Cultural Lecture: Painting

The second cultural lecture was on Chinese painting and was given by Xiao Laoshi, a periodic professor at GXNU, who is a painter first, a teacher second. Xiao Laoshi has been to the United States and during his three-month visit, saw many cities such as Chicago, Los Angeles and New York. He’s been to the Metropolitan Museum of Art eight times alone. He chose to lecture for the UW students because he feels that Chinese painting, while well understood in China is misunderstood in the West. As much as it is his responsibility as an artist to paint and to continue expanding and growing in his work, he feels a responsibility to share his knowledge with Westerners so that they too can better appreciate and understand Chinese painting and its importance and uniqueness.

Xiao Laoshi explained that painting and calligraphy in China are inseparable. He reiterated the importance of the four treasures: ink, brush, paper and ink stand, adding some additional information pertinent to painting. Such as, harder brushes are made from wolf hair and softer brushes are made from lamb hair. Medium brushes are made from a combination of both and each type of brush has a very particular function for the painter.

Painters use three kinds of ink to the one that Calligraphers use. In the West, color dominates painting whereas in China, many of the most famous paintings are made with ink alone, color and depth emphasized through a controlled use of the ink and brush and water. While going through his slides, Xiao Laoshi would also show examples of his various points on a sheet of rice paper with ink and brush. He showed students the ways in which to use heavy, light, dry and wet strokes with a brush on a piece of rice paper.

There are two kinds of rice paper used in typical Chinese painting. The “raw” or more absorbent paper is used for more abstract paintings while the “cooked” or less absorbent paper is used for highly detailed, realistic paintings. According to Xiao Laoshi, the best kind of paper for painting is made in Anhui Province’s Jin County. Before the invention of paper, painters would use silk.

Xiao Laoshi then spoke of the personality that exists within a painting based on the painter’s mood. When a painter is happy, she’ll paint slowly, evenly. When she is angry or excited, she will move the brush quickly and get a sense of spirit into her use of line and weight. There are five understood techniques for using ink and brush and a good painting incorporates these five techniques effortlessly.

In the West, watercolors are made from minerals. Chinese colors are made from plants, allowing for a great deal of transparency in the coloring of a painting. There are also mineral paints but they are different from Western minerals and so have a unique appearance from paintings from around the world. In terms of layout, Chinese paintings are also unique because layout and paper shape are taken into consideration before the composition is determined. Scrolls are a staple of Chinese painting and historically, Chinese artists were often monks.

There are three common groupings of subject matter in Chinese painting: the human figure, landscapes and flowers and birds. In all three subjects, there are two styles, one being “Gong bi” or realistic and the other being “Xie yi” or abstract, though it is less that this style is abstract and more that the artist is trying to capture the spirit of the subject, the emotion conjured by the subject and not the appearance of the subject alone. There are several artists who incorporate elements of Gong bi and Xie yi in a single painting, but to do this well requires a great deal of talent and practice.

Within the subject of human figures, the earliest example dates to the Jin dynasty, while the height of figure painting was during the Tang dynasty. The artist Ren Bo Yuan is said to have painted the Chinese equivalent of the Mona Lisa. His painting of a male figure in a blue coat and yellow trousers incorporates both Gong bi and Xie yi styles.

Landscape painting, while often containing figures, is centered on the mountain or other environment that the artist is trying to capture. The Song dynasty was the peak of landscape painting. One of the most famous “flower and birds” painters in China was the Emperor Song Hui Song, who was known to be a terrible leader but an amazing artist. Xu Wei was an artist compared to Van Gogh for his passion for painting and drinking.

Chinese art students often copy the masters before being able to develop their own style, but the great artists of history believed in their individuality as students and worked on their own style instead of copying the style of others that came before them. These are usually the artists that became the masters.

Xiao Laoshi spoke a bit about modern art, a form that is still struggling in China, with such a rich tradition of classical painting method and technique. He suggested that although modern art may not always be aesthetically pleasing, it usually deals with important current issues and societal worries in a way that draws a viewer into the questions being posed by the artist.

Xiao Laoshi concluded by saying that everyone has a path that must be followed though some may spend their whole life looking for the path and may never find it. An artist is no different. She must search for the path within art that gives her the greatest pleasure and therefore gives back to society because she has become complete through finding the path she’s supposed to be on.

After his lecture, Xiao Laoshi answered questions and signed postcard copies of his paintings for interested students.