Strength and lingering imagery of expression – about Zeng Mi’s ink wash painting

 Oh Kwang Su (Art Critic)
 

The commonalities of modern Chinese ink wash painters introduced thus far in the Milal Fine Art Museum were strong realistic perception closely associated with daily life and at the same time, freedom of expression by rich imagination. The choice of motifs deeply rooted in the reality is a reflection of compliance with the regime based on the realism while the freedom of expression is another implementation of personality breaking away from the whole. Given the history of art work by the artist reaching his early 70s, it reminds us of his life journey that was forced to go through the dark fetters of the time, the Cultural Revolution, experienced by modern China. In any time of history, when more severe situation is forced on humans, the resilience of their spirit is perfected more strongly. Particularly, from history, we have learned fully the fact that social absurdity and tense situations imposed on artists lead them to dreaming of the freer sense of liberation. Therefore, in the darker times, we are more likely to witness the emergence of great artists. The reason that Chinese art is highlighted internationally today is not because it simply arouses the exotic taste but because it strongly delivers the shackles of the time experienced by the artists and robust spirits having overcome those troubles through their works as media.

 Zeng Mi’s works are extremely simple in terms of the contents. It is because daily routines seen around normal life and nature surrounding himself are everything in his works. It can be seen that his works are not intended for uniqueness or brilliance in the contents, but instead, closely associated with specific life scenes and nature. The choice of extremely commonsensical motifs looks to be quite ordinary to the extent that one will wonder if those motifs can even make an artwork. This means no contrived elements are involved in the canvas. This also applies to his techniques. The simplicity of techniques looks as if it excludes techniques intentionally just like skills without skills, which naturally becomes true techniques. It reminds us of honest and diligent cultivation just as plowing the long field with a blunt tool. Touches of the brush occasionally and suddenly broken, and the wild dance of dots and strokes running down like rain drops represent freewheeling expressions, and symbolize spiritual freedom of the artist. 

 His landscape paintings are particularly dominated by night landscapes. Evening or moonlit night are frequent subjects. Hence, lonesome beauty fills the canvas. The aura of ink that permeates the entire canvas gives more remoteness and reminds the finiteness of time. Faraway beauty blossoms from the landscapes: busy rice planting in the paddy field on an early summer day; a river village scenery unfolding along the waterway; the entrance to a village with the silhouette of a person riding a horse under tall trees as staffage; a rural house visible through trees, and people and animals hanging around the house revealed in dim light; an empty boat on the riverside among a wave of weeping willows; staffage of a group of girls picnicking in the woods. They are realistic landscapes and at the same time, look as if coming over beyond the time like a landscape of memories. Thin coloring applied on the ink base arouses an unusual atmosphere. It elicits warmth as well as stillness. Not many artists can create the remoteness of time and the deeply lingering imagery of space so lively.

Endless exploration of life

 Shi Zeng (President of China Academy of Art)

November 2005

1

”Please just let me study endlessly!”

A gentle mountain slope suddenly cuts the high sky far away. Black ink color makes sky and land one. Thin clouds roll down the mountain slope. Thanks to emptiness (nothingness), the mountain slope has no worries, and no grass and angles. Heaven and earth purify each other, and simplicity is left in the song of a traveling person.

To speak of “late scenery (晩色)”, “scenery” is a subject of search and study. “Late scenery” refers to a study without constraints and boundaries. “A road so far away, my control is also far, but I will be seeking it, going up and down.” This song has been sung for 2,000 years in the wilderness of the East Asian continent. This heroic but bitter song has created a root of the Chinese nation. Such “remoteness” keeps coming ceaselessly as if it continues from below the feet high up to the sky, and there is neither the beginning nor the end. Presently, it’s gathering and playing freely on this mountain slope, or a faraway place of this mountain slope. It does so with the enlightenment of a traveling person who knows the vastness of time and life.

 This is the world of Zeng Mi, the world of a person who plays and studies genuinely freely.

2

 In his childhood in Gushan and Zhuhai, in his youth when he was fascinated at Huang Binhong, for the decades of adulthood during which he had worked in the fan factory until he started his own painting, and during the Cultural Revolution when he was suffering an ordeal, in any case, Zeng Mi has kept taking the road of exploring and studying. His sentiment has innate slowness, and thus he only speaks few words and extremely taciturn. He is honest and full of imagination. He seems not to mind anything at all on the surface, but makes really hard efforts in fact. He is not good at physical activities, but never avoids any. He looks slow and so quiet, but his heart walks outside of heaven, and his will transcends the world. It seems he walks on the peaks of five mountains, but he has his own firm line that obstinately does not change at all. It, however, does not mean that he sticks to unchanging itself. He makes everything in these mountain roads alive in the mind. Finally, these mountain roads slowly become non-existent, and disappear from below the feet.

 Zeng Mi researched many classics and masters, and among them are Bada Shanren (1626-1705) and Fu Hua (1832-1922). However, the most researched paintings were those of Huang Binhong (1865-1955). Although he has taken strengths of many artists and surpassed them one by one, he has not stopped studying consistently towards a faraway place, to the top of the sky.

 It was after the Cultural Revolution when Zeng Mi who had graduated before it became famous. Everyone in China, particularly artists cannot be free from memories of the Cultural Revolution. All that were left in the whirlwind of the Revolution were only ruins. Every valuable thing was annihilated, and only the primitive urge of self-injury was being satisfied. Existing culture and properties had to disappear, and even their memories in people’s minds were not permitted. The Cultural Revolution left ruins in the minds of all the people who survived its savage time. What we should know is that what is hidden deepest in the life of Zeng Mi and his contemporaries, or what has reminded them of their life best is the memory in front of them when they faced those ruins. They have directly experienced the sense of existence, half of which was destroyed, and another half of which was reborn in the very ruins. Zeng Mi’s sorrowful ink color, internally understated techniques and crowded composition all express the hidden realms of existence, which is only revealed when faced with such ruins, or the truth of life.

 However, Zeng Mi still uses the “various phases”. Silence, endurance and ‘not struggling’ are implied in the weakness of daily life. He gave up the function of hearing and spoken words as much as possible by speaking only few words or not speaking at all, and by doing so, he lived in a “different place” that he sealed in an edge of the time. This “different place” is where he alone travels back and forth between the past and present, and thus he could unleash his stubborn personality and “various phases” as much as he likes. Who can say that such a closed state of mind cannot influence the “complete transformation” of his art? When hidden deeper and unleashed more vigorously in the quietness and freedom of his personality, introverted nature and such ruins of his mind, the “various phases” as his personality have sublimed into the “various phases” as survival.

 The “ceaseless exploration” by Zeng Mi in the 1960s and 1970s was expressed, on the one hand, from the extremely closed state and, on the other hand, from the self-unshackling state. This is the rare state of the division of difference. Numerous passions have been exhausted here. Zeng Mi has been strolling on the depth of living without being seen through “various phases” that only he owns, or “various phases” that are slow and blunt externally but extremely free internally. His such lonely walk did not have a specified frame or limitation on the conclusion, but continued on with numerous nights and solitude as his friends. Zeng Mi could gain time, freedom and the right not to restrain himself through this tenacious walk. These “various phases” have appeared as vagueness and remoteness of the faraway road in the long time of contemplation and practice, as well as heavy duties of decoration and control. These ceaseless studies on survival along with the life of art have appeared finally as ceaseless studies on life. There are not many people among Zeng Mi’s generation who can sublime the survival state of the time into the form of life and art. However, Zeng Mi is the person who comes back to the origin of the time and takes a detailed look at it with his art.
 

3

 Shitao (1642-1707) said he would build his spirit on the ink stone and judge his life at the tip of the brush. The brush and ink contain life, spirit and ‘Gi-Un’ (vivid energy). What is ‘Gi-un’? ‘Gi’ is a ‘Gigae’ (sprit) that appears from the inside out and ‘Un’ is its echo that responds from the outside to inside. ‘Gigae’ (spirit) is the character of a strong man. The operation of the sky is robust, and thus the noble man should keep his body and mind together without rest. The matching ‘Un’ is the character of a meek person. The form of the land is ‘Gon’, and the noble man must embrace everything through generous virtue. Essentially, ‘Gi-Un’ is a response that is both inside and outside, and an interactive living creature. This creature cannot be obtained by force, but may be achieved only when it is constantly explored in the realm of human beings and the world. This includes the life choice of what should be done and what should not be done.

 Zeng Mi studied the essence of the brush and ink deeply, and regarded himself as a pile of mountain stones, allowing the brush and ink to flow over them. The brush and ink reveal the flatness and curvature of the pile of stones, which overcome the flying and flowing, and the gentleness and retention of the brush and ink. Therefore, it is no surprise that his life has condensed into a unique energy through the brush and ink. Huang Binhong said in the words accompanying the painting īngchéng Shān Rainfall>, "The backsides of the mountains were often painted during the Northern Song period, which was like walking on a mountain valley at night." When confronted with the ruins of the Cultural Revolution, Zeng Mi closed himself by day and trained himself hard at night, living a stealthy life. His such stealthy life was inevitably manifested by dark and dense stroke of the brush, and thick and heavy ink work. It also shows subtle instant adaptation in the relationship between heavy burdens and their avoidance, and emptiness and filling. Many people have learned Zeng Mi's techniques and produced a great number of paintings, but they do not know the hard-training process hidden behind them. The energy that his life has created can be neither learned nor imitated. It is because the brush and ink are visible, but the endless quest for life is invisible.

 Zeng Mi himself has considerable contradictions. He learned the bel canto technique to treat his problematic blood pressure. He always wears a decent suit although Buddhist monk's robe is more suitable for him, and a white suit at that. He has loved watercolor since he was a child, and his portraits are vividly elegant. As he also likes "cold abstract" paintings, he learns and enjoys conciseness, sophistication and simplicity in them. He likes the passionate nature of forms in German expressionist paintings. He does not interfere with friendly approach to different things as the nature of life, but enjoys the "life" of the ancestors through the contemplation of those who are traveling. When these are fully acquired and released again, they become living opportunities and the substance of life following its nature.

 After his life improved in the 1990s, he worked to capture the truthful impressions from life into wonderful scenery and characters while preserving the profoundness and sorrowfulness of "walking in the valley at night," In these paintings, it is felt as if everything being seen by the eyes is brought back to life. He sometimes constantly studies his own world of the brush and ink, and other times penetrates into life as he strolls in the true meanings of actual life. Naive and unique complacency and natural atmosphere seen his art are all acquired through such a life.

 "Il (Ease)" is a term that represents a high level in traditional Chinese painting. It can even be called the highest level, which is not easily reached by an ordinary artist. That level is based on pureness, which aims at the beauty of nature as it is. How to get pureness is a question that every artist is pursuing and agonizing over. Pureness is inevitably lost if greed is excessive. Pureness appears naturally when life gains complete freedom. It can also exist only when there is no technique and contrived things. In Zeng Mi's paintings, we can often see some sort of childishness, tipsiness where the brush and ink, and forms are in harmony, but forget each other at the same time, and the nature that the beauty and subtlety are created at his will even though he does not seem to care. These things suggest that he is in a state of forgetting his own existence because of his endless pursuit. His brush and ink at such a particular moment seem to be arbitrary, naive and roughly painted, but the end product has an exceptional elegance, and penetrates the essence of life despite looking immature. The meaning of Zeng Mi's ‘late scenery’ of life can be found in that they are consistently ongoing, have neither fixed frames nor boundaries, thus keeping their live status, and preserve the pureness and freshness of life when life is created.

4

 “There is no scenery to see in Dongting Lake in the early fall. The lake beautiful like a mirror is enormously vast, but only my small boat floats on it. As the bright moon shines light and the Milky Way comes together, the inside and outside are both clear. I was enlightened from my heart pleasantly, but I cannot tell you its subtlety.” This is a poem 《Crossing Dongting Lake while missing your beauty》 written by Zhang Hyosang of Song Dynasty. Although this poem is extremely subtle, and “I cannot tell you its subtlety”, Zeng Mi’s painting can be expressed well by the words “the inside and outside are both clear”. This truly means serenity and purity of unifying heaven and human beings. Only such serenity and purity are the state that can represent all of the long life. "I am thinking of my days in both Guang Provinces (Guangdong Province, Guangseo Province) and the lonely moon shines alone. So, my mind is getting cold. Adding honest poverty to a small number of short hairs, I float a boat peacefully in the vast lake under the sky. I will serve everything under the sun as guests, using the water of Yangtze River as a liquor and the Big Dipper as a cup.” How good such ‘late scenery’ shall become!

 Please just let me study endlessly. As this is the heaven’s will, should I choose the right time?