Page 213 - The Arts of China, By Michael Sullivan Good Book

brush technique of restless intensity, can achieve a final effect of
repose.
Now for the first time it became natural for the artist, following
the example of Ch'ien Hsuan and Chao Meng-fu, to find his in-
spiration not in nature so much as in art itself—a new and indeed
revolutionary attitude to painting that was to have a profound in-
fluence on later generations. Up till the Yuan, one painter had
built upon the achievement of his predecessors in enriching his
pictorial vocabulary and drawing closer to nature, as Kuo Hsi had
built upon Li Ch'cng, Li Tang on Fan K'uan. Now the succession
was broken, as artists began to range back over the whole tradi-
tion, reviving, playing variations upon, painting "in the manner
of" the great masters, particularly those of the tenth and eleventh
centuries. Tang Ti, for instance, revived and transformed the
styles of Li Ch'eng and Kuo Hsi, Wu Chen and Huang Kung-
wang paid tribute to Tung Yuan, while others transformed the
tradition of Ma Yuan and Hsia Kuei into styles that the profes-
sionals could practise. If henceforth this "art-historical art," as it
has been called, was to be nurtured and enriched by the great tra-
dition, it was also imprisoned within it, and it took a very strong
artistic personality to break free. A second and almost as far-reach-
ing consequence of the Mongol occupation was that the scholar-
painters became so alienated from the court and its culture that a
gulf opened between court painting and that of the literati that
survived up to the end of the Ch'ing Dynasty.
With the Yuan scholar-painters the literary and poetic associa-
tions of painting acquired a new value and importance. It became
customary for the painter himself to write a poem or inscription
on the painting, which might be joined by others written by
friends and later admirers, till the picture was almost obliterated
under inscriptions and seals which, far from ruining it in Chinese
eyes, might greatly enhance its value. From then on also, scholar-
painters preferred, like the calligraphers, to work on paper,
which, besides being a great deal cheaper than silk, was more re-
2
sponsive to the touch of the brush.
It is not surprising that the difficult art ofbamboo painting should BAMBOO PAINTING
have found special favour in the Yuan Dynasty, for it was a natural
subject for the proud and independent wen-jen, who lived out their
secluded lives far from the Mongol court. To them, indeed, the
bamboo was itself a symbol of the true gentleman, pliant yet
strong, who maintains his integrity unsullied no matter how low
the adverse winds of circumstance may bend him. The lithe grace
of its stalk and the dashing sword-point of its leaves offered the
perfect subject to his brush; but, above all, the painting ofbamboo
in monochrome ink brought the painter closest to that most diffi-
cult of arts, calligraphy. In painting bamboo, the form and place
of every leaf and sulk must be clearly adumbrated; the awkward
juncture cannot be hidden in mist as in landscape painting; the gra-
dations from black ink in the near leaves to pale in the distance
must be preciselyjudged, the balance of stalks to leaves, of leaves
to empty space, exactly struck. Having achieved this the painter
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