China: Religion and Philosophy

Religion: based in ancient traditions of ancestor and nature worship; yin/yang, male/female; animal (disintegrates with body) and spirit soul (exists as long as it is rememberedhas power to influence the living); no priestly class with special connection to the beyond; sacrifices performed by heads of state or families Characters for ancestor and god of the soil both contain phallic symbol Cruder forms of ancestor/nature worship embarrassed Confucians, who tried to minimize them Common people played no part in ceremonies of ancestor worshipreserved for gentry or upper classes Supreme being more like the supreme ancestor; Chinese had no creation myth or divine law outside of nature as in the creator God of the Western tradition

China: Religion and Philosophy

In general, no division between Being and Non-Being as in the West, so there is not a concern with abstract metaphysical questions as in the West (exceptions include Buddhism, which entered China from India, and Taoism Nevertheless, Chinese thought is characterized by a this-worldly tendency, with an emphasis on questions of social decorum, propriety, and harmony which finds its fullest expression in Confucianism and is consistent in many ways with the collectivism of Communist China Like Socrates, Confucius's aim was the definition and application of morals in the life of the state. Main difference between Confucianism and Daoism: the former emphasizes human relations, the latter an individuals place in the natural world. Another major philosophy in ancient China: Legalism (Lord Shang, d.338bce): One of the most thorough statements of totalitarianism in world history; clear and complete code of laws defining rewards and punishments which must be applied impartially; view that humanity was naturally good was visionary and rejected.

Important Chinese Dynasties

Qin (221bce)/Han (206bce-221ce): The First Emperor; Qin=chin=China; Han consolidated unified China and expanded its borders; Modern Chinese are referred to ethnically as Han Tang (618-907ce); open to other cultures; poetry, paper, printmaking; Empress Wu and the civil service Song: (960-1126ce): modern period; turned from military tradition to scholarly values and pursuits; less open to other cultures; landscape painting Ming (1368-1644ce): Forbidden City; linking of Great Wall; porcelain Qing (1644-1911ce): Last dynasty

Naturalism vs. Chinese Aesthetics

One consequence of naturalistic interest/descriptive criticism: a failure to develop terminology suitable for talking about the work of art as distinct from what the artwork imitates. Became noticeable in the 20th century as critics concerned themselves with talking about the formal qualities of a work as opposed to its representational content. Chinese aesthetics has talked about the artwork as a thing in its own right for centuriesthere is considerable difficulty accurately translating Chinese aesthetic terminology into Western linguistic equivalents as a result.

The naturalistic attitude appears as an aspect of the scientific attitude to nature which emerged in Classical Greece; it is a habit of mind that treats nature as something external and set apart from mansomething to be studied, observed, mastered, harnessed, emotionally reacted to or mirrored, flattered, or improved in art. In contrast, in Chinese aesthetics man is part on naturethe same life processes transfuse man and nature, with the ideal of bringing about a union between man and the cosmic principle. This is not a relationship of study or domination. During Middle Ages, the naturalistic outlook became subject to a theological doctrine in which man and nature were the creation of God, and the nature of the Deity was seen as being manifested in external nature as a symbol to man of the Divine Nature. (Again, we will encounter the idea of symbol and sign in PoMo)

Aesthetics of Chinese Pictorial Art

Classical antiquity/Middle Ages: the artist seen as a manual laborer In China, from the Han Dynasty (200bce) onward, painting, poetry, and music were regarded as pursuits worthy of the gentleman and scholar in a social structure that accorded very high prestige to scholarship and culture. The gentleman-scholar believed in the Confucian ideal that cultivation of good relations between man and man was the supreme aim of life and cherished the virtues of rightness, decorum, sincerity, and wisdom. Good social order was regarded as a reflection and embodiment of the Tao, conceived as a quasi-moral order of the universe.

Another View of Chinese Art

http://www.zhuweiartden.com/ZW/History/Chin eseTraditionalArt.htm

The administrative classes and gentry were recruited by state examinations in which painting and the other arts figured prominently. Mai-Mai Szes translation of the Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting: Painting is not a profession but an extension of the art of living; the practice of the tao of painting is part of the traditional Tao of conduct and thought and is an expression of maturity; the great masters first distinguished themselves as officials, scholars, or poets and many were expert calligraphers before they turned to painting; in the Tao of painting a painter underwent rigorous intellectual discipline and intensive training of memory. He acquired a store of knowledge crowned by the essence of Chinese thoughtthose ideals and ideas of painting comprehensible to all who had the same training. Ancient wisdom molded his character and nourished his innermost resources.

At the root of Chinese aesthetics: painting as an activity which at once brings the artist into unity with and makes manifest the cosmic principle of Tao. It is essentially a non-naturalistic conception of art. The Chinese painter was not concerned, except incidentally to the pursuit of other aims, to imitate the appearance of things or to represent things ideally as he would like them to be or as they ought to be or even to reveal some metaphysical reality behind the appearances of things.

The cultivation and practice of painting were thought of as a ritualistic activity creating an embodiment of the cosmic force of order which infuses all reality, human society, and the individual personality. While the Western artist typically aimed to produce a replica of reality, actual, imagined, or ideal, the Chinese artistalthough he might in fact do thismade it his first aim to bring his own personality into keeping with the cosmic principle so that the Tao would be expressed through him, and thus in his painting he would act in unison with the natural order and his work would be imbued with and would reflect the Tao.

In the West art criticism was for the most part either technical, devoted to the description and appraisal of the depicted subject matter and how well it was depicted, or it was concerned with diverse ulterior functions: educative, propagandist, decorative, devotional, and so on. The basic attitudes and deeper implications of Chinese aesthetics, while also technical, are so different from those found in our tradition that they are not easily formulated in the language to which we have become habituated. Since naturalism was not a major influence in Oriental art, the kind of criticism that we call aesthetic, i.e. that criticism which arises from a concern with the work of art itself as an object for contemplation, arose earlier.

A refined appreciation of the aesthetic qualities of calligraphy preceded and set the standard for the aesthetic of painting. The aesthetic principles of calligraphic brushwork constituted the core of appreciation in painting. Painting and calligraphy were regarded as allied arts; they used the same equipment, depended on the same techniques, shared the same aims, and were appraised by the same standards. Calligraphy in the Oriental sensethe embodiment of Tao in the manipulation of the manipulation of the brushhas little in common with such calligraphic styles as International Gothic or art nouveau.

The Six Canons of Painting dominated Chinese aesthetics for centuries. Monochrome painting was perfected to a very high level and it was a common saying that if you have ink, you have the Five Colors. The Chinese connoisseur cultivated a uniquely subtle sensibility to the intrinsic qualities of line and the physical skills involved took years of practice and self-discipline to perfect.

The styles of brushstroke were elaborately classified:

Luan ma tsun, brushstrokes like tangled hemp Ho yeh tsun, brushstrokes like veins on a lotus leaf Chieh so tsun, raveled rope strokes Tsuan tien, dotting tufted stroke And so on.

Two things stand out as most important for understanding Chinese aesthetic concepts:
The large extent to which the language of Chinese appreciation and criticism is rooted in the aesthetics of calligraphy (in the Chinese sense) When Chinese writers speak of emotion and expression in painting they connect these things with calligraphic techniques rather than subject matter.

This requires a mental shift to understand properly. In the West technique has typically been regarded as an instrument only, one that provides the artist with the mechanical equipment for imitating reality, communicating his message, expressing his personality, or embodying emotional appeal through the choice and manipulation of subject matter.

In the Chinese tradition the emotional appeal of a painting, its expressive content, the personality of the artist, resides in the technique of the brushstroke. The most emotional paintings for the Chinese connoisseur are paintings which for the Western observer are most neutral paintings of bamboos, louts plants, birds, flowers. The bamboo offered more subtle possibilities of expression than dramatic or anecdotal figural scenes. It is in the rhythm and the quality of the stroke, the technique of the brush, which embodies the spirit of the Tao.

In the West, owing to the prevalence of the naturalistic attitude, specifically aesthetic criticism started late and in consequence of this European languages are weak in aesthetic terms. (1700s compared to at least two thousand years) When we are confronted with a painting and wish to indicate the qualities which render it a rewarding object for aesthetic contemplation, we can only use indirect language and hope to be understood.

Chinese criticism has a vocabulary of aesthetic terms which are supported by a long and familiar tradition of appreciation, enriched but not substantially changed over 1,800 years. But this vocabulary has no precise equivalents in our language. Both in the case of Chinese and Indian aesthetics there exists in Western languages no terminology by which to translate the most basic terms, and lacking the vocabulary the very concepts are hard to conjure up.

To understand Chinese aesthetics we must constantly be alert to reject inappropriate associations with the Western naturalistic attitude. To help make the appropriate mindset adjustments, a very approximate analogy between the Chinese habit of mind and Mondrians search for objective laws of plastic composition could be made. But whereas Mondrian thought it necessary to eschew representation and restrict himself to geometric design in the attainment of these laws, the Chinese assumed that the objective rules and rhythms are embodied in all things as the principle of their growth or structure and the representational artist must identify himself with them.

Mondrian on Art: Modernisms search for foundations

Letter to H.P. Bremmer in 1914: I construct lines and color combinations on a flat surface, in order to express general beauty with the utmost awareness. Nature (or, that which I see) inspires me, puts me, as with any painter, in an emotional state so that an urge comes about to make something, but I want to come as close as possible to the truth and abstract everything from that, until I reach the foundation (still just an external foundation!) of things I believe it is possible that, through horizontal and vertical lines constructed with awareness, but not with calculation, led by high intuition, and brought to harmony and rhythm, these basic forms of beauty, supplemented if necessary by other direct lines or curves, can become a work of art, as strong as it is true. Following Helena Petrovna Blavatsky Theosophical movement, Mondrian believed that it was possible to attain a knowledge of nature more profound than that provided by empirical means, and much of his work was inspired by his search for that spiritual knowledge.

Broadway Boogie Woogie; Donated by Maria Martins To MoMA; Martins was likely the inspiration for Etant Donnes

The Six Canons of Painting

First Canon. Chi yun sheng tung. Spirit resonance which brings life movement. Chi is a key word in all traditional Chinese art theory; it is the principle of vital energy which pervades the whole of animate and inanimate nature (Chinese thought did not make an absolute distinction between organic and inorganic, spiritual and material) and it was conceived as a quasi-materialistically as something between animal magnetism and mental energy in a human being. It expressed character and personality insofar as a person had brought himself into consonance with Tao. Chi is a principle of orderliness and ritual propriety which carried moral implications.

Yun means something like sympathetic vibration, overtones, or resonance, with the compound chi yun expressing (with some element of metaphor) the sympathetic resonance as of a musical note between the vital energies of the individual and the vital principles that transfuse nature. The translation spirit resonance has been adopted by some. In Chinese, the term held certain precise and well understood implications. Chang Keng (1700s): It is something beyond the feeling of the brush and the effect of the ink, because it is the moving power of Heaven, which is suddenly disclosed. [Note: be careful not to understand heaven in the Western sense]. But only those who are quiet can understand it.

Wu Chen (1280-1354): When I begin painting I am in a state of unconsciousness; I suddenly forget I am holding the brush in my hand. The demand is for complete concentration upon the object with elimination of all distractions until the painter becomes, as it were, identified with the object. Originality in the sense of creating something new and unprecedented was not the objective. Chang Yen-yuan: His conception was kept whole in his mind before he used the brush so that when the painting was all finished the conception was embodied in it, and therefore it was all divine breath.

The painter must have such absolute mastery over the technique of the brush that during the activity of painting he can give complete expression to the chi without distracting awareness of the physical process of painting; even in one brushstroke one should be able to see the chi. Object and self alike are forgotten. [Compare to Western Modernism]

This Chinese ideal of concentration and spontaneous execution has sometimes been quoted as a parallel for modern techniques of unconscious painting used by the Surrealists or the spontaneous and undirected work of some Abstract Expressionists. It is, however, almost completely the opposite. [Perhaps a topic for a compare and contrast item on the midterm?] The Chinese painter worked spontaneously only after an elaborate preparation consisting of meditation on an idea or concentration on an object, a discipline which required training and cultivation, and he had available a perfected technique of expression.

The result to which he aspired [remember our working definition of aesthetics here!] was not an expression of his own subconscious imagery but the embodiment of a concept which he had painstakingly achieved by deliberate concentration and the enhancement of his mental energies into harmony with the outside world. [Note: for the Western observer to assume that what the Chinese painter is really doing is tapping into the unconscious psyche is to assume, without having really understood or experienced another viewpoint, that the Western conception of personality, emotion, and psychology is the true oneeven though there is debate in psychology and related fields about basic concepts in these fields as well as their application].

Chinese Aesthetics vs. Modernist trends in art

Nor did the Chinese aesthetic ideal provide for the painter to be lead and guided by the material medium in the course of his work. Feeling for material was embodied in the acquired technique and, according to some, nowhere else has the Chinese sensibility for materials (ink, jade, etc) been equaled. But the awareness of the possibilities of the medium was there at hand when the artist began his work and could be drawn on and used without distraction or hesitation. The modern idea that an artist may or should be guided by the accidental qualities of his materials during the working out of his conception and the execution of the work was foreign to the main Chinese tradition.

How often do we try to understand Chinese art and the Chinese aesthetic filtered exclusively through the 7+7, especially when we make so much of their use of negative space and gradations of value? How much do we miss? The 7&7 (which by themselves do not convey meaning) are part of a narrow approach in the Western aesthetic; theyve become almost canonical. When studying the art of other cultures, their use must be supplemented with an understanding of that cultures aesthetic.

One of the important results of chi yun was the quality of spontaneity and naturalness (tzu jan), prized both in Chinese art and life. As a quality of brushwork, it was essential; with regard to representational matter it ranked with chen (truth) as the highest attainment. It includes the idea of naturalness in the sense that the action of painting would seem to take place of its own accord like a natural process.

The quality of sheng-tung, life movement or rhythm, could be pointed out immediately by a Chinese critic but is very hard to express in English. To a Westerner it might seem like this concept refers to the visual illusion of movement or life. A Chinese critic would more naturally illustrate the quality from an ink painting of bamboos, trees, or mountains. The idea of visual illusion is absent from the Chinese concept of life movementthere is no attempt to create an illusion that the object is in movement or just about to move or that there is repose after movement. The quality of sheng-tung arises when the individual brushmovements and the rhythm of their combination and relations in a painting reproduce and as it were repeat the characteristic movements of growth in the object, the growth rhythms by which, for example, a bamboo differs from a lotus or a willow from a beech, the flight of a swallow from the movements of a quail. A concern for verisimilitude is often thought of as destruction of life movement and chi.

Second Canon. Ku fa yung pi. Bone structure, a technique of the brush. The phrase ku fa is derived from the pseudo-science of reading a mans character from his bones and skeletal structure; as applied to art, it can be seen as referring to the strokes which set up the basic structure of a composition. Hua Lin: Although these few strokes may be entirely covered up, the painting must have their strength to stand up; otherwise, even scarecrows would have the forms of men. Although the idea of a painting having a basic structure is familiar in the West, it has its own sense in the Chinese tradition, For instance, in a painting of mountain ku fa arose from the interplay between rhythms of silhouette with the characteristic brushstrokes which indicated the geological structure of the mountains. Ku fa referred to firm and vigorous brushstrokes, a calligraphic technique of using the brush, and not a rough draft of the objects structure.

Third canon. Ying wu hsaing hsing. Reflecting the object, which means drawing its forms. It is sometimes said that Chinese art depicts the spirit whereas Western art the appearance of things. Cheng Heng-lo: Western painting is painting of the eye; Chinese painting is painting of the idea. The Third Cannon is concerned with drawing in the sense of establishing the mass, shape, and particular essence of each object rather than its formal resemblance. The expression hsiang means something very different from photographic verisimilitude: after just on or two strokes, the image is already reflected in them. (Acker)

Chinese art criticism is filled with warning against the truth to nature that Ancient Greeks and Renaissance thinkers took as the supreme goal of artthe verisimilitude that aspires to produce a replica that will be mistaken for the original. Kuo Hsi (1020-75): When the artist paints mountains as they really are the result will resemble a map. Such mistakes arise from a lack of the ability to select things. Admiration for the photographic was regarded as vulgar, of one who is unable to appreciate the spiritual beauty of brushwork and the resonance of the life force.

Chang Yan-yuan (1600s): What can be seen with the eye is color and shape; what can be heard with the ear is sound and noise. But, alas, the people of this generation think that form and color and sound and noise are means by which they can come to understand the essence of Tao. This is not so.

The aesthetic of a time, culture, group or person:

Is

often the unknown or intangible that is sought after

For

the Romantics, this was, in part, the Sublime For the Chinese, it was the qualities described in the 6 Canons this generation think(s) that form and color and sound and noise are means by which they can come to understand the essence of Tao. This is not so

When traditional Chinese writers speak of realistic representation they refer to physiognomic properties, such as solitude, menace, or gaiety of visible objects rather than scientifically measurable shapes and colors. The Chinese were most concerned with the physiognomic properties that are most indicative of the individual and the type: the featheriness of trees, the spikiness of reeds, the characteristic placing and posture of vegetation in a landscape, the texture and conformation of rock formations, the lightness of butterflies, the hairiness of animals; the expressive poise or gesture, the attitude of deprecation, the dignity of an eagle or emperor*

The concern is with those qualities for which no exact word exists yet which might be said to be the essence or spirit of those things. Chinese art sought not to imitate but to suggest these things. The Chinese had a highly developed sensibility for the sensuous effects of the work of artline, stroke, tonal values, balance of void and object, etcbut an inherent antipathy for the imitation of the sensuous appeal of external things except to the extent that these were related to physiognomic properties.

Rowley: To the Chinese, sensuous beauty resided neither in richness of effect nor in physical appeal, but in elegance, refinement, and discrimination. The appeal to the sense was ever tempered by the activity of the mind. (These qualities, i.e. elegance, etc., are what we would refer to as aesthetic.).

Dutch still life that illusionistically reproduced in pigment the textures of fur, lace, the sheen of metal or glass, the tactile smoothness of silk or velvet, is at the opposite pole from the Chinese desire to suggest aesthetic qualities behind these surface appearances. Still further removed is the Impressionist style that seeks to put realistically onto canvas the play of light and color, dissolving the object into optical impression. [Why?]

Above: Willem Kalf, 17th century

Shih (pictorial reality) is that awareness of immediate presence which in Western art also sometimes strikes the observer with the impact of a blow. It does not depend on photographic reality or fullness of detail. It is strongly evident in the shapes on Tanguy, the fantasies of Dounaier Rousseau as in the angels of Giotto.

In Chinese art it is tied more closely than in Western art to vitality of technique and vividness in the depiction of physiognomic properties. Immediate presence is not bound up with illusionistic three-dimensional space; the Chinese artist did not tend to think of his picture as an arrangement of forms within a defined area on which he created an illusion of deeper or shallower space terminated by a background, as in the West.

Rather, the paradigm of Chinese painting was the scroll, which was opened gradually and read consecutively in time by the observer, not seen as a whole.

Li Gonglin (1049-1106 A.D.) Song Dynasty Handscroll, Ink and color on silk

Thus the mutual relation of objects in space was less important that the tension between object (shih) and void (hsu). In Chinese art the void is of prime importance as a positive source of tension and not to be confused with the negative space between objects which the Westerner speaks of.

Fourth Canon. Sui lei fu tsai. Correspondence to type, which has to do with the laying on of colors. In Chinese art, color symbolism was more important than its representational functions. Color was attached to the object and was rarely a compositional element. (Compare to the 7&7). He who has ink has all five colors: the sensuous beauty of pigment color as an end in itself was little exploited by Chinese artists, and color played a relatively small role in their general thinking about art. Their aesthetic of color (i.e. ideas and ideals embodied in their use and thinking about color) was determined techniques of monochromatic ink washes for the representation of mood and atmospheremore connected with an elaborate aesthetic of ink (a subject in an of itself). A jejune approximation of the idea might be: the mood and atmosphere of a picture are to be achieved by an appropriate technique of ink wash, keeping in mind that the emotional impact of a work depended more on brush and ink technique than formal representation of subject matter.

Fifth Canon. Ching ting wei chih. Organization and planning, which involves placing and arranging. In the Chinese tradition there was no mathematical system of proportion applied to either individual figures or the composition as a whole. Composition in the Western sense is not discussed at all except incidentally in terms when small figural groups should be used to provide a countertension for a void. In Chinese theory the organization of a painting was a matter of equilibrium of tensions, the balancing of contrasts, grouping in such a way as that the character of the group balanced and was balanced by the individuality of the units (groups were seldom of more than five units). It was as much psychological as mathematical. Design aimed for simplicity and economy rather than complexity and emphasis was on the expressive character of technique and its power to suggest the physiognomic properties of the subjects depicted. A classic example: Six Persimmons of Mu Chi (1200s)

Sixth Canon. Chaun mo I Hsieh. Transmitting models, which involves reproducing and copying. The high importance that Chinese art education (as opposed to the labor model of the Ancient Greeks) on copying old masters has often been misunderstood.

The most important feature of painting was the brush and ink technique, which for them was expressive of the personality and character of the artist and which, more than the subject or composition, embodied the results of the artists absorption in his theme, his identification with the life principle. This was a thing that could not be copied by ruler or tracing paper, measurement or accuracy of eye.

Its essence lay in spontaneity, and a man who could reproduce another artists technique with sufficient mastery to satisfy the connoisseur had necessarily to that extent assimilated his artistic personality. The purpose of copying was to follow and transmit to posterity the methods and principles developed and tested by the masters, and so to sustain the Tao of paintingboth to train oneself in the right path and to help pull the great cart of tradition.

Mai-mai Sze: In copying, seek to pass on the essence of the masters brush and methods. In the West, the values placed on originality and self expression only date from the Romantic movement of the 1800s (with its roots in the 1700s). China is the only highly organized civilization that, from an early date, recognized and valued both originality and the expression of personality in art. Hsieh Ho: To transmit without originating is not what painting puts first. Within the paths hallowed by Chinese tradition Chinese painting set a high store by the expression of personality. The painting was infused with the objective spirit of the universal life force, the ordering principle of the Tao; but the concretization of the Tao in each individual was the highest expression of his personality.

Within the paths hallowed by Chinese tradition Chinese painting set a high store by the expression of personality. Some contemporary Western artists set up parameters within which they must work, almost as a kind of false tradition that they impose on themselvesbut not for the purpose of establishing a tradition but as conceptual constraints. See, for instance, Jennifer Bartlett and Sol Lewitt.

Roger Goepper connects this respect for originality and expression to the amateur status of the Chinese artist: This evolutionis intimately linked with the genesis of the conception of an artist who does not feel his activity to be a profession, who has largely freed himself from the shackles of nonartistic demands and whose task is no longer presented to him by society at large for a specific purpose. Art has become a matter for the individual, above all for the creator. Compare to status of poet in contemporary society; $5 per linebut much freedom.

Critical Standards of Chinese Art

Although terminology varied, traditional bases of appraisal remained fairly constant and based partly on standards for calligraphy. The lowest level, neng or competent: he who has mastered the rules of style and by hard work and practice has acquired the ability to render the visible form of things. When brushwork is of a higher order, colors appropriate, and expression clear and harmonious, the painter may be placed in the miao (marvelous) class. The third and highest class is the painter whose work has the life-movement resulting from spirit-resonance, called the principle of Heaven. Some critics identified a higher class: supreme effortlessness and spontaneity. This approximates most closely the Romantic conception of the genius. However, it differed in that it was seen mostly in mystics and recluses who by meditation had achieved union with the Tao and who manifested this quality in forms so simplified that they became intangible or so obliterated that they suggest emptiness that is non-spatial.

Chinese Aesthetics: A Summary

Summary: In Chinese aesthetics, art is non-naturalistic. Attention is concentrated on the artwork as a reality in its own right, which by its structural and technical rhythms bodies forth and makes manifest the unifying cosmic principle of the Tao. The artwork may be thought of as expressing the personality of the artist Tao the extent that it has been brought into union with the Tao. But self-expression is only justified in the Chinese tradition (as in the Indian tradition) if, by self-discipline, the artist has brought his empirical personality into harmony with cosmic Reality so that by expressing himself he is in fact expressing the spirit of a higher, more ultimate Being or Reality. Art was thought of as a ritualistic activity by which the cultivated personality is manifest and leaves it mark on the history of civilized society even as it embodies the Tao.