The Essence of Chinese Painting (I)
My studies in Chinese painting and my dissertation on the development of xieyi painting form the background to this series. Here I begin with a question that remains central to my own work: how can unequal elements hold a painting together?
The Basics of Balance
A small bird can answer a large branch. A few characters in one corner can change the weight of an entire sheet. Balance in Chinese painting often becomes most interesting when the elements are visibly unequal. What holds them together is a relationship across the picture.
The two scales in Fig. 1 offer a useful analogy. On an equal-arm balance, equal weights balance at equal distances from the support. An unequal-arm balance can balance different weights by changing their distances from that support. In both cases the physical principle is the same: the turning effects of the weights must counterbalance one another.
I use this comparison to distinguish a visibly even distribution from a more asymmetrical, shifting sense of equilibrium. It is a way of looking at composition, rather than a division of all Western and Chinese painting into two opposing systems. Both traditions include symmetrical and asymmetrical arrangements. The Chinese works discussed here make the second possibility especially clear.
Visual weight is not physical weight. A small dark mark may command more attention than a much larger pale area. Color, contrast, direction, position and the surrounding space all affect how a form is felt. The question is how these different forces relate to the whole.
Balance Begins with a Single Brushstroke
The character yī (一, one) gives us a compact example. It consists of a single horizontal stroke, yet the stroke is not an inert bar. Its two ends, changing thickness and slight rise create a sense of direction and tension. The lower character, shuǐ (水, water), extends this relationship across several strokes. The marks reach outward while remaining connected to a center. [Fig. 2]
For me, this is where the discussion of balance begins: with the life of an individual mark. A composition does not acquire vitality merely because its objects have been placed at suitable distances. The strokes themselves must participate in that relationship.
Qi and Balance
Qi (氣) is often rendered as breath or vital energy. In discussing painting, I use the term to approach a felt quality of life: the way a stroke carries through a form and the way separated parts of an image seem to respond to one another. Balance alone cannot explain this quality, but it helps us see the relationships through which it becomes perceptible.
The ends of a line can seem to “communicate.” An inscription can answer the direction of a branch. Unpainted space can hold these movements together. I find a useful bodily analogy in Taijiquan, where the relation between the hands may be experienced as a connected field of attention and tension. Here that comparison describes an experience; it is not evidence of a measurable physical energy field in the painting.
Bada Shanren and Hongren
Zhu Da (朱耷), better known as Bada Shanren (八大山人), repeatedly tested how far a composition could lean, bend or open out while remaining convincing.[1] In the chrysanthemums below, the flowers gather near the upper left. A long stem moves across the sheet, bends down and turns upward again. The inscription at the right becomes part of this exchange. [Fig. 3]
The bird in Fig. 4 makes the role of empty space still more apparent. Its dark body is concentrated low on the right, while a small inscription sits high on the left. Viewed alone, the bird might appear to tip backward. Seen as part of the sheet, its posture directs attention into the open area. To my eye, the distance between bird and inscription becomes an active part of the balance.
Hongren (弘仁), a Buddhist monk and painter associated with the Anhui tradition, offers another example.[2] A tall cliff rises along the right edge, while a branching tree reaches across the lower center. Much of the upper and left-hand area remains open. [Fig. 5]
The tree mediates between the rocks and that open space. Its branches carry the eye outward rather than allowing the cliff to close the composition. The unpainted area acquires its character through the forms around it; it is not simply a leftover background.
In Pan Tianshou’s (潘天壽) cormorant, the bird’s raised neck and open beak give the surrounding space an almost audible presence.[3] One can imagine its cry continuing beyond the painted body. The inscription above also contributes visual weight. The image invites us to follow a movement that the brush has only begun. [Fig. 6]
The same principle can operate across a much greater distance. A long vertical scroll makes the interval between its elements particularly important. [Fig. 7]
A Vertical Scroll and Ma Yuan
The bird-and-branch painting identified in my original reference as a work by Chen Kang (陳康) sets a small bird against an old, gnarled trunk.[4] A slender shoot rises through the long, largely unpainted middle of the scroll. The bird sits near its upper end. The enormous difference in size between bird and trunk is held together by the thin, continuous movement of the shoot.
The lighter passages in the trunk, the narrow stem, the bird’s tail and the seals help the eye move through the scroll. I read these as a sequence of connections across the empty space. The open interval is essential to the effect: compress it, and the relationship would change.
This also touches on the relation between description and suggestion. The phrase “between likeness and unlikeness” (似與不似之間, sì yǔ bù sì zhī jiān), especially associated with Qi Baishi, is useful here as a later formulation of that artistic problem.[5] It does not mean that the earlier painters discussed here were following Qi Baishi’s words.
One-Corner Ma — Ma Yijiao 馬一角
Ma Yuan (馬遠), a court painter of the Southern Song dynasty, is particularly associated with compositions that concentrate their principal forms toward one corner. His album leaf Walking on a Mountain Path in Spring (山徑春行, Shānjìng Chūnxíng) provides a subtle example. The poem at the upper right is identified by the National Palace Museum as an inscription by Emperor Ningzong.[6] [Fig. 8]
The scholar, his attendant, the tree and the foreground establish a concentration of forms toward the left and lower edge. Willow branches extend across the upper part of the image; birds and the inscription draw our attention toward the open right-hand area. It would therefore be too simple to say that all the visual weight lies below. The delicate marks above matter precisely because they act across so much space.
To my eye, the willow branches can also suggest the contours of distant ridges. This is an association prompted by their shapes, rather than a literal second subject or a documented statement of the painter’s intention. Such suggestions allow the small scene to open into an imagined landscape.
Li Keran’s (李可染) boy and water buffalo gives the question of unequal weight a playful, direct form.[7] The tiny boy pulls on a rope attached to the massive animal. Their physical inequality is obvious, but the diagonal tension of the rope binds the figures together. The subject itself seems to stage the problem of balance. [Fig. 9]
What interests me in these works is how little the eye needs in order to feel a connection. A stem, a rope, a direction of looking or a distant inscription can hold unequal parts in relation. The unpainted space gives those relationships room to act. Balance becomes something we follow through the image, rather than a condition we measure once and then leave behind.
Footnotes
[1] Bada Shanren (Zhu Da, 1626–1705): the dates follow the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The museum record concerns a different album and is cited for the artist’s identity and dates. ↩
[2] Hongren (1610–1664), painter and Buddhist monk: see the Metropolitan Museum of Art. ↩
[3] Pan Tianshou (1897–1971), painter and educator: China Academy of Art. The Jiangsu Art Museum’s collection commentary, published under its own account, lists Cormorant as undated; the earlier date of 1960 is therefore not repeated here. ↩
[4] The name Chen Kang and the nineteenth-century identification come from the original reference used for this article. I have not independently confirmed the attribution. The compositional reading concerns the reproduced image. ↩
[5] For the formulation associated with Qi Baishi, see Between Likeness and Unlikeness — A Dialogue with Qi Baishi, exhibition information published by China’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism. ↩
[6] National Palace Museum, Taipei: Walking on a Mountain Path in Spring. The collection record gives Ma Yuan as the artist, silk as the support and dimensions of 27.4 × 43.1 cm; its explanatory text identifies Ningzong’s poem. ↩
[7] Li Keran (1907–1989): National Art Museum of China. This source supports the biographical dates, rather than the catalogue details of Fig. 9. ↩
Illustrations
Fig. 1: Diagram of equal-arm and unequal-arm balances.
Fig. 2: The characters yī 一 and shuǐ 水.
Figs. 3–4: Bada Shanren, chrysanthemums and bird; album-leaf reproductions.
Fig. 5: Hongren, landscape detail; identified in the original reproduction record as ink on paper, 25.2 × 25.3 cm, Shanghai Museum.
Fig. 6: Pan Tianshou, Cormorant; ink on paper, 61 × 41 cm, Jiangsu Art Museum; undated in the museum commentary.
Fig. 7: Bird on a branch; attributed in the original reference to Chen Kang, nineteenth century; ink on paper, 107 × 28 cm. Attribution remains unconfirmed.
Fig. 8: Ma Yuan, Walking on a Mountain Path in Spring; silk, 27.4 × 43.1 cm, National Palace Museum, Taipei.
Fig. 9: Li Keran, boy and water buffalo; identified in the original reproduction record as ink on paper, 68 × 35.5 cm, 1978, from an Artnet exhibition catalogue. The exact catalogue entry has not been independently recovered.
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