Way of the Brush. Fritz van Briessen

      ORIENTAL ART is less familiar to us than we assume, for we are always comparing it with our own, never making any serious attempt to understand it on its genuine terms. As a matter of fact, we like it to remain obscure so we can regard it as some exotic bloom whose very strangeness excites us. The Western mind often finds Japanese and Chinese psychology quite incomprehensible, and it is almost as if we were trying to prove their art equally incomprehensible. Thus we are inclined to fall back on the artistic conventions and aesthetic traditions of our own hemisphere.

      Being only too happy to accept Oriental art, and particularly painting, as finally inexplicable, we agree to call its works beautiful or impressive or masterly merely because they seem so by our Western standards. In consequence we necessarily miss certain essentials of this art.

      There is a danger both of not understanding and of misunderstanding. I believe, however, that a key does exist which not only opens the door to this strange world, but also charts a way through it.

      Admittedly, attempts have been made, often and successfully, to promote an understanding of Oriental art, but only dealing with its more superficial characteristics. Using Japanese and Chinese sources, the historical evolution of Oriental art has been investigated and described. Its aesthetics have been analyzed through studies of the works of Oriental painters and scholars, and co-ordinated into a system. Efforts have been made to discover the common traits within Japanese and Chinese culture and philosophy on the one hand and their artistic expression on the other. Finally, certain studies have been devoted to the techniques of Oriental art, though these were not very thorough. But all this explorative work which is accessible to us in the West still remains incomplete. Besides, most of it was intended for those who already had some previous knowledge on the subject. It ignored the wider circle of educated laymen who wish to understand Oriental art not merely from the base of their familiarity with its Western counterpart, but also as an expression of Oriental thought.

      Since the major works of Oriental art are known in the West almost exclusively through reproductions which obscure practically all the essential features of that art, we have very little real acquaintance with it. The educated man who is impulsively attracted by these works might become disillusioned if presented with yet another book only repeating, with slightly different emphases, what has already been said before. He may not feel that he is getting any closer to the understanding he is seeking.

      The Western art lover looks at a Western work of art and asks certain questions: What style is it? What is its historical date? Who is it by? What does it mean? How good is it? But when he looks at a work of Oriental art, he does not dare to ask such questions. Confronted with a Chinese painting, he has the depressing feeling that he can neither judge whether the painting is good or bad, old or new, an original or a copy, nor tell whether it is Chinese or Japanese. There is hardly a book on the subject which will help him. To this day even our university seminars cannot solve these problems without a great deal of fumbling and innumerable qualifications. Admittedly, a circumspect solution is often impossible, and usually difficult. In fact, one ought to be rather suspicious of any Western expert who, when examining an early Chinese painting, will pass unhesitating judgment on its origin or even on its genuineness.

      In spite of this situation there are many ways of helping the educated Westerner to achieve closer understanding of Oriental art. We Westerners are not necessarily confined to taking Japanese or Chinese painting at its face value, muttering vaguely how beautiful it is, quite unable to express adequately what we like about it, and without the least comparative notion of how a Japanese or a Chinese would react toward it. We are not compelled to remain so ignorant that we have to content ourselves with the mere impression a painting makes, without ever understanding its symbolic value or the charm of its technical perfection.

      It is interesting to note that a Chinese work of art is more often mistaken for a Japanese one than the other way round. This can probably be explained by the fact that most judgments on Chinese art accessible to us in recent years have been Japanese. Hence, even for Chinese art, Japanese terms are used. Chinese scrolls are often referred to as kakemono, and people still occasionally call a Chinese landscape painting a sansui, which is nothing but a Japanese version of the Chinese word shan-shui. This is true also of many other technical terms. As a result, changes in the evaluation of Chinese art have occurred either merely through the use of Japanese versions of Chinese terms or through their normal change of meaning in a new environment.

      In our consideration of Oriental art, especially painting, we find ourselves faced with two alternatives. We can abandon all attempts to gain deeper understanding as a seemingly unattainable goal or, starting from the very simplest level, we can try to work our way toward better knowledge in the hope that we shall finally uncover at least part of that art's secret. It is the second alternative that has been chosen for this book.

      There is no reason why Chinese painting should not, for once, be approached in this modest way: from the very beginning. The course of its development and the pageant of its great names have often been set out and will be repeated here only to the extent necessary for dealing with the specific questions that shall concern us: What technical means does the Chinese painter use to produce his paintings? What does he mean by style? What are the basic conventions he follows in his painting? What meaning does he wish his paintings to have? And, finally, what purely technical or symbolic methods does he use to express that meaning?

      All of these questions, of course, as well as their answers, are equally germane for Japan, or at least for that large part of Japanese painting that found its first and greatest inspiration in China. Even though the Japanese thereafter assimilated and subtly transmuted this borrowing, enlarging and transforming its techniques until the art became a true expression of native Japanese genius, even to this day the painting of the two countries, and their calligraphy as well, retains such fundamental affinities as to justify our considering them as similar aspects of a single artistic tradition, a single river of art only occasionally separated into two main streams by numerous small islands and a few large ones. Hence the reader should keep in mind that, with the exception of certain differences to be discussed hereafter, when we speak of Chinese painting we are likewise including its Japanese manifestations. Needless to say, however, our main emphasis shall be upon the Chinese origins of this river, since it was there that the tradition had its birth.

      My attempts to approach Oriental painting from the new angle suggested by these questions were met by the invaluable co-operation of the Peking landscape painter P'u Ch'üan or, to use the studio name by which he is commonly known, P'u Sung-chuang. Starting in 1944, we spent countless hours in discussion. With unending patience and the subtlest insight he then translated the verbal results of our sessions into pictorial terms. Thus we assembled well over a hundred sketches illustrating in a modern and easily understandable manner the elements, techniques, and principles of traditional Chinese painting. The sketches were intended to assist those art lovers who had never had any contact with Chinese life and culture, who had never handled for any length of time the Chinese brush. It must be admitted that these sketches, although done with the purpose of illustrating traditional elements, also contained much of the painter's own unique personal style, the unmistakable trait which even the finest copyist