User:Chen Junyu/Graduation Project Seminar/ project proposal/1st

Description for my work: "Water" Drawings help me think, and talk to myself. For the beginning of drawing, as building the conception of the work, one needs to be totally immerse into the process. The environment is always abstractive, either the annoying noise or the heart beat. So the beginning is very much like meditation of Zen, to get rid of the trifles and distracting thoughts, not just build up the conception of concrete work, also build up the proper state of mind. The materials are important. Every different type of pigment, paint, brush has its own characteristic. I chose these three basic tool for Chinese ink painting: ink, brush and rice paper , it is not just because we are from the same background, they can express myself better, also because the manufacturing operation of each of them. The origin of ink stick is the smoke from burning woods, and it experiences the multiple transformation of its modality -- it is first solidified to be powder then grinded in water to generate ink, when the ink drys on the paper, it becomes solid again. It is the life process of ink. Brush is just a tool to transmit the energy of the painter. Keep the arm always in a distance to the paper, thus we can train the control to brush and ourselves. Every breath would effect on the physical strength thus effects the usage of brush -- make it walk, ramble or run on the paper. Rice paper is just as the screen of a television, it reflects the image, control the resolution and the accuracy of the shape. Water is moving. What I try to present from these water drawing is also the sensation of moving. The four main drawings "water, well, miriness, wave" depict water in different environment.

How to draw a perfect circle This work is consisted by a video of the process of drawing circle and the physical drawings.It starts with the animated circles, then is the three screens showing the repeat of the movement of drawing. Beside the video, there is a transparent box half full with around 300 papers with the original drawn circles. This work is not about "how to draw a perfect circle", it is about the endless way to the imagined perfect. And the "perfect" is unreachable, it is the tool which drive us move towards. The real and concrete thing is the time we spend on the training, either on mental or physical aspect. I edit the video to three screens to emphasis the flowing of time.

Works of other artists:

Barry Le Va - Shatter scatter As I see this work is very much like the process of drawing: the result is unpredictable, the artist(painter) only can control part of his work--the shape of scatter, the quantity and the size of the fragments, are all uncontrollable. And every layer which lays upon the older ones, has effected and been effected to the older ones. Drawing is similar in this way -- the painter can do his/her best to control the paint, the brush, the canvas by training, but he/she can never grasp the whole proceeding. Different layers of paint, ink or pigment is always influencing each other -- mix or conflict. There are always some emergent factors happen in the between, it can either be the increasing heart beating, the noise from the outside, or the unpredictable shaking triggered by a passing truck. ( Here "digital" drawing is beyond the scope of the discussion.) Barry Le Va called this work as "isolated isolated contained art", there is on pristine glass tops the others, this act is the relative mounting, to "encases the raw energy of the work's creation"(from the description of Barry Le Va - Shatter scatter by MOCA).

Gary Kuehn -- Gesture Project 2011 This work is simple and clear, it seems present a cool truth of drawing: the symbiotic limitation and freedom. The track generated by chalk is beautiful and the sound of the grating of the chalk and canvas do build a feeling of immersive. However the shape of drawing cannot jump out of the frame, somehow it can be seen as painter is creating his/her own three dimension world on the canvas( width, length, height), or in an other way, the canvas sets a boundary for the creation. He uses video to record the process, thus we can see the linear change happening on the canvas. By video, it does show the "time" as a factor in drawing, but somehow it loses the charm in every single moment of the proceeding ( of course Gary Kuehn may have other aim for this project ). The "charm" of the drawing process is subtle and quiet, even sometimes it seems wild and free like Jackson's gesture painting, but the real enjoyment in between is the moment ( not every moment ) when the painter can really feel the tension between himself/herself and the medium, the desire to express, and the isolation from outside world.

Xu Bing -- Background story series What this series of work attracts me is, It shows the exact beauty of Chinese painting and at the same time it doesn't use any traditional materials. The works are made by light, by shadow, by construction and space. It makes me think if the range I set up for the definition of drawing is too narrow, drawing can also be something over the canvas, can be made by something lively ( such as Xu Bing uses leaves, branches). Compared with Picasso pasting leaves or branches onto canvas, the background story is even closer to the conception of original "drawing". Of course because of the different type of material, the way of making the work, the process of this kind of drawing also changes. It is still about the composition, the "strokes" built by all these material, but it has more "uncontrollable" factors.

Walter De Maria -- Lightening field Lands art has the most attractive process for me. Since the proceeding of the work is not ended up with the artist finished his/her work, it lasts much longer, changed or even presented by the environment. This work is a proper example. The artist placed 400 stainless steel poles in the form of a grid in the east of the continental divide, once the thunder coming, flash will be lead to effect with these poles. The duty for the artist is just completing the medium between art and nature, on the other hand, his activity becomes part of art. All the uncertainties of the work -- timing of happening, quantity of flash, shape, energy of the storm, and the constructed, artificial stage is the approach to eternity. “Art historians have noticed his change of mind, and it has been said that before the early 1920s, Mondrian thought of his compositions as part of an infinite plane, which could go on indefinitely in all directions. Starting with paintings like this one, the canvas is the whole object, the whole universe, and there is nothing beyond it.” Quoted from < How to look at Mondrian> by James Elkins.

The Process of Western/Eastern Drawing Firstly, how to define "Western art" and "Eastern art"? （ this part is very vague, and has problem with the accuracy of the descriptio, and the association about Western and Eastern philosophy is based on Tao Te Ching and the An Introduction to Zen Buddhism) Western drawing/painting has its source from Greece. The thought of "recording things we see correctly" is from Greek and Hellenistic art, therefore ancient painters started depicting expressions of space, trying to interpret the real world to canvas in a physically correct way ( includes properly beautify by painter). Based on Greek art, the history of painting starts.

At the beginning of the history of Chinese painting, the calligraphy and drawing has no difference. Calligraphy, also known as pictographic character, can be considered as source of drawing. For calligraphy, an important factor is the spirit, the strength, the atmosphere transmitted by the characters. It may because of this different start point of Chinese painting, the accuracy of depiction is barely the most important thing.

For one of the oldest civilizations Egypt, which sits in the between of Greece and China, also has this standard that correctly depicting something is not their aims, the abnormal size of characters, the erroneous angle of different parts of body are all serves for the beauty of the shape, and the significance of the character.

Synopsis of the texts

Philip Rawson, Drawing

"Drawing" explains what is drawing from a very fundamental level: why drawing is the most fundamentally spiritual art activity, how does it work with human mind( from the painter's view), how to experience a drawing/painting from spectators' aspect. The connection of this book to my thesis/graduation work is, it clarifies the definition of drawing/painting, and the difficulties to get to know all the information from the painter. Quote "drawing is done according to general principles of structure which can be discussed intelligently without the need for mystical jargon. Drawing is that the element in a work of art which is independent of colour or actual 3d space,the underlying conceptual structure which may be indicated by tone alone."

Fritz van Briessen， The Way of the Brush: Painting Techniques of China and Japan :

This book explains the concept behind the Eastern painting, and the general principles of Chinese painting. It talks about what is the gap when people who have western culture background appreciate an Eastern painting, and what is the possible way to decrease this gap. This book explain the vitality clearly in from a western view, it is a good example when explaining this concept of "vitality".

James Elkins, Chinese Landscape Painting as Western Art History

This books focuses on how to look at Chinese painting from the aspect of Western Art History, what is the possible similarities and the misreadings. Comparison: I agree with James Elkins says in his book "Chinese Landscape painting in Western Art Theory", Of all cross-cultural descriptions, comparisons seem especially fraught. Outright comparisons can appear rude (are the Han Dynasty or the Yuan really akin to Western modernism, as both have been claimed to be?) but qualified, introductory, or otherwise informal comparisons can seem both appropriate and useful. Because the different culture background sometimes misunderstand spectator for the purpose of the painter. For example in the book of Benjamin Rowland "Art in East and West, An introduction through comparison" , he compares a detail of Matthias Grünewald’s The Temptation of St. Anthony with a painting attributed to Li Cheng 李成 called Reading the Tablet, in order to show how “demon groves” are a theme in China and in the West.Quoted from James' book: Rowland “Li Cheng’s painting “represents a traveler seated on a donkey, scrutinizing with fearful intensity the inscription on a stele that rises like a menhir before a grotesque group of pine trees that arch their dragon branches against the empty sky.” Rowland is hypnotized by the “concentration and isolation of the twisted trees with their tortuous, iron-hard trunks and crab-claw branches,” and he finds the same “sinister” mood in The Temptation of St. Anthony, where “all nature, dreadful and deformed, enters into the demoniacal conspiracy against St. Anthony.” The branch Rowland excerpts is an icon of evil: it “stretches its dead, moss-covered branches in a kind of malediction over the ampitheater of monstrosities.” Then he mentions, Richard Barnhart has written an excellent short essay on the meaning of old trees in Chinese painting: they have more to do with longevity and independence than evil.But some comparison in <Art in East and West> is nearly perfect. Such as the comparison between Friedrich and Ma Yuan. This comparison focuses more on the atmosphere which the paintings transmit.

D.T.Suzuki, "An Introduction to Zen Buddhism" Zen is mysterious，ambiguous, Zen accepts paradox, accepts language can never tell the truth.

Vitality Here is a story about the great Chinese painter Zhang Sengyou (Chinese: 张僧繇). Quoted from Fritz Van Briessen's The Way of the Brush, originally written by Zhang Yanyuan from Tang Dynasty: Zhang one day decided to paint a dragon on the wall of his house. He guided his brush with full confidence, and after a while the dragon was finished except for its eyes. Suddenly the master's courage failed him. He simply did not dare to paint those eyes. When, many months later, he at last felt brave enough, he groped for his brush and with swift strokes dashed in eye and pupil. Within an instant the dragon broke into cloud roaring and flew away, leaving a trace of fire and smoke. In the Asiatic world, belief in the supernatural power of the artist remained alive over greatly prolonged period. And there was no absolute division between magic, religion and philosophy in the east, especially in China. Taoism, as the primitive Chinese philosophy, effects the developing of Chinese painting on a fundamental base. It influences the establishment of the material system and the construction of the painting principles.