When I think of the great lineage of our master painters from Ku K’ai-chih and Lu T’an-wei down to Wu Ch’ang-shih and Ch’i Pai-shih, I can only stand in silence and in awe. If I have aspired to put brush to paper too, I have done so with a sense of dedication to these greats as much as out of a love for the trade.

The first duty of a young Chinese painter, so it has always seemed to me, is the duty of assiduous learning from the great tradition of the past.

But at the same time, there is the persistent call of the age for a change, for more innovations – an age great for its vast social transformations and ever-widening inter-cultural exchanges. It will not do for us today just to retrace the steps of the old masters. Ours is the job of working out something new on the basis of the best of the old.

With this "dual assignment" in mind, I jot down hereby some of my recent thoughts for what they are worth.

(1) What makes Chinese painting Chinese is basically, I believe, the distinct character of its brushwork – its way of waging the Chinese brush, its art of striking out a line, a curve, a dot, a splash etc., so that each and all will show up strength and rhythm – strength which props up the "body" and rhythm that speaks the "spirit." Brushwork in painting is closely bound up with that of calligraphy, though it enjoys a greater variety of application and a wider range of free play. It is this art of the brush, at once sophisticated and free, that constitutes the authentic hallmark of Chinese painting. To be Chinese in painting is to be Chinese in brushwork. Guard jealously the authenticity of your brushwork and you’ll have retained the China-identity of your paintings. Subject matters may change. Themes may vary. This test of authenticity will remain. So long as the medium employed is the Chinese brush-and-paper, no brushwork, no Chinese paintings!

(2) A word now about the colors. Old masters have unfailingly stressed the importance of "brush-and-ink" in painting, meaning by "ink" the whole gamut of colors and shades of colors. Brushwork is supposed to constitute the "bone" and ink or colors the "flesh" of painting, the one being organically bound with the other. Still, the question of colors may be considered in their own right. My personal view is: While we should be strict on the matter of authenticity of the brush, we may make bold to learn from the west in the use of colors. I mean among other things the audacity and intensity of color applications instead of the time-honored preference for toned-down diffuseness. Nor should this shift of emphasis be taken as a pure western borrowing. It is inherent in the practice in our popular art and is quite consonant with what I should say as the spirit of the age – the demand for rugged freshness and artless virility. There is no question of going to extremes. What is at issue is: Audacious without being bizarre, intense without being thick and vulgar. In other words, a dash of vigor and life to form the rounded balance and artless sincerity that is China’s taste in its true maturity.

This is why I believe the "splash-ink" or "splash-color" method holds promise of great possibilities. Bold splashes in ink or in colors to lay a spirited background, followed by firm and lively lines and what not of the brush – wouldn’t this conduce to the making of a work "strong of bones and ample of flesh"?

(3) Here we touch perhaps the question of "paint-the spirit" in conjunction with the "free-stroke" technique. The centuries-old commendation of "paint-the-spirit" rather than "paint-the-form" of things does not mean a total disregard of verisimilitude. Rather is it a striving to get at the inner essence and meaning of things instead of enmeshing oneself in the cobweb of details of form. This insistence on "paint-the-spirit" is the core of Chinese aesthetics, just as brushwork is the backbone of Chinese painting. We pride the achievements of the school of "fine-drawing" with its charming fidelity to form. But it is the representative works of the "free-stroke" that have won the first place of honor for the past ten thousand years. For "free-stroke" as technique and style has proved to be better adapted to the expression of the spirit.

If I were to venture a surmise at the future trend, might it not be, by and large, a quickened development of the "free-stroke" in terms of bolder brush-and-color seeking to represent the most of the spirit and meaning of things with the least trappings of form?

– By Lin, Hsiao-yun

Contact information:

E-mail to Hsiao Yun Lin <Lin@HYLinArt.com>

This site is Copyright © 1998-2002 Hsiao Yun Lin. All rights reserved.
Site designed by WR Hall Consulting    Web Pages .