Brenda
Richardson (Menil Foundation Inc, 1992)
1.
The Three Perfections
Painting,
calligraphy and poetry are held in highest esteem by the Chinese.
Calligraphy
has been the most widely practiced.
Originated as picture-writing, but very few characters now retain any
traces of this and mostly combine phonetic and semantic elements. Evolution:
- o Large Seal Script latter part of Chou dynasty (1045-256BC)
- o Small Seal script Ch’in dynasty (221-206 BC)
- o Clerical/Official style Han dynasty (206BC – AD 220)
- o Square or Standard style soon after Han – orthodox script ever since
- o Running and Draft scripts evolved alongside this – fluid, rapid to execute
(http://www.art-virtue.com/styles/tsao/)
Last
three are most commonly used – others considered archaic
In
Han period calligraphy achieved the status of an art form, reaching a peak in
work of Wang Hsi-chih, the ‘sage of calligraphy’
Several
of the literati of the late Northern Sung period were eminent calligraphers
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Brushwork
used in painting and calligraphy grew closer and greatest painters were usually
proficient calligraphers.
2. A
Journey of Ghosts
On
Han Shan and the T’ien-t’ai landscape, fleeing a false life, the Zen way to
enlightenment. HS lived in poverty, an eccentric. We have his words in his poems, but the
calligraphy is by subsequent copyists.
Mostly made up of 8 lines, each comprising 5 characters and paired into
4 couplets – the visual form adopted by BM
HS
lived at Cold Cliff and took on the name HS which means Cold Mountain. As well as being a geographical place, this
refers to a state of mind – one of renunciation equated with enlightenment, the
Buddha within.
Video
on Han Shan (interviews with translators, animated readings of poems)- http://www.cultureunplugged.com/play/2457/Cold-Mountain
3. Weights
and Leanings
On
BM’s awe of Jackson Pollock, esp for his late works which critics
conventionally see as a falling away from the earlier ones. For BM White
Light (1954) is ‘among the greatest and most fully resolved paintings ever made
in the west’. ‘The great thing about
Pollock. . . was his conviction that each work is part of a continuing
quest. To be an artist is not about
making individual works. To be an artist
is to do your work and let your work express the evolution of a vision. .
. it’s part of a living situation.’
Admires
the fact that he never took the easy route; the amount of work and thinking
within each painting.
Of
JP’s very calligraphic drawing Untitled,
1950: ‘. . . it’s just three forms drawn with strokes of pure energy. It is one of the most compelling works in the
history of art.
Sees
that the apparent layering in the paintings is deceptive, that there’s an
organic weaving back and forth through the ‘layers’ creating areal space
between them.
‘.
. . if you’re responding, you enter a world that is really inexplicable. The painting’s world is only explicable in
the sense that it is what you’re
looking at. . . That’s why painters make paintings: to have you be in that
place.’
Speaks
of JP’s Scent as being burned in his
mind. And the black and white paintings
as being so strong and bizarre: ‘They have weights and leanings in them that
you just can’t understand at all.’
The
intense energy that comes from looking at a JP painting.
BM
keeps postcards of JPs work on his drawing table and books on him to hand;
frequently visits his paintings in NY.
Other
source of awe is Cezanne – in both the process of works evolving, ‘a true
relation between artists and the art they make’:
‘The
whole thing about making a painting, is that the next painting is supposed to
be a better painting.’
4. Mountain-Water
= Chinese term for
landscape painting. According to Tsung Ping (375-443) the primary
mark of excellence of a painting is that it reveals the artist’s true feeling,
their communion with the landscape’s essential nature, not that it is realistic. This essential nature is not obvious from the
landscape’s physical features but is revealed to the artist through direct
experience of the heart/mind, transferred via eye and hand to the painting and
there available to be directly apprehended by the viewer. So it is transcendental, it goes beyond
physical appearance; spiritual communion.
It is relational.
The mountain is a
revered space where supernatural powers can be attained and ultimately
immortality.
Chinese aesthetic
theory has as much a spiritual basis as formal/technical. 1st two
criteria in critic Hsieh Ho’s influential 6th century list are
‘rhythmic vitality’ and ‘bone/structure’.
Emphasis is on the
brushline. ‘To paint is to draw
boundaries’ (1st century Shuo wen, dictionary). The brushstroke is
both descriptive and expressive.
Poetry has as much
a place in a painting as objects. In this way calligraphy becomes
incorporated in art.
Emphasis on the
moment of execution (dance-like) rhythmic vitality, the personality of the
artist and the spirit of creation, intuitive awareness, enlightened states.
According to myth,
in far-off times fabulous beasts emerged from the Yellow and Lo Rivers bearing
on their backs the Tortoise Characters (so writing like the marks on a tortoise
shell) and the Dragon Chart (precursor of I Ching?)
1984 BM saw
‘Masters of Japanese Calligraphy’ exhibition in NY. He was in the
midst of working on stained glass windows for Basel cathedral so formalized
religion was already at the forefront of his mind. He was captivated by
the energy of the calligraphy and kept a copy of the catalogue to hand at all
times. Went from this to Chinese poetry.
He saw calligraphy
as a form of drawing that for him was an opening to a meditative
state. He read Chinese poetry in translation and started exploring
Chinese poetry, life, politics.
Began work on his Etchings
to Rexroth, the translator of Tu Fu’s poems and was thinking about the
relationship between form and content.
Was then given a
copy of Red Pine’s translation of the Cold Mountain poems (he already knew of
Gary Snyder’s) in which the calligraphy and translation are printed on facing
pages – enabled him to make a connection between the visual form of the
characters and the emotional/spiritual meaning. Fascinating
evolution of his drawn response to these, first based on the form of the
written poems, then joining calligraphy with image:
‘I think of Chinese
calligraphy as simply the way I see it, not knowing the language. . . But if
someone translates a piece for me, and I hear the relationships I am affected
by that. . . I use the form of calligraphy, then it disappears, but, it’s
always there, in some way. . . The drawings now look more like Chinese
landscape and less like calligraphies. . . For me, drawing is about the state
that the person would be in who’s standing in the drawing looking at the
mountain, it’s about sensing that.’ (Notes there is usually a figure on a
journey, a pilgrimage, in a Chinese painting)
5. A
Better Painting
1988
began work on drawing and small paintings inspired by Cold Mountain and often
loosely incorporating forms from nature – spiral shells, palm fronds, body
parts (often a sense of dancing figures) – ‘natural objects turning into, and
not quite turning into, abstract forms.’
Retained
the glyph-and-line structure of the poems.
‘[The
works] starts out with observation and then automatic reaction, and the back
off, so there’s layering of different ways of drawing. . . ‘
In
December took delivery of the materials for a 12’x9’ painting which became CM
1. The size was a deliberate challenge in terms of retaining movement and
life. Thinking a lot about which of JP’s
paintings worked and why – when they communicated a sense of JP being fully
engaged, struggling both formally and spiritually with the work. He was aiming for paintings in which both ‘he
and the viewer can get lost as characters in an unfolding story of each
individual’s personal telling’ (BR)
6
months after completing this one in 1989 he set up 5 more to work on contemporaneously
(though never on more than one on any one occasion). Each was to look different from the other in
terms of palette and marks. He didn’t
want them to be just large drawings – wanted to allow a relationship to develop
between ground and lines. To be carried right across the painting. Found the size daunting – any decision had
Took
till 1992 to complete all 6.
Basically
monochromatic, carefully mixed blacks, diluted with terpineol, wiped back,
painted over, grays, gray-greens. Some
colours took days to mix. It didn’t
occur to him for a long time that this was the palette of traditional Chinese
painting. Makes a mark with an extended
brush and immediately scrapes it off with a palette knife. Kept layers very
thin; lots of scraping, sanding and rubbing back, use of solvents between
layers. Lines became translucent.
All
the mistakes, re-thinkings are dimly or clearly visible – honesty. Positive erasures.
Spends
more time looking and thinking than actively painting
Happy
to paint with people around him and plays a wide mix of music. Relaxed but
focused. Fluid body movements, dancing
energy.
Still
drawing and also made a print series – etchings and aquatints, their stages of
development photographed. Drawings more
easily done in a more meditative state because freer, more automatic; in the
paintings, every mark had to be considered.
But he tried more for this in the paintings – losing himself, going
beyond rational control. When he looks
now at photos of the different stages, he finds it hard to relate to the
process ‘I don’t know what I did to get them to this place.’
He
keeps going till the work is ‘fully resolved’, ‘right there’, ‘out on the
plane’ – though he’s unsure whether he could take a decision about this
(exhibition deadlines usually assert their timeframe)
6. The
Everyday Mind
Chinese
expression for a piece of Zen calligraphy is hsin-yin, ‘heart print’ – or hsin
can translate as mind or spiritual nature.
BM’s
starting point was the 40-character structure of HS’s poems but the result does
not look like calligraphy; at most, there is some conjoining of form with
content that is rooted in calligraphy.
He
describes them as ‘open situations’ i.e. to a certain extent open to differing
interpretations
In
painting he understands himself as moving along a visual path towards something
he doesn’t know about. ‘It’s more like
knowing yourself by forgetting about yourself, learning not to be so involved
with yourself.’
Deepening
understanding and appreciation of Zen.
Came to see that art was less about creating the perfect painting and
more about striving to live a perfect life, from which perfect painting might
flow. ‘. . . the Buddha’s perfect. And you can become perfect.’ Buddhahood is lived out in the everyday. For the Chinese, a truth is only arrived at
through experience living in the world, not abstractly; their paintings and
calligraphy mirror this.
Family
is at the heart of his life.
‘What is
Marden’s is light. This is a subject that has
become his. He sees everything in terms
of light.’ (BR) He’s said ‘Color is a
way of arriving at light.’ – light is what gives vitality, life. (The kind of
light the paintings are hung in is also critical.)
The
unfolding of the works, the dialogue between them he believed is the crucial
thing about his work. And feeding into
that dialogue is everything he has lived through, thought about, painted. ‘Cold Mountain is not about Cold
Mountain. . . Cold Mountain is about
Brice Marden.’ (BR)
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