Chinese Painting, Negative Space and the Flow of Qi
Last post before summer vacation. Vacation? Not vacation in the traditional sense. My insurance plan allows 3 spa stays of 3 weeks each within 5 years. I was only once on a cure, this year again. The funny thing is, the name of the health resort is REDUCE.
It is quite an acceptable facility, a thermal bath with good medicinal water, and above all very quiet, with the best air quality, as more than 60% of the federal state is forest. The excellent cuisine uses food from local farmers.
So for 3 weeks, I will have my old fur brushed, will appreciate the excellent wines of the area, clean up my stack of books and take care of my calligraphy, which I neglect all too often. And so we are in the middle of the topic.
Two new works
I would like to show only two works today, taking a closer look at one of them through principles associated with traditional Chinese painting. Before doing so, however, I want to mention the French Surrealist André Masson, who became interested in East Asian ink painting and Zen Buddhism during the twentieth century. His ink works demonstrate how strongly spontaneous brushwork attracted Western modernists. Yet they also reveal how difficult it is to transfer the visual language of Chinese and Japanese ink painting without the calligraphic training and aesthetic concepts from which it developed. [1]
When I think back to my first years with ink and brush, it was these points that I found most difficult to master.
End of Nothing
The final work in this series devoted to reduction carries the working title Another Attempt to Touch the Idea of Zen. What may initially appear to be only a few spontaneous strokes is structured around ideas that have long played an important role in Chinese painting and calligraphy. One of them is the relationship between opening and closing – kai and he (開 / 合). Forms approach one another and separate again, creating tension not only between the painted elements but also between the image and the surrounding empty space.
This empty space is not simply a background. It allows the composition to extend beyond the physical boundaries of the paper and invites the viewer to imagine what remains unseen. The challenge is therefore not to fill the surface, but to create the greatest possible visual and emotional resonance with the fewest possible means.
The final work in the series, dealing with reduction, has the working title: Another Attempt to Touch the Idea of Zen.
My article series The Essence of Chinese Painting, deals with some of these principles of Chinese painting in more detail. In the following picture, we find some of those aspects again in compressed form.
Wandering through a painting
Traditional Chinese painting offers ways of organizing pictorial space that differ markedly from the fixed viewpoint associated with European linear perspective. This is particularly evident in landscape painting, where the eye may travel through different spatial zones rather than remaining anchored to a single viewpoint. Compositional sequences such as qi – cheng – zhuan – jie (起 承 轉 結) can help us understand this movement as a progression through beginning, development, transition and resolution. Within such a structure, rhythm and the perceived flow of Qi (氣) become important elements of the painting.
Floating
The heavier and more compact a painting appears, the more difficult it becomes to create a sense of movement and suspension. This makes the relationships between lines, forms and empty areas particularly important. Ideally, these elements establish a visual dialogue in which tension and release alternate naturally, much like the changing rhythm of the mountain stream described above.
Many of these principles are closely related to calligraphy. In Chinese painting, brushwork is not merely used to describe an object; the movement of the brush itself carries expressive value. This is one reason why painting and calligraphy have traditionally been regarded as closely related arts. A successful ink painting can therefore possess qualities that make it seem not only painted, but also “written.”
The sketches in gray should help to recognize these lines of force in the picture discussed. If we pay more attention to the white areas in the original picture discussed, the quite heavy picture becomes lighter. When we see the whole thing embedded in the white of the paper or the space outside the picture, the picture begins to float.
Well, if a picture is written (and not painted), we must read it. Calligraphy is usually read from top right to bottom. For images, the entry point may vary. But, as with calligraphy, we must be able to traverse it.
Let’s take a walk now
When we read a picture, we wander through it with our eyes. Let’s play a game again and see what a walk through the image above would look like based on what we just discussed.
We enter the picture at the bottom right 入 and a strong line of force pulls us to the left. (Bottom right corner on the sketch below). At the beginning of the hike, we are full of energy. Again and again we come across opposing forces that slow down the momentum and thus underline the flow of power in the picture – like in this part. Our hike is abruptly stopped at the left before a strong force (承) leads upwards. What follows is an arduous ascent.
Our effort is rewarded, a little breather, a bewitching view of a rock massif that rises up from the haze and fog. The force points (weaker) to the top left and (stronger) to the top right, which brings with it strong tension again. (转). The line of force pulls us to the right, and again our path is blocked by obstacles (vertical lines of force). At the very end of our hike, we approach the starting point again – not without great drama. 合 (he), close, is the magic word again.
Pan Tianshou described the part cheng 承 (or qi (起) like this: Imagine an ox cart stuck in the mud. The ox pulls and pulls and all of a sudden the exertion is relieved because the cart has freed itself from the dirt.
If we have understood this principle in the painting, we have taken a big step in our understanding of Asian ink painting. And ideally, we have also come a step further in our thinking and understanding generally.
footnotes:
[1] André Masson: Eine Kunst des Wesentlichen. Limes. Wiesbaden 1961
[2] kai : he principle. 开 [kāi] open, open up. 合 [hé] close, whole
[3] Qi (氣) is a complex term traditionally associated with breath, vitality and energy. In Chinese painting theory it is closely related to the idea of qiyun shengdong (氣韻生動), the first of Xie He’s Six Principles of Painting, commonly translated as “spirit resonance” or “spirit resonance, life-motion.”
Related articles: summer-inventory I poetry-from-sky I from-seo-to-water-lilies
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