Sun Wanling, September 2012 |
Sun Wanling is a traditional Chinese painter, trained specifically in brush painting of animals and plants. At first, I found it difficult to believe that a man so constantly in motion, so loose and amenable at the drop of a hat to any American experience, could be a master of this venerable art form. In many museums I’ve stood breathless among these exquisite, enchanting jewels of natural observation. They are slow and careful, I think, made without revision, with complete focus, in a state of mind that must be like grace.
Potter at Red Wing Pottery forming pots at Sun Wanling's request |
With Scott Gillmer, owner of Red Wing Pottery |
Sun Wanling, Chinese vase completed in China |
The unfired pots showed the traces of blue slip only faintly, but Sun Wanling's fresh designs were nevertheless clear and animated and miraculous to all of us. Though the pots were very small by his standards, he adapted well and his imagination shone. On a bowl with an oscillating pattern raked into its rim, Wanling painted diving fish, thereby turning the rim into ocean waves with playful fish swimming beneath.
Fish beneath the waves. |
Sun Wanling, Chinese vessel, painted in China |
When I had watched Sun Wanling at
Red Wing Stoneware, I was very impressed by the naturalism and
personality of each animal that he painted. As we looked through images of his
paintings, this observation was reinforced over and over. No two birds of the
same species looked alike and each radiated personality. Nothing appeared
stock; every iteration was fresh and alive, as if the bird, the duck, the fish
were a beloved pet, lovingly observed just at the instant. There is an
inventory of plants and animals the traditional artist paints, each with
symbolic association. How, after twenty years as an artist with twenty years of
prior training, can he continue to animate every single one? This alone seems
like an astonishing display of his heart and skill.
Against this absorbing naturalism, the traditional painter places his flora and fauna in the least Western of landscape perspectives. The extended forms of long or tall and narrow papers allow the painter multiple focal points without regard for literal distances or measurements; the relationships of feeling and symbols are what count. The attenuated papers also reflect an aesthetic that permeates a cultural worldview of which fine art is only one aspect. Horizontal paintings allow for a long, swooping arc to enter from the top right and cross toward the right, where it always stops, blocked by vertical lines of calligraphy or other design elements. As we looked through several images in which this was borne out, Wanling sprang from his chair to execute Tai Chi movements that were exactly the same, the comprehensive, circular spanning of the arm, brought to the center of the body and arrested. “The circle!” he told me, smiling.
As we discussed the paintings I had
chosen for their appeal to me, or for questions they raised, Sun Wanling began
each specific discussion with a diagram of the composition’s central thrusts—of
branches, grasses, the directions of a fish’s glide, the inclination of bird or
dragonfly wings. Composition is clearly primary—the viewer feels it at once—but
after years of training it must become part of the poetic instinct. Sun Wanling
paints horizontal papers as long as extended dining tables, but explained that
earlier poets who made monumental paintings worked with their paper scrolled,
painting only a small patch at a time. Yet they were able to execute grand and
graceful compositions.
I love the painting to the left, of the fishes swimming by the bank of some body of water. Sun Wanling explained that in this style of painting, sky, air, and water are represented by no more than blank paper; nor are horizons represented. So the ambiguity that I feel about the placement of the fish is quite natural in a tradition in which perspectives aren't fixed, as they are for Westerners.
What's more, what Sun Wanling has painted—and this he burst upon me to the greatest delight of both—is a mere fragment of a landscape that encompasses the whole world. He took my pen and showed me the house on the land above the river with its ground that sloped down to this rock. We saw the village on the other side of the river and the mountains behind. And it didn't take all that long for our imaginations to complete the circle and stop before our hearts and eyes, in Red Wing, Minnesota, where we could see ourselves in the painting too.
Point well made! Viewers: You are in this picture. It is a fragment of the world we all inhabit; our eyes, imaginations, and responses are part of what completes the circle.
I love the painting to the left, of the fishes swimming by the bank of some body of water. Sun Wanling explained that in this style of painting, sky, air, and water are represented by no more than blank paper; nor are horizons represented. So the ambiguity that I feel about the placement of the fish is quite natural in a tradition in which perspectives aren't fixed, as they are for Westerners.
What's more, what Sun Wanling has painted—and this he burst upon me to the greatest delight of both—is a mere fragment of a landscape that encompasses the whole world. He took my pen and showed me the house on the land above the river with its ground that sloped down to this rock. We saw the village on the other side of the river and the mountains behind. And it didn't take all that long for our imaginations to complete the circle and stop before our hearts and eyes, in Red Wing, Minnesota, where we could see ourselves in the painting too.
Point well made! Viewers: You are in this picture. It is a fragment of the world we all inhabit; our eyes, imaginations, and responses are part of what completes the circle.
A traditional Chinese painter, Wanling told me, has
four treasures in his studio. He has his brushes, his ink, his paper, and his
ink stone on which he grinds his colors. Of himself, the most important thing
he brings is his calmness. Sun Wanling achieves this by grinding ink on his
stone. He grinds it very slowly, in a circular motion. He told me that it, “puts
his heart in a peaceful state.”
The vivid spontaneity and life
of Sun Wanling’s painting come from the source of all artistic life, through
deep discipline so profoundly integrated into his heart and mind that they can
be commanded in an instant. Sun Wanling is the camera’s snap, and the bird, and
the brushstroke; he is the still, integrated embodiment of ancient tradition, and the
diving squirrel that always gets the nut.
Beautifully written piece that not only drew me in, but expressively quantified the extraordinary talents of the artist.
ReplyDelete[Tony Gregson - Japan]
Thank you, Mr. Gregson.
ReplyDeleteNice pictures. Love the details and coloring in the first one. chinese painting.
ReplyDelete