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Chinese Brush Painting
INTRODUCTION
The great antiquity and continuity of the
Chinese civilization is well known. Oriental watercolor, also
known as Chinese Brush Painting, is the artistic expression and
extension of that culture. It is the romance between the Chinese
brush (mao-bi) and the Chinese paper, with ink and color
pigments serving as the intermediary. It expresses the unique
aesthetics of Chinese culture and philosophy, characterized by
subtlety and a strong love of nature. It traces its development
alongside with Chinese writing and calligraphy.
It is an art form of great antiquity. For perspective, take the invention of the the Chinese brush by Meng Kuo, dated as far back as the Qin (Chin) Dynasty (ca. 200 B.C.). For paper, its invention is attributed to Cai Lun in A.D. 105 (the Han Dynasty). Thus, both paper and brush have a history of close to two thousand years!
When viewing a Chinese brush painting, one is struck by its unique mood, its simplicity, its subtlety and an ethereal quality. Various motifs abound -- flowers, birds, figures -- but landscape motif predominates. Its presentation is subdued. It has a monochrome quality dominated by tones and texture from black ink. Its use of color is spare. The mood is quiet and harmonious. Its landscape scenery has its own sense of space. It can at times be grand, dramatic and awe-inspiring, almost improbable. Other times, it is delicate and refined. But always poetic. For intimate subjects such as flowers and birds, the presentation is simple and condensed. Ink nuances rule.
PHILOSOPHY
Traditional Chinese philosophy is
governed by three schools of thought, Confucianism, Taoism and
Buddhism. Confucianism governs moral behavior, but Taoism
governs ideas. For artistic and literary endeavors, it is the
latter that rules, for it is concerned with intuition. An
influential sect of Buddhism, the Chan (Zen) sect, cast a Chinese hue onto the
great philosophy of India,and allies it with Taoist philosophy. It advocates seeking spiritual
truth by direct intuition, and non-reliance on scriptures. The
truth cannot be told in word; it must be felt and directly known.
In artistic expression, one must be subtle, and
must not overtly show, but should allow the viewer to see for
oneself. "The five colors dazzle the eye, and the five
tastes confuse the tongue", so goes a Taoist dictum. Chinese
paintings avoid dazzles but try to set the conditions for the mind
to see for itself.
This leads to the first characteristic of Chinese painting, "spiritual likeness". Chinese painting strives for "spiritual likeness". While the painting is representing a scene in nature, its goal is not just to provide an outer image of a real object, but to represent its spirits, its essence. To make this a reality, the artist must invest his own feeling and emotion onto the scene, and the scene can come alive in the mind of the viewer. There must be room for the viewer's imagination to roam. One key way to achieve this is for the representation to exhibit both likeness and "unlikeness", be imbued with a suitable degree of ambiguity. When the representation is too alike, the spirit is lost -- it is too "stiff", leaving no room for the viewer's imagination. Obviously, with too much "unlikeness", the painting will fail to convey its subject matter. This likeness-unlikeness dichotomy is especially evident in paintings of flowers and birds. There, it is to convey the idea of the flower or bird; accuracy of shape or lighting is not the primary goal.
A second characteristic is the emphasis on transcendance, the feeling of allure and life, the ability to transport the viewer to another world. In Chinese, the term is yi-jing, translated literally mind-space or idea-space, the space created by the mind or idea. Every artist must start out with an idea which he wants to realize on paper. Yi-jing, however, signifies a little more. The painting strives to bring the viewer to a space, by creating atmosphere and intrique. In landscape, the scene should draw the viewer in; it should be a place the viewer can and wants to visit, tour and even live. The Chinese describes a quality known as rhythmic vitality (qi-yun-sheng-dong in Chinese). This requires an overall unity in the composition,from not just a consonance between the various elements but also a resonance between them. The Chinese is fond of a concept of cosmic energy/vitality called "qi" (pronounced 'chi'). Rhythmic vitality also requires that the qi should be able to course freely through the space without restriction. One way to achieve this is by the masterful placement of empty space in the painting, such as mists, clouds and water.
The third characteristic primarily applies to landscape. It is the flexibility in perspective. While most Chinese landscape paintings take a viewpoint somewhat above the scenery, the painting is not restricted to a single viewpoint. This is consistent with the goal of "spiritual likeness" outlined above. The spirit of the mountain cannot be appreciated by just looking at it from one point of view. One needs to feel the mountain by traveling through it. The whole painting is structured like a recollection and an amalgamation of all the remarkable scenery taken in while hiking through the mountain. Indeed, Chinese painting comes in one format where the viewing is dynamic. Called the hand scroll, it is a long horizontal scroll that one rolls and unrolls to view. This way, one sees only a portion of the painting as a time, and progresses down the scenery as if one is traveling through the place.
TECHNIQUES
The painter sets up the moods by using
the rich tone and spontaneous effects that comes from the nature
of the Chinese brush and Chinese paper (a highly absorbent paper
sometimes known as rice paper). The brush stroke reigns supreme.
The noted painter Shi-tao of the seventeenth century wrote,
"The one brushstroke is the origin of all things, the root
of all phenomena". It is through the skillful use of the
brush that the aesthetic effects are achieved. In the
appreciation of Chinese paintings, one important component is the
examination of the brush stroke. Does it have interesting
variation in tone? How about variation in texture? Does it flow
naturally and effortlessly? Does it flow with rhythmic vitality?
The quality of the flow is also of paramount importance in
calligraphy. Indeed, painting and calligraphy are considered to
have a common origin in Chinese culture.
The Chinese brush is cylinderical in shape. It has a central core, to enable the hair to come to a point. The hair (animal in origin) is relatively pliant so that the shape of the brush can be altered (sometimes drastically) during its application. This is the key to producing a stroke of varying shapes, size, tone and texture. The artist has great facility at his disposal to achieve varied and spontaneous effects. The brush can produce exquisite lines with character. It can also produce a broad shape with spirit. The possibilities are manifold. The brush is typically held with a vertical orientation in the rest state. Three fingers are used to manipulate, and two fingers for support. This gives a greater range of movement. (The usual way to hold a pencil uses two fingers to manipulate, one finger for support, and two are idle.)
The Chinese rice paper, a common type being called Xuan paper, is thin and highly absorbent. The color or ink, when applied, will diffuse and mix somewhat, and permeates through the thickness of the paper. With the color absorbed in the paper, when it dries, the pigments are irreversibly bound to the paper, even when the paper is wet again, say in another color wash. Thus repeated washes are possible, allowing the artist to build depth and hue. A third feature of the Chinese paper is its extraordinary wet strength, allowing it to be repeatedly wet-mounted on a backing paper to produce the final painting. (Note that Chinese painting can also be done in a detailed, elaborate gong-bi style, where the artist draws with exquisite skill very fine and detailed lines to delineate the form. For this, a non-absorbent version of the rice paper is used. )
The other physical implements are the ink and the color. The Chinese ink is made of carbon black from the burning of pine or oil. The carbon black is made into a slab by a binder. Then there is the inkstone, a dish-like stone made of a very fine grained slate. Rubbing it with water against the ink stone produces the liquid ink. There is much to the making of the ink-slab or the ink stone, all part of a sophisticated culture. The color pigments used are mostly mineral in original and hence very long-lasting and non-fading, although there are also pigments of organic origin.
Finally, in recent centuries, the literati painter dominated the painting field. Rather than professionals in art institution sponsored by the imperial court, they were scholars and officials, who did paintings for enjoyment. As a result, there was a strong literary bend to the works, and poetic inscription became part of the painting. Nowadays, the painting contains two additional components, the inscription and the seal. The inscription calligraphy is integral to the painting, and so is a carved seal. Their placement serves to harmonize and complement the painting. Thus, the painting is often a composite art form, with the artist, the calligrapher, the poet and the seal carver all contributing.