A new definition of chinese ink painting

A New Definition of Contemporary Chinese Ink Painting James Elkins [Note to readers: this essay was commissioned, edited, paid, and then rejected by Mike Hearn, for an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2013 A shorter version was given at the conference “Back to the Region: An International Conference Ink Painting and Art History,” organized by Qigu Jiang and Lao Zhu, Zhu Qizhan Art Museum, Shanghai, May 2012 Paintings by Jiang Qigu, Jiang Zhen!en, Zhuang Yalun, and Wang Nanming are used by permission; the others are thumbnails "om the Metropolitan Museum exhibition and references can be found in their catalog Please send a# comments to the author at jameselkins@fastmail.fm.] Chinese ink painting is the oldest continuously practiced method of image making that includes historians, critics, and historiographers While some forms of Western artistic practice have been ongoing since the Greeks, Chinese ink painting has existed at least since the Tang dynasty (618–907), even though it can be traced much farther back As a result of the dual practice of making images and writing about them, Chinese ink painting has arguably the largest number of schools, styles, and techniques of any practice.1 Despite this I argued this point in my Chinese Landscape Painting as Western Art History (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010) This book was originally published in Chinese as Xi Fang Mei Shu Shi Xue Zhong de Zhon!uo Shan Shui Hua (Hangzhou: Zhon!uo Mei Shu Xue Yuan Chu Ban She, 1999), but the English edition is fully revised extensive history and scholarship, average Western viewers, who have not been taught anything about the history of Chinese painting, cannot see Chinese ink painting To them, the images all look the same Created with brushes and wash, these primarily monochrome works bear subtle distinctions that can be difficult to discern They can also appear dull, uninteresting, and disengaged from contemporary issues of identity or debates about medium, post-medium, or the politics of art institutions Of course Western viewers with good eyes and sufficient patience can readily learn how they address politics, but what they see may not correspond to what educated Chinese viewers see: they will make their own style assessments and draw their own conclusions about what the painters have done This culturally specific ability to comprehend these works is notable because in its original contexts, ink painting has been taken as naturally communicative But it is not: it requires years of looking and reading ( Chinese ink painting provides other obstacles to viewers who would like to learn to appreciate it The colophons on older works, beginning in the Tang dynasty, involve textual and historical allusions that make them hard to appreciate, even for Western specialists In addition, a working knowledge of Chinese ink painting presupposes a certain amount of hands-on practice, which is not a customary part of the education of Western art historians Subtle aesthetic distinctions, vast art-historical and textual references, and a lack of technical training all combine into a formidable challenge for unfamiliar viewers, for contemporary artists who wish to exhibit their work outside certain Chinese venues, and for those who seek to promote ink painting abroad as the most crucial or truest kind of Chinese contemporary art At present in the West, an exhibition such as this one can exist only in a major museum, supported by extensive scholarly work, as in this catalogue However, in China the art form, its definition, and its way forward are in flux Numerous conferences and exhibitions on modern and contemporary Chinese ink painting in the last five years have attempted in part to bring it toward the center of global conversations on art Some traditional (guohua) painters want to blur the institutional and historical differences between traditional and Western (xihua) painting practices, and others would like to develop ink painting so that it can reclaim center stage in China and become better appreciated internationally These dual and intertwined motivations have produced a peculiar complexity Some artists and scholars would restrict ink painting to just a few kinds of art; others would like to broaden the form to include any contemporary art that alludes to ink, brushes, or paper; and still others would leave the decision to the artist or critics, so that any artwork could potentially be enlisted as ink painting At one extreme, a work may only be considered an ink painting if it fulfills a series of technical requirements, usually including the use of ink, type of paper, brushwork (bi), and inclusion of landscape or other traditional subjects At the other extreme, it is argued that, regardless of its medium, content, or style, a work can be ink painting, a claim that depends either on certain general characteristics taken to be Chinese, such as subject matter, format, or more elusive qualities like cultural context An example is a work by Jiang Zhenggen and Zhuang Yalun that was exhibited in Shanghai.2 The Story in Paddy Fields (Bio-Ink-Art Insta#ation) depicts a rice field, with videos and still photos showing microscopic views of the microorganisms that live in the water (see figs below) The exhibition “The Story in Paddy Fields (Bio-Ink-Art Installation)” was on view at the Shanghai Zendai Contemporary Art Space, May 2012 I thank Jiang Qigu and Ping Jie, the curator, for this example; photos courtesy Ping Jie According to the artists, this work is a type of ink painting because the swirling patterns of the swimming protozoa and the curling tendrils of the rice rhizomes are reminiscent of the brushstrokes of traditional ink painting.3 From the artists’ statement: “To shed light on the ‘spirit of ink art’ in the contemporary context, the artists manage to integrate the aesthetics of “observing in stillness,” a traditional concept in Chinese philosophy, with bio-art, a highly contemporary art form Traces left by the paramecium in the paddy fields seem to form an elegantly abstract ink piece According to the artists, the integration of bio-art greatly extends the boundaries and enriches the expressive possibilities of ink art, giving rise to a new category: Bio-Ink-Art.” From The Story in Paddy Fields (Bio-Ink-Art Insta#ation) (Paramecium, paddy, plant fiber, nutrient solution, digital microscope, video converter, ink, etc.), May 2012 ( As an art theorist, rather than a historian, I find it fascinating that the terms of this discussion themselves are polarized Those who wish to work with the guohua tradition, developing ink painting “from within,” are constrained to talk about ink, paper, brush marks, colophons, seals, and scroll formats Those who wish to make ink painting more inclusive tend to make use of the largely Western vocabulary of medium, post-medium, multimedia, context, frame, and performance This odd and often unproductive difference in terminology makes it difficult at times for the two sides to even speak to one another What is missing in the literature as well as in conversations in galleries and studios is a working definition from the vantage point of those who wish to expand, promote, or otherwise remain faithful to the tradition they think of as ink painting In order to accommodate these new forms, this classification should be not rigid but clear enough to be cited, discussed, and critiqued ( Here is how I would define Chinese ink painting for contemporary art: it is a Chinese art practice with an unpara#eled density, complexity, and historical depth of reference Of these three points, the last is the most apparent: ink painting connects to a tradition that has been traced back to Han dynasty (206 B.C.–A.D 220) tomb reliefs, and even to cave paintings and the decorations on Shang (ca 1600–1050 B.C.) bronzes The density, complexity, and historical depth of reference of Chinese ink panting is unparalleled because no other genre of Chinese image making draws on such significant history or requires so much knowledge and experience on the part of the viewer ( Note that this characterization does not describe what the art looks like It is not a visual definition The art could have ink, brushwork, and paper, or use video, performance, sculpture, or other media; it may not even look like a traditional ink painting at all On the other hand, not all art done on rice paper with ink and brushes should be called Chinese ink painting Some of it is just modernism or postmodernism This definition is also a helpful way to distinguish what I would call ink painting from other kinds of Chinese contemporary art forms such as cynical realist, post-Pop, installation, experimental, post-medium, and anti-aesthetic Furthermore, the definition means it is no longer necessary to either talk about or avoid discussing Western influences Jiang and Zhuang’s installation draws on Western concerns such as installation and video art, even as the artists make claims about the Chinese nature of its content However, under this definition, the work is not ink painting: not because it lacks ink on rice paper, but because it has only a single allusion to the history of ink painting, and that reference—the sinuous, brushlike forms seen under the microscope—is very general (The installation is an interesting example of an attempt to fuse bio-art with Chinese philosophic concepts, but that is another story.) A typical ink painting echoes, alludes to, cites, and appropriates a range of practices, precedents, styles, artists, and schools A painting by Liu Kuo-sung (Liu Guosong, born 1932), for example, cannot really be understood unless the viewer knows something about Tang, Song (960–1279), and post-Song painting, along with the brushstrokes, compositions, themes, and schools of painters that he draws on (fig below) By contrast, 30 Letters to Qiu Jiawa (fig below) by Qiu Zhijie (born 1969) alludes to controversial elements of Chinese society but does not require deeper comprehension of either Western or Chinese painting The format, ink on hanging scrolls, is traditional, but the technique comes from Western pedagogy and some references from Western art history For a slightly more elaborate example, Jia Youfu (born 1942) makes work that should be considered ink painting because one needs to know that he studied with Li Keran (1907– 1989): otherwise a viewer would not appreciate how he has rethought his predecessor’s model One should also recognize the tradition of Northern Song (960–1127) painting, some twentieth-century parallels such as the work of Fu Baoshi (1904–1965), and brushmarks such as axe-cut stroke or hemp fiber stroke Without this background, Jia’s paintings would strongly resemble other contemporary ink paintings that are actually very different ( An example of a work that might be tied to ink painting but probably should not be is Pseudo [Characters] Series, Contemplation of the World (fig above) by Gu Wenda (born 1955) The pseudo-characters refer not only to other artists, such as Xu Bing (born 1955), who have experimented with illegible characters, but also to the history of older writing systems such as seal script, which has been revived for seals and calligraphy by artists in Gu’s generation The dense, heavy atmosphere of the paintings could suggest the monumental styles of the Northern Song dynasty, but the brushwork does not pertain to that tradition The portentous darkness of the series—and its strong monumentality—owe as much to Anselm Kiefer’s work as to Song ink painting Here the references to ancient scripts and the Song period are relatively simple and may not even be necessary elements of a full interpretation ( In addition to visual allusions, the historical references have a deep continuity, an historical depth, that is supported by interpretive texts For example the paintings of Qiu Shihua (born 1940) paintings draw on the idea of pingdan, which is traditionally associated with Ni Zan (1306–1374), whose iconography, cultural context, and range of references is very 10 different from Qiu’s The expression pingdan is difficult to translate but means roughly “level and bland,” “serene,” or “austere” (see fig.) The association with pingdan comes from art 11 historian and curator Martina Köppel-Yang, who is married to Yang Jiechang (born 1956), thus adding to the complex of historically inflected meanings With a cultural depth of nearly eight centuries, pingdan puts entirely different demands on a viewer than the label of minimalist, which is also applied to Qiu’s paintings ( Redefining Chinese ink painting in terms of the density of allusions means considering the number of references per square inch or per image One passage in a contemporary ink painting might suggest Zhao Mengfu (1254–1322), another of Qian Xuan (ca 1235–before 1307), a third of Hongren (1610–1663), Ni Zan, or Huang Gongwang (1269– 1354), all in one part of the work This painting by Jiang Qigu (born 1956) is a typical example: according to the artist, it represents a scholar’s rock, a traditional ornament of gardens and interiors (see fig below).4 The interpretations of style are the artists’s own Personal correspondence, March 2013 12 Jiang has painted it in emulation of a number of styles: in this detail (see fig on next page) the late work of the artist Shi Tao (1642–1707) is emulated at the top left; the middle is in the mode of Wang Meng (1308–1383); the lower right copies Ni Zan; and the bottom right recalls Huang Gongwang (1269–1354) This is an extreme example of a common phenomenon; Jiang’s paintings ideally require viewers who can be part of the conversation between the past and the present ( This density is not confined to recent historically minded movements, such as New Literati Painting ( xin renwenhua) or Post-Literati Painting ( hou renwenhua) that were active in the 1990s; rather it is a general possibility in ink painting The third defining term, complexity, means that the kinds of references vary within a painting: a brushstroke may evoke that of a Ming dynasty (1368–1644) painter; the theme, that of a Southern Song (1127–1279) painter; and the overall composition, that of a Northern Song model The complexity of reference comes from the diversity of allusions to schools, styles, and periods that can be compressed into a single image Looking at an ink painting is like standing in a crowded room, full of people from history, all in conversation 13 ( Current definitions of Chinese ink painting rely on technical properties of the medium I will close by considering four such characteristics—ink, brushes, paper, and technique There are two problems with these definitions First, they can make it difficult to speak about some practices as ink painting, just because they lack one or another criterion Requiring the form to employ ink, brushes, paper, or particular techniques puts 14 inappropriate limits on what counts as ink painting Second, and more seriously, these definitions can include many practices that are not in any interesting way ink painting That second reason is the more important motivation for my new definition ( First, it is often said that the principal characteristic of the art form is its use of ink, although some artists who work closely with the ink-painting tradition choose not to use it in the traditional manner or indeed use it at all Qin Feng (born 1961) uses oil in a way that closely adheres to the possibilities of ink; it would be counterintuitive to say his work is not ink painting merely because the artist chooses oil Wang Nanming (born 1962) has made large-scale rubbings of a dried lake bed (see figs below).5 See J P Park, Art by the Book: Painting Manuals and the Leisure Life in Late Ming China (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2012) 15 When this work was exhibited in Shanghai in 2012, it looked like an ink painting; again it would be insensible to exclude it just because the images are technically rubbings Despite the fact that Wang is also an ink painter and has written on ink painting, it would be misleading to talk about his dry lake bed rubbings as examples of the medium Landscape 16 (fig.) by Shao Fan (born 1964) draws on traditional forms to s u c h a n e x te n t t h a t w h e n reproduced in a book, it strongly resembles a pre-Qing (1644–1911) ink painting It also recalls the work of Mi Fu (1051– 1107) and Mi Youren (1074–1151) in its misty atmosphere, and of Dong Qichang (1555–1636) in its tipped-over mountain The artist names Wang Hui (1632–1717) as in influence, and the latter’s work is itself inspired by those three earlier painters Yet Shao’s Landscape is done in pencil using a Western hatching technique, which would have been unthinkable in Chinese practice until recently—yet despite its Western material, the work certainly belongs to the tradition of ink painting.( ( It can take a lifetime to learn to use Chinese brushes, and indeed the meaning of Chinese ink painting has seemed to be intimately tied to the motions and textures of the brush The difficulty with this criterion, however, is that there are Chinese ink painters who sometimes not use brushes Liu Kuo-sung has used rags soaked in ink and pressed on paper and, in other works, collage and wash as ways of blending Western abstraction with Chinese ink painting View of Tide (see fig below), a modified digital photograph by Yang Yongliang (born 1980), alludes to the form in its use of customary red seals; elongated hand- 17 scroll format with land confined to a lower corner; and flat expanse of waves seen from above It resonates with previous depictions of water, including Riverbank by Dong Yuan (active 930s–960s) in the Metropolitan Museum, Watching the Tide on a Moonlit Night by Li Song (ca 1170–1255), or album leaves of patterned water waves by Ma Yuan (active ca 1190–1225) in the Palace Museum in Taipei The photograph also seems in dialogue with contemporary works, including the paintings of polluted water by Zhang Hongtu (born 1943), made one year later in 2009 What is missing in Yang’s photograph is the meticulous brushwork that would have been used to paint the individual waves: tradition has been changed, but not erased ( Chinese ink painting is also known for its use of paper, which absorbs the ink quite differently than it does with oil or acrylic As with the previous characteristics, the support cannot define ink painting because artists have also experimented with unconventional grounds In 2012 the Suzhou River Gallery in Shanghai, for example, held an exhibition of new works by Qiu Shihua His untitled works were on canvas, a support that has commonly marked a distance from the Chinese tradition and an affinity for Western abstraction, from 18 artists like Zao Wou-Ki (Zhao Wuji, born 1921) to Yang Chihung (born 1947) Paintings on cardboard by Duan Jianyu (born 1972) also flaunt Chinese practice, but they are Chinese ink paintings because their allusions—dead trees, temples, characteristic mountains associated with the Li River—could not be understood outside their contexts These motifs may be hackneyed tourist images, but they are dependent on the history of ink painting Their reference to nationalist and tourist imagery is also to that of fine art, invoking the entire history of those representations Even more radically, Chinese Landscape —Tattoo (fig 00) by Huang Yan (born 1966) depicts a traditional Chinese landscape, executed in the ancient blue-and-green style, as if it were a tattoo on skin In describing this work, Huang uses the expression “human canvas,” an extension of the medium that has been made by a number of Chinese artists including Zhang Huan (born 1965) ( Finally, technique has been used to define Chinese ink painting The Chinese tradition is rich with texts that specify different kinds of brushwork, and Chinese brush technique is distinct in many specific ways from other forms of painting However, questioning or abandoning traditional brushwork has been a part of Chinese ink painting since artists born around the turn of the twentieth century, such as Zhang Daqian (1899– 1983), Li Keran, and Fu Baoshi, opened the way to such experimentation by experimenting with kinds of brushwork that older, traditional manuals and traditions did not imagine 19 Their successors, who were born in the 1920s and include Zao Wou-ki, Chu Teh-Chun (Zhu Deqin, born 1920), Wu Guanzhong (1919–2010), and slightly later Liu Kuo-sung, have continued these innovations The abandonment of historical technique is itself a tradition within ink painting ( Chinese ink painting is a marginalized art form in contemporary art; it is minimally present in international exhibitions, which are more concerned with experimental art Despite recent surges in the market for Chinese art, ink painting is also economically less prestigious than other forms of contemporary Chinese art This difference even appears in China itself where ink painting is often physically separated from other contemporary Chinese art in exhibitions; and in art academies, which continue to teach ink painting separately from Western oil and watercolor painting, sometimes in different buildings and with different faculty and requirements Redefining it without using visual criteria, and focusing instead on the depth, complexity, and historical density of the paintings’ references to the past, can open up an entirely new kind of conversation—one more attentive to the continuing pressure exerted by history on the present 20 ... Paintings on cardboard by Duan Jianyu (born 1972) also flaunt Chinese practice, but they are Chinese ink paintings because their allusions—dead trees, temples, characteristic mountains associated... the most apparent: ink painting connects to a tradition that has been traced back to Han dynasty (206 B.C.? ?A. D 220) tomb reliefs, and even to cave paintings and the decorations on Shang (ca 1600–1050... other media; it may not even look like a traditional ink painting at all On the other hand, not all art done on rice paper with ink and brushes should be called Chinese ink painting Some of it is