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Baihua, Zong - The Birth of Artistic Conception in China
Baihua, Zong - The Birth of Artistic Conception in China
Zong Baihua
To cite this article: Zong Baihua (2017) The Birth of Artistic Conception in China, Art in
Translation, 9:3, 367-396, DOI: 10.1080/17561310.2017.1353291
Article views: 3
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Art in Translation, 2017
Volume 9, Issue 3, pp. 367–396, https://doi.org/10.1080/17561310.2017.1353291
© 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
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essential nature of poetry and art; artistic creation and the artistic realm;
the meditative state and human emotions; music and rhythm; dance and
order; and the techniques of Chinese painting.
universities of Frankfurt and Berlin (1920–5). More than half of the near-
ly one hundred quotations (and quotations within quotations), however,
come from classical Chinese poems or from traditional Chinese works
on poetry theory and poetry criticism. Zong Baihua may be the father of
modern Chinese aesthetics, but in this essay, which continues to be widely
read to this day, Zong’s outlook, focused as it is on traditional landscape
painting and classical poetry, is highly reminiscent of that of the scholar/
painter of the past millennium.
The book used as the basis for this translation, Strolls in Aesthetics,
is Zong Baihua’s major contribution to the field. Compiled in 1981, it
collects more than twenty of the approximately thirty essays written by
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Foreword
The world knows no bounds, life knows no bounds, and the realm of
the arts equally knows no bounds. “What fits me feels always fresh” (a
phrase from a poem by Wang Xizhi1) is an expression of how an artist
experiences the world. “The scene constantly offering something new” is
the mark of all great works of literature and art. “Gaining novel insights
through the renewed study of old material”2 should be the attitude present
in all artistic creation and art criticism. When history takes a step forward,
this progress is often accompanied by a step backward consisting of root
seeking. Li Bai and Du Fu3 were geniuses, but let us not forget that they
benefited from the lessons taught by many masters. The Renaissance of the
sixteenth century copied ancient Greece, and nineteenth-century romanti-
cism longed for the Middle Ages. Twentieth-century modernism in its turn
traces its source back to the simplicity and naivety of primitive art.
Contemporary China finds itself at a turning point in history. New
prospects are bound to be opened up. But at the same time a critical ex-
amination of our traditional culture, and a new appraisal of it through
sympathetic understanding, have become all the more important. The
study and exploration of the specific structure of China’s artistic concep-
tion—the single most crucial aspect of Chinese cultural history, as well as
its greatest contribution to the world—will enable one to pry into the most
exquisite and magnificent vistas of the Chinese soul. It is a task of self-
370 Zong Baihua
right here in front of our table and mats. And in all of this the weather
conditions are of no influence at all!” That the Western Hills seem far
away one moment and nearby the next has nothing to do with distance in
the physical sense, but with distance in the artistic conception as it exists
within the heart.7
In his Random Notes from the Hut of Natural Indolence Fang Shishu8
states:“Mountains, rivers, plants and trees, the natural world as it has been
created, all of this belongs to the realm of solid reality. Creating scenery
out of the mind, and using the hands in order to convey what is in the
mind, belongs to the realm of the vacuous.9 To make the vacuous into
something solidly real, that depends on the presence of brush and ink.
Therefore the painters of old would always make their mountains dark
green and their trees luxuriant, their waters lively and their rocks sleek,
thereby creating a kind of magic different from that of the natural world.
Some artists may resolutely follow their own natural disposition and free
themselves of conventions, yet even they will invariably work like the al-
chemist who strives to develop the elixir of life, discarding the dregs so
that only the quintessence remains, and fully exploring all the wonders of
the vacuous and the shadowy.” These few lines express the entire essence
of Chinese painting. This essay, in its endless ramblings, does nothing more
than clarify Fang Shishu’s words.
In his “On a Painting by Jie’an,” Yun Nantian10 said:
What is artistic conception? When man comes into contact with the
world, there are five different realms, each of which stands for a differ-
ent kind of relationship between man and the world. First, there is the
realm of utility—i.e., satisfying physiological and material needs. Second,
there is the ethical realm, an expression of the mutual affection between
coexisting masses of men. Third, there is the realm of politics, pertaining
to the organization and control of the masses. Fourth, there is the realm
of science—the inquiry into the laws of physics and the development of
intelligence. Fifth, there is the religious realm, an expression of the wish to
return to the innocence of one’s roots and to blend the supernatural and
the human spheres. In the realm of utility, the main concern is profit; in
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the ethical realm, the main concern is affection; in the realm of politics, the
main concern is power; in the realm of science, the main concern is truth;
and in the religious realm, the main concern is the divine. However, situ-
ated between the latter two is another realm. Its object is the concreteness
of the universe and of human life. In this realm, the hues, the order, the
rhythm and the harmony of life are appreciated and enjoyed, which in its
turn provides man with a reflection of his own innermost soul. Real-life
landscapes are transformed into imaginary scenery; forms are re-created
into symbols. Humankind’s noblest thoughts and feelings are concretized
and embodied. This is the realm of the arts. In the realm of the arts, the
main concern is beauty.
Every flicker of beauty finds its source in the heart. Without the rays
of light provided by the heart, there can simply be no talk of beauty. Hen-
ry-Frédéric Amiel, the Swiss philosopher, said:
The artist lets his spirit shine on every phenomenon on earth, and he speaks
on behalf of the physical landscape. What he expresses is an osmotic blend
of subjective sentiments related to his own life and the objective scenery of
the natural world, thereby creating an unfathomably profound, spiritual16
vista, lively and ingeniously wrought, where all elements are in the right
place. This spiritual vista constitutes the artistic conception, the element
which makes art into art. (However, in music and architecture—i.e., pure
forms of art that respectively deal with time and space—the most pro-
found, ineffable artistic concepts of the human mind are being expressed
in shapes that do not imitate nature. Dancing, in its turn, is a pure form
of art that offers a synthesis of both time and space, and can therefore be
considered the original form of all types of art. This is something we shall
return to later.)
372 Zong Baihua
Here also, the first four verses entirely consist of descriptions of scenery,
whereas the last verse describes an emotion, suffusing the whole poem
with a feeling of sadness, loneliness and universal desolation.
Artistic conception can manifest itself in many different hues, because
man, place, emotion and scenery are never identical. It can be compared
to the Mani Pearl of the Buddhists, the beauty of which reveals itself in
countless different colors. The same starry, moonlit night may find itself
reflected in a wide variety of poetical modes.
In his poem “Gazing at the Moon in the Jingyang Palace,” Yang Zai20
of the Yuan dynasty wrote:
The Ming dynasty painter Shen Zhou21 said in his poem “Writing about
my innermost feelings, to be sent to a Buddhist monk”:
Yang’s poem exhales the heroic spirit of the imperial palace, which en-
veloped heaven and earth in feudal times. Shen’s poem takes us to the
realm of the recluse, who has broken off all ties with the world and its
defilements. Sheng’s poem, in its turn, describes the mind of the poet who
feels emotionally attached to the scenery, in a manner that is graceful but
not showy. The main element in the first poem is atmosphere; in the sec-
ond poem it is meditation; in the third it is temperament and interest.
As to the Tang dynasty poet Lu Guimeng’s23 famous lines on the white
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lotus—“I should feel resentment because no one’s aware of this / The moon
is bright, the breeze is clear, the petals are about to fall”—they present a
vivid picture of the flowers, quite close in style to that of the prose-poem
or rhapsody. The poetic conception and background are beautiful indeed,
but the emphasis is on the description of an object.
In every form of artistic expression, emotion and scenery form an os-
motic blend. One is enabled to explore one’s deepest feelings, to reach ever
deeper and bring to light layer after layer of one’s emotions. At the same
time one is enabled to penetrate ever deeper into the scenery, to discover
layer upon layer of sparkling, crystal-clear scenery. The scenery becomes
suffused with emotion, and the emotions are concretized and become
scenery. As a result, a unique universe and a brand-new imagery emerge.
Mankind’s imagination is replenished, and new vistas are opened up for
the world, precisely as in the words of Yun Nantian: “It is a unique crea-
tion, entirely the result of the inspiration; nothing of all this exists in the
real world!” This is the “artistic conception” I am talking about. “Outside,
I take Creation as my teacher; inside, I’m in touch with the fountainhead
of my heart.” These few words of instruction by the Tang painter Zhang
Zao24 are the main condition for the creation of artistic conception.
Tang Caizhen25 of the Yuan dynasty stated: “The landscape has been en-
dowed with all that is excellent in Creation. Sun, moon and obscurity;
clear weather and rain, cold and heat; dawn and dusk, day and night …
They vary according to circumstances and are of unlimited interest. One
has the impression of witnessing something totally unprecedented, some-
thing so inexhaustibly vast that it resembles a boundless expanse of blue
water—not at all easy to describe.”
The emergence of artistic conception implies that the objective scenery
has been allowed to become the symbol or token of one’s own subjective
affections. In our hearts, affections rise and fall, ever changing like the
waves, assuming countless different appearances. A single fixed outline or
rough sketch will never be able to adequately express them. Only the full
spectrum of all the vivid elements which Nature has to offer—mountains
374 Zong Baihua
and rivers, plants and trees, clouds and mist, light and darkness—enables
one to represent the breath and the rhythms of inspiration that boundless-
ly flourish in our minds. Yun Nantian wrote the following inscription on
a painting: “Sketching these distant clouds and mountains, they become
part of my thoughts, and they end up as tears shed by the hairs of my
painting brush.” The landscape has become the medium through which
poets and painters give expression to their affections. Therefore Chinese
painters and poets have always liked to give the realm of mountain and
water a central place in their expressions. This is utterly different from the
artistic path chosen in the West, where, since Ancient Greece, the human
body has been the main object. Dong Qichang’s26 words were well-chosen:
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“Poetry moves within the realm of the landscape, and the landscape moves
within the realm of poetry.” The poetical mind with which the artist has
been naturally endowed casts its light upon the poetical mind of heaven
and earth. (In the Apocryphal Book of Songs it is said: “Poetry is the heart
of heaven and earth.”) The natural landscape is a reflection of the poetical
mind of the universe. The spirit of the painter and the poet is dynamic; it is
itself nothing but a creative evolution of the universe. In all its movements
and choices it resembles a tiny cloud in the great void of heaven, or the
tracks of wild geese on a chilly pond: unpredictable and spontaneous!
profound and delicate. Dong Yuan31 of the Southern Tang dynasty said:
“While sketching the hills of the Jiangnan region, I wield my brush in
a highly careless manner. When you look at the result from up close, it
would seem to have very little to do with the actual shape of these hills,
but when looked at from a distance, the scenery is there in all its beauty
and freshness; one experiences exquisite feelings and profound pondering,
as one does when beholding a landscape one has never set eyes on before.”
When the artist relies on his profoundly tranquil mind-set, he discovers the
depth of the universe. In the natural world he can “happen upon withered
trees, blocks of stone, small ponds and sparse forest, and every time he will
be able, with deep feelings and yet cool detachment, to look for the hidden
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The first step is to find a decrepit wall, on which you spread out the
unpainted silk that will be your canvas. After that has been done,
you look at it morning and evening. After a certain period of time,
the patterns in the silk against the wall, running up or down or
crosswise, will start to take on the forms of mountains and water.
You focus your eyes and concentrate your mind upon them. The
highs will become mountains, the lows will become water; holes will
become valleys, empty spaces will become ravines; what is apparent
will become nearby, what is obscure will become distant. As your
mind extends its grasp, a concept will be created, and it will be as
if you see the shapes of humans, animals, plants and trees clearly
in front of your eyes, as they are dancing and moving to and fro.
Thereupon you take up the brush as you like, and while you remain
silent in order to establish spiritual communion, the scenery will
take shape naturally, and it will look as if your painting were not the
work of a mere man. That is what I call “the living brush.”
Song Di’s words are a very nice illustration of what Chinese painters often
say: “Hills and valleys are formed within one’s breast; upon awakening
they can be executed with brush and ink.” This is fundamentally different
from the painstakingly realistic attitude of Monet, the western impression-
ist painter who would depict the same view for up to a dozen times, after
having studied it in the morning, at midday and in the evening.
376 Zong Baihua
Concepts and ideas like to move along tortuous paths; melodies will
create a stronger impression if heard from a distance. When one
reads a poem for the first time, there emerges one view: the full-
ness of spring with its myriad of flowers, enchanting white dew,
snow that covers the earth like white silk, some remaining clouds
like embroidery in heaven. [Zong’s note: This is direct sensual per-
ception exaggerating our impression of things.] When one reads it
a second time, another view emerges: unbroken stretches of mist-
covered waters, icy winds blowing, a noble steed descending a slope,
the scales of fish emerging from the water. [Zong’s note: This is the
conveyance of something dynamic and alive.] When one reads one
last time, the glimmering moon, the white clouds light and fleeting,
the wild geese soaring high in the sky and the leaves that fall like rain,
all of this has mysteriously become modestly placid and detachedly
distant. [Zong’s note: This is the highest spiritual enlightenment.]
Jiang Shunyi commented upon this in the following words: “In the
first view, the emotions are victorious; in the second view, the vital
energies are victorious; in the final view, the personality is victorious.”
“Emotions” are direct reflections of the heart when confronted with im-
pressions; the “vital energies” are the forces of life, as in “The energies of
life travel far”;36 and “personality” refers to noble moral qualities as reflect-
ed in one’s character. In the arts of the western world, impressionism and
realism correspond with the first level. Romanticism, with its predilection
for untrammeled expressions of the musicality of life, and classicism, with
its penchant for revealing the statuesque qualities of life in perfect clarity,
both correspond with the second level. As to symbolism, expressionism
and postimpressionism, their purport corresponds with the third level.
In China, however, the artistic ideal, ever since the Six Dynasties peri-
od,37 has been to “purify one’s heart and behold the Way” (an expression
coined by the Jin and Liu-Song dynasties painter Zong Bing38), the medi-
tative state whereby one comprehends what is subtle and profound in all
marks of materiality, like the disciple of the Buddha who smiled when the
Buddha held up a flower.39 In the preface to his Lyrical Poems from the
Shrine of the Ever Shifting Mind, Ru Guanjiu40 aptly expresses this:
Birth of Artistic Conception in China 377
To surpass the world of concrete forms with a mind that is nothing but
purity and contemplation, that is the original foundation of the creation
of artistic conception. Birds singing by a pearl screen and flowers falling
out of themselves are the perfect completion of the expression of artistic
conception.
Also in painting, the multi-layered nature of artistic conception may be
observed. In his Sundry Stitches from the Purple Peach Pavilion the Ming
dynasty painter Li Rihua says:
In painting there are three consecutive stages. The first one concerns
the location of the body. The place where the body is positioned
must never be hidden or closed, but spacious and bright. At the
water’s edge or at the rim of a forest: that is the place where all
scenery gathers. [Zong’s note: This is the view from up close.] The
second stage concerns the focus of the eyes. One may choose an
exceptionally beautiful landscape, or something boundlessly entic-
ing, such as spring water falling, clouds emerging, a sail shifting
or birds flying away. [Zong’s note: This is the scenery as observed
from on high and at a distance.] The third stage concerns the trav-
els of the intention.43 The force of the eyes may have its limits, but
there are places where the emotions pulsate without interruption.
[Zong’s note: This is a panorama unlimited in space.] Be that as it
may, there also exist places the intention stumbles upon accidentally.
When one sketches a tree or a rock, for instance, it is necessary that
dots applied in a cursive manner grasp its attitude. [Zong’s note:
This is the realm where one hints at the unlimited within the limited,
where one transmits the spirit and captures the liveliness.] When
378 Zong Baihua
one sketches a long horizontal landscape, one must make sure that
“the intention reaches where the brush does not reach,”44 so that
the spiritual energy gets hold of it. The accidental nature of this is
not something one willingly seeks. Rather, it is an unavoidable kind
of accidentality. [Zong’s note: This is the realm where one makes
use of what is limited to express the unlimited, where the creative
and transformative forces unite with the fountainhead of the heart,
and where all forms become symbols.] This is what the Buddhists of
the Yogacara school45 mean when they talk about “extremely subtle
colors and shapes” and “smallest perceivable matter.”
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Thus, painting, once its marks of materiality are fully developed, reaches
the highest level of spirituality: the manifestation of the meditative state.
After having passed through several consecutive stages, it reaches its new
home. Dai Chunshi once said: “Wielding his brush like Li Bai when the
latter wrote the lines ‘Fallen leaves gather, then scatter again / Jackdaws
perch but then startle,’46 or in the fashion of One Peak,47 Yun Nantian
accomplished what is being described in the lines ‘Lonely fleabane shaking
out of itself / Startled sand sits, then flies up.’48 In other words: he paints,
but it’s almost a form of meditation!” Meditation is utmost quiescence
within movement, and it is also utmost movement within quiescence; it is
constant illumination through quietude, and constant quietude through
illumination. Movement and quiescence are not two separate entities.
Meditation is a direct exploration of the origins of life. Upon coming into
contact with Mahayana Buddhism, the Chinese became aware of the deep-
est recesses of the soul and magnificently elaborated this awareness into
a realm of philosophy and art: that is Chan Buddhism. Silently solemn
reflection and forward leaping vitality are the two cornerstones of art,
and both of them constitute the spiritual condition of Chan Buddhism. In
the Record of Omissions Made Good by the Monk Snowy Hall it is said:
“The Chan Master Taipingdeng (‘Great Peace Lantern’) from Shuzhou
was well-versed in the sutras and their scholastic reworkings, but apart
from that he also taught meditation. The monk Baiyunyan (‘White Clouds
Performance’) sent him a Buddhist hymn: ‘White clouds, moon over the
mountains / Great peace, shadows below pine trees / The night is clear, no
freak winds / All of this together forms one single vista.’ When Taipingdeng
received this hymn, he chanted it, and before long he experienced sudden
enlightenment.” Meditation makes use of poetry in order to express itself.
Therefore, for the Chinese artistic conception to be created, it took
both Qu Yuan’s extreme sadness49 and Zhuangzi’s carefree unpredicta-
bility. Only extreme sadness enables one to experience passionate love, to
penetrate to the very core of things, in other words, to “grasp what lies
within.” Only carefree unpredictability enables one to be like a flower in a
mirror, or like the moon reflected in water; to leave no traces, like an ante-
lope which hangs by its horns,50 in other words, to “transcend all outward
forms.”51 Form is emptiness, emptiness is form; form is not different from
emptiness, emptiness is not different from form.52 This not only pertains
Birth of Artistic Conception in China 379
to the poetry of the High Tang but also to the painting of the Song and
Yuan dynasties.
Zhuangzi was a philosopher with a natural talent for things artistic, whose
elucidations regarding the artistic realm are most ingenious. Zhuangzi was
able to merge the metaphysical principle of the “Way” (dao) with “art”
into a perfect blend. Living according to the Way goes beyond skill, and
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the expression of that skill is a revelation of the Way. The third chapter,
entitled “The Principle of Nurturing Life,” contains a brilliant piece of
description53:
Living according to the Way, just like living in the arts, means to let the
knife roam where there is lots of empty space, all in perfect rhythm, as
though one is performing the dance of the Mulberry Grove or keeping
time to the Jingshou music. The rhythm of music forms the very core of
both lifestyles. Therefore, also in Confucian philosophy it is said: “Great
music conforms with the harmony of heaven and earth, great ritual con-
forms with the order of heaven and earth.” The Book of Changes states:
“There is an intermingling of the genial influences of heaven and earth,
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During the Kaiyuan reign period65 of the Tang dynasty, General Pei
Min was in mourning. He paid a visit to Wu Daozi and asked him
if he would fill a number of walls of the Tiangong Temple in the
Eastern Capital, Luoyang, with paintings of gods and demons, so
that these might protect the soul of the deceased. Wu Daozi replied:
“My painting brush hasn’t been used for a long time, but if the
general is willing to perform a measure of his sword dance for me,
its vehemence and fury might stimulate me to penetrate the myster-
ies!” Thereupon General Pei took off his mourning garments and,
dressed in his everyday clothes, rode his horse so fast it seemed to
fly. Wheeling to the left and turning to the right, he threw his sword
into the clouds, several hundred feet high, where it flashed down
like lightning. General Pei stretched out his hand, holding the scab-
bard so as to receive the sword, but the sword pierced [the roof of]
a building and fell within.66 Several thousands of people witnessed
this, and each of them was startled or frightened. Thereupon Wu
Daozi pulled out his brush and started to paint on the walls as sud-
denly as a wind rising, and he created one of the most marvellous
382 Zong Baihua
The poet Du Fu, describing the highest achievement in poetry, said: “The
profound and subtle penetrate the boundless / Dancing, the thunderbolt
is transfigured” (from the poem “At night, listening to Xu Eleven reciting
a poem. I loved it and thus wrote this”). The first line describes probing
into deep darkness, penetrating the profound and subtle mechanisms of
creation. The second line hints at the Great Energy creating in a spiraling
movement, and describes how it is being provided with a shape and be-
comes a whirling dance. Profound calm and illumination are the source
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of dance-like vitality. Or to put it the other way round, only the dynamic,
concrete dancing movements of life, the meter of music and the different
art forms are able to give a tangible shape to, or to embody, the Way which
manifests itself in quietude and illumination. The German poet Hölderlin
wrote two lines with far-reaching implications:
The Yellow Emperor travelled north of the Red Water, ascended the
slopes of Kunlun, and gazed south. Upon his return, he discovered
he had lost his Dark Pearl. (Sima Biao explains: the Dark Pearl is
the authenticity of the dao.) He sent Knowledge to look for it, but
Knowledge couldn’t find it. He sent Li Zhu (“the one with the keen
eyes”) to look for it, but Li Zhu couldn’t find it. He sent Chi Gou
(lit. Stammering Abuse—the debater) to look for it, but Chi Gou
couldn’t find it. Finally he sent Shapeless, and Shapeless found it.
“How bizarre!” said the Yellow Emperor. “In the end it was Shape-
less who was able to find it!”
The above poem, and the lines from the poem about the ninth day of the
ninth lunar month72 by the Chinese Song dynasty Buddhist monk Daoc-
an—“Heaven and earth: a single eastern fence73 / Eternity: nothing but a
Double Ninth Day”—both manage to hint at how the boundless is lodged
within the finite, at how all the things that are born and die symbolize
eternity.
The noblest spiritual activities known to mankind, situated in the
realms of art and philosophy, are born from a self, the inner core of which
experiences the highest degree of freedom and abundance. As this plentiful
self is permeated with the pure force, tens of thousands of images are right
by its side;74 bracing its arms it marches on, detached and unrestrained;
it is in need of space in order to be active (see my article “Consciousness
of Space as Evidenced by Chinese and Western Painting Techniques”75).
“Dancing” is its most direct, its most concrete natural expression. “Danc-
ing” is the model of all Chinese arts. All Chinese calligraphy and paint-
ing techniques display a tendency toward dancing in the air. Even solemn
buildings have flying eaves76 and seem to dance in their own typical way.
Du Fu’s poem “On Seeing a Pupil of Lady Gongsun Performing the Jianqi
Sword Dance—A Ballad” opens with the following lines:
In the past there was a beautiful woman from the Gongsun clan,
Who moved the whole world as she performed her sword dance.
Audiences so numerous they looked like hills watched in amazement,
For heaven and earth seemed to continue moving up and down …
Heaven and earth are dancing, they are poetry (poetry is the heart of heav-
en and earth), they are music (great music conforms with the harmony of
heaven and earth). The typical features of Chinese painting rest on these
foundations. Loosening his clothes, the painter majestically faces a blank
piece of paper (the space where the dancing will take place), and using
384 Zong Baihua
cursive or seal script as if he were dancing in the air, he composes the mu-
sic and poetry that is inherent in all things in the universe. What happens
when one photographs the myriad beings with a camera? Their shapes
form a kind of bottom layer of dark shadows on the paper. The lines with-
in the contours of the shapes of things are blurred and hazy. The plants,
trees, cliffs and rocks on the mountains are unable to vividly express the
painter’s thoughts and ideas. Only after a substantial amount of snow has
fallen will the contours of the cliffs and rocks, the branches and trunks of
the trees in the forest, reveal their spirit and disposition, their radiating
power and vitality, as if one would unfold a sheet of blank paper and allow
the myriad beings to reveal their picturality through irregularly outlined,
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boldly traced lines. This is the reason why Chinese painters (Wang Wei for
instance) love to paint snowscapes: it allows them to create an image of a
world being opened up.
Confronted with the blank surface, Chinese painters are unwilling to
let the bottom layer of dark shadows fill up the “face” of the object, there-
by obliterating the empty space—which is precisely what western paint-
ers do. Therefore they directly wield brush and ink on the blank surface,
giving expression to the living rhythm of what they paint by using a wide
variety of wrinkly lines. (Shitao stated: “Through the use of wrinkles, the
brush suggests the living surface of things.”) At the same time they make
use of the different styles of calligraphy (cursive script, seal script or offi-
cial script) in order to express the meter of their own heart. The resulting
painting will always be a mix of the natural beauty of things as directly
grasped by the painter on a spiritual level, his creative powers, and his
soul. As brush and ink are applied in a free and unrestrained fashion, as
the lines create their own rhythm and the colors their own music, a path
opens up for one to follow. Cherishing the void one roams, exploring the
vacuous and the shadowy, and modeling emptiness into solidity. (See the
Fang Shishu quote in the first section of this article.)
Zhuangzi talked about “the empty chamber where the white light is
born,”77 and he also said: “The Way gathers in emptiness alone.” The
method of expression whereby details are added in a blank space and
emptiness is modeled into solidity is emphasized in Chinese poetry and
songs as well as in essays. In every poem, in every song, open space and a
kind of undulation are always present. Conceptually, they are very close
to Chinese painting.
Calligraphy, that preeminently Chinese art form, is a particularly good
example of what is meant by being “unpredictable and turbulent.” In his
Discussion of Calligraphy78 Zhang Huaiguan of the Tang dynasty de-
scribed Wang Xizhi’s way of wielding the brush in the following words:
“Placing one dot here and one stroke there, he moves from right to left and
from top to bottom. The characters seem to recline in the middle, leaving
an abundance of open space. But the characters are forceful and beautiful,
they resemble living things. They seem obscure, but in a profound and last-
ing way; they seem to glow with a spiritual brilliance. Because it cannot be
fathomed, it is the most marvellous of all calligraphy.”79 Here we can see
Birth of Artistic Conception in China 385
that calligraphy in its most marvelous form entirely accords with painting:
movement emerging from emptiness, depth and quietude amidst spiritual
brilliance; outward forms are transcended, to grasp what lies within.80
This applies to all creative processes in the Chinese arts.
In his Poetry Unraveled, Wang Chuanshan81 states: “People discussing
painting will say that something tiny, merely one foot long, has the pow-
er82 of ten thousand miles, and that as soon as a written character has
been empowered, it is able to attract the eye. If we do not involve power,
then we contract ten thousand miles into something one foot long, like
the map of the entire empire at the beginning of an atlas. It is because of
this power that five-character quatrains, at the moment of their concep-
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tion, contain the ultimate truth. Only the High Tang poets83 were able to
produce the most wonderful effects with five-character quatrains. Take
this poem for instance: ‘Where is your family’s abode? / I live in Hengtang
/ Now the boat has moored I ask you / Perhaps we come from the same
hometown.’84 The energy of the ink radiates in all directions, so that the
poem’s intention is made clear even there where characters are absent!” In
his “Song discussing painting” Gao Rifu85 said: “Even there where brush
and ink do not reach, a mysterious breath pervades the empty space.” And
Da Chongguang86 said: “Vacuity and solidity generate one another. Even
there where no painting has been done, wonderful vistas arise.” All three
of them pay attention to blank space as a key element in the realm of the
arts. In Chinese poetry, painting as well as calligraphy, a similar concep-
tual structure manifests itself, a conceptual structure which represents the
way in which the Chinese people perceive the universe. In the poetry of
High Tang poets such as Wang Wei and Meng Haoran,87 the influence
of Chan Buddhism, with its stress on the illusory nature of all phenom-
ena, is omnipresent. In the lyrical poems of the Northern Song dynasty,
there are the rippling movements of waves amidst emptiness, and end-
lessly vast expanses of water. Even the following verses: “The twenty-four
bridges are still intact / Swaying in the heart of the waves, the cold moon,
without a sound” and “I watch as the painted boats all pass under Xiling
Bridge / Springtime is preserved on half the lake”—respectively written
by Jiang Baishi88 and Zhou Caochuang89—manage to use emptiness as a
foil for solidity, allowing the energy of the ink to radiate in all directions.
But because they exaggerate in their application of color while describ-
ing the scenery, they fail to “make the poem’s intention clear even there
where characters are absent,” the latter being a characteristic of the Tang
dynasty quatrains which has never been surpassed. When the Chinese
learn about the Way, they do so by “seeing movement in places of vacuity
and quietude, and by seeing vacuity and quietude in places of movement.”
The Way gathers in emptiness alone; substance and function do not exist
in two separate realms.90 This constitutes the actual nature of the Chinese
people’s sense of life and artistic conception.
Wang Chuanshan also said: “Du Fu was particularly skilled at grasping
the most profound essence of whatever he came into contact with, and at
giving expression to the most minute of things. The genius of Wang Wei
386 Zong Baihua
resided in his ability to broadly absorb from all sides, all the while reveal-
ing his innermost self.” He also said: “Wang Wei was an absolute master at
making what is far off seem near, and at remodeling vacuity into solidity.
With Wang Wei, the presence of the mind would make itself automatically
felt in an indirect way, and outward forms would automatically occupy
the right place.” This is highly interesting. “The presence of the mind mak-
ing itself automatically felt in an indirect way” finds its expression in “the
energy of the ink radiating in all directions,” whereas “outward forms au-
tomatically occupying the right place” corresponds with “something tiny,
merely one foot long, having the power of ten thousand miles.” “Broadly
absorbing from all sides, all the while revealing his innermost self” and
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“making what is far off seem near, and remodeling vacuity into solidity”:
that is precisely the creative technique and the artistic conception of Wang
Wei, who was at the same time a great painter and a great poet. It is also
representative of how the Chinese create the movement of life and the
taste of the generative forces of heaven and earth out of vacuity.
In his discussions of the genesis of artistic conception in poetry, Wang
Chuanshan makes another profound and subtle statement which helps us
understand the ultimate foundation of “the birth of artistic conception
in China.” He says: “In the midst of mystery and agitation, all true affec-
tions can be found. [By the Songs] you can arouse, you can contemplate,
you can express comradeship, you can show resentment;91 therefore one
chooses the Book of Songs. However, if, inspired by all this, one attempts
to write poetry, it often happens that one witnesses certain scenes or sit-
uations, that one thinks of things from the past or in the future, without
being able to adequately express oneself, even after years of painstaking
efforts. To write about universal human emotions with a swiftly moving
brush, as if one were following the sun’s shadows, that is the secret of any
poet.” “To write about universal human emotions with a swiftly moving
brush, as if one were following the sun’s shadows”: in these words lie both
the ultimate ideal and the highest achievement of the Chinese arts. This
holds true for the poetry of the Tang and Song dynasties, and it holds true
for the painting of the Song and Yuan dynasties.
Especially in the landscape, flower and bird paintings of the Song and
Yuan dynasties we can savor what it means “to write about universal hu-
man emotions with a swiftly moving brush.” The natural life depicted by
the painter is concentrated on an endless expanse of white. Amidst the void
undulates the Way, “which you can look for but cannot see, which you can
listen for but cannot hear, which you can reach for but cannot hold,” and
which is therefore described by Laozi as “invisible,” “inaudible” and “in-
tangible.”92 Every single flower or bird, every single tree or boulder, every
single mountain or river which appears on the expanse of white is loaded
with infinitely profound significance, with boundlessly profound emotion.
(Painters and poets look upon the myriad beings with the same kind of be-
nevolence, without discriminating. It doesn’t matter how far away or how
puny a plant or a rock may be. They will paint it with their “meticulous
brush,”93 or they will convey an impression of haziness and desolation
Birth of Artistic Conception in China 387
while sprinkling the ink with an “unrestrained brush.”) The myriad beings
are steeped in the calm and deep love of the painter’s soul, the brightness
of which is felt throughout the four quarters of the land.94 So deep is this
love that one feels as if one is living a peaceful dream. What the watcher
experiences is a consolation that pervades his entire soul, and the awaken-
ing of a subtle awareness.
This is the way the brush is used in Chinese painting: it plunges straight
down from the void, ink dots perform a dance and blend with the white
on the paper. The painting starts to look like “a cloud, colored by the sun;
its brightness does not come from within, but neither does it come from
without; no contours, no lines are visible, yet it can give rise to an end-
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Zhang Xuan98 wrote the following poem: “The rocks are sleek, rain before
the cliffs / The fragrance of a spring, wind through tips of small branches /
River and mountains offer unlimited views / All drawn together in one ki-
osk.” And in his poem on the Hanxu Pavilion, Su Dongpo wrote: “There’s
only this pavilion, and nothing else / I sit and watch myriad vistas—nature
in its perfection.” The Way gathers in emptiness alone.99 The Chinese per-
ception of the universe also finds its expression in Chinese architecture.
Where the vital energies circulate in openness and quietude, where kites
fly and fish leap: that is the realm where the artistic soul of the Chinese and
their image of the universe meet like two mirrors reflecting one another. Ni
Yunlin wrote the following poem:
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to find. One fine example is the following lyrical poem by Zhang Yuhu102
of the Song dynasty. It is called “Lovely Nian Nu: Crossing Lake Dong-
ting”:
Artistic conception has its own depth, its own height and its own width.
The height, greatness and depth which Du Fu reached in his poems have
never been reached by anyone else. “To express what no other man is able
to express, that is height. To contain what no other man is able to contain,
390 Zong Baihua
that is greatness. To follow winding paths that no one else is able to follow,
that is depth” (quoting a remark by Liu Xizai104 on Du Fu’s poetry). And
in his Poetry Talks of Stone Forest, Ye Mengde105 stated:
The Chan Buddhists have three sorts of sayings, and the same goes
for Old Du’s poems. For instance, the lines ‘Waves toss the wild rice
seeds, sinking clouds of black / Dew chills the lotus pods, the falling
powder’s red,’ speak of containing heaven and earth. ‘Fallen flowers
and gossamer threads, the day is calm / Cooing doves and young
swallows, spring is deep,’ speak of following the waves. ‘Secluded
for a hundred years, the brushwood gate is far away / In the fifth
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month the river is deep, the thatched pavilion is cold’ speak of tran-
scending all emotions and knowledge.
Translator’s Notes
empty because the one person whom the poet would like to meet is
temporarily absent.
10. Yun Shouping, also known as Yun Nantian (1633–90), was a well-
known calligrapher, poet, and painter (of flowers, bamboo, insects,
and animals) of the early Qing dynasty.
11. Zong Baihua explains that Tang Jie’an, a friend of the painter, is
meant here.
12. An allusion to a passage in the sixth chapter (“The Great and
Venerable Teacher”) of the Daoist classic Zhuangzi, where a
terminally ill man is trying to imagine what will happen to him after
his death.
13. Another allusion to Zhuangzi. In the first chapter (“Free and Easy
Wandering”), it is said that the legendary ruler Yao visited the
faraway Mountain of Gushe, which so awed him that he forgot all
about governing his empire.
14. The original, in Journal intime, reads: “Jedes Landschaftsbild ist ein
Seelenzustand.”
15. Zhu Ruoji (1642–1708) was one of the most fiercely individualistic
painters of the early Qing dynasty. A Buddhist who later converted to
Daoism, he is best known under the name Shitao (“Stone Billows”).
16. “Spiritual” here has the connotations “divine,” “supernatural,”
“sacred,” “efficacious,” and “marvelous.”
17. A Song dynasty (960–1279) economist, statesman, and political
reformer, Wang Anshi (1021–86) was also an accomplished poet.
18. Where Wang Anshi spent the first twenty years of his government
career.
19. Ma Zhiyuan (c. 1250–1321), courtesy name Dongli, was a poet and
well-known playwright of the Yuan dynasty (1271–1368).
20. Yang Zai 1271–1323.
21. Shen Zhou 1427–1509.
22. Exact dates unknown.
23. Died c. 881.
24. The eighth-century eccentric Zhang Zao was one of the first Chinese
painters to use his hands instead of a brush.
392 Zong Baihua
40. Another quotation from the seventh chapter of Jiang Shunyi’s Cixue
jicheng. There is some uncertainty as to the name of the author of this
obscure fragment. Instead of Ru Guanjiu, his name might be Guan
Jiushan.
41. First verse of a lyrical poem by Su Shi, composed to the tune “Prelude
to Water Melody.” Su Shi (1036–1101), also known as Su Dongpo, is
the most famous of all Song dynasty poets.
42. First verse of a lyrical poem by Feng Yansi (903–60), composed to the
tune “Visit to the Golden Gate.”
43. Intention is yi, the first half of yijing or “artistic conception.”
44. The first artist and art theorist to formulate a version of this famous
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57. “Conveying the spirit” (chuanshen) is one of the most crucial notions
in Chinese art. Coined by the famous early painter and Daoist adept
Gu Kaizhi (c. 345–406), it originally denotes the painter’s capacity to
grasp the spirit of the person who is being portrayed and to transmit
it through painting.
58. Zaohua, a term originating in the sixth Zhuangzi chapter.
59. The “veritable controller” is an allusion to the second Zhuangzi
chapter.
60. In Zhuangzi, “Mysteriously Profound” (xuanming) is a term
indicating the ineffable dao or Way.
61. The latter two phrases are an unacknowledged quote from Sikong
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75. Originally the text of a 1935 lecture, this article was published in
1936 and can also be found in Meixue sanbu.
76. So called because of their pointed, upturned forms.
77. The empty chamber is the heart/mind. The white light is the
illumination to the Way. This quote, and the following one, are from
the fourth Zhuangzi chapter (“In the World of Men”).
78. Shuyi, dated 759.
79. This quotation is not in Zhang Huaiguan’s short treatise. It can
be found attributed to Zhang Huaiguan in later works, such as
Sheng Ximing’s (fourteenth-century) Examination of Calligraphy
(Shufa kao). In reality, Zhang Huaiguan’s opinion of Wang Xizhi’s
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