The Canyon Between Western Art Training and Life

As I've been developing material for my upcoming Asian Brush Painting Workshop, it's taken me to a place I've visited before - how Eastern Arts are so very different than Western Arts.  There's only been maybe one person whose path I've crossed who is trained in Western painting but understands something about Eastern arts.  No doubt there are more, I've just not had the good fortune to cross their path.

It's such a gulf between the two forms that attempting to capture it is beyond my ability.  How to explain the concept of energy?  You know it exists.  You can feel it.  Yet, it's inexplicable.  Perhaps like love.  Thankfully, there are poets to point us in the right direction.

In Chinese calligraphy the most challenging 'painting' is a one-stroke painting.  That is, a painting consisting of just that - one 'simple' stroke of the brush.  It's the most difficult painting to execute because everything in the painting must be conveyed by that one stroke.  This is utterly foreign (no pun intended) to the Western artist and viewer.  The quote from D.T. Suzuki does hit the mark, “The arts of Zen are not intended for utilitarian purposes, or for purely esthetic enjoyment, but are meant to train the mind, indeed, to bring it into contact with ultimate reality.”

Han-shan, a Tang Dynasty poet, captured the dilemma of words saying,

“My heart is like the autumn moon,
pure as a blue-green pool,
No, this comparison sucks!
How can I explain?

How can I explain what is inexplicable?  How can you explain your experience of sex?  Indeed.

Asian Calligraphy

In what follows, I'll speak about Chinese calligraphy for both simplicity and a reflection of historical development as Chinese language migrated to both Korea and Japan.  It wasn't until the 5th or 6th century A.D. that important documents in Japan began to be written in Japanese, which is itself a modified from Chinese to reflect Japanese sentence structure and pronunciation.  Continuing, one of my sources added the following details:
"Chinese became the dominant written language form across East Asia from the Tang dynasty (618 - 907) and was practiced in both Korea and Japan, complementing their respective languages. In the case of Japanese language, the Chinese written form, kanji (kan= Chinese, ji = writing), was entirely integrated into the two existing written forms.  Japanese calligraphers will compose their work using purely kanji or sometimes uniting all three forms as in their everyday language.  In Korea, calligraphers will use either Chinese or Koean written forms. " 

In China and Japan calligraphy is the highest of art forms.  I suspect that is also true in Korea, though I don't know that for certain.  One source I consulted speaks of there being four art forms in China that are considered part of a well-lived life: calligraphy, painting, playing a stringed instrument, and the board game Qi.  This is different than what I had recalled, and one knowledgeable friend indicated that the Three Perfections are Calligraphy, Poetry, and Painting.  His comment actually conforms to my understanding.

Chinese painting is all about line in contrast to form.   Calligraphy really forms the basis, the foundation, for Chinese ink and brush painting.  For example, taking the brush's tip and making a line in contrast to lying the brush on it's side to color a larger field.  If you look closely at Chinese landscape painting, while they often will include some field of ink, for the most part they're composed of a multiplicity of line. Skillful use of the brush, learning to control the ink, combined with papers of various qualities, produces a range of painting styles.  Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is sung painting.   Michael Sullivan wrote a wonderful book by the title, the Three Perfections.

Besides these technical matters, calligraphy teaches the body practice that accompanies strong calligraphy.  If you examine some Chinese brush paintings, you will find that the brush strokes contain a strength that's developed from years of calligraphy practice.

Calligraphy is considered the highest art form, even ranking above painting.  For us Westerners, one aspect of calligraphy that's important to grasp is it's about more than writing an alphabet to construct words to write letters.  It's also a form of emotional expression.  In fact, the Chinese characters are not analogous to our alphabet.  In China, the thousands of various characters that it contains are actually pictographs and combinations of pictographs make up a word or phrase.

Typically, you'll come across discussions of there being five different styles of writing Chinese calligraphy: seal script, clerical script, cursive script, semi-cursive script, and regular script.  That is, there are five different ways of writing the same pictographs.  My personal bias is for the cursive script and my cursive script tends to be much looser than that shown in the link for cursive script above.

As for my calligraphy, I've studied with both Japanese an Chinese artists, and I just blend all that together not worrying about separating the Japanese from the Chinese.  One reason I'm not so concerned about mixing them up is because my interest lies in practicing writing the phrases as a way to develop stronger brush strokes as part of a mindfulness practice.  I've often been heard saying that "calligraphy doesn't lie."  What I mean by that is that while I'm pretty skilled at deceiving myself about how I'm doing overall, calligraphy always produces work that is a perfect mirror of how I'm really doing.

Space and Time in Art

This VERY BIG topic can only be chewed on in small chunks, and that's what I'll offer up here - a small morsel of a very rich meal.

Two-dimensional visual art, which is the form I practice, addresses - or uses - time in a wide variety of ways.  Monet studied how light changes on a cathedral’s façade and in his garden at different times of day and different seasons of the year.  Painting, like his of the cathedral, are sometimes hung in series, one after another in time.  A viewer walking past these separate images is viewing individual moments of light during a sequence of time.  The time it took him to execute them, the different times he executed them, and the time it takes the viewer to pass by and look at this series of paintings are all ways that time is used in visual art.

In Chinese scroll paintings, time is more continuous than it usually is in a single canvas executed using Western forms of composition.  Time flows as the scroll is unraveled and the next chapter of the story is revealed.

Rauschenberg executed very large prints composed of disparate bits and pieces from various points in time in contemporary culture.  Cubism deals with time by making the three-dimensional image flat and therefore takes time and compresses it.  It compresses time since it would take time to walk around the image that’s been rendered flat and therefore the viewer sees all angles at a single moment in time.   Dove Bradshaw, a contemporary American artist, addresses time explicitly in her work.  One way she does this is by executing pieces that actually change with time.

Thoughts?

Space and Time in Life

Space and time are inextricably  linked.  Not only in art, but in the sentient world in which we live.  Six years ago I was involved in a horrific auto accident in which my neck was broken in four places, one of which was a complete severing of my spine.  As my spinal cord didn't snap, but was 'only' damaged, I'm typing this as you would type, I'm breathing, walking, and living a 'normal' life.  Yet, it's a different life one that continues to unfold in surprising ways.


Recently, I became aware of some events surrounding my accident that I had no conscious memory until recently.  Wedged in what turned out to be my car, I saw all white, heard glass shattering and men yelling.  Other than those brief sense impressions I’ve got no conscious memory of smell, taste, touch, or pain.  It’s funny how there are just these other bits and pieces I do recall, like them cutting off my pants in the E.R., certain friends saying they are there, and whomever said that they needed to get me into the O.R.  Besides moments like those, my memory about any other sense impressions is a blank.


The sense impressions I do recall all seemed to occur at connected and distinct moments in time.  It's like how viewing slides used to be - one image than another.  Except there's one key difference.


Normally in life we have a sense of one moment to the next.  We usually recall what we were doing just a second ago, a hour ago, and so forth.  We have the sense of each moment’s part of the day’s movie.  There's a sense of each separate slide being part of a sequence.  That sense of continuity between moments was utterly absent for me.


When it did return, I didn’t actually realize anything like ‘oh, I’ve returned to my movie life now.’   My consciousness just returned to what I guess was normal and that must have included a sense of segmented moments also being part of a “a river of time,” in the words of Andy Goldsworthy.


What I have a felt sense of now, not just an intellectual idea, is that without a sense of time there is no sense of space.  Where this takes me is space will be revealed in time.

  

Monoprints and Monotypes

Mono-printing is just one of many printmaking methods.  Some love it and others hate it.  I know one printmaker who loathes monoprints and monotypes.  What he doesn't like about it is the absence of a 'matrix.'  By that he means some repeatable structure.  That's what monoprints are about - they are one-of-a-kind images.  (Note: A monoprint does have a repeatable image, a monotype does not have a repeatable image.  Inthis post, I'm not distinguishing between them although there is a difference).

What I like about them is the artist has to give over control of the images to the press.  With practice, the print maker develops greater skill with laying ink on the plate, using the right paper and so forth.  Yet, when the plate runs through the press, you've given up total control over the image making process.  I love that that is part of the print making process.  It's alchemy.

Monoprinting is without a doubt the most 'painterly' printmaking method.  It allows the artist to combine all sorts of additive and subtractive processes and methods as well as 'tools' ranging from rollers called breyers to cotton swabs and everything in between.  Whatever serves the artist in executing an image is fair game.

Even though mono-printing is as the name implies a singular image, that image itself may be developed using one run through the press or multiple runs through the press.  Layering thin layers of ink nad building up an image can produce some quite lovely results.

Color and Composition

Not too long ago, I was having a short conversation about color and was making a point about color being different from composition.  The woman I was talking with asked "isn't color also composition?"  Darn good question.

Yes and no.

Matisse is a good one to turn to on this topic.  He was at least somewhat known as one who had some painting that focused on color and others where he focused on composition.  Perhaps turn also to Papa Cezanne.  It's much easier to see his focus on composition as there's isn't the same riot of color going on as there is with Matisse.

It's easier to approach this topic from the vantage point of black & white photography.  This strips the picture plane down to the organization of various shapes in shades of grey.  Color is monochromatic in a b & w image.  Here we can then focus on how various shapes are arranged in that two-dimensional plane.

Can't color also be a way to organize shapes in a picture plane?  It sure can.  We're back to Matisse for one.  Here's the thing though, if you're able to see past the color to that actual organization of shapes in the picture plane, you might find that the basic structure of the painting is flawed.  Since we're so reactive to color, its easier to disguise lousy composition when using color than when painting monochromatically.

It's true that knowing some elements of Color Theory can help you play with composition using color.  For example, warm colors generally come forward and cool colors generally recede.  Large shapes generally come forward and small shapes generally recede.  Knowing this, you can put a large cool shape in front of a smaller warm shape (not overlapping) and play with the rules to achieve more tension in your painting.  This is but one example of using the rules and 'breaking' them in the aim of more effectively reaching your goal.

Society Sucks, Product and Process, and the Well-Fed Artist

The term postmodernism is used in a confusing variety of ways. For some it means anti-modern; for others it means the revision of modernist premises.  It avoids, as much as possible, the modernist desire to classify. Postmodernism partakes of uncertainty, insecurity, doubt, and accepts ambiguity.


The seemingly anti-modern stance involves a basic rejection of the tenets of Modernism - a rejection of reason, the notion of truth, the belief that it’s possible to create a better, if not perfect, society. This view has been termed Deconstructive Postmodernism.  An alternative understanding, which seeks to revise the premises of Modernism, has been termed Constructive Postmodernism.  


Maybe the entire film by the Coen Brothers, The Big Labowsky, reflected these competing themes.  There's The Dude and his life.  Then, there's Juliane Moore's character Maude.  And, who can forget Bunny, especially the scene where she asks The Dude to blow on her freshly painted toenails to help dry them, and he turns towards the pool then asks her "won't he mind?" (turning his head towards the pool to bring the passed out guy into view) with Bunny responding "Uli doesn't care about anything.  He's a nihilist."


The Surrealists (the Dali variety) had the modernist belief that their art could influence human destiny.  Later, after the war and in the period when humankind could be obliterated, surrealism of a different sort emerged (the Tapias variety).  Now, we have such practitioners as Keifer.  Maybe you wouldn't put him in the surrealist camp, but I find his work to be consistent with that view of human-kind.


In June 1970, the French writer Jean Clay observed: "It is clear that we are witnessing the death throes of the cultural system maintained by the bourgeoisie in its galleries and its museums."  Well, that certainly seems debatable.  I do agree that the church, aristocracy, and state were being replaced by a rising group who came along with the rise of a professional middle-class.  Also, we have seen a growth in Outsider Art, and street art of all sorts.  Yet, it's hard for me to see that Clay's observation as more fantasy than reality.  Though, Conceptual art helped to turn our attention towards "making" and the manipulation of materials where process was the product, there's the artist Dove Bradshaw who produces 'things' that are themselves about process and that change and degrade with time.


We can continue this line to include all of performance art including the “Happenings” of the post-WWII era, the Arte Povera and Arte Brut movements, Abstract Expressionism, and so forth.  Yet, even here, a society that values the object as our does exerts a tremendously powerful force in the art world.  That along with artist's desire to both make good work and live in heated spaces and have good food!