1 INTRODUCTION

IN THE PRECEDING PART WE HAVE DEALT with the materials, elements, techniques, and principles of Chinese painting. In the process the reader will have gained some insight into the essence of this art, which can be deepened and made meaningful by careful and studious application of this newly acquired understanding to many examples of Chinese painting.

Now we shall turn our attention to a number of subsidiary observations concerning elements and methods, which might have disturbed the flow of the argument if introduced earlier. The main purpose of the notes that follow is to try to apply cautiously—to individual aspects of Chinese painting and to individual works—the knowledge heretofore gained. But it must be admitted frankly that this is but a first attempt to explore new facets of this amazing art, an attempt which is sure to be cursory and incomplete. If the reader will bear with me, perhaps we both can learn and profit by our mistakes as we move along. I propose to make only some suggestions as a guide to more thorough studies in the future, indicating the angles at which new investigations might be started, and pointing out the natural limits of such investigations. In most cases we shall have to confine ourselves to a few sentences, merely explaining where certain differences of style or technique appear and how certain principles and their resulting techniques manifest themselves.

Once again it should be emphasized that this book is not primarily nor even marginally concerned with a historical survey of Chinese painting. Consequently the periods involved are dealt with rather broadly and out of sequence. This demands the reader's close concentration on the argument if it is to be followed accurately. On the other hand, the contrasting of similar motifs from different periods, of similar techniques as executed in different times, will make it possible not only to perceive the continuity of Chinese art but also to understand the subtle distinctions that exist between dissimilar styles and techniques or between similar styles and techniques as executed by different artistic personalities.

In these notes there may appear to be no plan, and we may seem to jump haphazardly from one aspect to another, from this phenomenon or appearance to the next. However, to take it this way would be a misunderstanding of our purpose. Briefly, our aim is to throw some light upon Chinese painting as a whole, approaching it from its technical aspects, and to illustrate our findings by reference to the whole body of Chinese painting.

The following sections should be understood in this way. Their method of reasoning rather resembles the preliminary work of a surveyor in laying out a new road. He measures the land with his theodolite from all angles and finally decides on the best route. Once this is done, he can picture the future site even with his eyes closed, whereas we laymen have to follow the red-and-white markers with keen attention until we apprehend just how the road will go and where it will take us.

What has been done in the preceding chapters comprises the general layout on the existing map, the taking of certain measurements, the placing of the striped markers. So now let us take a stroll along the rough track and make a tentative assessment of it, hazardous and incomplete though it may be. From one marker we may not be able to see much farther than to the next one. But by the time we have reached its end, we may have gotten the feel of this road and its final destination.

2 WRITING AND PAINTING

WRITING AND PAINTING have a common origin in China, as they presumably have in other countries as well. In the matter of technique, their beginnings lie very close to each other, even though painting is perhaps the older art. We have already established that this close relationship is strongly emphasized in China as, for example, by the frequent use of the same word hsieh for both painting and writing. In spite of this basic fact, writing and painting drifted further and further apart as the pictorial element developed and as painting came to depend more and more on brush and ink effects which are either incidental to pure calligraphy or else quite foreign to it. Some of these brush and ink effects were first conceived in the rather restricted field of calligraphy, but they broke out of the limitations of this art, stepped over the line, and more or less pushed their way into painting, even while retaining their calligraphic nature.

The borderline between writing and painting is admittedly fluid, but it does exist. One might say that the more the upright brush is moved to a slanting position to produce special brush effects, the further it departs from calligraphy and the nearer it gets to painting. This is made graphically clear in Figs. 144-47. In 144 the brush is being used for actual writing and is held perpendicularly. In 145 the brush has moved only slightly from the perpendicular, for the method of executing the leaves is similar to writing. In 146, showing the splashed-ink technique, the brush has gone noticeably over to the slant, not only because of the width of the brush stroke but also because the movement of the brush aims at producing certain other effects, which need not concern us here. Fig. 147 illustrates the complete transition from writing to painting; here the brush is being used to begin a wash which will be completed by the water-filled brush held ready in the same hand.

A large number of Chinese characters originated in sign pictures (Fig. 148), which during the course of centuries were worn down to "drawings" of almost unrecognizable abstractions—to characters, in other words. So writing and painting, both being pictorial, are inherently related to each other. But one should not be misled into the assumption that painting originates directly from writing. The early sign pictures were not written at all; they were cut, scratched, and pressed into the bronze mold. They had nothing whatsoever to do with the brush.

Even in the old Chinese seal writing (Fig. 149), there is no trace of the brush, although, later on, this kind of writing was often imitated by the brush and was then accepted as a legitimate kind of brush writing (disciplined and formal writing—Zuchtschrift). Similar characters, looking rather like runes, were also scratched into bone and tortoise shell to stand as oracle signs.

Coming to actual brush writing, we can observe in Figs. 150-53 the route that Chinese calligraphy traveled. In Fig. 150 we have the brush imitating the seal writing of Fig. 149. This method is called "iron-wire seal style" because all the lines are of equal thickness; as can be seen, it represents a perversion of the brush to uncharacteristic uses. Fig. 151 shows the same seal characters executed in true brush style, while 152 shows the clear brush characters used today. Fig. 153 represents the other extreme of brushed characters, the so-called grass writing, a sort of cursive or shorthand writing which exhibits definite painterly elements, though it is undoubtedly still calligraphy and reveals the unlimited capabilities of the Chinese calligraphic brush. One might characterize these two extremes of brush writing by saying that seal writing consists of hard and rigid abstract pictures while grass writing develops the archaic signs into a relaxed and abstract dance.

Far more than in Western calligraphy, the brush stroke in Chinese writing, as well as in painting, follows its own inner life and its own rules. When confronted with character writing that is in some way exceptionally well done, the Chinese tries to discover how the writer has produced each single brush stroke. He not only reads the characters, he tries to "read" the brush strokes as well. But in order to read them, he must first of all learn how to execute them. In the course of time, therefore, very definite ideas have evolved on how each brush stroke should actually be made.

Just as in painting, the history of calligraphy, too, brought about numerous departures from the norm and plenty of personal idiosyncrasies, and many of these, if the work of an acknowledged master, are greatly admired. But certain basic principles may still be perceived. The most important rule is that each brush stroke be made firmly and with continuous control of the movement from its very inception, whether delicate or strong, to its final knob or point. Each stroke has a prescribed form and, as seen in Fig. 154, the hairs of the brush must change direction or tilt over at exactly the right spot with exactly the right pressure to produce that correct form. Calligraphic textbooks often indicate the exact path to be followed by the point of the student's brush in forming the characters (Fig. 155). And the brush, moving in a perfect rhythm up and down, back and forth, executes strokes of extraordinary delicacy, accurately judging their precise form to the final hairsbreadth.

Even the Westerner who never expects to learn Chinese characters, let alone the writing of them, will find his understanding of Chinese painting greatly increased by a careful study of brush movements and of how they produce a genuine living brush stroke. For everything that the Chinese painter produces on his painting surface, in all its thousands of variations, derives originally from exactly the same principles as the simple brush stroke of calligraphy, although in painting the possibilities are far wider and richer. One cannot overemphasize how fundamental is the role of the brush stroke in Chinese painting. This is often overlooked in the West because we usually see Chinese painting in reproductions that do not reveal the individual brush strokes. One should therefore take every possible opportunity to visit museums and exhibitions where the detailed brushwork can be studied in genuine originals.

Our discussion here will have at least led to a better understanding of why a Chinese painter's handwriting is so closely related to the brushwork found in his painting. Although it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to apply principles of graphology to Western painting, this becomes a matter of course with Chinese painting.

The graceful calligraphy of the Sung emperor Hui Tsung (Fig. 156), with its predominantly longer strokes, has been greatly admired for its almost feminine elegance and has often been copied. Note how its quite individual style bears a striking resemblance to details in his painting (Fig. 157), such as the birds' feathers, the long tapering pine needles, and the delicate tracery of the twigs.

Speaking of this same calligraphy in his book on Chinese calligraphy, Chiang Yee said: "The Emperor Hui Tsung of Sung [was] a gifted scholar, painter, and calligrapher. He distinguished himself in calligraphy by a special style to which he gave the name of Slender Gold. [This calligraphy] is an example. His writing shows him to have been a tall, thin, and handsome figure." Whatever one's opinion of Chiang Yee's little digression into graphology—and I, for that matter, admire it—one fact cannot be disputed: there is indeed a striking similarity between Hui Tsung's style of writing and his style of painting.

In Fig. 158 we have an example of calligraphy by Mi Fei, that resolute individualist who, as has been emphasized, introduced a revolutionary dot technique in such paintings as that reproduced in Fig 159. And again one observes an unmistakable connection between his calligraphy and his painting. In the one he used a broad brush and thick black ink, while in the other his dots, so familiar in leaf painting, are densely piled up into mountains with the same directness and strength. Chiang Yee remarks: "One thinks of a striking tubby figure, walking along a road, unaware, apparently, of anyone but himself." From his style we gather that Mi Fei had a powerful and reflective mind, and also probably a sense of humor.

By its very nature, bamboo painting has a particularly close connection with calligraphy. Many techniques originating in calligraphy were further developed in bamboo painting—for instance, the technique of flying white. Su Tung-p'o, incidentally—a statesman and a scholar widely versed in many fields of art—was the famous bamboo painter linked with that story which has become so typical an illustration of the coloristic quality of Chinese ink (see page 105). The richness of tone of this ink is in fact very great, probably making it an adequate substitute for color.

When we compare Su Tung-p'o's calligraphy and painting (Figs. 160-61), we find in both the same distinctness of brushwork and the same forcefulness of the individual brush stroke. Chiang Yee says of his writing: "Su Tung-p'o was a statesman, writer, poet, painter, and calligrapher of the Sung dynasty. In his style one can discern the loose flesh and the easy manner of a fat person. Su Tung-p'o's reputation as a happy humorist has engendered the saying that one can live longer if one practices Su Tung-p'o's style.

Chu Ta became famous as a monk under the name of Pa-ta Shan-jen. His life was a protest not only against the Ch'ing emperors, who had driven him into seclusion as a member of the family of the last Ming emperor, but also against the narrow conventions of a declining art. His was a negative kind of protest, consisting of a withdrawal into himself, of indifference, and of solitude. The calligraphy and painting of this unusual man (Figs. 162-63) express his originality and his stubbornness. His superb sweeping simplifications place him rather outside the strictly academic conventions and nearer to the moderns, in spite of his odd views and his strange way of living. Pa-ta Shan-jen was a rebel who ignored all rules because he had mastered them and, at the same time, because he despised them—a rebel who isolated himself from human contacts and withdrew into himself, who hated vulgarisms, and who managed without any apparent effort of will to reconcile what he wanted to say with the methods of saying it.

To summarize, three important points will have emerged from this brief comparison of writing style and painting style. First, in China, where writing in itself is an art, there is a fundamental relationship between it and the art of painting, both arts employing the same ink and the same or a very similar brush. However, in the higher stages of its development the art of painting acquired its own characteristic differences while employing the identical tools and materials.

Second, the characteristics of an artist's handwriting are repeated, even if in modified form, in the brush strokes of his painting. If in the West we also sometimes speak of the calligraphy of an artist, thereby suggesting a connection with his handwriting, in most cases we should nevertheless be at a loss if we had to identify a Western painter's work by comparing it with his handwriting.

And third, the individuality of a Chinese painter's handwriting as expressed in his painting is a matter of nuance and necessitates a very careful study of brush strokes before one can recognize the individual touch of a master behind the styles and mannerisms that belong to his period in general. Painting is not nearly as systematized as is writing, particularly in China, with its many thousands of ideographs for an unlimited number of strokes and signs. Hence it may be farfetched to imagine a sort of graphology of painting. But if it be granted that even the Western painter may reveal something of his character in his brush strokes, then the more likely is this to be the case in Chinese painting. The judging of a painting's authenticity will, in the final analysis, frequently have to depend upon just such intangibles as these, upon comparisons of writing and painting styles. Of course Chinese calligraphers have always been able to imitate many styles of many periods, but it is also true that they are usually best in those styles which suit their own character and temperament.

3 ABSTRACT AND CONCRETE

IN CHINESE PAINTING ONE OFTEN FINDS curiously distorted, grotesque stone formations which seem to have abandoned the attempt to represent natural stones and to have transgressed into abstraction. The Mustard-seed Garden gives numerous examples of abstract stone paintings which suggest pieces of modern sculpture. This tendency evidently arises from the typically Chinese urge to experiment with strange forms. The same urge finds expression in the use (as garden decorations) or the representation (as elements in a painting) of stone formations with a strongly abstract appearance; that is, they seem either not to have been shaped by nature alone and to have somehow gained a design beyond their natural shapelessness, or else to be entirely man-made creations without any reference to natural shapes. For example, see Figs. 164—65, from the Ten Bamboos Studio. Many similar examples can be found in other collections, such as The Mustard-seed Garden, and in numerous individual paintings.

This love of stone formations—which, incidentally, has been inherited by the Japanese—obviously accounts in part for the frequency with which they find their way into paintings. But there is still another reason: the desire to bring an otherwise isolated natural form more closely to the viewer's attention by a presence which can be interpreted as having been intentionally given its grotesque shape, thus rendering significant an otherwise perhaps meaningless appearance. A counterpart to this is the tendency to project concreteness into merely incidental phenomena as, for example, in finding mountains or waterfalls or trees in the natural cloud patterns of a piece of marble. This urge seems to try to link together disconnected fragments of life and to find correlatives for them in the natural world. Although these unusual forms are not abstractions in the real sense of the word—namely, not results of a deliberate intention to eliminate a certain amount of concreteness from the appearances, of simplifying things of the visible world into something barely on the verge of recognition—the creation of such forms is really a play on the borderline between concrete and abstract. In this case, however, the tendency seems to be to pull things from meaningless existence into concreteness by giving them meaning. This tradition, as represented in The Mustard-seed Garden and the Ten Bamboos Studio, may still be recognized as a late echo in the abstract sculpture of Teshigahara Sōfū, who often makes use of it in the so-called abstract flower arrangements of his Sōgetsu school in Tokyo (Fig. 166). A parallel may also be observed in some of the sculpture of Henry Moore.

But while these stone forms indicate a Chinese tendency to pull meaningless and abstract shapes into significance, some of the techniques of Chinese painting seem to have been expressly designed in order to make the abstraction of natural phenomena easier. If the splashed-ink technique helps the painter to represent leaves or rocks with splashes of ink reducing the natural forms into something of a type, a symbol, a cipher, we are obviously confronted with a tendency toward the simplification of abstraction. This tendency is stronger in ink painting, which is in itself an abstraction, than in painting with colors. It is stronger in the broken-ink style than in the gold-line style, although a line too is an abstraction. And finally, it is stronger in the spontaneous than in the elaborate style. Thus we find it more in the literary man's painting of the Southern school. To name only four of countless examples, note the abstract qualities in Ying Yü-chien (Fig. 106), Sesshū (107), Pa-ta Shan-jen (162, 271), and Ch'i Pai-shih (273).

There is one important point to be kept in mind: this fondness for abstraction, for the channeling of natural forms into simplified formulas, never crosses the borderline into complete abstraction but always retains a certain degree of realism. None of the great masters ever entirely abandons recognizable artistic representation for the sake of complete abstraction. There is no doubt that it would be an easy step to take, but, with the possible exception of modern Japanese abstract calligraphy, and leaving aside Japan's Western-style art, it has not yet been attempted.

Perhaps it is the Chinese artist's ability to be abstract within the realm of concreteness, together with his intrinsically conservative nature, that has kept him from taking the final step. Some impulses in this direction seemed to be developing immediately after World War II, but these have been completely suppressed as aberrations during recent years. In many ways the Japanese have been more progressive, more modern, in their explorations of the possibilities of abstraction and have thereby succeeded in expanding their artistic frontiers.

4 EAST AND WEST

THE INFLUENCE OF THE WEST ON CHINESE painting had been felt even in early times in the gradual spread of Graeco-Buddhist art through central Asia into China. It became really noticeable about a thousand years later in two ways. First, there were the activities of artists like the Jesuit father Giuseppe Castiglione, who arrived at the court of the Emperor K'ang Hsi in 1715 and there achieved fame under his painting name of Lang Shih-ning. Second, there were the Chinese painters who came in touch with Western forms of art through the Jesuits or via other channels and modified their own art under the influence of these contacts. In both cases the impulse was toward greater realism—toward a style of painting which sought, through a study of nature, to approach objective reality, rather after the fashion of the Chinese careful or kung-pi style. To adopt the Chinese classification, the impulse was in the direction of the Northern school of painting.

One painter who belongs to the group of artists who were influenced by the West was Shen Nan-p'in, also known as Shen Ch'üan. A contemporary of Castiglione, he is of special interest in that he went to Japan and lived from 1731 to 1733 in Nagasaki. There he helped introduce Western painting methods and the realistic style of Chinese painting to Japan, influencing such Japanese artists as Maruyama Ōkyo.

The paintings shown here by Shen Ch'iian (Fig. 167) and Castiglione (Fig. 168) are closely related to each other both in spirit and form. Castiglione's work shows definite Chinese characteristics in spite of his Western realism. An unwary Western observer might easily mistake the painting for a Chinese one. On the other hand, for a Chinese, there would be certain elements in the painting which to him would seem foreign and almost unintelligible. Note, for example, the strong shaping of the tree bark and the stone in the background, which indicate shading as the consequence of lighting; likewise the shaping of the deer itself and the arrangement of trees, stone, and deer which all converge backward and downward to a single point make a very un-Chinese composition. Then, again, Shen's painting would strike the Chinese observer as far too realistic and detailed. In addition, although the composition as a whole is Chinese in character, certain Western effects of perspective are unmistakable. These two paintings, in fact, represent a crossing of Eastern and Western art. Perhaps it is symptomatic that at the highest level of Chinese painting no such crossings can be detected.

The last echoes of Graeco-Buddhist art still sound faintly in many of the Chinese temple frescos of the Ming and Ch'ing periods. These frescos, because of the natural conservatism of their painters, have preserved the old traditional forms up to the present. See, for example, the wonderful Dürer-like portrait in Fig. 169, from one of the frescos in the Temple of the Sea of Laws (Fa Hai Ssu) near Peking. Very little is known of their history, but we can imagine this one to be a self-portrait of the painter. It is by far the most unorthodox piece of portraiture in the whole temple, and when compared with the strict forms of its neighboring paintings, this head stands out with an extraordinary individuality and modernity. It furnishes, then, a link with the art of character portraiture—an art which in China began to develop slowly only in the twentieth century.

Continuing to twentieth-century Chinese art, we find the Western spirit very apparent in character portraiture and many other fields. Fig. 170 shows the head of an old man, painted by Chiang Chao-ho in the 1940's, that includes many non-Chinese elements; for example, the almost photographic accuracy with which the planes and lines of the face are worked in. Chiang was, as he himself admits, influenced by the paintings of Kaethe Kollwitz. The result is a kind of realism, but a realism lacking the social purpose and the social protest of Kollwitz's work. During the war Chiang Chao-ho made a sketch for frescos intended for a great community hall. The frescos were never painted, and the sketch has been lost. But it was photographed, and a section of it is shown in Fig. 171. The subject of this long strip of fresco was "The Horrors of War." Although the horror does make itself felt faintly, the general effect of this collection of individual portraits is not one of disaster. There appear a calmness of observation and a detachment in this strangely mixed composition, in which bodies are painted in a manner typical of Chinese brushwork while the heads show a photographic realism. Western technique has certainly influenced this picture profoundly, but again there is only the faintest echo in it of the social outcry of Kollwitz's paintings.

5 CHINA AND JAPAN

IF EVEN A PROFESSIONAL OBSERVER sometimes finds it difficult to tell whether a given painting is Chinese or Japanese, the layman must feel completely baffled. The problem becomes especially complex for two reasons. First, at various stages in its history Japanese painting has been strongly, if not decisively, influenced by Chinese art. And second, the differences, although really quite basic, seem to fade away into the merest subtleties when viewed from a distance.

If we compare individual Chinese and Japanese paintings with each other, we may be better able to formulate certain principles by which to distinguish them. But in doing so, we must bear in mind that it is not a simple matter to find pairs of paintings which are comparable in absolutely every way. Thus, in the examples that follow we can observe that the members of each pair were often painted at different periods or were products of different social conditions. What we shall actually be doing is to set against each other paintings with similar motifs and done in similar styles in order to discover some of the special ways in which they differ.

There are other dangers in this juxtaposing of paintings, but if they are kept in mind, we believe the approach will be helpful. First of all, one must take into account the dissimilarities between painting surfaces—paper, silk, or wood. Then there are differences in size, ranging from album sheets to sliding-door panels and frescos. And finally, the artist's intentions may vary—the pure painting or the decorative work. The effects of the qualities of painting surfaces have already been explained at length (pages 182 ff.). The acquired understanding will help the student to judge how far paintings on dissimilar surfaces are comparable and to reckon with the painting-surface effect in his over-all estimate of the combined factors involved.

The diversity in size or format presents a more intricate problem—one which has duly harassed the minds of those who write on art. Ideally, all reproductions of paintings should be done on the same scale, say 1:10. This method would be particularly favorable in cases where the character and quality of paintings are to be compared, for size and the distance of the observer from the painting are factors which affect this. Not to compare paintings simply because they happen to be of unequal sizes would mean to deprive oneself unnecessarily of an insight into them which should basically be oblivious of the size or the viewing distance. But then, if the contrast in size is considerable, as it is, for instance, between a mural and an album sheet, then the fact that they are scaled down in differing proportions can falsify the comparison and be seriously misleading.

Of course much depends on which elements or techniques of the paintings are being compared. The Chinese brush stroke is of a kind that does not lose, in a scaling down, any of its vigor or essential character; therefore a reasonable scaling down of the brush stroke is quite permissible provided it is not carried too far. Chinese masters have often tried writing characters with a broom on a piece of paper spread out on the floor, without failing to capture all the essential elements of force and beauty. (And in Japan the exuberant Hokusai is said once to have drawn a picture of Daruma on a roll of paper fifty feet long.) The same masters have also written the minutest characters with brushes of very fine hair. Paintings of the same style and by the same hand have often been done on tiny album sheets smaller than playing cards and on sheets so enormous that they could be cut up into as many as ten sections to give ten separate pictures.

Finally a few words ought to be said on the differences in intention. The character of a painting expresses a fundamental trend of its epoch or of the personality of its painter. Just for that reason a finely painted landscape which is typical of a certain painter's style can be compared with a decoratively painted landscape which is typical of another's, provided that the difference between the two truly indicates the stylistic distance between the painters and that their artistic quality is comparable.

The famous seascape by Sesson (Fig. 172) undoubtedly shows certain characteristics of Chinese Sung painting. (Sesshū was greatly indebted to the Sung masters too, and his paintings are very similar in style to this seascape). Li Sung, who lived three hundred years before Sesson, was a typical Sung painter, and his tormented seascape (Fig. 173) bears all the marks of the Sung style. These two paintings are especially well suited to illustrate certain pointed stylistic differences between Chinese and Japanese painting. Both employ a forceful and vigorous brush stroke. But whereas in the Chinese one the technical perfection of the individual stroke is deliberately concealed, in the Japanese painting it is quite visible. Furthermore, the Japanese tends toward a simplification: the broadening of the brush stroke here is not always just a matter of ink technique, but is the result of a deliberate simplification aiming at the dramatic. It would be wrong to imagine that, with these two paintings, we are concerned with two different levels of artistic achievement. On the contrary, we are only stressing, for the sake of comparison, what differences exist. The issue will become clearer as we continue.

It may be mentioned here that Sesson as well as Sesshū (see Fig. 186) generally preferred a stronger brush stroke for their outlines than did the Sung painters. And it seems that the reason for this lies less in the fact that three or four hundred years separate the two styles than in the sociological dissimilarities between the two countries and in the aesthetic tastes of the painters themselves.

In Figs. 174-75 we have similar paintings of pine trees in a misty background, the first by Hsia Kuei and the second by Hasegawa Tōhaku. No one who has ever studied Oriental painting would have any doubt about which is the Chinese painting and which the Japanese. And yet, setting aside the obvious differences—the broader, more sweeping use of the brush, the stronger simplification in the Tōhaku; the more varied ways of the brush, the detailed work in the Hsia Kuei—close observation is needed to point out the distinctive diversities. One thing is certain, however: Tōhaku's screen impresses us as extraordinarily dramatic. We notice a brilliant heightening of effects. The capacity of the paper to absorb and spread everything out into a misty vagueness is exploited to the full. Hsia Kuei's painting gives the impression at first of being much more modest, even apart from its very much smaller size. For all the clarity of the wonderful brush strokes, the effect is still brilliantly concealed. One senses in it something mysterious and almost epic in contrast to the dramatic sensation of Tōhaku.

We are comparing here two pictures of different sizes: the small one by Hsia Kuei and the large screen by Tōhaku. The size of the latter painting has been drastically reduced in this reproduction; as a result, it looks more delicate or graceful than it really is. However, even on this small scale, its essential qualities are still perceivable: the extraordinary power and sureness of the brushwork, its almost magical evocation of mood, its imaginative design, and its effortless use of so many different methods and techniques. Tōhaku's brilliance in all these capacities puts him on a level with the Chinese masters and with the greatest of the Japanese painters. This claim finds support in the fact that Chinese and Japanese artists have long recognized the special skill which is needed for the large sweeping brush strokes that demand a movement from the shoulder instead of the usual wrist movement of the smaller stroke—a skill much used in China, particularly in early times when the walls of temples and palaces were available to artists. This generous skill was adopted in Japan at a much later period, about the time when the Kano school was carrying on the old traditions in the painting of screens and sliding doors.

There are of course many cases in which external factors leave no doubt about whether one is dealing with a Chinese or a Japanese painting. The sliding-door from Nijō Palace in Kyoto (Fig. 176) has Japanese metalwork on it. In addition the skillful use of a wooden painting surface is more typical of Japanese painting. The faint sketching of the boat, with the bird standing on its deck, is so effective that we seem to feel it deep down in our minds rather than see it with our eyes. It is quite justifiable to compare this brilliant painting of the Kanō school with Fig. 177, a painting by Ts'ui Po, who lived in the second half of the eleventh century. In both paintings we have a similar motif. And in both paintings, the aim is decorative: obviously so in the case of the sliding doors, and in the case of Ts'ui Po to be inferred from our knowledge of his other work. So there exists a legitimate basis for comparison of these two paintings in spite of their difference in size and painting surface. The glamorous technique apparent in the Japanese painting and the academic perfection of the Chinese one certainly disclose dissimilarities if one looks below the surface. And there are a number of other distinctions that need pointing out. The Japanese painting contains a certain reduction of elements which also affects the painting techniques. There are not only fewer brush strokes in the whole picture, but also single elements seems to be done with fewer strokes. This economy in strokes, or at least the appearance of economy, seems to be more typical of Japan than of China, although some Chinese painters can boast of equal economy at the same time that some Japanese go to the opposite extreme. But in the over-all view, economy and a tendency toward abstration seem to be Japanese traits, as will be seen in later examples.

One point will thus have clearly emerged: that Japanese painting has developed a degree of simplification and concentration upon essentials which we find in China only with Mu Ch'i (Fig. 178) or with Pa-ta Shan-jen (Fig. 163) and some of the Ch'an painters. This inclination toward simplification produces decorativeness in paintings that are meant to be used as decoration, such as those on screens and sliding doors, while in paintings intended to be enjoyed from a close angle, such as kakemono, makimono, and album leaves, its effect leans toward the contemplative; that is to say, using the word contemplative in the Ch'an sense, the emphasis is on the essential, on the essence which aids recognition.

The lion of the Temple of the Sea of Laws (Fig. 179) is undeniably related to the tigers and leopards of Nijō Palace in Kyoto (Fig. 180), though individual brush strokes are more clearly visible in the Chinese painting than in the Japanese one. One can again recognize the Japanese painting by external factors, such as the metalwork on the sliding doors and the gold-leaf painting surface. Moreover, the simplifying tendency mentioned above is unmistakably present. The planes and shapes, the shading and the lines are without question arranged in an aesthetic rather than a realistic relationship, whereas in the Chinese painting the decorative effect derives to a certain extent from the fact that the lines are used not so much to depict a lion but rather an allegorical creature which has become so stylized that even elements of the dragon have crept into its formation (e.g., the backbone). Making allowances for the remotest interpretation of that word, realism was not the aim of the artist who put this lion into his picture as a Buddhist guardian.

What is true for these wild animals is also true for the geese painted by the Chinese Wang Hai-yün (Fig. 181) and the bird painting on a wall in the Nijō Palace (Fig. 182). We can set off the cunning use of a gold background to form clouds in the Japanese painting against the skill in pure composition of the Chinese painting. In the Japanese work there is a dramatic correspondence between the shapes of the clouds and the shape of the pond; and in the Chinese work there is a symbolic correspondence between the drooping grass and the standing bird, and between the wind-blown grass and the flying bird. In the Japanese work, the correspondence of forms suggests meaning, while in the Chinese the correspondence of details suggests mood.

One is not likely to hesitate in deciding that the sliding doors of Fig. 183, with their metalwork and gold leaf, were painted by a Japanese, while the painting of the branch overhanging the water (Fig. 184) must be Chinese. Discounting this obvious distinction, there is still another essential difference in these two works with so similar a motif. In the Japanese painting, extra details are added here and there for effect, while the Chinese painting, in spite of its effective interplay of branch and water, seems to be restrained, to be leaving things unsaid. Studying the Japanese painting, one feels that the small bird in profile is perhaps unnecessary; that the sharply jutting twigs near the door-pull of the right center panel accentuate a little too consciously the painter's skill in his brushwork; that the richness of decoration is a little overrich in the gnarled knuckles of the branches. The Chinese painting is not without abundance of forms, but it still has a more restrained effect. This contrast is of course partly due to a disparity in the intended functions of the two works. Sliding doors always need to be more strongly decorative than picture scrolls, because they have to play the role of the wall. Nevertheless, the divergence seems to reflect something quite fundamental. There is an old tradition in Chinese painting that a master ought to avoid pa ch'i. And pa ch'i means a virtuoso display of technical skill.

To avoid any misunderstanding, it should be repeated that we are not trying to make value judgments—although they creep in unawares—but are mainly concerned with analyzing differences. That this is not easy in a limited space as part of a larger argument will be understood. The dissimilarities in question are probably in part explicable as a consequence of different national temperaments. China, conceived on such a huge scale, so vast, so prodigal of human life, developed a class of scholars (many of whom were also painters) who were liable to be posted anywhere in the emperor's service. Wherever they settled, they would try to adjust their personal idiosyncrasies to their new milieus. In spite of this books like Shui Hu Chuan (Water Margin), which immortalized revolt against bad government, were still written, and there were still painters like Mi Fei and Shih T'ao who in their work revolted against the traditional. By contrast, the volcanic islands of Japan, in which millions lived crowded together in a cramped, narrow space, had developed from early times a tendency toward the explosive, and had extended certain traditions already existing in China. There was for example the tendency to concentrate movements into a precise fraction of a second, which one finds in judo, in sumo wrestling, in Japanese archery, and so on, or to produce the surprise effect that one finds in the Kabuki theater. Furthermore there is the ritual calm of the Noh play and the tea ceremony. And even the tea ceremony, which unfortunately is in danger of turning into a mass performance for modern tourists, shows dramatic stylization of all movements.

Ma Yüan was one of the masters on whom Sesshū modeled himself. The juxtaposing of a work by each of these masters (Figs. 185-86) will give an idea of what became of Sung-style painting during the course of three hundred years and a transplanting from China to Japan. It is interesting to see how the Japanese painting, with its grand simplifications, becomes at the same time more manly and more decorative than its Sung paragon. And this is not because Sesshū uses broader brush strokes, nor because of the flat shaping lines like the cuts of a big axe. The simplification which has taken place in the Japanese painting does not, in fact, reflect an inner impoverishment but the introduction of something like an urge to the dramatic. There is a boisterous energy at work, using jagged, broken brush strokes to paint the distant mountain under a sky heavy with snow, a method which is in sharp contrast with the misty lyricism of Ma Yüan. One is actually tempted to put this on record as a definition: to talk of Ma Yüan as lyric and of Sesshū as dramatic, of the Chinese as placid and the Japanese as explosive. To what extent fundamental distinctions between the two styles of painting are thus indicated is a question that must be left open, particularly because—as we have already stressed—one can find examples of Chinese art which suggest a Japanese treatment and vice versa. But for the time being, and as long as no authoritative study of the styles of the two countries exists, such tentative hints and suggestions may be of service to those who seek a clearer understanding of the problem.

With Sesshū, who lived much later than Ma Yüan but felt himself to be contemporary with him in style, the brush stroke seems to slash and parry like a dagger stroke. Particularly impressive is the wonderful ability of the Japanese artist to simplify, and this simplifying proves to be of a kind entirely alien to that of the Chinese artist: it is more strident. The Chinese artist's method of simplification is an act of contemplation, while that of the Japanese seems to be a demonstration. Both artists are experts in technique, and it is fascinating to follow in both paintings the slashes and thrusts of the brush right up to the last.

The woodblock print is one branch of art where the difference between the Chinese and the Japanese is especially noticeable and can be appreciated even by someone who is just beginning to study Oriental art. Admittedly, there are some prints in Japan which have been influenced by Chinese prints, but these are not typical. If we set the two styles of prints against each other, the fundamental contrast should not be hard to discover. The Japanese print (Fig. 187) has developed a technique and a style in which the original design, with its lines and brush strokes, is covered over and disappears. Here the principles of woodblock design have been so thoroughly worked out that gradually the pictures came to be designed with the engraver and printer in mind. The relationship of lines, shapes, tones, and planes now has a very largely decorative purpose. The line, originally pulsating with the life of the brush, has become a mere area contour and shows little evidence that it was ever produced by brush and ink. One notices in the Japanese print a general air of abstractness.

As we have said, there do exist in Japan "imitative" prints also, which faithfully follow the original designs in their brushwork and colors. But quite early the Japanese masters began to adapt their designs to the material they were working in—wood. Of course it would be wrong to consider "imitative" prints as aberrations. Those in China, for instance—the ones which were intended primarily as illustrations for books on the art of painting, like The Mustard-seed Garden—had necessarily to stick very closely to the originals, to their brush strokes and colors. Moreover, the print never grew in China into an independent art form with its own rules. It always remained a handicraft, though certainly a highly developed one. In Japan the print was at first looked down on by the cultured as a cheap form of popular art, as a means of illustration, and as a poster art (advertising sumo wrestlers and actors). Later the art of the print became an independent genre, and much excellent work was produced. Of course, seen from our modern vantage point and after having become a recognized art through the efforts of its later practitioners, many of the earliest prints are today rightfully considered of top artistic quality. The fact that the art of the print was not very much appreciated until "discovered" by the West does not detract from its importance. This independent art is an extremely faithful expression of the Japanese character. It not only shows the Japanese delight in their materials, but also offers opportunities for artists to produce those elaborate and rich simplifications of essentials which they like so much. For there is a taste in Japan for the ornate, the decorated, the pleasantly grotesque, and the striking effect (which is not the same thing as crude ostentation). Quite apart from the question of the relative values of prints in China and Japan, the woodblock print itself is perhaps the most typical expression of the difference in the national characters, and as such it deserves further study.

A marked contrast to the Japanese print is represented by the Chinese art of the print as we know it from The Mustard-seed Garden and the Ten Bamboos Studio and as it has come down to us in the traditional letter paper of contemporary painters (Fig. 188). The original brush marks, the track of the ink, and the color still remain on the block. The engraver tries to copy the original sketch down to the finest flying white or the subtlest iron-wire lines. In consequence the Chinese print often looks less like a print and rather like a water color. This is all the more so because the Chinese printers give the colored areas an extremely lively texture by working the colors into the block with the flat of the hand before the print is made. Thus again, in the print rather than in painting, an essential difference between the two countries evolves: the Chinese try to maintain the vibrant texture of the line, while the Japanese try to extract from the stroke and the shading the greatest possible decorative effect.

The two landscapes seen in Figs. 189-90 illustrate the difficulty which an untrained observer, or even an expert, can experience in distinguishing between a Japanese and a Chinese painting. Certain similarities in the technique and style of the two paintings will be at once apparent. One is tempted to assume that the Japanese Unzen, who came from Kyushu and represented the Southern school in the Edo period, modeled himself on Mo Shih-lung. This is all the more likely since Unzen himself was a scholar painter and representative of the so-called Southern school, and Mo was one of the two Chinese painters and art theorists responsible for the distinction between the Northern and Southern schools and for the partial identification of the Southern school with the scholar-painters. We know that in almost every period the Japanese were both lovers and imitators of Chinese painting. There have been times in the history of Japanese painting—especially during the years when the so-called Manga or Nansoga (Nan hua or Nan-tsung-hua in Chinese, literally "Southern painting" or "Southern-school painting") was introduced when it was the highest ambition of many Japanese painters to reproduce the style of Chinese models. The imitations were sometimes so close that they could hardly be distinguished from the Chinese originals, either in the style itself or in composition and idea. The greater the external resemblance between a Chinese and a Japanese painting, the more necessary it becomes to make a detailed study of all aspects of the technique of painting in order to penetrate through surface resemblances to the real differences which lie underneath.

Now perhaps it will become possible to discern the fundamental differences between these two paintings. In the Japanese one, there is a greater degree of concentration, a stronger emphasis or underlining of the elements of Chinese painting, and it makes no effort to conceal the conscious intentions of the painter, which are hidden in the Chinese painting. If one can imagine the Chinese painting as having been squeezed into the same width as the Japanese, one can see how much more concentrated are the effects of the latter. One must not, of course, accept this as a recognized method of comparison; it is only a trick of the eye.

In many cases it will naturally be possible to identify a painting by its signature. In doing this, however, one dodges the question of artistic judgment, which is, after all, the whole point. Signatures, anyway, have no value when one is dealing with a forgery, and almost every painter who has won even a limited interest among collectors and connoisseurs has also won the interest of the forger.

There are, of course, masterly legitimate Japanese copies of Chinese paintings which the artists admit to be such. Note, for example, Yokoyama Tai-kan's excellent copy (Fig. 192) of a Mu Ch'i painting (Fig. 191). But there also exist extremely efficient Japanese forgeries of Chinese paintings.

As we have already suggested (page 122), the Japanese tend to treat traditional techniques with a greater freedom; this shows itself in many ways. A recognition of this difference in attitude may make it easier to distinguish between typical Chinese and typical Japanese styles. The urge among Japanese painters to shake off the chains of a tradition that they have sometimes felt to be a burden has frequently become apparent. And it is one of the typically Oriental paradoxes that the Japanese, normally so strongly bound by tradition, should thus in painting have broken away with greater success than the Chinese, who are normally less bound to tradition or, one might even say, indifferent to it. (The latest development—the application of Marxism to Chinese art—must, for many reasons, be passed over here without comment.)

Among the various ways in which Chinese techniques have been carried further along more original lines in Japan, the following at least ought to be mentioned:

1.  The more common use of the split brush. This technique was occasionally used by Pa-ta Shan-jen and is often used by Li K'o-jan (Fig. 248), but in Japanese painting it became a recognized procedure at an early date. We find it, for example, in the Kano school in the work of Naonobu (Fig. 108) among others.
2.  The mixing of techniques. For example, Kano Naonobu (Fig. 108), as well as others, often executed shaping lines like big-axe cuts with a split brush and combined is with the flying-white technique. (See also page 120.)
3.  Tarashi-komi, or the drop technique. This is seen particularly in the work of Sōtatsu and Korin (Fig. 104) and it is frequently found nowadays, though not always used with the same mastery and restraint as in the past. (See also page 122.)
4.  Nijimi, or letting the ink run (Fig. 105). This technique is probably a fairly recent development and, as already suggested, is somewhat akin to Ta-chism. But it is still part of a painting method where the movement of the brush is firmly controlled. As the control of ink is relaxed while that of brush is retained, new and interesting aspects of an ancient ink and brush technique have evolved. It is interesting to note that, in art courses in some grade schools in Japan, the nijimi technique is taught in connection with instruction on brush handling. From this one may gather that the modern possibilities of this technique are recognized, and yet at the same time the close link with tradition is emphasized. (See also page 123.)

It would be wrong to underestimate these Japanese contributions to the old brush and ink techniques. When one recalls the revolutionary impact on Chinese painting technique of such methods as Mi Fei's dot technique, or Ni Tsan's dry brush, or Shih T'ao's shaping lines, and remembers how difficult it was to break away from the tradition or to try anything new, only then can one measure the liberating effect which these Japanese techniques must have had. One may assume that sometime in the future, when intercourse between Japanese and Chinese culture will again be feasible, these modern Japanese techniques will in their turn have some effect on the traditional painting techniques of China, in many ways so rigid. And the influence will be a beneficial one. Before the political upheavals of 1949, there were signs of this happening in China, and now one notices that, after many years of neglect, the traditional school is once more coming into favor. This is certainly linked with a policy which wants to reinterpret the achievements of the past in a new light. Nevertheless it has also something to do with the quite recent recognition of the great possibilities of an art form in which realism plays only a subordinate role, and in which many unexpressed emotional elements and symbols of great power are inextricably rooted.

Although in the course of this necessarily brief comparison of Chinese and Japanese art certain fundamental differences will have become clear, it has also become obvious how difficult is the task of expressing and summing up these differences in definite terms. The obstacles increase where an outward similarity is nothing but the cover for deeply founded contrasts based on completely divergent national characteristics. It is easy to see—and state—the differences between a painting of the Yamato school and a typical Sung painting. However, when the differences are hidden under the technical similarities of certain brush strokes or ink methods, the distinction becomes one of subtleties. The Japanese as a nation and Japanese artists as individuals have proved again and again that they have an amazing power of transmutation, of assimilation, of appropriation, so that anything they accept becomes, sometimes in a very short period of time, absolutely and unalienably Japanese. This fact makes it compulsory to delve deeply into this highly intricate question of how and where Japanese artists have made a foreign importation their own in the deepest sense, and in what way this transmutation has become manifest. Perhaps this brief attempt will induce others to deal with the problem on the basis of a sound sociological analysis and, with the instruments of exact definition of impulses and responses, to determine how they came about and what forms they created.

6 GENUINE OR FALSE

THE CHINESE, WITH THEIR GREAT VENERATION for famous names of the past, are quite as interested as Westerners in establishing whether a given painting was actually painted by such and such an artist, nor have the art dealers been reluctant to exploit this veneration to their own advantage. And yet the question of whether a given painting is genuine or false is a very complex one in China, and far more difficult to answer than in the West.

There are two main reasons behind this difficulty. The first is the Chinese attitude toward copying. In the Chinese view, a painting which is known to be a copy of an old master is quite as much a "genuine" painting as is the original. True, there may be a great difference in the prices of the copy and the original, but the painting that is obviously derived from another, faithfully echoing the composition of the original, is nevertheless a genuine painting, to be judged on its technical skill. Provided it is well done, such a painting is in no sense considered a plagiarism but an independent work of art.

The last of Hsieh Ho's six principles ( see page 109) is often translated: "Copy the old masters." This principle has certainly been followed by the majority of Chinese painters, at least during the period of their apprenticeship. (It should be pointed out, however, that the principle has also been rejected quite explicitly by other painters, for example by Mi Fei and Shih T'ao.) There have even been painters who became masters almost entirely by copying old paintings, without having had teachers at all. They learned how to handle the brush by writing with it, and for the rest, they armed themselves with numerous books on painting.

As a result of this Chinese attitude, copying has been both the blessing and the curse of Chinese painting. There is not thought to be anything despicable in tracing over a painting, stroke for stroke; and to make a free reproduction of some famous painting is thoroughly honorable. All kinds of copying—tracing, exact reproduction, free interpretation—have special Chinese names, and these names show how various the methods are and what an accepted place they occupy in the Chinese painting tradition.

The second difficulty, closely allied with this attitude toward copying, lies in the exceedingly fine distinctions of Chinese painting techniques, in the Chinese conception of the fundamental importance of the brush stroke. Hence the difference between a genuine original and a masterly copy is often very subtle and minute, so much so that even an expert can be misled. The earlier the painting, the more hazardous the problem becomes. The usual practice in China is for a number of experts to examine a painting together. They will probably discuss it at enormous length before they venture a decision as to whether it indeed is the work of the painter to whom it has been ascribed. Western experts are rather more venturesome. They often seem to decide after only a few moments of screwing up their eyes in front of a Chinese painting: "Ah, not a doubt of it—a genuine Shen Chou!"

As a result of the tradition of copying and the great difficulty in distinguishing between original and copy, many paintings which were assumed to be originals became famous in Western and Chinese museums until they were finally discovered to be contemporary or later copies—for example, Ku K'ai-chih's "Admonition of the Imperial Instructress," in the British Museum, or Wang Wei's "Waterfall" (Fig. 100). Not only were honorable copies often mistaken for originals, but numerous deliberate forgeries from the centuries-old forging studios of China have also found their way into museums and histories of art.

This same opinion has been advanced by many authorities. To name but a single example, a few years ago in Tokyo I attended a lecture on Chinese painting by Professor Y. Yashiro, the well-known Japanese scholar, during which he set forth this same view. Afterwards his sponsor complained that the professor's lecture, although extremely interesting, had dealt a hard blow at the collectors, who would now be forced to suspect the authenticity of many of the paintings in their collections.

One can see, then, why such a tremendous confusion exists over what is genuine and what is false in Chinese art. It drives us to one fundamental conclusion: a painting must be judged primarily on its artistic merit, not on its attribution. And this of course presupposes an extensive knowledge of the techniques of brush and ink.

Some years ago, in an unpublished manuscript that I had the opportunity of seeing, a Chinese scholar wrote: "It is high time that all the unprofitable discussions which go on about the genuineness or otherwise of a Chinese painting came to an end. We should take it for granted that all the paintings which appear on the Chinese market are imitations, with only a few genuine ones thrown in as exceptions to prove the rule. Quisque preasumitur malus donec probetur contrarium may be a deplorable principle in law; but in the no man's land of Chinese art it is an excellent means of making order out of chaos. We should always let ourselves be impressed by paintings whose beauty is beyond question, whether they are genuine or false, original or copies."

This is a refreshing attitude in view of the widespread and again paradoxical tendency in China to prize highly a painting which is clearly genuine and as clearly bad, and to appreciate artistically but undervalue financially a painting which is good but obviously not an original by a famous master. This tendency, which is also common in Japan, has led to many well-executed paintings by unknown artists being given the forged signature of some celebrity, though the name and the picture do not accord with each other. Such a painting may then come on the market just cheap enough to attract the layman by its supposed bargain value. But it will not tempt a buyer who is really an expert in art, for although he may appreciate the painting in itself, he cannot ignore the jarring discord that evidently exists between the famous signature and the artistic style—any more than he can ignore the price, which is obviously too cheap for a genuine painting by a renowned artist.

These considerations ought to make the experts more humble—and furthermore, make them realize that only a ceaseless study of methods will pave the way to an understanding of whether a painting is good or bad, in the Chinese interpretation. This, reasonably enough, will often be found to coincide with the question of whether it is genuine or false.

Now we are ready for the two paintings reproduced here. They are contemporary paintings and have been chosen because they are examples in which a clear decision can be made as to whether they are good or bad, genuine or false. The first (Fig. 193) is a genuine Ch'i Pai-shih, painted in 1948, when the master was eighty-eight. Its genuineness is attested not so much by the signature as by the masterly brushwork and ink control and by the taste with which the grape basket has been arranged on the flat surface. These qualities are all lacking in the second painting (Fig. 194). Although this carries the same signature and seal, it is a bungled painting. To name but a few of its many faults, its brush strokes are weak, especially in the basket; the stems of the grapes are all but nonsensical; the arrangement of the grapes is monotonous; and the entire design is flat and shapeless. One further indication, though not readily apparent to the average Western expert, is the signature itself; here the well-educated Chinese, practically without needing to compare it with a genuine signature, would have no hesitancy in deciding that it was little more than a poor forgery.

It is fairly easy to come to a decision regarding these two paintings, since they were chosen for the very reason of their obvious qualities of genuineness and falsity. But in most cases one does not have both the genuine and the false available for comparison, and instead must look at a single painting and pass judgment. Here the problem becomes infinitely more complex, and one's only recourse is to the study of the minutest nuances of brush strokes and ink usages.

In the case of these two paintings, obviously what happened was this: Ch'i Pai-shih, like other Chinese painters, went through a succession of periods: a landscape period, a figure period, a bird period, a wisteria period, and during each period he used to play endless variations on a single theme. Hence the public was accustomed to seeing quite similar pictures by him showing the same subjects. So when his grape-basket period became generally known, the forgers felt comparatively safe in reaping the benefit of the master's fame, just as they had done with all his earlier periods. Perhaps they were even able to get hold of a genuine painting which he had carelessly discarded and to use it as a model in their desire to pick some of the crumbs from his table. However it came about, the fact remains that grape-basket forgeries such as this began to pop up everywhere in the painting markets, with Ch'i Pai-shih's signature on them. Many visitors to the exhibition halls of Central Park or the antiquaries' street Liu Li Ch'ang came across a Ch'i Pai-shih which looked genuine to them and proudly carried it off home, when just a little knowledge of brush techniques would have put them on their guard and further study would have made them realize that the painting bore all the marks of a downright forgery.

7 ORIGINAL OR COPY

WE HAVE SEEN THAT THIS PROBLEM OF deciding whether or not a painting is genuine makes it essential for the connoisseur to study brush and ink technique. Nothing, perhaps, will better convey the importance of this study, so little understood in the West, than a comparison between an original and a copy. The original chosen for our example (Fig. 195) comes from the seventeenth century, while the copy (Fig. 196) was done as an exercise by a young Peking artist who now paints and teaches in Hawaii. Although Miss Tseng has faithfully copied the original, the work is still stamped with her own personality.

Most reproductions in Western publications are so much reduced in size and so indistinct that only a general impression of the over-all composition is given, while the essence of the original is largely lost. In Chinese art, this "essence" lies neither in the subject nor in the composition, but in the execution; and it is precisely this quality which is often sacrificed in the reproduction. However, in the paintings reproduced here, one can follow all the details of brush handling and ink work. In the copy, which frankly claims to be nothing more than an exercise, even the minutest movements of the brush are visible. Note the extremely lively texture of the flat surfaces, the emphatic, even dramatic, quality of the general outlines. Here is a talented painter using her brush with great skill. But no matter how faithfully she tried to copy the original, she could not (or perhaps would not) avoid giving the painting something of her own personality, as a close comparison of the two paintings makes clear.

In China, as already stated, there does not exist a dichotomy between technical and aesthetic values, between form and spirit. So there can be no question of the importance of technique being underrated. The idea, which is sometimes put forward in the West, that it is the total effect of the painting which counts, finds no acceptance in China. A Chinese can go into ecstasies over the disciplined grace and power of the brushwork in a painting, but he will be equally ravished by a masterful handling of the brush which is less spectacular and does not call attention to itself. His own experience with the writing brush makes him specially perceptive in this matter, and he follows lovingly each movement of the brush, bold or subtle. In short, if the brush-work, the technique, of a copy is as good as that of the original, then in Chinese eyes it too has justified itself as a work of art.

8    MOOD

IT IS SAID OF THE SUNG PAINTER KU TSUN-CHIH THAT whenever he went into his tower to paint he pulled the ladder up after him in order to cut himself off completely from mundane influences. He rubbed his ink only when the weather was fine and the wind still, so that his brush would not get contaminated with dust or dirt. On the other hand, the T'ang painter Kuo Sheng is said to have needed noise to get into the mood for his painting. He had to have musicians blow trumpets and beat calfskin drums before he could put his brush to work.

The point of these stories is that the Chinese painter must be in the right mood to paint and, conversely, that he can only truly express his own moods in his painting. In the first story, the tower is a symbol of concentration and the weather a symbol of mental purity. In the second story, the beating of drums and blowing of trumpets may also have had the connotation of driving away evil spirits.

Incidentally, the story of Ku's tower suggests that it was early in the history of Chinese art when the painter stopped working out of doors and became a studio artist. Ever since, the Chinese artist, with few exceptions, has aimed not so much at a realistic imitation of the world around him, but rather at the expression of a mood or feeling experienced in the solitude of his studio—summoning up his memories of the visible world and reacting to that world. As was remarked earlier, take away the romantic connotations from Wordsworth's definition of lyricism as "emotion recollected in tranquillity" and this also becomes a good definition of Chinese studio art.

In their fondness for expressing even the deepest of artistic tendencies in epigrammatic form, the Chinese have naturally not been taciturn on this central problem of art, the expression of mood. Their epigram in this case is a kind of signpost which gives warning that painting and mood must be in accord: "When happy, paint the iris; when angry, paint the bamboo." This is true not only in its deeper sense but also literally. A calm, steady hand—which depends on a calm, steady mind—is in fact essential for rendering the long elegant leaves of the iris (Fig. 197), while the sharp confused leaves of the bamboo (Fig. 198) seem always to have been flung down in irritation by a nervous jerky hand.

9 FINGER, BRUSHLESS, AND RULER PAINTING

IN CHINESE PAINTING there has long existed an urge to get as close as possible to the painting surface and to bypass as many as possible of the physical processes which obtrude between eye, heart, and painting surface. This has led at times to a complete abandonment of the brush in favor of parts of the artist's body, producing strange forms of painting and even some true oddities. But since this phenomenon does arise from a genuine problem of painting and, at least in finger painting, has resulted in some remarkable works of art, it is deserving of brief notice.

The techniques of Chinese painting form in themselves a unique attempt to overcome technical difficulties by assiduous study and to achieve thereby an apparent immediacy of expression. (Paradoxically, this has also made it possible for expressionless art and mere virtuosity to flourish.) It is small wonder, then, that sometimes Chinese painters have not been satisfied with the freedom given by a mastery of technique and have tried to bridge the narrow but profound gulf which must always in the end separate the painter from his work. Driven by this desire, which has also perhaps something in common with Ch'an philosophy, Chinese painters have painted with their own hair, their tongues, or their fingers.

The problem is actually a universal one. In a lecture which Gustaf Gruendgens gave in March, 1954, on the subject of "The Theater and Modern Art" (printed in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, April 3, 1954) the same problem was noted. Quoting the famous German writer Lessing as a modest personality in comparison to a certain fictitious type of painter, it is explained that the modest artist Lessing "found the way from the birth of a work of art to its realization a very long and painful one. He made his fictitious conversation partner, the painter Conti, say: 'We do not paint immediately with our eyes! On the road from the eye through the arm into the brush, how much is lost!' And then Lessing himself stuck out his chest—a rather more modest chest, though—and replied: 'If I say I know what has got lost, and how it got lost, and why it had to get lost, I am as proud of this, or even prouder, as I am of everything that I don't lose. From the former I learn more than from the latter—that I am really a great painter but that my hand often is not.'"

In China, what gets lost on the way from the eye (and in the case of the Ch'an painters, from the heart) through the arm and into the brush is much more minute and more difficult to recognize than it is in the technically ponderous art of the West. But although the Chinese painter is in fact and in spirit closer to his painting surface and actually has a greater chance of achieving immediacy (not that he always succeeds in achieving it), he has still been dissatisfied, and has even tried to do without the brush. One can think of Western parallels to this—painting with a palette knife, with the fingers, or with the tube.

Some Chinese painters have dipped their own hair in ink and painted with that. The "brush" control in such cases was obviously not very great. More common are the painters who have tried to paint with their tongues. When one thinks of the parallel between a tongue movement creating tones and a brush movement creating forms, then tongue painting seems, from the point of view of immediacy, to be not quite so eccentric.

Lastly, finger painting has won for itself quite a firm place in the history of Chinese painting, and there exist a fair number of works produced by this technique which are quite presentable. Obviously, in finger painting it is the qualities of the ink which predominate rather than any brushlike effects. The modern finger painting by Ch'en Wen-hsi (Fig. 199) shows this clearly. Here the ink has sparkle and liveliness, while the "brush stroke" completely lacks fineness and richness, for all the skill displayed in the use of the broad flats of the fingers and the sharp nails. We can hardly talk any more of an inner texture. In other words, in finger painting the painter "has ink" but "lacks brush." Another example of finger painting, showing how forceful an impression the technique can produce, is seen in Fig. 236.

The Chinese painter has never been afraid of using simple devices to help him solve his artistic problems. One example of this is the technique—admittedly not a very important one—which the Chinese call chieh hua. This is usually mistranslated into English as "boundary painting." Perhaps "ruler painting" would be a more accurate description of the technique, since a ruler is actually used. For example, a ruler has certainly been used for a number of the lines in Fig. 115. And in Fig. 200 the palace architecture was ruled into a freehand landscape. The complicated beam joints in the roof, the pillars, and the gables have all been drawn with a ruler, giving the painting a rather stiff, textureless quality.

This technique has always been looked down upon by the critic-scholars, as well as by true painters, as being an "artisan" approach. Nevertheless, painters of repute have used it from time to time.

10 SIMILAR MOTIFS AJVD DIFFERENT PERIODS

IT IS VERY SIGNIFICANT THAT Japanese painters who modeled themselves on the Sung techniques, Sesshū and Sesson especially, did not cling exclusively to the style which was later usually associated with the Northern school, that is, with Ma Yuan and Hsia Kuei. The painting by Sesson (Fig. 201) shows that he was also a master of the splashed-ink technique which derived from those Sung painters who belonged to the Southern school. This painting not only suggests the Southern school but also comes near to what is called scholar-painting (in Chinese wen jen hua, in Japanese bunjinga). It has the technical brilliance, the reckless generosity of style that one associates with scholar painting. And it is precisely this ability to use both styles (as the great Chinese masters also could) that makes the difference between literary and academic painting so uncertain and has caused so much confusion in the criticism of Oriental art. Chinese art critics usually went further than this distinction between literary and academic painters and introduced the additional classification of artisan painter (kungjen), using the idea of "anti-literary" to cover both the academicians and the artisans.

Huang Shen, working in the scholar-painter tradition in the eighteenth century, had the same technique of handling his brush as Sesson and his Chinese models, only with greater freedom (Fig. 202). In the language of the art critics, he handled his brush with literary nonchalance. Nevertheless, one can see in this painting the virtuosity of his dot technique, which meant that he could put his painting on paper with great speed.

It is interesting to note that the ink painting by P'u Ch'iian seen in Fig. 203 seems to have more in common with Sesson's painting than with Huang Shen's. This is because P'u has tried to capture the spirit of the Sung painters, and he can be said to have succeeded in this. P'u Ch'üan, who still lives in Peking, is one of the leading young landscape painters of China. This small painting seems to get very close to Japanese painting, but its rejection of dramatic effects in favor of mood still discloses its Chinese background.

Although there seems to be very little that is Chinese in the work of a painter like Kōrin, many of the techniques which he uses can be traced back to Chinese models. And the fact that the general impression is purely Japanese must be regarded as a result of his special use of these techniques. For example, the style of working in planes is present in the Kōrin painting of Fig. 204 in the boat and in the headgear of the cormorant fisherman. The general motif is certainly familiar; it recalls the famous fisherman painting by Wu Chen and also one by Kung K'ai. But it would be difficult to find a better illustration of the fact that the motif is only incidental and that in Oriental painting more than in any other kind, it is the execution which is decisive. One is again reminded of the parallel between painting and music; for a motif of painting passes before our eyes in its myriad variations in much the same way as we listen many times to a familiar piece of music rendered by different musicians. It has been said that Chinese art has comparatively few motifs. This is true, but it is only important in those cases where the Chinese painter considers originality to be his main aim. In reality, however, it is almost always the power and delicacy of the execution which is considered important. Compositions are repeated time after time, in painting as in music. The execution, the keyboard technique (the brush stroke), the sound of the strings (ink tones), the orchestration (brush and ink technique)—all these determine whether or not a well-known composition has been rendered well. A Chinese painting is really two things at the same time: a new composition and a creative rendering.

If we now look at the second painting in this group (Fig. 205), all this will become clear. It is a modern interpretation of the same old theme: the fisherman among the reeds. The painting is by a contemporary Peking artist, Li K'o-jan. It is painted on unsized paper, with a very loose, flowing brush technique. And although it uses traditional methods as well, it has many modern characteristics which make it a work of the twentieth century—especially since it contains a slight tendency to the nijimi effect discussed on pages 123 and 250.

11 TUN HUANG AND THE ORIGINS OF CHINESE PAINTING

WE HAVE AL-READY STATED THAT this book is not a work on the history of Oriental art. A historical survey has been excluded here, not because it is unimportant but because it is already well known, having been dealt with in numerous other works. The historical details which will be given in the following pages are merely suggested as a means of linking up the themes with which this book is really concerned.

WALL AND BANNER PAINTINGS. Chinese painting has shown a continuous and uniform development from early influences which, though untraced or difficult to ascertain, have proved to be extremely strong. Parallel with this development, it has also been able to create an extraordinarily splendid and unified art, and in addition has assimilated many foreign elements. This great art embraces nearly two thousand years of time. Its scope has been relatively narrow, but its roots have gone very deep, and it has produced a richness of forms and achievements of great and lasting value which cannot be ignored.

Wall and banner paintings were the earliest forms of Chinese painting or, more accurately, the earliest forms of which we have any record. For it is quite possible that there might have existed genuinely painted pictures which have not been preserved. These would have been contemporary with the semipictorial representations on early bronzes and with bas-reliefs on such tombs as that of the Wu family in Shantung, dating from the second century, which we have left out of our account.

The walls of cave temples, which always lured people of early times with their mysterious gloom; the walls of emperors' and noblemen's palaces in the many centers of culture of early China; the walls of temples and monasteries—all these walls beckoned to anonymous artists and craftsmen (often probably monks) and offered their tempting surfaces to the painters' skill. On them they depicted the old symbolic figures of the Taoist, and later the Buddhist, pantheon.

On the banners carried in processions or at festivals, and on the draperies which hung from the pillars of the temples, all the pictorial richness of Buddhist iconography could be expressed. One can still clearly recognize the Indian origin of many of these early works. A closer look will reveal Hellenistic elements as well. Hellenism traveled the immense distance from Greece through Bactria and Bamiyan to Gandhara (where it mixed with Indian elements), and from there across the Hindu Kush, through Turkestan eastwards to the gates of China. Men like the Germans A. von. LeCoq and Albert Gruenwedel, like the Englishman Sir Aurel Stein and the Frenchman E. Chavannes, have followed in the footsteps of this migrating art and checked its route. Over the sandy deserts of Turkestan to the very portals of China came those ambassadors of Hellenic and Indian art and religion. And even then China was an ancient country, with fifteen hundred years of history and periods of political and historical greatness behind it.

Tun Huang, in northwestern Kansu, is the place where, during the first eight centuriesA-B., more than four hundred cave temples and monasteries were painted with Buddhist images and scenes. It was a stage on the great silk route where, as caravans rested and goods were exchanged, worlds of thought met. A city of temples grew up in the rock face, and in these temples pilgrims and merchants, camel drivers and caravan guards lighted butter lamps on the brocaded altars to show their devotion to this religion from India, Buddhism. When war and unrest later flowed over China, the caves were abandoned, most of them being sealed up by faithful monks, and then largely forgotten. In at least one case precious art objects and manuscripts were further concealed by being sealed into a niche within a cave chapel. Although knowledge of the caves' existence survived as a vague tradition, they were rediscovered and brought to the attention of the art world only half a century ago, and it was found that the dry climate and the careful work of stonemason and builder had preserved this extraordinary treasure of paintings and manuscripts, many over 1,500 years old, in wonderful condition. Several centuries of artistic development are reflected in the cave paintings, which include many from the early periods of Chinese painting history. In them one can trace not only the general development of Chinese art, but also the emergence of distinctive types of painting within this art.

The banners shown in Figs. 206-8, preserved by a happy stroke of fate, are all from Tun Huang. This fact does not in itself prove that they are of Chinese workmanship. There are still so many elements present in them which bear witness to the origins of this art that one would hesitate to call them Chinese at all were it not for the presence of certain Chinese features too—notably the painting of the rocks around the central Buddha. In the banners of Figs. 209-10, however, the Chinese elements are quite unmistakable. Clothing as well as furniture, architecture as well as landscape, are already definitely Chinese in character, and one is tempted to date these paintings fairly late, even as late as the Sung period. When one compares these scenes from the life of Buddha with the corresponding scenes in the Ajanta caves of central India, one realizes the distance this art has already traveled from its Indian beginnings. For we have here not only the Chinese technique of making the brush strokes, but also fundamental principles in Chinese painting, such as that of composition. The composition here is already much more highly developed than in the Ajanta paintings, with their multitudes of figures. Since these banners are in fact ascribed to the T'ang period, they cannot be considered to be early forms of Chinese art.

PROVINCIALISM. Although Tun Huang was situated on the great route along which trade and ideas passed from East to West and from West to East, it was still only a provincial center of art, far away from the flourishing main cities. This provincialism is suggested by a certain stiffness of the forms, as well as by a backwardness in technique. For this reason, works from Tun Huang appear to be about a hundred years earlier than city paintings of the same date. The disparity in time is obvious, for example, in a comparison of the silk banners of Figs. 207-8 and the hollow-tile painting of Fig. 7. These tiles, painted in color, are usually ascribed to the third century and are therefore probably several hundred years earlier than the silk banner. But how much more vigor they have in their forms, strength in their characterization, liveliness in their expression than do the much later, and necessarily more conventional, banners! One may conclude that the essential techniques of the brush developed quite independently in China and that the Western influence was limited to the iconographic form. Brush technique, which plays only a minor role in the banner painting, is already highly developed in the tile painting. Here it displays its capabilities in swelling and narrowing, in wet and dry brushwork, which in the course of Chinese painting history was to acquire such subtlety and elasticity of function. Of course, along with this obvious difference in quality between the two paintings, one has also to consider the difference in painting surface, in sociological conditions—to say nothing of the individual skill of the two artists. The tile, with its smooth surface and relatively small size, inspired the early master to a calligraphic elegance that shows itself in the sweep and the varying pressures of the brush stroke, while the banner, on the other hand, is not such a favorable surface for this kind of brush stroke.

TUN HUANG COPIES. No complete list of the Tun Huang paintings exists. The reproductions which have appeared in various works have often been only unsatisfying black-and-white photographs. Moreover, it becomes more and more difficult to compile a complete list because in recent years further caves have been opened which are also covered with paintings.

The paintings of Tun Huang, executed over a period of six hundred years from the fourth to the tenth century, actually constitute a remarkable treasure house of Chinese Buddhist painting and iconography and of the development of style and technique. In addition, the paintings are a mine of information on cultural history. We can draw on them for our knowledge of building styles, tools, and conveyances, of fashions in dress, habits, and customs. Nowhere else can we find knowledge so reliable and in such profusion.

During the Second World War, in the 1940's, a number of Chinese painters and archeologists went to live in Tun Huang and devoted themselves to the task of copying the wall paintings. It was planned to publish reproductions of these copies after the war was over. The printing of color reproductions was delayed, however, when the civil war absorbed all the energies of the nation. Only Chang Ta-ch'ien, one of China's greatest living landscape painters, actually published at his own expense a number of the copies he had made in Tun Huang. Since Chang, however, was mainly interested in the later works—that is, from the T'ang period onward—the earlier works, which are so fundamental and so interesting, remained neglected.

The majority of the painters who worked in Tun Huang stayed on in China after the Communist revolution had been successful. The rich material produced has been exhibited in foreign countries, including the Soviet Union and India. Meanwhile, a number of portfolios containing Tun Huang reproductions have appeared under the Communist regime. Some of these latter are shown here. They are reasonably faithful copies, the colors of which correspond more or less with those of the originals. And, since they are printed on matt paper and use mineral and vegetable pigments, they give a very good idea of the originals.

Fig. 211 has been ascribed by archeologists to the Northern Wei period of the fourth or fifth century. This means that the painting comes from a period in which Buddhist sculpture flourished in China under the Tartar Wei dynasty. It shows a purely linear style of art which, in comparison with the tile painting of Fig. 7 looks early and primitive, though it is actually later in date. The flat treatment and the extreme stylization of the forms was taken up again in later centuries. Many contemporary painters, incidentally, have been inspired by the Northern Wei style.

The woodcutters (Fig. 212) belong to a slightly later period, the Sui dynasty at the end of the sixth century. Already there is a suggestion of something like perspective in the slight differentiations in size and in the different planes of color. The trees have those stylized forms which we find again much later, for example, in Indian and Persian miniatures, but which also figure in the Chinese painting tradition as a method of deliberate aesthetic simplification. The movements of the woodcutters are well observed, but the faces are only conventionalized suggestions, similar to those often found in modern painting.

Dated about the same period (but perhaps a little later) is the magnificent painting of a farmer plowing (Fig. 213). The team of oxen is held in the traditional balance of contrasting brightness and darkness. The dark furrows, the peacock, the decorative forms which can be interpreted as snake and tortoise (that ancient Chinese motif of feminine and masculine), the shapes of tree and leaf already observed in a painterly way, and the extremely effective and modern-looking composition—all these are fascinating clues to an early art of which we still know relatively little. The latticework in the background between the trees may be taken to be a stylized bamboo thicket. This is suggested first by the sticklike bamboo reeds and, second, by the shape of the leaves, which—for all the formal manner of their execution—still bear some resemblance to this plant.

The hunting scene (Fig. 214) is essentially painted in two tones of blue and white. The graceful liveliness of the game, the sweeping lines of the horses (which we find much later in the brush technique of China and of Japan), the disposition of the foliage in the total composition (the stylized forms of which remind us of the much later Indian and Persian miniatures), and the placing of the mountains in distinct layers still unrelated to each other—these are the essential characteristics of this wall painting, as they were also of the previous one from the Sui period. (One should mention here that all these illustrations show only details from larger scenes, so that each composition should really be considered only as part of a larger complete composition.)

Turning to Fig. 215, we seem to enter a landscape which is quite different and shows a far more advanced state of development. Although experts have ascribed this painting also to the Sui period, the distant mountain landscape shows a technical skill which relates it to far later works. And the diminishing scale of the boats and figures show that the period was beginning to get a firm hold on the idea of perspective. Moreover, the brushwork in the plane areas is of a kind which anticipates flying white. It is not easy to say what this river landscape is actually about. But the unusually vigorous painting of the figures, in spite of their simplified outlines, indicates an attitude of prayer or worship in all of them. Quite possibly the subject is the appeasement of the river spirits.

The boat haulers (Fig. 216) are ascribed to the early T'ang period of about the seventh century. This is a masterly painting, showing all the features of Chinese painting which had been developed at that time. Even assuming that the Tun Huang paintings were a little behind the times in the general development of Chinese art, clearly showing their provincial and artisan character, we can still gauge from this wall painting what a high standard painting had reached in that golden period of Chinese history. Few authentic paintings from that period have come down to us, and expert opinion tends more and more to a later dating of those paintings which previously were thought to be from the T'ang period. For this reason, the Tun Huang paintings are all the more remarkable and valuable, since they can be dated fairly accurately and are so well preserved. This is the period when the great Wu Tao-tzu lived, but none of his works can be identified with any certainty. His name is mentioned in connection with many paintings, such as those incised into stone plates, from which rubbings can be made (Fig. 250). His style is described in many treatises, and we can get a certain idea of his paintings, especially from the temple frescos, without, however, being quite sure that the famous peculiarly plastic style of Wu really looked like these.

One may make allowances for the fact that the modern copyists, who are experienced artists skillful in the traditional techniques, let many things slip unawares into their copies which would not have been current in the T'ang period. But even so, there are certain special characteristics of this picture which we can be fairly certain were known at the time the original was painted. For instance, the way in which the steep banks are outlined suggests that a very sophisticated brush technique was being used, a conclusion which is supported by the spirited breaking up of the surface of the water. The interplay of the two figures, the balancing of individual features, and the composition as a whole involve, in fact, all those principles of painting which were most highly developed in the T'ang and Sung periods.

The caves of Tun Huang are enlivened by hundreds of flying devas or heavenly spirits (t'ien shen in Chinese, a Buddhist term similar to Christian angels) such as those of Fig. 217. From such devas one can draw fairly reliable conclusions about the style of the T'ang period. This style was, as we have noted, probably not very different from that of Wu Tao-tzu. He had, of course, a much greater mastery of it, painting with a force and a grandeur which impressed his contemporaries as something quite new and a great step forward in art; but to us, looking back across nearly 1,500 years, he seems to represent a quite normal stage of its development, carrying further certain elements which were already quite familiar in his time.

The farm scene of Fig. 218 is ascribed to the Sung period, to the tenth century at the earliest. There does not appear to have been any real progress made during the intervening centuries, but this is likely to be due to the provincial conservatism in ideas of painting of the monks and craftsmen of Tun Huang. The period in which this painting was done was that in which Chinese painting reached its peak of technical perfection and in which technical problems had been so thoroughly mastered that the painters could concentrate upon refinement—and this many hold to be the beginning of a decline. The scenes of rice cultivation which are shown here are perhaps of special interest to the sociologist, since they show the farmer's tools—plow, scoop, broom, table—his ox-team, and the garments of the period. But one would scarcely imagine from these scenes that this painting was done at a time when, in the cultural heart of China, problems of perspective, composition, and technique had so far been mastered that they had come to be simply recognized preliminaries to the work of artistic creation; when they no longer stood as obstacles to the painter, but as the means by which he could freely represent the external world as he wished.

12 THEMES, MOTIFS,
AND PERIODS

BUDDHIST MOTIFS. It was a long journey that Buddhist painting themes and motifs traveled, from India across Turkestan and China to Japan. They passed, incidentally, through the area in which Western and Eastern, Hellenistic and Indian art met, and created, as we have noted, the so-called Graeco-Buddhist style in what is now the Afghan region of Gandhara. Hence it was that Buddhist motifs acquired Hellenistic vestments before wandering eastward along the same route by which Buddhist religion came to China. A. von LeCoq has described this route. The solitude of nature, the wildness of the mountains, the rigor of the desert have evidently all played their part in preserving both the artistic forms of earlier artists during the centuries that the paintings were being created and also the actual paintings themselves as they exist for us today.

The wall painting from the cave temple of Dandan-Uiliq in Turkestan (Fig. 219) is clearly related to the frescos of Nara, and was probably painted at about the same time. The Amitabha of the Hōryū-ji in Nara (Fig. 220) gives unmistakable evidence of the source of its motif, as a comparison of the two paintings shows. One must, however, recognize that the mudra may have a different meaning and that the desert artist obviously had to allow for irregularities in the surface of the cave wall.

In Figs. 221-23 we have three paintings, all with Buddhist motifs, but how different they are in style and treatment! The first painting shows the historic Buddha, Sakyamuni, rendered by an eighth-century artist. Here the strong ink line that typified the T'ang period is still to be seen, but already the swelling of the brush strokes presages the disintegration of the pure line and points to the broken-ink techniques that are to come. The second painting, from the tenth century, shows the second Ch'an patriarch in contemplation as he rests his arm on a tiger. Here a painterly—and at the same time conceptual, even symbolic—breaking up of the line suggests a highly personal approach, quite unlike the formalized approach of the T'ang paintings. In the third painting, from the thirteenth century, we find a favorite subject of Ch'an Buddhism—the seventh-century poet-monk Shih-te, with his companion Han-shan; as usual, Shih-te holds a broom symbolizing wisdom and "the power to brush away every speck of sorrow." This grotesque group, painted in a flashing, cavalier manner, demonstrates that the painter had now discovered how to create expression by the use of ink.

CHARACTERIZATIONS. In the work of the Sung painter Liang K'ai (Fig. 224), the bold brush stroke predominates, but with genuine modesty it is concealed under an extreme compression and preserves an almost calligraphic linearity in spite of an obvious tendency toward a painterly breaking up of the line. Only in rendering the trunk of the willow tree—the decorative element in the painting, with its symbolic value of modesty—does Liang K'ai allow his skill free rein.

The restrained self-discipline of Sung painting, as represented in Liang K'ai's work just cited, is no longer valued in the Ming period, as represented by Fig. 225. Here the brush stroke dissolves into the ink planes, and linear elements are limited to only a few features of the painting. The ink predominates over the brush stroke, and no literary or aesthetic considerations hinder the Ming (Yüan?) painter from making a show of his technical prowess.

Kao Ch'i-p'ei, of the Ch'ing period (Fig. 226), seems to have inherited much from his Sung forebear Liang K'ai, though with less severity, less concentration. His work looks rather coarser, but it is still recognizably the work of a master.

A tendency toward strong characterization made its appearance early in the history of Chinese painting, as seen in the tile paintings of Fig. 7, in which individual types were rendered with concentrated simplicity. This trend, not without humor even in the earliest periods, has often taken a turn toward the grotesque particularly in depictions of monks and priests, whose special way of life seems to have provoked the artists. It is a trend not confined to any single period of time, and several examples will be found in following sections.

The broad brush stoke, the disintegration of the pure line ("ink breaking"), has been firmly established as part of the Chinese painting technique since the Sung period. In Figs. 227-28 we can observe a clear stylistic and technical relationship between the painting of Mu Ch'i (Sung) and of Yin T'o-lo (Yüan), although the tendency to the grotesque is more marked in the latter. The technical and stylistic details of these two earlier paintings are carried even further in the painting of a wandering monk by the Ming painter Chang Hung (Fig. 229); here the linear element is almost entirely dissolved in the ink planes, whereas in the earlier paintings it still existed, in spite of the broadening of the stroke and the breaking of the line.

Grotesque characterizations or exaggerations have, as mentioned above, been a favorite subject in Chinese art. In the work of Kuan Hsiu, of the Five Dynasties period (Fig. 230), the grotesque was still painted in a linear way. The eighteen Lohan incised onto stone plates in a temple near Hangchow, which are usually ascribed to Kuan Hsiu, are famous all over China and carry the grotesque almost as far as it will go. Compared with those of Kuan Hsiu, the works of later artists such as the Sung-period Mu Ch'i (Fig. 231) look almost restrained, although they, and still later examples also, use distortion in a brilliant manner.

We come now to three paintings from the same period, the Sung. What a world of difference there is between them, however: in the technique they use, in their expression, and in their way of emphasizing brush and ink for the purpose of characterization!

With Ma Lin (Fig. 232), the ink predominates; as the Chinese put it, Ma Lin has ink. His ink usage is masterly, because he has learned how to use the ink's capacity to express things. Of course, the ink is sterile without a brush, and linear elements are certainly not entirely absent. But it is the various qualities of the ink—in shading, tones, and texture—which determine the whole character of the painting. We notice, too, that the leaves are dotted onto the lightly stroked twigs; there is, in other words, no real brush stroke but only a slight touch of the brush on the painting surface. Ma Lin's landscape style belongs to the so-called Northern school. But this painting showing Han-shan and Shih-te rather gives the impression of belonging to the Southern school (if one finds it necessary to talk in these terms at all). This only proves that the differences between the two schools are not differences of quality (as the "Southern" art critics stated they were). The fact is that great painters often use both styles.

Liang K'ai's painting of Hui-neng (Fig. 233) makes an effective contrast to Ma Lin's painting in that it puts the real emphasis on the brushwork. In Ma Lin's work, the ink usage is brilliant, while in that of Liang K'ai it is the brush usage that is outstanding. Liang K'ai definitely has brush, as the Chinese say. The qualities of the brush are here directed to a work which is essentially linear. And even the tree trunk, which is merely hinted at, is done in strokes.

Yen Tz'u-p'ing (Fig. 234) has both brush and ink. The linear and the painterly, the lines and the ink planes—both of them recognized methods of painting in China—have between them created this Bodhidharma sunk in meditation. Bodhidharma was the Indian monk who brought Ch'an Buddhism to China and to whom the discovery of tea is attributed in the charming legend of the cut-off eyebrows. After sitting Yoga-wise for many years, so the story goes, the Bodhidharma became troubled by his eyebrows, which had grown so long that they hung right down to the ground. So he cut them off, and the wind carried them away to the fields, where they took root. And from the hairs of his eyebrows, the first tea bushes grew.

These three paintings, with their very different techniques, suggest one thing: it makes no difference whether the emphasis in a painting is on the use of the ink or on the use of the brush, the master is master of both. Whether the one method or the other predominates in a painting and to what degree, does not affect the quality of the painting—in a masterpiece, both are always present.

BIRDS. The well-known motif of a bird on a branch is shown here in three different versions, two by Chinese painters and the third by a Japanese. They are all three very skillful artists, with undoubted technical ability. The Sung painter Mu Ch'i, many of whose masterpieces are preserved in Japan, paints his myna bird on a pine trunk (Fig. 235) with the brilliant restraint of a monk, using the painting almost as a means of religious contemplation. He is not trying to show off, nor to impress the onlooker. Here perhaps, and in a few similar examples, we have something which is rather rare: a painter who paints not for the public but for himself, as a means of self-enlightenment or of objectifying his thoughts. In this way, a highly introspective painting is created, which, because it does not try to impose itself on anyone, conveys the essence of the Ch'an spirit.

From the Ch'ing period, about five hundred years later, comes the painting by Kao Ch'i-p'ei seen in Fig. 236. Although far less compressed and introspective, the painting again reveals a certain restraint in its technique.

Finally, in Fig. 237, we have the famous seventeenth-century Japanese version of a bird on a branch by Miyamoto Musashi, also known as Niten. It has all the intensity of a sword thrust. The artist was a disciple of Zen (that same Buddhist sect we have frequently mentioned by its Chinese name of Ch'an) and a fencing master, and his work has all the precision which one might expect of a brilliant swordsman. This Japanese painting is undoubtedly more dramatic than the two Chinese versions. And perhaps in the stronger visual impact which it makes one can see something of the difference between the styles of the two countries. And yet it is at the same time understandable that a painter like Mu Ch'i, whose perfect technique will be at once apparent to the connoisseur, found his spiritual and artistic home in Japan rather than in China. In fact, the Chinese art historians have had very little to say about him in their writings.

The bird motif set against a simple background of grass or trees seems to have held an endless fascination for the Chinese painter (often probably for symbolic or allegorical reasons). The next three paintings reproduced here, although having much in common, show three quite different conceptions of the motif. The painting of the myna bird (Fig. 238) is by Mu Ch'i. The kingfisher on the lotus branch by Pa-ta Shan-jen (Fig. 239) is remarkably similar in character to Mu Ch'i's bird, but the painting is on the whole more playful and light. Pa-ta Shan-jen, a member of the Ming imperial family, watched the fortunes of his family decline but remained faithful to it even under the rule of the Manchu barbarians, the conquerors from the north. He led a monastic life, withdrew into solitude, and tried to keep the world at a distance by putting strange inscriptions on his door. He did not concern himself much with the strict traditions of painting, and often ignored them altogether. In spite of this, we do not find in his work any strong urge toward originality. His deviations from tradition are, rather, the unconscious result of an individual painter who painted not for the public but, in the true Ch'an spirit, for himself. He tried to sort out in his own mind his relationship to the world and to life by means of brush and ink. His paintings therefore often appear rather whimsical; they do not pretend to be great paintings, but they still make a forceful and immediate impact on the observer.

The two birds under palm leaves by the contemporary painter Lin Feng-mien (Fig. 240), executed with thick, bold sweeps of the brush, seem at first sight to be quite alien to the preceding two paintings. Lin studied in Paris and was strongly influenced by Western art in matters of technique and ideas. He is separated from Mu Ch'i by eight hundred years and from Pa-ta Shan-jen by three hundred. Yet even at such distances of time, and notwithstanding great technical differences, Lin was never able to discard tradition completely. His brush technique is certainly coarser and makes no use of the subtler capabilities of traditional painting methods. There is in his work a lightness of space, a reduction of detail to the bare minimum, and a lively sense of aesthetic balance resulting from the interplay of planes and tones. Mu Ch'i and Pa-ta Shan-jen were both monks; and the latter, both in his own time and later, was considered rather eccentric. Lin is nothing but a painter, though, and literary or philosophical elements intrude into his work only insofar as he belongs, like everyone else, to the spiritual current of his time.

The three paintings of Figs. 241-43 also prove to be quite instructive. Two of them are Chinese, and one Japanese. Pa-ta Shan-jen, who lived in the transitional period between the Ming and Ch'ing dynasties, and the twentieth-century Chinese painter Ch'i Pai-shih are both popular in Japan, where one finds, in fact, what are probably the best collections of the former's paintings. In comparison with these two Chinese paintings, Sesson's painting of a camellia and wagtail is done in a broader manner, but it was presumably composed in a similar spirit. The Chinese paintings seem to be more nervous, and perhaps more cunning in their use of ink. Sesson, however, achieves a wonderfully convincing balance of shapes and planes. He has a quality which is "individual," in the sense of belonging to one nation; and this "Japaneseness" can be recognized after some practice, when one learns to understand the greater forcefulness, in general and in detail, of Japanese painting. The delightful modern master Ch'i Pai-shih is so taken with his own skill that he almost carelessly brushes the wire cage over the myna bird.

SYMBOL AND REBUS. Certain motifs recur time after time in Chinese painting, not only because, as already mentioned, every artist tries to play new variations on the old themes, but also because these themes have a symbolic value in addition to their real meaning. Thousands and thousands of cranes and pines, like Taki's copybook sketch (Fig. 244), have in the course of centuries sprung from the brushes of Chinese painters, partly because the artists wanted to paint a pine or a crane, but partly also because they wanted to express by it the idea of longevity. For this is what cranes and pines symbolize in Chinese painting. One might, for instance, give such a painting to one's friend as a birthday present, to wish him long life.

Many such symbols take the form of a rebus, when a word is capable of having different meanings, though pronounced in the same way. For example, the bats shown in Fig. 245 take on the meaning of happiness, since both words are pronounced fu in Chinese. At the same time, the five bats also represent the five "blessings": long life, prosperity, health, virtue, and natural death. In this particular case, the five blessings are linked with five peaches. Since the peach, too, is a recognized symbol of longevity, these five peaches are a fivefold wish for long life.

Finally, in Fig. 246, Yün Shou-p'ing has started with the old theme of the "Three Friends of the Cold Season" (pine, bamboo, and plum blossom) and has extended it by adding water and moon to mean the "Five Pure Things." Water and moon are both extremely rich in symbolic associations in China.

It is not easy to determine the meaning of a Chinese painting from the symbolism it contains. There are many paintings whose real significance can only be grasped by those who have a very wide and profound knowledge of Chinese history and literature. For not all symbols are like a rebus, nor are they always used with the same connotations. Symbols are often altered to suit an individual case, which makes them all the more difficult to interpret. There is for example a painting by Pa-ta Shan-jen which shows a myna bird on a branch and carries the inscription: "The myna bird understands the language of man and does not care whether the wind blows or the sun shines." Here, by the symbol of the linguistically-minded myna bird, Pa-ta Shan-jen, offspring of the Ming emperors, avows his independence from the Manchus who had usurped the throne of the Middle Kingdom.

It is impossible here to cover the whole of this subject of picture language in Chinese painting. The list of Chinese symbols which is given in Appendix 3 is necessarily incomplete with regard both to the number of items included, and to the descriptions themselves. For the world of Chinese symbolism is enormously rich, and every single symbol is likely to have numerous meanings. But the list may at least be of some assistance and, especially for the student of Chinese animal and flower painting, may open up a new dimension. It has often happened that a particular motif of Chinese painting, repeated in countless variations for many centuries, has lost its original meaning, which has either been changed or even forgotten entirely. The three accompanying paintings will illustrate this point. In Fig. 247 the original symbolism of the boy-and-water-buffalo motif is still fully present. The tiny boy leading the primitive figure of the huge animal symbolizes the conquest of the powers of nature by weak human beings. At the same time there is a contrary suggestion of the omnipotence of nature in relation to the human being, who can only occasionally subdue its vast strength. Man and beast are still relatively small compared with the grandeur of nature.

When we turn to a modern version of this motif (Fig. 248), we find the earlier symbolism to be only superficially present. In this painting by Li K'o-jan, who is still living in Peking and has tried to adapt himself to the new ways of thinking, the symbolism is definitely subordinate to the purely artistic need to create, by a skillful use of technique, recognizable forms based on the visible world. With Li, ink usage is particularly highly developed, and his manner of painting planes shows a remarkable control of brush and ink.

Finally, the symbolism disappears entirely in the painting by Hsu Pei-hung (Fig. 249), who until his death in Peking in 1954 preferred that his name be written in the French way, Peon Ju. In this painting we are concerned only with the portraits of water-buffalo, which are admittedly extremely well executed. The technique is no longer purely Chinese, and it hardly reflects the earlier conflict between man and nature—unless one assumes that the conflict is transferred to the viewer of the painting, standing fascinated by the furious glare of the buffalo.

The weakening of symbolism into allegory, as we have seen it expressed in the paintings just discussed, seems to be a feature of the development of Chinese painting (as it may be also in other cultures). The tortoise and the snake in the rubbing after Wu Tao-tzu (Fig. 250) are ancient symbols of masculine and feminine, Yang and Yin; this symbolism is reinforced here by the constellations charted on the tortoise's shell. Tortoise shells were used in early China by priests and soothsayers for fortunetelling. In the painting of Fig. 251, dated roughly five hundred years after Wu's painting, symbolism has vanished. A rich allegory has been introduced instead, and only the pair of pheasants remains from the old Yang and Yin contrast. All other elements are also intended to be allegorical. For example, the peony is a rebus for love. The early universal principle of the identity of opposites has given place to an earthly banality about the opposition between the sexes. This does not in itself determine the quality of the painting, but it does disclose the changes of a primitive concept during the process of being thought about by thousands of minds and of being painted in thousands of works.

Among the ways in which the feminine principle of water in a Chinese landscape is set against the masculine principle of mountain, the waterfall is one of the commonest. This is probably connected with the fact that a waterfall not only expresses the feminine principle in landscape, but is also a philosophical symbol of a different kind—that is, in Grosse's words, a "symbol of the endless flux of all things in this world, in which the forms are always the same but the contents are in continuous change." In the majority of paintings of this kind, human beings are lost in contemplation of the waterfall, be they scholars, as in Fig. 252 and, presumably, also in Fig. 253, or else resting woodcutters, as in Fig. 254.

Although not strictly germane to our present subject, there is another interesting point that arises from a comparison of the latter two paintings. Shih T'ao (also known as Tao Chi) is one of the few Chinese painters who have again and again advocated breaking away from the old models and painting without regard for conservative rules. In contrast to paintings produced by his contemporaries, Shih T'ao's work often shows a successful effort toward independence. Looking back on them from our present standpoint we realize, however, that in numerous ways Shih T'ao was simply carrying further traditions which already existed. Chang Ta-chien began as an imitator of Shih T'ao, and many details about his composition and technique recall Shih T'ao. Indeed, some of his own paintings have even been sold as genuine Shih T'ao work. Chang now lives in America, and although he is still a master of all brush and ink techniques, his political exile has somewhat weakened his power over the ancient means of artistic expression.

The remarks in this section represent but a very cursory treatment of an interesting and wide subject. It has heretofore been dealt with by several authors from the viewpoint of symbolism and rebus and less from the problematic angle of how these have found representation in painting. A study of great or representative works of Chinese painting dedicated purely to the symbolism they contain would be an important contribution to better understanding and would open the way to a new appreciation of that art.

LANDSCAPES IN MANY STYLES. Chinese painting exerts a tremendous pull even on painters who have learned in the West to paint in other techniques and to other aesthetic standards. This becomes obvious if one compares two early paintings—one from the Sung period (Fig. 255) and one from the Yuan period (Fig. 256)—with a modern landscape (Fig. 257). The modern painting is undoubtedly coarser and flatter. It does not apply the subtleties of Chinese brush technique and seems to aim only at a powerful effect. And yet one can still recognize that same feeling about composition, about the principle of mountain and water, which distinguishes the older paintings and gives them their meaning. About a thousand years lie between Fan K'uan and Lin Feng-mien, and no one can expect the modern painter to experience the same relationship to nature as the Sung painter or to express it in the same way. But a tradition must indeed exert a tremendous power if a painter, deliberately trying to break away from it, is caught, as he is here, in its invisible pull. One must assume that for a Chinese artist of today, or of the future, it will remain difficult to break away completely from the tradition, unless of course he is wrenched away from it by political directives and forced into forms of expression which are banal, without roots, and purely utilitarian in purpose.

Winter landscapes in particular have been for the Chinese painter an opportunity to symbolize the puny human race confronted with the majesty of nature. In a snow-covered landscape, where there are fewer lines and larger plane masses, the relationship of man to nature can be expressed in a concentrated form. The solitary rider of Fig. 258 is shrunken into virtual invisibility as he follows his lonely path under the grandiose backdrop of mountains, although he is somewhat consoled in his solitude by the sight of the inviting roofs of a temple snuggling into a fold of the mountains.

In the second winter landscape (Fig. 259) a feeling of cosiness is secured in spite of the forbidding knife-edged mountains with their flat masses of snow. The curtain of the carriage has been opened; the servant is busy with the door-catch; the group has reached its destination. Here the winter landscape has become a background indicating the season. In Fig. 260, however, meaning has changed into mood. The painting could be called simply "Snow." Mountain and tree have drawn closer together, and the snow-smothered farmer's hut looks almost comfortable.

Although several hundred years separate the two paintings seen in Figs. 261-62, they seem to be linked by some inner relationship, as well as by a certain technical resemblance. Both Ni Tsan and Pa-ta Shan-jen are highly individualistic painters, and their landscapes always impress the viewer as simple and often fairly empty. They share a preference for a clear primary axis around which their pictures are built, and they like to suggest rather than to analyze in detail. Both of them give plenty of scope to the free exercise of imagination by leaving large areas untouched by the brush—in the case of Ni Tsan by using a dry brush, and in the case of Pa-ta Shan-jen by using broad sweeping brush strokes.

As has been mentioned, identical motifs take on different characters during the course of the years. The Ma Yüan landscape seen in Fig. 263, with its airy expanses inviting almost unlimited play of idea and imagination, is, in the Ming painting by Hsu Lin (Fig. 264), squeezed to a bourgeois narrowness. The group of pine trees obstructs the view into the distance, and the feeling in Ma of a bottomless abyss has in Hsu diminished to a mere rushing stream just a few feet away. Nothing could better demonstrate the transition from Sung to Ming. The fragrant Sung lightness seems to have vanished; the technique becomes stiffer. In short, from the Sung style has emerged a Ming mannerism. And yet, at the same time, the two paintings in question show technical similarities almost as striking as the dissimilarities of their expression.

Figs. 265-67 call attention to how all the familiar techniques and methods of painting are still employed in the often small-scale landscapes of the Ch'ing period. In the landscape by Wang Chi-fan the stroke techniques seem to be somewhat similar to those of Kuo Hsi or Tung Yuan, though without their urge toward grandeur. In the painting by Yün Nan-tien (Yün Shou-p'ing) the graceful rocks and mountains are rendered in dry broken lines reminiscent of Ni Tsan. The flying-white technique is used in the opened-up shaping lines, while splashed ink is applied in the dotting of the middle-ground as well as in the fir tree of the foreground. The mood of the picture recalls Kuo Hsi of Sung. And finally in the landscape by Kung K'ai, which is painted in the manner of Mi Fei, little remains of Mi's detached attitude to the world. The foreground road-crossings (or are they streams?) lie too close to the foot of the mountains, and the mountains themselves give the impression of narrowness rather than grandeur.

Occasionally a certain tendency toward abstraction, encouraged in a way by the simplifying and concentrating Chinese brush techniques, becomes evident in Ch'ing-period painting. The painters are less concerned with expressing recognizable appearances than with the interplay of forms. With Kung Hsien (Fig. 268), who loved grotesque trees anyway, this tendency leads to a writhing of thorny tree shapes among inquisitive groups of rounded rocks strewn with plum-shaped dots. With Kao Ch'i-p'ei (Fig. 269) the abstract tendency has perhaps not gone quite so far, but it shows in the dark clusters of strokes which are evidently supposed to represent groups of pine needles, and these seem very abstract in contrast to the extended rock and mountain shapes that seem to hang down into the painting. Finally in the painting by Wang To (Fig. 270), one senses in the rhythms of the hardly identifiable tree (cedar?) an attempt to picture the rhythms of dance.

Pa-ta Shan-jen (born about 1620) and Shih T'ao (flourished about 1660-1710) were contemporaries and shared the same outlook. Both rebelled against ancient rules and created original paintings which, in their own time, must have appeared to be protests—though, seen now from a historical distance, they take their place in the stream of tradition. Both were monks, and by their work they infused new life into the old Ch'an methods. Shih T'ao painted mainly landscapes, and Pa-ta Shan-jen was best at small paintings of birds and fish which were strongly abstract in character, though he also painted many landscapes. The shaping-line techniques of both painters are original and owe hardly anything to the conservative forms. Or so it seems at first sight. In fact, however, the shaping lines used by Pa-ta Shan-jen (Fig. 271) bear a certain resemblance to shaping lines like rolling billows of cloud, while behind the nervous spirals of Shih T'ao (Fig. 272) one may recognize shaping lines like veins of lotus leaves. These resemblances should not be exaggerated, but at least they indicate that even a painter like Shih T'ao, who advocated in his brilliant critical writings a complete abandonment of tradition, and in his own time appeared as an original force, still finds a place in the flow of a great tradition. The banks of this stream may fade out of sight in the distance, but the islands which lie in it are constantly regenerated and given new shapes by all the wealth of material swept down by the current.

As seen in Fig. 273, Ch'i Pai-shih liked to paint his landscapes—unfortunately all too rare—with a relatively dry brush and light ink, accentuating in heavy ink only rocks and rooftops. In his own way, Ch'i Pai-shih is quite as original as the two Ch'ing painters we have just considered, and he cares just as little as they about effect. Unlike these two, however, he is neither a Ch'an philosopher nor a scholar, though fundamentally his manner of painting is similar to scholar painting. Here again we come across one of those paradoxes, frequent in Chinese painting, which make categories and distinctions in painting appear so arbitrary. Ch'i was, first and foremost, a painter and produced his poems only to harmonize with his paintings, or made his poems the subjects of his pictures. To him, the writing was always less important than the painting.

The Yuan painter Chao Meng-fu, who was probably never forgiven in China for having been a sort of court painter to the Mongol usurper Kublai Khan, was considered to be a realist, and confined himself to imitating the great masters, especially in the horse paintings which have made him famous. The landscape of his shown in Fig. 274 suggests something quite different, though: the ability to paint in forceful generalizations, reducing the scene to its simplest elements. This surely limits the "realistic" quality of the work (although it has some color), and it also emphasizes a more profound quality which we see reflected in the interplay of the bright and the dark, of the planes and the lines. There may appear to be no immediate connection between this painter and Shih T'ao, but there are in fact many deep links between them. The interplay of lines and dots has become more nervous, and the picture seems to vibrate. One feels something of the same kind in the Huang Shen landscape of Fig. 275. His pictures are especially popular in Japan, and although not a true scholar-painter in the narrow sense of the word, he painted what are considered to be scholar paintings. The important point about this often fruitless and rather arbitrary distinction between painters remains, however, not whether a man is a good scholar, but whether he is a good painter. The final test is, after all, the quality of the work as a painting.

CONTRASTS AND SIMILARITIES. The detail shown here from a wall painting in the Temple of Fa Hai Ssu near Peking (Fig. 276) is from the eighteenth century, while the nude figure by Chiang Chao-ho (Fig. 277) is from the twentieth century. The two make a startling contrast. In the past, Chinese painting did not go in for painting nudes at all, except for the ch'un hua, the "spring paintings" of erotic content. But the twentieth century has brought many changes in this respect, just as it has in the interpretation of light and shade. The shaping lines in the Chiang painting are shadings derived from illumination. In line, in the use of color, in decoration, and in symbolism, the wall painting of Fa Hai Ssu is fully traditional, while the nude by Chiang turns its back not only on the onlooker, but also apparently on tradition. Nevertheless, traditional elements can still be recognized—at least in the technique—in the brushwork of the contours.

In Figs. 278-79 we again have two paintings of different periods using similar motifs. The earlier shows an old man sipping tea, holding the cup in hands characterized by the long fingernails of an aristocrat, while the other presents a professor-like figure smoking a cigarette as he awaits his tea. The two paintings, at first sight, seem even more different than the two hundred years between them would warrant. Huang Shen was a scholar-painter under the Manchu emperors, while the contemporary Yeh Chien-yü here reveals his beginnings as a caricaturist under the Republic. Besides the similar motifs, artistically speaking, the backgrounds of the paintings also rather resemble one another: in the first case the calligraphic background is appropriate for the scholar-painter Huang Shen, and in the second case we have a background of a bamboo thicket. The earlier painter expresses by traditional methods a mellow wisdom and a calm detachment. The contemporary painter introduces a note of irony. The war has driven the professor, together with his whole university, from Shanghai or Peking into the country's interior, perhaps as far as Szechuan. He wears straw sandals, for there are no shoes to be had, and anyway the sandals are more comfortable. He is probably dreaming of the joys of the coastal towns.

In Figs. 280-82 again we find three paintings with a similar motif, that of people carrying things. But what a difference there is between them! In the one by the Yuan painter Yen Hui, Liu Hai is shown with the three-legged toad. Liu Hai was a Taoist adept, a magician of unusual powers and the master of a three-legged toad about which many tales of good fortune and mischief are told. The next picture, by the unknown Sung artist who painted the monk Hsüan Tsang on his way back from India laden with the holy writings of Buddhism, is permeated entirely with the same Chinese world of belief and symbolism. And Hsüan Tsang, like Liu Hai, stirs up in every Chinese memories of stories and visions, of adventures and symbols, such as those related in Wu Ch'eng-en's popular novel about the monkey, Hsi Tu Chi (Account of the Journey to the West), still so vividly remembered in China. The third painting in this group shows a Tibetan girl carrying fruit baskets; it is by Yeh Chien-yü. In comparison with the first two, it is pure reportage, without any symbolic or narrative content. We can see what kind of sandals and leggings she wears, how she binds her sash, and how she ornaments herself; how the baskets are made and how the poles (in a manner different from the Chinese) are stuck through the holes in the wickerwork. Although the technique and the brushwork still reflect many of the traditional methods, yet this art is very far removed from the paintings of the past, with their wealth of associations. And since we are here dealing with someone engaged in toil, the painting comes closer to our personal experience. It approaches what in China, as in other places, is called "socialist realism."

A final comparison should now be made, or rather suggested, so as to mark certain tendencies which have developed in Chinese painting. The two landscapes of Figs. 283-84 exhibit a certain outward similarity in their wealth of mountain shapes. The first is by the Yüan painter Huang Kung-wang, reputed to be one of the four great painters of his period. The scene is well designed, rather airy, and completely lighthearted in character; the rocks and mountains were painted with a relatively dry brush and the trees with a wet brush, providing a refreshing contrast of bright and dark, of the straight and the bent. In the second, by the Ch'ing painter Wang Yüan-ch'i, too many details have been squeezed into the painting. The artist is one of the "four Wangs" of the Ch'ing period (Wang Shih-min, Wang Chien, and Wang Hui are the other three) and wrote the vast Encyclopedia of Painting and Calligraphy under the Emperor K'ang Hsi. It looks as though something of this encylopedic spirit has entered into the monotonous delineation of mountain shapes: the scholar and encyclopedist seems to have gained the upper hand over the painter.

13 CONCLUSION

IN CONCLUSION, I SHOULD LIKE TO REITER ate a remark made at the beginning of Part Two. The notes in this second half of the book have had to be rather short and fragmentary; they represent only a modest beginning of a reinterpretation of Chinese art from the technical point of view. It would be fatal, however, if only that technical point of view were to be considered. It must always be combined with an awareness of the deeper and wider meaning of art in China as faithfully handed down through many generations to our own times. I believe it has been made amply clear that the technical viewpoint constitutes but one way of investigating an artistic phenomenon which until now has to a certain extent defied Western efforts at understanding principally because Westerners have insisted on applying their own standards and principles to an art which, having different human and spiritual origins, has pursued completely different artistic aims with completely different technical means.

It may well be that at the highest level the Oriental and Occidental artistic visions approach each other very closely. However, to reach the highest level of true understanding it seems essential to explore the roads leading to it and to grasp the meaning of the spiritual landscape through which such roads pass. Contrary to the opinion of many art lovers who have never quite succeeded in reaching this highest level of oneness, Chinese painting is not esoteric. Their failure to achieve oneness frequently lies simply in their belief that in both the East and the West a brush is just a brush, a brush stroke just a brush stroke, a color just a color. Moreover, there has been an inclination to regard art as something so elevated that it would be beyond the dignity of a true art lover (who should move only in the realms of the aesthetic, the spiritual, the revelatory) to inquire into such humble things as painting techniques.

Unless this book has completely missed its mark, it should by now have become clear that while a knowledge of painting techniques may not always be prerequisite in judging a Western work of art, it is absolutely indispensible for the Westerner who wants to understand Eastern art. It will also have become apparent that the understanding and enjoyment of Far Eastern painting can be vastly enhanced by knowing how it is done, why it is done in just this or that way, and what it may mean when it is done this way rather than that. An art which seemed to radiate a somewhat strange and unreal beauty, elusive and eternally untangible, may thus be finally conquered and loved in its own right.