About a Dot in Chinese Art
When I was once introduced to Professor Wolfgang Kubin, a sinologist I greatly admire, he said: “Yes, I know who you are. You’re the man who can deliver a lecture on just one stroke”. Well, that would be the short version; a whole evening would come closer. The subject of brushstrokes will hardly fit into one blog post. So let’s begin with something smaller: a dot.
If you have a minute, try this: imagine you have been asked to give a short talk about a dot in Western art. What would you say?
I like this exercise because it makes us attend to something we might otherwise pass over. Before giving the dot a definition, we have to look at it.
Painting and Calligraphy
In the Chinese painting tradition I studied, painting and calligraphy are closely connected. The attention given to a large composition also belongs to a single stroke or dot. Each mark must have life.
I have often written about the play of opposites. During my five years in China, however, painters, teachers and colleagues rarely spoke explicitly about yin and yang in our conversations. Perhaps the relationships we were practising did not always need to be named.
What Is a Dot?
A dot can be understood as a very short stroke. It has a beginning, a movement and an ending. Its character depends on how the brush meets and leaves the paper.
One instruction is to make a dot that seems to go “through the paper to the table.” A teacher may turn an absorbent sheet over to examine how the ink has entered it. This is a way of attending to the mark’s substance, rather than merely its outline. Preparation begins before the brush touches the sheet.
When I speak of a dot having qi, I mean a felt vitality in the mark. An exercise is to imagine holding the brush with both hands, one drawing upward while the other presses downward, then to imagine opposing movements forward and back, left and right. These imagined tensions prepare the gesture. Another approach is to touch the paper, increase pressure, turn the brush slightly and release it as the tip completes the dot.
The result should feel settled into the paper, not as though it could be blown away. Such descriptions may sound strange until you compare the marks made with different kinds of attention.
A Good Dot
A dot rarely stands alone. Two dots already establish a relationship; with three or more, a rhythm develops. Traditional names often refer to familiar things: scattered peppercorns, a rabbit’s tracks in snow or chrysanthemum blossoms. Those associations give the hand something to work with. In some formations, an open centre holds the marks together, reminding me of an ensō, a brush-drawn circle.
The six examples above show how varied these marks can be. Their different directions, pressures and groupings take many hours of practice.
Dots and the Whole Painting
Dots also help organise an entire landscape. The wet marks known as “Mi-family dots” are associated with Mi Fu and his son Mi Youren. The Metropolitan Museum’s Cloudy Mountains by Mi Youren offers an example of this approach.
Shitao is another painter whose dots particularly interest me. In the reproduced details below, they form dense, changing relationships across the landscape.
Now to a dot in one of my own paintings.
The painting could work without the small dark mark near the bottom. But its presence changes how I read the whole. I could have put a leaf-like mark there instead, or left the area open. The two comparisons below show those alternatives.
Why do I feel this dot works? It is made from two interacting strokes, with a small suggestion of emptiness between them. For me, their relationship brings yin and yang into this small mark.
The Qi of a Dot
The dot carries something of the larger painting’s brushwork and mood. The broad black forms suggest a broken circle, while the small mark below becomes a counterpoint.
It also suggests a bird. I wanted that association to remain just short of a fully described animal, finding a balance between recognition and abstraction. Set against the water, it might almost be heard calling. At least, that was my intention.
Related articles
The Cosmos in One Dot · Dot and Emptiness: The Essence of Chinese Art · Daoist Talks
Explore Art & Writing
Art Portfolio → Featured Artworks → Arts & Philosophy Journal → All Articles
Explore Asian Art Essays for writing on Chinese painting, calligraphy, aesthetics and art history.
Available Artworks
Original works are available on FriedrichZettl.com and Saatchi Art
Leave a Reply