Brush Strokes From Seven Stars Studio

Chinese Painting and Calligraphy: On Discipline and Freedom, the Chinese Way

"Summer girl" by Fei Lingbi (Dan KJ Vercammen)

Issue 1

by Prof. Dr. Dan KJ Vercammen

Many years ago, I had a student who held the opinion that modern Chinese painters and calligraphers were not real Chinese artists, because they absorbed Western influence in their artworks. I didn’t want to start a discussion with him, because I already knew he was a narrow-minded person.

Years later, when doing fieldwork on Chinese art, I had a discussion with Chinese art professors of the famous China Academy of Art in Hangzhou on the future of Chinese fine arts. They were worried. Not so much about the obvious Western influence on art in China and elsewhere, but more so about evolving towards “Chinese” art that was not any different from contemporary Western conceptual art, i.e., art that had lost its roots.

As a European student, collector, and practitioner of Chinese calligraphy and painting, I bring my own background to the study of these “foreign” art forms. Should I refrain from introducing Western watercolor techniques in my Chinese paintings? Should I put all my Chinese calligraphic characters in a nice, straight row?

It is easy to answer these questions. Chinese artists have been incorporating foreign influence and unorthodox techniques for many ages. That is called artistic freedom. The love of freedom that is common to artists all over the world is what creates continuous evolution and new discoveries in art. Buddhism brought ancient Greek and Indian art forms to China, which were absorbed and welcomed by Chinese artists. Chinese sculpture from then on integrated the “looks” of Greek statues and later moved away from this look again. In a country where Taoism had deep roots, artists were really imbued with artistic freedom.

When Western missionaries came to China, and especially the Jesuits, they introduced Western oil and portrait painting to the Middle Kingdom. Because the Jesuits aimed at converting the Manchu imperial circles to Catholicism, they used whatever attracted the Chinese ruling class and became Confucianists themselves to gain access. They found out that their painting skills were admired, and soon they were allowed to make portraits of important Chinese (even of emperors) and of subjects that interested the imperial court (such as hunting and horses). This eventually led to Chinese painters copying Western methods and further developing them to create hybrid portraits of people, where the faces were painted meticulously in a Western fashion, and the clothes and background were represented in a Chinese impressionistic style.

Foreign influence aside, artistic freedom is characteristic of Chinese art. But so is discipline and sticking to artistic rules and thorough techniques. These are not opposites to the Chinese artist; artists need both to produce artworks of great quality. More on that view later.

As used to be customary in the West (and is still in vogue with many modern artists), Chinese artists spend a lot of time copying works of other masters. They do this until they are able to copy in such a way that their copies equal the original. This goes for people working in the traditional Chinese way and for Chinese artists who practice Western techniques.

Some anecdotes should make this clear. In the early 1980s, I was working for the sinology department of a Belgian university, and one of my tasks was assisting visiting Chinese scholars with their administrative paperwork. One of these scholars was professor Zhong Han, a great oil painter of the Beijing Art Academy. One day, to thank me for my help, he invited me to his apartment to have lunch. On his easel was his copy of the “Man with the Golden Helmet”, a work that in those days was attributed to Rembrandt. I couldn’t notice any difference between the photo of the painting in the art book that professor Zhong used and his copy (except for the size, probably). Professor Zhong was one of my Chinese art theory teachers, and I possess a traditional Chinese ink painting from his hand. He also excelled at Chinese ink painting and calligraphy, having studied those as part of his curriculum at the academy.

In those days, I also befriended other Chinese painters and calligraphers. One of them, professor Hu Zhenyu, former head of the oil painting department of the China Art Academy of Hangzhou, became my main Chinese painting teacher. Again, an oil painter, and again someone who also mastered Chinese painting. He and Zhong Han use their oil painting work to show Chinese subjects, and in that way, their paintings radiate Chineseness and continue the legacy of Chinese artists before them

"A Thousand Miles against the Wind" by Hu Zhenyu

Yet another one, Hu Yuanxiang, was a law student in Belgium, but at the same time, he was a talented calligrapher, having studied this art form with famous calligraphers. Knowing that I was practicing taijiquan, he made a calligraphy of the three characters for “taijiquan” 太极拳 for me. It is customary to use complex Chinese characters for a calligraphy in the regular writing style, but he chose to write 极 in the simplified modern form. Modernity is not the enemy of the traditional; traditional once was modernization.

I have never met a great practitioner of the arts who didn’t follow the rule: practice, practice, practice … Acquiring perfect skill is regarded as essential in Chinese art. That requires copying, copying, copying, until the desired result is reached. What is different from Western tradition is that creating a perfect copy of another artwork is regarded as a great artwork in itself. Of course, this creates problems with identification of the creator of a work of art, because the calligraphic text and the name of the original maker on the work can also be copied perfectly. But it is a problem for the Western eye, not for the Chinese who admire the art and the skill.

The opposite, the lack of practice and skill, the quick and easy approach, the empty works made by someone who lacks skill and education — that is traditionally looked down upon. In that way, Western contemporary conceptual works don’t find favor with traditional artists in China. And the fear of the professors I was discussing the future of Chinese art with was exactly that. They saw that Chinese students of art and certain Chinese artists were evolving in that direction. They were not against adopting modern techniques, they didn’t exclude abstract art (Chinese painting and art in general have always been a lot more abstract than traditional Western art), they didn’t fear “emptiness” as a technique (on some traditional Chinese works there is a lot of empty space). What they found (and I concur) is that lack of depth and lack of skill combine to what the Chinese call a lack of Qi. And then the work is practically worthless, actually non-existent as a piece of art.

Let me explain this, because it is necessary to understand the Chinese explanation of the effects a work of art has on the viewer.

Qi is the key here. Qi is everywhere. It is in us, and we are in Qi. Qi’s basic meaning is vapor rising from the soil and creating cloud layers. Its extended meaning, which was debated by many a Chinese philosopher, goes much further. In humans and other creatures, it is breath and what this life-giving breath can do in their bodies. What it does is make changes, transformations, give impulses, connect everything, create, etc. At the same time, it is all these things: change, transformation, impulse, connection, creation, …

And so, what it brings to, for instance, the human body, it also brings to the rest of the universe (which is traditionally seen as a magnification of the body, or the body is a scale model of the universe). Therefore, inanimate things are actually animate things. And that’s the right English word for it: animate. This word contains “anima”, the Latin for “breath” (also indicating an idea of spirit, which, from a Chinese point of view, would be a subtle kind of Qi).

Everything “breathes”, i.e. contains Qi. An object, just like a human, is a container of Qi and more precisely is formed by Qi and maintains its form as long as Qi keeps it that way. And this Qi is connected with the rest of the universe.

Now take a work of art. It is made by a human being, by the hands and/or by an object in the hand (a brush, for instance). The human creator is full of Qi, but the brush is, too, and the work that is being created just the same, as it absorbs the Qi of the artist through the medium. It also connects with the Qi of the universe.

The more the artist works on his/her Qi, the more the artwork will reflect this. How does the artist work on his/her Qi? For a traditional artist, this is done by continuous practice, associated with the continuous change of the universe: creation, transformation, and recreation is the way everything works. It is also how an artist works.

It further involves “spiritual” refinement: the artist expands her/his view, studies, acquires life experience, regulates her/his body, breath, and mind. (S)he looks for harmony, expressed as beauty. (S)He transforms everything into something that resonates in the universe and contributes to the life of it. Ugly things become transformed in art into genuine beauty.

The more this change happens, the stronger the Qi in the artwork and the more it can generate deep feelings and sometimes life-changing experiences in the viewer. Qi communicates through the art. But this is dependent on the artist’s labor, imaginative and technical skill. No skill, no imagination, no effort will reflect that: a work of art with very little Qi or with some Qi that is not able to convey a life force.

In Western contemporary conceptual work, there is often a need to “explain” everything, meaning the words generate the concept, because the work is not able to communicate for lack of Qi. Or the imagining is left to the viewer, who can then let the imagination roam freely. All fine, but it is the “work” (development, refinement, artistic mind) of the viewer that creates a Qi transformation or vibration then, not the work of the artist. That is still quite empty.

If you’re not agreeing with me, that’s perfectly alright. Taoists don’t want to be in the right. Views can be different; those differences all create movement, transformation, and life.

My point is that the Chinese experience of creating and viewing art is based on an underlying philosophy and observation of the universe, creation, and transformation, and that Chinese traditional artworks breathe this. Because of that, Chinese artists have always absorbed whatever was around. But they didn’t just absorb by looking at something; they had to feel it, practice it over and over again, live it, work with it, until it became natural and “of themselves”.

“Ziran” (自然), the Taoists call this: being as it is by itself; mostly translated as “naturalness” or “spontaneity”, it is not natural or spontaneous in the way we usually understand it. It is a transformed, reverted naturalness: through refining oneself and acquiring gongfu (kung-fu; i.e., skill developed through time and labor), things become or feel natural. In a Taoist view, this is reverting to a more original condition by removing layers of unnatural, taught habits that don’t belong to who we really are.

Whether we are talking about Chinese art or some other aspect of a Chinese Taoist lifestyle, the duo of discipline and freedom is always in the foreground. One is free to express oneself in one’s own way (this creates individual style), but one is also expected to stay “in line” with predecessors and tradition by copying and working hard to achieve skill and present its rendition as a work of art.

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