Appreciating Chinese Art -
With Artist Wong Teng Hee

by Leong Tuck Yee

Owl, the Guard in the Silent Night. The night is extremely cold. Frost is everywhere. A lonely owl is perching on a "withering"tree, shivering while trying to keep warm. Accompanied only by the silent moon unsympathetic to its plight, the owl sends out its nightly calls. One cannot help but feel the profound sadness on its drawn-out calls.

Recently, a landscape painting by Li Keran has been auctioned for 9 million Yuan! (about RM4.5 million) Interest in Chinese art has increased manifold lately, but, despite this, Chinese brush paintings still remain a mystery to many foreigners and English-speaking Chinese. Even those steeped in western art find it difficult to enjoy the artistic values in these paintings.

"To appreciate Chinese art," veteran artist-calligrapher-teacher Wong Teng Hee says, "one must first put aside all his notions and knowledge of western art and understand how these arts have developed and evolved." Wong had recently held a retrospective exhibition at the Wisma Kebudayaan SGM.

Western art has grown out of architecture, sculpture and science while Chinese art rose out of philosophy and literature. The former seeks to capture the three-dimensional realism as presented by the objects before the artists’ eyes while the later seeks a beauty that depends on thinking abilities and imagination to create a story or see visions evoked by paintings. An artist from the western tradition generally paints what he sees from the eye level but a Chinese artist likes to look at the world from the top, a viewpoint which Wong emphasised can be fresher, much broader and all-inclusive.

Plum Blossom & Carps exemplifies this difference in viewpoint perfectly. In a glance, this painting looks ridiculously wrong. It looks as though the carps are "flying" up towards the branches, defying the laws of gravity. But viewed according to the Chinese viewpoint, it makes sense. We are standing next to a plum branch looking down into a pool of carps, viewing them from the top.

A Chinese painting can be realistic depending on the artist but it takes imagination to see and feel a sheet of ice between the carps and the branch, the vibrating, fleeting shadows of the flowers on the ice and the hungry gaping mouths of the carps below. By accepting this viewpoint, one begins unlocking the process of appreciation, the painting becomes his, allowing him to further discover deeper artistic concepts, evocation of images and finally arriving at the philosophy or message imbedded within. Almost all the time, such philosophic messages are found at the heart of Chinese art. The painting is part of a vehicle to convey them to the viewers in a memorable way. With these messages, the paintings are in turn enriched and made sublime with layers of depth.

Stone and Peony. As with many other objects found in a Chinese painting, peonies, which bloom during the Chinese New Year, symbolise prosperity and a possiblity of becoming government officials. The yellowish type in the midle is extremely rare, which makes them priceless. Many such peonies are grown in Luoyang, China. But it is very far away, separated from Malaysia by numerous mountains and valleys. So painting this flower allows us to appreciate the flower's beauty right here and to recall those flowers in Luoyang.

Feel It

Now that one has understood why Chinese paintings look they way they are, the very next step is to allow free flow to Wong’s natural, honest responses to the paintings. Not only does this tell him whether he likes the painting or not, making a good initial selection. Through continuously looking at the painting at different times, one discovers different layers of meanings, experience variations of emotions and see new visions.

This feeling part or first impression is in fact so supreme that artistic elements such as composition, colour, saturation, hue, 3-D effects, light and shadow and perspective become secondary means to convey and enhance the intended emotions, while so-called "inconsistencies" and "illogical bits" are forgiven and ignored.

A good Chinese painting captures not only some likeness of the subject but its "qi" or strong life-force, essence or even spirituality. Landscape paintings make good examples of how artists express their respect and wonder of nature. Here, human beings are usually very small in comparison to the mountains, rivers and clouds, painted thus to express their philosophy of man existing in perfect harmony with nature. Bamboos in paintings can grow out of white paper but the point is to symbolically emphasise the scholars’ versatility, adaptability and above all resilience to compromise themselves for material benefits.

In a specific example, Owl, the Guard in the Silent Night, Wong has combined his imagination and what he actually observed to produce a painting that speaks of immense cold in a frosty night. The owl may look sketchy, the tree a little odd and the moon a wee bit too reddish, but look beyond all that, read the accompanying poem or verse and one cannot help feeling the terrible loneliness and cold. Those watchful eyes would haunt and fill him with insomniacs’ fear of staying wide awake at night. Some viewers might even swear hearing the hoots in their mind. When a painting captures our attention and makes us feel in a certain way and see visions particular to each viewer, the artist has succeeded in his endeavour to bring the painting alive.

The More Technical Bits

One of the most obvious elements differing from western art is the colours used. Many would say that Chinese paintings lack colours, but it helps to understand that their philosophy plays a huge role in this choice to give their paintings a comfortable, soothing, modest and conservative look, emphasising harmony. Different shades of black ink are used to represent colours. The ability to evoke colours in viewers’ minds with only ink is their achievement. Furthermore, to express an emotion, an artist may use any colours that suit him, not necessarily those of the objects and times of the day.

Another essential element of utmost importance is obviously the use of brush. It shows not only an artist’s talent and skills but also his character, learning and philosophy. An artist ought to be well-trained in calligraphy and this continuous training will show in his strokes - powerful, controlled and confident. As painting is done on thin paper which does not allow any corrections, his strokes must all the more be certain. In addition, some books recommend 30 different stroke styles for landscape painting and 18 for portrait.

A true artist would not be complete without an ability in composing poems or verses to accompany his paintings. How well the poems complement the paintings or how well the paintings bring out the spirit of the poems shows his sensitivity and richness of his artistic thoughts and feelings. They are also used to give hints of the deeper layers of meanings where pictures fail to do so.

The last of the four elements in Chinese art is the use of seals. A good artist usually carves his own seals which he affixes to the painting by using red ink. These red stamps are evidences of certification and may bear the names of the artist or information about the history of the paintings. Properly balanced, these red marks enhance the beauty of the paintings by giving them some accents.

A final word must be mentioned about the surfaces used, paper being the most common one. There are many types of paper and each has its rate of absorbency. Hence the amount of ink and water being loaded onto the brush and the amount of time (usually very little) the brush touches the paper is of crucial importance. How far the ink will spread on paper must also be calculated. All this has to be done in splits of a second and a mistake along the line would spoil the entire creation. To further appreciate this technical virtuosity, it is highly recommended that one tries one’s hand on actual painting.

[ Courtesy October 2007 Cosmic]