Page 109 - The Arts of China, By Michael Sullivan Good Book

spirit and let it infuse him with energy so that in a moment of in-
spiration—and no word could be more appropriate— he may be-
come the vehicle for its expression. William Acker once asked a fa-
mous calligrapher why he dug his ink-stained fingers so deep into
the hairs of his huge brush when he was writing; the calligrapher
replied that only thus could he feel the ch'i flow down his arm,
through the brush and onto the paper. The AH is a cosmic energy
that, as Acker puts it, "flows about in ever-changing streams and
eddies, here deep, there shallow, here concentrated, there dis-
persed. "* It infuses all things, for there is no distinction between
the animate and the inanimate. Seen in this light, the third, fourth,
and fifth principles involve more than mere visual accuracy; for, as
the living forms of nature arc the visible manifestations of the
workings of the ch'i, only by representing them faithfully can the
artist express his awareness of this cosmic principle in action.
The quality in a painting through which awareness of the inner
vital spirit is expressed is the second of Hsich Ho s principles, ku
(the "bone"), the structural strength of the brush-stroke itself,
whether in painting or calligraphy. The sudden flowering of cal-
ligraphy at the end of the Han Dynasty as an art form in its own
right was partly due to the popularity of the ts'ao-shu ("draft
script"), the cursive style which freed the scholar from the formal
angularity of the typical Han li-shu ("official" or "clerical script")
and enabled him to express himself in a style more personal, more
charged with energy and grace, than any other writing that man
has devised. It is no accident that many of the greatest calligra-
phcrs of this period, including Wang Hsi-chih and his son Hsicn-
chih, were Taoists. Both the techniques and the aesthetic of this
subtle art had a considerable influence upon the development of
Chinese painting during the three centuries following the fall of
the Han.
The Taoist ideal in action is illustrated in the life and work of
Tsung Ping, a distinguished Buddhist scholar and painter of the
early fifth century, who spent his life wandering amid the beauti-
ful hills of the south with his equally romantic wife, and who,
when he was too old to wander any more, recreated the landscapes
that he loved on the walls of his studio. A short Preface on Landscape
Painting {Hua shan-shui hsii), one of the earliest surviving writings
on this new art form, is attributed to him. In it he maintains that
landscape-painting is a high art because landscapes "both have
material existence and reach out into the realm of the spirit." He
1 1 5 Anonymou*. Copy after Wang
declares that he would like to be a Taoist mystic, meditating upon Hsi-chih (c. 30J-J61) Beginning oi' the
" Hsmg-ihu
the void. He has tried it and is ashamed to confess that he failed; letter "I ising-jang. ,
style. Ink on paper. T*ang Dynasty.
but, he asks, is not the art of the landscape painter, who can repro-
duce the very forms and colours that inspire the Taoist adept, even
more wonderful? He is innocently amazed at the power of the art-
ist to bring down a vast panorama of mountains within the com-
pass of a few inches of silk. Visual accuracy he holds to be essen-
tial, for if the landscape is well and convincingly executed, if the
forms and colours in the picture correspond to those in nature,
HO
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