Anna Martin
HIAA1201
Professor Moser
Boundless Within The Bounded: Coherences Between Xu Daoning and Jing Hao
“Fisherman’s Evening Song” by Late Tang landscape painter Xu Daoning embodies an
expansiveness striking in its seeming infinity, powerful in its presentation of limitlessness. It is a
physically large work: a wide-view panorama of clusters of peaks dimmed by the waning light of
early evening, their crags dusted by the delicate branches of spindly trees, a few fishermen’s boats
rippling quietly in the placid water, far mountain ranges blurring and interlocking in the
background. But the painting’s allure lies its expansion even beyond this tangible physicality to an
expression of almost supernatural, immeasurable distance. Xu Daoning endows the work with
several central aesthetic features that communicate this sense of boundlessness, this feeling of
physical and spiritual perpetuity – namely, he employs mimetic ink wash techniques, heightens
experiences of depth through shifting atmospheric perspective, balances a vaguely mirror-like
composition, and manipulates space by subtly directing viewers’ gaze. These techniques combine
and coalesce gracefully, harmoniously, to create a vastness magnetic in its suggestions – and
indeed, its manifestations – of that which lies beyond.
With a mimetic goal to portray the true essence of the perceived world, Xu Daoning’s
brushstrokes are swift and relatively loose, rapid and flowing, such that transparent layers of ink
build upon one another. This ink wash technique is especially visible in the large, expansive visual
planes of the painting: in the faces of more distant mountains, for instance, and the stretch of
tranquil water, Xu Daoning masters the technique to such a degree that his brushstrokes disappear
into the fluid composition and wide expanse of the painting. Virtually erasing the traces of the
process of composition creates sense of depth that is inherently natural and fundamentally mimetic
in its elegant organicism. Rather than evince their status as created, painted objects, the ink-washed
mountains in “Evening Song” appear as commanding natural forces that exist by virtue of their
solidity and nobility and presence – the naturalness of their composition thus legitimates their form.
Xu Daoning heightens this permeating sense of the undiluted, fluid natural by manipulating
atmosphere – and thereby blurring the boundaries between visibility and invisibility – with the
effect of expanding the world of the painting beyond its materials limitations. There exists a hint of
nighttime fog floating, mistily permeable and silkily dense, in the background of the painting: the
far peaks of distant mountains are obscured by shrouds of cloud, and even some of the closer crags
effuse a haziness that indicates a sort of atmospheric film overlaying the entire work. This sense of
atmosphere directly interacts with the varying types of outlines present in the painting: trees and
densely foliaged mountaintops, in addition to some more textured areas of mountainsides, are firmly
demarcated with dark ink, while the interior contours of mountains and distant forms in the
background feature fleshier, broader and lighter lines by contrast. This interweaving of dark and
light pigments, of sharp, attenuated lines and soft, generous ones not only makes visceral the
textural differences of different surfaces within the painting, but on a broader level, intensifies and
visualizes the interaction of natural forms with their atmospheric surroundings. The relative
sharpness or smoothness of lines reveals the presence of an atmospheric dimension that mediates
presentation within the painting itself.
The vaguely mirror-like composition of the work further shapes space within the painting as
balanced, unbounded, and ultimately, navigable. “Evening Song” features two central peaks that,
while strictly unequal in size (the right cluster reaches slightly higher than the left cluster)
nonetheless appear as a sort of harmonious doubling that lends balance to the painting in totality. In
the background, this aesthetic mirroring is continued as distant peaks rise at quite equal intervals,
flanking one another at corollary, regular points. Even the cluster of trees in the bottom right corner
is mirrored by a smaller cluster in the bottom left - thus the painting is imparted with a strong sense
of equilibrium that develops its sense of delicate strength, of misty solidity. Such a sense of
equilibrium further stabilizes the space within the painting, rendering it sprawling and continuous,
but inherently navigable. Specifically, the smaller, less detailed objects in the background
emphasize the painting’s spirit of infinite continuity: the work seems to continue forever in all
directions, peaks and trees are “cut off” by the end of the scroll indicating unimpeded continuation.
Xu Daoning directs viewers’ sight to this depth: his vast, boundless environment encourages
onlookers to peer through the painting to the limitless expanse beyond, but prevents such a visual
navigation from being destabilizing or disconcerting through the fundamental equilibrium of his
work. Elegantly, masterfully, Xu Daoning offers visual pathways that extend through and beyond
his individual work.
The brushwork required to compose such a masterful piece of art is intensely skillful, highly
difficult, and the result of extensive practice. In his ninth century Notes on the Art of the Brush,
painter Jing Hao expounded upon the theory and philosophy of brushwork idea through an
allegorical interaction between a young, untutored, over-confident narrator-painter and a old, rustic,
artistic sage, As ventriloquized through the old rustic, one of Jing Hao’s central conclusions is that
the true, divine landscapes form and depict reality by eliminating artificiality through movement.
This paradigm of truth-through-movement permeates all aspects of a painting: to achieve “real”
landscape painting, movement should be present in the grasping of the fullness of reality prior
during the stage of inspiration, during the painting’s composition, and within the painting itself.
Perhaps obviously, advanced brushwork, and especially techniques of ink wash, were not at
all intuitive concepts to beginning painters: at the opening of the story, for example, the narrator
draws over “ten thousand trees,” yet none are correctly formed. To attain mastery in brushwork,
artists must undertake an arduous process of technical instruction, the culmination of which should
produce brush skills that embody reality. And true reality, Jing Hao argues, is not just
verisimilitude; instead, “reality means that both spirit and substance are strong” such that that
outward appearance is conveyed in addition to inner essence. Thus the artist must first understand
the nature of reality in its fullness before even beginning to paint - and “only after learning these
fundamentals of nature” can the artist subsequently begin instruction on the “art of the brush” and
the technicalities of composition.
However, Jing Hao argues, even when an artist has indeed perfected these technicalities of
brushwork, his creative trajectory is not yet fully perfected. Instead, when the methods of the brush
are too obvious or overpowering, the inner essence of a painted object is lost and the “image is
dead.” In fact, seemingly counterintuitive to his highly technical conclusion, Jing Hao relates that
real landscape painting should not evince a rule-bound, structured, artificial process of creation – in
fact, “only when you reach a state of forgetting the technical matters of brush and ink,” he writes,
“Do you achieve real landscape painting.” this is the key component of Jing Hao’s artistic
philosophy: after grasping reality in its fullness, and after achieving virtuosity in the technical
aspects of brushwork to communicate the reality, the artist must finally overcome the artificiality of
the process he just learned and make his object – and his process – appear natural. In order to
preserve the vitality of his work, the learned artist must subsequently “forget” what he has been
taught regarding the process of artistic depiction, so that his objects in his work “appear natural, as
if they had not been done with a brush.” Only by disintegrating this boundary of artificiality
between process and product – between the technicalities of brushwork composition and the
resultant landscape – can a vital, true landscape can be achieved.
And ultimately, Jing Hao indicates, movement will effect this disintegration. He instructs his
readers to “regard brushwork neither as substance nor as form but rather as movement, like flying or
driving.” Rather than a pattern of technicalities and stipulations, Jing Hao conceives of true
brushwork as a natural, dynamic gesture – something inherently naturally in and of itself.
Movement of the brush and within the painting itself destroys artificiality and fuses process and the
product in vital union: movement in composition depicts objects with “vital energy and dynamic
configuration,” while movement within the painting reveals “impressions of the far and near” and
thus creates traversable spaces in which viewers can roam. For Jing Hao, the true landscape is a
landscape that is the result and embodiment of movement, and by extension, of the fullness of
reality.
An intriguing analytical question arises: does Xu Daoning’s landscape adhere to the ideals
espoused by Jing Hao? Does “Evening Song” reflect Jing Hao's paradigm of movement as means to
truth? Ultimately, Jing Hao’s values do indeed map onto Xu Daoning’s work – the only discrepancy
is a slightly unnatural contrast between heaviness and levity in the transition spaces between water
and mountain in the foreground of the painting. Besides this relatively isolated instance of
dissonance, however, Xu Daoning’s skillful depiction of boundless depth eliminates extends the
scope of the painting into the limitless beyond. Skillful ink wash eliminates al traces of artificiality,
all evidence of human composition - evincing a harnessing of full reality through harmony of
outward appearance and inner spirit that coheres with Jing Hao. Indeed, the delicate translucence of
the ink wash almost perfectly coheres with Jing Hao’s injunction to eliminate overt compositional
features and make objects appear “as if they had not been done with a brush.”
The simplicity and balance of the scene – a series of peaks with human figures minimized in
the foreground – adheres to Jing Hao’s precepts that unnecessary elements should be eliminated,
and that essentials should be represented to their full vitality. Indeed, the serenity of the scene is
anchored by the solid mountain forms in the foreground and bolstered by the atmospheric peaks in
the distance, creating a depth invigorating in its profundity. Xu Daoning masterfully depicts
“impressions of far and near,” cohering gracefully with Jing Hao’s stipulations, in this sense
inviting viewers to traverse the terrain with their eyes and move within and through the painting
itself. In this sense, Xu Daoning creates a sort of three-fold sense of motion that classifies the
landscape as divine by Jing Hao’s standards: brushwork-as-motion is evident in the expert ink wash
of the painting’s composition, motion is evident in the atmospheric rendering of the work’s depth,
and motion is facilitated on the part of the viewer partaking of the scene.
The single exception to Jing Hao’s values as manifested in “Evening Song” occurs in the
areas of the painting where water meets mountain. In these spaces, the water – smooth and nearly
transparent due to expert layers of ink wash – seems to either melt or dissolve into the base in a
manner that inelegant and confusing to the structure and texture of the painting. This peculiarly
inelegant section portrays a stagnancy anomalous for Xu Daoning and the rest of the painting: the
water does not move fluidly, and in motion interact with the solidity of the mountain, but rather
appears to simply disappear. This inconsistency, while not one of high impact or intense caliber,
does complicate the relative weight of the depicted objects. Is the water, once assumed fluid,
connected to the heaviness and solidity of the mountains? Or alternatively, is the heft of the
mountains siphoned as a result of being intertwined with the water? If Xu Daoning had more clearly
depicted the liminal spaces in which water meets land, either with more vigorous shading or
differences in line, Jing Hao’s principle of motion would be paid nearly full homage.
In “Fisherman’s Evening Song,” Xu Daoning achieves an artistic feat: he creates a
boundless space within an inherently bounded one. By harnessing motion in composition,
representation, and presentation, Xu Daoning minimizes traces of his own process of creation and
gracefully emulates Jing Hao’s ideal of true, vital reality through landscape painting. Wandering
amidst an infinity, roaming into the beyond, viewers partake in this reality – in motion themselves,
facing art as alive as they.