To speak of Chinese art is difficult, for its scope is vast. I will try, however, to express my views in a few points. And I will speak of its shortcomings as well as its strengths.
First of all, what is art? Whether east or west, the basis of art is the need for expression. The artist wants to express something - beauty or other things. It does not matter whether an artist paints a shipwreck or Waterloo. Like a writer, he must have something to say. He must see what he feels about life, and convince people of what he feels. He tries to convey the meaning; and there must be something that profoundly moves him to seek the meaning.
What an artist wants people to see is not the tree, the rock or the mountain. He wants you to sublimate something from what he paints. Chi Pai-shih may paint only a few shrimps but what he wants to say is much more than a few shrimps.
In China, there is a great dissatisfaction with "material reality". Chinese artists, especially of the Southern School, were not content with mere verisimilitude. A photographer does much better in reproducing material reality than a Chinese artist. The chief characteristic of Chinese painting is not careful, minute emulation. The Sung scholar Su Tung-p'o (1036-1101 A.D.) once said: "To judge a painting by its fidelity to form as such is childish." What moves an artist to paint is the "bamboo that sprouts" in him. When the bamboo sprouts in you, you paint
Now we come to the present century and the modern expressionist school. Western art is characterized by innovation and audacity. I don't want to decry modern Western art. The post-impressionists were great. But some artists have run into a blind alley. They want to express themselves, they want to be original, they want to create a new style—but they don't know how! Picasso and the Picasso school try to get away from reality. The Picasso woman has no ankle and looks like an idiot. Here is a story about two French young men-both play boys. "A" told "B" that he knew a certain lady who was just divine, and that he would like "B" to meet her at a restaurant. "B" waited. First a gorgeously dressed lady in her thirties came in. "B" asked: "Is she the one?" "A" said: "No." Then a young girl showed up. She was pretty and there was freshness in her. The friend asked again: "Is she the one?" "A" said: "No." Finally came a woman, cross-eyed, snub-nosed, and she had no ankle and no neck. The young man asked his friend: "Isn't she divine?" The friend looked stunned. "Don't you think she is beautiful?" asked "A". His friend shook his head. "A" said: "In that case, I can see you don't like Picasso, either."
Mood That Matters
It's not because Picasso cannot paint beautiful women. Picasso and the Picasso school are concerned only with reality as they see it. It's the mood they care for. Why? Maybe they are too sophisticated to be interested in beautiful women.
Western artists excel in women's portraits. They paint beautiful women in the flesh. There were Leonardo de Vinci, Raphael Sanzio of the European Renaissance, and many later artists. They were concerned with what they saw. Down the centuries Western artists painted so much of women's flesh that some got sick of it ... They went on and went on. The trend developed until we have Picasso. It is a question of style and expression. It has to do with what one wants and what one does not.
An Oriental speaks of Western painting as boneless. It has not got contour lines— round mountains, rocks, and trees. Chinese art is different. Are the mountains in Chinese painting really mountains? No, they are only contour lines, or texture lines. These are the special qualities about Chinese painting:
(1) The joy of brush work
A Chinese artist masters his brush and carries it to the paper. We enjoy Chinese painting because of the freedom of the brush and the grace of movement, just as we enjoy Chinese calligraphy. It takes years, maybe one's lifetime, to achieve this.
(2) Play of the brush
We usually judge a Chinese painting by its mastery of the brush. We call it the play of the brush. An idea is born in the artist's mind. He has good brush and good ink. When he is in the right mood, the brush, ink, mood, and man combine and create.
Where does Chinese art fall short?
(1) Preoccupation with strokes
Chinese artists are preoccupied with strokes - texture strokes. How to use the brush is a main concern of Chinese artists. We have more than 20 kinds of texture strokes such as pien feng or chung jeng (to paint with the middle or an angle of the brush). Sometimes Chinese artists have overemphasized the brush stroke to the point of obsession.
(2) Too little originality
Chinese art lacks originality. In the time of Tung Chi-ch'ang (1368-1433 AD.) of the Ming dynasty, artists of one whole generation did nothing but copy the works of a great Yuan master, Huang Kung-wang. (1268-1354 A D.). The urge to copy is best described in a remark made by a scholar: "Chia chia yi chuan, jen jen ta tz’u. (Every family keeps a scroll; everyone feasts to his heart's content.) It's all right for art students to copy. But I just can't imagine what is happening in the world of art if artists do nothing but copy. The love of things ancient (hao ku) has its bad influences on Chinese art. Said Tung Chi-ch'ang: "Art will become dead if everyone wants to copy." Tung urged scholars to look at real mountains. "One can copy the detail," he said, "but not the spirit." Generally speaking, a great deal, though not all, of Chinese painting is alike in composition. The paintings of Shih Tao and Pa Ta Shan Jen (both of the Ming dynasty) are different. It's a real pity the Manchu emperors thought they were rebels and would not take the trouble to collect their works.
The impulse to create comes from nature. But nature is not made to order. It is not of the same pattern. Chinese art suffers from a lack of audacity and has too little innovation, while Western art has too much of these.
But China has great painters as well as poets. What really matters to a great artist is his own conception, which comes before the brushwork. You have, first of all, an impression that you want to convey. Along with good ink, brush and paper, a creative junction occurs.
Creative Audacity
Mi Fei (1050-1107 A. D.), one of the great painters of the Sung dynasty and a contemporary of Su Tung-p'o, created a new style. While everyone was copying Tung Yuan, Mi Fei had the audacity to say that Tung Yuan was no good. The works of Mi Fei and his contemporaries are characterized by greater simplicity and subjectivity. What I would call the new Tonalist School came nearer to the Bonheur Western style. Mi Fei was famous for his misty hilltops. He abandoned the texture stroke for the wash method. Here again we have to speak of ink and brush. Both Northern and Southern Schools used ink and brush. It is a matter of approach; some emphasize the brush, some the ink. But ink and brush, as a rule, must merge.
I am a great admirer of Ma Yuan and Hsia Kuei (12th-13th century) for their clarity and unity of composition. Ma was a great master without much of the texture stroke. His nickname was "One Corner Ma" because he painted only a corner of Hang chow - the beautiful West Lake surrounded by hills. Ma did not bother about the background. What he wanted to present was the unified impression of the moment.
Chinese art has been universally criticized for its paucity of work on domestic or interior scenes. We find that Chinese artists were preoccupied with the painting of nature—mountains, trees, and rocks. Why? One interpretation is this: Chinese artists lived in an over idealized world. They thought they were high above the world and that interest in themes other than nature was below them. But aren't there other aspects of life and many more things artists can paint? Why not paint a beggar? When China was divided and ran into chaos, we often had great artists.
I must say something about Chao Meng-fu (1254-1322 A D.). Mi Fei was a great master. But Mi Fei still lived on "hilltops". It was Chao Meng-fu who brought art to town and to man's common level. Chao changed the air-to-air missile to the ground to-air missile.
Somehow Chinese artists are inexhaustible in the painting of nature but very weak in portraiture. In the time of Northern Wei (4th century) a new element entered Chinese art and poetry. The inspiration came from Buddhism. This was the time when China produced its great portrait makers. The need for portraits used in ancestor worship and the imperial court provided an added fillip to flourishing art.
Mastery of Brush
The great Wu Tao-tzu of the 8th century was inimitable. Wu's mastery of brush is admirable. He was a genius, born not made. His works are distinguished by boldness and freedom. But like Leonardo de Vinci, Wu's genuine works are rare now. The decay of portraiture coincided with the development of the painting of birds, flowers, and insects in the 12th century.
Generally speaking; portraiture is not the strong point of Chinese art. Ch'iu Ying (working period 1509-1552 A D.) of the Ming dynasty was a master of the female form. But Ch'iu's women suggest not the beauty of bodies but the beauty of wind and waves. Chinese artists seldom paint women's flesh.
If you visit a Western art gallery, you will see a lot of women's flesh and oil paintings of nudes. At a Chinese art exhibition the main attractions are landscapes, insects, and beautiful flowers but very few human bodies.
Editor's note: This article is based on Dr. Lin's lecture at the Palace Museum in March, 1967. Appreciation is expressed to Dr. Chiang Fu-tsung, curator of the museum, for the use of a tape recording; to Elaine S. C. Chou, a staff member of this magazine, for the use of her notes; and last but not least, to Lin Yutang himself for helping to recall his words.