landscapes of the southern school, certain influences of calligraphy. First, one sees the
swift, powerful and always highly rhythmic strokes. In the twisting lines of the pine
tree one sees the same principle of twisting used in Chinese writings. Tung Ch' ich'ang
said about painting trees that every line should twist all along, and Wang Hsichih said
of calligraphy that every slanting line should have three twists. Tung Ch' ich'ang also
said that "when scholars paint, they should apply the laws of the running script, the
lishu, and the archaic script." One sees also in the hollow wavy lines of the rocks a
type of script called feipo, which is written with a relatively dry brush, leaving many
hollow lines in the centre of the strokes, and sees in the entwining branches of the
trees the wriggling lines of the seal character. For this is a secret left us by Ghao
Mengfu himself. Further, the artistic use of blank space is an important calligraphic
principle, for proper spacing is the very first law of calligraphy, as stated by Pao
Shenpo. If the spacing is correct, even mere symmetry of form may be sacrificed, as
may be seen in Yii Yujen's writing to-day. It does not matter in Chinese writing if the
contour of the character is unsymmetrical, but incorrect spacing is an unforgivable
offence, which is the surest sign of immature craftsmanship.
And one recognizes further in the simple unity of design of Chinese paintings the
controlling rhythm of the brush, called fyi. Ti means the "conception9* in the artist's
mind. To make a Chinese drawing is but to "write out a conception/5 ksiehyi. Before
one puts the brush on the paper, the artist has a definite conception in his mind; then
as he draws along, he is only writing out that conception through certain strokes; he
brooks no interference of irrelevancies, and adds a twig here or a blade there to
preserve the organic rhythm; and when he has expressed the essential conception in
his mind, he leaves off. For that reason, the picture lives because the conception
behind it lives. It is like reading a good epigram; the words end, but the flavour
remains. The Chinese artists express this technique by saying that "the conception
precedes the brush, and when the brush has done its work, the conception still
remains,'* For the Chinese are consummate masters in suggestion and "leaving off at
the right moment." They like good tea and olives which give a "back-flavour,"
hweiwei, which is not felt until a few minutes after eating the olive or drinking the
good tea. The total effect of this technique in painting is a quality called Kungling, "empty-and-alive," which means extreme vitality coupled with economy of des ign.
Chinese poetry gives Chinese painting its spirit. As stated already in the discussion on
poetry, it more often happens in China than in the West that the poet is a painter, and
the painter, poet. Poetry and painting come from the same human spirit, and it is
natural that the spirit and inner technique of bath should be the same. We have seen
how painting influenced poetry in perspective, because the poet's eye is the painter's
eye. But we shall also see how the painter's spirit is the poet's spirit, how the painter
shows the same impression, the same method of suggestion, the same emphasis on an
indefinable atmosphere, and the same pantheistic union with nature, which
characterize Chinese poetry. For the poetic mood and the picturesque moment are
often the same, and the artist mind which can seize the one and give it form in poetry
can also, with a little cultivation, express the other in painting.
First, we can dismiss the question of perspective, which puzzles Westerners, by
explaining once again that Chinese pictures are supposed to be painted from a very
high mountain* The perspective one obtains of the world of objects from a high
altitude, say, from an aeroplane flying six thousand feet above the earth, must be
different from the perspective on the ordinary level. The higher the vantage point, the
less, of course, the lines converge toward a point. This is also visibly influenced by
the oblong shape of Chinese scrolls, which requires a long distance from the
foreground at the bottom of the scroll to the line of the horizon at the top of the scroll.
Like the modern Western painters, the Chinese artists wish to portray, not reality but
their own impressions of reality, and hence their impressionistic method. The trouble
with Western impressionists is that they are a little too clever and a little too logical.
With all their ingenuity, the Chinese artists are not able to produce artistic freaks to
startle the layman. The basis of their impressionism is, as has been explained, the
theory that "the conception must precede the using of the brush." Not the material
reality, therefore, but the artist's conception of the reality is the purport of the painting.
They remember that they are painting for fellow human beings and the conceptions
must be humanly intelligible to others. They are restrained by the Doctrine of the
Golden Mean. Their impressionism is therefore a human impressionism. In painting a
picture, their object is to convey a unified conception, which determines what to
include and what to leave out, resulting in the ffungling quality.
Since the conception is of primary importance, the greatest pains must be taken to
conceive a poetic conception. In the Sung Dynasty, when scholars had competitive
examinations in painting under the Imperial Bureau of Painting, we see how this
consideration of the poetic conception overruled every other standard. Invariably it
was the painting which showed the best conception that won. Now it is characteristic
that the best conceptions always depended on the method of suggestion. The themes
were poetic enough in themselves, since they were always a line taken from a poem.
But the ingenuity lies in the most suggestive interpretation of that poetic line. A few examples will suffice. In the reign of Huichung, once the subject for examinations
was a line:
Bamboos cover a wine-shop by the bridge.
Many competitors tried to concentrate on the wine-shop as the centre of the picture.
There was one man, however, who painted only a bridge, a bamboo grove by its side,
and hidden in that grove, only a shop-sign bearing the character "wine," but no
wine-shop at all. And this picture won because the wine-shop was hidden in the
imagination. Another subject given was a line from Wei Ingwu's poem:
At the deserted ferry, a boat drifts across by itself.
The poet had already used the method of suggestion in conveying the atmosphere of
silence and desolation by showing that the boat, left alone, drifted across by the force
of the current, but the painter carried the method of suggestion further. The winning
picture was one which conveyed this feeling of silence and desolation by drawing a
bird resting on the boat, and another one about to perch on it. The presence of the
birds near the boat suggests that the boat was deserted and no human beings were
about.
There was another painting, which was intended to portray the atmosphere of luxury
in the rich man's mansion. A modern painter, sick of painting reality, would also try to
suggest. But he would probably paint a jumble of a saxophone that magically
penetrates through a champagne glass that rests on a woman's breast that hides
underneath three-quarters of a motor-car wheel that grazes over the funnels of a
Gunard liner, etc,, etc. The Chinese impressionist painted, however, only a rich
mansion in the background, with its gate standing halfopen and a maid peeping out
and pouring out a basketful of rich men's delicacies, like ducks' feet, Ikhi, walnuts,
hazelnuts, etc. which were delineated with the greatest realism of detail. The
sumptuous feast inside was not seen, but only suggested by these left-overs to be
thrown into the refuse heap. The conception is therefore everything, on which
depends very largely the poetic quality of the work. It is shy of straight portrayal and
it always tries to suggest. The constant care of the Chinese artists is: Leave something
for the imagination!
Had Chinese painting remained content, however, with the emphasis on "conception/*
which is more a matter of the head than of the heart, it would have struck a blind alley,
for art, which ought to appeal primarily to our feelings and our senses, would have
degenerated into a mathematical puzzle or a logical problem. No amount of technical
skill or cleverness of intellectual conception can give us great art, if it fails to achieve
an atmosphere and evoke in us a sympathetic state of emotion. We see this in all great paintings, whether Chinese or European. The mood is therefore everything. The
drawing of two birds alighting on a boat serves merely to suggest the absence of any
boatman near by, and that absence can mean nothing to us unless, at the same time, it
evokes in us a mood of solitude and desolation. Why should not the boat drift across
by the force of the current if it wants to? The picture becomes alive and full of
meaning to us only when we feel that the boat would not have drifted across like that
if it had not been left alone, and this leads to a reflection on the desolation of the
scene which could touch our emotions. Of what avail is it to paint the sign of a
wine-shop hidden in a bamboo grove by the bridge unless we are led to imagine the
people who might be gathered in that wine-shop, where time hangs heavy and life is
at peace, and men can spend whole afternoons gossiping about the fisherman's
rheumatism and the queen's girlhood romance? The evocation of the mood is
therefore everything, in painting as in poetry. This leads us to a consideration of
"atmosphere,5* otherwise called "rhythmic vitality," which has been the highest ideal
of Chinese painting for the last fourteen hundred years, since Hsieh Ho first
enunciated it and other painters elaborated and discussed and quarrelled over it
For we must remember that the Chinese painters did not want mere accuracy of detail.
Su Tungp'o said: "If one criticizes painting by its verisimilitude, one's understanding
is similar to that of a child." But taking away mere verisimilitude, what has the
painter to offer us? What, after all, is the purpose of painting? The answer is that the
artist should convey to us the spirit of the scenery and evoke in us a sympathetic
mood in response. That is the highest object and ideal of Chinese art. We
remember how the artist makes periodic visits to the high mountains to refresh his
spirit in the mountain air and clean his breast of the accumulated dust of urban
thoughts and suburban passions. He climbs to the highest peaks to obtain a moral
and spiritual elevation, and he braves the winds and soaks himself in rain to listen to
the thundering waves of the sea. He sits among piles of wild rocks and brushwood
and hides himself in bamboo groves for days in order to absorb the spirit of life and
nature. He should convey to us the benefit of that communion of nature, and
communicate to us some of the spirit of the things as it is instilled into his soul, and
re-create for us a picture, "surcharged with moods and feelings, ever-changing and
wronderful like nature itself." He might, like Mi Yiijen, give us a landscape of
nestling clouds and enveloping mists which entwine the rocks and encircle the trees,
in which all details are submerged in the general moistness of the atmosphere, or, like
Ni Yiinlin, he might give us a picture of autumn desolation, with the country a stretch
of blank whiteness and the trees so sparse of foliage that only a few dangling leaves
affect us by their loneliness and their shivering cold. In the power of this atmosphere
and this general rhythm, all details will be forgotten and only the central inood
remains. That is "rhythmic vitality," ettijun shengtung, the highest ideal of
Chinese art. Thus poetry and painting meet again*
This is the message of Chinese art, that it teaches us a profound love of nature, for the
Chinese painting which really excels by its unique accomplishments is painting of landscape md of nature. The best of Western landscapes, like Corot*s3 give us the
same atmosphere and the same feeling for nature, But in the portrayal of human forms,
the Chinese are deplorably backward. For the human form is made subservient to the
forms of nature. If there is any appreciation of the female human form as such, we see
no traces of it in painting. Ku K'aichih's and Ch' iu Shihchou's female forms suggest,
not the beauties of their bodies but the lines of the winds and the waves. For this
worship of the human body, especially of the female body, seems to me to be the most
singular characteristic of Western art. The most singular contrast between Chinese and
Western art is the difference in the source of inspiration, which is nature itse lf for the
East and the female form for the West. Nothing strikes a Chinese mind as being more
