--An analysis on a triptych by Mu Qi and Mountain Village in Clearing Mist by Yu-JianFigure 1: Triptych: (left) Crane in a Bamboo Grove; (center) White-Robed Guanyin; (right) Monkey with Her Baby on a Pine Branch. By Mu Qi (Fa-Chang; c. early 13th century-after 1279 C.E.). Hanging scroll ink and slight color on silk; h. 70” (177.8 cm). China. Southern Song dynasty. Daitoku-ji, Kyoto Figure 2: Mountain Village in Clearing Mist. By Yu-Jian (act. mid-13th century C.E.). Section of a handscroll; ink on paper; h.30.3cm, l. 83.3cm. China. Southern Song dynasty. Idemitsu Museum of Arts, Tokyo. Since Buddhism was led into China during Han Dynasties (206 B.C-220 C.E), it has thrived through centuries, not only politically but also culturally. Despite its remarkable crackdown in mid-eighth century during Tang dynasty (618-907 C.E), it has become an influential inspiration in art world, especially in Song dynasty (960-1279 C.E). In fact, the final brief chapter of Southern Song paintings was written in the Buddhist monasteries around West Lake (Hangzhou, present Zhejiang province) in the decades just prior to the Mongol invasion of China in the 1270s.[1] Not only did it include traditional Buddhist iconographies as subject matters of traditional Chinese ink paintings, but it also employed a spontaneous artistic style which led to a radical aesthetic value of achieving mental transcendence through paintings. This kind of painting was called Chán (Zen, Japanese) paintings where Yijing (意境)of Chinese paintings was emphasized. Even though Chán Buddhism owed its root to ancient Indian Buddhism, it blended in so many indigenous Chinese elements through centuries that it became almost a signature style of China and influenced all over the world, especially Japan, Korea, and countries in Southeastern Asia. In this paper, I will explain how Buddhist iconography is represented in this abstract and expressionist style by using two paintings of Southern Song dynasty—a triptych, Crane, White-Robed Guanyin, and Gibbons, by monk Mu Qi and Mountain Village in Clearing Mist by Yu-Jian. While the former one better exemplifies how Buddhist iconographies are represented in Chán paintings, the latter is more dexterous at demonstrating how paintings of Chán Buddhism illuminate spiritual transcendence through pictorial images. This triptych Crane, White-Robed Guanyin, and Gibbons (figure 1) by Mu Qi is one of the most famous Chán paintings in the world, and it represents an interactive relationship between Buddhist iconography and familiar images. In Song dynasty, great temples maintained continuous traditions of hereditary painters who were highly trained like academic and independent professional masters, but who also lived within a rougher, freer community that often prided itself on its unconventionality and eccentricity.[2] Mu Qi who called himself “Monk from Shu” embodies such a tradition because he appears to have been both a Buddhist monk of some stature and a professional painter, but one who also painted in a simple, terse, swift style of ink drawing that appears to be typical of Chán artist generally. In this painting, the white-robed Guanyin is the center piece and has been kept at the Daitokuji temple in Kyoto for many centuries.[3] Guanyin is the most influential Bodhisattva in China and is associated with compassion in Mahayana Buddhism. Seated in a grotto in her legendary island home surrounded by mist and mountains, our Guanyin here shows supreme compassion represented by his traditional meditation pose, abstract draperies of his white robe, as well as round earrings hanging down his plump ear lobes. On the right side of Guanyin, a white skinny jingping (净瓶) stands on the rock with a piece of willow leaf whose pliability and tenderness also signify the benevolence of Guanyin. The two flanking scrolls, a gibbon and his baby resting on the branch of an old pine tree on the right and a crane crying out from a misty bamboo grove on the left were intended to provide expanded visual dimensions and mysterious spiritual reverberations to the central Guanyin.[4] In traditional Chinese culture of Daoism and Confucianism, gibbons and cranes are symbols of human life and represent longevity and sometimes even immortality. However, instead of creating a static scene by simply putting these three icons side by side, Mu Qi brought about more interactive and reciprocal relations between them. The crane on the left with a white body gallops loudly through the bamboo, head raised and beak open, as if it is crying out to the Guanyin in a human voice, demonstrating a very active reverence towards the compassionate figure. On the other hand, the two gibbons on the other side of the painting—the mother gibbon tightly holding her baby on a pine tree—both stare directly at us, creating a surprising confrontation. As if in direct opposition to the dynamic and loud crane, these two gibbons set up a silent and still gaze which arouses a more unsettling feeling: what are we to think when we look into the eyes of two gibbons sitting in a high tree beside the sainted Guanyin?[5] Rather than directly representing Buddhist iconographies and indigenous Chinese symbols in the painting, Mu Qi somehow creates an interaction between the subject matters of the painting as well as a confrontation between the viewer and the painting. Crane, White-Robed Guanyin, and Gibbons demonstrates that, as Barnhart beautifully puts it, “the infinite compassion of Guanyin is as real yet intangible, as mysterious yet accessible to all men as the cry of a crane from the misty bamboo or the shriek of a gibbon from the high trees.”[6] In this Chán painting, the painter no longer uses a single figure of Buddha or a cluster of Buddhist iconographies to represent the divinity of the religion, but instead, he employs a simple and swift style of ink drawing to demonstrate the mysterious spiritual reverberation of Guanyin with other subjects of the painting, as well as with the viewers ourselves. However, Crane, White-Robed Guanyi, Gibbons not only represents Chán Buddhist iconography through pictorial image but also demonstrates very indigenous Chinses style painting technique. The spontaneous mode[7], an expressionist style created by the spontaneity of brush and ink, was applied by文人, scholar painters, and calligraphers as early as the tenth century, wishing to transfuse the discipline of writing into pictorial form.[8] Towards the end of Song dynasty, this technique, which is also called baimiao (白描), was used by court painters and Chán artists to show the emphasis of Daoism and Buddhism on intuitive response to nature.[9] This style of painting requires painters not only to reproduce the appearance of the subject but also to capture its spirits. For example, to paint a horse, the ink and brush need to understand the temperament better than its bones and muscles; to paint a flower, it is more important to capture its liveliness and fragrance than its colors and shapes.[10] This is the essential idea of Chinese spontaneous ink painting. In Mu Qi’s triptych, he did not employ flashy colors or extreme details; however, his Guanyin is depicted in a very simple and abstract way with a white watery robe and several jewelry ornaments. This simplicity resonates with people’s reverence toward this saint figure who demonstrates benevolence and compassion without many material decorations. In other words, Mu Qi captures the spirit of the Bodhisattva, Guanyin, rather than his physical form or his ostentatious garment. Similar to the depiction of Guanyin, Mu Qi represents the crane in a very simple and austere way. We can hardly recognize the lines of its muscles and bones, however, the straight line of its foreleg and the slightly-bent curve of the other leg clearly demonstrates its movement, or, to some extent, its pious approaching to Guanyin. Its decorated tail, without any embellishment by colors, shows the beauty of the crane and reveals its symbolism of longevity and immortality through its simplicity. On the other hand, compared to the more carefully painted crane and white-robed Guanyin, the pine branches and gibbons, as well as the bamboo grove behind the crane, reveal extreme spontaneity in brush handling. Hardly seen any form or lines which compose them, these subjects are composed of ink which is executed with rapidity and abbreviation of brushwork and boldness of composition.[11] All of these subtleties and refinements, including the treatment of the stems and leaves as if they are Chinese characters, reveal brush control at its very highest level. The range from sharpness to vagueness, from pitch darkness to extreme lightness,[12] creates a Chinese style spontaneous mode in Chán Buddhism painting. Nevertheless, even though Crane, White-Robed Guanyin, and Gibbons by Mu Qi is considered as one of the most famous paintings of Chán Buddhism, it never achieves the highest value of Chán Hua (禅画); despite the fact that it employs some Buddhist iconographies and implicates some reciprocal interactions between Guanyin and mortals, it does not represent the very aesthetic value of Chán—Yijing (意境), which stands for the mental transcendence through pictorial image. This concept is hard to explain by a different language, but it above all promotes that painters are not required to produce beautiful pictures, but to express a state of consciousness which to them is the greatest happiness and the highest form of reality.[13] To reach this it is necessary to cleanse the mind of all deceptive illusions and sensual entanglements. The artist has to learn that the whole exterior universe is but far more potent than the phenomenal world—an insight that would not be obtained simply through intellectual study or formal training.[14] This was called the “opening of the third eye,” or the awakening of the intuitive faculty by which man becomes conscious of his Buddha-nature, the potential spark in every entity.[15] The style of this aesthetically religious painting, however, is almost as abstract as its philosophy. It does not matter what the painters really paint—mountains, flowers, birds, fish, or clouds—as long as what he paints reveals his inner world and his transcendence in spiritual world. One of the best examples of this kind of paintings is the Mountain Village in Clearing Mist by Yu-Jian (figure 2.) Yu-Jian was probably a Chán Buddhist monk who lived in a monastery near Hangzhou towards the end of the thirteenth century, and his painting, Mountain Village in Clearing Mist, belongs to the most expressive examples of Chán paintings. He painted his picture with few strokes and in the most delicate pale washes, giving an impression of mist. The little poem added by the painter on the side of the painting demonstrates one typical style of Chinese scholarly paintings, “诗中有画,画中有诗”—to combine the poetic and pictorial image together so that the viewer can sense a style of poetry through the painting and see a painting through the poem: “Rain clings like a robe to the foot of the clouds, hiding Ch’ang-sha A rainbow arches over the evening mist. How beautiful are the meadows lying between the hamlet and the bridge, The flag on the inn hangs slackly down and the travelers thinks of home.”[16] However, even though the painting was done in a comparatively abstract way so that the scene is created to give people a sense of Yijing rather than some specific iconography, we can see the dimensionality and details of the painting through the painter’s delicate brushwork. The mountains in the lower registrar are painted in a darker color to show its adjacency toward the viewer, while the remote mountains are painted a lighter style to show that they are surrounded by heavier mist. In between these mountains locates a small peaceful village which can be seen by the roofs of village houses. At the center bottom of the painting, between two mountains, there is an arched bridge with a paralleled-lined base under it. The whole paintings represent such a tranquility and almost serenity so that the viewer can almost hear the sound of water and rivers. On the other hand, the travelers in between the mountains and mist are in comparatively large size are more recognizable. They look like as if they are composed with basic Chinese characters. Their location in the white background also illustrate certain loneliness and homesickness as illustrated in the poem. What is the purpose of Chán paintings? What are their aesthetic values? Even more intriguingly, how does this kind of abstract and expressive paintings reveals a sense of peacefulness and serenity even though it is hard for us to identify its subject matters? In his article “浅谈中国艺术中的禅”,[17] Chenxu Wang and Jiajia Liu argue that Chán is the ultimate end of Chinese art because it defines the highest aesthetic value which painters and artists throughout history have been longing for. While Western art puts a lot of emphasis on the “form” of bodies, such as composition, colors, and dimensionality of subject matters, Chinese artists think that the “spirit” of bodies is more important and valuable. However, different from the “form,” “spirit” is not a thing that can be easily proved by outside presentations—it is an abstract concept constructed by the artist through his dexterous skills with his senses, imaginations, experiences, interests, as well as his perceptions and understanding of the world. The “spirit” that he creates is called Yijing , and it is more similar to a mental inspiration rather than a visual perception. However, whoever is able to create such high level of mental inspiration must be someone who has achieved a certain level of individual spiritual transcendence because whatever he puts into his painting or his poem reveals what his inner world looks like. For example, Monk Yu-Jian, who probably had achieved certain level of enlightenment through Buddhism, was able to present his spiritual world through paintings with a high level of Yijing. Among all these spirits, the ultimate end, or the highest level, is brought about by “Chán” because it embodies old masters’ philosophy—a lifestyle free from conventionality and emphasizing on inner serenity and spiritual transcendence. It can almost be compared to the feeling of Kong (空),[18] which is also hard to explain under this context, but can be compared to certain kind of “carefreeness” or “nothingness.” Old masters thought that the meaning of life was achieved through the separation of all the worldly things, especially the material world, and through the enlightenment of inner self. This is idea might have its influences from ancient Chinese Daoism, but we can hardly deny its involvement with Buddhism where the ultimate enlightenment is achieved through self-realization and the entering into nirvana, the other world. Mountain Village in Clearing Mist by Yu-Jian never expresses the mental transcendence through narratives, but instead, it conveys the spirit by something vaguer, subtler, and with no doubt, aesthetically more beautiful. Monk Yu-Jian presents to us a world more poetic than the real one, taking us to the other realm—a realm that he created in his mind and put it into painting with his dexterity of skills. In this painting, Buddhism, or Chán Buddhism, no longer inspires the enlightenment through narrative tales or distinctive iconographies; instead, it transforms the ideology into something visually accessible and mentally approachable. There is no “form” that we can find in the painting, but everyone who is looking at it can feel the “spirit” of it, heart being touched by its brushstrokes and therefore completely being absorbed into its beauty. Disputes around the origins and influences of Chán Buddhism paintings have been going on for decades. Some scholar argue that it is hardly surprising that late Song period is filled with imaged of the sacred and the spiritual because Song China neared its eventual destruction by the Mongols, so that people sought inner peace and power through these paintings.[19] Other people think that the abstract style of Chán paintings had influences on Modernism, especially Expressionism and later manifestations. However, no matter how it was formed and developed during centuries, we can never deny the beauty of Chán paintings and the aesthetic value that they bring about. As a branch of ancient Buddhism, it promotes, to some extent, the spiritual enlightenment of Buddhism by extraordinary visual experience. Notes: [1] Richard M Barnhart. Three Thousand Years of Chinese Painting (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002.) P133 [2] Barnhart, Three Thousand Years of Chinese Painting. P134 [3] Ibid, P136 [4] Ibid. [5] Ibid. [6] Ibid. [7] Sherman E Lee. A History of Far Eastern Art (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1982.) P178 [8] Ibid. [9] Ibid. [10] 李晓东,禅与文人画,(丽水师范专科学院学报,第26卷第三期,2004年6月 Journal of Lishui Teachers College, Vol26, No.3, Jun, 2004) [11] 李晓东,禅与文人画 [12] Lee. A History of Far Eastern Art, P176 [13] 李晓东,禅与文人画 [14] Osvald Sirén Chinese Painting: Leading Masters and Principles (New York: Hacker Art Books, 1973), P132 [15] Ibid. [16] 李晓东,禅与文人画 [17] 王晨旭,刘佳佳, 浅谈中国艺术内涵中的禅 (科技信息:科教文化,黑龙江 Access 2017-08-09) [18]王晨旭, 浅谈中国艺术内涵中的禅 [19] Barnhart, Three Thousand Years of Chinese Painting. P137
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorLayne |