Gao Shiming
2014

SHARING SILENT SECRETS: Cao Xiaoyang’s Way of Shanshui

Gao Shiming

Xiaoyang once said: ‘All my exhibitions have one single theme: shanshui.’

Xiaoyang has devoted himself exclusively to shanshui art (Literally, ‘mountains and water’; the Chinese concept of brush-and-ink landscape painting.) for over ten years. And through all these years, each time Xiaoyang paints, it seems that he is seeking to evoke the archetypal shanshui scroll: the scroll that has endured through thousands of years, through the ravages of time, the invasions of insects, the turmoil of war, and that retains faint, misty traces still discernible on its surface. This scroll, in itself, is shanshui.

How, then, to define shanshui? It is more than the physical scenery that appears before our eyes. It transcends the forests, springs, hills and valleys we have travelled through in our lifetimes. Shanshui is a perfect oneness, an organic amalgamation of mountains, rivers, roads and paths, cliffs and rocks, trees and groves. In a shanshui painting, all things appear before us in a balanced equality. Its form can change in a single breath, as the myriad elements of nature shift and emerge, and the mountains and rivers coalesce. It is an endless series of images, wherein all that is above and below, in foreground and background, appears in a vast continuity, without breaks or borders, a single broad perspective without end or vanishing point.

Scrolls of this nature play no role in the art-historical debate between the ‘subjective expressiveness’ of the brush and ‘real landscape’. There is a deeper meaning here, but it is difficult to convey in words. Here, in this scroll, the artist’s skill is in the ability to master the gestural movements of the Creator, to capture the links that lead back to the source of life in the universe, and the way in which the myriad things of the universe manifest into form. When sketching in nature, the artist stands amidst the mountains. When painting in the studio, the scenery reappears in the artist’s mind, and materializes through the movements of his body: the painter and his subject matter become as one, bonded together in a process of mutual cultivation, like polishing a piece of jade. This process of cultivation or ‘polishing’ also reveals a worldview. In this scroll the secrets of nature are made visible through the aggregation and elaboration of myriad images and forms.

Xiaoyang executes his shanshui paintings with charcoal, eschewing the unique expressive charm and myriad other seductions of brush and ink. Charcoal enables the artist to attain greater intimacy with the physicality of the objects themselves, evoking a line from Jing Hao’s (855-915 CE 980) Notes on Brushwork (Bifa ji): that qiyun — ‘rhythmic vitality’ or ‘spirit resonance’ — must be realized through form and concept.

In making charcoal by burning wood, one is creating an artist’s material from the very substance of trees. When this dead material comes back to life under the control of the artist, it once again attains the form of rivers, mountains ranges and valleys. Xiaoyang manipulates this basic, elemental material with extraordinary virtuosity, creating his own subversive method of dots and strokes, wash and texture. Not only does his charcoal painting dispense with overelaboration and superficiality, and grasp what is essential, he is able to go beyond the power of the brush and create works of remarkable subtlety.

Using charcoal as his ‘brush’, the artist not only paints in black– he also paints in white. The moment the charcoal touches the paper, the painting surface immediately ceases being a void, and when the painting is finished there is no part of the surface that is ‘empty’, that is not part of the painting. The dazzling white ground that the charcoal struggles to carve out is not a void, but rather a presence. ‘Knowing what is white, but embracing what is black, and thus providing a model for the world’. Xiaoyang’s shanshui art has its origins in his experience with woodcut prints, with their strong chiaroscuro quality. This is not the traditional Chinese approach of ‘measuring the white space as if it were black’ [i.e. treating the background as if it were the subject matter]. In his works, black trumps white, and the white reinforces the black; black and white reflect each other’s light and shadows, like heaven and earth in primeval chaos.

When painting with charcoal, creating wash effects is extremely challenging. But such effects do not rely so much on mastery of brush and ink techniques, but rather depend on the artist’s qiyun, rhythmic vitality or spirit resonance, which is expressed through acts of concealing and revealing. The role of the artist is simply to render visible the materiality of both darkness and void. This process is not to be compared to the uncanny science of developing photographic prints in a darkroom, but is more evanescent, like carving or taking a rubbing from something formless and shapeless, teasing out threads of thought from the tapestry of the ineffable darkness. At the moment the glimmering dawn separates the world from the night, the face of creation gradually takes form, emerging from a multitude of subtle, infinitesimal details.

The Way of Painting comes down to the process of revelation and concealment. The painter problematizes process: he repeatedly transforms substance into nothingness, presence into absence, and then reverses the process by restoring emptiness to substance; in the continual interchange between what is visible and what is not, the images are mutable, lacking any fixed form. Void reverts to substance, substance returns to void. These continuous cycles of shifting between illusion and reality are a paradox of appearance and disappearance. The artist attempts to delineate in his work what cannot be outlined in words; to illuminate situations that defy definition. The artist is attuned to subtle, mysterious changes and disturbances; from these illusive sources he creates works of art, just as the myriad transformations are uninterruptedly taking place in nature. Among these transformations, the artist seeks out a process of externalization and effusion. He attends to the infinitesimal, not only to panoramic vistas and viewpoints, concentrating on the inner workings of things. Embodied in form and concentrated in spirit, the hand of the painter guides and directs the eye in its observation of objects; the artist’s perceptions are at once physical, and intellectual; this is called ‘investigating the nature of things by means of the self’. As if blind and deaf, the artist becomes indistinguishable from nature, and unconstrained by emotions, only the paper in his hand can reawaken him, at a point when the entire phenomenal universe is transformed into the patterns of clouds and mist emitted from his brush, and are manifested on the surface of the painting. Emotions never cease changing, ultimate wisdom is attained through external objects; this is called ‘understanding the self through the medium of external things’. Between the self and external objects, where Heaven and mankind intersect, there is only disappearance and reappearance, sinking and resurfacing.

 From ancient times, painting has been a conceptual and spiritual practice. Rare are the individuals who can hear the sounds in the remote silence. Xiaoyang has only shown his shanshui paintings to a small circle of friends and disciples. We can go so far as to say that Xiaoyang has been working on these shanshuis in secret for the past ten years. This work is secret not only because so few people are aware of it, but even more because what these works strive for is the secret of nature’s creation. Sunlight and clouds fill the sky, dragons and snakes inhabit the land; there are endless spiritual transformations, but their mystery and subtlety defies ready understanding.  ‘Standing at the center and encompassing the entire universe’, the artist can share the abstruse overtones of these hidden sounds; slowly over time, he seeks out their subtle mysteries. Xiaoyang’s approach to shanshui is perhaps best reflected in a concept contained in the ancient text Guicang: the idea of ‘returning to the mystical storehouse’ from whence all things emerge.

The above is little more than the ranting and raving of an admirer. Among a handful of friends, perhaps these words can serve as a source of inspiration.

(Translated by Don J. Cohn and Valerie C. Doran)

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秘響旁通

曹曉陽的“山水”工作

高士明

曉陽說，此生辦展覽，只有一個題目，就是“山水”。

曉陽畫山水已有十年。十年來，他的畫也唯有山水這一個主題。甚或說，這些年他只在追摹那同一幅畫卷。這幅畫卷，歷經千古，於歲月輪轉中損蝕磨礪，於變亂漶漫中有跡可察。這幅畫卷，就是山水。

何為山水？非獨眼前所見之景物，亦不止吾輩登臨之林泉丘壑；山水者，山川道路、丘石林木俱為一體，眼前世界俱平等相。一氣化形，萬物成象，山水渾然一體，物象連綿不斷，上下前後廣延不可分割，無分無界亦無限。

如此畫卷，無關畫史中所謂“得意筆”與“真山水”之辯詰。此中真意，欲辨忘言。當此畫卷，畫者之能，僅在於能夠把握造物者的手勢，捕捉到萬物生發、自然化育的蛛絲馬跡。師法造化，在臨在摹。臨者山在眼前，身居其中；摹者以思御景，身與境化，要在畫者與物象之間如膠似漆，如琢如磨。琢磨而出乎其中者，乃是一種世界觀的展示——當此畫卷，造化之秘在無數物象的集聚與鋪陳中變現而出。

曉陽作畫，以木炭為筆，擺脫了毫管筆墨獨有之意趣，拋卻水暈墨章的萬千魅惑，反而更切近於事物本身，更加應和著荊浩《筆法記》中所言，將氣和韻，落實為景與思。燃木為炭，這畫材脫胎於林木之身體，此刻又躍然於紙上，在畫者指掌的運作中使山川巒壑成形顯象。曉陽用這最簡單直接的畫材，於筆墨混融間點劃涂抹，無所不用其極；不惟“去其繁華，採其大要”，更是竭其所能，盡其微妙。

燃木為筆，畫者不但畫黑，而且畫白。一旦動筆，畫面就不再是空白，畫竟之時，畫面上更無一空處，那炭筆刻劃爭戰出的耀眼的白地，亦不是空，而是有。“知其白，守其黑，為天下式”。曉陽之山水畫源出黑白分明之木刻經驗，並非中國傳統所謂“計白當黑”，而是以黑御白，以白養黑，黑白輝映，天地渾茫。

木炭為筆，滋潤最難。滋潤之意，不在筆精墨妙，而在氣韻。氣韻在乎隱現。畫者所為，無非是讓沉默之世界從暗夜虛無中有所顯現，其過程卻並非如暗房顯影般奇妙從容，而是取視成灰，於一片漫漶中摹刻拓印，於無盡幽暗中抽思織錦——世界之夜破曉的晨光離合間，造物之面容從無數精微細節中漸次顯影而出。

畫之道，顯隱爾。畫者無是生非，嘗於實中化虛，又復運虛於實；顯隱生化，惟恍惟惚；返虛入實，因實轉虛；似非而是，由是而非；返轉變幻，全在顯隱之間。畫者欲彰顯不可言詮之象，煥發難以名狀之境；於風雲際會中領悟神變幽微；於無跡可尋中成就氣象萬千；於萬千氣象中追索大衍運行。其關竅處，不惟觀覽之法，更在運作之妙。體物凝神，繪畫之手牽引觀物之眼，以體察之，以心審之，所謂以我格物。收視返聽，觀者化入自然，忘情其中，唯手中片紙將之重新喚起，森羅萬象化作筆底煙雲在畫面上展開之際，緣情隨化，因物知幾，此是以物格我。物我之間，人天之際，或隱或現，載沉載浮。

繪事自古為心印，幽音渺渺幾人知？曉陽的山水，除寥寥幾位好友和弟子外，從不示人。山水可以說是曉陽十年來的一項秘密工作。這份工作之所以秘密，不獨因其不為人所知，而且由於它所欲趨向者，乃造化之秘藏。天光雲影，龍蛇起陸，神變無窮，幽微難測。畫者“佇中區以玄覽”，因秘響而旁通，於歲月遙永間探其幽微，由是此山水工作亦可為歸藏之道也。

以上所論，皆屬狂悖之言。三五同好之間，或可為共勉之辭。