Looking for the Essential Through Painting
How much can I leave out of a painting before it loses what matters? Readers’ questions about the soul in Daoism brought me back to this practical question. I want to approach it through a few pictures and short verses, rather than pretend that a painting can settle a philosophical debate.
Lü Dongbin, also known as Lü Zu, and a text traditionally associated with him, The Secret of the Golden Flower, will accompany the experiment. Both need a little historical care. The immortal’s traditional biography places him in the Tang period, while the text as we know it is much later. [1]
A Word About “Soul”
The Western Soul
There is no single Western account of the soul. Religious and philosophical traditions differ over its relation to the body, its survival after death and what spiritual development might mean. My own interest begins with questioning fixed answers, but that is a personal starting point rather than a description of all Western thought.
The Daoist Soul
Daoist traditions are varied too. Terms such as hun and po, often translated as different kinds of “souls”, do not map neatly onto the idea of one immaterial self. Transformation and the relationship between the person and the cosmos interest me particularly. In the paintings that follow, I use “soul” more loosely for the felt character of a subject, not as a precise translation of a Daoist technical term. [4]
A Playful Approach in the Studio
My way into the subject is to try things. I move between writing, painting, remembered images and music, allowing one to suggest a direction for another.
I sometimes call this brainstorming, though it is a one-man exercise. The “team” consists of the works and ideas I bring into the room, with Lü Zu as an imagined guest rather than the inventor of a painting method.
For this experiment, I imagine the soul as light and unburdened. What would happen if I removed the decorative or impressive parts of a picture and kept only what carried its mood? That thought connects with earlier reflections on letting go. [2]
Haiku Paintings
After interpreting one of Ashley’s haiku in calligraphy, painting a response to a short poem seemed a natural next experiment. I was pleased by the interest in that collaboration. But I have no wish to turn it into a marketable identity as “Friedrich the Haiku Painter”.
The Essence of Art: Stripping Down to the Basics
The phrase 真水無香 can be rendered as “pure water has no scent”. I use it here as an image of simplicity, without claiming a verified classical Daoist source for the wording. However fond I may be of Poopsy-Cola and its relatives, I do not need their added sweetness in order to drink water.
When we think about this and apply it to painting, a question inevitably arises: “How much can I leave out, like stimuli such as ‘sugar’ and ‘flavorings,’ before there’s no art left?” After a few more considerations like this, we can make our first attempt.
Capturing the Essence in Art with Haiku
What attracts me to haiku is how a few words can make a scene present without explaining it completely. I want to try something comparable with paint. The verses below are my working prompts, which I call “semi-haiku”; they are not models of a traditional Japanese form.
1: Walking Through the Park
Imagine an old man walking through a deserted park in late autumn. There could be an avenue, a few golden leaves at dusk, a carpet of leaves underfoot, perhaps a dog following him. Now leave out whatever distracts from the feeling of the scene. I do not mean that perspective, colour knowledge or brush training cease to matter; I simply do not want them to become the subject of the painting.
Since I’m neither a poet nor an expert in haiku, let’s call these examples semi-haiku. They will suffice for our purposes. Our semi-haiku goes:
Leaves crunch underfoot,
Old man strolls, autumn whispers,
Twilight years in gold.
The Abstract Realm: Capturing the Essence
In this experiment, the marks do not describe the park literally. The paper, made with elephant dung fibres, brings its own warm colour and irregular surface. Black movements and muted patches suggest an atmosphere without providing a clear avenue, man or dog. I hope there is something of autumn in it, though the response remains open to the viewer.
I am trying to keep the picture from depending on a display of skill. What remains, if the experiment works, is a poetic trace of the subject. That is the sense in which I speak of its “soul”.
2: An Ensō in Fragments
The next work takes a different route. Instead of a continuous circular brush line, I arrange separate forms around an open centre. It is my variation on an ensō, rather than a conventional example. The gaps have to do as much work as the painted segments.
To start, we’ll use a semi-haiku again:
Eternal Enso,
Birds and fish souls glide within—
Imperfect joy found.
A passage in The Secret of the Golden Flower describes turning or circulating the light and uses the image of a spirit body taking form. I respond to it as a painter: movement gathering around a centre, something becoming perceptible without becoming solid. This is an association with the text’s imagery, not an instruction in its meditative practice. [3]
3: Jazz
For the third attempt, I turn from a quiet scene to jazz. My short verse becomes a cue for rhythm, darkness and heat rather than a description of a place:
Jazz, black as night’s veil,
Tiger blood and coffee blend—
Whiskey, pulse, immerse.
Extra: Picasso and Reduction
The Bull: A Comparison
Reduction is not confined to any one artistic tradition. Picasso’s sequence The Bull offers a useful comparison: a series of lithographs made in 1945–46 in which the animal becomes increasingly spare. The final state is dated 17 January 1946. [5]
The bull remains recognisable as its modelling and detail fall away. That makes me ask what recognition depends on. In my own experiments, I am also interested in what survives when the subject becomes less identifiable: a mood, a rhythm, or a particular tension between marks.
The phrase I took from Wilhelm’s edition, “In silence, you fly up to the moon”, stayed with me as an image. [3] The final painting below is another attempt to follow it. I am still asking how much of that feeling the marks can carry.
Footnotes
[1] Lü Dongbin (呂洞賓), also called Lü Zu, is one of the Eight Immortals. The National Palace Museum’s account distinguishes his traditional Tang biography from the emergence of his legend in the Song period.
[2] Previous articles on the topic of “letting go”: Gaining by Letting Go, About Letting Go,
[3] My starting point was Richard Wilhelm’s Das Geheimnis der Goldenen Blüte, with commentary by C. G. Jung, Walter Verlag, Olten, 1973, p. 77. The short English phrase above is my rendering from that edition. Fabrizio Pregadio dates the Taiyi jinhua zongzhi, in its different versions, to around 1700; see The Way of the Golden Elixir, pp. 41–42. Traditional attribution to Lü Dongbin should not be treated as evidence that the surviving work was written in the Tang dynasty.
[4] For the diversity of Daoist traditions and terms such as hun and po, see Religious Daoism, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. “Soul” is a convenient but imperfect English translation.
[5] MoMA: Pablo Picasso, The Bull, state XI, lithograph, 17 January 1946. This provides a documented reference for the series; the composite image’s original compiler is not established here.
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