I encountered a code-red smog warning for the first time when I arrived in Beijing on a trip there in December 2015 to attend the “Reshaping Tradition” on-site creation group exhibition at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. This first experience of being enveloped by a blanket of air pollution and dust, and the shock to the visual and olfactory senses of not being able to see one’s own fingers and sense of airways tightening jolted me back into the world of mortals from the ethereal Peach Blossom Spring paradise of the Jinshan countryside.
In direct view of the window in my assigned dormitory room at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing was a smokestack, behind which were the residential high rises of the citizenry. In fact, this type of air pollution and dust is a daily occurrence here.
How can I use ink “wash” to express the visceral experience of pollution in the real world after this overwhelming somatosensory experience? Millennia of traditional ink art theory have been of a brush and ink aesthetic in praise of the beauty of nature. I sensed a discrepancy between classical ink art aesthetics and the sensory reality of the present. The breathing brush and ink in the ink art chapters are entirely out of sync with the gasping breath in present reality.
Determined to face my realistic senses, I engaged in a dialogue with the ancients in the on-site creation for the group exhibition at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing to express the phenomenon of air pollution through another form of expression that replaces the visual sense with the olfactory sense. Hence, a “fiery ink” focused on charring began to take shape in my mind.
That smokestack outside the dormitory window provided inspiration. In response to the imagery of this smokestack, I purchased a hundred sheets of xuan (rice) paper which I began to burn at the workshop of a local artist. The burning roll of paper resembled the quotidian chimneys used for heating in Beijing as well as the chimneys in industrial areas that emit exhaust gases. Under Bejing’s purple haze, I collected the ashes of the half-charred xuan paper. This will be my medium for the on-site production of “fiery ink” at the exhibition.
I intentionally chose the circular tiled area at center of the exhibition space in Building 7 of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, representing Beijing’s Temple of Heaven. Wielding the charred xuan paper ash in my hand, I began my emulation of the Guo Xi masterpiece Early Spring from the Northern Song Dynasty with its emphasis on the “extract with the body directly from the mountains and streams” perspective. The scorched, burnt scent of xuan paper ash replaced the glistening moisture in the ink wash shanshui landscape imagery. The charred xuan paper ash represents the microscopic PM2.5 carbon particles released into the air after burning. In Beijing, the “moistened ink” of the ink work Early Spring representing the imperial landscape has been replaced by a version of Early Spring rendered in the “arid ink” of fiery ink.
In this simulated Temple of Heaven, I have reverentially placed the remaining xuan paper ash on the ground. Some of the charred rolls of xuan paper have been placed upright, and some laid flat; yet others have been unfurled on a temporary pedestal, as though in a ceremonial arena in a rite for climate change.
Chapter the Second_ Comparison of Ancient and Modern: Taiwan
An Olfactory Contemplation of Ink I began living in the humid countryside of Jinshan Town in Northern Taiwan in 1992. Facing the sea with the mountains behind me, the sense of misty, moistened air was a source of inspiration for creating the earlier works in my Discrete Islands series. The slick ink in my brushwork was a response to my corporeal senses as I breathed in vast mistiness.
But when my return to Taiwan after a week in Beijing coincided with the Beijing smog shifting to Taiwan due to a northeasterly monsoon. Located on the northeast coast of Taiwan, Jinshan is a windward region. Air pollution knows no boundaries, and drifts in all directions according to seasonal winds. There is no escape to a Peach Blossom Spring paradise. Carbon emissions disseminate in the air currents. Even life in the countryside does not provide a bulwark against the all-pervasive effects of air pollution.
I was inattentive to the fact that smog has long existed in my daily life. Driving along Provincial Highway 74 on a visit to the Mailiao Sixth Naphtha Cracking Petrochemical Industrial District in Yunlin, I encountered the endless smog that obscured the sky and scenery. This vast whiteness was unclean, the dusty fog was not romantic at all. Driving my car, I was among those creating air pollution, living in an era when air is exchanged for convenience. “Fiery ink” is a response to the era, as well as my repentance. I knew then that I must continue in “fiery ink.”
What are the “two methods of ink respiration”? There are two types of breath in daily life today: when fresh, damp mist comes, we open our mouths to draw deep breaths; when smog of Particulate Matter PM2.5 descends, we cover our mouths with masks and take shallow breaths.
“Brush and ink” have always belonged to the visual sense; however, when Guo Xi of the Song Dynasty proposed the perspective of creating seasonal shanshui landscapes that “extract from bodily immersion in the mountains and streams” to retain a moist atmosphere in his work Early Spring, it was an effort to pivot the moist ink within the painting toward the corporeal sense of breathing the steam and mist of early spring. Do possibilities exist for us to express ink of a different olfactory sense through our bodily sensations? One that is related to the sense of breath in the present moment? If we remain mindful of the effects of the corporeal senses in shanshui; if we no longer rely solely on brush and ink of the visual sense in painting shanshui; and instead, bring our olfactory bodies into the mountains and streams in our extraction, then what is the shanshui landscape created from respiring in the mist or smog?
In my Moist and Burnt: As Ink Breathes solo exhibition held in TKG in Neihu in 2017, I created another official edition of Fiery Ink, Displacing Guo Xi's Early Spring, No.2 emulated in its original size and exhibited as a more comprehensive installation. At the same time, I created additional fiery ink emulation works that comprise a series.
Integration of Vessel and Air: The Installation Metaphor
Three works in the Fiery Ink series are contained in transparent boxes. These include Fiery Ink, Displacing Frosty Forest Amid Snowy Landscape by Fan KuanFiery Ink, Displacing Wait to Cross a Mountain Stream by Guan Tong), and Fiery Ink, Displacing The Guo Xi's Travelers in Autumn Mountains. In the “Grand Vessel Chapter” of the Qijing (Sutra of Vessels), it was written: “The heaven and earth contained a vessel, and then life emerged. The breath has its vessel, the vessel has breath. The vessel and breath are one.” Air is contained within vessels. The heaven, earth, mountains and waters are vessels. There is air within shanshui landscapes. The air was mostly wonderful during the agrarian era; and more often unpleasant during the industrial age.
The transparent box represents a metaphor for “vessel of heaven and earth;” at the bottom of the box is a charred roll of paper at the center which represents a smokestack (Image), the three works emulated using fiery ink are classic images with the seasons or natural scenery as theme. These respond to the arid ashes of the paper smokestack, suggesting scorched ash that envelopes the shanshui landscapes in smog. Some scattered ashes remain at the bottom of the transparent box, representing the carbon particles that are suspended in the air as a metaphor for drifting characteristic of smog.
Installation works such as Fiery Ink, Displacing Guo Xi's Early Spring, No.2 represent the circular Temple of Heaven. In Fiery Ink, Displacing Xu Dao-Ning's Fishermen's Evening Song, three pillars of charred paper rolls are reminiscent of the incense censor on an altar (page). The unfurled layers of blank charred paper in Fiery Ink, Displacing Mi You-Ren’s Cloudy Mountains alludes to the nature destroyed by burning, and the vacant vistas after the clouds and mountains vanish. All represent the contemporary survivor, in the face of historical climate change, lamenting the gradual vanishing of nature’s beauty amidst the charred remains of magnificent landscapes.
The Form of Fiery Ink: The Dialectic of Materiality The concept of “fiery ink” originates in an inquery of ways in which the medium of “ink” extends its material vocabulary. “Fiery ink” is created from the charcoal ash that remains after xuan paper has been burned. The “ink” of “ink wash” also comes from charcoal created with fire. In Mencius: Gong Sun Chou I, it is written: “Charcoal is ink.” The Chinese character for “ink” evolved from a pictogram of its production method of “lamp bowl and smoke,” where fire is lit upon soil to burn wood or oils derived from wood and then a bowl is inverted to gather its smoke to make ink. The essence of both “Ink wash” and “fiery ink” is charcoal ash.
From the perspective of the most primordial of raw materials, the “ink” in ink wash is made by forming an ink stick from mixing the fine charcoal ash from burning wood with glue. It becomes ink wash by adding water and grinding it on an inkstone. The medium is characterized by its “fire first, then water” method of utilization.
Fiery ink is created by burning xuan paper into charcoal ash, and then using the paper ashes to create paintings. No water in added in the painting process. Xuan paper is made of wood or plants that are soaked in water during the production process to soften the bark, and then ground into paper pulp and then formed by hand. Hence, the charcoaled ash of xuan paper is a “water first, then fire” method of utilization.
In terms of the essence of the materials, “ink wash” and “fiery ink” both encompass the three physical elements of water, fire, and wood. The xuan paper used in fiery ink and the ink sticks used in ink wash both come from trees as a raw material, but they differ in the resulting relationship and production process of the natural elements which leads to different outcomes.
A study of historical shanshui painting theory would reveal that in regards to “ink,” the aesthetic orientation of ink leans toward perspectives that emphasize the moistness of ink, with an emphasis on its lubricative beauty, and eschewing that which is “not moistened,” for instance, Du Fu of the Tang Dynasty wrote in an inscription poem, “The original breath splattered makes the screen look wet; the true lord up above commands and heaven responds with weeping,” the moistened ink that “makes the screen look wet” points to the formation of a natural beauty that “the true lord above commands” shaped by “the original breath splattered”. Li Cheng of the early Northern Song Dynasty, who pointed out in On Painting Landscapes, that the application of ink that is “parched and dry without lubrication” is not desirable, hence, he emphasized, “avoid applying ink with a heavy hand, heaviness creates turbidity and lacks clarity; nor apply ink with too light a hand as to be dry and unlubricated.” Adept in painting landscapes in all four seasons, the Northern Song painter Guo Xi wrote in Lofty Aims in Forests and Streams, to aim for “ink coloration that is moist and not parched.” The aesthetic pursuit of ink application according to Huang Gongwang of the Yuan Dynasty in Method of Landscape Painting also aspired to “many moistened areas on raw paper.” While Tang Zhiqi of the Ming Dynasty described ink character in Remarks on Painting to be “brimming on the brink of dropping, a moist smoke that is not dry, that is rich and not thin.” Li Kaixian of the Ming Dynasty writes of “Methods for the Moistened Brush,” and Zou Yigui of the Qing Dynasty advocated “drench with ink,” and “blend with ink.” And Huang Binghong of the Republic set “honest and full, lush and nourished” as a measure for brush and ink; etc.
Ancient painters emphasized “moistness” in ink application and eschewed “dryness,” but some artists did propose a “dry” approach to ink application, for instance, Gong Xian of the Qing Dynasty wrote in Gong Xian’s Manual on Painting Instruction that “dryness is suited for texturizing, without dryness it becomes ink.” This was a reference to the brush technique, and the “dryness” here is describing the dry, thirsty brush. Even a dry brush with burnt ink must harmonize and coexist with rendered ink. The purpose of dry ink or burnt ink is to provide contrast for the existence of “moisture.”
Fiery ink does not intend to follow in the reproduction of classical ink aesthetics, but reveals a material dialectic in the relationship of corresponding production process between the three natural elements through an exploratory “return” to its essential materiality. Hence, contemplations of essential ink character that have remained unchanged for millennia are turned outward, uncovering the heterogeneity produced within homogeneity resulting from the reversed operation of matter, thus instigating an arena for debating an anti-(ancient) ink aesthetic form and intention.
Shanshui landscape paintings inevitably correspond to the natural environment. My proposal of “fiery ink” not only responds to the contemporary air phenomenon due to climate change, but also profoundly explores and debates the ink essence of traditional ink wash in the dialectics of formal transmutations in the materiality of ink.
Disparities in the Significance of Fiery Ink: The Pivoting of Ink Aesthetics in Cultural imagery
The Tang Dynasty proposition of “five colors of ink” established a key stance for ink aesthetics and forms within shanshui painting. In the millennia of scholarship on shanshui paintings that followed, discussion on the forms of ink nature became pivotal issues for ink art. This core in support of form, connotation, and aesthetics of ink art remained intact even with the advent of the Modern Ink Art Movement (hereafter referred to as Modern Ink Art) which advocated preserving the ink and eschewing the brush. Ink is the pillar that upholds the history of shanshui painting.
What other possibilities remain for the study or advancement of shanshui paintings in the contemporary? Ink is a necessary issue that must be confronted; where ink is more than a visual perception, but thought must be given to an expression of olfactory synesthesia.
The “aridness” of fiery ink differs from the aridness of concentrated ink applied with a dry brush as defined in the aforementioned classical painting theories. The aridness of fiery ink is a response in opposition to the “moist” ink aesthetic of traditional ink wash. It is a post-incineration scorched quality, a brush and ink form that focuses on the olfactory aura rather than visual sense.
To regain a lost sensory perception, to truly experience and respond by engaging the body into the sphere of living – if the olfactory sense is necessary, then it should not be avoided. Do not be wary of expressing reality if reality is grotesque. I attempt to subvert classical cultural imagery to mirror the current conditions of climate change. Fiery ink is not an expression to voice idealized shanshui landscapes or the beauty of nature, but is a reflection of the status of existential crisis in the current era, it is creativity that results from the corporeal senses and actual experience. The ancient paintings selected for emulation in fiery ink have not been selected at random, but are works pinpointed for their seasonal themes or content of air. The “moist ink” emphasized in these classical ink wash painting has been replaced by the “arid ink” of fiery ink. This appropriation and displacement are allusions to the replacement of air from the ancient agrarian era by the industrialized world of the 21st century. It also responds to the lexicon of shanshui landscape paintings that has prevailed for millennia, and the necessity for the production of new forms in order to narrate new content in the changing times.
The appropriation of classical shanshui imagery through fiery ink is not for the purpose of demonstrating the effects using disparate media in imitating ancient brush and ink paintings, but rather to invert the language of ink character through the disparities from classical ink character. The current conditions of smog that confronts the natural world today requires an expression through the arid ink of fiery ink. Fiery ink does not intend to return to classical aesthetics, but has been created to correspond to the contemporary phenomenon of air pollution to open a new dialectical space for “ink character.” Reality is sometimes grotesque. The current era calls not only for a study of aesthetics, but also for anti-aesthetics.
Chapter the Third_ Quotidian Smog: Global
Extracting from bodily immersion in the air, Fiery Ink
Though fiery ink may ostensibly follow in the reforms advocated by the mid-20th century Modern Ink Art Movement to eschew the bamboo brush and the centered brushstroke techniques, but major difference remained between fiery ink and modern ink art.
Modern ink art values variations in form and technique but continues to uphold the aesthetic language and connotations of traditional ink art. For instance, there is an emphasis on the “universal natural artistic conception”, “between likeness and unlikeness”, “unfettered mist”, and “pages of rendered ink”, etc., that aspire to the freehand aesthetics and forms between water and ink that resemble classical splashing ink technique, etc., so it is a reformation that is fundamentally in the direction of a “similarity of connotation with a disparity in form.”
Not only does fiery ink differ from the past in its medium and technique, it also exists in opposition to ancient connotations and vocabularies. It represents a mutation in technique and medium as well as a shift from the pursuit of the moistened ink aesthetic. It diverges from the classical lexicon in both content and context. Fiery ink takes further strides on the foundations of modern ink art, to thoroughly adhere to the realities of contemporary life in form and connotation. It is a complete renewal that is disparate in form and connotation.
By observing climate change from the perspective of respiration, and to express the differences between the contemporary and the ancient using a ink character that corresponds to the air through the two respiratory methods of ink: the “ink wash” in Discrete Islands responds to my experience of expansive panoramas while living in humid, foggy Jinshan; “fiery ink” corresponds to the quotidian sights and scents of smog formed by global warming. The water and fire are both a part of my daily life.
Fiery ink confronts issues in the quotidian life experiences. In the realistic life of the globalized 21st century, issues of survival are universal. Global warming has become an everyday phenomenon. Unlike their counterparts from the latter half of the last century, creators in the present era are no longer preoccupied by the issue of “brush and ink” in painting. What contemporary creators must confront the need to recover their lost corporeal senses in order to transform formats appropriate to the contemporary condition through an effective application of media and techniques. They must update the historical language through the perspective of real-life experiences in order to propose aesthetic content and lexicons appropriate to sentiments, characteristics, and environment. A reverence for the ancients, while mindful of the sensorial reality located in the present place and moment, and truthfully conveying this reality -- this is the definition of "True shanshui landscape."