APPENDIX I

TRANSCENDING FIGURES:

Differences and Similarities between Chinese and Western Aesthetic Images

CHENG CHAONAN

            As we face the objective world, sheer sensitivity would encounter what William James called "a blooming, buzzing con-fusion." In describing the world and distinguishing things we make forms which can be representatives of things. Usually by copying an object, people formulate a figure or natural symbol. For most nations, this would not be difficult to understand, because a figure is linked mainly to sense and everyone’s senses are the same.

            Further, since the act of copying an object is likened to one’s culture, it is an action of intelligence, and hence the figure must have some characteristics of the culture. For example, though there seems to be hardly any difference among the figures preserved on rocks since remote antiquity in 120 countries, still we find a differ-ence between two kinds of figures which markedly reflect their respective culture. One is a figure of bear in the Three-brother’s cave in France; this is lifelike and gives one a sense of three di-mensions. The other is a figure of some wild goats in Inner Mongolia, which is succinct and lineal in style.

            The key issue in Chinese culture concerns "How to be a real man", relations among persons, and the relation between man and nature. The aim of Confucianists is to be a sage or a benevolent person, that of Taoists is to be a true man (ÕæÈË) or a man wholly in harmony with nature (ÖÁÈË). In view of this, Confucianists expect artists to improve social and moral life, and take poems as uttering their lofty aspirations (Ê«ÑÔÖ¾). Taoists expect artists to return to nature, and say "Nothing is more beautiful than simplicity" (ÆÓËضøÌìÏÂĪÄÜÓëÖ®ÕùÃÀ)

            In contrast, European art is developed from the Greek and has as its main point how to understand the world. Socrates said, "Knowledge is the most beautiful thing" and Aristotle wrote that "People got their first knowledge from imitation." The imitation theory of art was the most important in the European art tradition.

Transcending Ordinary Images

            Artistic images are the results of transcending ordinary fi-gures which themselves may not be works of art. Art works are figures which are essentially aesthetic in value; every good work of art is beautiful.

            The Chinese cultural tradition exerted a tremendous influence on Chinese traditional arts. A silk painting from the Warring States period depicts a phoenix which defeated a serpent-like monster; below them is a young woman. It expresses the central idea that evil is overcome by good. All the images in the picture are flat, in the style of line drawing. This great image (´óÏó) corresponds to the Taoist school of thought that "A great image is without form" (´óÏóÎÞÐÎ). Idea (import) is more essential than imitation for Chinese traditional arts.

            Yi-Ching (Ò×¾­) raises the problem of "forming images" and declares this to be necessary to express ideas. Zhuangzi (ׯ×Ó) said language is for ideas; when we have understood the idea, we must forget the language. "Writing cannot ..... our meaning nor the meaning exhaust our idea (import)." He stressed getting the idea on import: "To get the idea" must be integrated with "to form images"; the integration to the two is called Chinese imagery. In creating works of art, Chinese traditional artists paid more attention to "getting the idea" and belittled the importance of imitation. They maintained that the one who could imitate the object exactly was only a craftsman, not a painter.

            The Greek tradition on "how to understand the world" exerted great influence on European art. One of the Greek bottle paintings from the 5th century B.C. describes some soldiers who are pre-paring for war. The figures are absolutely lifelike. It gives the observer the sense of three dimensions. Socrates asked a famous Greek painter whether in order to create a most beautiful man one should gather each beautiful part from different men; the answer was "yes." Aristotle wrote, "We make images and imitate things using various colors and postures." When European artists imitated objects, they intended to create typical images reflecting the essence of a kind of things. C.L.S. Moutesquieu declared that beauty is the gathering of the best general and typical things. The Russian democrats also advocated an art that reflected the essence of social life.

Art and Feeling

            In Ming and Qing Dynasties, Chinese arts intended to express "feelings", "taste", "desire" and "beauty". It was a new trend re-flecting the simple nature of man, which shook off the yoke of the feudal ethical code. Tang Xian Zu said, "Dream comes forth from feeling, and drama comes forth from dream."

            In the Qing Dynasty, skill at imitation was introduced into China by ÀÉÊÀÄþ (Joseph Castilione). He drew some pictures in the Western style for the Qing Court, but they could not be appreciated there. One of the important painters of the Chinese painting circle then said that the Western painters were good at perspective so that you might take a picture on the wall as a real scene and be a tricked to go into it. Though we could learn something from it, it lacked the vigorous strokes of Chinese paintings. Though it might be meticulous in brushwork, it could not be called a fine work of art.

            At the end of the 19th and the beginning of 20th century, pushed forward by the social revolution, Chinese traditional art absorbed not only the knowledge but the realistic factors of Western art. Lu Xun pointed out that artistic images have three factors: (1) things by nature, (2) thought, and (3) beautification. Chinese art changed its aim from "being a sage" to "reforming society", from "returning to nature" to "reflecting on reality".

            At the end of the 19th century, Western artists were tired of copying objects exactly and detested abstract expression. One of the leaders of Impressionism, E.M. Monet often went to a shop called the "Chinese Window" and the Eastern style of painting could be seen from his works. Van Gogh held that art is nothing but putting man into nature. Henri Matisse, dissatisfied with both realism and impressionism, criticized them as unfeeling. Wassily Kandinsky searched for the spirituality in art and abandoned using figures in his paintings; he became the leading figure in abstractionism.

            At the beginning of the 20th century, an Eastern artistic trend appeared in European literary circle, namely imagism. Its leader was Ezra Pound, who translated some Chinese poems into English. In his paper, "I gather the limbs of Osiris", he declared that Chinese poets expressed the poetic character fully, and did not preach. The imagist poets wrote their poems in a Chinese style and their poems were called "Chinese style poems".

            In his book "Chinese Arts" (1935), L. Binyon recognized that some aspects of Chinese art were very modern. For example, they expressed correctly the proper place of man in the world, and man’s sympathetic response to the life form of everything.

            Art is a special symbol; like language it is an artificial and presentational form, not a deductive form. Susanne K. Langer pointed out that "Art is the creation of forms symbolic of human feeling." As a feeling image, art is a unity consisting of three levels: A work of art should copy or describe the object; this is the basis of a work of art. Every good work of art has both something that may be said to come from reality, and from the artist’s own feeling about reality. Reality normally furnishes the images, which do not remain things in reality, but are figures which could be symbols of things.

            The artist’s feeling often springs from imagination and is more important than figure. It gives the first elements of form to the work, from which begins the work of composition, the creation of a feeling form for complete expressiveness. What is created in a work of art is a form, an image. It detaches itself from its actual setting and acquires a new aesthetic character; in other words, it has the special capacity to give us aesthetic value.

Art and Culture

            Artistic forms lie in a dimension related to culture; a work of art is a part of a certain culture. It is impossible for an artist to create a work of art without a certain cultural tradition, nor can we appre-ciate a work of art correctly without the knowledge of a certain culture. This is the second level of a work of art.

            The third level of a work of art is the level of import-form. Xu Beihong (Ð챯ºè) pointed out that fine quality (Ãî) belongs to beauty, whereas being lifelike (Ф) belongs to artistry. For S. Langer, "Beauty is an expressive form."

            We find mutual communication and borrowing at all three levels between Chinese and Western art works in the 20th century. Both Chinese and Western art have improved through this comple-mentarity. The style of Chinese art approaches that of the Western, and the style of Western art approaches the Chinese. Having absorbed each other’s style, Chinese art can reflect real life and express modern consciousness better than before, while Western art can display the individual emotion freely, and keep a balance between the psychology and the physical in industrialized society.