CALIFORNIA STA'rE UNIVERSI'l'Y, NORTHRIDGE
LANDSCAPE
\\
An abstract submitted in partial. satisfaction c,f the
requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in
Art
by
Erh Yuan
June, 1979
The Abstract of Erh Yuan is approved:
California State University, Northridge
ii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Abstract
1
Bibliography
10
List of Illustrations
11
iii
ABSTRACT
LANDSCAPE
by
Erh Yuan
Master of Arts in Art
Born in China into a traditional Chinese family, I was
taught that landscape is the best of all art forms •. As I
have grown up, I have found that landscape has an overwhelming power over me.
I am always attracted by its mys-·
terious beauty and the cosmic rhythm which it embodies.
When creating a landscape piece, I feel that I am very
close to the spirit of Tao, which is the way to pursue
naturalness, the highest attainment of art.
Initially I
meant naturalness in the classic sense of harmony with the
cosmic.
The following lines from TAO TE CHING of Laotzu
may better express my meaning.
The ways
by those
The ways
by those
The ways
of
of
of
of
of
men were conditioned
earth;
earth were conditioned
heaven;
heaven by those of Tao;
1
2
and the ways of Tao by Naturalness.
(Tuz-jan)l
Thus, about two and a half years ago, when I started a
nostalgic series of woven Chinese landscapes called
HO~E
and then another series of local vistas called VALLEY, I
believed that,
••• painting(art) .•• (was) an extension of the art of living for
the practice of the tao of painting .is part of the traditional
tao of conduct and thought of
living ~n harmony with the laws
of Tao.L-
The process I followed in creating art was as follows.
Once I had arrived at my subject, and after making
sketches, I usually meditated for a long time and then
tried very hard to perfect that sketch and its woven form
in order to harmonize with cosmic principle.
tice produced work that was tensionless.
This prac-
The viewer could
look at any part and find himself very relaxed and peaceful.
I believed that the harmony in life would be re-
flected by harmony in the work of art itself.
I also
believed the value of an art piece lay in how morally
spiritual it could make the artist and viewer feel.
1.
Harold Osborne, "The Aesthetics of Chinese Pictorial
Art," in AESTHETICS AND ART THEOHY, p. 116.
2.
Mai-mai Sze, THE TAO OF PAINTING,
GARDEN MANUAL OF PAINTING.
~'liTH
THE MUSTARD SEED
J
I agreed with Harold Osborne, the author of THE AESTHETICS OF CHINESE PICTORIAL AR1' that:
This idea of painting as an activity
which at once brings the artist into
unity with and makes manifest the
cosmic principle of Tao lies at the
root of Chinese thinking about art,
whether it is described as the cultivation of character, the expression
of personality, or the search for the
essence of things. It is essentially a non-naturalistic conception of
art •••• The cultivation and practice
of painting were thought of as a
ritualistic activity creating an embodiment of the cos~ic force of order
which infuses all reality, human society, and individual personality.
While the VJestern artist typically
aimed to produce a replica of reality,
actual, imagined, or ideal, the
Chinese artist-although he might in
fact do this-made it his first aim to
bring his own personality into keeping with the cosmic principle so that
the Tao would be expressed through
him, and thus in his painting he
would act in unison with the natural
order and his work would be imbued
with and would reflect the Tao.J
I kept working under that concept for a year until one day
I found I could not continue.
I found that since I no
longer lived in China, my life style had changed.
Here,
unlike China, I have to fight to get whatever I want.
This highly industrialized western world robs everyone of
time and dreams.
I began to question whether that perfect
world that Chinese artists have been pursuing for so many
J.
Harold Osborne, "The Aesthetics of Chinese Pictorial
Art," in AESTHETICS AND ART THEORY, p.l05.
4
thousands of years exists or not.
I changed.
The concept
of a harmonious picture plane was no longer useful to me.
I wanted to express whatever emotional perturbations I
happened to experience.
To me, good art work should mani-
fest what the artist wants it to manifest.
Trying to free
myself from the traditional, I tried to work as spontaneously as I c<mld.
By
cutting paper, pouring hot wax and
dye, drawing with crayon on surfaces, I did two large
pieces: TREE and
roNQ.
The process was wonderful; I felt
that I was really divorcing myself from tradition and that
I had found a better way to express my feelings.
the pieces themselves did not satisfy me.
However,
I wanted some-
thing more structured, something more like my
ea:rli~r
pieces and yet more direct and energetic like the more
recent wax pieces.
Fiber was still the media I liked most
so I began to work on large tapestries.
The Chinese point of view about art was still inside
me, but at the time being I tried to forget it.
Thus, I
have shortened the meditation time because from my past
experiences, I have found that the longer I meditate the
more decorative the work will be.
Instead, I now prefer
my works to be strong and direct.
They must still be one
with my life but I want them to convey the intensity of
the anger, fear and excitement that I feel.
with the old Chinese saying which Arthur
I disagreed
~valey
quotes in
5
THE WAY AND ITS POWER (1935):
Closely associated with the art of
the mind is the art of nurturing
ch'i, the life spirit. Fear, pettiness, meanness- all those qualities
which pollute the "temple of the
mind"- are due to a shrinkage of the
life spirit.4
I do not mind expressing my fear, my pittiness. or my
meaness.
If these are true feelings I do not think they
can be wrong.
I carry my fear and anger to my pieces be-
cause I think I have to face them in order to conquer them.
I do not want to pretend that they are nonexistent.
Pre-
tending is the only thing that will shrink my life spirit.
To face an imperfect world and creat imperfect artwork is
the only way an artist can reach the truth which I believe
is the Tao of the universe.
In that case:
The valiant, the magnanimous, the
strong of will are those whose ch'i
pervades the whole body, down to
the very toes and fingertips. A
great well of energy must be stored
within, "a fountain that never dries,"
giving strength and firmess to every
sinew and joint.5
Under that concept, I made CANYON and BEACH which are about
my-own psyche and my philosophy of life.
Before I put the show together, I thought that I had
changed to another person.
After putting it together, I
4.
Arthur Waley, THE WAY AND ITS POV.JER.
5.
Ibid.
6
found out that the only change in my pieces was the form.
The concept of my art is still the same, which is a way of
expressing Chinese philosophy in art.
Agnes E. Meyer ex-
plained this concept in CHINESE PAINTING AS REFLECTED IN
THE THOUGHT AND ART OF LI LUNG-MIEN:
In this way the Taoist artist achieved
••• a metaphysical reality, and expressed
it more accurately than language ever
could, in a.smuch as words are more elusive than forms and spaces. They painted
reason- succeeded in expressing organically a whole system of philosophic
thought.b
Max Lohr said, "The system of philosophic thought referred
to is, of course, that of Taoism."?
And the artists who
express Tao, which is " ••. a notion which Rowley explained
as embodying the concept of the realms of spirit and of
matter of being one . .. B, are 'l'aoist artist.
Good Chinese
artists are considered to be Taoist artists.
All my works
are dominated by this traditional Chinese concept of art.
Rowley put it further in his CHINESE PAINTING:
••• that art would tend to take over
the funtions of religion and philosophy, and would become the prime
vehicle for man's most profound
thoughts and his feelings about the
6.
Agnes E. Meyer, CHI~ESE PAINTING AS REFLECTED IN THE
THOUGHT AND AR'l OF LI LUNG-lVliEN, p.l84.
1
7.
Max Lohr, "Chinese Landscape and Its Real Content,"
in RICE UNIVERSITY STUDIES, Vol. 59, No. 4, FOUR VIE!wvS
OF CHINA, p. 67.
8.
George Rowley, PRINCIPLES OF CHINESE PAINTING.
7
mystery of the universe.9
It is ironic that I struggled a long time to find a
better way of expression, and found out, at last, that
what I want to express is only Taoism in another formthat Taoism which was already in my earlier works.
Tao is the same
Tao~
The
the only difference is in the ex-
pression of the Tao.
I am impressed by one paragraph in a lecture lVIax Lohr
gave at Rice University, Texas, about Chinese landscape
painting and its content and about the 14th century artist
Wang IVIing:
A painting of this kind, with its
restless, crowded forms, combines
much of the artist's own psyche with
archaistic reminiscences; symbolic
values, ••• As for its content, the
painter's otherwise inaccessible
inner world counts above all else;
his archaistic reference ranks next;
the motif of mountainscape takes
third place. "Inner world," of
course, is an inference, something
the viewer imagines he reads in the
picture but actually reads into it.
The reality is the style of the
painting, created by the painter,
and therefore revealing- plasticly,
but not verbally.lO
9.
George Rowley, PRINCIPLES OF CHINESE PAINTING, p.5.
10. Max Lohr, "Chinese Landscape and Its Real Content,"
p. 86.
8
I felt very close to
~\lang
Ming, and the inner world he
tried to achieve in his works is wh.at I always try to pursue in my works.
Moreover, the landscape motif is not
that important to me either.
It is a form I only always
use to express myself.
Since the Chinese avoided allegory,
thought would somehow have to be
expressed the way of concrete :1ubject
matter, such as a tree, a rock, or a
landscape. Apparently, therefore, we
are expected to be able to read a
Chinese picture like a book and comprehend at once what it has to say,
its expression, its meaning, or its
content.ll
My works are all about landscape because I believe
there are objective laws in landscape.
Mondrian thought it necessary to
eschew representation and restrict
himself to geometric design in the
attainment of these laws, the Chinese
assumed that the objective rules
and rhythm are embodied in all things
as the principle of their growth or
structure and the representational
artist must identify himself with
them.l2
According to Susanne Langer, "all forms in art are abstracted forms" but "abstracted only to be made clearly
apparent" in order to "act as symbols, to become ex-
11.
Max Lohr, "Chinese Landscape and Its Real Content,"
p.
12.
67.
Harold O~'borne, "The Aesthetics of Chinese Pictorial
Art," in AESTHETICS AND ART THEORY, p. 110.
9
pressive of human feeling."lJ
Naturalism can never apply
in my works; I do not want to imitate the beauty of landscape.
I only hope that through landscape I can express
the spirit and essence of my philosophy of life in my
pieces.
Through my effort in searching for different formsj I
have finally come to understand Tao.
I shall keep working
on one body of work in order to build up my experiences
and to reach the highest level of art- Chen, which is:
the idea of effortlessness in execution and the idea of naturalness
in the sense that the action of
painting would seem to take place
of its oyu accord like a natural
process.
.
and that is what Laotzu meant when he said, "the ways of
Tao by Naturalness".
52,
p.
50.
lJ.
Susanne Langer, FEELING AND FORM, p.
14.
Harold Osborne, "The Aesthetics of Chinese Pictorial
Art," in AESTHETICS AND ART THEORY, p. 116.
10
BIBLIOGRAPHY
langer, Susanne.
FEELING AND FORM.
New York, 1953.
Lohr, Max. "Chinese Landscape and Its Real Content," RICE
UNIVERSITY STUDI~S, Vol. 59, No. 4, FOUR VIEWS OF CHINA.
Edited by Robert A. Kapp, Published by William Marsh,
Rice University, Houston, Texas, Fall, 1973.
Meyer, Agnes E. • QI1_IN~SJL_PAINTING AS REFLECTED IN THE
JHOUQ.HT AI\ID AR'I~ Ol':_ J_,I _1_yNll-Ivii£N. New York, 1923.
Osborne, Harold. AESTHI~rriCS AND ART THEORY.
& Co., Inc. New York, 1970.
E. P. DUTTON
Rowley, George. PRINCIPLES OF CHINESE PAINTING.
University Press, 1947.
Princeton
Sze, M.a.i-mai. THE TAO OF PAHFriNG, ~HTH THE MUSTARD SEED
GARDEN .MANUAL OF PAINTING . .London: Routeledge & Kegan
Paul, 195?.
Waley, Arthur.
Unwin, 1934.
!!IE WAY Atf"D ITS POiJIJER.
London: Allen
&
11
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Home I
12
Home II
13
Home III
14
Valley I
15
Valley I, Detail
16
Valley
17
T
.l.,
Detail
Valley II
18
Tree
19
Tree, Detail
20
--~Gnu-------------------
21
Pond, Detail
22
Canyon
23
Beach
24
12
HOME I
31 in x 24 in
13
HOME II
46 in x 26 in
14
HOME III
34 in x 22 in
15
VALLEY I
11 in x 7 in
16
VALLEY I, Detail
VALLEY I, Detail
/
18
VALLEY II
llt in x
5 t in
19
37i in x
78~
in
-
----------- --
""
20
TREE, Detail
21
50 in x 50 in
22
__ ,
POND
Detail
23
CANYON
62 in x 79 in
24
BEACH
52 inx 72 in