Naturalness (自然) in Painting
We tend to assume that “natural” means much the same thing to everyone. A friend’s young daughter taught me otherwise. She loved strawberry yoghurt and knew exactly which supermarket brand she preferred. Her mother bought fresh strawberries at a farmers’ market and made some at home. The girl tasted it sceptically and refused any more. Why? “It doesn’t taste natural.” Her favourite brand was advertised as the one with the natural taste.
That small story makes a useful starting point for thinking about naturalness in painting. A familiar manufactured flavour can come to seem more natural than fresh fruit. In looking at a painting, too, we may mistake an effect we have learned to expect for something unforced. Here I mean the difference between naturalness and contrivance, rather than simply between natural and artificial materials. [2]
Naturalness in the Daoist Sense
Ziran (自然) is often translated as “naturalness” or “spontaneity”; more literally, it means “self-so”. In Daoist thought, it points to what is so of itself, rather than being forced to conform to an imposed pattern. The related concept wuwei concerns action without coercive striving; the two belong together, but they are not interchangeable. [3]
For a painter, this raises a practical question: how can a mark feel unforced without being careless? Naturalness is not a substitute for skill. A brushstroke may look immediate precisely because long practice has made the movement possible.
Rather than attempt a complete account of the subject, I want to look closely at fish paintings by Bada Shanren, also known as Zhu Da (1626–1705). [1] His life included many years as a Buddhist monk, so calling him simply a “Daoist painter” would be too narrow. I am approaching his brushwork through the Daoist idea of ziran, as a way of looking rather than a claim to explain his entire art.
The Appearance of Simplicity
I once looked at paintings like these and thought: “A few brushstrokes—I could do that too.” Trying to copy one soon changes the picture. The difficulty lies in what each stroke accomplishes: the curve of a belly, the weight of a body or the movement of a tail. As with Zha Shibiao’s apparently simple painting, economy becomes more demanding the longer one looks.
Brushstrokes and Composition
The strokes do more than outline a fish. Their changes of pressure and ink give the body weight and direction. The untouched paper becomes a space through which it moves. I read it as a fish in water, although there are no waves, plants or bubbles to tell me so.
The composition matters just as much. My diagram below follows the eye’s movement around the fish and the open centre. I understand that circulating movement in terms of qi, the vitality of the picture. The red circle is my analytical overlay, recalling an ensō to me; it is not a circle painted by Bada Shanren, nor evidence that he intended that Japanese Zen form. Much of the paper remains untouched, yet this open area holds the composition together.
My Own Experiments
I chose fish partly because I have been working with them myself. The encounter between a Chinese master’s economy and my own more abstract painting gives me something concrete to test.
I have practised copying old masters, but imitation is not the aim here. I want to explore ziran in a contemporary painterly language, several centuries after Bada Shanren. The following collages contain details from paintings and studies. Some retain a recognisable fish; others are attempts to convey what I call “fishness”. [4]
Levels of Abstraction
In the first group, the fish remain recognisable in shape and colour. Mouth and tail are still fairly easy to locate. In my Magic Sea paintings, such forms act almost as extras: they animate the water and give a viewer a foothold in an otherwise abstract composition.
A step further, the fish lose their clear outlines. They begin to merge with their surroundings, so that the movement of the water matters as much as the individual creature.
The darker passages in the collage below explore what I associate with yin: obscurity, depth, mud and submerged life.
In the next group, a fish may be scarcely more than a movement of the brush. These strokes help carry the picture’s energy. Within the larger painting, I still read them as fish, although the isolated detail may suggest something else entirely.
One Step Further
Have these experiments taken me too far from the naturalness I admire in Bada Shanren? I do not think the question can be settled by measuring resemblance alone.
A passage in chapter two of the Zhuangzi returns to beginnings, what precedes them, being and nonbeing, before questioning whether the speaker has really said anything at all. [6] I read this as a challenge to the confidence with which we draw distinctions. It is not a set of instructions for painting, but it gives me a way to think about what happens when an image resists a single name.
That uncertainty interests me in the painting below. [5] One viewer may see a fish: head, body and tail. Another may see a cloud and ask what a fish could be doing in the sky. The marks remain the same; the reading changes.
“Fishness”
When I insist that the image is a fish, or is not a fish, I risk closing down that encounter too quickly. Zhuangzi’s questioning encourages me to loosen my grip on the label. I do not take this to mean that every distinction is useless, or that Daoism and Buddhism offer an identical teaching. It is a painter’s invitation to look again.
“Fishness” is my working word for the presence I am trying to convey, rather than a technical Daoist term or a hidden essence I can prove. The image has no interest in the name I give it. A few marks may suggest a living movement before they resolve into a creature. That is where naturalness becomes interesting to me: can the painting remain convincing while leaving the question open?
The other essays in this series are gathered in Daoist Talks.
Footnotes
[1] Bada Shanren (八大山人), born Zhu Da (朱耷), lived from 1626 to 1705. For his Ming imperial background, Buddhist monastic life and later career, see the Smithsonian’s Enigmas: The Art of Bada Shanren.
[2] “Contrivance” is used here in the ordinary sense of an affected or deliberately manufactured effect, not as a single canonical Chinese opposite of ziran.
[3] For ziran and its relationship to wuwei, see Alan Chan, Laozi, section 7: Naturalness and Nonaction, in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. The application to painting is my own.
[4] I use “fishness” as an exploratory description of my paintings, not as an established translation of ziran or a claim that fish possess a permanent essence beyond their forms.
[5] The fish-like form was made in one continuous brush movement: the tip did not leave the paper, and I made no subsequent changes to that form. The image is a detail from a work in the Magic Sea project.
[6] See the Zhuangzi, chapter 2, The Adjustment of Controversies, with James Legge’s translation. The passage is paraphrased above rather than presented as a verbatim quotation.
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