Page 71 - Studio International - October 1967

million-year-old page that stimulated the imagina- infinity washed on a scroll, it is impossible to bination of characters, regardless of their meaning,
tion of a fifteenth-century Wen-jen. feel any exact correspondence with experience of a may become a formal challenge to recreate them
Prof. Ecke is above all concerned with the Western order. Ecke is quite right to invoke with his own hand, re-casting protoforms of im-
peculiar character of much Chinese painting in Romantic poetry, especially Rimbaud's vision of memorial ancestry, and the sum total of these
which spontaneity and even automatism can the abyss, in order to try to bring it closer. graphs into a "field" of formal forces, a constel-
occur without loss of control. He looks sympatheti- His sketch of the origins of Chinese art puts the lation of potent signs.'
cally at modern art, but nevertheless concludes emphasis on his special love, calligraphy. 'The The thrust of the Chinese imagination, its con-
that the twentieth-century versions of Chinese two potencies to which Chinese brush art owes its cretization of visible and invisible, is apparent as
brushwork are wanting in 'primordial awareness origin—the forces of form and of mana— are in its much in the calligraphies as in master paintings.
of pure form' and in the kind of control an im- command from the very outset,' he says in his Honolulu's treasured Hundred geese scroll, attri-
memorial heritage deposits. Many contemporary summary of what he calls the 'pristine roots'. He is buted to Ma Fen, is unthinkable without the
Western artists, he feels, mistake 'chaos for careful to stress the telluric background of Chinese background of calligraphy, but is also a perfect
configuration'. symbolism, but at the same time he isolates a evocation of a specific landscape. The aesthetic of
He prepares his ground with a brief discussion of peculiar tendency in the history toward contained twentieth-century purism would never find corre-
Hsieh Ho's Six Cannons of Painting, the first of form. spondences in Chinese art. But romanticism in our
which deals with the concept of ch'i. Tor the By calling to mind Kandinsky's search for own century is rich in affinities, at least in Prof.
Chinese way of thinking, the concept of ch'i is `internal significance' Ecke not only lends fresh Ecke's eyes. In one of his concluding paragraphs,
crucial. It indicates the power that possesses the support to Kandinsky's theories, but makes his indicating again his inquisitive nature, he writes :
hand, changing the brush into a magic wand. The point that the Chinese interest in form is not an `While mescalin and other "hallucinogenic"
sign representing this concept originally had the end in itself, but a natural consequence of some drugs may soon be available at the soda fountain
meaning of breath, subsequently of exhalation, 4,000 years of brush drawings. around the corner, and while Dr Virchow's
emanation, aura, life-spirit, and, eventually, of the Calligraphy as practised currently in Japan is scalpel is still glittering somewhere, the pessimism
impersonal cosmic force.' sometimes called abstract. It has always seemed to of the Existentialists promises at least the pride of
Equally important is the concept of yün, which me that no matter how far from the initial picto- lofty frustration.' Such pride will gladly admit
suggests musicality. 'Its significance is tone, over- graph the modern calligraphic painting moves it is George Braque's assertion.
tone . . . resonance. To those who "think symbo- rooted in the security of having had a meaning. What Prof. Ecke achieves in his circling discussion
lically" the mating of ch'i and yün suggests the Prof. Ecke points out that 'the basic layout of any is to stress not style in terms of periods, but style in
very quality of esoteric painting, as of all spiritual character is not an individual creation, but the terms of individual artists.
art. Nietzsche's notion of Enchantment comes invention of a priestly caste which, more than I have neglected to mention the superb physical
close to that of ch'i-yün— enchantment through the three thousand years ago, is likely to have de- quality of the book. It contains, in two of the three
evocation of a dream world. It is "music made signed it as a device to preserve in documentary volumes, what are probably the longest facsimile
visible", the very premise from which Kandinsky form the answers to ritual augury'. This invention, plates ever printed, folded in order that they may
started his attempt to uncover the spiritual in art.' the 'master graph', is then at the disposal of be read roughly in the manner of the scroll. The
Although spiritual resonance inheres in any artists. Throughout Chinese art history, as Ecke reproductions are excellent, and judging from
great art, or we would not identify it, the resonance nimbly demonstrates, artists have found means to memory, faithful to the originals in tone. Binding
of certain Chinese brush paintings is special. If stretch the master graph to almost abstract and linen box are excellent. It is a physically
you have once been moved by the faint breath of patterns. For the Chinese calligrapher, 'any corn- beautiful object.

Head of a Wen-jen by Ch'en Hung-shon, Detail from Hundred geese scroll attributed to Graph in running script by Hsu Wei, Ming dynasty,
Ming-Ch'ing dynasty 1651, detail of hand scroll in Ma Fen, Northern Sung, 12th century, hand scroll 16th century
ink and slight colour on silk, approx. actual size in ink on paper approx. actual size