Gao Shiming 高士明

One

Although we have both taught at the China Academy of Art for quite a few years, it is only relatively recently that I have come to know Zheng Li well. The first time we met in person was in 2008, when Xu Longsen flew to Hangzhou from Beijing especially to introduce us. Xu had already told me that of all the active shanshui[1] painters he knew, Zheng Li was the one whose skill he admired most. At that time, my own focus of interest was almost exclusively contemporary art. Even though I had always had a certain admiration for shanshui painting, I viewed it more as a kind of artistic Weltanschauung, a representation of a particular world view manifest in the majestic landscapes of the Five Dynasties and Northern Song periods, and as such as an art form that had never really moved on from that point. As a result, I generally kept a respectful distance from contemporary shanshui art; and when it came to the subgenre of garden paintings, I was even more critically averse.

Prior to meeting Zheng Li, I had never seen his actual works, and only had a vague impression from having come across some reproductions of his paintings in various publications. Despite our having been colleagues for years, it took a friend from outside the university to introduce us, and I must admit that we both felt a little awkward at that first meeting. Later that evening, we all ended up at Zheng Li’s studio, where we talked late into the night. And that was the first time I ever entered into the world of Zheng Li’s art.

When I arrived at Zheng’s studio, the first thing I saw was his monumental painting Pure as Snow, hanging on the wall at the corner of the room. The startlingly realistic, life-size composition made me feel like I could walk right into it. When I moved closer to the painting to examine it more closely, I could only gape in amazement at the superb brushwork. At first what most impressed me was the deft gongbi (fine line) style brushwork. A more careful examination revealed both a high level of refinement and delicacy in the compositional details, and a masterful use of inkplay. While the architectural elements were rendered with an understated literati elegance, in painting the natural elements—mountains and rocks, grass and trees—Zheng Li’s brushwork was fluid and vibrant, full of energy and power, the ink moist and glistening, the strokes unrestrained yet solid and sure. Taken in its entirety, there was absolutely nothing stale or cliché about this painting: it was at once both understated and powerful, refined and exuberant, precise and untrammelled.

That night, being so deeply impressed by Zheng Li’s Pure as Snow, I found myself apologizing to him for my past indifference and misunderstanding. In the past, when I had only seen reproductions of Zheng Li’s paintings, my impression was that they showed an over-reliance on technique, and the power of their craftsmanship overwhelmed any sense of inner vitality or stylistic uniqueness, but now I understood that I was wrong. I remember how during our first meeting Zheng Li and I talked far into the night about everything from the methodologies of shanshui art, to the significance of brushplay, to the principles of connoisseurship; we also discussed how many contemporary painters too often are ‘infatuated with technique’ and ‘obsessed with theory’, and touched on the special characteristics of Tang painting. We both felt enriched by our frank discussion, and since that time we have been good friends.

The only problem is that over the last couple of years I’ve become so overwhelmed with my professional commitments that I hardly ever have time these days for leisurely conversations. Zheng Li, on the other hand, still very much lives the the unfettered life of an artist, roaming at will, sleeping by day and painting by night. And yet every year, when I have to make the rounds at the academy for the year-end academic reviews, I look forward to my visit to Ink Painting Department where I am inevitably impressed by the way Zheng Li conducts his class in the techniques of Song and Yuan shanshui painting: his teaching style is energetic and inspiring, and its effectiveness is revealed in the deep understanding of shanshui art that he instills in his students.

When I talk about Zheng Li with friends, we all agree that he is a genius at ‘court-style painting’ in the Song manner. This is not only because of the great skill and charm of his brushwork, which is infused with the aristocratic elegance achieved by the imperial painters, but also because of his masterly skill in sketching from nature. Zheng Li is able to capture both the forms of the natural scenery and the objects within it with a meticulous accuracy that is distinguished by a great delicacy of detail and a truly painterly touch. At the same time, he creates organic compositions in which aura and artistic vision are deeply integrated into the landscape scene. Zheng Li first shot to fame with a series of garden-themed paintings, of which Aura of the Literati is a representative example. In this series of works he weaves together a tapestry of wind and rain, grasses and flowers, rocks and bamboo, dew-covered mosses. Entering into the world of his small, self-contained gardens, one experiences a sensation of deep quietude and otherworldly serenity that soothes the spirit.

In the process of studying Zheng Li’s paintings, I have come to an understanding of what makes his stylistic approach so unique: first, he is able to achieve an organic integration of the techniques of gongbi and expressive freestyle brushwork (xieyi); and second, the objective, emotional and intentional realms in his paintings are indivisible. The stylistic distinction between gongbi and xieyi brush painting has been recognized since ancient times, but by now this distinction has become so absolute that the difference in technique is viewed as a difference in genre──a view which constitutes both a conceptualization and simplification of these two approaches. It is helpful here to examine two masterworks of Song-period landscape painting: Snowy Bamboo (Xuezhu) attributed to the 10^th-century painter Xu Xi, and Early Spring (Zaochun) by Northern Song painter Guo Xi. In Snowy Bamboo, we can see not only how the expressiveness of xieyi painting is achieved through quick, spontaneous strokes, but also how it is manifested within the framework of meticulous painterly craft: both of these aspects add to the powerful compositional effect within the field of the scroll. As for Early Spring, there has already been so much written in the literature about the artistic conception and xieyi brushwork technique in this painting that there is no need to go into it here: suffice it to say that although the brushwork in Snowy Bamboo is not as vigorous or fluid as that of Early Spring, yet the rightness of the forms and the expressiveness of the painter’s articulation of even the most subtle details of the winter scene, are such that the entire scroll is suffused with the tangible sensation of a snowy day: the frosty air, the dusky winter light and the utter stillness of the atmosphere. Snowy Bamboo is not depicting a grand cosmological structure, yet by focusing so attentively on a small corner of the natural landscape, the painter creates a poetic realm which encapsulates the spiritual profundity of the cosmos, in the same way that a tiny drop of water can reflect the entirety of a world. In Zheng Li’s paintings, we can find this same level of integration of spontaneous expressiveness, painterly craft and poetic profundity.

The aesthetic notions of ‘objective realm’ and ‘intentional realm’ were identified long ago in traditional poetry and painting theory. Tang-dynasty poet Wang Changling wrote that ‘There are three realms in poetry: the realm of objects (wujing), the realm of emotions (qingjing), and the realm of idea (yijing).’ Further describing these three realms, Wang stated that one must ‘Experience the object realm within the body, view the realm in the mind, then exert thought to capture the images in the realm; [To achieve the emotional realm], emotions inspired by the landscape must be arrayed in the mind and lodged in the body, then absorbed into the imagination: then one will profoundly attain the expression of emotion; [As regards the idea realm], array both objects and emotions in one’s thoughts, and then contemplate them in the mind: in this way one will achieve the expression of their true essence.’

Wang Changling laid out these three principles as a means of analyzing the profound subtleties of poetry. In Zheng Li’s paintings, his consummate skill in capturing the details of a scene with life-like accuracy is balanced by the artistic intention that arises in the mind. His gardens are conjured into being through a fusion of ‘object, emotion, and idea’: they are both concrete and luminous, tangible and spectral. Two paintings that exemplify these qualities are Zheng Li’s Jade Tree in a Breeze (Yushu linfeng) and ‘Wind in Pines amid Myriad Valleys’ in Miniature (Xiao wanhe songfeng). Although the latter work was painted while the artist was living in Paris, it is infused with the aura of mountains and forests, drawing the viewer deep into the landscape where one can tangibly feel the integrated realm of object-emotion-idea. In Jade Tree in a Breeze, the brushplay is brilliant, with the dark moistness of the ink countered by the strength and vigour of the strokes: here the artist uses an untrammelled wildness to achieve an effect of delicate beauty. The transformative power of Zheng Li’s brushwork in this painting is equal to that of the Yuan masters. And although the subject of the composition consists of nothing more than a single tree and a rock, yet there is an aura of eternity and boundlessness, as though this scene encapsulates an entire world. In this way, this painting is a direct expression of the Song poetic realm.


Two

Zheng Li’s most recent work, Reflections of The Classical Garden, in one sense can be viewed as the sister of his earlier painting, Pure as Snow; yet in the compositional arrangement of Reflections of The Classical Garden we find something completely new. The foreground of the painting is relatively sparse, containing only a Taihu rock, a single bamboo tree, and some grasses and flowers. The focal point of the panting is a white wall in the middle ground, and at first glance the composition feels a little stark and empty. Yet looking more closely, one finds that the wall appears to glow with a kind of gentle spring radiance, a sense of light and freshness that almost seems to emanate from the material of the painting itself. Inserted into the wall is a window, and through it one can catch a glimpse of an interior garden that presents an enticing scene of otherworldly charm. The title of this painting references a poem by the Song-dynasty poet-painter Su Dongpo, quoted in full below:

‘To the Tune Yongyu le (Joy of Eternal Union)–Lodging at Swallow Tower by night, written upon waking from a dream of Panpan’

The moon is bright and pure as frost, the breeze limpid as water,
The scenery spreads out before me.
Within the winding brook fish leap, and dewdrops roll across the round lotus leaves,
Yet there is no one here to witness my solitude.
The third drum sounds in the night, and the loud crackle of a falling leaf
Startles me awake from a lingering, cloudy dream.
Vast and dark is the night, all seeking is in vain,
And In my wakefulness I pace the garden aimlessly.

I’m but a weary traveller at the end of the world, and though the tracks of the old path through the mountains are still there,
I fear I may never again see the gardens of my home, held deep in my mind’s eye.
The Swallow Tower is deserted, where could the fair lady be?
The swallows are locked away in the empty tower in vain.
The past and the present both seem like a dream; yet when will we ever wake?             
There are only past joys and new sorrows.
Some future time, when others view this night scene from the Yellow Tower,
They will lament and heave a sigh for me.

The layered emotions in Su Dongpo’s poem are deeply moving: the poetic mood is solemn, enigmatic, and illusionary, expressing the poet’s state of mind as he wanders through the scenery, lost in melancholy. By contrast, Zheng Li leads a happy, carefree life: unlike the figure in Su Dongpo’s poem, he is no ‘weary wanderer at the edge of the world’ and has no need to seek ‘the tracks of the old path through the mountains’. For this reason, it would be impossible for Zheng Li’s painting to echo the sense of desolation and melancholy of Su Dongpo’s poem. What Zheng Li wants to express is the classical garden in his mind’s eye, rather than the loss of it.

Only a single wall separates the viewer from Zheng Li’s garden; through the small window we can discern the garden’s enticing, mysterious beauty, and the harmonious layout of plants and trees, pagodas and terraces, ponds and pavilions. In the chapter ‘Shensi’ (‘Spiritual Thought’) in the sixth-century treatise on literary aesthetics Wenxin Diaolong (The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons), the scholar Liu Xie wrote: ‘It is easy to have extraordinary ideas when one can roam in the realm of imagination, but difficult to achieve ingenious effects when bound by rigid details’. But through his unique inkplay Zheng Li is able to achieve both the ambiguousness of the marvelous and the concrete details of the real. For Zheng Li, the garden appeals not only as a subject for painting, but also as a realm where his spirit finds space to roam. While the garden scenes that Zheng Li conjures with his brush and ink have a strong element of realism in their meticulously rendered detail and beautiful delineations of structure and form, at the same time there is always an ineffable sense of illusion: It is as though the ‘classical garden’ he is depicting can truly be apprehended only through the mind’s eye.

This element of illusion is especially pronounced in the painting Garden Dream, but it also is discernible in other works such as Aura of the Literati and Pure as Snow, which evince a kind of mysterious, twilit aura, and a sense of a lingering presence. In his more recent paintings depicting scenes of real-life gardens, such as Suzhou’s Lingering Garden and The Humble Administrator’s Garden，Zheng Li’s brushwork displays a more vigorous, kinetic quality, yet at the same time his compositions are still suffused with that tranquil, hesternal atmosphere. The forms and contours of the pavilions and walkways, courtyards and flowers, stones and trees, seem somehow to shift and change subtly, so that it is difficult to pin them down, or bring them into a fixed focus: the effect is like the moon reflected in water, or a flower reflected in a mirror. Objects seem to appear and fade within the flow of artistic intention and the changing trajectories of the mind’s eye.

The myriad things of this world flow past us like water, and in our dreams the illusory is as tangible as the real. Time is experienced within the inner vision of the artist. As Zheng Li’s gardens emerge from the flow of time, their linked verandas, winding pathways, and elegant rocks glimmering in the shade, all invite us to linger in these captured moments. Although these are essentially depictions of real gardens, entering into Zheng Li’s compositions one experiences many unexpected encounters, and discovers that the familiar scenes and objects are now imbued with a sense of enigma and transformation within the crepuscular atmosphere. These realms and these object-forms that so gracefully inhabit the painting surface are also manifestations of time’s duality, of coming into being and passing away. Within the realm of the mind’s eye, the beguiling ambiguity of object-forms is illuminated, but of course, what is also illuminated is the shimmering presence of times past, lingering on in the classical garden.

Written on Qingming Festival, 2017
(Translation by Valerie C. Doran)


[1] Shanshui, literally meaning ‘mountains and water’, is the term used for Chinese brush-and-ink landscape painting—Trans.