I've been reading The Chinese on the Art of Painting by Osvald Siren. A translated excerpt from a text by art critic Teng Ch'un made me chuckle:
Someone said that Kuo Jo-hsu went too far, but I do not think so, therefore I now place the high officials and hermit scholars in two different classes, thus establishing my own humble opinion. Those who are capable of clear criticism must accept my opinion.
I'm not sure if English was Siren's first language, or whether he was just an academic, but his translations are clumsy and his general prose style is absent-minded, so translated excerpts tend to sound a bit babel-fish goofy anyway, but I really liked the idea of everyone having to accept Teng Ch'un's humble opinion. If they were capable of clear criticism, of course. Otherwise they could tell him to stuff himself.
Anyway…
I've long found myself far more drawn to traditional Chinese and Japanese painting than to the European tradition, and I do have some ideas why, but they recurred to me again this evening in a slightly different, or perhaps just very slightly more focused form. Really the refinement of attitude is only very minor, but it occurred to me that in Western art, traditionally, there has been much more of a tendency to murder by dissection. That is, I think, the defining tendency of Western thought generally. The reason I have had so little response to the great oil paintings in the various Western galleries I have wandered through, and such absorbed fascination when, for instance, seeing a Sesshu exhibition in Kyoto, is that, quite simply, to make the most ludicrous but necessary generalisation ever, Western art is completely dead. It has been pre-murdered by Western thought.
Let's go back to one of Siren's badly translated excerpts from the ancient Chinese texts of art criticism:
By revolving their thoughts and preparing the brush (licking the brush) the painters can represent the characteristics of everything, but there is only one method by which it can be done thoroughly and exhaustively. Which is that? It is called the transmitting of the spirit. People think that men alone have spirit; they do not realize that everything is inspirited. Therefore Kuo Jo-hsu despised deeply the works of common men. He said that though they were called paintings, they were not painting (as art), because they transmit only the forms but not the spirit. Consequently the manner of painting which gives the resonance of the spirit and the movement of life is the foremost. And Kuo Jo-hsu said that it has been practised only by high officials and hermit scholars, which is correct.
To me this is a mixture of what is so obvious that it hardly needs saying – although the obvious does seem to need repeating from time to time – and the frankly bizarre, in the form of weird, archaic Chinese hierarchical 'issues' that I don't claim to understand. (Perhaps there's a connection? I mean, part of the murderous dissecting quality of the Western mind is its ridiculous dualism, which is also the dualism that leads to 'progress', real or so-called, because there is the constant dynamic of thesis, antithesis and – hopefully – synthesis, which can perhaps be seen in constant revolutions of thought and fashion. By contrast, Imperial China was, I believe, a place of great stasis. Teng Ch'un himself, writing at round about, or shortly after, 1167, states: "Since olden times there have been many amateurs who have studied the art of painting very carefully. Consequently the records about it form more than one book. But in the T'ang period Chang Yen-yuan collected all the information about famous painters and classified them. His work reaches from Hsuan Yuan (prehistoric time) until the first year of Hui-ch'ang (841) and is called Li Tai Ming Hua Chi. In the present dynasty Kuo Jo-hsu wrote the T'u Hua Chien Wen Chih, which reaches from the first year of Hui-ch'ang to the seventh year of Hsi Ning (1074). These two books are the most important; other books are simply repetitions." In other words, there had been so little change in art criticism and the philosophy of art since prehistoric times, that you only really needed to read two books to know the whole lot. This sense of stasis actually fascinates me. I know many people would be appalled by it, but I find it in many ways attractive. I could go on about the implications, but this was meant to be a short post.)
The transmitting of the spirit… To me it can't really be argued that this is what art is all about, and, traditionally, Chinese art achieves this much more readily than the European tradition. I look at Chinese paintings with the same sense of refreshment and unwearying fascination that I have when looking at a tree, or at clouds. It truly is art created in the spirit of nature. It is alive, as opposed to dead Western art, upon which I can't keep my eyes resting for very long before I turn stalely away with a stifled yawn. (Ridiculous but necessary generalisation.) But no, actually, no, the generalisation isn't even that ridiculous for me. It's not really that much of an exaggeration. There's something of the textbook about Western art. Oriental art, traditionally… I can feeling it breathing back at me, the way the leaves of a tree breathe. And, of course, the fact that this 'can't be argued' is highly objectionable to Western artists and intellectuals, because they're all about argument. That's their thing. Thesis, antithesis and synthesis. That's what they do. Personally, I prefer photosynthesis, but, you know, the Western artist can't sit still long enough for that. You have to overthrow the last thing and then overthrow the thing you've just replaced it with.
All this leads me, of course, to Tanizaki Jun'ichiro, and since all roads lead to Tanizaki, where else? In particular I want to mention his long essay In Praise of Shadows, which is to me such a key text, and such a precious text, that I hardly even dare mention it here in case it becomes too popular or something and is dragged out of the shadows where its title tells us it belongs. I will continue nonetheless. In this essay Tanizaki laments the fact that Japan was unlucky enough to collide with a "superior civilisation" and therefore be forced to adopt the technology of that civilisation rather than develop a technology more suited to its own culture and spirit. Western paper, he tells us, is no good for writing on with a Japanese brush. The Western phonograph destroys the subtleties of the silence between notes on which traditional Japanese music depends. Technology is not culturally neutral; it comes with all kinds of cultural assumptions, which it forces upon any who find they must use it.
History has taken the turn that it has, but perhaps it could have taken another. If Western art is defined by the tendency to murder to dissect, then how much more so Western technology? Western art is dead, and Western technology is death. But what if there could be another kind of technology that was full of the transmission of the spirit and alive, breathing the same air as nature? Wouldn't that be a better path to take than the one we presently tread?
Those who are capable of clear criticism must accept my humble opinion.
To me the perspective in Chinese painting transcends the mathematical realistic way of seeing of Western art. If you ever have a chance to go to China , you will see how clearly the paintings depict the landscape , culture and philosophy. (the mountains really do jut out of the clouds like that). Perhaps it is because so much of the art is stylized. All Chinese artists learn the basic brush strokes, the style, how to paint a Chrysanthemum, a cloud etc. And then once the painter has learned those basics she is able to modify it to her own style. I don’t know. I do know that many Chinese artists are frustrated by these constraints and the results (in modern abstract and installation art) are incredible. Maybe our eyes long for something new…
I appreciate this style of eastern photography.
Hello. Thank you. I’ll answer later. Have a deadline today.
By the way, I did notice the commentary under Wordsworth’s poem, to which I posted a link:Yes, another one of these. There is a discernible attitude, among some poets,
that book learning (and science in particular) is somehow ‘unnatural’ and
‘unpoetic’, and that by its pursuit the human race is abandoning its
collective spirituality, so to speak, and moving away from nature.
This has spawned a whole brood of fallacies and misrepresentations, from
Rousseau’s unfoundedly praised ‘noble savage’ to Whitman’s unjustly reviled
‘learned astronomer’.[1]
But enough of the rant – what about the poem? Well, even considered apart
from its viewpoint, it’s not that great a poem. The tone is sententious, the
form correct but dull. And if he was trying to present nature as infinitely
more attractive than books – well, let’s just say I’ve seen it done better.
In fact, the only reason I’m running this at all is that my irritation at
the attitude displayed occasionally calls for an outlet, and the poem made a
good excuse :)He’s right – or I agree with him – that it’s not a good poem, but it has given us the phrase ‘murder by dissection’, which is, I think, a very brilliant phrase, and very true. As for the discernible attitude which he decries, well, of course, nothing is ever that simple (is it?), but… well, I happen to be someone with a particularly strong dose of the attitude in question. He doesn’t give his reasons for thinking it’s not true, of course. He just doesn’t like that attitude. Well, you know, close your eyes and ears then. Don’t look at what we’re doing to the planet. Don’t hear the news. Everything’s perfectly fine.I will answer your actual comments, don’t worry. Or perhaps you should.
Well, the Tannister, as we call him around here, is always worth re-reading.I really want to address some of those points you’ve made, but I’ll have to do it later, because I still have a little work to do.
Justin Isis writes:
I actually liked Tanizaki more before he went all traditional. When he was younger he seemed genuinely interested in some kind of cross-cultural synthesis (I guess this falls into thesis, antithesis, etc. the whole Hegelian procedure), mixing Eastern and Western culture. This was also the era of moga, mobo, Taisho art, etc. I feel like history took a kind of crossroads there; there could have been a genuinely cross-cultural country that came out of that instead of the militarism and fascism that resulted in reality. I almost feel like that period had a better cross-culture than actually exists there now, in certain respects – there was less actual Coca Cola being shoved at people and foreign culture (okay, *American* culture) actually *imposed* like it was after the war. Instead there were strange hybrids, strange forms of architecture and clothing that arose naturally from greatly different styles coming into contact.Similarly, I find Tanizaki’s earlier works more interesting than his later ones. In books like “Naomi” when he’s conflicted about modernity and the influence of the West, I can relate to him a lot. That book feels ahead of its time in a lot of ways. But whenever he’s writing historicals, I find it harder to be interested. Keep in mind I’m not saying the turn of mind he later took was “wrong,” I just find his earlier lifestyle easier to relate to. Here’s a quote from him about this period:”I discovered that, as a modern Japanese, there were fierce artistic desires burning within me that could not be satisfied when I was surrounded by Japanese. Unfortunately for me, I could no longer find anything in present-day Japan, the land of my birth, which answered my craving for beauty…I would have to seek from the West objects to satisfy my craving for beauty, and I was suddenly overcome with passionate admiration for the West…I felt an uncontrollable desire to learn everything there was to be known about the countries of Europe that have given birth to these many astonishing works of art, and about the various aspects of the daily lives of the superior race of men living there. Everything labelled as coming from the West seemed beautiful and aroused my envy. I could not help looking at the West in the same way that human beings look up to the gods…I made up my mind that the only way to develop my art fully was to come into ever closer contact with the West, if only by an inch closer than before, or even by totally assimilating myself into the West.”Strong words, again, interesting that later in life he went in the opposite direction. I usually find his writing the most interesting when the tension between the two ways of thought and living is the highest. Again, “Naomi,” there is a lot happening in that book, it can’t be taken as a straightforward satire or parody, it’s actually very difficult to work out what the ‘message’ of that book is, if there is one, and what Tanizaki actually thinks of his characters. You could look at Naomi as a horrible person, but from another perspective she’s actually a strong woman, a strong character. It’s worth re-reading.
“To me the perspective in Chinese painting transcends the mathematical realistic way of seeing of Western art. If you ever have a chance to go to China , you will see how clearly the paintings depict the landscape , culture and philosophy. (the mountains really do jut out of the clouds like that). Perhaps it is because so much of the art is stylized. All Chinese artists learn the basic brush strokes, the style, how to paint a Chrysanthemum, a cloud etc. And then once the painter has learned those basics she is able to modify it to her own style. I don’t know. I do know that many Chinese artists are frustrated by these constraints and the results (in modern abstract and installation art) are incredible. Maybe our eyes long for something new…”Well, I’ve been to Taiwan, and definitely want to go to the Mainland some day. In fact, I’d love to be fluent in Mandarin. I love the sound of it, and the look of Chinese text. There are all sorts of paradoxes at play in the relation between freedom and repression in culture – paradoxes that seem to become more apparent when you compare different cultures, such as East and West. Longing for something new… Yes, I suppose so. I can’t deny a significant conservative (yes, with a small ‘c’) streak in myself, though. There’s a Lovecraft quote, “What we hate is simply change itself.” I can understand that. Then again, there are different kinds of change, or ‘progress’. In many ways, the stasis in China might have owed a great deal to a philosophy of flow. I’m not sure. Maybe I’m wrong. I certainly don’t think the interplay of these forces is simple to explain or adumbrate, by any means.
I love the paradoxes.
“I love the paradoxes.”Yes, they’re the best bit. Throw away holiness and wisdom,and people will be a hundred times happier.Throw away morality and justice,and people will do the right thing.Throw away industry and profit,and there won’t be any thieves.If you want to become whole,let yourself be partial.If you want to become straight,let yourself be crooked.If you want to become full,let yourself be empty.If you want to be reborn,let yourself die.If you want to be given everything,give everything up.And so on.I personally find Stephen Mitchell’s translation of the Tao Te Ching to be the best:http://acc6.its.brooklyn.cuny.edu/~phalsall/texts/taote-v3.htmlFor some reason, I’m particularly fascinated by the 20th chapter, which is somehow a bit enigmatic:http://acc6.its.brooklyn.cuny.edu/~phalsall/texts/taote-v3.html#20Of course, famous in the Tao Te Ching is this:Those who know don’t talk.Those who talk don’t know.I think I demonstrate this quite thoroughly with every blog entry that I write.
Hello Dantesoft.Thank you for the link. That’s quite fascinating. I wasn’t aware of Yamamoto’s work, but I like his approach. Talking of technology, one item I am rather fond of is my digital camera. I mean, I even specifically like the digital one that I have, rather than hankering after one that uses film. I wonder why that is. I think it’s partly because it feels like some gadget like they used to use on Blake’s 7 or something. (Another item of technology I was very fond of was my pink rice cooker, which I left in Kyoto. I miss it.) For some reason I like photographing trees. I sometimes regret walking past a tree if I don’t have my camera.
“I actually liked Tanizaki more before he went all traditional. When he was younger he seemed genuinely interested in some kind of cross-cultural synthesis (I guess this falls into thesis, antithesis, etc. the whole Hegelian procedure), mixing Eastern and Western culture. This was also the era of moga, mobo, Taisho art, etc.”I like the Taisho period, what I know of it. And apparently the Taisho Emperor was completely hatstand, too. And, as I’m sure you know, I love this kind of thing:http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/hsc/evrev/img/00206034.jpgIt's hard for me to pick favourites with Tanizaki, but I think that the work of his that I love most is A Portrait of Shunkin and Some Prefer Nettles. And, thinking about it, those are pretty damned traditional, but it’s the kind of traditional that only happens after you’re aware that the tradition is slipping away. In a sense, it’s a more sumptuous treatment of those traditions than ever occurred when they were healthy and people took them for granted. There is something I relate to deeply in the old geezer figure in Some Prefer Nettles who’s incredibly fussy about all the traditions that are transmitted through art and so on, and who has this kind of girlfriend who he’s more or less picked because he thinks he can mould her into some ideal of art and tradition. There’s a sense here of coming home to something, and I’m not sure that I can articulate exactly what it is. I will, in fact, have to read it again and give it some more thought. Also, A Portrait of Shunkin is like something by Mishima. It’s perfectly polished, perfectly formed, very dramatic, and utterly obsessive, a kind of complete devotion to beauty made possible through the strictures of tradition. Of course, if Tanizaki was in some ways Mishima’s precursor, then Kafu was Tanizaki’s. However, Tanizaki strikes me as very accessible, very colourful and very… er.. juicy. Kafu is a bit sort of removed, idiosyncratic and dry… and monochrome. His work at first might seem difficult to get into. You know the phrase ‘daigomi’. I kind of feel that was made for his work. It’s like chewing something that at first seems a bit tough and doesn’t have much taste, but the more you chew the tastier it becomes, revealing all kinds of subtle flavours. Anyway, I mention him specifically because he’s a great example of the dynamic you mention of wanting to become Western, but also retreating into an excessive concern for Japanese tradition as a kind of reaction. You know, apparently he was wandering the streets of Tokyo in a Western suit and tie when just about nobody was doing that. There’s a fucking great story in Amerika Monogatari about this Japanese guy in America who doesn’t join his (Japanese) work colleagues at the bank to eat Zoni at New Year because his mother died of pneumonia after his father made her go out into the cold to fetch the bonsai in from the snow because he was always fussing about bonsai and using the right ceramic dish with the right fish and so on. And so this guy can no longer even bear to eat Japanese food. Interestingly, I believe Kafu himself, when at home, would eschew Japanese food and have red wine and bread. But… he did a Tanizaki. Before Tanizaki.And… well, Kafu was certainly an influence on the Tannister. In fact, I think it’s in the same volume of essays as In Praise of Shadows that there’s an excellent essay on Kafu’s novel During the Rains. I must have brought that with me to Wales, I’m sure, as there’s no way I couldn’t have considered that an essential.I have also heard at second or third hand of an acquaintance between Kafu and Tanizaki. I am told that Tanizaki met him at, I don’t know, some social gathering, and basically knelt before him and said, “We’re not worthy!”Which is pretty much what I did when I visited Kafu’s grave in Zoshigaya. It’s very near Soseki’s grave.
Third hand, obviously. As in, third or more than that.
Justin Isis writes:
I feel like when we get older we’re going to end up “pulling a Tanizaki” by ex. wearing business suits every day, eating only steak, eggs and potatoes, listening to classical music, attending Church weekly, and reading only Latin and Greek writers. Also you can be like “The British Empire was actually awesome! All kinds of cultural benefits were lost when colonial rule ended.” Then send letters to the Prime Minister like “Unless you return England to its true form, I’m forming a private army of young men in order to improve spiritual purity and protect the nation.”Also we have to include scenes in books where a character sees Calpis sports drink being vended in an import goods store and they flip out -“The country was being ruined by excessive industrialization, spiritual lassitude, and an inordinately high number of Ayumi Hamasaki trance remix albums…it was time to restore the nation to its true form, and in the process expire.””Chinese and Japanese painting lacked the vigour and physicality of Western Renaissance art…even the Mannerists were unfairly maligned…”Then I will be like”Ranzuki and Egg magazine are not actually good models for young women, since they encourage excessive and decadent tastes…a plain, natural look is preferable.”
Hello again Q, I wish I could add words of wisdom to what you have posted here,but as I once personally told you I do not have the sagacity or knowledge to engage in a meaningful dialogue on some of the subjects you explore (ok, I will admit that I could do such a thing but I would need the inspiration and the conviction that my time would be well spent in such an endeavour; I will also admit that I range over a wide plain in my thought process and pehaps that is a disadvantage if one had to focus on the topic you write about – or perhaps I am simply intellectually ‘lazy’). I can only ‘stand back’ and admire your profound thought process and your diligent application in bringing your thoughts onto the screen in the way you do. Long ago – and you and I will remember what I imply – we three would debate and where we could not readily postulate some concepts we would use rational argument and (I always hoped) logical intervention to get our view across. But that was long ago. It is interesting to read your thoughts on ‘paradox’I was going to paste a few here in my reply but that would only suggest that I am padding out my attempt to write a thought-provoking response in part to your erudite statements. Instead, I will post the following link (but will not be surprised if you are aware of its content) :http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_paradoxesSalutations,Lokutus
“I feel like when we get older we’re going to end up ‘pulling a Tanizaki’ by ex. wearing business suits every day, eating only steak, eggs and potatoes, listening to classical music, attending Church weekly, and reading only Latin and Greek writers.”Obviously this is exactly what will happen. It’s inevitable.I keep thinking of the old geezer in Some Prefer Nettles. I can’t remember his name, and Wikipedia refer to him simply as ‘the Old Man’:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Some_Prefer_NettlesAnyway, I seem to recall a kind of comedic aspect to his character which appeals to me, as if he’s always in the middle of some comic turn affected for the benefit of others. Like, I don’t know, I can’t remember the details… but almost as if he deliberately arranges to be pruning a flower arrangement at the moment when someone enters the room, or something like that:Visitor: I hope I haven’t disturbed you in the middle of anything.Old Man: No, not at all. I was just finishing writing the Lotus Sutra in block calligraphy on this paper fan.Visitor: Really? Old Man: Yes, I’m glad you asked that. It’s a gift for the kannushi of the Yasukuni Shrine, a splendid chap with whom I was talking just yesterday.Visitor: Hang on – a sutra for a kannushi?Old Man: Don’t be so picky. Yes. That’s right. Don’t you know about Japanese syncretism? Anyway, he happened to give me a whole consignment of osame fuda, with which I plan to travel the length and breadth of Japan next year on foot, visiting the sites from all the old poems. This is a small token of my gratitude to the kannushi. I am proposing to make a substantial financial donation to the shrine soon, too, so that a new torii may be erected with my name on it. Funny thing is, I got back here and happened to notice a tear in one of the paper panels of the shoji. Blast it, I thought, I’ll have to remove it and put in a whole new panel. Then it occurred to me – why not simply use one of the osame fuda as an attractive patch? So that’s what I did, preparing a glue paste with consecrated rice from the shrine in question so as to avoid any blasphemous overtones to the act, and there you have the results – a real touch of fuuryuu if I say so myself. Well, that’s the last of the sutra now, I’ll just call in my deshi now and we can have a good sit down and a chat with a bowl of matcha in these splendid old Bizen-yaki tea bowls…Etc.
Hello Lokutus. Good to hear from you again. I’m afraid that words like ‘erudite’ make me blush. I’m hardly that. Thanks for the list of paradoxes. No, I don’t know all of them. Not even sure how many I do without spending some time going through them. Zeno’s is a favourite, of course, with the missiles never reaching their target, mainly because, if legend is to be believed, he’d run away when people then threw missiles at him. I do love that one. The thing is, I’m sure that when I first heard that, as a child, I thought, “Well, but that’s brilliant. That’s right, isn’t it.” At the same time, of course, I knew it was wrong. I suppose I thought that thinking about things in a different way might change reality. And maybe it might.Didn’t someone come up with a similar paradox about us never dying? Instead of space being infinitely dvisible, he was talking about time being infinitely divisible. I seem to remember one like that.Yes, I’m aware of what you imply. Things change, of course. Well, there’s a French saying about that, isn’t there? I don’t change much, really, though. I mean, I happened to look at the very first page of this blog yesterday, and it was, well, rather strange. Re-reading it, I could feel how nervous I was laying my thoughts bare on the Internet like that. And I still am in a way. Another thing that hasn’t changed – I was looking for a publisher for my novel Remember You’re a One-Ball! then, four years ago, and I’m still looking for one now. Since we’re in intimate company here, I will say that, despite continuing attempts to be modest, I think this is a crime on the part of the publishing world. I really do. There’s a line in – I think – one of the Bowie biographies, and it’s talking about Bowie being around for ages and ages without making it big, and it says something like, “Bowie was a thorn in the music industry’s conscience. Why wasn’t he huge?” I’m not sure if the publishing industry has a conscience (there are endless excuses to fill the space where the conscience should be), and I think stories like the death of Robert Walser just don’t seem to bother anyone in publishing. On the contrary, the vultures gleefully descend. As they will on my death, if people still read books then. I’m sure that sounds bitter and like what the Japanese call ‘makeinu no tooboe’ (the distant howl of the losing dog), but it’s true. It’s true, and that’s why I don’t care who reads it.Anyway, apart from that I’m not doing too badly. PS Publishing have the vision and gumption to be publishing my novella Shrike soon. Perhaps that will help make a difference for me.