In 1949, the English art historian Kenneth Clark collected lectures he had given as Slade Professor at Oxford University into a book titled Landscape into Art. Although Clark’s aim was to explain how the everyday “scenery” we speak of became an independent genre of art, his graceful analysis ended up touching on the logos of civilization in Europe. He argued that the Greeks, who provided the source for European culture, only attached importance to human beings and not to the natural world. Not until Fracesco Petrarch (1304-1374) did European civilization grasp the pleasure that was to be found in nature. To emphasize this, Kenneth Clark even said that Petrarch “was the first person to climb a mountain just to climb a mountain. He climbed up a peak merely to survey the panorama below him.” In a work titled Landscape and Western Art (Oxford University Press, 1999), Malcom Andrews—another British professor—used a comparison of two artworks (“Little Pond House” c. 1497 and “The Virgin and the Long-Tailed Monkey” c. 1497-98), one of them possibly by Lucas Cranach (1472-1553) and the other by Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528), to discuss when exactly European artists’ views changed from “scenery” as mere setting to scenery as subject. The tradition of treating scenery as a subject to be enjoyed in paintings came to the Chinese quite early, perhaps because of their fundamental intellectual and cultural background (the philosophy and life-attitude of Laozi and Zhuangzi). If we look to the written word to understand modes of knowing the natural world, such affirmation goes even further back in time:
My roaming brings me to this spot,
My spirit is delighted, my mind quiet.
…
Expansive space opens for mind and spirit.
(Wang Suzhi, Orchid Pavilion Poems)
Set my sensibility loose among mountains and streams,
Feel time’s unfolding and forget all constraints.
(Wang Huizhi, Orchid Pavilion Poems)
Often he borrows landscape, to loosen melancholy’s knot.
(Sun Chuo, “Third Day Third Month Preface”, Orchid
Pavilion Poems)
These writings were produced a thousand years before Petrarch’s remarks in letters to friends about the pleasures of nature. If we are looking for the charms of natural scenery as depicted by painters, even if we were to skip over Wang Wei (701-761), the landscape paintings of the Five Dynasties Period (907-960) would offer plenty of evidence of the pleasures to be derived from nature.
Our emphasis here, of course, is not on a historical study of scenic landscape painting. What I hope to convey is that different civilized traditions lead to differences in art; different civilized traditions have irresistible effects upon artists; what is more, each provides ample nourishment to artists and fosters a special temperament, thereby forming unique modes of thought and perception. As we can see from the title of this exhibition, it is hard to translate the Chinese phrase xishan qingyuan into English, so we had to settle for “Pure Views”. In a strict scholarly sense, this rendering can hardly be called successful, since it covers up some of the implied meaning.
“Pure Views Remote from Streams and Mountains” is the title of a landscape painting by Xia Gui of the Southern Song period. Xia Gui’s dates are not clearly known, but he surely lived in the era of Emperor Ning (1195-1224), because he served in Emperor Ning’s Painting Academy, and there is record of him being awarded a golden belt. “Pure Views Remote from Streams and Mountains” is an important work in the history of Chinese painting. This work depicts views along a waterway in Yangtze River country: grouped peaks, vertical rock faces, lush forests, storied buildings, a long bridge, a village, a thatched pavilion, fishermen’s boats, distant sails. How is an ordinary Western viewer to compare nature as
shown in this painting with that in John Constable’s (1776-1837) scenic paintings?
Of course an art historian can look for contrasts in materials, techniques, style, and taste. However, the genuine differences come from a cultural source, from each civilization’s own tradition. If viewers lack understanding of the cultural tradition behind an art phenomenon, even on the level playing field of today’s global era, it will be hard for them truly to understand or identify with a cultural phenomenon.
Viewers may readily notice that, unlike Chinese art from recent decades, the works in this exhibition show a more uniquely traditional temperament. Most of the works in this exhibition depict nature and scenic landscapes. Erstwhile political and ideological symbols have almost completely disappeared. What is more, to a certain degree, these works reveal new kinds of ambient energy. One can see from these new forms of ambient energy that the artists are taking the initiative to seek resources in traditional Chinese culture, even though they each adopt a different angle, and their aims are dissimilar.
For Chinese intellectuals and artists, it is not as easy as one might imagine to discuss “culture” and “tradition”. Chinese intellectuals’ reflection upon their own civilization began with the Opium War. After the Chinese navy’s defeat in the 1895 Sino-Japanese War, the need to understand Western civilization became a serious proposition for most intellectuals concerned with China’s fate. Clashes of Eastern and Western, modern and traditional were continuous from then on, but once full-scale war broke out between China and Japan in 1937, artists’ views of their own civilization were no longer as dismissive as those held by some radical intellectuals of the May Fourth Period (1918-1922). Artists who had studied Western painting in France or Italy still used ink brush and rice paper to paint some of their works; what is more, they joined with traditionalists to hold refined gatherings based on ink art. 1945-1949 was a period of civil war. In Nationalist-controlled areas, each artist established his own stance—to persist in Chinese painting or in Western painting—based on his own knowledge and judgment. In the Communist-controlled area of Yan’an, artists were told that the important thing was not Western painting or Chinese painting, because in May 1942 the Communist Party leader Mao Zedong had already told intellectuals in Yan’an that literature and art should become a weapon for striking the enemy (the Japanese army and the Nationalist Party). The Party demanded that the style and taste of art should enable the uncultured masses to understand and identify with its message, in order to do a good job of propagandizing the Party’s policies and ideas. In 1949, the Communists took power, and the government’s policy on art and literature from the Yan’an period remained an imperative until 1976. During these 27 years of uninterrupted political campaigns, artists were repeatedly re-educated and required to indicate their own political stance, so that art could be made a tool of political tasks. Of course there were times when artists discussed the inheritance and upholding of traditional civilization, but these were only pretty sounding words suited to the needs of political movements. As soon as the political goal or task changed, the discussion of tradition would immediately be stopped or given a new slant. The “Cultural Revolution” which began in 1966 was a deliberate purge by Mao Zedong of his peers in the Party. In a movement of mass criticism that spread nationwide, traditional civilization was almost completely relegated to the category of “corrupt, retrograde thinking of the feudal landlord class”. Many artefacts, buildings, and works of ink art were destroyed. Not until 1978 did the Eleventh Session of the Third Plenary Assembly (of the Party Congress) change the focus from “class struggle” to “economic construction”. Only then did people gradually get the chance to resume their attempts to gain knowledge of traditional culture. From the outbreak of full-scale war in 1937 to the cruel
Cultural Revolution’s end in 1976, the precious vessel of traditional civilization met with all-out calamity. Most importantly, Chinese artists lacked the intellectual setting and institutional conditions to hand down their own traditional civilization. As a result, people born in the 1940s and 1950s received practically no education in traditional civilization. For a long time it was difficult for them even to see the most basic traditional texts. Thus, the thread of spiritual connection to tradition was nearly broken.
In the 1980s, young Chinese artists began to gain a renewed understanding of Western art from libraries and exhibitions. They used Western ideas and art to view the world anew and actualize their own artistic freedom. In this period the main direct influence on them was Western Modernist art—from Impressionism to Dadaism. Such was their great disgust for previous prohibitions and their boundless longing for new art, combined with the serious lack of traditional culture in their background, that for nearly ten years China’s artists did not concern themselves with their own traditional civilization or try to understand it anew.
At the end of the 1980s, having been exposed to currents of freedom for ten years, conditions were in place for artists to learn about traditional art. This task was at first undertaken by practitioners of ink painting, who continued to use traditional tools of painting. In 1989, an exhibition named “New Literati Painting” was held in Beijing. This exhibition was ridiculed by Modernist thinkers as an example of intellectual impotence and artistic cowardice. They thought it was artistic regression. However, as time went by, more and more young artists joined the ranks of the New Literati. However, those artists who used non-traditional tools kept up their connections with Western currents. Due to certain features of the Chinese system, along with the development of a market economy and residual influence of Cold War ideology, the most suitable chances for Chinese artists to show their new work were through international exhibitions. Because the imagery in their art possessed special symbolism and temporal import, Western viewers’ gained their understanding of China by way of such artists. They became familiar with a number of Chinese artists’ names like Zhang Xiaogang, Wang Guangyi, Fang Lijun, and Yue Minjun.
Reform and opening led China to merge more fully into international society. China was thus prompted to answer the question: what was the standpoint upon which this nation and people could bring forth their own creativity? After a hundred years of learning from the West, what after all had our own civilization gained? What do we face in this present moment, and what art is relevant to it?
In 1998 the German Federalist Republic’s embassy in Beijing held an exhibition titled “In the Mirror of Tradition”. At that time, Eckhard R. Schneider remarked: “The concept of this exhibition is to show how Chinese contemporary artists are dealing with their tradition from different angles and aspects.” Works by many contemporary artists appeared in this exhibition. Zhu Qingsheng not only took part in the exhibition, as a scholar he also wrote an essay in which he prompted viewers to consider how the ancient notion of “art” in China had evolved. He went on to say, “The revisiting of ancient Chinese ideas about ‘art’ stems from a demand for modernism in our art.” Here he picked up on the fact that the development of China’s modern or contemporary art has reached the point where it needed to reflect anew on its own civilized tradition. In 2003, at China Art Project Space, the critic Li Xianting curated “Prayer Beads and Brush Strokes”. He invited a number of painters to participate who used traditional materials—developed from the New Literati—in a way which he claimed was distinct from earlier “abstract ink art”. He also claimed that abstract ink art “for the most part did not go beyond the language of Western abstraction and abstract expressionism.” Even though the works in this show, for the most part, still appeared to be “abstract”—a term borrowed from Western painting—yet in the eyes of some Chinese critics and artists, painting in this vein “is a new type that originates in the deep-founded ink art tradition. Not only is it distinct from Western painting, it is also distinct from traditional painting.” Li Xianting began writing a thematic study for this exhibition in 2000, and in several articles prior to that he had expressed similar ideas. The efforts of critics and artists indicated that contemporary Chinese art concepts in the twenty-first century would surely give rise to obvious changes.
“Pure Views” is a group presentation of contemporary paintings which employ Western materials to reflect upon and reinterpret traditional civilization and temperament. The age span of participating painters is quite large. In their observation and understanding of Chinese traditional painting these artists, born between the 1950s and 1980s, differ in perception, judgment, and attitude. In fact, as soon as a Chinese artist focuses his attention and receptivity on his own cultural tradition, once he discovers its wonders, he will begin to create new contemporary art. Certainly there is now a different temporal background for this concern with inner spiritual qualities of traditional art. A hundred years ago Chinese intellectuals did not have a thorough understanding of Western civilization. From 1978 to 2000, Chinese artists at last had adequate opportunities to understand other civilizations. By incorporating Western art into their practice, which was affected by their own pre-existing art history, they carried out a contemporary experiment. As alluded to above, Chinese artists began to absorb the resources of various traditions, synergistically and without prejudice, evincing an obvious trend—recovery of the Chinese temperament.
Chinese people often use vocabulary like linghui (“come to a realization”) and lingwu (“attaining insight”) to indicate the attainment of genuine understanding of an issue. As forthe “Chinese temperament” we have been speaking of, how are we to understand it?
To say that there are obvious dissimilarities between Chinese people now and their forbears would be putting it mildly. Their spiritual state has been filtered through the complexities of modern society, and this background enables artists like artists like Chen Danqing, Shang Yang, Mao Xuhui, Wang Guangyi, and Zhang Xiaogang to convey their perplexity and mood of resignation through their works. Chen Danqing obviously expresses his nostalgia for the temperament of “streams and mountains”. However, he does this by incorporating a book about “streams and mountains” into his pictorial composition, rather than portraying the real thing, and thereby reveals sadness and a sense of loss. Mao Xuhui in his early years received influence from many modern Western thinkers and literary writers. Even now there is an intense note of sorrow in the way he views current reality and history. Thus, he keeps an obvious distance from the style of traditional literati. Yet is there not a connection between his note of sorrow and the conflicted mental states expressed by the ancients? As the artist himself says, “The Yuan dynasty painter Zhao Mengfu (1254-1322) created the painting ‘Waterside Village’ in 1302, and it moves me endlessly. In Chinese landscape painting this is called the ‘level distance’ mode of composition. This sense of form gives the viewer a feeling of breadth, of expansiveness, and of facing something immense.” The continuity of historical spirit can be seen—in unique form—in the works of Wang Guangyi and Zhang Xiaogang. These painters tend to engage in critical analysis which counter-poses yesterday with today. Wang Guangyi always taks a dispassionate attitude in examining problems. As for Zhang Xiaogang, he has discovered time’s influence on visual judgment and its psychological importance. Zhou Chunya’s piece is titled “After Xia Gui’s ‘Pure Views’”. Westerners may not grasp the implications this word “after” has for Chinese painters. It is a matter of honoring and comprehending. Zhou Chunya had an epiphany some time ago about the depiction of “peach blossoms”, and here he places them within Xia Gui’s scenes of mountain boulders. This contemporary treatment also amounts to an extension of traditional temperament.
The inner state of artists born between the 1960s and 1970s is not as grave as that of the abovementioned artists. Their reception of traditional culture carries an experimental quality. Works by Yue Minjun, Hong Lei, He Sen, Yang Mian, and Zhao Qin bear the stamp of personal understanding. After his “Laughing Faces”, Yue devoted a great deal of time to pondering the question: “what is art?” This led him to use a traditional walled garden to construct a “cultural labyrinth”. He admires many elder artists—almost all are painters who use traditional materials and tools. He loves their art, but he is pondering why their works, unique yet characteristic of their civilization, are not considered “contemporary art”. To let us revisit this group of Chinese painters, he arrays a variety of approaches, thereby establishing a new compositional mode. The photographer Hong Lei says that when he first saw “Stream Bank” by Dong Yuan (Song), he felt he had “received a punch that nearly bowled me over”. This description is no exaggeration: regarding composition and narrative of the ancients, he feels an understanding that comes from deep within. This is precisely why he expresses the hidden unease and amazement he feels. He Sen uses various techniques to deconstruct ancient art as he understands it, thereby creating a new aesthetic. Yang Mian tries to use CMYK terms and methods from print technology to express the disappearance of civilization amidst continuous consumption. As for Zhao Qin, who preserves the romantic passion of his early years, his responses to time and frailty are memories tinged with pathos. Such a mood is quite close to that of the ancients. For quite some time the focus of Fang Lijun’s expression has been the relation between life and the natural cosmos. He buys and collects things made by the ancients. His art highlights his understanding of time. He confers a sunlit splendor upon time; his treatments of clouds and atmosphere have a sense of immensity. Yet he always puts death into his works—in obvious or hidden ways. Such an attitude is quite different from his attitude in the first half of the 1990s. As for Zeng Hao, who has been known for his “bad paintings” and his compositions featuring little people in empty, open scenes, recently he’s been experimenting with radical simplification. He seems to have become aware of the simple ease of painting. From among the viewpoints of the ancients he can readily discover new principles and a new path for his art.
In the works of Shen Xiaotong, Cao Jingping, and Tang Ke, we can also see that the temperament of the ancients has had an influence. Shen Xiaotong says he likes Shi Tao’s “clean-lined accessibility” and “natural distinction of turbid and clear”. Cao Jingping borrows poetic lines from Tao Yuanming to express his feeling about the work “Travellers among Streams and Mountains”: “There is genuine meaning to be found in this; I wanted to expound on it but forgot the words.” This kind of statement is a traditional habit of Chinese people. Tang Ke admits that he strongly favors the “exquisite energy balance” conveyed by ancient paintings; at the same time, he believes that he is using new methods to extend this temperament. Zhang Xiaotao recognizes that “tradition is a river that changes as it flows, and it seems that eventually we return to it.” However, he injects his own understanding of landscapes and nature into his piece, “Homage to the Tang” .
Zhang Jian identifies with Dong Yuan’s detachment. Even at Madrid, Li Qing apparently is discussing a kind of solitude we might expect. Yang Xun understands tradition as a cloud of enchanting mist, so his gardens are filled with exquisite drama and cultural imagination. Shen Na in her works appears to be drawing her mental activity inward. In her reading and intellectual inquiry she has gradually shifted her concern to the traces of history. Luo Quanmu’s works can be considered a homage to Li Cheng, as well as a new manifestation. He can even feel the here-and-now resonance caused by a connection across time. Peng Si’s paintings have their own dense ambience, but by now they reveal a susceptibility to traditional temperament. He also tells us that he has moved from the Christian doctrinal meaning of love to an understanding of natural love. Gao Weigang characterizes the objects of his search as “what comes by quiet cultivation”. But such an objective, in the Chinese view, is attainment gained through inner cultivation, not merely visual effects on a painted surface.
The ancient Chinese critical work Gegu yaolun (“Essential Inquiry into the Ancients”) contains this passage: “Xia Gui excelled at landscapes. His layout and textured strokes were similar to those of Ma Yuan, but his conception emphasizes a time-worn, pared-down quality. He liked to use a very worn down brush, and he often painted leaves with angular paired strokes. For his buildings he used no ruler, preferring to do them freehand. His use of abrupt strokes was marvelous, and the resonant force was quite elevated.” This is an assessment of Xia Gui’s painterly art. Western readers of such criticism may have a hard time truly understanding what is meant by “time-worn, pared-down quality” or “elevated resonant force”. In fact, this is not merely because two ethnic groups had two different art histories. In these two contexts the crucial thing is that different cultural structures and cultural geography determine different logics for the two civilizations. Painting and the written word are crystallizations of spiritual civilization. Only when such a spiritual crystallization becomes part of us are we likely to understand meanings within that civilization. Chinese contemporary artists of the present day are clearly beginning to acknowledge such a demand. After being baptized in Western modernism and post-modernism, Chinese contemporary painting is finding a new point of departure based on its own tradition.
Over a hundred years ago Emile Zola (1840-1902) used the word ‘temperament’ in a critique of the works of Edouard Manet (1832-1883). At that time, French viewers were taking a serious interest in Japanese and oriental art for the first time. Clearly, it would have been difficult for academic terminology to characterize the new paintings of Manet and the Post-Impressionist painters. Today we likewise see new Chinese painting which cannot be described in vocabulary taken from Cold War ideology or Post-Modernism. To some extent these new paintings show new identifying characteristics, and we need to savor and develop our understanding of them on their own terms.
As a final reflection, let me remark that although one would suppose “spring” to be a synonym of “beautiful” or “pleasant”, painters of Xia Gui’s era who depicted spring no longer approached it so straightforwardly. What is more, they tended to express complex inner feelings that were not simply “spring-like”. Fresh breezes and drizzling rain, pine trees and willow boughs—in the minds of Southern Song literati and painters these things called up faint melancholy, or even a forlorn feeling. Thus even in spring, even at lovely West Lake, instead of seeing delightful beauties of nature, they only sensed gloomy introspection and sadness.
Nesting orioles among leaves, twirling floss over low swells. Homeward
boat at the isthmus bridge, amid slanting rays. How many excursions are
left me? You look at flowers and already next year is here. Yet the east wind
dallies with briar roses. When briar roses come out, spring has a plaintive
look. More forlorn than that is drizzle upon all the nuances of green, and a
streak of desolate mist.
Any idea where last years’ swallows have gone? Now thick moss grows
here in Weiqu, and grass overgrows a stream bank. Hearing the talk of new
sorrows, I’ll be with gulls that can’t be approached. No mood to continue
revels of reed-pipe and song, I close the gate and door. Nap idly at the edge
of intoxication. Don’t pull aside the curtain, for fear of seeing petals fly or
hearing cuckoos cry. (Zhang Yan “Gaoyang Pavilion” from Spring Feelings at
West Lake)
A dipperful of West Lake water. I came over the Yangtze, to a hundred
years of dance and song, a hundred years of rapt intoxication. Look back
toward Luoyang’s flowers among rocks, all you see are misty fields of millet.
Never to be regained. Tears fall at a new pavilion. While beauties mingle with
musicians on a painted boat, I ask who will man the oars mid-water? And
where is the water to wash away everlasting sorrow? In the years left I aim to
achieve clarity. Who can do it for me? I have not yet come across Pan Xi[1],
and Fu Yan[2] has not yet emerged. Who can be a pillar for affairs of state?
I can only wear my robe and belt along this river. Many say the river god
provides a haven. I ask the hermit in a lonely mountain grove. He turns away
laughing and points to the delicate heart of a plum blossom. We know how
affairs of the empire go! (Wen Jiweng, “Congratulations to a Groom” from
West Lake Excursion)
Of course to read poems like this requires historical background. However, if we are familiar with the poet’s temperament, and if we can possess something like it ourselves, we may experience the spiritual world to which he can only allude in words. This same principle holds true for understanding the paintings in this exhibition.
Sept. 1, 2010