I. Texturizing With Tears
In Yuan Hui-Li’s recent work, Manual of Yuan’s Texturizing Strokes, there is “The Teardrop
Stroke” (Fig. 1), which is both compelling and provocative. Is this texturizing stroke created using
teardrops? Texturizing strokes, or cun (皴), are a foundational element of traditional Chinese
shanshui painting. Originally referring to the surface textures of mountains and stones, the term was
expanded by early artists to facilitate transfer of knowledge, and included categories of strokes that
depict various textures, with nomenclature that resonated with daily life experiences, such as
“hemp-fiber stroke” or “axe-chisel stroke.” However, regardless of how the nomenclature has
changed, observations of nature remain a fundamental component. The textural elements within are
tantamount to the primary pursuit in shanshui painting: The artist takes on the role of the hand of
the Creator, using the brush to manifest life on earth. Yuan may make shanshui paintings, but she
intentionally eschews the relationship between shanshui and nature. Her “Teardrop Stroke” pivots
away from nature toward a nebulous, intangible emotion, and the tears are thus conjured. As a
foundational element of painting, teardrops are reduced to small dots resembling the raindrop stroke
in Fan Kuan’s Travelers Among Mountains and Streams, which have been created with a straight,
downward stroke using the tip of the brush. However, in Yuan’s hand, the brush point is finer and
more uniform, and variations in ink color cease. This becomes an abstract element in her rendering
of imagery, where form is only revealed when she decides to stop, and is often a boulderesque
structure with a mutable exterior and a pockmarked interior. This entity does exist in the natural
world, but is often considered an element of fantasy or wonder. Yuan’s strange rocks perhaps have
emerged from her travels to Linwudong and Taihu Lake in Jiangsu, China, coupled with her
recollections of the extraordinary mountains and rocks in Yuan-dynasty painter Wang Meng’s
Forest Chamber Grotto at Juqu scroll. However, the teardrop stroke as a substitute allows for a
pivot from the fantasy of a mystical forest toward a personal, sentimental lyricism. (Fig. 2)
II. Pivoting Toward the Lyrical
Details of the long and tortuous process of pivoting from spectacle to lyricism may be
unfathomable. However, rock figurations filled with teardrops appeared as early as in the 2013
Ambiguous World series (Fig. 3), where they are rendered through varying expressions. Mutable
and amorphous on the exterior, these amoebic figurations evoke primitive life forms floating in the
deep azure of the vast universe. In Plural Landscape, her 2014 exhibition catalogue, she explains
that these are “stones to mend the heavens,” which immediately bestow these Teardrop Stroke
entities with another layer of emotional connotation.
“Stones for mending the heavens” is, of course, an allusion to the legend of Nüwa, the goddess of
creation, who mends the heavens with stones, the last of which was intended for patching the
heaven of sentiments. This final stone inspires Cao Xueqin’s literary classic, Dream of the Red
Chamber (also known as The Story of the Stone), in which not only do women feature as the main
characters, but the male protagonist Jia Baoyu is also remarkably feminine, and the female
protagonist Lin Daiyu is teardrops incarnate. All of this figures into the emotionally heightened
story structure of Dream of the Red Chamber, as one of “a debt of love as vast as mountains and
oceans [that] can only be repaid with sobs” (excerpted from the inscription in “The Teardrop
Stroke” in Manual of Yuan’s Texturizing Strokes). Yuan’s intimate connection to Dream of the Red
Chamber immediately calls to mind her gender consciousness. This emphasis on the texturizing of
heartfelt sentiments is a conscious subversion of the traditional texturization system, through which
the artist intends to create a sentient world, like that in Dream of the Red Chamber, which would
resonate with her.
III. Emancipation of the Soul
Manual of Yuan’s Texturizing Strokes documents 32 different strokes that have appeared in Yuan’s
THEY Shanshui works through the years. In addition to dotted strokes, such as “The Teardrop
Stroke,” there are also several types of linear strokes, such as “The Vexing Stroke,” alluding to the
tedium of life that “can be neither severed nor reasoned,” a metaphor admittedly charged with
sentiment. These lines are contorted and winding, the opposite of the simply distributed Teardrop
Stroke. Between the two, there is not necessarily an irreversible trajectory from chaos to order, but
in reference to traditional texturizing manuals, a sense of methodical order must be maintained to
facilitate study. In addition to invigorating the composition, Yuan’s varied texturization of
sentiments perhaps entails her own subjective expectations. Although the Manual of Yuan’s
Texturizing Strokes has set a precedent, as a righteous declaration to the art world of her resolute
break from tradition, she remains mindful of the challenges that await.
The issue here may be: While physical elements based on emotions provide catharsis for her realworld
grievances, how can these elements — rather than miring everyone in the artist’s personal
lamentations — construct a world within the painting?
Unlike the Manual of the Mustard Seed Garden, Manual of Yuan’s Texturizing Strokes contains
only illustrations of each texturizing stroke without further elucidating the composition rules for
each physical element. The elucidation is, in fact, key in traditional painting manuals. For instance,
when it comes to the composition of mountain peaks, there is the “host-guest relationship method,”
or the “main peak in itself a mountain method,” both used to create distinctive mountain ranges.
These reveal a certain internal order in the world of shanshui. Is circumventing this focus of study
an intentional gesture extending from Yuan’s cognizance of a prevailing male dominance in the
established shanshui system? Absolutely. She does not intend to vie for pedagogical authority with
this manual of texturizing strokes, but simply to voice her own artistic assertions. She recognizes
the reality of her own oppression, and the true rationale behind this effort is inextricable from the
positions of inferiority to which female artists have been relegated in the cultural world. Manual of
Yuan’s Texturizing Strokes and all of her lament-filled figurations aim to subvert male subjectivity.
Even now, in the 21st century, Yuan’s proposal of a manual of texturizing strokes can still be
regarded as an exceptional act of gender consciousness in the world of ink painting.
However, even when she intentionally disregards the composition principles for blending elements
in traditional shanshui painting, Yuan must still confront the requirements of the shanshui vista.
She has created new figurations with the texturization of sentiments, but how do these individual
elements combine to create a brand-new world? This is a thorny challenge even for an avant-garde
feminist. Yuan’s response to this fundamental issue is a poignant approach that initially sets aside
existing traditional expressions of volume and space, before pivoting toward the most primal of
schemas for inspiration. This can be seen in her recent THEY Shanshui works, such as her revamped
emulation of Guo Xi’s Early Spring (Fig. 4). There is a rationale for choosing Early Spring as a
challenge, as it is a classical work that plainly showcases one’s spatial consciousness within the
canon of shanshui. When familiar schemas are abandoned, where ought mountain ranges, river
valleys, and heaven and earth be placed? Yuan shifts away from the classical “three distances”
schemas, and eschews Western spatial perspectives to return to an expression of distance using
superimposed layers. In this manner, she shuns millennia of shanshui painting history, and returns
to a primal schema that preexisted the establishment of shanshui painting. Mountains are divided by
distinct lines in Yuan’s work, the most uncomplicated composition only seen in Han-dynasty
murals (Fig. 5).
This is the world where Yuan Hui-Li finds her emancipation. It would not be inappropriate to
compare this to the world beyond the heavens once mended by Nüwa.
A world comprised of the texturization of sentiments in a return to primal schemas — this seems to
resonate with her quest to attain the state in Dream of the Red Chamber. She has named her recent
works THEY Shanshui, but how would the artist respond, I wonder, to a playful reference to these
paintings as her project to mend the Heavens with sentiments?
/ Shih Shou-Chien is an art historian. He was a professor and the director of the Graduate Institute of Art History,
National Taiwan University, as well as the deputy director and the director of National Palace Museum. He was elected
academician at Academia Sinica in 2012, and is now a corresponding research fellow at the Institute of History and
Philology, Academia Sinica.
In Yuan Hui-Li’s recent work, Manual of Yuan’s Texturizing Strokes, there is “The Teardrop
Stroke” (Fig. 1), which is both compelling and provocative. Is this texturizing stroke created using
teardrops? Texturizing strokes, or cun (皴), are a foundational element of traditional Chinese
shanshui painting. Originally referring to the surface textures of mountains and stones, the term was
expanded by early artists to facilitate transfer of knowledge, and included categories of strokes that
depict various textures, with nomenclature that resonated with daily life experiences, such as
“hemp-fiber stroke” or “axe-chisel stroke.” However, regardless of how the nomenclature has
changed, observations of nature remain a fundamental component. The textural elements within are
tantamount to the primary pursuit in shanshui painting: The artist takes on the role of the hand of
the Creator, using the brush to manifest life on earth. Yuan may make shanshui paintings, but she
intentionally eschews the relationship between shanshui and nature. Her “Teardrop Stroke” pivots
away from nature toward a nebulous, intangible emotion, and the tears are thus conjured. As a
foundational element of painting, teardrops are reduced to small dots resembling the raindrop stroke
in Fan Kuan’s Travelers Among Mountains and Streams, which have been created with a straight,
downward stroke using the tip of the brush. However, in Yuan’s hand, the brush point is finer and
more uniform, and variations in ink color cease. This becomes an abstract element in her rendering
of imagery, where form is only revealed when she decides to stop, and is often a boulderesque
structure with a mutable exterior and a pockmarked interior. This entity does exist in the natural
world, but is often considered an element of fantasy or wonder. Yuan’s strange rocks perhaps have
emerged from her travels to Linwudong and Taihu Lake in Jiangsu, China, coupled with her
recollections of the extraordinary mountains and rocks in Yuan-dynasty painter Wang Meng’s
Forest Chamber Grotto at Juqu scroll. However, the teardrop stroke as a substitute allows for a
pivot from the fantasy of a mystical forest toward a personal, sentimental lyricism. (Fig. 2)
II. Pivoting Toward the Lyrical
Details of the long and tortuous process of pivoting from spectacle to lyricism may be
unfathomable. However, rock figurations filled with teardrops appeared as early as in the 2013
Ambiguous World series (Fig. 3), where they are rendered through varying expressions. Mutable
and amorphous on the exterior, these amoebic figurations evoke primitive life forms floating in the
deep azure of the vast universe. In Plural Landscape, her 2014 exhibition catalogue, she explains
that these are “stones to mend the heavens,” which immediately bestow these Teardrop Stroke
entities with another layer of emotional connotation.
“Stones for mending the heavens” is, of course, an allusion to the legend of Nüwa, the goddess of
creation, who mends the heavens with stones, the last of which was intended for patching the
heaven of sentiments. This final stone inspires Cao Xueqin’s literary classic, Dream of the Red
Chamber (also known as The Story of the Stone), in which not only do women feature as the main
characters, but the male protagonist Jia Baoyu is also remarkably feminine, and the female
protagonist Lin Daiyu is teardrops incarnate. All of this figures into the emotionally heightened
story structure of Dream of the Red Chamber, as one of “a debt of love as vast as mountains and
oceans [that] can only be repaid with sobs” (excerpted from the inscription in “The Teardrop
Stroke” in Manual of Yuan’s Texturizing Strokes). Yuan’s intimate connection to Dream of the Red
Chamber immediately calls to mind her gender consciousness. This emphasis on the texturizing of
heartfelt sentiments is a conscious subversion of the traditional texturization system, through which
the artist intends to create a sentient world, like that in Dream of the Red Chamber, which would
resonate with her.
III. Emancipation of the Soul
Manual of Yuan’s Texturizing Strokes documents 32 different strokes that have appeared in Yuan’s
THEY Shanshui works through the years. In addition to dotted strokes, such as “The Teardrop
Stroke,” there are also several types of linear strokes, such as “The Vexing Stroke,” alluding to the
tedium of life that “can be neither severed nor reasoned,” a metaphor admittedly charged with
sentiment. These lines are contorted and winding, the opposite of the simply distributed Teardrop
Stroke. Between the two, there is not necessarily an irreversible trajectory from chaos to order, but
in reference to traditional texturizing manuals, a sense of methodical order must be maintained to
facilitate study. In addition to invigorating the composition, Yuan’s varied texturization of
sentiments perhaps entails her own subjective expectations. Although the Manual of Yuan’s
Texturizing Strokes has set a precedent, as a righteous declaration to the art world of her resolute
break from tradition, she remains mindful of the challenges that await.
The issue here may be: While physical elements based on emotions provide catharsis for her realworld
grievances, how can these elements — rather than miring everyone in the artist’s personal
lamentations — construct a world within the painting?
Unlike the Manual of the Mustard Seed Garden, Manual of Yuan’s Texturizing Strokes contains
only illustrations of each texturizing stroke without further elucidating the composition rules for
each physical element. The elucidation is, in fact, key in traditional painting manuals. For instance,
when it comes to the composition of mountain peaks, there is the “host-guest relationship method,”
or the “main peak in itself a mountain method,” both used to create distinctive mountain ranges.
These reveal a certain internal order in the world of shanshui. Is circumventing this focus of study
an intentional gesture extending from Yuan’s cognizance of a prevailing male dominance in the
established shanshui system? Absolutely. She does not intend to vie for pedagogical authority with
this manual of texturizing strokes, but simply to voice her own artistic assertions. She recognizes
the reality of her own oppression, and the true rationale behind this effort is inextricable from the
positions of inferiority to which female artists have been relegated in the cultural world. Manual of
Yuan’s Texturizing Strokes and all of her lament-filled figurations aim to subvert male subjectivity.
Even now, in the 21st century, Yuan’s proposal of a manual of texturizing strokes can still be
regarded as an exceptional act of gender consciousness in the world of ink painting.
However, even when she intentionally disregards the composition principles for blending elements
in traditional shanshui painting, Yuan must still confront the requirements of the shanshui vista.
She has created new figurations with the texturization of sentiments, but how do these individual
elements combine to create a brand-new world? This is a thorny challenge even for an avant-garde
feminist. Yuan’s response to this fundamental issue is a poignant approach that initially sets aside
existing traditional expressions of volume and space, before pivoting toward the most primal of
schemas for inspiration. This can be seen in her recent THEY Shanshui works, such as her revamped
emulation of Guo Xi’s Early Spring (Fig. 4). There is a rationale for choosing Early Spring as a
challenge, as it is a classical work that plainly showcases one’s spatial consciousness within the
canon of shanshui. When familiar schemas are abandoned, where ought mountain ranges, river
valleys, and heaven and earth be placed? Yuan shifts away from the classical “three distances”
schemas, and eschews Western spatial perspectives to return to an expression of distance using
superimposed layers. In this manner, she shuns millennia of shanshui painting history, and returns
to a primal schema that preexisted the establishment of shanshui painting. Mountains are divided by
distinct lines in Yuan’s work, the most uncomplicated composition only seen in Han-dynasty
murals (Fig. 5).
This is the world where Yuan Hui-Li finds her emancipation. It would not be inappropriate to
compare this to the world beyond the heavens once mended by Nüwa.
A world comprised of the texturization of sentiments in a return to primal schemas — this seems to
resonate with her quest to attain the state in Dream of the Red Chamber. She has named her recent
works THEY Shanshui, but how would the artist respond, I wonder, to a playful reference to these
paintings as her project to mend the Heavens with sentiments?
/ Shih Shou-Chien is an art historian. He was a professor and the director of the Graduate Institute of Art History,
National Taiwan University, as well as the deputy director and the director of National Palace Museum. He was elected
academician at Academia Sinica in 2012, and is now a corresponding research fellow at the Institute of History and
Philology, Academia Sinica.