Do we have time for the Subtleties of Guohua?

By Britta Erickson

Third Chengdu Biennale

Yishu, January 2008

 

What is the role of beauty in contemporary life? In January 2007, Gene Weingarten, a writer for the Washington Post, conducted an experiment to determine how receptive people are in their everyday lives to beauty. (1) He arranged for Joshua Bell, one of the most famous violinist in the world, to pose as a street musician and play classical music in a Washington DC Metro station during rush hour. Only a few people paused in their hurry to get to work, to listen to the virtuoso playing on his eighteenth century violin, one of the most exquisite instruments ever made (and valued at several million dollars). Bell was astonished to realize that while people were willing to pay one hundred dollars to attend one of his sold-out concerts, they did not have the time to stop for a free performance.

This experiment leads to the likely conclusion that the stressful pace of urban life numbs people to unexpected encounters with beauty. Must people be anticipating beauty to fully appreciate it? Will they appreciate it more if they have paid for the experience, or if it takes place in a sanctioned location such as a concert hall or a museum? A second question raised by the experiment is, are sophisticated works of art, such as the violin pieces played by Bell, accessible only to an elite audience whose members have cultivated an understanding of that particular art form? Interestingly, one of the few people who whished to stop and listen to Bell was a child; indeed, children passing by Bell generally took notice of the performance, but were hastened on by their adult companions. Are we born with an innate feeling for beauty that is overpowered by the demands of daily life as we age, or by a cultural apparatus that insists education is a prerequisite for appreciation of elitist cultural forms?

These questions are highly relevant when we consider guohua (2) (Chinese painting or, literally, national painting), at its best a highly sophisticated art form whose masterpieces are fully understood by few. The appreciation of nuanced ink painting can justly be compared with violin playing: while the subjects portrayed in ink painting are often familiar, as a musical composition may be familiar, it is the subtleties of style and execution that provide the fodder for connoisseurship and act as the source for a deep level of enjoyment. While over time new subject matter-such as airplanes, factories, the moon landing, foreign beauty spots, wartime refugees, revolutionary martyrs, or contemporary urban life-is regularly introduced into ink painting, and new approaches may appear, it is with rare exceptions that the fundamental mastery of the medium serves as indicator of the artist's abilities and ultimately determines the quality of the work of art. The figures inhabiting Liu Qinghe's and Li [in's paintings, for example, are fresh and enormously appealing, but it is the artists' skill that renders the paintings compelling works of art. And it is technical accomplishment combined with original thinking that has led calligrapher Wang Dongling and painter Zheng Chongbin to develop striking innovations in the field of abstraction based, respectively, on a profound understanding of the line founded in calligraphy, and on an understanding of three-dimensional form based in figure painting.

Perhaps an ingenue, such as a child, may appreciate the gestalt of a great work of art. Otherwise, education or some kind of push in the right direction will contribute much to a satisfactory level of appreciation. A significant portion of the Third Chengdu Biennale is devoted to works of art that spin off from the grand tradition of guohua, including video, installation, performance, photography, and painting rendered in oil or acrylic. While such works do not fit within the boundaries of a conventional definition of guohua, they reflect, illuminate, and expand outwards from there. Some do this by isolating the long-established basic materials employed in guohua: ink, colour, brush, paper, or silk. If it is a daunting proposition to fathom the depths of a great painting tradition without extensive training, then to break it down into its component parts may provide a kind of window or opening into the subject. Some artists working thus may be more deeply engaged with the meaning of guohua than guohua artists who focus on superficial innovations in lieu of exploring the profound implications of this enduring mode of painting.

Ink has become an object of fascination for artists like Wu Shaoying, who has created compellingly beautiful videos of flowing ink, highlighting the essential qualities of that material. Both Zhou Tiehai and Zhang Hongtu copy historical masterworks of guohua in non-traditional media (airbrushed acrylic and oil, respectively); their works jolt the viewer into a reconsideration of the conventions underlying the originals, and the cultural implications of those conventions. Also working in oil on canvas, Qiu Shihua renders original landscape compositions: considered in terms of medium, they clearly are not guohua, and yet their philosophical underpinnings bring them closer in spirit to literati painting than the vast majority of contemporary ink painting.

As mentioned above, it is rare for any aspect of a guohua painting to trump mastery of brush and ink in ultimately determining the quality and impact of a work in this mode. Yet, with the rising importance of conceptual art in China, the idea underlying the work can be a primary consideration in viewing a work rendered in ink on paper or silk. This was originally the case with Xu Bing's Landscriptpaintings that began with an emphasis on the concept. The artist is, however, gradually refining his technique, bringing mastery of ink and brush into harmony with the conceptual sophistication of the series. Historically, concept and technique have often developed in tandem in the field of guohua.

How we might find our way to an appreciation of guohua-whether we initially are lured in by a painting's subject, or by the beauty of a single brushstroke, whether we find entry through related works in other media, or are seduced instantly by a work's masterfully symbiotic execution and concept-does not really matter. In the end, if we can learn to take the time to appreciate the endless subtle variants at play within guohua, we can no doubt also find time to cultivate other nuanced experiences. Referring back to the title of the exhibition, Reboot,

the present need to reset priorities to make time for beauty and nuance parallels a need for a rethinking of the fundamentals of guohua, to eschew the easy or dogmatic answers in favour of a search for deeper meaning.

 

Notes

1 Gene Weingarten, "Pearls Before Breakfast," Washington PO&, April 8, 2007, p. Wl <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR200704 0401721.html>

2 Guohua, literally national painting, refers to Chinese painting in brush and ink (and often color) on paper or silk.