THE SPIRIT OF CHINESE PAINTING
(Santiniketan)
Like
the physiognomy of the average Chinaman, there is something changeless in the
Chinese landscape. Yet these people are not afraid of change. A life lived in
close association with the tranquil spirit of cosmic nature has endowed them
with a serenity difficult to disturb. Throughh long centuries of patient
living, they have learnt the art of humility and harmony, a non-aggressive
ethos. Their view of life and art is not obscured by the assertiveness of
individual extravagance. Incidentally, this may be one of the reasons why the
Chinese have not been able or willing to adopt oil-colour, for the use of oil
brings in a note of strident separativeness, violating the subtle laws of man’s
oneness with nature,–an offence against universal rhythm.
Chinese
painters are generally divided into two schools, Northern and Southern. The
Northern school of painters tried to keep up the exactness of the
subject-matter. This verisimilitude may go to prove the power of the brush, but
it gives a rather photographic impression. The Southern school of painters
attempted a rhythmic composition expressed through line. While painting
realistic pictures, they would avoid the process of assimilation through geometrical
lines, and seek to give expression to the inner idea. Outwardly we perceive
different types and shades of a landscape in the morning or evening, but to our
inner vision they take on a different shape in their entirety.
Chinese
art, in the history of its gradual development, was thus divided into two
schools. The style of Ku K’ai-Chih (346-407 A. C.) was developed by Li Tsu-Hsun
(651-716 A. C.) into the Northern or traditional school of painting and it was
to take a definite shape in the paintings of Wu Tao-Tse (700-760 A. C.). This
was further developed and the Southern school of painting took its form in Wang
Wei (699-759 A. C.), the poet-painter, also known as Mo-Chih Or Mo-Chieh. When
he was deeply lost in the meditation of painting, he would make no difference
in the four seasons (China’s seasons are Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter). He
would paint a cherry and a lotus in the same picture. Herein lies the
difference between an ordinary painter and a poet painter. Such style of art
has been known as Scholars’ Painting. Su Tung-Po, an exponent of this school,
once painted a bamboo without any joints. When asked to explain the
extravagance, he said that the bamboos do not grow by adding pulps one after
another. To these painters ‘Conception’ is greater than mere ‘Form’. They
distinguish between ‘Hsing’ or the ‘physical form’ of the object, ‘Li’ or the
‘inner law of spirit’, and ‘Yi’ or the artist’s ‘conception’. Scholars’
Painting, in spite of its being once sarcastically called ‘Mo-hsi’ or ‘play with
ink’, deals with the spirit of artistic conception. To these painters, the
outward materials and laws of painting are no necessary guides. When
inspiration comes, they paint with anything on earth,–whether a roll of paper,
a piece of cane-stick, or bare fingers (Chang Tsao of the T’ang Dynasty had the
gift of painting with two brushes taken together, one of which was usually
blunt–otherwise one of his fingers). Here, art is not a photograph of a
material object, but an impression of internal conception. Chinese painting is
‘Hsieh-yi’ or ‘writing out a conception’.
The
glory of the Southern school of painting was Su Tung Po (1036-1101 A. C.), who
may be held responsible for ‘Scholar-Painting’–‘Shihjen hua’ as the Chinese
term it. With its emphasis on ‘rhythmic vitality’ and a ‘controlling subjective
conception’, it is an unacknowledged precursor of the modern impressionistic
art. Chinese calligraphy may also be called a form of abstract painting. For,
its characters are drawn from nature. So, to a Chinese painter, the lines are
not merely static, they are vital–with a rhythmic grandeur in them. As in
Chinese calligraphy a minimum of strokes expresses the meaning of the word, so
also in Chinese painting of the advanced group the fewest lines or the minimum
of shades would express the maximum of thought and idea. Hence the term
‘Shieh-yi’–writing out a conception.
Impressionism
is a revolt against photographic accuracy. As Sa Tung-Po said, ‘to judge a
painting by its verisimilitude is to judge it at the mental level of a child.
Commenting on a painter, he said ‘... What you want to look at is the spirit of
a horse. The professional artists often see only the skin and hair...that is
why the paintings of professional artists are lacking in spirit, and after seeing
a few paintings, one is bored.’
Every
painting is an unconscious reflection of some attitude of philosophy. ‘Chinese
paintings unconsciously express the one-ness of man with nature and the
essential unity of the great mystic procession of life in which the human being
occupies but a small and transitory part.’ (Lin Yatang–Gay Genius). Here,
‘...man is not the centre of the world, he is only a detail in the Great Whole;
the life of the Universe infinitely surpasses his life, and it is the echoes,
gleams, apparitions from this vaster life which haunt the mind of the Chinese
painter.’ (Emile Hovalaque–China).
While
the northern artists accepted a stern tradition of classical sobriety and
restraint, the south gave colour and form to feeling and imagination. The
complete identification of such painters with the object to be expressed may be
seen in the following poem of Su Tung-Po:
‘Receiving
the moisture of wine,
My
intestines sprout and fork out,
And
from out my liver and lungs
Shoot
rocks and bamboos,
Surging
through my breast, irresistible,
That
find expression on your snow-white wall.’
(Lin Yutang-Gay
Genius)
The
Chineee artist Hsieh Ho (6th century) said that the painter’s effort must
strive to render ‘the Life-movement of the spirit through the Rhythm of
things.’ It is this profound reality, the creative essence, not the thing
created, the soul and not the outward form which the artist should portray. To
a Chinese painter, the important factor is not in what he is looking at, but
what mystery lies behind that outward vision. ‘Chinese art does not (like
Western art) aim at an exact and complete representation of reality; still less
does it attempt to imitate Nature; in no case does it aim at giving the
spectator the illusion that he sees the thing itself in the manner dear to so
many in the West.’ (Emile Hovalaque –China).
In
the eyes of a Chinese artist, spirit is everything; in all things it is the
invisible spirit within them which must be set free and expressed, and not
their visible reality. A Chinese artist does not merely compose colours, he
also composes the portions to be kept blank and vacant for making the
suggestion intense and complete. In Western art, the painting is usually
limited to the scope of the eye and brought towards the spectator, while in
Eastern art, since the picture transcends such limitations and exists only in
mind, it is reflected on to space. The former has a fixed point of view, while
the later has a moving or more than one point of view. Western art is limited
in time, and hence depicts arrested action, but Asian art represents a
continuous condition, indifferent to transient effect.’ (Shio Sakanishi–The
Spirit of the Brush).
The
three simple characteristics of Chinese painting may be enumerated here; (l)
Abstractness (painting a landscape by rearranging, without following faithfully
the original form or composition; (2) Comprehensiveness; and (3) Symbolism (e
g. pine tree symbolizes longevity, bamboo–nobility of character, plum
blossom–endurance, etc). ‘Since the Chinese avoided the Western approaches to
the mystery of artistic creation, either through science which investigated the
mechanics of representation, or through aesthetics which questions the nature
of the beautiful, or through psychology which explores the motivations of
expression, the terms used by us (Westerners) to define the essential qualities
of painting, such as unity, balance, scale and empathy, together with the
aesthetic types of the beautiful, sublime and so forth, are all slighted in
Chinese critical writings. In their places, the Chinese employed terms taken
from the associated arts of poetry and calligraphy, or when specifically trying
to express the in-expressible of painting, they resorted to the terms of
mysticism, which is as it should be.’ (George Rowley- Principles of Chinese
Painting)
Though
like the painting of all countries, Chinese painting also centres around Man,
yet it either takes him or sees him against a wider scheme of relations, of the
philosophy of mankind. The details of form or the scientific knowledge of
material things are no pre-occupation of the artist of the East. He views the
world from some spiritual altitude, whereby man, material reality and nature
become all inter-dependent on one another to make a complete realization of the
Universe possible. The matter-of-fact life of ours today has made us separate
and self-assertive. Realism in its crude sense seem to be the keynote of art
and literature today. But the obsession with inferior realism is perhaps ended
or ending. We visualize some kind of a border-line between realism and
idealism. The modern background must give a new tone and temper to the Chinese
painting of today. India once, with the conflict and influence of the West,
achieved a great revival of genuine Indian art. Let us hope hrough a synthesis
of modern European and Chinese art, China too will emerge with a new art,
Chinese in spirit, but alive to the new moods and situation of a later and
perplexed humanity. The spirit in which modern Chinese artists solve this
problem will be a test of their culture.