Page 172 - The Arts of China, By Michael Sullivan Good Book

his motives were the honourable ones of training his hand and of
transmitting the ancient models in the spirit of the sixth principle
of Hsich Ho. To paint in the manner of Wu Tao-tzu, therefore,
was no less original than for a pianist to play the works of Bach
and Beethoven; for what the artist sought was not originality but
a sense of identity, both with nature and with the tradition itself.
The Western artist particularises; and his painting is generally the
result of a direct examination of what is before his eyes. The
Chinese painter generalises, and his work, ideally, reveals not the
particular but the quintessential forms of nature, animated by his
£lan and by his mastery of the brush. To achieve this he must, like
the pianist, have the language of expression at his fingertips so that
no technical impediment, no struggle with form or brushwork,
should come between the vision and its realisation. An important
part of his training is the study of the old masters. He might per-
haps make an exact reproduction by tracing (mu), he might copy
the picture with the original before him (/in), or he might freely in-
terpret the manner of the master (fang). Paintings in either of the
first two categories which passed into the hands of unscrupulous
collectors or dealers would often acquire false signatures, seals,
and colophons, and the new attribution would then be attested by
further colophons. In many cases, such are the vicissitudes
through which the painting has passed that the authenticity of an
ancient masterpiece can never be proved, and the most that can be
said is that a given work is in the style of a certain master or period
and looks old enough, and good enough, to be genuine. Some-
times a painting is exposed as a copy by the subsequent appearance
of a still finer version. In this most difficult branch of connoisseur-
ship there is not an expert who has not been deceived, and the re-
cent tendency in the West has been perhaps toward an excessive
caution not shared by the majority of Chinese and Japanese
connoisseurs.
LANDSCAPE This uncertainty applies particularly to the few great landscape
PAINTING: paintings of the Five Dynasties and early Sung which are generally
THE CLASSICAL IDEAL attributed to such masters as Ching Hao, Li Ch'cng, Tung Yuan,
IN NORTH CHINA and Chii-jan, all of whom were working in the tenth century, and
Fan K'uan, Hsu Tao-ning, and Yen Wcn-kuci, who w r ere active
into the eleventh. In the hundred years between 950 and 1050 a
galaxy of great names succeed each other in what must be looked
upon as the supreme moment in classical Chinese landscape paint-
ing. Ching Hao, who was active from about yoo to 060, spent
much of his life in retirement amid the mountains of eastern
Shansi. An essay attributed to him, the Pi-fa chi (Record of Brush
Methods) or Hua shan-shui lu (Essay on Landscape Painting), puts his
thoughts on the art into the mouth of an old man whom he pre-
tends he met when wandering in the mountains, and who gave
him a lecture on principles and technique. The old man tells him
of the six essentials in painting: the first is spirit, the second
rhythm, the third thought, the fourth scenery, the fifth brush, and
the sixth ink; a more logical system than that of Hsich Ho, for it
152
Copyrighted material