields of knowledge such as philosophy, sociology, history, literature criticism and so forth, from its historical features as a study and collection of specialised rules of interpretation for the use of theologians or jurists. 28 J M Chladeius, ‘On the interpretation of historical books and accounts’, in K Mueller-Vollmer (ed.), The Hermeneutics Reader, The Basil Blackwell Ltd, Oxford, 1986, p.308. 29 ibid. 30 ibid, p.331.

Similarly, Hans-Georg Gadamer ascribes primary importance to the concept of the action of ‘understanding’ the world. However, as opposed to earlier thinkers who saw

‘understanding’ as a means of overcoming the historical distance between the interpreter and his or her historical phenomenon, Gadamer further maintains the historical nature of ‘understanding’ itself.31 Since human intellect cannot achieve interpretation without a personal ‘understanding’ of the world, the interpreters are always guided in their understanding of the past by their own particular perceptions.

According to Gadamer the perceptions, or ‘prejudice’ in his words, of the individual,

“far greater than their judgments, constitute the historical reality of their being”.32

Indeed, for Gadamer, the overcoming of all prejudices is itself a prejudice. It is impossible to step out of context.

The very idea that it is impossible to overcome prejudice as it is itself a type of prejudice indicates an acknowledgment of a historical understanding and interpretation of the past. Since we cannot be living in the same world as those in the past, it is not necessary to place ourselves in the same historical periods. It is the distance between the interpreter and the past in Chladenius’ statement, which causes the particular viewpoint. However, it is necessary to point out the importance of having attitudes of appropriate understanding in any interpretation. The appropriate understanding emphasises making an effort to try to understand the past. Then, instead of struggling with or fearing imperfect interpretation of the past, it is possibly better to maintain contemporary perceptions and values, being aware of their particular

31 K Mueller-Vollmer, ‘The Hermeneutics Reader’, in K Mueller-Vollmer (ed.), The Hermeneutics Reader, The Basil Blackwell Ltd, Oxford, 1986, p.38. 32 H Gadamer, ‘Truth and Method’, in Kurt Mueller-Vollmer (ed.), The Hermeneutics Reader, The Basil Blackwell Ltd, Oxford, 1986, p.138.

30 historical significance in the stream of history. As in Gadamer’s theory, our prejudice is a necessary condition of all historical ‘understanding’.33 This particular meaning of interpretation, to some extent, can inherit the past in a dynamic way with some additional qualities at various times. We must accept our own viewpoint or context when we interpret the past.

Responsively, Hirsch claims in his article, “we should welcome them (prejudice) as the best means of preserving the vitality of our inheritance and our tradition”.34 Any artist in his or her process of interpreting a tradition inevitably expresses an individual point of view of the tradition, which consists of various influential backgrounds, leading to a personal ‘prejudice’. We could agree that some of these individual interpretations of different art traditions have provided the art world with new visions and new art vocabularies.

Therefore, in considering the context in which this research occurs we should identify some aspects of the individual interpretation that will affect the outcomes of this research. First, it is the difference between the ancient masters and myself as an individual. We are from different historical periods and so our responses to life experiences in the world may vary. Second, it is of concern that some misinterpretation may occur in understanding between the traditions of traditional artists and the contemporary. The foreseen misinterpretation should be acknowledged out of respect for the tradition. Nevertheless, the possible misinterpretation can be

33 ibid. 34 E D Hirsch Jr, ‘Gadamer’s theory of interpretation’, in J Margolis (ed.), Philosophy Looks at the Arts, Temple University Press, Philadelphia, 1987, p.450. Hirsch explains that Gadamer uses ‘prejudice’ substituting for the meaning of ‘pre-understanding’, which is constituted by our own expectations, attitudes and predispositions. ibid.

31 taken advantage of and offer some new perspectives that may lead to innovation if the misinterpretation is based on some learning-understanding process of the original tradition. Then this new individual perception and interpretation in this research carries its own significance that may lead to various destinations, dependent on the methodology. As a result, my interpretation of busi zhi si will reveal my individual approach to the traditional concept, which reflects my life experiences and responses to the world just as it reflects the tradition of the old masters. The emphasis is on the process of individual practice but also on the individual responses that share similarities with those old masters on an aesthetic and philosophical level. Through this process, my personal interests, preferences and influences in the contemporary world are revealed.

It is not easy to change tradition in even the smallest aspects. Nevertheless, the process of promoting change and renewal within an existing tradition or convention is a goal for many artists. Art history clearly shows that it is through these individual efforts that art tradition or convention extends and renews itself. For instance,

Impressionists advocated the immediate responses to nature, which was a hugely different approach from the academic conventions. This also led Neo-Impressionists to search for a stronger theoretical plan and a rigorous pictorial technique based on scientific laws of optics. Without such independent and individual experimentations, the art world would lack fresh ideas. Therefore tradition and its renewals or changes, are seen as a natural expansion of artistic tradition in this paper and can be seen as being in an interactive relationship.

Tradition and its expansion are mutually necessary.35 Robert Maxwell states that it is impossible to exclude one from the other because both tradition and expansion are part of “the same process whereby society maintains continuity while allowing changes”. 36 Tradition has never stopped being innovated and expanded while innovation cannot be born without tradition. Maxwell cites the architect Emilio

Ambasz as seeing new forms arising from existing reference (i.e. tradition or commonly accepted ideas and concepts) to an architectural viewpoint and notes that often these (new forms or the expansion of tradition) would not be accepted in the culture until they became a useful convention.37 In other words, the new forms usually can be recognised and applied when they show their relationship to some existing tradition. In this way, expansion and tradition are necessarily coexisting.

We also note that the process of expansion is linked with tradition in a complex yet dynamic relationship. Within the expansion there is still something of the tradition, which renders the new recognisable; and within the ‘tradition’, the new is being carried, developed and changed. This describes how an art movement appears onto the historical stage from a traditional background, regardless of whether it follows or objects to its precedent. In this way, for instance, our understanding of contemporary art is tied to our understanding of Modernism. Modernism, as a significant art revolution in the twentieth century, is concerned with how an object is made, how it is perceived and what defines art. It focuses more on the formal properties of art, for

35 R Maxwell, The Two Way Stretch: Modernism, Tradition and Innovation, Academy Group Ltd, London, 1998, p.10. Maxwell actually talks about the relationship between tradition and innovation. I used ‘expansion’ in this paper, instead of ‘innovation’ for the consideration that I see my research more as a way of expanding the Chinese tradition from an outside approach than innovating it internally. 36 ibid. 37 ibid.

33 instance, space for Cubists and gestural vocabulary for Abstract Expressionists. Some other issues in contemporary art followed this change, such as why an art object is made, how it is experienced and what the object means beyond its formal composition.

Contemporary art still seeks a reassessment of the modern traditions of art and its role in society, so the expansion comes from the tradition, and the modified tradition continues to push the expansion further.

The expansion sometimes revives tradition in a positive way. The reflection of tradition in artwork can be the result of conscious efforts to build-up the connection between past knowledge and the renewed approaches. We may recognise that many renewed values in contemporary art are the result of re-evaluation of tradition by modification of the existing, rediscovery of the old and reuse of the old-fashioned.

Just as contemporary drawing has inherited its tradition, expanding its nature to major and independent works, it presents substantive evidence of contemporary values of recreating the past and keeping traditions alive. This revival of tradition not only ties up the past and present but also leads to the future when tradition may reappear again.

Every change and renewal that is produced through the integration of individual work reflects a tradition, which the individual either belongs to or takes from. This research regarding particular Chinese tradition intends to re-explore its uniqueness and locate it in a contemporary context. It does not mean to change the tradition but to draw connections with different art forms instead. This is consistent with the idea that connections between different forms of art in different cultures are more important than extreme alterations in tradition.

This research suggests that appropriate understanding of tradition is necessary in any interpretation, particularly in situations where the interpreters are from another culture.

Each individual perceives this world differently because of influences from personal experience and their contemporary context. On the one hand, it should be stressed that individual appreciation and an attitude of ‘apprenticeship’ is important to achieve the goal of interpretation. On the other hand, the acknowledgment of each individual’s interpretation with his or her incomplete understanding should be maintained in his or her interpretations too. This is considered to be the historical significance of their interpretation, which provides the past with various contemporary approaches.

“Tradition is a matter of much wider significance. It cannot be inherited, and if you want it you must obtain it by great labour”.38

2.4 Similarities between Chinese traditional painting and contemporary drawing

Since this research seeks an individual interpretation in drawing, this interpretation therefore should maintain the aesthetic aspects of both contemporary drawing and

Chinese traditional painting. As we mentally reconstruct some particular historical phenomena in drawing in the twentieth century we must call to mind that, prior to these changes, drawing consisted of representations of accurate observations in the academic standard. Between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, the impact of the Academy was overwhelming. “Inherited forms and adherence to tradition are of

38 T S Eliot, ‘Tradition and the individual talent’, in Critical essays on The Waste Land, Longman, Harlow, 1988, p.14.

35 the essence of academism”.39 European Academic theory had established a schematic classification of drawing types and their functions40 and many artists produced their drawings according to these standards.

It was not until the late nineteenth century that Impressionists began to search for new meanings and functions of drawing, thereby starting a completely new era of drawing practice in art history. The twentieth century witnessed radical changes in almost every area of human activity. Contemporary drawing reveals these changes. It has inherited its tradition as a medium, and has maintained its feature as a preparatory stage leading to a finished work in another medium. Drawing has joined the ongoing changes in modern and contemporary visual art, in which context drawing has been considered in relation to time and space, being and becoming, incompletion and autonomy.

Chinese painting shares some similarities with contemporary understandings of drawing. Firstly, Chinese painting has the same nature as contemporary drawing in its preoccupation with primal and elemental characteristics. Drawing has the mythic and magic nature of connecting the world to us, a world that its nature has not changed for thousands of years. It is an immediate way of both “representing the world … [to] bring forth something new,”41 which we experience by living in the world. This activity, one we have all practised since our childhood, also directly connects us with

39 M Barasch, Theories of Art: from Plato to Winckelman, New York University Press, New York, 1985, p.333. 40 P Rawson, 1987, p.284 . 41 E Dexter, 2005, p.6.

36 the earliest human art forms.42 This magic power of drawing is reflected in Chinese traditional painting. By the juxtaposition of immeasurably high mountains, for example, with minute details of human activities, the artist conveys the Daoist belief of the primary importance of nature, and of humankind's small yet harmonious existence within this orderly universe. It functions similarly in Emma Dexter’s description of drawing as a “device of understanding our place within the universe”.43

Secondly, based on Vitamin D, the simplicity and purity, the honesty and transparency of the act of mark-making have made drawing unique from painting.44 This is one of the aspects that differentiate drawing from conventional painting, which conventionally more tends to be concealing and completing, requiring every part of the canvas to be covered. It would be possible to paint entirely different paintings, one on top of another. “Drawing is improvisatory and always in motion”,45 which offers possibilities of continual progress and shows the process by leaving traces, covering mistakes and proceeding to new approaches. In the same way, the marks left by water, ink and brush in Chinese brush and ink painting are of the same action from the start to the finish. Although accuracy in the making of the image is necessary, which involves painstakingly repetitive practice; each time there is an immediate and instant process through brush strokes in the painting. We see the phases of the procedure because the translucency of the ink allows the appearance of various marks made at different times in the work. The flat surface contains the vertical layers built up over time. The blank space is not empty but is as important as the images, and contributes

42 ibid. 43 ibid.

44 ibid.

45 ibid.

37 to the composition and meaning of the work as a whole. It also offers a certain intimacy for the viewer to examine the techniques and the details closely and personally. The artist’s personal interpretations and representations of the object, the fluidity and immediacy that the medium provides in the process of drawing, are the appeal and attraction of the work. The work comes to associate with Dexter’s description of our loose understanding of what drawing is: “intimacy … authenticity … subjectivity …”46

2.5 Likeness and essence in western drawing in the twentieth century

Since this research is to introduce a Chinese concept into contemporary drawing, which has been developed from western drawing tradition, it is therefore necessary to provide an overview of how likeness and essence have been expressed in the current context. Essence is a term that has been used in both eastern and western aesthetic traditions. Chinese painting and western drawing both have been pursuing the depiction of an inner essence of the world. In the West, the theory of the relationship between essence / reality and the object and the theory of representation originated with Plato and Aristotle. It was not until the eighteenth century that the more contemporary concepts emerged and the theory of art as a mere representation of an object lost its dominance in the art world.

It was Plato who based the discussion of the arts on the concept of representation /

46 ibid.

38 imitation (mimesis). Plato never expounded a theory of the visual arts, but perhaps no other philosopher in history has had such a profound impact on western aesthetics.

Plato used the terms ‘reality’ and ‘form’ to distinguish reality from ‘appearance’.

Plato’s concept of reality has two levels.47 According to Plato, the unchanging forms, which are the objects of the philosopher’s knowledge, are ultimately real. The world on the other hand, perceived by the senses, the world of change, though not unreal, has a lower status ontologically than the realm of forms. Plato’s rejection of pictorial representation / imitation of an object is based on the illusionist character of painting.

He introduced the famous example of the three tables: the reality / form of the table; the carpenter’s table, which is specific material and a concrete form; and the painter’s table, with its merely visual representation from a certain angle, in a certain light or at a certain distance, etc. Therefore, he raises the questions, does the painter represent the object as it is or as it appears? and, which does the painter try to represent, the thing-itself as it is in nature or the things the craftsman makes?48 In contrast,

Aristotle’s views on art were more positive ones. Aristotle believed that art did not merely copy nature; rather it could reveal “what is possible (but does not exist) and what is necessary (among the states of affairs that exist)”.49

To a certain extent, Aristotle’s intention of representing reality seems to share similar ground with that of ancient Chinese philosophical perception, for instance, Zong

Bing’s question, “What then of where one’s body has strolled and one’s eyes rested

47 Plato, The Republic. The quotations of The Republic in this paper are from Desmond Lee’s translation published by Penguin Books in 1985, p.205. 48 ibid, pp. 361–363.

49 S Davies, ‘Introduction’, in S Davies & A C Sukla (eds) Art and essence, Greenwood Pub. Group,

Westport, 2003, p.xiii.

39 repeatedly when it is described form for form and colour for colour?”50 However, there is a fundamental distinction that in Chinese philosophy reality or essence is changeable and formless, whereas western traditional understanding of the world is basic formal unit. Moreover, in Chinese philosophy reality and appearance are both necessary aspects of an object, which cannot be separated in any representation.

“Reality is formless by itself but assumes any form that circumstances give it”.51

Chang Chungyuan demonstrates this with the example of a golden lion from the seventh century.52 In this example, gold symbolises reality, while the lion symbolises appearance. Gold has no “nature of its own”, but it is made into the shape of a lion; the lion is an appearance with no reality of its own. When gold absorbs the lion completely, the lion has no existence as a separate object. The existence of the lion is dependent upon the existence of gold. The lion represents the appearance of gold.

Appearance reveals the existence of reality. When one sees the lion, one sees it as a lion; “the lion is evident, the gold is neglected”.53 When one sees the gold, “the gold is evident and the lion is neglected”. 54 Therefore, as Chang concluded, 55 Chinese traditional painters pursued a state in which mutual conditioning of reality and appearance are in harmony, when appearance and reality “are completely identified and nothing hinders their fusion”.56 For instance the atmospheric reality of a painting

“penetrates perfectly into the form of tree, of sky and water, just as the gold is

50 B Zong, (375–443) The preface of painting landscape (Hua Shanshui Xu), translation quoted from S Bush & H Shih (eds), Early Chinese texts on painting, Harvard University press, Cambridge, 1985, p.37. 51 Ch Chang, Creativity and Taoism: a Study of Chinese Philosophy, Art and Poetry, The Julian Press, Inc., New York, 1963, p.99. 52 ibid. 53 ibid. 54 ibid. 55 ibid, p.100 56 ibid.

40 completely absorbed by the lion”.57 This understanding of the relationship between reality (essence in this paper) and visual appearance entirely determines the application of the concept of likeness in drawing practice in this research.

In contrast, the painted image in Plato’s philosophy has extremely different characteristics from those in Chinese painting. Plato considers a painting a visual imitation. For instance, a painting of a particular bed is a likeness of the material bed, which itself is a likeness of a real bed. Therefore, the painting is a likeness of a likeness of reality. As such, paintings are the “representations at the third removed from reality, and easy to produce without any knowledge of the truth”.58 Greek painters were masters of realism. The reason that the painters only copied appearance instead of reality is that, according to Plato, they have “little grasp of anything, and that little is of a mere phenomenal appearance”.59

In responding to Plato’s question that what the painter represents is an object as it is or as it appears, Jessica Moss expresses some concerns. Moss asks, “Can something

‘third from the truth’ be relevantly similar to the truth?”60 Moss further gives an example of a photocopy of a photograph to explain that a likeness of a likeness will still resemble the original. Therefore, a painting of a bed “surely captures something, although not all, of the nature of beds”.61 It is a matter of degree—the degree of resemblance. Even in The Republic, Socrates seems to suggest this by asking whether

57 ibid. 58 Plato, 1987, p.365, 599a. 59 ibid, p.364, 598c. 60 J Moss, ‘What is imitative poetry and why is it bad?’, in G R F Ferrari (ed.) Cambridge Companion to Plato’s Public”, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2007, pp.415–421. 61 ibid.

41 by making something false as similar to the truth as we can, do not we make it useful?62 Moreover, Plato’s generalisation of the artistic representation does not explain every form of individual art expression, many of which have a deep perception and understanding of the object and the intention to present truth to the audience. Therefore, looking through western art history, we notice a steady development and a variety of interpretations of reality / essence in artists’ statements.

Nor have twentieth century western artists stopped pursuing the essence and reality of the world. For instance, the stress on change and the dynamic nature of reality were two important characteristics of Cubist theory. Gray Christopher63 explains that artists became aware of the problem of reality and especially the reality of form. The most crucial concept in the Cubists’ revelation of reality was the objectification of the common appearance of the world. Clarity was not a primary value, but ambiguity plays a large role in suggesting something beyond mere outward appearance. One of the means of rendering reality, and the changing and dynamic truth, by the Cubists is

“moving around an object to seize several successive appearances, which fused in a single image, reconstitute it in time”.64 This emphasises that our knowledge of an object in time consists of a process of integration of various views or concepts of the object to create its totality in time. Forms are broken apart and recombined in other abstract forms. The constant changing of forms from one context to another gives a static work a real sense of movement. To the Cubists the core problem is found in the fact that form belongs to the realm of ideas, not to that of direct perception. Bernice

62 Plato, 1987, p.79, 382d. 63 ibid. p.54 64 A Gleizes and J Metezinger, Cubism, Quoted in Christopher Gray Cubist aesthetic theories, The Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore, 1953, p.86.

Rose65 described Picasso as the artist who focused on the vocabulary of drawing in the exploration of new structural principles with no objective perspective. The details of the object and the representation of the views as a whole are not just obtained from ordinary sight but as the artist knows them: they are not just from various views but from a complexity of perceptions. In Picasso’s drawing can be seen the transition from the natural to the conceptual, and how the form is presented to the viewer as a

“virtual whole, in a departure from ordinary vision”.66

Moreover, the emergence of Cubism demonstrated a consciousness of seeking radically new ways to represent the experience of that world. The Cubists were eager to create an art that would reveal aspects of reality that seemed unable to be represented through conventional techniques and art expressions. The idea of representing reality could no longer be achieved by means of imitation, or illusionist representation. The awareness of the changes in that world and the limitation of art expression therefore altered and encouraged the artists’ “response to the demand of inner life, truthful engagement with external reality, and directness of utterance”.67

These changes in attitude towards such pictorial elements dramatically altered the exploration of new aesthetics of the dimensions of pictures in the twentieth century.

Artists such as Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein adopted and developed the idea of using reproductions. To Rauschenberg, “a piece of the real world has been isolated and appropriated to art and illusion”, because the work looks

65 B Rose, A Century of Modern Drawing from the Museum of Modern Art, British Museum Publications Limited, London, 1982, pp.22–23. 66 ibid, p.24. 67 M Gooding, Abstract art, Tate Publishing, London, 2001, p.7.

43 more like the real world when it is made of the real world.68 Also to Lichtenstein, as

Rose argues, Platonic question of the third removal from the truth by art that he has interpreted through imitations of imitations. His famous series of Bull collages is based on van Doesburg’s reduction of a naturalistic cow to a purely abstract schematisation. It is the notion of how artists only produce something that copies the world of ideas—the components of sense as the ‘perceptible reality’.69 The progress of exploration in art from naturalistic to abstract depiction to some extent reveals the desire in the mind of the artists searching for reality in the world. A diverse range of devices has been adopted by various artists in their pursuit of expressing reality and nature through their perceptions, such as arbitrary colours, distorted forms of the object, collage and other disruption of surface, gestural marks, etc. Many artists have responded to freedom of expression as an extension of representational art to ‘abstract art’.

However, this paper intentionally avoids using the term ‘abstract art’, for the reason that there has been no simple definition of the term, nor has it been clarified with a fixed starting point of time or place. Compared with what is called ‘abstract art’, ‘non- abstract art’, which is more likely to be realistic academic art, can also be accepted as embracing some kind of abstraction by its exaggeration, emphasis and manner of rendering. Instead, in this paper, some more specific terms are used. For instance, the terms ‘non-naturalistic art’, or ‘non-objective art’, will be used to clearly define the art forms. These terms are used to describe a shift away from the representation of the object in space, from what they ‘look like’ in nature, to the representation of more generalised, simplified, or distorted appearance. However, this shift varies greatly

68 B Rose, Drawing now, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1982, p.26. 69 ibid, p.43.

44 from one time to another, with the different intentions and effects of twentieth century art. Since this research is about the likeness of the depicted object in drawing, it is necessary to draw the connection between the perception of representational likeness of the object and the ‘abstract’ image of the object or non-object in the significant art movements of the twentieth century.

In moving towards the non-objective and non-naturalistic, visual art aims to express the outward and visible imagery of the invisible truth. Kasimir Malevich, in his essays on art, declared that he had destroyed and escaped from the convention that had

“imprisoned the artist and forms of nature”.70 The conventional masters, such as

Renaissance artists, had achieved great results in anatomy but failed to achieve a true impression of the body. Forms must be given “life and a right to individual existence”, which has nothing in common with nature, but is on its basis of weight, speed and the direction of movement.71 For Malevich, the convention, the art of naturalism, is the idea of reproducing what is seen, but it is not about creating a new form. It is consciously allowing intuition to create forms in the art, in which objects have

‘vanished like smoke’. This is because the very object itself, together with its essence, purpose, sense or the fullness of its presentation, is not necessary. Instead, the conditions of the object are more important. This non-objective creation was considered as a new realism in painting, for each form is a world, and each form is free and individual.72

70 K S Malevich, ‘From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism: The new realism in painting’, in Essays on Art 1915-1933, George Wittenborn, Inc., New York, 1968, p.19. 71 ibid, pp.24–29. 72 ibid, p.38.

Many early non-objective artists echoed the same belief in the early twentieth century.

Kandinsky believed that painting should be an expression of the artist’s inner life, that is, the deepest intuition and feelings, without resorting to reproduction of ‘natural phenomena’. Like music, visual art should be expressed with the creation of autonomous forms and freedom from ‘mere representation’. 73 This is also the intention for Mondrian, who used art as a philosophical and spiritual activity to reveal the hidden reality behind the forms of nature. The personal expression of the oppositions in Mondrian’s work became an essential formal means of reaching the spiritual equilibrium that he believed was the “precondition of a new civilisation”.74

Mondrian sought to eliminate the illusion of three-dimensional space. His purely vertical and horizontal relations were represented as a visible “expression of the unchangeable”.75

Despite the non-recognisable images in most of the non-objective art, there are still some links between nature and forms such as kinetic constructions or the expression of the incomprehensibility of the cosmic order. “The untouched and entirely distantly objective manner of appearance shows a possible reality …”76

Non-objective art also requires the viewer to respond to the work by questioning the way reality is perceived in his or her mind. It is a matter of how the spectator takes the work into his or her own consciousness, modifying his or her feelings, and understanding and analysing the world in different ways. Gooding claims that the

73 M Gooding, 2001, pp.20–21. 74 ibid, p.27. 75 ibid, p.30. 76 A Moszynska, Abstract art, Thames and Hudson, London & New York, 1990, p.180.

46 viewer’s response to Malevich’s Black Square may be the same as the response to a

Byzantine icon. The icon is not a representation but a sign for an “infinite spiritual reality that cannot be pictured”.77 Similarly, the eyes begin to see a resemblance to storms or fireworks in Kandinsky’s strokes, lines, curves and smudges. 78 Non- objective art intends to reveal the ‘universal principle’, hidden by the everyday appearance of specific natural things. In Mondrian’s work, “the expression of things gives way to the pure expression of relation”.79 The materials are as important as the image. When Picasso painted a violin, its swell and arabesque were translated into planes and straight lines. It challenges our perception of the titled object. Inviting the spectator to recreate the work in their imagination, these non-objective visual forms demand conscious engagement in political, philosophical and spiritual activities. They demand poetic experiences of emotional, spiritual and existential states.80 For instance, with Jackson Pollock’s work, the spectator is given a wonderful freedom of engaged imagination through the traces of movement. In Mark Rothko’s images, the spectator is asked to respond to elements in the work in which basic human emotions are to be perceived at various levels. These non-objective works create a visual world that is responding to painting itself rather than to a picture of a thing in the world. The likeness or the imagery of objects is completed in the spectator’s imagination. These non-recognisable or non-referential objects provide a context or a resource of tangible and imaginative objects in the spectator’s mind.

These works are also produced to resemble the outer appearance of nature. The

77 ibid, p.18. 78 ibid, p.23. 79 ibid, p.30. 80 ibid, p.75.

47 colours may remind the viewer of sky, or the shape can be associated with fruit, and so on. In his Picture with A Black Arch, Kandinsky may have started with forms in nature, but he then transformed them into more non-representational forms.81 The work of Willem De Kooning is a dynamic representation of the world as “flux, as a complex of sensations in which it is impossible to hold anything still”.82 The spectator is able to imagine a way back to the objective world that is reflected and referred to by these new forms and images. In Jackson Pollock’s work after his move to Long Island, some references to nature began to appear, although these images serve as a base for later gestural application or a source of ‘psychic nurturing’.83

This abstracted figurative art encourages the viewer to join in the search for

‘equivalents of reality’.84 The images in these works show all the feelings and reality that we as individuals confront in life. After the Second World War, the human image appears in a distorted, lonely, alienated form. The conventional optical realistic figures, as understood by artists, were no longer appropriate for expressions of either feelings or a sense of reality. When the society changes, artists must change their forms to react, respond, and to reveal the truth or essence of the world. Norman Rosenathal concludes in his essay,85 “Within the realm of depicting reality from the twentieth century, we are constantly confronted with what might be described as the pathetic fallacy … [the] interpretations of reality from Cubism to the present, are all more or

81 M Rosenthal, Abstraction in the Twentieth Century: Total Risk, Freedom, Discipline, Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1996, p.11. 82 M Gooding, 2001, p.80. 83 A Moszynska, 1990, p.150. 84 M Rosenthal, 1996, p.55. 85 ibid, p.62.

48 less heroic attempts to overcome the fallacy which is the spur to creation”.86 He believes that many twentieth century figurative artists after the Second World War struggled with the fundamental impossibility of realism when they attempted to depict the reflection they imagined. So it is the reality of the object, the figure that reflects the problems of the world, its history, human life with its social and psychological consequences they focused and expressed.

During the period from the mid 1970s there was a resurgence of representational drawing. Both R B Kitaj and David Hockney seriously returned to figures and to life drawing. From the 1960s onwards, Avigdor Arikha drew from life exclusively after giving up his abstract painting.87 Philip Guston went back to the drawing of objects from time to time even when he was making minimalist drawings.88 In a lecture given in 1978, Guston explained, “the visible world … is abstract and mysterious enough. I don’t think one needs to depart from it in order to make art”.89 These representational images are given a freedom from descriptive function—an observed and reflected object—and liberation from tradition. The truth of nature “is rather to be found in the conflict of different types of representation”.90 These new drawings, which appear to be produced sometimes in a manner of a precise depiction of nature, actually differ from the nineteenth century academic drawings in many ways. The representation is still everything that artists have sought in past decades. It reflects the ongoing pursuit of reality, and the truth of the world that artists question and strive to represent.

86 ibid, p.61. 87 T Godfrey, 1990, p.64. 88 ibid, p.21. 89 T Kovate, The Drawing Book, Black Dog Publishing Limited, London, 2007, p.32. 90 ibid.

In more than two decades since the reappraisal of drawing in contemporary art, we see how drawing has adapted to all the shifts and new conditions in the world in which we live. During this past decade, certain artists began to champion representational drawing again in different subject matters, but still about humankind’s existence in relation to its surroundings environmentally, politically and socially. We can find a

Figure 3 Paul Nobel Mall 2001-2 Russell Crotty Hercules Over Knolltop Estates (Previously Chapparall) 2002 (right), Photos are taken from Vitamin D(left),

variety of representational drawings applied in Russell Crotty’s globes drawings, Paul

Nobel’s depicted landscapes, Michael Landy’s plantation drawings, or Kiki Smith’s human body and animal drawings, and Marlene Dumas’ human body drawings.

Particularly we can observe the demand to represent the likeness accurately when the work of Chuck Close has recorded his changing appearance, initiated from working from gridded-up photographs. If we compare his first self-portrait with one of his latest ones, we may notice that, as Stephen Farthing argues, the distinction between these two works for the artist is not how they recorded how his face has changed over time, but a record of how he has kept on developing his visual language to depict the face.91 It is inevitable that new times requires new forms of art, including drawing, to

91 S Farthing, ‘Recording: and questions of accuracy”, in S Garner (ed.) Writing on Drawing: Essays on

50 make sense of changing situations, philosophies and understandings of the world. In these contemporary drawings there still implies challenges: how and why to represent likeness in relation to the object in such a tremendously dynamic world. Regardless, no matter what concepts dominate, what techniques are used, or how the objects are depicted, how to depict the likeness and essence of the object is a question that has never ceased to be asked. Drawing has always been a way of showing the struggle and exploration of searching for the truth of the world, the essence of nature in relation to human life. It seems to be part of human nature to seek the truth through artistic expression. Artists have had the role of expressing their keen awareness and dynamic perception of the world, a role that determines their never ending and irreversible journey in search of the truth. If all roads lead to Rome, this research would like to take a spiritual, mental and physical journey to find a way that embraces Chinese traditional aesthetics and contemporary drawing activity. It is not an intention to compare or juxtapose together some seemingly different elements. It is to learn from previous approaches and means in order to find a way to express the likeness and essence of the object in contemporary drawing practice.

Drawing Practice and Research, Intellect Books, Bristol, 2008, p.143.

I'm idle, as osmanthus flowers fall,

This quiet night in spring, the hill is empty.

The moon comes out and startles the birds on the hill,

They don't stop calling in the spring ravine.

人闲桂花落，夜静春山空。月出惊山鸟，时鸣春涧中

Wang Wei, Birds calling in the ravine 王维《鸟鸣涧》

3 Theoretical Foundation

2.6 Principles

Practice and theory

Drawing practice, as the core visual interpretation of the concept of busi zhi si

(likeness of unlikeness), has been the mainstay of this research. The theoretical research guides the practice. The study of the philosophy and aesthetics of Chinese traditional painting is used here primarily as an aid to my drawing practice.

Theoretical study aims to help design workable methods of interpreting the philosophy of Chinese traditional painting in drawing. In the process, there emerges interdependency between these two parts: practice and theory.

This, as expected at the beginning of the research, is revealed in both this written thesis and the changes in my drawing throughout the past three years of research.

This interdependent relationship has emerged naturally with the progression of practice. In other words, the more practice is undertaken, the more theory study is needed in order to resolve any problems that occur. From the theoretical perspective, the review of relevant philosophy and aesthetics serves as an underlying reasoning in the same way as it did in Chinese traditional painting. Practice and theoretical study work hand-in-hand throughout the entire research, interacting with and interdepending on each other. For instance, any changes in drawing reflect the former theory study; in the same way, the more that research has been carried out, the more contemplation of interpretation of busi zhi si is expected to be achieved in drawings, which in turn, again requires more response and leads to evaluation. Therefore, theory and practice are mutually important and supportive of each other.

Preserving and enhancing the relationship between practice and drawing results in the major method of interpretation: copy and imitation, which have been fundamental methods of learning in Chinese traditional painting.

Copying and imitation

In order to interpret the traditional concept in my drawing, in other words, to experience the process of creating my own artistic language by learning from tradition,

I have followed the methods that have been used in Chinese traditional painting. To create by copying seems contradictory, for some people may think copying limits creativity. But throughout art history, artists have copied the works of their predecessors, imitated them, been stimulated by them, admired and criticised them.

The philosophy of copying and imitating the work of the masters is the basis of

53 mastering techniques, expressions and artistic vocabularies.

Figure 4 Illustration of copying method in Chinese traditional painting. Pictures are from Chao Xun’s copies of The Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting, 1995, (left) and from W Li, 2002 (right)

The majority of Chinese traditional artists agreed that studying the old masters and copying their works would provide the insights and techniques essential for personal expression.92 They recognised that copying was beneficial and that the artist learnt with cumulative experiences (Figure 4). Also they embraced the idea that the past can enrich the present. Generation after generation of Chinese artists has been brought up to copy, with stroke-by-stroke fidelity, the genuine works of the old masters. More importantly, great emphasis has been placed on imitating the spirit of the forms in the work. So good copies of the spirit of the works of the old masters were highly praised and valued. This activity was regarded as essential practice for every beginner, and

92 C Y F Shen, Challenging the Past: the Paintings of Chang Dai-chien, University of Washington Press, Seattle and London, 1991, p.34.

54 even for some mature artists. For instance, Qi Baishi (1864–1957), a significant

Chinese modern brush painter, explained how he used to copy in three stages for learning purpose: fidelity copying, memory copying and the third copying.93 Qi started with an analytic study of Bada Shanren’s work and how Bada (1626–1705) applied brushes, colours and compositions. He then seriously copied Bada’s work with contemplation. Qi also copied the same work from his memory and understanding of the previous exercises. A third copy was necessary if any unsatisfying parts appeared in the second copy. In a different way another Chinese modern brush painter, Zhang Daqian (1899-1983), practices copying in three different categories: lin (close copy), fang (free-hand imitation) and zao (creative reinterpretation).94 These three different categories deal with various degrees of the copying in relation to the original work, as being a loyal copy of the original, involving a slight degree of personal interpretation, and creating a ‘new’ work instead of reproducing something in the old masters’ styles and manners respectively.95 The reason that Qi, Zhang and many other old masters in history approached copying to so many levels, was to master the techniques and to guide their understanding of the expression and the essence of the original. The value of copying mainly lies in the artist’s later individual interpretation, which might eventually lead to some sort of transformation. “Transformation is the difference between merely copying and challenging the past”.96The relationship between copying and innovation reveals the artist’s link with the past and his or her ambition to change the future.

93 W Li, Chinese tertiary art academies-teaching painting sketches of famous artists: Xieyi Bird and flower, Liaoning Art Publisher, Shenyang, 2002, p.31. 94 C Y F Shen, 1991, pp.34–35. 95 ibid. 96 ibid.

Similarly, copying the old masters is also a widely used method of learning in the western drawing tradition. There are some differences between copying and imitating.

Italian artists from the sixteenth century argued that artworks must be copied if the work of art contains both perfection of art and matter, while imitation should be given to those that are lacking in some way, to make them perfect.97 In his book, The creative copy: interpretative drawings from Michelangelo to Picasso, Egbert

Haverkamp-Begemann states that through the centuries, western artists have copied the drawings of the old masters in order to “shape their vision, however innovative and personal, only by absorbing the past”. 98 During the Renaissance, copying masterpieces in the medium of drawing gave drawing more importance as an instrument of artistic representation than before. Artists considered the art of antiquity as a means to grasp the truth of nature.99 Haverkamp-Begemann further argues that the intention behind the act of copying art from artist to artist, or from one copy to another is to record, to interpret, to criticise or to learn. Artists exploit the possibilities for invention. A continuous dialogue takes place between the artist and the interpreted work, through which solutions to problems or new ideas may arise.

Over the centuries, the process of expanding and innovating drawing tradition has been tied up with tradition in continuation, forming a complex and dynamic relationship. Within innovation there is still something of traditional drawing, which renders the new form from a recognisable tradition, and within tradition, the new form

97 S Gregory, ‘Vasari, prints and imitation’, in Stuart Currie (ed.) Drawing 1400-1600: Invention and Innovation, Ashgate Publishing Limited, Hants, 1998, p.137. 98 E Haverkamp-Begemann, The Creative Copy: Interpretative Drawings from Michelangelo to Picasso, Sotheby’s Publications published in associated with The Drawing Centre, New York, 1988, p.13. 99 ibid. p.17

56 is being developed. In the twentieth century, despite the lack of a defined theory of imitation in drawing, modern artists still kept the tradition of imitating and copying the old masters in order to grapple with formal and expressive problems. Picasso copied not only to learn and experiment but also to impose his own style and vision in his recreations of works by his predecessors.100 “It’s better to copy a drawing or painting than to try to be inspired by it, to make something similar ... One does not do a monkey’s job here: one invents”.101 When Juan Gris copied Cezanne’s work, he attempted to explore the integration of figure and setting in a manner directly related to his experiments in Cubism.102

Without any training in Chinese traditional painting, I genuinely consider myself as a beginner. So the philosophy of learning from tradition is firstly to inherit the idea of copying as a starting point. It is believed in this research that copying will be beneficial and helpful to master many aspects in practice. However, since various mediums have been employed in my drawing practice, the traditional stroke-by-stroke technical imitation and copying in Chinese traditional painting is not necessary, nor is it to be followed. Copying must therefore be defined in this particular study. What will be copied in this research is different from what is commonly copied in Chinese traditional painting. That is, it is the methods that have been chosen and interpreted for my drawings of the object. Therefore some methods of rendering the objects in

Chinese traditional painting have been chosen and imitated in this study. These methods were used to depict the object to achieve the outer likeness and essential

100 ibid, p.20. 101 S G Galassi, Picasso’s Variations on the Masters, Harry N. Abrams, Incorporated, New York, 1996, p.8. 102 ibid.

57 likeness by the traditional artists or promoted by them in their approaches to traditional aesthetics. In order to interpret methods of rendering the object in the same way as the Chinese old masters did, this research has focused on the reasons for these particular methods and the means of how I interpret them in my drawings.

Two aspects in my interpretation, outer likeness and interpretative likeness, are equally emphasised with a goal-directed observation as preparation for mark-making in my practice. So three steps are set out in my drawing process as below:

1. To observe before actual mark-making.

2. To capture the outer likeness.

3. To convey the interpretative likeness.

They reflect how theoretical study has guided the methods of practice, both philosophically and aesthetically. Therefore different and referential methods used by

Chinese old masters will be discussed and interpreted accordingly. The decision of choosing these methods has been based on my understanding of the ancient aesthetics and consideration of how I can apply them in my practice.

Evaluation

The evaluation in this research has been focused on the progress and the mental journey of the researcher, who tries to learn from tradition and how she strives to apply what she has learnt. The question with which this research started was how, in drawing practice, could a contemporary drawer (this researcher) construe the value of

58 the interpretation and application of a traditional concept in drawings? The question is a necessary one that has led to the evaluation of the means and process in my drawings. In order to answer this question, a planned process for the drawings has been realised. However, it is necessary to point out that this is not a scientific experiment that can be standardised by specific and measurable evaluation, by data or quantitative analysis. It is therefore not the focus to accomplish some precision or accuracy of interpretation of busi zhi si. The evaluation serves as objective investigation and summary of the outcomes as well as an aid to help improve the progression of drawing practice, but not a final successful image.

This process has continuously developed over the research period with some predicted and unexpected aspects that have appeared. In fact, this research has been searching for a way in which some new or different approaches may be discovered or inspired.

It is drawing practice that is meant to lead the research to connect contemporary drawing with Chinese traditional painting so that some imagery can be produced that embraces some Chinese traditional aesthetics. There has been a progressive exploration when the drawn images become more convincing and appropriate to my understanding of the original concept. The more I understand the concept, the more revelation of the understanding is expected to show in my drawings. Also if the understanding is changed, the drawn imagery should reflect the differences too.

So the outcome of this research is not only the drawings results presented at exhibitions, but more importantly it is the changes, the explorations, and the struggles in the drawings that have emerged in this research while the researcher makes effort to understand and interpret. The mental process of the research is as valued as the drawn

59 images for evaluation. The research is not set as a close-ending project but an ongoing exploration that will lead to more opportunities in the future.

3.1 Methods

The old art principles, The Six Canons,103 have been emphasised, which have oriented the execution of the implemented methods. The reason these old principles were chosen to help with the framework of my methods is based on their historical significance. Xie He, the eminent writer, art historian and critic of the sixth century wrote The Six Canons, which set out the essential principles for painting that have been interpreted by many later generations until today. More importantly, I have noticed that the structure of The Six Canons can be interpreted and applied in my research as a framework to present the philosophy of learning and the ultimate goal of this research.

The Six Canons

The Six Canons are as follows:

1. qi yun sheng dong 气韵生动

2. The bone method in using the brush (gu fa yong bi 骨法用笔).

103 H Xie, (unknown birth, circa sixth century), Gu Hua Pin Lu (The grades and criterion of ancient paintings) Quoted from Zhu, L Zh 2004, The Reading of Chinese aesthetic discourses (Zhongguo meixue mingzhu daoddu), p.55. Translation quoted from J Gao, 1996, p.127.

3. Corresponding to objects in making lifelike depictions (ying wu xiang xing 应物

象形).

4. Following the categories in applying colours (sui lei fu cai 随类赋彩).

5. Designing and managing the arrangement (jing ying wei zhi 经营位置).

6. Transmitting by copying (chuan yi mo xie 传移模写).

The first canon has been left un-translated because there have been different understandings of this canon throughout the history of Chinese traditional painting.

Gao Jianping states that in Xie He’s mind this canon meant “a vigorous and elegant representation”, whereas during the Ming and Qing periods (1368- 1911) it most likely meant “a vigorous representation of vitality and rhythm”.104 Many Chinese contemporary art aestheticians have offered various explanations too. They all agree that in this four-character canon, the first two characters Qi 气and Yun韵 carry different meanings that cannot be mixed together. Ye Lang has explained in his book

An outline of Chinese Aesthetics that Qi embraces three meanings in Xie’s theory: energy and force as the source of the universe; the creativity and vitality of the artist; and the essence of the art. Yun is originally the rhythm of sound and music, but in

Xie’s context it means the painted figure’s temperament and personality.105 Ye argues that Qi lies in the integration of the work and it determines the quality of Yun; Yun derives from Qi.106 Li Zehou also explains the significance of Qi in Chinese culture.

Qi has the features of being virtue and life, material and spirit together, which according to Mencius, represents organic life force to release the energy out of the

104 J Gao, 1996, p.124. 105 L Ye, An outline of Chinese Aesthetics, Shanghai People Publisher, Shanghai, 1999, pp.73–77. 106 ibid.

61 integrated intelligence. As such, Qi deals with the physical, as breath and temperament, but also the organic life force of an individual, which can fuse with the universe.107

There are other interpretations as well. Xu Fuguan108 disagrees with the view that Yun originates from music. He believes it refers to the temperament and personality of a human being, which can be seen in the depiction of the body. Once the Yun is captured, the likeness of appearance exists, therefore, to depict the temperament or personality of the figure is to capture the Yun of the art. Xu disapproves of the translation of Yun as ‘rhythm’,109 but agrees with Mencius’ concept that the origin of Qi is the energy of the body. In terms of art, Qi is the spirit or the power of the art. This power and spirit of the art must be affected by the artist’s conception, emotions and imagination, but derives from Qi. It is the energy of the artist’s body, so Qi determines the person’s temperament and the style of the artwork. In the time of Xie, Qi referred to the temperament, spirit and the force or power emerging from the artwork. In later

Chinese aesthetics, Qi was regarded as the ‘spirit’ that affects the path through which the artist’s internal life energy reveals itself. However, no matter how the theorists present various explanations to differentiate Qi from Yun, they all agree that the spirit or nature of the depicted object is vital in painting.110 This further explains the relationship between likeness to form and likeness to spirit in Chinese traditional painting.

107 Z Li, Chinese aesthetics, Tianjin Social Scientific Institution Publisher, Tianjin, 2001, pp.104–106. 108 F Xu, The spirit of Chinese art, Chunfeng Art Publisher, Shenyanng, 1987, pp.134–156. 109 ibid. 110 ibid.

Xie He’s The Six Canons was also regarded as a set of criteria by which to comment upon and evaluate artists and their works. After having presented The Six Canons in his treatise, Xie started to comment on certain artists and their art to show what these canons meant to him and how he understood the relationship between the canons.

Therefore, for the purpose of this research, it is necessary to understand the relationship between these canons and the requirements of an artist to achieve in his or her art practice. There is a need to understand The Six Canons.

1. 2. Technique of brush 6.

Spirit 3. Lifelike appearance Imitation

(Qi Yun) 4. Colour

5. Composition

Figure 5

In this research, The Six Canons have been divided into three groups in order to help understand the relationships (Figure 5). It is admitted that there have been different opinions on their relationship throughout Chinese art history. However, it is essential to clarify that it is the structure of The Six Canons that inspired and helped this research set-up the theoretical framework. So the purpose of interpreting and applying this relationship here is to articulate my understanding of these traditional principles as my theoretical foundation so that this research can be understood and carried out more appropriately to Chinese traditional aesthetics.

The first canon emphasises and concludes the ultimate goal of painting. In the first canon, Qi and Yun are ranked as essential above all the others. The second group

63 consists of the next four canons, being four different aspects in painting. The second canon concerns techniques of brushwork. Nevertheless, ‘the bone method in using the brush’ shares similarity with Qi, sometimes referring to the spirit of art or a person, so the second canon also concerns the physical presentation of the artists themselves.

The third and fourth canons are for judging the lifelike appearance in the artwork and the ability of the artist to observe and make convincing images of the object. These are accompanied by the fifth canon, concerning the composition and configuration in the artwork. The final group deals with methods of copying the work of previous generations in order to master the former four canons, which intentionally leads back to the achievement of the first canon. This division of three groups helps clarify the methods of my interpretation in this research.

The sixth canon has been separated and put into a different group in this research. It is normally skipped or little discussed in books because it seems to have nothing to do with the spirit of art and artists. However, its importance in Chinese traditional painting lies in its emphasis on copying and imitating the old masters, an essential method of learning from tradition. Almost every artist meticulously copied and imitated the work of earlier masters so that later they would be confident to innovate their own paintings. It is believed in this research that the intention of having copying as one of the six canons is to help the learners understand the techniques and skills as well as the spirit of the art and artists through strokes. This enables the learner to apply the other four main aspects in painting: application of brush; shape; form; and composition, so as to reach Qi. Chinese traditional painting indeed deals with the relationship between tradition and a contemporary artist. Any innovation in Chinese traditional painting has never been an extreme revolution but an inherited progression.

- Technique of brush Imitation - Lifelike appearance Spirit - Colour (Qi Yun) -Composition

- Composition Figure 6

So I reorganised the direction of the original principles, which seems to be reverse from the beginning to the end (Figure 6). This procedure seems to make more sense to my practice and the theoretical framework for this research to follow.

In Figure 5, the second, third, fourth and fifth canons are grouped in the same section simply because they are the artistic and formal aspects of the painting that the artist must deal with in his or her work. They are positioned behind the first group

(imitation) because the first basic method of learning art in China was copying and imitating the old masters’ techniques, styles and spirit in all art genres. The painstaking copying and imitating was believed to lead to the successful mastery of skills. It was considered the foundation to becoming a good artist. The requirements of a skilled hand together with a profound understanding of the world and a virtuous temperament and heart are the keys to producing good artwork. Although to reach the spirit is normally the top concern, the last fidelity (copying), as one of the six principles, still indicates the importance of the learning process from borrowing to creating.

The process or method of making a painting starts from copying and imitating the

65 work of the old masters before mastery of the major elements in painting—brush skills, colours, shapes and composition. These elements are then judged and evaluated by how much the spirit of the depicted object is revealed in the painting. It should be pointed out that in the second group, all the elements are learned from the masters and are also required to be developed by the artists in their own practice. This process is inseparable from the relationship of likeness to form and likeness to spirit. The likeness of colours and shapes are therefore depicted by the mastery of mediums that convey the spirit of the object.

The introduction of The Six Canons in Chinese art history played a fundamental role in the traditional criterion of aesthetic judgment of values. I am borrowing from this criterion to set-up the theoretical framework of this research (Figure 6). Once the framework is set, the imitation of the methods can be chosen and applied in my drawings.

- Observation

Imitation / copying - Outer likeness Essential likeness of traditional methods - Interpretative likeness

Figure 7

Figure 7 represents the method of interpreting The Six Canons with respect to my drawing. The essential likeness, imitation of Qi Yun, is the ultimate goal of my

66 practice. In order to achieve this, the three components: observation; outer likeness; and interpretative likeness, must be accomplished. Achieving this lifelike appearance

(shape and form, according to the criteria in The Six Canons) is my intention when depicting the outer likeness of the object in this research. Nevertheless, the other two canons of technique and study of composition have little direct connection for the purpose of this research; they are not the core issues of method design. In order to achieve the essential likeness, the interpretative likeness plays a crucial role in this research. This research follows Chinese traditional notions of learning from the previous masters through imitation and innovation. The analysis of The Six Canons has provided practical guidance for the design of methods. Some specific methods on learning in Chinese traditional painting have been chosen and discussed in order to implement them in my drawings.

Observation

“Some people learning to paint flowers would put a flower in the ground and

observe it from above to obtain all points of view of it”. 111

Guo Xi, ca. eleventh century, Lin quan gao zhi

Observation is the first lesson any draftsperson must take seriously. Precise observation was highly regarded, in both the East and the West. For instance,

Leonardo da Vinci was one of the most meticulous and faithful observers of nature.

He declared, “I will observe the aforesaid rule, making four demonstrations for the

111 X Guo, Lin quan gao zhi, quoted from Zhu, The Reading of Chinese aesthetic discourses (Zhongguo meixue mingzhu daoddu), Beijing University Press, Beijing, 2004, p.169. Translated by the author.

67 four sides of each limb, and for the bones I will make five, cutting them in half and showing the hollow of each of them”.112 In da Vinci’s drawings of the body, the overall structure is presented as clearly as possible with all the details of the body, in which da Vinci, as Moshe Barasch argues, wished to represent all there is in nature, with no omission or selection, transforming the figure into a mirror of reality.113 The edge between his art and scientific statement is blurry.

In Chinese traditional painting, by way of contrast, this type of scientific knowledge and careful observation are not put together to bear the representation of the object.

For instance, Zheng Xie’s (1693–1765) famous statement on painting bamboo showed the function of observation in Chinese painting. Zheng was a master of painting bamboo in the early Qing Dynasty. He summarised three types of bamboo in the process of painting: the bamboo in the heart; the bamboo in the eyes; and the bamboo in the hand.114 When seeing bamboo in morning light, with a foggy, shadowy and frosty atmosphere around, the artist has Yi 意 ( “the untrammelled, or spontaneous and individualistic expression”, 115 and hidden meaning of the image in the artist’s mind).116 Therefore, the artist has the impetus and inspiration for expressing this Yi.

The bamboo in his eyes is not the same as that in his mind. Likewise, the bamboo in his work is not the same as that in his mind. Therefore, Yi must be in the artist’s

112 M Barasch, Theories of art: from Plato to Winckelmann, New York University Press, New York and London, 1985, p.138. 113 ibid, p.140. 114 X Zheng (1693–1765), The thorough collection of Ban Qiao (ban qiao quan ji), quoted from L Li, & M Lin, The Development of Chinese Ancient Art Theory Historical Records, Shanghai People’s Arts publisher, Shanghai, 1997, p.347. Translated by the author. 115 J Hay, Shi Tao: Painting and Modernity in Early Qing China, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2001, p.181. 116 X Zheng, 1997, p.347.

68 thoughts prior to the actual act of mark-making. This is the principle. Not only does it require the artist to observe the object carefully, but also to stimulate his or her feelings and emotions to the point of expression through a kind of communion with the object. The object therefore functions as a trigger to evoke the artist’s creative response.

Likewise, some Italian artists from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries shared a similar understanding of the role of drawing as a particular activity in the artist’s life in relation to nature. Giorgio Vasari argues that drawing initiated from the artist’s mind.117 In other words, as Federico Zuccari argues, that which is to be expressed must firstly appear in the artist’s mind.118 That is, the disegno interno, inner design or idea, preceded the act of the disegno externo, outer design or physical drawing, which is seen as the visualised shape of the structured idea through various mediums.119 The process of externalising the internal intellectual as creation is considered to be the nature of drawing by many artists. It also has strong connection to the “pursuit of the perception–or, at least to the memory system which functions as the storehouse of the past precepts”.120

The memory system in making art is also explained by Guo Xi in his article, as the entire impression and emotional response gained from careful observation. The rest of the article from Guo Xi’s quote on the method of observation of the object and the selection of images (guan wu qu xiang) gives examples of how to observe a mountain.

117 P Fuller, Rock and Flesh, Norwich School of Art Gallery, Norwich, 1985, p.7. 118 ibid. 119 ibid, p.8. 120 ibid, p.7.

Guo suggests that the artist who wants to paint landscape should study the entire appearance of a mountain.121 This consists of the mountain’s movement from a distance; its texture within the distance; atmospheric changes of clouds, air and colours; and the feelings and emotions of humans in association with the scenery in each of the four seasons (such as harmonious in spring, prosperous in summer, sparse in autumn and bleak in winter); or laughing, dripping, making-up and sleeping, respectively.122 Guo also describes the diversity of the faces of the mountain from different angles, distances, times of the day, seasons and climates, which requires the artists to observe with their eyes and master in their mind and heart. This also best demonstrates Shi Tao’s paintings of landscape with an entirety of the landscape.

Therefore, when the artist paints a mountain, there are actually hundreds of faces of the mountain in his or her mind. The image of the mountain the artist intends to make, therefore, is the complex perception of the object fused with feelings that arise from observation. The purpose is to convey the true feelings of the artist and multiple true appearances of nature. Before the artist begins any painting of the mountain, what he or she has seen has to be integrated into an image or several images in his or her mind.

A painting integrates many different observations, not just one viewpoint.

Capturing outer likeness

“Others learning to paint bamboo would place a bamboo and look at its

shadow on a wall in moonlight to study the outline of a real

121 X Guo, 2004, p.169. Translated by the author. 122 ibid.

bamboo.”123

Guo Xi, ca. eleventh century, Lin quan gao zhi

This is a quote from the same treatise Lin quan gao zhi by Guo Xi. Following the description of his method of observation, Guo then describes his method of studying the outer appearance of a bamboo from its shadow. The method reveals an awareness of the depiction of likeness of outer appearance of the object since an early stage of figurative painting in China. For instance Gu Kaizhi (ca 346–407),124 who was concerned with obtaining believable likeness in portraits, creates well-designed pictures that were copied from the appearance of nature in subject matter, application of colours, composition and scale. One of the stories about traditional artists also describes an incident of how lifelikeness was achieved by a highly praised painter in the third century. Cao Buxing (birth date unknown) is regarded as one of the great painters of a time when realistic representation was highly pursued by artists. Sun

Quan (182–252, one of the three overlords in the Three Kingdoms period) asked Cao to paint on a screen. Cao mistakenly spilt a drop of ink, which he then painted as a fly.

Sun Quan thought it was real and tried to flick it away with his fingers.125 This story about how the famous artist Cao deceived the Emperor is similar to that of Greek artist Parrhasius who tricked the artist Zeuxis with a painted sheet, which Zeuxis wanted to uncover.126

123 Zh Zhu, The Reading of Chinese aesthetic discourses, Beijing University Press, Beijing, 2004, p.169. Translated by the author. 124 K Gu (ca 346–407), Hua Yuntaishan Ji (Notes for the landscape of Mount Yutai). Quoted from L Li & M Lin, The development of Chinese ancient art theory historical records, 1997, p. 45. 125 Y Zhang (815–875) li dai ming hua ji (The essays on famous paintings through the ages), translated and quoted from J Gao, 1996, p.123. 126 Pliny, the elder, Natural History, quoted in Norman Bryson Vision and Painting: the Logic of the

Different from western learning methods, Chinese art theories did not establish any similar application to capture the outer likeness, which was the main method of the

European academic tradition. Chinese theories emphasise accurate observation and knowledge of the object, as explained in Guo Xi’s method of observation. But they also demonstrate the notion that the outer appearance of an object is not the main goal of depiction. For instance, Chen Zao, in his book Jiang hu chang weng ji127 (The treatise of jiang hu long old man), states that when the artist asks the model to dress up, sit still and look serious, the artist looks up at the model and looks down to draw on paper, drawing without any mistakes, even in the depiction of a single hair.

Although the image would be like a reflection in a mirror, it would look like a wooden puppet.128 The same argument also appears in Su Shi’s treatise.129 If the model is dressed up and sitting there with fixed sight, how can the artist convey the essence of the model when the model is so unnaturally serious and tense? Chinese traditional artists commonly believed that it was an accurate, yet empty representation of the object with only outer appearance. There have been few evident methods of teaching beginners to capture the outer likeness of the object in the same way as the European tradition. Beginners learning Chinese traditional painting start by copying and imitating the work of the masters, from which they would be able to obtain the techniques and knowledge of depicting the objects, in addition to careful observation.

This is a very distinctive feature of the teaching and learning of Chinese traditional painting, which can be found in other areas too, such as learning literature by reciting

Gaze, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1997, p.13. 127 Z Chen, Jianghu changweng ji (The treatise of Jianghu long old man), quoted from L Li & M Lin, 1997, p.147. 128 ibid. 129 Sh Su, The collections of Su Dongpo, quoted from L Li & M Lin, 1997, p.98.

72 the poems and essays of the old masters. Therefore, to use shadow, a means of capturing the outer likeness in Guo Xi’s treaties, is a well-recorded method that is rare in Chinese art traditional training. As such, the use of shadow will be applied as my imitation of Guo Xi’s suggestion in this research.

Different artists in their practice have applied this method, such as Su Shi and Xu Wei.

Song artist Su Shi (1037–1101), who once devalued the emphasis on the outer likeness as a child’s understanding of the world, recorded his experience of copying the shadow of his own face.130 Su had seen the shadow of his face and asked others to copy it onto the wall, but with no eyes or eyebrows. People who saw it could not stop laughing when they realised it was his image. Su later stated that the essential likeness of a person lies in any aspect that implicates the person’s character, such as their eyes, nose or particularly, additional hair on the face.131

Another significant artist from the sixteenth century, Xu Wei (1521–1593), was famous for his bird and flower paintings and his grand manner of expression. One of

Xu’s techniques was to “convey spirit through capturing shadow”.132 He used po mo

泼墨 (splashed ink) to depict the object, for instance, but he painted large areas of rocks with splashed ink or po mo破墨（broken ink）to depict the shade of the rocks.

Xu chose to paint the shadowed side of the rocks, which conveyed their massiveness with visual impact.133 He appreciated Xia Gui’s landscape, commenting, “When I look at Xia Gui’s work, boundless and massive, it forces us to abandon appearance

130 ibid. 131 ibid. 132 X Li & X Li, Xu Wei, China People University Publishing, Beijing, 2005, p.35. 133 ibid, p.146.

73 and shape, to appreciate shadow”.134

Figure 8. Xu Wei Huang jia tu (a painting of a Yellow Crab) ink on paper, 114.6 x 29.7 cm, date unknown, picture is taken from X Li & X Li, Xu Wei

He also expressed his favour of the shadows of bamboo. The depiction of shadow not only matched the technique of using black ink in his painting but, more importantly, the simple and plain shape of the object provided the artist with a freedom to represent imaginative images of the object. The details of the particular appearance of the object

134 W Xu (1521–1593) quoted from L 2004, p.204.

74 were eliminated in the dark and plain shape of shadow. The artist therefore was able to express yi, which arose from the visualised shapes of the object. A depiction of the essential likeness of the object was achieved by the artist as a result of applying a combination of observations, feelings and emotions, and techniques. The artist was not just following the outer likeness of the object, but rather the outer likeness was used as a basis for further creation.

It is not only Chinese traditional artists who have experience of using shadow to learn from and depict an object. Western painting shares similar traditions such as that depicted in Pliny’s study of the origin of plastic art. A young woman, who was in love with a man who was soon departing for war, drew his shadow on the wall as he was sleeping. Her father, who worked with clay, sculpted the image by filling the contours with clay.135 Also some contemporary artists have applied this simple method too. For instance, Jasper Johns’ own shadow was traced onto the canvas in a series of the four paintings Seasons. In each there is a filled-in silhouette of the artist's shadow. For instance, in Spring a shadow of a young boy appears on top of his own and, a year later, the boy’s outline appears again in another drawing, A souvenir for Andrew

Monk.136 While it is interesting to find this similarity between Chinese and European traditions, it is also surprising to see how the same technique of capturing the likeness of an object through investigation of its shadow has led to such different directions in different cultures. Art in the West took to using light and shade, and contrasts of tones and colours to represent the appearance of the world, whereas these things were considered to convey the essence of Dao in a different way in China.

135 Plny the Elder, Natural history, xxxv, quoted in Victor I. Stoichita, A short history of the shadow, Reaktion Books Ltd, London, 1997, p.11. 136 T Godfrey, 1990, p.19.

Regarding the relationship between the object and its shadow, Victor I Stoichita, in his book A Short History of the Shadow,137 discusses that there are two possible functions of shadow in the process of interpretations of art. The first function is that the shadow’s resemblance to the original plays an important role in the depiction. The other possible function is that shadow also belongs to the object or person who originally cast it (in Stoichita’s discussion), because image / shadow is the person’s image. Stoichita further argues that in Pliny’s story, despite the departure of the beloved one, the image of his shadow remained on the wall. The real shadow is no longer there, but his outline, captured once, immortalises a presence in the form of an image. Before any further artistic embellishment of this image, which was later turned into a volumetric sculpture carrying possible meanings of soul and death as in ancient

Egypt or Greece, this shadow was an externalisation of the person’s being.138 When discussing the nature of being and reality, it is necessary to mention Plato’s famous simile of the cave in The Republic (514a–15c).139 It is as if the prisoner in a cave was a spectator in a cinema, only able to see whatever passed by the mouth of the cave as if it was showing in front of him on the screen. In order to get to the truth, he had to see the real world via a transitional stage of looking at its reflection in a puddle of water. Finally, he could see the sky and the sun. Plato saw the role of the artist as depicting the reflection of the world, in the same way as a mirror does.140 An object’s shadow can function as this mirror.

137. V I Stoichita, A Short History of the Shadow, Reaktion Books Ltd, London, 1997, p.15. 138 ibid. 139 Plato, 1987, p.365. 140 ibid, (596e).

This brief discussion of the relationship between the object and its shadow helps me understand the functions of the shadow in my drawings and its possible limitation and potential in practice. To imitate the traditional method of using shadow to capture the outer likeness can be embraced in western contemporary drawing, since the application is not new at all. This can also provide me with more opportunities to learn from western contemporary artists, who have applied similar methods in their practice.

Conveying the interpretative likeness

To convey the interpretative likeness is actually an act of combining skills, feelings and emotions, careful observation, and captured outer likeness.

Interpretative shape and form

“When Su Shi (1037–1101) painted ink bamboo, he painted it from bottom

to the top with no stops. I asked him “why did you not define the bamboo

joints separately?” He replied, “When does bamboo grow joint by joint

separately.”141

- Mi Fu (1051–1107) Hua Shi

141 F Mi, A History of Painting, quoted from L Li & M Lin, 1997, p.119. Translated by the author.

In this story, Su Shi’s method of depicting the bamboo revealed how he perceived the force and the continuation of growth within the life of the bamboo. Although this method was not a common application of painting bamboo traditionally, it served a role as a way of approaching the interpretative likeness of the object in this research.

The emphasis on studying the object from nature is not for the purpose of replication, instead they sought an empathy between artist and the object. 142 The loyal representation of the outer appearance is not enough to achieve the essence of the object. Simply copying or abandoning the outer appearance of the object is not appropriate, whereas the intention of changing the outer appearance lies in the understanding of the reasons behind the simplification.

For proper aesthetic judgment, art should be interpreted with its own conventions and in its own context. The representation of shape and form in Chinese traditional painting should therefore be understood together with its philosophical and aesthetic judgments. Artists from different regions and cultures, at various periods, with little exception, try to interpret the world visually. Their work cannot be understood or interpreted correctly if one does not understand the purpose and intentions that serve in their work. For instance, the ancient Egyptian artists’ style of depicting a pond with trees around it should be judged from a western conventional standard of spatial depiction. This also can be seen in many Chinese traditional paintings in which, although artists apply texture and shading to depict some objects, the paintings look more simple and linear than western tonal drawings. The shape and form of the objects in Chinese traditional painting, particularly in those more expressive and freehand styles, appear sketchy, with less detail, compared with some other more

142 C Y F Shen, 1991, p.43.

78 meticulous and fine paintings. However, the occurrence of the reduction or simplification of strokes stems from the aesthetic pursuit of the Dao as well as the unique nature of brush and ink.

In Chinese traditional painting, outer likeness of the object has never been neglected or ignored. In fact, it is always considered important to represent the outer appearance of the object, as it embraces the essence of nature. When outer likeness was highly regarded during the Song Dynasty (960–1279), many artists tended to merely demonstrate the outer appearance, rather than the essence of the objects. Therefore, many scholars and artists fought against the phenomenon during that time. Scholar Su

Shi was one of the phenomenal figures that seemed to devalue the depiction of outer likeness. Su emphasised the value of spirit or Qi Yun of the object because he lived in a period when meticulousness and detail in painting was fashionable. Like Su, many artists promoted a more expressive and less detailed style of their own. This style was highly developed in the later Yuan Dynasty when society forced artists to engage in

Daoist and Buddhist philosophies. The appearance of reduced and simplified strokes was considered as a better representation of the void and emptiness, or plainness and simplification, in the philosophy of these religions. It is the yi that has been transferred through the plain strokes and colours that matches the artists’ spiritual pursuit. Therefore, to understand the reduction and simplification of strokes in

Chinese traditional painting requires an appreciation of the artists’ intentions.

However, the way of simplification and reduction of stroke is not the goal of Chinese traditional artists; rather it is a process of purifying the imagery to achieve the goal of portraying the essence, or the truth of the world. It is purification. The appearance of

79 the shapes and forms seemed to be simplified in many Chinese traditional paintings, which can sometimes lead to the misunderstanding that the main intention was to reduce the details of the objects. We should not study Chinese traditional painting as if there were comparisons between parts and the whole, that is, partly depicted imagery and completely detailed real objects, because Chinese traditional artists have never seen the finished imagery as partly depicted. Their beliefs, techniques and aesthetic values lead them to express and represent the objects the way they are. The intention of simplification and reduction serves as a tool for expression. It is a matter of how best to depict the object from their viewpoints, which are determined by the philosophy and aesthetics. It is the reason behind the reduction and simplification that

I imitate as a method, not the execution of simplification and reduction in my drawings.

Interpretative colour

“Therefore, to apply ink so that five colours are obtained, it is considered

an achievement of yi. If the focus is on five colours, the imagery of

objects will not be achieved.”143

Zhang, Yanyuan (815–875) Li Dai Ming Hua Ji

143 Y Zhang (815–875) The essays on famous paintings through the ages, quoted from Jiang Chengqing ‘Chinese colour perception (zhong guo ren se cai guan)’, Jiangsu Education Publisher, Nanjing, 2000, p.5.

The application of ink and brush has been greatly valued in Chinese traditional painting since the thirteenth century, particularly in the Yuan, Ming and Qing

Dynasties. Since the advent of the borrowed techniques from calligraphy, Chinese traditional painters have overwhelmingly regarded the aesthetic value and autonomy of brush and ink. Artists of the Ming and Qing Dynasties connected the quality of techniques of brush and ink with the ancient aesthetic theory that “The qi yun is hidden in brush and ink, [the application of] brush and ink creates qi yun”.144 This connects modern innovation to tradition in painting. This connection has resulted in the development of Chinese traditional painting since Xie He’s The Six Canons when the application of brush in the bone method was recommended. The discussion of how to combine calligraphy and painting lasted for nearly a thousand years, until the

Ming and Qing Dynasties, when the use of brush and ink played a crucial role in painting.

The use of ink in Chinese traditional painting is considered to be a method of interpreting colours, because the selection of black ink instead of other colours reflects the philosophical understanding of the world in painting. The five major colours in Chinese culture are black, white, red, yellow and blue / green. They are metaphors for the directions north, west, south, centre and east accordingly. They also symbolise seasons, five elements, and other traditional concepts, such as music, tastes, etc. If these five colours represent the Chinese understanding of the world, why then did the traditional artists abandon them for plain black?

One important reason for the promotion of the use of ink is that it echoes a

144 N Yun, Nan tian hua ba (Envoy of Southern field) quoted from Zhiliang Zhu, The Reading of Chinese aesthetic discourses, 2004, p.147. Translated by the author.

81 philosophical belief about the world. It is believed that the use of black ink in Chinese traditional painting originates from its nature as being Xuan. Xuan is the cosmic mystery that is the gate to the secret of all life in Daoism.145 Black has the nature of being mysterious, infinite and profound. It demonstrates the nature of the cosmic mystery in Chinese philosophy. Black is also called xuan hei, or mysterious black.

This colour therefore represents the truth of nature that can best be depicted by traditional artists. It is the perceived colour, light or dark black, which contains everything in the world. This also reflects the Chinese philosophy of the relationship between the Dao and the objects we see in front of us. All the visible objects are carriers of the law of the universe. In other words, they visualise the nature of the Dao.

In order to depict the Dao, it is therefore possible to perceive visible objects to reveal the essence in them. The colour black functions in the same way that other colours do in depicting visible things which can be easily grasped, but the true nature of those things can only be depicted by using black. The colour black is more suggestive and indicative in representing the objects in Chinese traditional painting.

The revolutionary use of colour in Chinese traditional painting started in the Tang

Dynasty (618–907), when landscape painting rose from the dominance of figurative painting. It was also a period when Daoist philosophy had been revealed in the employment of the landscape since the seventh century. Artists at that time were devoted to approaching the Dao through artistic activity. While Senior and Junior Li applied splendid green and golden colours to depict nature, Wang Wei, secluded in the mountains, reacted against this dominant culture and invented the black ink landscape.

Both of these approaches allowed artists to express their life experiences and their

145 Laozi, Dao De Jing, translation quoted from Lin Yutang’s version in 1955 http://home.pages.at/onkellotus/TTK/English_Yutang_TTK.html#Kap01, viewed 03-02-2008

82 perception of the world through their interpretative colours. Both of these techniques have been inherited by following generations, but the devotion to ink colour in painting has really been dominant since the thirteenth century, when plainness and simplicity became the major style in painting by many artists who chose to live as recluses. Therefore, the use of ink developed from more realistic forms, via Senior and Junior Li’s green and gold, and has reflected the pursuit of obtaining the core of nature in Chinese traditional painting. In Zhang Yanyuan’s treatise, Zhang states that nature, grass and trees, clouds and snow, mountains and phoenix, have their own beauty of colour without relying on painted colours. It is the power of nature, the law of the universe.146 Zhang believes that in order to achieve the interpretation of the law of nature, artists cannot just imitate the colours of the objects they see, but should use black ink to represent all the various colours.147

This dominance of black ink in traditional painting does not reduce the use of other colours in Chinese culture. In fact, colours became highly symbolic. For instance, the colours of the facial make-up in local operas have great significance. White represents the treacherous, black represents the resolute and steadfast and red represents the loyal and faithful. The distinction between ink and colours is not contradictory, for to the

Chinese, nature and its appearance are not contradictory. Ink has its variation of tones that can represent nature. The colours that are used to follow the tones of ink, as de- saturated colour, were also called water ink in the Tang Dynasty. The combination of ink in various tones and washy and de-saturated colours are commonly used in

Chinese traditional painting. De-saturated and washy colours are considered to embrace the simpler and plain qualities reflected in Daoist philosophy. In the

146 Y Zhang, 2000, p.50. 147 Ch Jiang, 2000, Chinese colour perception, Jiangsu Education Publisher, Nanjing, 2000, p.50.

83 drawings developed as part of this research, the use of colours is limited to keep the simplicity and plainness that pencil, charcoal and ink provide. These are the main mediums to achieve monochromatic representation of the colours. Here the monochrome does not represent the tones but colours. Some local colours will be drawn in order to convey the outer likeness and interpretative likeness, but it is not the focus.

Within the framework of searching for the essential likeness in these drawings, interpretative likeness in colour, shape and form have been considered as an individual interpretation. In this interpretation, it is not the intention to simply reduce the details or exaggerate any parts. Individual appreciation and exploration are highly regarded when representing my understanding of nature in Chinese philosophy.

To imitate the simplicity of the use of colour in my research, I will limit the range of colours in my drawings. Also the employed mediums provide me with the chance to apply fewer colours. However, it is the reasons behind the action that I have focused on. That is, it is the intention of reaching the essence of the object, the nature, through this modified means. The research will follow the theory study, tying it to an individual perception and understanding of the objects. This perception arises from careful observation and knowledge, when I see the object or hold my pencil in front of my paper, seeking to reveal Yi. It also comes from my experiences, such as my judgment and my instinct, which have been influenced by my life experiences. There will be a description of my process in each stage of interpretation. Certain investigation and evaluations of practice will be undertaken in accordance with the theory study in order to justify my practice in this ongoing process.

3.2 Other relevant aspects

Subject matter

The objects that appear in my drawings developed as part of this research are mainly from my everyday life. They may be chosen from my home, the art studio, or from my travels to different places. They are sometimes the things I touch and use often, with a sense of affection, such as a chair in my studio, or objects that I am interested in and eager to draw, such as trees and birds. The choice of objects is general and personal. It is important to emphasise this connection, as it is crucial for my conveying the essential likeness in my drawings.

Similarly, many Chinese traditional artists choose to paint everyday things. The appearance of vegetables, fruit, plants and animals is a result of daily observation and affection on the part of the artist, and partly because of their symbolic meanings. The basic wishes of the Chinese are similar to those of other groups. For instance, by surrounding themselves with auspicious symbols such as long-living plants and birds, the Chinese believe that their wishes for a long life will come true. The symbols in traditional painting often serve to reinforce a plain surface and represent a veiled meaning. Some art historians suggest that these paintings are “meant to be viewed as symbols, and their characteristic themes – rocks, water, clouds, animals, trees, grass – betoken not only themselves, but also something beyond themselves: they mean

85 something”.148 Instead of using words as a form of expression, the Chinese regard these symbols as far more subtle and less primitive.149

However, in my drawings developed as part of this research, the symbolic nature of the objects has not been the major concern in terms of choice of the subject matter.

Nevertheless, the choice made is inevitably my personal decision and is subjective to some extent. The objects are not therefore plainly depicted only because they appear in my daily life, there is a hidden implication behind them in these drawings, but not necessarily their traditional symbolic meanings. With the changes in the world, many of the symbolic objects have lost their relevance and it is a matter of superficial imitation to keep their original meanings. However, there are hidden meanings behind these objects that reflect my concerns or perceptions of the world, which reflect functions in a similar way in my life as the drawer. There are wishes, blessings and implications in these objects that serve in the same way as those in Chinese traditional painting. More importantly, the development of these drawings has led to an understanding that the intention to paint the object sometimes is not only the reason of choice but the way in which the artist paints them. Therefore, the question of how to draw objects, that is, to achieve their essential likeness to reveal the Dao, is the main purpose of this research.

The essential drive of choosing the objects in my drawings is a more affectionate than rational decision. John Berger describes van Gogh’s drawings as maps of love for everyday objects such as chairs, boots for walking, sunflowers and even a postman;

148 E Preetorius, Catalogue of the Preetorius Colletion, quoted in W Eberhard A dictionary of Chinese Symbols, London, Routledge, 1988, p.9. 149 ibid, p.15.

86 things that simply evoke van Gogh’s passion and ‘capacity to love’. This passion and love drive van Gogh to strive to realise and to achieve that love.150 It is this love, according to Berger, that forces van Gogh to risk fusing with the object and losing himself in fusion. 151 It is important for Chinese traditional artists to fuse with the object – in a Chinese way of expression, to forget themselves. The intention is to fuse the body with bamboo (身与竹化 shen yu zhu hua), for example, so pureness and freshness emerge infinitely. The traditionally symbolised bamboo stands for straightness and selflessness, due to its shape and hollow inside form, which were highly regarded as a good nature for a gentleman. The fusing with bamboo through art has provided a channel for artists to achieve their moral pursuit through art expression.

This intention of losing oneself in painting is believed to be a way of achieving Yi and the Dao in Chinese traditional aesthetics. This tradition may have its origin in the philosophy of Zhuangzi during the third and fourth centuries BC. One of Zhuangzi’s famous stories is about a cook who butchers an ox for the King. In the act of butchering the ox, he looks as if he is dancing to a piece of ancient music. In reply to the question of how he is able to do it the cook explains that he achieves this as the

Dao, which is higher than skill. He explains that his Dao in his butchering occurs when he goes at it “by spirit and [I] don’t look with my eyes. Perception and understanding have come to a stop and the spirit moves where it wants.”152 This cook then obtains a kind of freedom in his actions and it is this freedom that makes the

150 J Berger, Berger on Drawing, Occasional Press, Aghabullogue, 2007, pp.13–14.

152 ibid, pp.14–15. 152 Zhuangzi, Zhuangzi in Burton Watson, trans., The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu. Quoted in J Gao 1996, p.78.

87 action enjoyable. This story has exerted a profound influence on artists of later generations. The action of penetrating the object without looking at it, but meeting it with spirit, has revealed the unified relationship between the artists and their objects.

This connection is believed to help the artists to achieve the Dao.

Similarly, it is my affection for certain objects from everyday life that provides the potential to achieve a depiction of their essential likeness in the drawings developed as part of this research. These objects are easier to become attached to, or to evoke emotions when I observe them and when I learn to commune with them. Within all my drawings of these daily objects, love and affection leads me to a path on which the interpretative likeness seems to be more convincing, according to my understanding of the philosophical and aesthetic background. It is this sort of connection that I have sought to express in my drawings. Since this research has focused on my individual interpretation, to understand my personal way of perceiving things is vital to determine the process of carrying out the research. While various approaches may occur when different artists aim for the same goal, my choice of subject matter is based on my life experience, art preference and appreciation. Choosing objects from familiar groups, as the old masters did, will help me observe them sufficiently and depict the outer likeness and interpretative likeness.

Mediums

Any drawing can face two challenges: ‘what to represent’ and ‘how to represent’. A movement from ‘what’ to ‘how’ is generally seen as progression. If the use of materials becomes a standard, it also reveals that the artists have not only begun to 88 concern themselves with the problem of ‘what to draw’, but also to give thought to the more specific problem of how to make a picture. In this paper, this ‘how’ question can be defined as ‘how to draw the objects with the use of certain mediums.’

“Media are pure potentiality waiting for the artist to give them a chance”.153 Each medium has its own nature. The decision to employ any one of various materials in my drawings is both personal and general. It is essential that in using any medium in these drawings I can best convey my understanding and perception of the objects. It is also important to develop some sort of sensitivity and association with the nature of the materials, their possibilities and limitations. This also helps me express emotions and feelings through both the material and physical applications.

Chinese traditional painting has its own special materials and tools. First, there is the

Chinese brush. The various absorbencies of water also leave amazing marks to depict forms, textures and the quality of the object. Second, there is the ink. Traditionally, when the ink cake is ground on the painter's stone slab with fresh water, ink of various consistencies can be prepared depending on the amount of water used. Thick ink is very deep and glossy when applied to paper or silk. Thin ink appears lively and translucent. As a result, in ink-and-wash paintings it is possible to use ink alone to create a rhythmic balance between brightness and darkness, and density and lightness tonally, and to create an impression of the subject's texture, weight and colouring.

Third, Chinese traditional painting may be done on either Chinese paper or silk. The original paper (around 100 AD) was made from many different materials including

153 T Sale & C Betti, Drawing: a Contemporary Approach, Thomson/Wadsworth, Belmont, 2004, p.349.

89 pulp, old fishing nets and bark. The paper is classed in degrees of weight and size.

The paper is very absorbent and the weight will dictate the quantity of ink used for strokes on the paper. Chinese paper is usually known as rice paper in English. Rice paper may be processed or unprocessed. Unprocessed rice paper absorbs moisture and ink, and colours sink in easily when water is added. Chinese traditional artists also like to paint on silk. In general, it is used after being treated and is used mostly for paintings in the meticulous style. Raw silk is used for freehand painting.

In this research, the traditional application of brush and ink will be interpreted in a different way from my drawing practice. The techniques and the philosophy behind the use of brush and ink will be transformed to my employment of various mediums used in the development of the drawings underpinning this research. These mediums are relatively conventional in western drawing.

The support is mainly paper, and because of the traditional connection with Chinese painting, silk has been applied in some drawings, which also offers a special translucent quality. In some cases, silk provides a distinctive quality to my drawings that strengthens the interpretation of likeness. To use silk in my drawing is to connect with the tradition but also to experiment with a relatively new support in drawing.

My drawing tools are mainly pencil, charcoal, pen, ink and pastels, all commonly used by any drawer. There is some consideration in choosing these more traditional media. With the advent of new technologies and digital art, the use of pencil and charcoal reflects the connection between the traditional and the contemporary. The application of these traditional tools to represent one’s contemporary life suits the

90 issue of dealing with tradition and modernity. Mike Esson suggests that drawing is like a game of Chinese whispers.154 That is, artists take what is valuable and pass it on.

It has been a progression in that every artist should be assessing whether conventional drawing mediums offer anything to contemporary practice. As such, in my drawings, these materials are maintained in their own nature, but also are juxtaposed with some unconventional materials from the West, such as silk and transparent plastic sheets.

The idea of linking the past and the contemporary, the old and the new, is reflected in my choice of support.

The combination of traditional materials and new materials also maintains the simplicity of the drawings. This is the second reason that I have chosen to limit the use of some new and advanced mediums in my drawings. Plainness and simplicity convey the spirit of Daoist aesthetics. The intention of applying a simple medium is to serve the philosophical understanding of how to capture the essential likeness of the objects instead of being distracted by the nature of the medium. These traditional drawing mediums are the main focus of my research and will help me break old habits, and force me to approach drawing from different ways with more spontaneity. The silk, for instance, serves well with its delicacy and translucency, which complements my intentions in this body of work, but also challenges me to go beyond its limitations in some ways compared with paper. In today’s drawing, many artists stay with traditional mediums but endow them with new concepts; some artists will combine new technology to enrich the conventional mediums and revive the nature of the medium; and many artists intentionally choose to use unusual mediums to emphasise

154 M Farmer, ‘Drawing connections: the 2005 Sydney drawing festival’, COFA, issue 9, art design: Winter 2005, Sydney, 2005, p.9.

91 materiality, objectivity and subjectivity. For the purposes of this research, I have limited myself to using the simplest materials. Nevertheless, I am aware that this simplicity should not reduce any expression or depiction. After all, my aim is to achieve the outer likeness and the interpretative likeness of the objects together with these mediums.

The mountain air is fresh at the dusk of day;

The flying birds in flocks return.

In these things there lies a deep meaning;

I want to tell it, but have forgotten the words.

山气日夕佳，飞鸟相与还。此中有真意，欲辨已忘言

Tao Yuanming, Drinking Poem 陶源明《饮酒诗》

4 Implementation

4.1 Imaginative drawing in observation

In the drawing process undertaken as part of this research the first step, before any mark-making, is to observe objects from my daily life. John Berger uses ‘ruthless observation’ to explain how it turned Watteau into a great artist, because ‘ruthless observation’ is not only a question of an artist using their eyes but a result of honesty, of their fighting with themselves to understand what they see.155 From the action of observing with honesty what I see, I learn how I respond to the objects that I will later draw.

The intentional activity of observing everyday things from my life as subjects has provided me with a good opportunity to look at them from different perspectives, that is, different viewpoints, different faces at different times, different surroundings or different personal experiences. For instance, when I look at a tree that I pass each day

155 J Berger, 2005, p.39.

93 on my way to school, it shows me different characters in different seasons, in different weather, in this particular suburb environment or in others. Sometimes when I pause to look up at its body and leaves, I follow the force of the growth of its trunk, or I sense the tenderness and freshness of its leaves in spring, or the leaves in autumn after having gone through the mill. In doing so, I intend to capture the outer likeness and the tree’s nature that has a particular sort of interaction with me. I respond to its physical appearance, the shape of the leaves, the surface of its trunk and the whole shape of the tree from different angles. This is impressed on my mind every time I pass it. Meanwhile, the changes to the tree also draw my attention from time to time. I notice the first newly grown flower in the branches in spring or the bold head of the branches in late winter, its attachment to its neighbour's wall and window or wire pole.

These changes are added into the impression of the tree in my mind.

When I observe them, a question arises in my mind: what is the relationship between the object and nature? The relationship between the object and nature was explained in philosophy prior to the second century BC; in Chinese philosophy, this understanding frames the ideology of the Chinese traditional art world. Yi zhuan or

The book of changes156 is influential on art in terms of the understanding of the image and the manner of observation. It puts forward the notions of “xiang 象(image)”,

“guan wu qu xiang观物取象 (observing objects and choosing image)” and “li xiang yi jin yi 立象以尽意 (form image in order to express the meaning to the utmost)”. Its

156Yi Zhuan (Zhou Yi Da Zhuan) is a book that interprets and develops the other book, Yi Jing. According to historian and aesthetician, Yi Jing was produced in the early Western Zhou (1046–771 B.C.) and Yi Zhuan was produced in the period between 5–3 century BC. See Lang Ye, 1999, pp.64–65, and Danian Zhang The Science of Sources of Chinese Philosophy, Sanlian Bookstore Press, Beijing, 1982, p.26.

94 aesthetic concepts had great effect both on the development of Chinese traditional painting and on how to observe and depict the world.

The ancient Baoxi governed the world. Up, he observed the images in the Sky; down, he

observed the regulations on the Earth; he observed the patterns of birds and beasts and

occurrences on the Earth. He chose things that were from his body and life or surroundings. He

thus started to invent Ba Gua (Trigram - Eight Diagrams) in order to comprehend the virtue of

157 Gods and to resemble the affections of the world.

Chinese scholar Lang Ye explains the significant influences of this description on

Chinese aesthetics.158 According to Ye, this depiction describes the origin of the images, representations and interpretations of the universe, originating in nature, in order to express the hidden meanings. The process of creating the images is a way of perceiving and producing the object through observation of the universe with artistic refinement. The methodology of observation is to look up and down, near and far, at both the microcosmic and macrocosmic to grasp the entirety and essence of the universe. As such, Chinese artists have traditionally been encouraged to experience and focus on an integrated understanding of the world rather than depict specific details. This also determines the notion of likeness between imagery and object, to what extent the entirety is rendered, after an integrated observation. Therefore, it is the overall perception of the object rather than a partial view of its appearance that is important. The way of observing plays a significant role in the depiction and expression of Chinese traditional artists’ perceptions of the nature. This emphasis on the entirety of the object in nature has great importance in Chinese traditional painting.

157 Yi zhuan, Quoted from L Li & M Lin, 1997, p.7. 158 L Ye, 1999, pp.73–77.

Therefore, to observe carefully and intentionally is one of the main methods applied in my drawing practice, culminating in the experience of overall observation rather than just a single viewpoint.

Similarly, some western artists take overall viewpoint observation seriously. Vasilii

Pavlovich Zubov, in his study on da Vinci, emphasises the ‘synthetic’ character of the master’s anatomical drawings.159 These drawings are not from one single observation, but are overviews generalised from all the results obtained from many corpses.

Leonardo da Vinci suggested that an artist should not follow the master but learn directly from nature. Therefore, a correct imitation requires observations from different angles with the selection of consecutive aspects of the same object.160 In all his drawings and in the accompanying texts, da Vinci demonstrated his strong belief in objective correctness, which turned his drawings into almost purely scientific statements. The ‘correct imitation’ of da Vinci’s approach is obtained through grasping ‘true knowledge’ of the shape of any body.161

However, the careful observation and detailed depiction did not lead Chinese traditional artists to be more scientific in the same way as da Vinci was. Instead,

Chinese traditional artists seek a way of representation from spontaneous and evocative response to the object. In many Chinese landscape paintings, we may feel a powerful sense of “tactile immediacy and realism, the landscape motifs are conceived frontally and individually, and with an ideographic clarity”.162 Even though they

159 V P Zubov, Leonardo da Vinci, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1968, p. 137 160 ibid. 161 ibid, p.138. 162 W Fong, Sung and Yuan Paintings, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1973, p.22.

96 applied some standardised principles in composition or particular techniques in modelling rocks, the paintings seem to be more poetic. For instance in Guo Xi’s Lin quan gao zhi, mountain is described as

… (it) has water as blood, foliage as hair, haze and clouds as its spirit and character … Its (the

high mountain’s) limbs spread wide and its base is powerful and solid … Its (the low

mountain’s) head [summit] comes halfway down, merging straight into its neck… Rocks are

163 nature’s bones … Water is nature’s blood.

It is this implicit likeness of the object that carries both the nature of the object and the artist’s individual perception and expression for these Chinese traditional artists. This likeness is understood as essential likeness in this research, as discussed earlier. As such, observation functions as a culmination of experience to Chinese traditional artists, which reveals more about feelings and emotions than scientific analysis.

This understanding helps me with the action of observing an object. It also helps me in my drawing in many ways. After observing it from different perspectives, an image starts to form in my mind. It is memory, but I see it more like an imaginative drawing made in my mind. I believe that, after training and practice, an artist will see and remember things in an artistic way. Matisse has explained how different a tomato is to him when he sees it as an artist, rather than as a normal person. He sees a tomato as others do when he eats it, but he sees this tomato in a different way when he paints it.164 This also explains my experience when I intentionally seek to draw the tree in

163 Guo Xi, Lin quan gao zhi, translated in S Bush & Hsi Shih 1985, p.167. 164 G Stein, Picasso, 1938, quoted in Betty Edwards The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, Penguin Putnam Inc. New York, 1999, p.4.

97 my mind, I do not just keep the imagery as normal memory but as an imaginative drawing. This drawing changes all the time. Sometimes it is more representational and naturalistic in tones and proportions, sometimes less, with more subjective lines and marks. These images in my mind will be realised when I start to draw in my studio, however the first stage of observation and imaginative drawing provides the references for my work. This process demonstrates how my observation is transferred to my drawing activity.

4.2 Shadow – capture of outer likeness

After careful and intentional observation, the mark-making process starts from the depiction of outer likeness in my drawings. The use of shadow is specified in this research as being a method of searching for and capturing the outer likeness of the object. It is a means of bringing out the possibility of interpreting essential likeness through outer appearance. This application is located in a contemporary context in which many artists also actively use shadow as a special art form in their work. But the shadows in their work have gone far beyond the outer likeness of the object. In the later stage of my practice, I unexpectedly explored the use of shadow to reinforce the depiction of the interpretative likeness. This new approach has provided me with more opportunities for interpretative representation of the object.

There have been various studies on shadow in other disciplines, which are not the focus of this research. For instance, the image of shadow is highly evocative, especially when considered in the context of spirituality. Darkness is implied by light.

Light not only has the property of illuminating the dark places, but it also casts dark

98 shadows.165 In the study of psychology, light is often considered to be a symbol of consciousness. Light illuminates our world and brings it into awareness, so we are able to act intentionally and rationally with intelligence. On the contrary, darkness is primarily symbolic of the “unacknowledged, hidden, unconscious reality that moves silently in the depths”.166 Darkness therefore represents a level of our own being that is outside our awareness, conscious knowledge and control. Shadow also can be regarded as the opposite side of our conscious persona, which we accept and acknowledge and express as reality. Shadow, in contrast, represents those aspects of our personality that we have learned should not be expressed.167 From another perspective of religious philosophy, shadow can represent the surface of the world, the reflection of the world in Chinese and Japanese aesthetics, influenced by Buddhism.

In this context, artists believe that nothing exists but shades; nothing exists but reflections; nothing exists but images.168 So it is important to define the use of shadow in my research, which is understood as the projection of the object that exists in the world from visual perspective.

The use of shadow in this research is a means to capture the outer likeness of the object. Shadow, as cast shadow of the object, implies a blocking of light reaching a portion of a surface by the object itself, with a reasonably complete shape of the original object. It is considered as a projection, which has equal shape of the object under special light conditions. This understanding defines and modifies my application of capturing the shadow of the object in my drawings. Instead of striking

165 M Daniels, Shadow, Self, Spirit, Imprint Academy, Exeter, 2005, p.72. 166 ibid. 167 ibid, pp. 72–74. 168 S Megumi, ‘Mask and shadow in Japanese culture: Implicit ontology in Japanese thought’, in M Marra (ed) Modern Japanese Aesthetics, University of Hawai’i Press, Honolulu, 1999, pp.242–250.

99 light onto the object to get a real shadow, there is an assumption that the shape of the object in front of us can provide an equal shape of its shadow for the use of outer likeness.

There are also many significant uses of shadow in modern and contemporary art, which has inspired me in my use and understanding of the relationship between shadow and the object. Some artists have used the object’s shadow as projection to convey the object, such as Man Ray’s use of shadow in his photography. During his stay in France, Ray produced unique art pieces that were known by the photographers as ‘Rayograph’.169 These images are the pictures that were produced on photographic paper without the use of a camera. In doing so, the subject is laid directly on the paper, light is exposed to it and then the paper is developed. The shadow of the subject is what creates the image, which stressed the influence of light and shadow rather than the importance of the image itself.

Like Man Ray, many artists use the art form of shadow in many different ways to bring substance to shadows. Shadows themselves have become the main imagery in many works. In 2009, an exhibition entitled In Praise of Shadows170 brings together eight contemporary artists from seven different countries and two master filmmakers who have applied different art forms of shadow in their work, from shadow theatre to silhouette and puppetry. Some other artists share similar interest in shadow too. For instance, French artist Christian Boltanski uses shadow in some of his works. In some

169 M Ray, Self Portrait, Quoted in Man Ray Photographe, translated by Carolyn Breakspear, Thames and Hudson Inc. New York, 1982, p.130. 170 Official website of Irish Museum of Modern Art, “In Praise of Shadow”, http://www.modernart.ie/en/page_170646.htm, viewed on 23-02-2009

100 of his installations the dim light of candles, for instance, casts onto the wall the shadows of little figures cut out of metal, strongly expressing the idea of death.171

Many artists have explored the traditional art form of shadow, such as silhouettes shadow theatre and plays and their influence on the world of contemporary art in recent years. One of the selected artists from In Praise of Shadows, South African artist, William Kentridge’s interest in shadow can be seen in his early drawings when he often portrays shadows of figures looking downwards from above. This interest was further developed into his short animation in 1999 where the images were filmed as shadows of three-dimensional objects as well as paper cut-out figures.172 William

Kentridge’s I am not me, the horse is not mine (Figure 9), for the 2008 Biennale of

Sydney, was a multi-channel projected work based on The Nose (1837) by Nikolai

Gogol. Kentridge developed his drawing animation by using shadows on the wall to express an “ongoing interest in the roots and trajectory of modernism: a mixture of the absurd, the self-reflective (and the ‘self-divided’), and the forms of fragmentation that one associates with modernism”. 173 New York-based artist Paul Chan projected compositions of light and animation that formed an imagined landscape, unfolding with the movement of light (Figure 10). In Chan’s exhibition in Stedelijk Museum CS

2007, his projections ‘Lights & Drawings’, together with charcoal drawings, collages and digital studies were presented in six rooms. Light and shadow were the literal and figurative focus of the exhibition.174 Looking at his work from an artistic perspective, although he was being an activist, the dreamlike, slow-motion image began with a

171 D Eccher, Christian Bolanski, Edizioni Charta, Milano, 1997. pp. 82–83. 172 C Christov-Bakargiev, ‘Shadow and Processions’, in the catalogue of an exhibition held at Castello di Rivoli, Museo d’arte contemporanea, Rivoli-Torino, Jan. 10–Feb. 29, 2004, William Kentridge, Skira Editore S P A, Milan, 2003,.p.146. 173 http://www.bos2008.com/app/biennale/artist/40, accessed on 26-06-2008 174 http://www.absolutearts.com/artsnews/2007/03/12/34397.html, accessed on 24-11-2008

101 distended rectangle of light projected onto the floor of the gallery. After a while, some fragmentary shadows in varying scales and degrees of focus drifted across the space.

Like the play of shadows, they interacted with the space and those who entered it.175

Figure 9. William Kentridge, I am not me, the horse is not mine, video installation, 2008, picture is downloaded from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sayt75o8fYk

Figure 10. Paul Chan, 6th Light, 2007, video installation, picture is downloaded from http://www.absolutearts.com/artsnews/2007/03/12/34397.html

175 http://www.bos2008.com/app/biennale/artist/31, viewed on 08-14-2008

102

Figure 11. Kara Walker, From the Bowel to the Bosom, 1996, cut paper silhouettes, picture is downloaded from www.pbs.org/art21/artists/walker/clip1.html

Another contemporary artist who uses a great deal of shadow in her work is American artist Kara Walker, who has been making enormous, even room-sized, installations using the silhouette format in cut paper. The silhouette, popular in the eighteenth and nineteenth century with women, is employed today as a narrative device by Walker

(Figure 11). Walker likens her process of cutting out near-life-sized silhouettes of characters she invents, based on such sources as nineteenth century slave narratives, to the process of stereotyping itself—both involve reducing figures to their emblematic profiles. The silhouette, like the young woman’s shadow drawing in

Pliny’s story, depicts the characters in Walker’s context. Walker’s images serve in the same way as to portray the beloved but departing young man in that the flat, black shapes erase the distinction between black and white actors. They are the depiction of both oppression and the myths that obscure black history.

103

Walker has been incorporating a light projector in her silhouettes since 2001

(Figure12), in which the viewers’ shadows projected by the overhead projector have engaged with her paper cut-out on the wall. To her, the idea of projecting is a kind of

“shadow play tool”. 176 The meaning of

projection has been extended into the

projection of one’s desires, fears and

conditions onto other bodies. In addition, the

viewers’ shadows become captured and

implicated in a way that is very didactic, for Figure 12. Kara Walker, Darkytown Rebellion, cut paper and projection Walker believes that overhead projectors are a on wall, (4.3 x 11.3 m) overall, 2001, picture is from www.pbs.org/art21/artists/ schoolroom tool, and so should convey facts.

walker/clip1.html In this case, Walker intends to project fictions into those facts, in which her whole point is to link the past to the present.177

In my work (Figures 13 and 14) the outer likeness of the object is conveyed through my interpretation of the relationship between outer likeness and shadow. The study on contemporary artists’ use of shadow has brought me new concern about my use of shadow. The capture of the shadow of the object serves for the outer likeness, while since the outer likeness and interpretative likeness cannot be separated, the shadow therefore imposes some new additional function. The shadow has the potential to indicate or reveal the essential likeness of the object.

176 Art21, ‘Interview Projecting Fictions: Insurrection! Our Tools Were Rudimentary, Yet We Pressed On’, viewed on 28 July 2008, 177 ibid.

104

Figure 13. Details of Bird, mixed media on cardboard, 92 x 60 cm, 2006

Figure 14. Details of Going home, mixed media, 92 x 60 cm, 2006

The intention to bring fiction and facts together in Walker’s art to some extent helps me to reconsider the relationship between the essence of the object and its outer

105 appearance. How should I demonstrate the coexistence of the outer appearance (as fiction) and essence (as fact) in my drawings? Are they side by side in juxtaposition, overlapping each other or one visible and explicit (like Kara Walker’s work) and the other invisible and implicit? These are the questions that led me to explore the use of shadow in my drawing and how to draw the interpretative likeness in the next step.

The first function of shadow, as Victor Ieronim Stoichita discusses in A Short History of the Shadow, is that the shadow’s resemblance to the original plays an important role in the depiction. The other possible function, as Stoichita argues, is that shadow also belongs to the object or person who originally cast it because image / shadow are the person’s image.178 In this research, the depiction of the shadow as the projection of the object is considered able to capture the outer appearance of the object. As such, the shadow represents and resembles the outer likeness of the object, as well as implies the existence of the object.

The method I have chosen to apply is to combine the outer likeness and interpretative likeness in my drawings. In this circumstance the outer appearance and interpretative likeness work together to convey the essential likeness of the object. It is not possible to clearly separate the outer likeness from the interpretative likeness, for essential likeness relies on the outer appearance and interpretative likeness to exist and be revealed. Sometimes the outer likeness maintains its implied function of carrying the essence, reinforced by interpretative likeness; or in the other case, the interpretative likeness breaks the outline of the outer appearance and this new complexity of trace of outer likeness and interpretative likeness together convey the essence of the object.

178. V I Stoichita, 1997, p.15.

106

Figure 15 Traced shape of a chair (left) & details of Hail storm, Pencil on paper,

200 x114 cm 2006 (right)

To draw the shadow for the outer appearance I firstly introduce a transparent plastic sheet to trace the object in front of me (Figure 15). Then I cut it out either to paste it onto paper or to trace it again to create a contour line of the object I am drawing. I also use the cut-out as the shape of the shadow that is cast by the object. I regard shadow as part of the existence of the object. I raise the question of how to provide the shadow with more substance than it is usually thought to have. In this way, the intention is to trace and capture the outer likeness of the object as reference. Here, for instance, the shadow of the chair in my drawing also represents the ‘beingness’ of the chair as well as its outer appearance in the world, since the shadow has the function of belonging to the chair and reflecting and revealing the character of the chair. The application of drawing positive and negative spaces of the chair also represents the perception of the chair. That is, what is the image of the chair in my drawing, as we see, or as we understand or as it is? The use of shadow has served to raise these concerns in my drawing of the outer likeness and essence of the chair.

107

From early 2007, I started to use polyester and

silk as a drawing support in this research. Its

translucent quality inspires me to draw on both

sides of the fabric. The idea comes from

Chinese shadow play (Figure 16) where a

curtain is placed between the audience and the

Figure 16. Chinese Shadow show, picture is from puppets. What the audience sees is the shadow http://www.yoto.cn/article/皮影戏 of the puppet in a particular light condition. In this form of image making, I explore the possibility of perceiving the outer appearance or shadow as the outer likeness of objects in my drawings.

Shadow puppetry in China can possibly be traced back to a legend from the Han

Dynasty when one of the concubines of Emperor Wu (156–87 BC) died. The Emperor was devastated, and he summoned his court officers to bring his beloved back to life.

The officers made a shape of the concubine using donkey leather. Her joints were animated using eleven separate pieces of leather and adorned with painted clothes.

Using an oil lamp, they made her shadow move, bringing her back to life.179

Drawing on both sides of the translucent support has been done to embrace the nature of imagery as reflection and resemblance of their original objects (Figures 17 and 18).

Additionally, the intention is to explore and convey the relationship between existence of appearance and existence of essence of the objects. As in Pliny’s story, the image of

179 D Zhang, ‘Searching the origin of pi ying xi from the perspective of folk tales’, in Contemporary Drama, 2007: Vol 2, Contemporary Drama Press, Xi’an, p.13.

108 the young man’s shadow remained on the wall. The real shadow is no longer there, but his outline, captured once, immortalises a presence in the form of an image. In order to maintain the presence of Emperor Wu’s beloved concubine, the shadow puppetry serves the same role in the Emperor’s life. It is to represent the outer likeness of the woman in order to relieve the pain of her passing. The main difference is that the shadow puppetry is motional and livelier than the girl’s static copy of her lover’s shadow on the wall. They are temporal. They disappear after the show is finished. They are not tied to a certain place. They can vary from show to show. This seems to echo the Chinese philosophical perception of the universe that the basic element is energetic and formless, that it is revealed in every thing in the world; that it varies, yet the essence remains the same.

In my drawings, when viewers see the images drawn from the back of the fabric, it not only shows the viewers the representation of the objects, but also challenges their perceptions of the shadows of the drawn images as the representation of the objects.

Likewise, when the images are drawn on the back of the fabric, the viewers actually see the shadow of the shadow of the object. It applies the notion of reduction as a method to give less importance to the outer likeness, focusing rather on the literal imitation of reducing the details of the objects. It further echoes the Chinese traditional aesthetic that in perceiving the painted objects in their art, the outer likeness is not so important, but the essential likeness should be pursued.

109

Figure 17. Back and front sides, details of Leaves, mixed media on silk, 120 x 120 cm, 2007

Figure 18. Details of Leaves, mixed media on silk, 120 x 120 cm, 2007

110

4.3 Interpretative likeness

With regard to the methods that have been designed for this research, the most

important component is to depict the interpretative likeness in my drawings. In actual

practice, I have realised it unnecessary to consider the forms and colours separately in

depiction. I found that they come together when I am doing the imaginary drawing in

my head and when the drawing is done with the concept of Yi in my mind. It is like

the previous story of the butcher in Zhuang Zi who serves for the King and does not

differentiate the parts of the ox, but meets it in a different way (Chapter 3). Similarly,

in this research, I observe the object as an entirety, with evoked emotions and

perceptions in the action, in order to draw from my imagination. This imaginary

drawing is realised by mark-making on the captured outer likeness of the images. At

this stage, the form of the object is more important than the colours. There has been

an intention to limit the use of colour so as to convey the Daoist concept of simplicity

and plainness, although it is not the intention to draw in black and white in my

drawings. Colours are selectively applied in my drawings. This is considered to be a

refined interpretation through my practice.

During the exploration process of drawing, I have become aware of some Chinese

contemporary artists who also share the similar intention of drawing connections with

Chinese traditional aesthetics. Learning from their art and their way of perceiving the

world, I have found my art echoes theirs to a certain extent. On Zhou Chunya’s

official website,180 we can find his work over the past ten years, among which his

Green Dog series has always drawn my attention (Figures 19 and 20). Zhou states in

180 Anomynous, Interview with Zhou Zhunya part 2: The concepts on creativity, on http://zhouchunya.arton.net, viewed on 24-11-2008.

111 this website that the motivation for producing this series from 1997 was simply because he had a German shepherd dog in his life and could observe it everyday. His emotions and attachment to the dog drove him to express it in his art. He explains that his initiative was to apply the simplicity and plainness of the Chinese literati bird and flower style to render the force with fluidity of calligraphy; to imply texture and volume with strokes, and to reveal the relationship between movements and form with clarified positive-negative space. 181 More and more people appreciate his work because of the poetic imagery in his rocks, flowers and trees that can be associated with Chinese traditional painting. Some critics also believe that it was his short stay in

Germany that brought him back to Chinese traditional art, painting, music and calligraphy, which have enriched the Chinese elements in his work.

Another artist, Wang Yuping, is known for his gritty, comic book style portraits of urban life in China. His images are playful, feature rough, tough or absurd Beijing characters and seem to spy on life in the inner city. Although Wang paints more than he draws, his painted imagery simplifies the objects from a realistic form to a more interpretative form. His birds and fish look subtle but lively. Wang reduces details of the birds or interprets part of the details to express his perceptions of the objects, which seems to reflect the style of Chinese traditional painting (Figures 21 and 22).

The imagery is more indicative and suggestive more than descriptive. On one of his paintings, he texts, “the bird is so cute”, showing his emotion and feeling towards the object. The bird looks naive and curious, whereas the two figures around it with no facial expressions look less energetic and tired. Wang uses simple strokes to create the body of the bird and its feathery outlines. Its silhouette shape, like a shadow, captures

181 ibid.

112 the life of the bird in contrast to the urban human being.

Figure 20. Zhou Chunya, Green Dog Figure 19. Zhou Chunya, Green Dog 2001 series 1, oil on linen, 200 x 150 cm 2006 series-A, oil on linen, 250 x 200 cm, 2001, both pictures are downloaded from http://zhouchunya.arton.net

Figure 21. Wang Yuping, Bird and human, oil Figure 22. WangYuping, Fish, oil on linen on linen, 109 x 78 cm, 1998, both pictures are 160 x 170 cm, 1999 downloaded from http://cn.zmzart.com/hisArtistWorksList.htm ?artistId=587

Like Zhou Chunya and Wang Yuping, many Chinese contemporary artists had restrictive academic training at art school when they started their profession. As

113 discussed in the introduction of this thesis, some of these Chinese artists feel an urgent need to break the perceptions and ways of depicting nature and seek their own expressions of personal connection with Chinese tradition. Among them, Ye Yongqing, as a good example, has demonstrated his eagerness to escape from mainstream themes and forms of expression. His exploration was firstly influenced by Gauguin, Picasso and Australian aboriginal art; then, after some years of making installations and incorporating silk, his work appeared to try to bring together Chinese tradition and the contemporary. In an interview with Ye Yongqing, Li Xianting states that Ye has been wanting to “transcend the limitations of cultural ethnicity, identity, and regionalism …

(in his) choice of symbols, techniques, and materials, to try to find a world of harmonious coexistence within the various historical, spatial and temporal elements”.182

Figure 23. Ye Yongqing, Swallow, size unknown, 2006 (left)

Figure 24. Ye Yongqing, Untitled, size unknown, date unknown (right)

Both resources are from Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, Volume 7, May 2008

Ye’s methods of making images of birds derives from his early graffiti style, but are

182 X Li, ‘Nonexistence reality: a discussion between Li Xianting and Ye Yongqing’, Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, 2008, Vol.7, May 2008, Art and Collection Group, Taipei, p.37.

114

“actually a model of countless details from graffiti, and they are also a search for a link between painting and concepts”183 (Figures 23 and 24). Ye applies tracing as part of his drawing method—he puts a picture together in pencil and scans it into his computer. Then he projects the image onto his canvas and copies it. However, he argues that his tracing process is distinctive from that of others because he will

“purposefully exaggerate it, making it all chopped up” in order to achieve the effect that the more others look at it the more it seems wrong.184 Ye’s seem-to-be wrong images are intentionally produced to be childlike. As such, they are not about simplifying the images but about giving them his interpretative quality by applying exaggeration and reduction. The ‘wrong’ aspects in the images seem to be more like the ‘unlikeness’ of the objects in my interpretation of busi zhi si. In other words, the precise and accurate aspects of the outer likeness of the object do not convey the essence of the object in Ye’s understanding of the world.

To Ye, his images explain his understanding of the world. “Things appear real and are not at the same time”,185 echoing the famous classic Buddhist poem, The Bodhi tree is not a tree; a mirror is not a mirror. His strong tendency towards Song painting has led him to the point where he chooses to make the form of his birds in this way for he feels it contains that poetic element, as he likes the elegance of traditional painting. It has been his pursuit to find a way to bring Chinese traditional aesthetics and philosophy into his art. Ye feels the disconnection between these two worlds since the tradition cannot touch contemporary culture and life. However, his interpretation of the form of his birds shows the philosophical reasoning underlying his work.

183 ibid. 184 ibid. 185 ibid.

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I share a similar method to that of Ye in terms of interpreting the form of the object in my drawings. I trace the outline of the objects so as to convey the method of using shadow. However, my tracing method is also used to represent the outer likeness of the objects in order to add the interpretative likeness. The outline of the objects seems to be filled up in a similar way as the child’s colouring game, but is purposefully added to with various marks through my interpretations of the object, just like Ye’s tracing action. It is about mark-making in my drawing that depicts the objects within or expands the boundary of the outline. The outline then becomes both the reference and the basis for the interpretative likeness. While the images may be seen to be as

‘wrong’ as Ye’s images, the intentionally wrong depiction is an appropriate interpretation of my understanding and perception of the objects, as are Ye’s interpretations. For instance, my drawing of the bird shows the original trace of the bird—the outline shows the two legs left outside the body and the drawn body has been stretched with two legs supporting the body in a proud and aggressive manner.

This is the impression that the bird gave me when I saw it. The prolonged body better depicts the attitude.

As an example, the bird I drew is called the Indian Myna (Figure 24), which can be found everywhere in urban and suburban Sydney. In Australia, the Indian Myna is an invasive pest.186 It is a hollow-nesting species; that is, it nests and breeds in protected hollows found naturally in trees or artificially on buildings. However, compared with native hollow-nesting species, the Indian Myna is extremely aggressive. This

186 American Bird Conservancy, ‘Threats to Birds – Common India Myna (Acridotheres tristis)’ from http://www.abcbirds.org/conservationissues/threats/invasives/mynas.html, viewed on 24 November 2008.

116 aggressiveness has enabled the Indian Myna to displace many breeding pairs of native hollow-nesters, thereby reducing their reproductive success.

Figure 25. Indian Myna Figure 26. Details of Indian Myna in my drawing Bird

As a visitor to Australia, my life, including my art, is related to my belief of the world, and it is understandable that the Indian Myna’s striking features have drawn my attention as a migrant breed on this continent and that my drawings demonstrate my understanding of this particular species.

The marks executed to demonstrate the bird’s nature are simplified into two distinct forms: a thinly monochromatic layer for the body and detailed drawn feathers. The thinly coated washy colour represents its local colour, which implies its vulnerability as a migrant species, being new to the continent and seeking to survive in competition with local species. On the other hand, its aggressive nature has caused national problems that cannot be neglected. I therefore chose to draw the feathers stretching

117 out of its body so that its anger, ambition and aggressiveness could be depicted as I imagine it. To win battles, the Indian Myna needs to stimulate all its energy to fight against what it perceives to be threats. This imagined nature is depicted by the appearance of the stretched feathers. These feathers are drawn in black, which provides some darker and stronger features; conveying its local colour and spirit. The sharp ballpoint pen is used to depict each hair on its feather to convey the bird’s purposeful attitude (Figure 26).

After learning about this species I began to question what essential likeness I would like to convey in this image. It is the nature of survival and the universal harmony that

I want to express through this aggressive creature. It is my understanding of the Dao, which creates the universe and its order where everything has its place, which has been incorporated into this drawing.

This demonstrates that the essential drive of choosing the object is a more affectionate than rational decision. Therefore, it is my feelings towards the bird, gained from my everyday life, which provides me with the potential to achieve a depiction of its essential likeness. It is about introducing, connecting, and harmonising various elements together in each piece of my work and in everyday life.

In some cases, I realise that my understanding of the essence of the world might not be perceived straight from the outer appearance of the world. It is harmony that the

Dao brings to the world and that operates in the world. From my interpretation, I used the opposite example of apparent harmony, like the Indian Myna, to suggest that the apparent aggressiveness of the drawn bird is not what the world should be. Its threat

118 to the local environment, its dislocation in its living environment and the outcome of being a problem to the nation have all been negative factors to the truth of harmony of nature. Since the Dao in Chinese painting is intangible and formless but existential in our daily life, the truth is in any form in nature. No matter how the bird represents, I believe that the Dao should exist in the bird although that may not be demonstrated from its appearance.

Figure 27. Details of trees and Indian Myna in my drawing Going home

I also believe that the truth and nature of the Dao can be perceived in our daily life.

My interpretation therefore is to draw the objects that imply the existence of the Dao.

Other images in my drawings represent this interpretation, such as trees. Besides the drawn bird in my drawing Going home, trees are also drawn. These trees convey my interpretation of life and harmony in the world. The movement of the branches represents their joy of going with the flow of nature, and the straightness and rigidity

119 of the trunk represents the unchangeable truth that is reflected in the natural objects

(Figure 27). The shadow and its real branches are connected with each other, suggesting their existence and relation to the invisible Dao. It is my understanding of

Chinese philosophy that has led me to make the marks in my drawings.

Another reason for choosing various objects from nature and from my interior living context—such as a table, chair and other objects—is the implication of placing human-made objects and natural objects together, which lies in the understanding of my real living circumstances, in which the traditional understanding of essence is sometimes hard to comprehend by the contemporary. It has become another interesting part of this research; a process of experiencing and trying to resolve the difficulties of revealing the traditional belief of the world in my drawings. In this case, personal influences and interpretations have been essential to the marks I make to convey the interior objects, which represent my internal eagerness or my resistance or misunderstanding of nature. These marks can be more physically lifelike, which means the marks represent more about the physical outer likeness than any imaginative interpretation from me. On the other hand, the marks can be very different from what the outer appearance appears to be, but full of interpretative and suggestive features, which secretly serve to reveal my understanding and pursuit of the essence of the world. In the second case, the interior objects are no longer lifeless objects but existing things, as lively as the birds and trees in my drawing.

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The Great Way has no gate; there are a thousand paths to it. If you pass through the barrier, you walk the universe alone.

大道無門，千差有路，透得此關，乾坤

Wu Men Guan, The Great Way 《禅宗无门关》

5 Evaluation

At the beginning of this research, I sought to separate my practice from its evaluation clearly in writing. However, during the research process, I found it difficult to describe the drawings without discussing the mental and intellectual resolutions of problems that confronted me while investigating and evaluating my practice. This complexity reflects the complicated working process in which practice and theory have first to be justified before framing conclusions. This finding was made in the middle of the research process, one year prior to the completion of the required deadline of the research.

Therefore, at this stage of the research, I will examine the extent to which I have understood the original statement busi zhi si and how I have reflected this understanding in my drawings through the application of the designed methods. It is also important to provide recommendations and suggestions for further practice. To evaluate the outcomes, the three sections: observation; the depictions of outer likeness; and interpretative likeness will be discussed separately. These have been realised in

121 the drawing process and the outcomes have become a valuable resource for further investigation in the research.

Making an intentional observation was the first activity and provided guidance and reference in the practical action of mark-making. Observation and drawing from imagination have provided the referential images from which I draw. The objective observation is evident in the outer likeness and the imaginative drawing in the mind has been interpreted into the interpretative marks. When actual drawings are made, the overall impression and memory drawn from observation assist my drawing of the object, which sometimes cannot be obtained from photographs. However, the information from photographs will provide more perspectives of the objects to help me to draw them. The relationship between the spontaneity of life-site observation, drawing from the imagination and rational analysis of photographs have become interdependent, resulting in the outcomes of each piece of drawing, which try to capture the various responses, which at many levels help to depict the outer likeness and interpretative likeness. For further practice, it could be suggested that imaginative drawing in the mind can be translated in other ways in relation to actual mark-making to reinforce the analysis of the essential likeness of the objects.

In the second section, an understanding of the functions of shadow to capture the outline of an object has proved more profound and meaningful to the image making than a simple line drawing. The decision to trace the outline of the object and drawing on the back of the translucent support has further developed the concept of exploring the presence of the object and perception of the viewer. When the viewer accepts the shadow of the drawn object from the other side of the drawing support (silk) as the

122 image of the object, they have weighed up the values of the shadow as representation of the drawn image in relation to the original object. Nevertheless, it could be suggested that the outer appearance of the object in relation to its essential likeness needs to be considered more profoundly, since it can be analysed and explored with respect to ‘why’ and ‘how’ to trace the outline of the object.

Lastly, in order to convey the essential likeness of the object, the interpretative likeness of the object has played an essential role in my drawings. My previous understanding of Chinese traditional aesthetics has greatly helped me with this process. Each stroke and piece of mark on the supports conveys my understanding. It has shown the necessity of respect for tradition and an appropriate understanding of its aesthetics in my practice. Without all these efforts and the development of such understanding, many of the images would not be drawn in the way that they are now.

At this point, the drawn images demonstrate my understanding of the tradition.

However, some concerns arose during the process in terms of my understanding of

Chinese traditional aesthetics. Since the traditional interpretations of Chinese aesthetics have been ambiguous and vague, many concepts are hard to articulate.

Therefore, it can be difficult to investigate the outcome of whether the images in my drawings have achieved the goal I have set out. In response to this concern, it is stressed that this evaluation does not focus on judging and deciding a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’ result to the outcome. It should focus on how the interpretation and application makes efforts to approach the original concept and how the current outcomes may benefit future drawings. As a result, this research has created a problem-solving process instead of judgment-for-an-end action, which will be constantly revealed during every

123 observation, every step of theory study and each drawing. In other words, since this research is based on an individual process of learning from tradition, it is important to consider the action of searching for resolutions whenever problems occur. It is an ongoing process with exploration and experimentation at all stages.

More issues will emerge while the practice and theory study continues, however, the results from the drawings at this point demonstrate with some confidence that theory and practice can be combined well in this research. After two years of research, both in theory and practice, I have seen the outcomes develop in the direction anticipated, such as the function of observation in practice. There have also been unpredicted outcomes such as the application of translucent support to explore the use of shadow.

The initial purpose of the research was modified during the first two years of practice.

The interaction between theory study and practice has been strong. Every step I have made in practice reveals the underlying reasoning, not only providing information, but also being realised through my drawings. The dialogue between my practice and theory study has been constant and each benefits the other in close partnership in this research.

Another concern emerged with respect to the basic principle of learning. Since Shi

Tao’s busi zhi si has been influential in painting for later generations, it is suggested that to analyse a modern or contemporary artist as a case study of a follower will help to understand the concept. It should focus on some specific aspect that has been important in my drawing, such as the simplification of form. It is also necessary to investigate how this method reflects Chinese traditional aesthetics, which can be beneficial to my drawing as well. Therefore, Qi Baishi, a significant Chinese modern

124 brush painter, has been chosen to discuss as a learning model in this case study. His famous prawn paintings will be discussed in regard to the art form of simplification of the details and the aesthetics behind. Qi’s work will also be discussed with two of his western contemporaries whose work searched for the ultimate truth and reality in the world, same as the goal for Chinese traditional artists. The intention in this discussion is not to look for differences between Chinese and western aesthetics, although it will be mentioned, but the focus is on the underlying reasoning for the art form of simplification of details appearing in their work. As a result, the approach to the form will be modified in terms of how I represent the details in relation to the outer appearance and essential likeness. This has greatly influenced my drawing.

5.1 Case study

Analysis of Qi Baishi’s images of the prawn

Qi Baishi (1863–1958) was a Chinese modern painter, who was most noted for his prawn paintings, although his subjects included common domestic animals, insects, birds, flowers, vegetables, and landscapes. He also, based on earlier masters’ aesthetics, theorised that:

Painting lies between complete conformity to the outward form and total

departure from it. Too much outward form only serves to cater to the uncultivated

187 observer, but totally non-representational threatens to deceive the entire.

187 C Y Ch Woo, Chinese aesthetics and Ch’i Pai-shih, Joint Publishing Co, Hong Kong, 1986, p.65.

125

Qi Baishi did not have much formal education in the field of painting; however he managed to master many different techniques including calligraphy and seal carving.

Therefore, since this research deals with Chinese traditional painting in a contemporary context, under the condition in which the researcher has not undertaken any training in Chinese traditional painting, the example of Qi and his success in inheriting and innovating the tradition of brush painting is highly relevant.

Qi made a great effort to learn from Chinese traditional painting. He painstakingly practised and then meticulously assimilated traditional techniques. He copied the borrowed The Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting in its entirety and used it for many years, until he started to study with some local painters. His copies of The

Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting, a technique manual of Chinese painting, provided him with comprehensive guidance on painting plants, animals and flowers.

He then became a pupil of the famous masters, Bada Shanren, Xu Wei and Shi Tao of the late Ming and early Qing periods. From copying the old masters, Qi aimed to learn the composition, the expression and feelings, and other distinctive aspects in the paintings. Like other Chinese artists in the learning process, Qi also believed that copying was a way to pass on the essential elements of the masters’ brush strokes and methods.188

However, Qi had never been satisfied with the resemblance of his imitations to the original. Instead, he always advocated innovation in his paintings. To create his style,

The original is “作画妙在不似之似之间，太似为媚俗，不似为欺世.”

188 ibid, p.62.

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Qi later abandoned the models of the old masters. He admitted that these earlier models stayed with him and that it was difficult to paint without similarity to earlier models. He said, “When I do landscapes, I fear that they resemble those by Pa-ta

[Bada Shanren]”.189 At the age of forty, he established his style of applying swift, sure, spontaneous and emotional brush strokes in depicting his subjects. As he said, “I use my own approaches to paint my own landscape”.190 Qi also learned calligraphy as another medium of expression, in which he improved his brush techniques. In his later works, Qi applied his comprehension of this technique to his painting, which brought newly innovative vocabularies and personalised styles.

Some details of Qi’s prawn paintings have been selected for a discussion upon the progression of painting prawns over the period of thirty years. From these examples, we can follow the steps how Qi continued to pursue the depiction of prawns in his work. It is a common process for most artists to apply various means or interpretations to the same subject matter. However, the emphasis in this case study is to find out and understand the reasons behind the changed images. Since the depiction of the prawns in Qi’s painting seems to be looser in shapes, more expressive in strokes and more simplified in form and details, these changes may help explain and demonstrate Qi’s purposes and intentions behind these painted prawns.

189 ibid.

190 ibid, p.63.

127

In Figure 28, this prawn was painted

between 1910–16. It was a development

from Qi’s earlier style that placed

emphasis on the imitation of nature. The

technique of depicting the prawn has

less distinction and interpretation, as

well as lacks the calligraphy influence of

Figure 28. Qi Baishi, details of Swimming prawn his later work.191 with narcissus 82 x 36 cm, ca 1910-1916

This painting (Figure 29) was done in

1926. There are some changes of

gradation of ink. The bodies of the

prawns are painted in seven strokes.192

Figure 29. Qi Baishi, details of there is no ichthyosaur but many prawns and crabs 133 x 34 cm, 1926

191 W Li, 2002, p.27.

192 ibid.

128

The painting in Figure 30 was done in

1932. The gradation of ink has become

greatly distinguished in depicting the

head and body of the prawn. The body is

depicted in five strokes, reduced from

the seven strokes of his earlier work.193

Figure 30. Qi Baishi, details of A painting of a group of prawns, 160 x 35 cm, 1932

This work was done in 1939 (Figure 31).

Qi further eliminated the details of the

prawn and added techniques of

calligraphy. He finished establishing his

own style of depicting the prawn.194

Figure 31. Qi Baishi, details of A painting of a group of prawns, 115 x 35 cm, 1939

193 ibid.

194 ibid.

129

This painting in Figure 32 was done in

1947. Qi’s prawns look livelier than

those in earlier works and the bodies

seem to be in motion. The way of

depicting the body with translucent

marks represents the texture of the

lifelike prawn. The intertwined legs

imply the communication and

interaction between these prawns that

Figure 32. Qi Baishi, details of Prawns, 35 x 35 convey some joy, freedom and harmony cm, 1947 in nature.

This painting in Figure 33 was done in

1954. The strokes reveal his skill,

techniques and freer expression. The

outer likeness of the prawns is

recognisable, but it is also noticeable

that Qi does not focus on the outer

likeness, but on the movement of the

heads, bodies and legs. The tonal brush

strokes and dried ink marks have given a Figure 33. Qi Baishi, details of Prawns (album), 38 x 24 cm, 1954. The above pictures are taken more realistic likeness to the texture of from A full collection of Qi Baishi, 2003 the shell, sharpness of the heads and

motion of the legs in the water by

applying some techniques of calligraphy.

130

As shown above, this process of change exemplifies how Qi has constantly pursued better depictions of the prawn in his paintings. Qi wrote the following, “I have gone through several changes in my painting of shrimps. At the beginning, it looked somewhat realistic. One change made it exactly realistic. The next change brought in the dark and light ink”.195 In his demonstrated copies of Qi’s several phases of innovating the way of rendering the prawn, Li Wei explains that Qi’s prawn in 1900 still could not depart from the influence of Bada Shanren. The prawn in that period was a more naturalistic depiction of the object, without sophisticated consideration of technique.196 By the late 1920s, obvious changes had taken place. The strokes making the body were reduced and the gradation of ink had been highly emphasised. However, it was not until the 1930s that Qi’s awareness of combining the technique of calligraphy and painting appeared and dominated in his drawings of prawns. The head was depicted in a broken stroke so that the translucency and hardness of the shell were well represented.197

Qi borrowed and interpreted techniques from other art genres to convey lifelike prawns. For instance, some techniques were borrowed from calligraphy to represent some believably moving small under-belly legs. Qi himself explains that he wanted

“[to] eliminate those details that were artistically non-essential to the shrimp, though realistic extant on the live shrimp, and accentuate those characteristics of the subject that contribute to the perfection of the shrimp’s form”.198 By the beginning of the

195 C Y Ch Woo, 1986, p.64. 196 W Li, 2002, p.27. 197 ibid. 198 C Y Ch Woo, 1986, p.64.

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1940s, Qi more consciously strove to emphasise the yi. He did this without completely abandoning the objective, recognisable form, but emphasised the yi more than the outward appearance of the prawn. As he states in his famous manifesto, the depiction of his image of the object lies in between representation and non-representation, that is, between likeness and unlikeness.

Cho WooYi-yu concludes Qi’s intention was to produce images between likeness and unlikeness. The first reason for choosing to make an image of an object between likeness and unlikeness is that complete non-representation “threatens to deceive the entire world”.199 According to Edmund Feldman, the viewer can be pleased by the successfully depicted images because naturally we realise that we can understand the images. Therefore, it is one of the practices of principles to create credible imitations of visual appearance.200 Qi adjusts the real features of the object and re-orders the sensuous qualities. He achieves the balance and stability to satisfy the viewer’s expectation, because the viewer is “fascinated by the tension between appearance and reality”.201

The second reason for choosing to make an image of an object between likeness and unlikeness is for the ‘optical truth’ rather than the scientific and objective truth that Qi aims for. As such, the prawn has five parts of shell instead of seven and eight under- belly legs instead of ten, as in reality. This interpretation is more real to Qi as it enhances the mobility and vitality of the object. Departing from the practice of depicting the outer appearance of the object, Qi is a long way from being non-

199 ibid, p.65. 200 E B Feldman, Varieties of Visual Experience, quoted in, Catherine Y Cho Woo, 1986, p.65–66. 201 ibid.

132 representational. His prawns, flowers and everything he paints are based on his observation of nature. He states that his pursuit of nature is similar to that of a Daoist, that is, the Dao follows nature.202 In order to improve the depiction of the object, Qi learned from nature by careful observation. Therefore, every change in his representation of the object is to depict the visible and tangible reality around him. For instance, in his drawings of chicks it is through his brush strokes with their varying gradations of ink that we experience the lively little creatures that run after their mother. In some flower paintings, Qi approaches the form of the flower in control of the tonality to create the translucency of the ink, which registers the interplay of the light and the flower.203 In regard to the use of colour, Qi rejects the imitation of nature by matching nature’s colour exactly; he only “recreates what is appealing in nature through his choice of colour and form.”204 The purpose of using ink in Chinese traditional painting is not to imitate nature by matching the colours, but to create what is appealing in nature through representational colours and form. This restriction actually compels Qi to personalise the traditional subject matters in his work with his own emphasis.

It is important to discuss another characteristic of Qi Baishi’s painting in regard to the relationship between representation and non-representation, which is the appearance of some simplified form. Qi’s methods of reducing the details of the object and employing the techniques of calligraphy in his work have not led to a non- representational format. The purpose of applying these methods is to reinforce the vitality of the object, and nature. Therefore, the images of his work could never cross

202 ibid, p.54. 203 Woo, C Y Ch, 1986, p.69. 204 ibid, p.70.

133 over to the non-representational.

In between presentation and non-representation, both Chinese and western artists seek reality, the essence of the universe. It is a question of how to capture the truth of the universe. To the Chinese traditional artists, the truth resides in the forms and in something beyond forms. Looking at Qi’s work, we pass from the tangible and measurable into intangible and immeasurable and experience the intelligibility of the whole. In contrast, some people205 believe that western traditionally common belief in science, reason and the expression of human emotions seems to mean that the art forms appear different to Chinese traditional painting.

Comparison with Theo van Doesburg’s images of cows and Piet Mondrian’s images of trees

The purpose of discussing the works of Qi Baishi with those of Piet Mondrian and

Theo van Doesburg is to reinforce the understanding of the intentions and purposes of simplified and reduced form in Chinese traditional painting. In western modern art history, Theo van Doesburg and Piet Mondrian have their particular roles in the revolutionary periods. They developed a new style of abstract painting with works of a newfound simplicity, which influenced the western art world. The way of abstracting the object to them is a philosophical and spiritual activity, in which they seek to reveal reality hidden behind the forms of nature. Van Doesburg’s progression of studies of the cow and Mondrian’s changes in trees over the years share some similar pursuits in artistic creativity (Figure 34 and 35). It seems that Qi, van

205 G Rowley, Principles of Chinese Painting, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1974, p.77.

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Doesburg and Piet Mondrian all use the means of eliminating and simplifying the details of the object to reach the essence of the world. If all roads lead to Rome, why then do the works that they produced look different? So it is important for me to understand how these artists maintain the essence of two different philosophical backgrounds that tremendously impact on their art and creation.

Figure 35. Piet Mondrian, Studies of trees, Figure 34. Theo van Doesburg, Composition charcoal and black crayon on paper, (The Cow) Pencil on paper (c. 1917), c.1909, 1911, 1912, 1913, resources are picture resource are from Els Hoek (ed) from Frank Elgar, Mondrian and Joop M. Theo van Doesburg Joosten, Catalogue Raisonne of the Work of 1911-1944

Qi, van Doesburg and Mondrian were contemporaries and they all experienced changes in society and the art world respectively. In Qi’s time, China was in a transitional period, Chinese traditional culture was no longer valued and westernised knowledge and art forms were promoted. It was at that time when China was at her weakest point in history when external crises and domestic chaos worried every individual who sought the key to rescue the nation. Under this particular situation, artists responded to these demands in art too. They adopted the art education and art forms of Europe and were eager to contribute to the national movement. Qi was not on the front line, mainly because he was a folk artist, a carpenter, and learned to be a

135 portrait painter for a living. The changes and the revolution had no meaning for him in that situation. He chose a pure and simple environment in his hometown in which he focused on learning the essence of the tradition. This also essentially prevented him from converting to a westernised artist, unlike his other Chinese contemporaries who adopted westernised education and art styles. It was not until a period of residency in

Beijing in his late 1950s that gave Qi the opportunity to meet people who were fighting for the new art movement. This in fact strengthened his intention of innovation.206 From then on, he started to establish his personalised style that became the treasure of Chinese modern and contemporary art.

It was a different situation for both van Doesburg and Mondrian, who were participating in the revolution in European art. Mondrian said, “at the end of everything ancient: the separation between the two is absolute and definite”.207 The changes in society in many ways evoked artists to respond to the dynamic and energetic phenomenon. Their art was produced to reveal the ‘new’ appearance of the world and a new perception of reality in the universe. Mondrian believes that the universal is what all art seeks to express, which, to him, “exists in us and outside of us, in everything and everywhere”.208 It is the unity of man and nature that reflects reality, and that demands artists apply a new way of depiction, when the particular barrier that

“diverts us from the essential, disappears; only the universal remains”.209

206 B S Qi, Qi Baishi: Account in His Own Words (Qi Baishi zi shu), Shandong painting magazine

Publishing, Jinan, 2000, p.112. 207 P Mondrian, ‘Neo-plasticism: The general principle of plastic equivalence’, quoted in Art in theory 1900-2000: An Anthology of Changing Ideas, C Harrison & P Wood (eds), Blackwell Publishing, Malden, 2003, p.290. 208 ibid, p.285. 209 ibid, p.286.

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This goal to reveal the reality of the world meets the same goal as Chinese traditional painting, which is to reveal humankind’s existence in relation to the truth of the world that can be revealed by everything. Artists sought to produce images in paintings to reveal the ultimate truth of essence in the universe, because “unity is within diversity and the particularity is defined with universality”.210 Therefore, individuals represent the universality and variety echoes the unity. The depiction of objects is the depiction of the essence through that particular way of seeing and rendering objects.

All three artists, Qi, van Doesburg and Mondrian, came to express the reality behind nature. To do so, they all employed a means of eliminating the details of the outer appearance of the object in their work. The method of elimination is to give form to their “aesthetic experience of reality”, or their “creative experiences of the fundamental essence of things”.211 Qi’s reduction of details in prawns, for instance, reinforced the depiction of the vitality and essence of the object. Likewise, the progression of van Doesburg’s cows also represents his method of ‘cancellation’, by which, “an aesthetic unity is achieved by means of multiple exchanges and by cancelling out the positions and postures of the figures, the areas of space and masses and lines of movement in the picture (by relationship)”.212 Mondrian shares the same intention in that in the changes of his trees he first abstracted the “capricious, then the freely curved, and finally the mathematically curved”.213 To him, abstraction was not enough to eliminate the naturalistic from painting. He favours straight lines to exclude

210 Ch Chang, Creativity and Taoism: A study of Chinese philosophy, art and poetry, The Julian Press, Inc., New York, 1963, p.11. 211 V D Theo, ‘Principle of Neo-plastic Art’, in C Harrison & P Wood, 2003, p.282. 212 ibid. 213 P Mondrian, 2003, p.286.

137 the ‘visible-concrete’ aspects of the object in nature. Even though this depiction of nature might seem to make everything look alike, Mondrian thought it was necessary to express the universal instead of the particular. Therefore, for these three artists, instead of allowing the appearance of nature to predominate, they sought to achieve expression of a universal idea by “purposeful organisation of the object and subordination of the details”.214 They borrowed and used natural forms only as a means of attaining their artistic aims.

However, there are some significant factors that have greatly influenced on the reasoning behind the depiction of the objects by these three artists. Firstly, an essential feature in Qi’s prawns, van Doesburg’s cows and Mondrian’s trees lies in the artists’ fundamental beliefs of the world. They all strive to represent the essence of the world through art. Mondrian sees his art as “religion – is the means through which we can know the universal”.215 “Through the immutable in us, we are united with all things”.

So his art shows the “relationship of each to the other: its appearance changes, but art remains immutable”.216 Chinese traditional painting is an art form with a similar intention of expressing the law of nature, the Dao and the relationship between the

Dao and things in the world. But fundamentally, Chinese philosophy understands the world in an opposite way to the dominant view of the world in the West at the time. It is not appropriate to generalise the perceptions of the world in any simple conclusion between different cultures without looking at their history and their development up-

214 V D Theo, 2003, p.282. 215 P Mondrian, quoted in John Golding, Paths to the Absolute, Thomas and Hudson, London, 2000, p.26. 216 P Mondrian, 2003, p.290.

138 to-date.217 Generally speaking, there has been a dominant view in the West for many centies, which is believed to see the world as consisting of basic elements of ‘bricks’

(e.g. atoms) that are extended in space and make the world largely through spatial organisation. From this perspective, change occurs merely in appearances, and the world is static at a fundamental level.218 In contrast, Chinese philosophers believe that the fundamental elements in the world are more subtle and formless. For these philosophers, the fundamental nature of the world is changeable: the dominant

Chinese understanding of the world at its fundamental level is as qi (energy-like) that extends to various forms of the world. 219

These fundamental philosophical differences in understanding the world inevitably lead the believers to divergent general conclusions when they intend to express the reality of the world. The unchangeable world in van Doesburg and Mondrian’s art therefore, must be simplified and reduced to the simplest unit of artistic language, which, to them, is the best explicit expression of the essence of the world, contrary to

Qi, for he believes in the changing state of the world. Qi’s intention is not in depicting the invisible essence, but the things where the essence resides. The appearance of the object therefore, is the agency for the artist to express his or her perception of reality and the changing essence of the universe.

Secondly, Qi adopted different artistic elements from tradition to strengthen the representation of the prawn, while at the same period, van Doesburg and Mondrian

217 For instance, In The Shape of Ancient Thought, Thomas McEvilley argues that Eastern and Western civilizations have not always had separate, autonomous metaphysical schemes, but have mutually influenced each other over a long period of time. 218 C Li, The Tao encounters the West, State University of New York Press, New York, 1999, pp.2–5. 219 ibid.

139 strived to seek completely new approaches in art forms to represent the world. It was the desire for van Doesburg and Mondrian to create revolutionarily new expressions in the new era. Following the long tradition of academic drawing, which emphasised on naturalistic representation, new art form was inevitably to be something non- representational. On the contrary, Qi introduced the traditional techniques from calligraphy and applied them in his paintings. With regard to techniques, the marriage of painting and calligraphy in Chinese traditional painting reinforces the purpose of pursuing the depiction between representation and non-representation. Chinese calligraphy provided Qi with an extraordinary formula to innovate his expression of the object.

Thirdly, Qi has never abandoned the outer appearance of the prawns, whereas van

Doesburg and Mondrian sacrificed the outer appearance of the cow and tree for the sought reality. van Doesburg and Mondrian began with a naturalistic starting point, as in a tree and a cow, and then took each to extremes, abstracting the object almost beyond recognition until “the vague sense of an upright form was all that remained of the subject”.220 In both of their works, the naturalistic reference is lost; instead, the elements are reduced to vertical and horizontal lines. For Mondrian, the goal of developing abstraction is to express unity, which is the impression of the vastness of nature and its expansion.221 In contrast, Qi sought to express the yi, the spontaneous and evoked expression and response, which, to be believed, is best depicted when the image is between likeness and unlikeness. Therefore, likeness has never been abandoned in Qi’s paintings. We see in his application of calligraphic brushstrokes a suggestion of abstract forces in life rather than visual effects and wild dashes. The

220 A Moszynsky, 1990, p.50. 221 ibid.

140 vitality of the object comes alive, with its rhythmic motions caught, as though

“momentarily frozen but constantly ready to resume its motion”.222

Some fundamental aspects of Chinese calligraphy should be taken into consideration in this discussion on the representational and non-representational form. Calligraphy could be read as a non-representational art form, which seems rarely to resemble any recognisable objects. But Qi and many Chinese traditional artists used it as a means of representation of the object. The first reason is that many Chinese characters themselves are representational. Each character represents a syllable of spoken

Chinese and also has a meaning. The characters were originally pictures of people, animals or other things, but over the centuries they have become increasingly stylised and some have totally lost their resemblance to the things they represent. Nevertheless, most characters in modern Chinese are picot-phonetics, also called semantic-phonetic compounds, or phonon-semantic compounds. This category represents the largest group of characters in use presently. Characters of this sort are composed of two parts: a pictograph, which suggests the general meaning of the character, and a phonetic part, which is derived from a character pronounced in the same way as the new character.

Therefore, the characters in Chinese calligraphy are not only abstract codes, but some are representational symbols with meanings. The way of making the strokes also often matches the meanings and feelings arising from the characters’ representation.

Another feature is that calligraphy itself has a representational quality in the rhythmic movement. A single brushstroke provides the viewer with another dimension of visual experience. This idea shares the same intention and explanation of basic elements in

222 E B Feldman, 1986, p.67.

141 western drawing, but with different approaches. For instance the shapes of the dot for

Kandinsky can be unlimited, dependent on the sizes and forms. They can be shapes of circles, triangular, or many different free shapes, depending on the direction and movement of the dot,223 while in Chinese calligraphy each single stroke forms a particular image, which varies from, but is associated with, each other. For instance, dots should be solid and concrete, so dots should be “like a falling rock from a high peak”.224 A vertical linear stroke should be like a metal pillar, suspended needle, or like ten thousand year old dead vines, or straight pine trees along the edges of high cliffs. Horizontal linear strokes should be as straight as a jade ruler, or a mass of clouds in battle strength, or a still lonely boat on the surface of a river. Turning strokes should be like a brass hook, a bending arm of a strong solider, or some subtle and light running strokes.225 These descriptions of the strokes provide a more visualised experience in the work. The stroke is also determined by the medium of calligraphy – the softness and absorbance of the brushes and the absorbance of paper. Qi’s work illustrates this as the basis of his aesthetic appeal. The motion of each stroke is physically observable. The viewer can also perceive the force that the stroke contains in association with the stroke itself, as well as the object. In his later paintings of prawns, Qi uses running strokes to represent the moving legs, enhancing the movement and lively nature of prawns; or he uses big brushstrokes to paint the long whiskers of the prawn, with stiffness in the softness to strengthen the movement.226

223 W Kandinsky, Point and line to plane, Dover Publication, New York, 1979, p.31. 224 W Ding, An extract discussion of calligraphy (shu fa jing lun), Beijing China Bookstore, Beijing, 1983, p.30, translation quoted in Catherine Yi-yu Cho Woo, “Chinese aesthetics and Ch’i Pai-shih”, Publishing Hong Kong Co Ltd, Hong Kong, 1986, p.59. 225 G Liu, An introduction of the aesthetics of calligraphy, Hubei People’s Publisher, Wuhan, 1979, pp.30–33. 226 W Li, 2002, p.27.

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The abstract appearance of calligraphy in Chinese traditional painting indeed represents a live and moving world for the viewer to perceive and observe. This differs from the practice of some western artists who adopted the appearance of calligraphy in their work, mainly as inspiration for abstract forms. For example, some artists who admitted the influences of oriental calligraphy, such as American artist

Mark Tobey, began to ‘write’ his painting in linear compositions to express his interest in brushworks. French artist Pierre Soulages’ dark compositions show that his interest was in free expression with imitation of oriental characters, but by way of contrast with oriental calligraphy, they function as literal representations. 227

Differently Qi’s mastery of the sophisticated techniques of calligraphy enabled him to translate them into more representational vocabularies. This is an important source of

Qi’s artistic appeal, which further reinforces his aim of reaching the essential likeness of the object.

This case study has provided me with a

better understanding of busi zhi si,

likeness of unlikeness, which is

demonstrated in Qi’s images of prawns

that are depicted in between likeness and

unlikeness. The representational likeness

of the object should not be rejected no

matter what mediums and techniques are Figure 36. Qi Baishi, Red leaves and autumn cicada, 98.6 x 32.5 cm, 1945. Picture employed. It is rooted in Chinese resource is from Liu jia.nping, Qi Baishi, 2003 fundamental philosophy and aesthetics

227 A Moszynsky, Abstract art, Thames and Hudson Ltd, London, 1990, pp.130–132.

143 and is revealed through each individual stroke left on the paper by Chinese traditional artists. As James Cahill said of Qi’s painting, “it preserves an additional dimension of meaning …” 228 My initial interpretation of busi zhi si as outer likeness and interpretative likeness is proved to be an appropriate approach. So I will keep on exploring how to create the additional dimension (interpretative likeness) within the outer likeness in my drawings.

Moreover, the comparison between Qi Baishi, Theo van Doesburg and Piet Mondrian helps understand some issues surrounding the simplification and reduction of the details. It is not a matter of whether to reduce or not to reduce, but why one should reduce or add details to the objects. The principle of simplification to depict the details should be understood as a tool to reinforce the essential likeness of the object.

The purpose is to strengthen the representation of the object that the artist chooses to paint, without loosing the outer likeness. When the reinforcement is required, details need to be added in many cases. In many Chinese traditional paintings, we can find the meticulously depicted details of the object, even in Qi’s simplified-style paintings.

For instance, in Figure 36 we can see how patiently Qi tries to capture the specification of the cicada. So the complementary integrity of the details and entirety, or part and whole, is what Qi aims at in his painting. In my drawings, I have been driven by the same intention to eliminate some details, which has helped me focus on the essential likeness of the objects. Nevertheless, there are some objects that have been drawn with full details that seem to be more like them from my interpretation.

Therefore, essential likeness of the objects in my drawings lies in the unity of form and formless, detailed and less detailed, as well as defined and undefined context.

228 ibid, p.67.

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Thirdly, learning how Qi Baishi has achieved the concept of busi zhi si in his self- taught process, we may note that his copying method benefited his mastery of traditional techniques and his later establishment of his art pursuit. Qi’s inherited way, in contrast to van Doesburg and Mondrian’s revolutionary action, inevitably reflects

Chinese traditional aesthetics on the representation of the object. They departed from different initial respects towards tradition. Qi started from copying and imitating techniques of traditional paintings. His desire to achieve the representation between likeness and unlikeness drove him to adopt and innovate tradition for his own interpretation. This learning process also encourages me to keep my learning on track from Chinese traditional methods in my future study. It is the belief in this research that explorations and experimentation derive from the genuine and proper act of copying and imitation.

5.2 Unity of subjectivity and objectivity

The representation between likeness and unlikeness lies in the relationship between the object and the artist’s responses, so the unity of the objectivity and the subjectivity has become a new focus in my practice. This modified and enhanced aspect is based on the understanding of the previous case study of Qi Baishi, in which the simplified images are determined by the intention of reaching the essential likeness of the object.

When Qi decides the reasons for the simplification and reduction of the details of the prawns in his paintings, it shows that his perception of the essential likeness is emphasised. This is resulted by his comprehension of tradition and individual

145 expression.

Compared with Qi Baishi, Shi Tao was a revolutionary artist as an individual. His approach to likeness of the depiction of the object therefore reveals his particular art pursuit. Few artist-theorists in Chinese history have achieved the kind of influence through their theories that can be claimed for Shi Tao.229 His methods advocated maintaining oneself, exploring oneself, and freeing oneself from the established traditions and painting methods in techniques. His statement of one-stroke method (yi hua fa一画法) or I use my own method (wo yong wo fa 我用我法), and the establishment of his own method seem to be more radical than that of his contemporaries. Therefore, Shi Tao’s concept of likeness should also reveal the importance of an individual and his personal perception of nature.230

Shi Tao’s accomplishment was not only as an artist and a theorist; his concern was also with painting as religious praxis. His art concepts signify a cosmic unifying principle underlying the practice of painting. For instance, his one-stroke method echoes the Dao De Jing, “sets the stage for a view of the practice of the painting as the recovery of Oneness.”231 Daoist philosophy adopted the unity of multiplicity as its most basic principle. “Obtaining the One, all things live and grow”.232 It is this unity that Chinese traditional artists sought to understand and convey in their art and life.

229 J Hay, Shitao: Painting and Modernity in Early Qing China, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2001, p.272. 230 Ch Yang, The study of Shi Tao’s painting (shi tao hua xue), Shannxi Normal University Press, Xi’an, 2004, p.153. 231 ibid. 232 Lao Zi, Dao De Jing, Chapter 39, translation from Earle Jerome Coleman’s Philosophy of painting by Shih-T’ao, Mouton Publishers, The Hague, Paris, New York, 1978, p.17. 146

Art movements often reflect important ideas of their time. During the transitional period between the Ming and Qing Dynasties in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, in which Shi Tao lived, Chinese artists were more and more conscious of the values of individuality and self-expression in their art.233 Shi Tao and many artists of this time expressed the changes of life experiences in their paintings, some of which were a form of escapism from the political situation, rebellion against the decadence of the traditional ideology, or personal suffering from both political restrictions and their hopeless and helpless reality. Their belief in the Dao and the world had not changed, but its aesthetic interpretations had been inevitably altered in various social situations. The changes of styles and techniques in Chinese traditional painting echoed this ideology. Some modern scholars, such as Li Zehou, argued that besides the former traditional concepts of expressing equilibrium, plainness, elegance and harmony, some artists from that period started to pursue different imagery that could convey the senses of shock, kitsch, colourfulness and eccentricity, etc.234 They were more conscious of the individual emotions and feelings of the artist in association with the objects. These emotions and feelings turned into drives and motifs and determined the execution of materials.235 The imitation of the tradition at this time was not merely to follow but interpreted the conventional art forms and regulations into new patterns for practice.236

In many ways, this change shares similar ground with some expressions in western art, such as Expressionism in the twentieth century. During this time, European and

233 Z Li, 2001, pp. 307–322. 234 ibid, p.322. 235 M Lin, 1991, p.43. 236 Z Li, 2001, p.327.

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American Expressionists were those who were faithful to inner feeling, not outer appearance, in which case outer representation should serve for inner expression. It began in the period when arguments over philosophy and science with their conflicts and contradictions were reflected in the life and art of the early twentieth century and has continued during certain periods. In his analysis of the background of

Expressionism, Donald E Gordon explains how the Expressionists participated in the scientific learning of their age, yet went against its materialism and positivism.237

Some early Expressionists addressed their concerns about the problems raised by science. Philosophers such as Friedrich Nietzsche profoundly influenced some artists at that time, who sought new values in the individual. The objective, impersonal and rational scientific method, to Nietzsche and some Expressionist artists, was valued but was also regarded as dehumanisation in art, religion and morality.238 These artists believed that it was self-realisation and self-evaluation that would provide the power that could “rescue a person from the meaninglessness of the modern existence.”239

Wassily Kandinsky responded to the re-evaluation that “when religion, science and morality are shaken, when the external supports threaten to collapse, then man’s gaze turns away from the external toward himself.”240 The meaning of the existence of the individual and the purpose of seeking are therefore represented in Expressionist art.

The concept of self-expression has been the subject of debate. Some people argue that objectivity and subjectivity in Chinese traditional painting are distinct from the western viewpoint of representing the object. For instance, Jacques Maritain argues

237 D E Gordon, Expressionism: Art and Idea, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1987, pp.1–3. 238 ibid. 239 ibid, p.12. 240 ibid, p.16.

148 that oriental art places emphasis on objectivity while western art is intent on subjectivity.241 His explanation of Chinese traditional art is that the inner principle of dynamic harmony, mastered by the Chinese traditional artists, should be conceived as a “sort of interpenetration between Nature and Man”.242 This partly explains the difference between Chinese traditional painting and Cubism. Maritain argues that the

Chinese way of depicting the object is based on objectivity, i.e. the entire appearance of the object, but it is fused with the artist’s subjectivity. In contrast to this, the

Cubists started from subjectivity, scientific analysis and intellectual reconstruction, and ended up at the point of common objectivity of the world. They emphasised our knowledge of the object in time. Forms are broken apart and recombined in other abstract forms. The nature of the object becomes so vague and subtle in some of the

Cubist works that people hardly recognise the images.

However, it is too simple to differentiate Chinese from western artists merely by saying one or the other is more intent on subjectivity or objectivity. The interaction between humankind and nature has never stopped in art history. At the root of art, both Chinese and western artists grasp at a common experience of humankind in relation to nature, as discussed earlier in van Doesburg and Mondrian’s concepts of the relationship between artists, art and the reality of the world. However, individual feelings and perceptions of the world enable artists to represent nature with detailed dimensional observation and the inspiration it provokes. Most importantly, individual inspiration or expression serves to strengthen the perception of the world in which the artists themselves fuse entirely with their objects. They become the bamboo, the tree

241 J Maritain, Lectures at the National Gallery of Art in Washington in 1952, quoted in Chang, Chung- yuan, 1963, p.8. 242 ibid.

149 and the mountain, conceptually and spiritually. Therefore, it is both an objective and subjective process for Chinese traditional artists to produce artwork.

If there is a difference between Chinese and western understandings of humankind’s communion with nature, it may lie in the role and significance of humankind in nature.

In their choice of human inhabitations, the traditional Chinese often manage to express humankind’s intimate experience with nature rather than controlling it. In fact, they often depict some activities of humans to demonstrate nature’s dominance over human and their awareness of nature and their relationship.243 In Chinese traditional painting, particularly after landscapes became a popular genre, human figures were less significant and were rendered in small scale in comparison with mountains, trees, rocks, etc. It is a Chinese way of perceiving perspective in nature, but it also reveals the role of being human in nature. Wang Wei (701–761), a significant poet and painter, claimed at the beginning of his treatise “Formula of mountain and water” that Yi precedes the brushstrokes in painting landscape: zhang mountain, chi tree, cun horse, and fen human. Here zhang equals ten times chi, one hundred times cun and one thousand times fen in Chinese traditional length measurement.244 With a belief in the unity of humanity and nature, the artist’s subjective view of the world is revealed through the depiction of nature. To the Chinese, nature should be understood on her own terms.245

In comparison, there are some distinctive intentions in art approaches in which

243 G Rowley, 1974, p.20. 244 Wang W (701–761), Formula of Mountain and Water (shan shui hua jue), translation quoted from LinYutang The Chinese theory of art; translations from the masters of Chinese art, Heinemann London, 1967, p.31. 245 G Rowley, 1974, p.21.

150 modern western artists focus on an interaction with nature in their work. Their aims are to mark themselves in nature, to reveal their existence or experiences. In other words, it is to impose their being into nature. The Greek tradition tended to personalise the force of nature by their classical allegory; nature in the Middle Ages was regarded as the handiwork of God; humankind’s enjoyments or vigorous emotions of nature were emphasised in the Renaissance and modern periods.246 For example, some western artists in the 1970s hoped to bring humanity back into unity with nature in response to an environment threatened by humankind’s actions.

Similarly, the artwork invites deeper thought on the uncertain relationship between modern man and the vulnerable environment, such as Richard Long’s mark-making in nature, or other Land Artists forming simple shapes with the configuration of natural materials in the environment. In short, both Chinese and western artists have combined objectivity and subjectivity with different philosophical beliefs in their depiction of humanity’s communion with nature.

This discussion on the relationship between subjectivity and objectivity has reinforced my understanding of Qi Baishi’s application of simplified details of the object to achieve the essential likeness. The reasons why an artist eliminates some details may be explained by the artist’s individual subjectivity regarding the existence of the object in the nature. The comparison between Chinese and Western aesthetics does not intend to show the differences, on the contrary, it is the intention of finding different ways to express the search for the unity of subjectivity and objectivity, by different artists from different times. These examples do not cover all of the artists in history, but they explain that various perspectives of this search have been applied in art

246 ibid.

151 history and the Chinese traditional way is one of them. It seems that it is a common desire to depict the likeness and essence of the object, but with different degrees of subjective and objective emphasis. Regarding this perspective, further exploration will be shown in my drawings as to how I have interpreted the outer likeness and interpretative likeness of the object.

152

All the birds have flown up and gone;

A lonely cloud floats leisurely by.

We never tire of looking at each other -

Only the mountain and I.

众鸟高飞尽, 孤云独去闲。相看两不厌, 只有敬亭山.

Li Bai, Alone looking at Jingting Mount 李白《独坐敬亭山》

6 Reflection

From previous practice and study, I understand that the representation between likeness and unlikeness lies in the relationship between the object and the artist’s responses. So the unity of the objectivity and the subjectivity has become a new focus in my practice. Shi Tao stated that his experience in painting in fifty years of practice had been trapped in the outer appearance of nature until he realised how to go beyond the appearance of nature.247 It is nature, mountains and rivers that he encountered spiritually, so the trace of appearance became the unity of objectivity and subjectivity that his painting speaks for nature.248 Therefore, to reveal this understanding of the relationship between objectivity and subjectivity becomes essential for further interpretation and application of busi zhi si in my research.

247 Shi Tao, Hua Yu Lu, Chapter 8, in Chenyin Yang, The study of Shi Tao’s painting (shi tao hua xue), Shannxi Normal University Press, Xi’an, 2004, p.183. 248 ibid, p.153 & p.184.

153

The intentional observation in my previous practice has provided positive and helpful outcomes. The objective observation is the reference to the outer likeness and the imaginative drawing in my mind became preparation for the drawn marks of the interpretative likeness. It was suggested to reinforce the service of observation in relation to interpretative likeness from the practice in the earlier investigation of this research. I then started to place emphasis on the function of observation in my drawing, which aims to reconcile objectivity and subjectivity. This action has given me more freedom to play with my perceptions of the object and create many different imaginative images of the same object in my mind. Knowing that I would emphasise on the aspect of details of the object, I pay more attention to the details and making different imaginative drawing in my mind from this particular perspective, with different chosen details of the object in order to have full range of the imagery as references for later drawings.

The action of observation has not been modified too much at this stage. The only modification of the method is that I intentionally spend more time contemplating and recalling the imaginative drawing before I actually draw. It is the procedure of translating the imaginative marks into actual marks that I focus on more than what I used to do. It still follows the same intention as that of the Chinese old masters when they travelled in the mountains, where they observed, memorised and filtered the information, before creating the result in their painting.

I maintain the method of obtaining the outer likeness of the object in the same way as that which was carried out previously except that more consideration has been given to the shadow in relation to its origin. It becomes a question of how this act actually

154 captures the outer likeness. It is also a question of how I apply my understanding of the relationship between objectivity and subjectivity within the drawing process. As well as tracing the outline of the object from life, I have also used photography as a means to emphasise the objectivity of the outer likeness.

The invention of the camera has provided challenges, threats and new incentives for art, and drawing is no exception. The concept of depicting the likeness of the object has been inevitably challenged in this revolutionary era. Upon seeing the wonders of the daguerreotype, invented in 1839, Paul Delaroche declared, “from today, painting is dead.”249 To claim the death of painting was a desperate response to the great impact of the invention of the camera. People from Europe felt “themselves raised to a completely new plane by photography”.250 They had faith in this new invention that

“provided genuine and authoritative pictures of reality”.251 They also believed that this new technology enabled human beings to “see and assimilate as much as possible”.252

It was from the belief in the reality captured by a camera, originally a scientific device, which led artists to explore a special reality that was not directly recognisable and photographable. Hans Gerhard Evers explains that artists were aware of something, such as the life of the object, which could not be reached by scientific photography.

The outward form was no longer considered to be the reality of the object, which was

249 J Hauptman, ‘Imagination without strings’ in Drawing from the Modern, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2004, p.13. 250 ibid, p.131. 251 ibid. 252 ibid.

155 attained by photography, but as “concealment and delusion”.253 As Camille Mauclair concludes, the various modern tendencies “attempted to escape the first degree of resemblance and to press beyond the simple, physiological reality to attain what psychologists call ‘the second reality’”.254 From the Renaissance onwards, it has been widely accepted that a portrait should be more than an outer likeness, that a moral or psychological dimension should also be depicted.255 An artist such as Ingres, whose distinctive style of “sharp-focus, strangely impassive portraits of the 1850s and 1860s may look ‘photographic’ to modern eyes”, is still considered to be an artist who mastered the ability to render “a timeless image of the subject’s public persona and inner psyche”.256

It is undeniable that the invention of the camera did influence people’s perception of the world, in particular, artists’ perception of the ‘reality’ of the depicted object. In my drawing, I take advantage of a camera to assist my intention of capturing the outer likeness, the objective perspective of the object. For instance, when I cannot capture the momentary action of a moving bird, or I cannot easily hold my transparency or plastic sheet to draw from an angle of a tree, I will use a camera to get the images I need. These photographs are taken by digital camera, and are either printed out or traced from my computer.

253 H G Evers, The modern age: historicism and functionalism, translated by J. R. Foster, Methuen, London, 1970, pp.130–139. 254 H McPherson, The modern portrait in nineteenth-century France, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, New York, 2001, p.5. This ‘reality’ can be traced back to Plato’s reality, which has two levels. 255 ibid, p.6. 256 ibid, p.3.

156

Since photography has become an additional means to achieve the outer likeness in the process, I have started to ask myself how true this image as a projection of the object is to the original object and how I use it in my drawing. The action of capturing the motionlessness of the object offers the reference that will be considered as one of the aspects of the object existing in the world and more aspects from my observation and understanding are depicted through the imaginative drawing in my mind and the interpretative likeness in my drawings.

On the other hand, the use of shadow has still been the major means of depicting the outer likeness. Some different approaches have been taken into consideration in relation to the understanding of how shadow, as objective outer appearance, functions as a carrier of essence of the object and to reflect the existence of objects.

Among many artists who deal with the

shadows of objects, there are two artists of

particular interest in terms of their

application of shadows in their work.

Contemporary artist Regina Silveira’s

sustained twenty-five year exploration of the

aesthetics of shadows has probably been Figure 37. Regina Silveira, The Saint's paradox (maquette), wood, paint, and photographic cutout, 22 x 37 x 25 cm, more systematic and encompassing than that ca. 1990, picture is from http://www.artnet.com/Artists/LotDetai of any other artist.257 According to Fernando lPage.aspx?lot_id=EBF4BD3FDECD10 E82238B7FAD4875E47 Castro, the exploration of shadows was

257 Castro, F, ‘Regina Silveira: Where Shadows Vanish’ on ArtNexus No.61–Jun 2006 http://www.artnexus.com/NewsDetail/16668, viewed on 18 July 2007.

157 perhaps first evident in Silveira’s work in a series of photographs she called Enigmas

(1981) in which the shadows of a saw, a hammer, and a fork—without the objects that projected them—descend upon a valise, a typewriter and a telephone, respectively.

The idea of a small object projecting an enormous shadow appeared once again in

Silveira’s 1994 installation The Saint’s Paradox, at the Museo del Barrio, to make a political comment about the far-reaching implications of the European conquest of the

Americas. For the work Super Herói (Night and Day) (1997) Silveira created a cartoon-like superhero of ambivalent credentials. Super X’s shadow, a 39-metre-tall vinyl form glued on the façade of a branch of the Itaú Bank in Sao Paulo made the hero superhuman while the actual absent figure was quite small. In other words, objects in Silveira’s works do not necessarily project their own shadow, they may also project the shadow that most reveals their true character; it is the shadow they deserve.258 Her eloquent comments on her own work are that, “I wanted perspective to act like a sort of philosophical look at the world of appearances, delving into our recognition of the things in our surroundings”.259

Larry Gakan is another artist who takes advantage of the negative effects of shadow in his work. Gakan describes his works as drawings with steel and shadows on the wall.

(Figures 38, 39 and 40). When he encountered the problem that the steel elements cast extraneous shadows onto the wall on which they were hung, Gakan became aware of the shadows in relation to the objects. 260 He explains that he sees shadow as

258 ibid. 259 ibid. 260 L Gakan, ‘Object/shadows: Notes form a developing art form’, in by Howard S. Becker, Robert R. Faulkner and Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett (eds) Art form start to finish: Jazz, painting, writing, and

158 something that forces us to rethink what we already know. We are challenged about how we see the object, how we know it. The relationship between shadow and steel in his work is a sort of “transition from abstraction to recognisability”.261

Figure 38 Larry Gakan Figure 39 Larry Figure 40, Larry Gakan , Hand in Black cat, steel, size Gakan Soul singer, hand, steel, size and date unknown, and date unknown steel, size and date all three pictures are downloaded unknown from http://www.arts.rpi.edu/~kagan/abo ut.html

To draw with shadow has led Gakan to more creative possibilities, through which he puts the conventional drawing act on a par with his newly created shadow drawing process. Gakan extends the normal physical movement of executing a drawing stroke on a surface to a “pre-process of suspending a form in space”, that is, “making a mark on a piece of paper is automatic, making a shadow mark entails a physical building process that requires stepping back and applying an extra level of analysis”.262 We

other improvisations, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2006, p.164. 261 Interview in the video Object/Shadows: The Work of Larry Kagan, by Derek Sylva, on http://www.arts.rpi.edu/~kagan/about.html, viewed on 18 August 2007. 262 L Gakan, 2006, pp.166–168.

159 generally draw with our body. For instance, when we want a line to extend to the right, we move to the right. However, in Gakan’s drawings, moving a shadow from left to right can be achieved in many ways: by moving the object up or down, by moving the object nearer or further from the wall, or by shifting the light source to different positions. The result is that many new possibilities of composing visual imagery are introduced.

The purpose of producing the appearance of steels and their shadows in Gakan’s work echoes my response to the question of how the shadow represents the object’s being.

It is interesting to see the contrast between the steel and the appearance of the shadows. It raises the question of what is the outer likeness of the objects (steel)?

Does the shadow convey its outer likeness? The particular effect from light has cast some extremely distinctive shadows off the steel. This is therefore interpreted in my drawings by tracing the shadow of the object differently. When I place the drawing plane in different positions by tilting it on an angle, it changes the physical appearances in scales and shapes of the objects, and the traced shapes are varied accordingly. It is reminiscent of shadows cast by objects in different light sources in

Gakan’s drawings, because when light sources are changed the shadows cast will change shapes too (Figures 41 and 42).

160

Figure 41. Details of Flower-fullmoon, mixed media on paper, 250*114 cm, 2008

Figure 42. Details of Bird nest, mixed media, 250*114 cm, 2008

161

Figure 43. Details of Falling leaves, mixed media, 65*225 cm, 2008

The relationship between the object and its existence in relation to the Dao as I try to understand it, has been advanced conceptually. The cast shadow is regarded as the projection of the object’s existence in the world, and functions in a similar way to the object that is regarded as a projection of the Dao in the world in Chinese philosophy.

Therefore, how does a shadow’s shadow, that is a chair’s projection, reveal the truth of the Dao? In my drawings, I attempt to answer by reversing the roles of the object and its cast shadow, of conveying the essence of the Dao. In other words, essence can be seen in the outer appearance and so can the shadow. For instance, when I draw the outline of the chair as its outer likeness, I also draw the same shape for its shadow.

Therefore, the shadow of the chair is given the essence of the original chair, even if it is seen as a shadow in my drawings. There is an ambiguity in the relationship between the essence of the chair and its projection (Figure 43).

162

This depiction also challenges the perception of what we see versus what we know. It is also a process in which I have tried to convey the unity of the objectivity and subjectivity. There is the unity of shadow’s function here, being representation of outer likeness and the existence of the object. The drawn outlines of the shadows are intended to reflect what we know or what we perceive but we may not notice immediately. As such, this perception has been emphasised in this process because the depiction of the object is to express not only what we see visually but also what we know and understand to be the Dao. The swap-over role-playing has been my response to the question of how the cast shadow as projection depicts the outer likeness of the object, as part of belonging and evidence of existence. When the outer likeness is drawn, it is then a matter of how to depict the interpretative likeness so that essential likeness can be conveyed through my drawings.

The shapes of the outer appearance and shadow of the object await the drawn marks to be completed so that the essential likeness can be achieved. Therefore, it becomes a matter of how to realise the evoked feelings and emotions, imaginary drawings in my mind, together with the objective observation.

The bamboos in Su Shi’s eyes grow up without stopping; this can be considered as imaginative likeness. One of the fundamental characteristics of Chinese traditional art is the emphasis on imaginative likeness.263 It is this imaginative likeness that is conveyed by a loosely defined object in details. Li Zehou gives us a clear image of this Chinese philosophical aesthetics.264 He states that visual likeness means the depicted object is visually correct, whereas imaginative likeness is an image that

263 Z Li, 2001, p.245. 264 ibid.

163 derives from an object’s outer appearance but with some hidden characteristics brought into the foreground. These hidden characteristics can be read variedly from person to person. A good example given by Li is that in Chinese local operas, the environment is virtual, so are the actors’ actions. Going up or down stairs is accomplished by very simple implicit movements, riding a horse is indicated by holding a stick prop when the actor is moving back and forth to show his or her journey. These movements and poses are generalised and standardised, with strong implications of reality but subtle in their representation of specific reality. The success relies on the skill of the actors and the understanding and experience of the viewers, for a high degree of imagination is required to complete the scene. This process of completion is implicit, to both the actors and viewers.265

Chinese traditional painting is engaged with the same aesthetics as Chinese opera. For the artist, Li explains, it is important to fuse understanding, perception and sensibility with imagination so as to focus on imaginative likeness. Since the imaginative likeness embraces accommodative and suggestive nature in accordance with the environments, the loosely defined images can be freely specified and modified differently within different contexts.266 In other words, an unspecified image offers an unrestricted context, in which various groups of viewers would perceive it in different ways in various periods and places. For instance I would have more freedom to perceive the mountain in Shi Tao’s painting, due to its loosely specified appearances with my experiences and my contemporary living context, which could be different from another viewer’s. This diversity occurs when the image has the quality to be adopted and altered in an acceptable way by its viewers in different circumstances and

265 ibid, p.244. 266 ibid, pp. 244–246.

164 periods of time. This aesthetic approach to the object offers more possibilities for artists to magnify, reduce, add or eliminate the outer appearance, to be free from the normal logic in a visual sense. It therefore offers possibilities to express the feelings and emotions, the subjectivity, through subtle and less defined visual representation.

Nevertheless, the emphasis on imaginary likeness does not leave aside logical elements; the objectivity. The knowledge and understanding of the object attained by careful observation underlies the reasoning of the interpretation and expression.

Therefore, imaginary likeness seems to be more real and becomes more convincing and sensible. Some Chinese traditional artists argue that it is not only necessary to examine and observe objects, but to experience the objects with the feelings and emotions they evoke. To examine objects before drawing is to master the structure and character of the object. For instance Guo Xi’s treatises on observation have explained how to observe the mountain, including the feelings and emotions of humans, in association with the scenery in four seasons, The mountain should be “tranquil and captivating in spring, fresh and green in summer, clear and neat in autumn, and melancholy and subdued in winter”.267 This observed and perceived likeness of the object allows interpretation and translation of the essence through its forms and colours. Expression and meaning, described as ‘the life of a percept” by Rudolf

Arnheim,268 resulted from observation and discovery.

According to empathy theory, visual information serves to situate the art in context,

267 Guo Xi c (1020?-1100?), ‘Lin quan gao zhi’, in Z Xiong, C Liu, W Jin & Y Pan (eds) Theories on Painting in Song Periods (Song ren hua lun), Hunan Art Publisher, Changsha, 2003, p.14. Translations quoted from George Rowley, 1974, p.19. 268 R Arnheim, Art and Visual Perception, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1974, p.16.

165 from which viewers can draw their inference.269 Rudolf Arnheim, from a scientific perspective, gives an example of seeing columns of a temple that evoke our experiences of the kind of mechanical pressure and counter-pressure that occurs on them. This recalls past experiences of feeling physical forces acting upon our bodies as if we were in the place of columns. The pressure also calls up other feelings from our memories that respond to the situation and how the forces make us feel. These feelings might include a projection of pride, courage, stubbornness or lightness.

Therefore, empathy for our environment becomes a truly aesthetic empathy.270 Rudolf

Arnheim explains that all perceptual qualities have generalities, which we see in individual examples, but which convey a kind of experience, rather than a uniquely particular one. Dynamic qualities are structural, in the experiences of sound, touch, muscular sensation and vision.271 He states, “vision is an active grasp”.272

When an artist applied this act, with empathy for the object alongside the artist’s observation, the imaginative likeness of the depicted image conveys the convincing qualities of the objects. This works in a similar way to the way children draw in that they create their own images with their own experiences and imagination. Arnheim argues that in the young mind things are what they look like, sound like, move like or smell like.273 Artists may not transcribe exactly what they see; they may translate it in terms of their medium.274 In Max Black’s How do pictures represent?275, Black

269 ibid, p.448. 270 ibid. 271 ibid, p.445. 272 ibid. 273 ibid, p.165. 274 E H Gombrich, Art and Illusion, Phaidon Press Limited, London, 1980, p.30. 275 M Black, ‘How do the pictures represent?’, in E. H. Gombrich, Julian Hochberg & Max Black (eds),

166 examines four cases connected with resemblance. The first two cases may be identified as ‘look alike’. We can think of this along the lines of the resemblance we notice when we see someone who looks like someone else or even explicitly matches someone else as in the case of twins. In the third and fourth cases, Black discusses metaphors. For instance, we might describe a cloud as being a bird, or a man as a wolf.

This comparison is a process of expressing imaginative likeness, acting as “matching to find a justification for applying principles, concepts or acceptance of respect to appearance, durability or other properties”.276 Therefore, the imaginative likeness comes from the desire to affirm the perceptions of the world, not to distort it. It results in the pursuit of the most precise representation of experience. When an artist cannot employ a ready-made image to express his or her individual experiences, a personal image is required. A successful image seems to rely on the individual artist’s intentions. That is to say, the imaginative likeness varies from artist to artist. It is an internal perceptual process in the artist’s mind. The outstanding features of the object, which represent the essentials, should be grasped.

Psychological explanations have given support to the way that Chinese traditional artists pursued artistic expressions. This explains the relationship between objectivity and subjectivity in Chinese traditional painting. It is the empathy evoked from the artist’s understanding, perception and sensibility through their observational and imaginative links between the object and themselves that lead to their depiction of the object and the essence of nature. The objectivity can be loosely depicted through the artists’ subjective employment of artistic application, and visually and conceptually realised by the viewers’ subjective perception. Moreover, the loosely defined object

Art, Perception and Reality, The John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1972, pp.120–124. 276 ibid.

167 provides the freedom for the artists to accommodate their subjective expressions and for the viewers to evoke their subjective responses. The less defined objectivity ( by reducing or simplifying the details) plays an important role in the depicted context.

The drawn image should not be read as a result of reduction of details of the outer appearance. Indeed the essence of the images is enriched by giving the option of having some less defined outer-apparent likeness in details, and by an addition of the imaginative likeness conveyed by the artists and the viewers.

In learning the way in which artists express the empathy in their work, Bada Shanren has become one of the examples in my study. Bada Shanren, a contemporary of Shi

Tao, shows his unique expression that demonstrates the communion between the objects and the artist. His name literally means ‘Mountain Man of the Eight Greats’.

He was born as Zhu Da (ca. 1626–1705), of noble lineage, being a descendant of the

Ming Dynasty prince Zhu Quan. He had a strange, tragic life and is sometimes thought of as the Chinese van Gogh because of it. He was intelligent and talented, but forced by his circumstances to seek sanctuary in the Buddhist priesthood. In 1678, he apparently suffered a nervous breakdown, was unable to speak for a number of years, and became known for his fits of madness and eccentric behaviour. He left the monastery and, despite his afflictions, became a founder of the school of painting known as Qing.

168

Figure 45, Details of Bada Shanren, Bird Figure 44. Details of Bada Shanren, Bird and and Rock, 1650–1705 grapevine (Leaf album), 1695, both pictures are from from Liu jianping, Bada Shanren, 2003

There is something striking, shocking and imbalanced about virtually all his ink paintings. It is commonly explained that his insecure life, uncertain fate and tragic experiences inevitably led to his high mode of personal expression. In Bada’s paintings, we may see, as Richard M Barnhart describes:

… angry, mocking myna birds caw at weakness and failure. Fish seek the forgeful freedom

of deep waters. Loquates and peonies recall greed and avarice. Small birds huddle under

looming rocks that have no support. Cats sit still and watchful. Glaring eyes, the ‘white

eyes’ of anger, stare out from fish, birds, and animals; quails gather in the wilderness.

Fish are transformed into birds, rocks into lotus, ducks into plantain, and a bleak,

impassioned world of exiles in their own country is given form. Mountain yams are like

ghosts, filling the storehouse of old; bamboo is an emblem of ancient loyalties and

modern disasters. Trees are stunted and broken, like men’s lives, and the lotus holds

277 within itself virtue, redemption, and rebirth in another realm.

277 R M Barnhart, ‘Introduction’ in The Life and Art of Bada Shanren, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1991, p.17.

169

Bada plays a role in his paintings and becomes the objects in his virtual world, in which he and the objects are merging into one unity. He is his objects and his objects are he. The communion of unity between the artist and the object can be applied in many different ways. In Bada’s case, the communion reflects his understanding of

Chinese Daoist and Buddhist philosophy. This is the unity of objectivity and subjectivity in Chinese aesthetics, and the unity of humankind and nature.

In my drawing, I have learnt to put myself into the context in which the objects are

(Figures 46 and 47). It starts from my observation from which I try to imprint the virtual environment in my mind when I make my imaginary drawings. Then when it is time to translate my observation of the object, I sometimes imagine that I was in the same situations as they are or I sometimes imagine that I were them. This, to me, is like a role-play game in which I become them. The feelings vary and the expressions emerge when I draw. For instance, I sometimes imagine that I was an aggressive and vulnerable Indian Myna bird in nature. In order to secure my territory I would show my strength by stretching up my feathers. Alternatively, I might be in a human living environment in which I have little power but a determined mind with a vulnerable body. I use different marks to depict their feathers to show their emotions, which may also reflect my living situation.

170

Figure 46. Details of Myna bird in Bird in pink, mixed Media on silk, 13*8.7 cm, 2007

Figure 47. Details of a Baby cockatoo in Baby Bird, mixed Media on silk, 29.6*21 cm, 2007

However, it is not the intention to use these objects to reflect my individual living situation, but to reveal the general and universal reality. I understand that the aggressiveness of the survival instinct reflects the law of nature. It also implies that the apparent conflict should be minimised or terminated by the true law of the world.

It is my belief that the world is one in which harmony and balanced features rule.

171

Therefore, the objects represent the underlying truth of the world I understand, which is waiting for me to reveal through my drawing. It is the process of finding a way to the truth and seeking a way to reveal the truth. In some of my drawings I therefore convey the communion between the object and nature. For instance after a short trip in west of New South Wales region, I drew same marks on both the bird and its surrounding in order to eliminate the difference between the bird and the harsh environment. It was my experience and understanding of how the creature should survive and live in nature. This survival way can be applied everywhere, which is to adopt the living conditions and create the particular communion. Also, when there is a matter of life and death I have been concerned with, the dysphasic baby cockatoo I saw at a friend’s place, appears in my drawing. The fragility is easy to observe, whereas the life determination to survive is imagined by my action of playing the role of the baby bird. This sort of imagination of being the object has helped me understand it from different perspectives, which are shown in my work.

Additionally, I keep my understanding of the Dao as plainness and simplicity, which defines the world and is revealed by the world in my drawings. Simplicity is sometimes linked with spontaneity in importance. It is a particular pursuit that

Chinese traditional artists aim to achieve as the refinement of a cultivated person, but is not meant to be pretentious. This affects the implementation of materials and marks in my drawings. Being in a role-play of the objects, a bird, or tree or anything in my mind, I realise empathy immediately. The actual drawing happens quickly, in the same way as Chinese traditional artists drew, implementing the material with little hesitation. It is one of my interpretations of simplicity in the process of my drawing – immediacy and directness. The connection between the object and me created in

172 observation and role-play activity needs to be released. The moment when I draw the object, I am still thinking of being it. I am in the state of mind of fusing myself with the object.

The emphasis on the nature of the medium has also been carefully considered in terms of simplicity. After the mental preparation of the process, the issue arises of how to draw it with different marks. Here a mark means any track left by any medium on my paper or silk. The solution is to recall the empathy evoked during observation and follow the perception to decide the marks. Chinese brush and ink are two simple tools but create amazingly variable marks, which have been appreciated and pursued by

Chinese traditional artists. In order to follow the same philosophy, using simple tools to create various marks, I limit my use of mediums to convey the concept of simplicity. I have experimented to make different marks of the same birds to explore the marks and their expressions (Figures 48– 51)). To explore the nature of paper and the combination of these simple and conventional tools has been important.

Figure 48. Study of bird with different marks

173

Figure 49. Study of bird with different marks

Figure 50. Detail of Falling Leaves

174

Figure 51 Details of Indian Myna bird and crows in my drawings

During the act of mark-making I have always been aware of the relationship between the details and the imaginative likeness of the object. The decision to reduce or exaggerate the details is determined by my response. It is similar in purpose to employing pictorial language to express the objectivity and subjectivity in my drawings. Being in role as if I were them, I regard each detail’s function differently.

For instance when I was a tree, I would imagine how leaves are attached to the branches, or how the truck would be imprinted over time. This will affect my determination of treating the details differently. When Chinese traditional artists have established a set of brush techniques in their paintings, they use pictorial language to describe them. The titles of many of the styles show the intimate relationship with nature rhythms, such as broken-reed, willow leaf, running water strokes. Therefore, the real marks to depict the object in my drawing will both carry the imaginative likeness of the object, such as thin and delicate lines for bird’s feathers, various shapes of dots for tree’s leaves, or upward directional short lines for the growth of the

175 grass. At the same time, the marks also show my understanding of their ‘beingness’ in nature and how this reflects the essence of the universe created by the Dao. The bodies and feathers of the birds will be distinctive from each other depending on their environments and physical condition as I see them. The tree’s leaves will vary, depending on the seasons, and the grass or weeds show their growth and survival strength in nature.

There is another issue in regard to the imaginative likeness in my drawing. It is the context in which the unity of objectivity and subjectivity need to be perceived. It is the negative space that plays an essential role in Chinese traditional painting. This is what Li Zehou talks about, the imaginative likeness of the depicted objects when they are vaguely visualised but also defined conceptually.278 The objects are an interactive being in their existing context. This context is depicted and completed by the artists and by the viewers too. It is about what we see and what we do not see. What is the white? There seems to be nothing, but according to Chinese aesthetics, there could actually be weeds, pools, duckweeds, and sky; there could even be the trace left by a

Kingfisher that had perched and flown away. It is in the artists’ imagination. The artists worked on where they have painted and where they have not painted.279 White indicates the positive-negative space. The white area is activated as the undefined space and different atmospheres, such as mist and smoke, by the relationship with objects in composition. The unbounded negative space is indeed a being in various forms, and the nothingness in the painting becomes the ‘beingness’ in the viewers’ minds. The actual positive–negative space in paintings is the space beyond the reach

278 Z Li, 2001, p.245. 279 ibid, p.397.

176 of the brush and paint, coming alive in the viewers’ minds, depending on their temperament and nature. Generally speaking, the spatial consciousness reflects

Chinese traditional aesthetics being conscious space.280 That is, when we become conscious of space, the space becomes a tangible and active player within the visual expression.

Figure 52 Falling leaves, 65*224 cm, Mixed Media on paper, 2008

In my work, I render a positive–negative space for the viewers to feel, to think and to perceive. They may be solid substances such as floors and walls, or can be less tangible things such as air and smell, or a place in the viewers’ minds. These images expand and activate the space around them. At the same time, because of the absence of the substance in the area, the objects are given more freedom to lead the viewers to travel around the place. It can be a journey from interior to exterior, or from sky to the ground. It can also be perceived as a ‘drawn video’, in which one can follow the camera while one’s eyes are roaming in the positive-negative space. Once the viewers’ eyes begin to adjust and to see beyond the initial impression, they are allowed to go on a journey, directed by the images and space. There are many alternative routes to travel through these images with positive-negative space directing the action, movement and time.

280 ibid, p.340.

177

More importantly, the application of positive-negative space is a means of achieving the unity of objectivity and subjectivity, the objects and the expression of my perception of their essential likeness. The objects are given freedom to speak for themselves in a less forceful and defined context. The essential likeness consists of the outer likeness, and a process of completion of interpretative or imaginative likeness of the object by both the artist and the viewers. The evoked emotions and feelings from my observation initiate the marks, which then are realised in actual action in my drawings when my understanding and empathy come into play when the objects are drawn. I learn from the masters to commune myself with the object and in this way, only in this way, the objectivity of the nature and subjectivity of my purpose and the viewers’ responses complete the process.

178

You ask me why I live on Green Mountain?

I smile in silence and the quiet mind.

Peach petals blow on mountain streams

To earths and skies beyond Humankind.

问余何意栖碧山，笑而不答心自闲。

桃花流水窅然去，别有天地非人间。

Li Bai, The conversation on the Green Mountain 李白《山中问答》

7 Conclusion

I have used my experience to explore some possibilities arising from a study of contemporary drawing using some Chinese traditional aesthetics. The initiative of introducing some aesthetics from Chinese traditional painting into my drawing practice has turned it into research in which an investigation of the relationship between tradition and some contemporary interpretations, as well as theory and drawing practice has taken place. This process of research has provided a means to build a bridge between Chinese and western aesthetical grounds on depictions of the likeness and essence of an object. It is based on the exploration of the interpretations of busi zhi si.

More importantly, it has led to a process in which a contemporary artist endeavours to apply a particularly traditional concept to contemporary drawing practice properly. It is this approach towards Chinese aesthetics and philosophy with proper attitudes, which has greatly oriented the research in terms of its methodology. It has been

179 stressed that this research has focused on a problem-solving process instead of judgment-for-an-end action, which will be constantly revealed during every observation, every step of theory study and each drawing. In other words, since this research is based on an individual process of learning from tradition, it is important to consider the action of searching for resolutions whenever problems appear or new findings emerge in the outcomes. It is an ongoing process with exploration and experimentation when the interpretation and application approach the original concept and how the current outcomes may benefit future drawings.

This research started with the question of how a contemporary artist could draw an object with its form and essence in a similar way to that of Chinese traditional artists.

Some specific issues have arisen from the research as being addressed in the

Introduction section:

1. How do theory research and practice operate in this practice-based research?

2. How can a contemporary artist introduce a particular aesthetic into a different

art genre in practice (i.e. a particular Chinese traditional concept into

international drawing practice)?

3. What methods can we apply to draw the object? How do these methods reflect

Chinese traditional aesthetics?

The focus of this research has been on the application of the design methods and the reasons behind these methods. The vital point of answering them is to understand why

180

Chinese traditional artists perceived the world and depicted the object in such ways.

The process of this research can be described as what Man Ray once said:

People are always asking how certain results are obtained, seldom why. The first query stems

from the wish to do likewise, a feeling of necessity, a wish to emulate; the second wishes to

understand the motive that has prompted the act --- the desire behind it. If the wish is strong

enough, it will find a way. In other words, inspiration, not information, is the force behind all

creative acts.281

Therefore, to answer these questions, I started with asking the reasons with a high regard and genuine respect for Chinese traditional aesthetics and philosophy. This respect has led to a process of constant study of the underlying reasoning. It is the perception of being apprenticed to the traditional concepts that has required me to search for and collect as much information as possible. To honestly acknowledge the limitation of my knowledge indeed has created a modest and eye-opening attitude, which was the basis for building-up the framework from which theory and practice have both benefited.

Theory and practice in this research have advanced alongside each other. This cooperative partnership not only reflects the initial attitude of understanding the tradition with respect, but also effectively benefits the practice whenever it needs some support from theory. From this starting point, the research has been part of a journey in which learning in a traditional Chinese way has been the main methodological approach to realise the initial proposition. In other words, to imitate and copy some traditional methods to depict the likeness and essence of the objects

281 M Ray, 1982, p.129.

181 has been the major principle.

Traditionally, Chinese artists painstakingly copied and imitated the work of the old masters to learn techniques and skills, as well as to achieve the spirit of the imagery and painting. In this method, the apprentice artists are not only expected to master the skills or techniques, more importantly, they are required to establish their own style and interpretation of the tradition. This learning method has been interpreted philosophically in this research in order to set up the practical methods to reach the main goal of depicting the essential likeness of the object. Since the stroke-by-stroke copy has never been the main method of my research due to the various mediums being employed, the methods that have been applied in this research have been imitations of the traditional ways of depicting the objects. Three aspects in depicting the object, which are observation, outer likeness and interpretative likeness, have been studied in relation to Chinese traditional aesthetics.

The method of observing the objects prior to the actual mark-making has played an important role in my practice. Chinese traditional artists took the action of observing the object seriously in order to evoke their emotions and experiences, which later directed their imagery. My intention to maintain this evocative activity has been stressed by my imaginary drawing in my mind as my interpretation, which has helped me to understand not only the Chinese traditional artists’ procedure of making art but, more importantly, creating images in my drawing which I sometimes cannot grasp in direct observational sketches or study. The reason is partly that the imprinted imagery in my mind is made within the entire environment including the object, its surroundings and me as the observer and executer. The mark-making process in my

182 mind stimulates all my senses including smell, sound, temperature and so on.

Therefore, the imagery in my mind is based on the most impressive nature of the object acting upon me, which is considered as being close to the essence of the object.

This imagery is far more real than some observational results that are more distracted by the outer appearance of the objects that are in front of me.

The imaginary drawings of the object have helped me a great deal in rendering the outer likeness and interpretative likeness of the object. The use of shadow as a very specific method to capture the outer likeness has been employed in this research, and has been extended to explore the essence and outer likeness of the object philosophically. This depiction of the outer likeness is then added by the implication of the being of the object, combining with the representation of the interpretative likeness. This process of making an image is considered as an interpretation of busi zhi si. The forms and colours of the object are two main aspects that this research has been focusing on in two imitated methods arising from Chinese aesthetic theory.

After the evaluation in the later study, particularly in the case study, I have gained a more profound understanding of how the essential likeness may be achieved by representing the unity of subjectivity and objectivity. This understanding also has helped me modify the drawing act in three aspects; observation, outer likeness and interpretative likeness. The Chinese traditional concept of imaginative likeness has been borrowed to reinforce my approach to depict the interpretative likeness of the object in a less defined context, with the consideration of the details in relation to essential likeness. This mental journey has been reflected in my later drawings, in which the concern about how to deal with details in relation to the essential likeness

183 has been a modified focus.

The Chinese belief in the formless and changeable world seems to lead to a unique artistic expression in which implication is considered to carry more essence in the subtlety than some defined visual images. As such, defined methods were not promoted in learning and teaching painting in traditional training because demonstrating formlessness with forms was regarded as an inappropriate approach.

However, it is essential in this research to clarify what the interpretative likeness is in relation to traditional painting and how the contemporary practitioner can learn to achieve the same goals as the traditional masters did. Therefore, it is my belief that it is contrary to the original aesthetics and philosophy of Chinese traditional painting to set any defined methods of depicting the interpretative likeness, but explicit explanation of the approaches in practice should be presented in this research. All these above concerns have been unfolded and explained in the process.

However, some new concerns have emerged during the later period of research. As articulated in the beginning of this research, any interpretation of the past will not be able to overcome the distance between the interpreters and the past. It was from this basis that the research aimed to establish an individual interpretation of a traditional concept. Since the methods of this research have been chosen according to the researcher’s understanding of the tradition, it can be argued that there are some limitations of this research in terms of the forming of methods. The interpretations of

Chinese philosophy and aesthetics have been vague and implicit, the designed methods therefore possibly interpret the tradition partially or there might be some misunderstandings. So, by the end of this research, some new questions have arisen

184 on this issue. Although they have not been answered in this period of time, but these questions will possibly bring fresher and more exciting elements into practice. These new questions are:

1. How to improve the methods in order to achieve the purpose of an appropriate

understanding of the original concept?

2. How can this research lead to some other interpretations of busi zhi si?

The researcher has taken opportunities to present the outcomes at different stages to various groups of audiences, including drawing practitioners in international conferences, and Chinese painting practitioners in China. Feedback and comments have been taken seriously in this research throughout the whole process. However, it should be acknowledged that this research has been carried out in a particular set of circumstances, in which the time limit has been the main obstacle to addressing these newly arising issues and questions. It was towards the very end of this research that I started to realise that the process of this research has presented so many possibilities in my future practice. A more optimistic resolution of this issue is to accept the situation and regard this research as a starting point and the key to further exploration.

If this is one of the first steps of a long journey, all the results and research experiences will become valuable to any other researchers or artists who are interested in the same concept. Also the promising future of this ongoing research therefore seems to be more exciting to invite other drawers to take part in similar research to apply different aesthetic concepts in practice. The individual experience in this research can therefore be shared in a more general art community and hopefully contribute to other relevant fields.

185

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Video:

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Internet references:

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Chronological Chart

Western Europe China

1000 Bronze Age Bronze Age

B. C. Shang Dynasty (1523-1028 B.C.)

Zhou Dynasty (1028-281 B.C.)

0 Rome Empire trade with China Han Dynasties (206 B.C.-221 A.D.)

100

200 Jin, Three Kingdoms and Six Dynasties Periods (221-589) 300

400 Invasion in Rome

500 Sui and Tang Dynasties (589-906) 600

700

800 Charlemagne

900 Five Dynasties (906-960) 1000 Northern and Southern Song Dynasties 1100 Romanesque Art (960-1279)

1200 Gothic Art

Marco Polo’s Travels (1271-1292) Yuan Dynasty (1279-1368)

1300

1400 Renaissance Art Ming Dynasty (1368-1644)

1500

1600

Qing Dynasty (1644-1911)

1700 Baroque Art

1800 Romantic Art

Orientalism

1900

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List of Plates

1. Little Red bird 13 x 8.7 cm mixed media on silk 2007

2. Baby Bird 29.6 x 21 cm mixed media on silk 2007

3. Bird in Pink 35 x 36 cm mixed media on polyester 2007

4. House in Black and White 50 x 49 cm mixed media on polyester 2007

5. Rocks and Red Bird 86 x 65 cm mixed media on silk 2007

6. Spring I 98.5 x 63 cm mixed media on silk 2007

7. Going Home 92 x 60 cm mixed media on cardboard 2006

8. Cactus 200 x 114 cm pencil on paper 2006

9. Lucky Bamboo 200 x 114 cm pencil on paper 2006

10. Falling Leaves 65 x 224 cm mixed media on paper 2008

11. Bird Nest 250 x 114 cm pencil and colour pencil on paper 2008

12. Friendship 250 x 114 cm pen and ink on paper 2008

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