SHARING SILENT SECRETS:

Cao Xiaoyang’s Way of Shanshui

Gao Shiming

Xiaoyang once said: ‘All my exhibitions have one single theme: shanshui.’

Xiaoyang has devoted himself exclusively to shanshui art (Literally, ‘mountains and water’; the Chinese concept of brush-and-ink landscape painting.) for over ten years. And through all these years, each time Xiaoyang paints, it seems that he is seeking to evoke the archetypal shanshui scroll: the scroll that has endured through thousands of years, through the ravages of time, the invasions of insects, the turmoil of war, and that retains faint, misty traces still discernible on its surface. This scroll, in itself, is shanshui.

How, then, to define shanshui? It is more than the physical scenery that appears before our eyes. It transcends the forests, springs, hills and valleys we have travelled through in our lifetimes. Shanshui is a perfect oneness, an organic amalgamation of mountains, rivers, roads and paths, cliffs and rocks, trees and groves. In a shanshui painting, all things appear before us in a balanced equality. Its form can change in a single breath, as the myriad elements of nature shift and emerge, and the mountains and rivers coalesce. It is an endless series of images, wherein all that is above and below, in foreground and background, appears in a vast continuity, without breaks or borders, a single broad perspective without end or vanishing point.

Scrolls of this nature play no role in the art-historical debate between the ‘subjective expressiveness’ of the brush and ‘real landscape’. There is a deeper meaning here, but it is difficult to convey in words. Here, in this scroll, the artist’s skill is in the ability to master the gestural movements of the Creator, to capture the links that lead back to the source of life in the universe, and the way in which the myriad things of the universe manifest into form. When sketching in nature, the artist stands amidst the mountains. When painting in the studio, the scenery reappears in the artist’s mind, and materializes through the movements of his body: the painter and his subject matter become as one, bonded together in a process of mutual cultivation, like polishing a piece of jade. This process of cultivation or ‘polishing’ also reveals a worldview. In this scroll the secrets of nature are made visible through the aggregation and elaboration of myriad images and forms.

Xiaoyang executes his shanshui paintings with charcoal, eschewing the unique expressive charm and myriad other seductions of brush and ink. Charcoal enables the artist to attain greater intimacy with the physicality of the objects themselves, evoking a line from Jing Hao’s (855-915 CE 980) Notes on Brushwork (Bifa ji): that qiyun — ‘rhythmic vitality’ or ‘spirit resonance’ — must be realized through form and concept.

In making charcoal by burning wood, one is creating an artist’s material from the very substance of trees. When this dead material comes back to life under the control of the artist, it once again attains the form of rivers, mountains ranges and valleys. Xiaoyang manipulates this basic, elemental material with extraordinary virtuosity, creating his own subversive method of dots and strokes, wash and texture. Not only does his charcoal painting dispense with overelaboration and superficiality, and grasp what is essential, he is able to go beyond the power of the brush and create works of remarkable subtlety.

Using charcoal as his ‘brush’, the artist not only paints in black– he also paints in white. The moment the charcoal touches the paper, the painting surface immediately ceases being a void, and when the painting is finished there is no part of the surface that is ‘empty’, that is not part of the painting. The dazzling white ground that the charcoal struggles to carve out is not a void, but rather a presence. ‘Knowing what is white, but embracing what is black, and thus providing a model for the world’. Xiaoyang’s shanshui art has its origins in his experience with woodcut prints, with their strong chiaroscuro quality. This is not the traditional Chinese approach of ‘measuring the white space as if it were black’ [i.e. treating the background as if it were the subject matter]. In his works, black trumps white, and the white reinforces the black; black and white reflect each other’s light and shadows, like heaven and earth in primeval chaos.

When painting with charcoal, creating wash effects is extremely challenging. But such effects do not rely so much on mastery of brush and ink techniques, but rather depend on the artist’s qiyun, rhythmic vitality or spirit resonance, which is expressed through acts of concealing and revealing. The role of the artist is simply to render visible the materiality of both darkness and void. This process is not to be compared to the uncanny science of developing photographic prints in a darkroom, but is more evanescent, like carving or taking a rubbing from something formless and shapeless, teasing out threads of thought from the tapestry of the ineffable darkness. At the moment the glimmering dawn separates the world from the night, the face of creation gradually takes form, emerging from a multitude of subtle, infinitesimal details.

The Way of Painting comes down to the process of revelation and concealment. The painter problematizes process: he repeatedly transforms substance into nothingness, presence into absence, and then reverses the process by restoring emptiness to substance; in the continual interchange between what is visible and what is not, the images are mutable, lacking any fixed form. Void reverts to substance, substance returns to void. These continuous cycles of shifting between illusion and reality are a paradox of appearance and disappearance. The artist attempts to delineate in his work what cannot be outlined in words; to illuminate situations that defy definition. The artist is attuned to subtle, mysterious changes and disturbances; from these illusive sources he creates works of art, just as the myriad transformations are uninterruptedly taking place in nature. Among these transformations, the artist seeks out a process of externalization and effusion. He attends to the infinitesimal, not only to panoramic vistas and viewpoints, concentrating on the inner workings of things. Embodied in form and concentrated in spirit, the hand of the painter guides and directs the eye in its observation of objects; the artist’s perceptions are at once physical, and intellectual; this is called ‘investigating the nature of things by means of the self’. As if blind and deaf, the artist becomes indistinguishable from nature, and unconstrained by emotions, only the paper in his hand can reawaken him, at a point when the entire phenomenal universe is transformed into the patterns of clouds and mist emitted from his brush, and are manifested on the surface of the painting. Emotions never cease changing, ultimate wisdom is attained through external objects; this is called ‘understanding the self through the medium of external things’. Between the self and external objects, where Heaven and mankind intersect, there is only disappearance and reappearance, sinking and resurfacing.

 From ancient times, painting has been a conceptual and spiritual practice. Rare are the individuals who can hear the sounds in the remote silence. Xiaoyang has only shown his shanshui paintings to a small circle of friends and disciples. We can go so far as to say that Xiaoyang has been working on these shanshuis in secret for the past ten years. This work is secret not only because so few people are aware of it, but even more because what these works strive for is the secret of nature’s creation. Sunlight and clouds fill the sky, dragons and snakes inhabit the land; there are endless spiritual transformations, but their mystery and subtlety defies ready understanding.  ‘Standing at the center and encompassing the entire universe’, the artist can share the abstruse overtones of these hidden sounds; slowly over time, he seeks out their subtle mysteries. Xiaoyang’s approach to shanshui is perhaps best reflected in a concept contained in the ancient text Guicang: the idea of ‘returning to the mystical storehouse’ from whence all things emerge.

The above is little more than the ranting and raving of an admirer. Among a handful of friends, perhaps these words can serve as a source of inspiration.

(Translated by Don J. Cohn and Valerie C. Doran)

秘響旁通

曹曉陽的“山水”工作

高士明

曉陽說，此生辦展覽，只有一個題目，就是“山水”。

曉陽畫山水已有十年。十年來，他的畫也唯有山水這一個主題。甚或說，這些年他只在追摹那同一幅畫卷。這幅畫卷，歷經千古，於歲月輪轉中損蝕磨礪，於變亂漶漫中有跡可察。這幅畫卷，就是山水。

何為山水？非獨眼前所見之景物，亦不止吾輩登臨之林泉丘壑；山水者，山川道路、丘石林木俱為一體，眼前世界俱平等相。一氣化形，萬物成象，山水渾然一體，物象連綿不斷，上下前後廣延不可分割，無分無界亦無限。

如此畫卷，無關畫史中所謂“得意筆”與“真山水”之辯詰。此中真意，欲辨忘言。當此畫卷，畫者之能，僅在於能夠把握造物者的手勢，捕捉到萬物生發、自然化育的蛛絲馬跡。師法造化，在臨在摹。臨者山在眼前，身居其中；摹者以思御景，身與境化，要在畫者與物象之間如膠似漆，如琢如磨。琢磨而出乎其中者，乃是一種世界觀的展示——當此畫卷，造化之秘在無數物象的集聚與鋪陳中變現而出。

曉陽作畫，以木炭為筆，擺脫了毫管筆墨獨有之意趣，拋卻水暈墨章的萬千魅惑，反而更切近於事物本身，更加應和著荊浩《筆法記》中所言，將氣和韻，落實為景與思。燃木為炭，這畫材脫胎於林木之身體，此刻又躍然於紙上，在畫者指掌的運作中使山川巒壑成形顯象。曉陽用這最簡單直接的畫材，於筆墨混融間點劃涂抹，無所不用其極；不惟“去其繁華，採其大要”，更是竭其所能，盡其微妙。

燃木為筆，畫者不但畫黑，而且畫白。一旦動筆，畫面就不再是空白，畫竟之時，畫面上更無一空處，那炭筆刻劃爭戰出的耀眼的白地，亦不是空，而是有。“知其白，守其黑，為天下式”。曉陽之山水畫源出黑白分明之木刻經驗，並非中國傳統所謂“計白當黑”，而是以黑御白，以白養黑，黑白輝映，天地渾茫。

木炭為筆，滋潤最難。滋潤之意，不在筆精墨妙，而在氣韻。氣韻在乎隱現。畫者所為，無非是讓沉默之世界從暗夜虛無中有所顯現，其過程卻並非如暗房顯影般奇妙從容，而是取視成灰，於一片漫漶中摹刻拓印，於無盡幽暗中抽思織錦——世界之夜破曉的晨光離合間，造物之面容從無數精微細節中漸次顯影而出。

畫之道，顯隱爾。畫者無是生非，嘗於實中化虛，又復運虛於實；顯隱生化，惟恍惟惚；返虛入實，因實轉虛；似非而是，由是而非；返轉變幻，全在顯隱之間。畫者欲彰顯不可言詮之象，煥發難以名狀之境；於風雲際會中領悟神變幽微；於無跡可尋中成就氣象萬千；於萬千氣象中追索大衍運行。其關竅處，不惟觀覽之法，更在運作之妙。體物凝神，繪畫之手牽引觀物之眼，以體察之，以心審之，所謂以我格物。收視返聽，觀者化入自然，忘情其中，唯手中片紙將之重新喚起，森羅萬象化作筆底煙雲在畫面上展開之際，緣情隨化，因物知幾，此是以物格我。物我之間，人天之際，或隱或現，載沉載浮。

繪事自古為心印，幽音渺渺幾人知？曉陽的山水，除寥寥幾位好友和弟子外，從不示人。山水可以說是曉陽十年來的一項秘密工作。這份工作之所以秘密，不獨因其不為人所知，而且由於它所欲趨向者，乃造化之秘藏。天光雲影，龍蛇起陸，神變無窮，幽微難測。畫者“佇中區以玄覽”，因秘響而旁通，於歲月遙永間探其幽微，由是此山水工作亦可為歸藏之道也。

以上所論，皆屬狂悖之言。三五同好之間，或可為共勉之辭。

SHANSHUI + LANDSCAPE:

A Third Path?

Jiang Jun

I.

After many years under Xiaoyang’s tutelage, it never occurred to me that I would be asked to write about his art, and I must confess that the thought of it makes me a little uneasy. I am more of a theorist: I have never undertaken any formal study of Chinese art in the academy, and have only had opportunity to study the fundamentals of Western art. So before elaborating on Xiaoyang’s work, I would like to begin my discussion with a more theoretical overview of some of the cultural differences between the concepts of Chinese shanshui and Western landscape painting.

Though Xiaoyang has been clearly influenced by Northern Song painters, people often describe his art as evincing a constant conflict between the stylistic elements of fengjing (or landscape in the Western sense) and shanshui (or landscape in the Chinese sense; lit. ‘mountains and water’). Although Xiaoyang professes little interest in the problematics of this issue, he does address it from the angle of the practicing artist.

Looking at the evolution of the term ‘landscape’, we must begin with Old English from which the term originally derived. Like German, Old English is Proto-Germanic in origin. In German, the word for scenery is Landschaft, composed of the word Land (Earth, Country) and the suffix schaft, which comes from the German word schaffen (to create). Thus the literal meaning of this word in Proto-Germanic is the creation of a piece of land. Its construction is similar to that of another German word, Freundschaft (Friendship)—the creation of friends (Freund-schaffen). In twelfth-century Middle High German, Landschaft meant life on a piece of land, or a group of people indigenous to a particular location. It was not until the Renaissance that this term came to mean a fragment of land extracted from Nature. During the sixteenth century Landschaft gradually expanded to encompass the meaning of Landscape in English (Landshap in Dutch). Within these words we can undoubtedly see traces of creationism in the language, regardless of its Christian, Hellenistic or Nordic roots. Landscape is the piece of land that mankind salvaged from the chaos, and it exists within a framework of objective rules and order.

In Chinese, the term shanshui is a combination of, and interaction between, the words mountains (shan) and water (shui). Mountains are associated with yang, and the water with yin. It is from the interaction between yin and yang that all the things of creation comes into being. The interaction between mountains and water creates myriad different, possible landscapes. In the Chinese worldview, the beginning of life did not occur on a tempestuous night with an active god and a passive world suddenly coming into being, but rather emerged gradually through the silent interaction between yin and yang. Because the Chinese view of creation is not predicated on a conflict between man as subject and world as object, China never developed a creation myth in the grand manner of the Homeric epics of Ancient Greece.

In the aftermath of World War II, the philosopher Martin Heidegger was banned from teaching in his native Germany for several years. In the interim, he and the Chinese academic Xiao Shiyi translated the Laozi together in a small house in Todtnauberg. From that moment onwards, we can see Laozi’s Heaven, Earth, Sky and the ever-changing Dao emerge within Heidegger’s ‘fourfold’ unity of Earth, Sky, Divinities and Mortals.

In Heidegger’s schema, in the moment when Earth, Sky, Divinities and Mortals come together in a ‘gathering’, the myriad things of the world are illuminated and revealed to us; and man exists within a ‘poetic dwelling’. This is a classic example of what Heidegger described in later years as not only the pursuit of an ideal poetic life, but as a serious response to and revolt against increasing technologization, and the ‘flattening’ of the world brought about by modernization, industrialization and capitalism. Heidegger differentiates between ‘producing’ (Hervorbringen, literally ‘bringing forth into being’) and ‘happening’ (Geschehen). In analyzing the alienation caused by modern technology, Heidegger traces its roots to the early years when philosophy was just being formed in Ancient Greece.

When the world was understood by Plato as a binary of form and sense-perception, and sense-perception was viewed as a mimesis of form; when the idealized Republic was set up as the model of utopia (a theoretically perfect nation), the brutalization of the world by the tools of modernity was already implicit. The most crucial thing is that it established a relationship between the creation or production of an object (Hervorbringen) and the passive material; and science was founded upon this principle. Conversely, Geschehen (happening) does not distinguish between the active and the passive, and does not attempt to clarify the meaning of the world. Rather, it encompasses a multidimensional understanding and interpretation, allowing different components to resonate with each other. It is constantly at work in our relationships, and you can neither extract nor conceptualize it. In China, we call this principle qi, and it is the action of qi that gives impetus to the interaction between yin and yang. Therefore, our Western concept of landscape (Landschaft) and the intentionality of the Chinese concept of shanshui make evident that there are two fundamentally different understandings of the world: Was the world created? Or did it silently come into being/happen?

The concept of creating (manufacturing) form has developed alongside the Cartesian notion of the subject-object dichotomy and the formation of human subjectivity, which perceives the world as an objective image external to man, a passive object-material that can be moulded and dominated by active man; and it is within these conditions that our contemporary technology and tools came into being. Technology attempts to simplify the world’s many dimensions and meanings, to judge everything through one single standard of rationality, and has refuted everything that does not fall within the boundaries of its universe as falsehoods and superstition. At last the technological mentality has become a living creature in itself, and has come to determine the logic of our lives alongside capitalism, suppressing our humanity within the cogs of its machinery. We live in an age of artificial autonomy, where our physical selves have gradually detached themselves from nature, detached themselves from the difference between dawn and dusk, from the change in the seasons, and from a life rooted in nature. We live in an artificial arena of isolation, where production and endless consumerism determines our existence.

The act of viewing a Western-style landscape painting is unquestionably predicated on the audience’s role as subject. On one level, the audience acquires a kind of control over a unified space, and as such is in the secure position of self (the subject) external to the painting. Yet, on another level, the audience’s position is fixed at a point in which things happened in the past, such that the past is forever left open in the present. My personal experience of viewing Chinese shanshui painting, however, is completely different. Rather than being in a fixed, external position, I find my ‘self’ dissolving into the composition of black and white as my eyes follow the pathways created by the unrolling and closing of the scroll. I finally understand the ‘happy sojourn’ that Zhuangzi spoke of, and feel myself suddenly liberated from status, responsibilities, and personal relationships in the mundane world. In viewing, I am able to free myself from space’s rigid fixity and to sojourn (you) freely, leaving time behind. ‘Sojourning’ in the Chinese sense is a kind of repeated alternation between external and internal: it opens up a portal into untrammelled freedom, towards a transcendent state where one forgets both self and the object.

Ever since the rules of perspective were first established, European art has attempted to unite both space and time within the frame.  The segments of sequential time that are made manifest through the application of perspective are expressions of the subjective gaze and the control of time. The past becomes forever frozen in the continuous present, trying to break through to the audience. Time in German is ‘Zeit’, originating in the Old German word ‘zît’:  the original meaning is ‘to cut off’ (Abgeteilt). The English word ‘time’ originated in Proto-Germanic ‘timon-’, meaning  ‘division’. This cannot but remind us of the European attitude towards the problem of time: using the different stages of past, present and future to describe the temporal structure of narrative. In Chinese, the compound word for time (shijian) was adopted from the Japanese translation of the English word, which first appeared in Asano Shinbun in 1874. In 1907 China imported this newly created word from Japan: Prior to this, East Asian philosophy contained no theoretical division of time and space. The eighteenth-century German art critic Lessing emphasized ‘the purity of time’ as a standard for art in his essay ‘Laocoön: An Essay Upon the Limits of Poetry and Painting’ (1776). In this work, he argues against the tendency to take Horace‘s ut pictura poesis (as painting, so poetry) as a prescriptive for literature. In other words, he objected to trying to write poetry using the same devices as one would in painting. Instead, poetry and painting each has its character (the former is extended in time; the latter is extended in space).

He believed that paintings and sculptures were both spatial forms of art, in which a moment in time becomes solidified. Conversely, literature and music are temporal forms of art, because they unfold over the course of reading. Anything that goes beyond the main point of the piece of artwork becomes transgressive, because it interrupts the purity of the art experience. Because a painter can only capture one moment in time, Lessing advises to ‘choose the significant moment wisely’ as that moment will allow the viewer to guess the events prior to and following it. European languages historically differentiate between the verb ‘to watch’ and the verb ‘to read’ and this conceptual difference is clear in the academic theories of art of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, just as it is in Lessing’s idea. The same is true of the Impressionist art that followed, where the theme of the instantaneity of the moment is clearly expressed.

In Chinese, however, there is no distinction between viewing and reading, since both are a form of active movement. Reading calligraphy is an action that unfolds in time. Similarly, surveying a shanshui painting is like becoming a traveller, wandering among the alternating ink trails of black and white, admiring the abstract beauty created by brush and ink. Later shanshui paintings often had accompanying poetic inscriptions, which exemplifies the idea that looking and reading are similarly structured. Tenses do not exist in Chinese, so time as we observe it is not truncated, but continuous. We do not stop in the present, for it is in the never-ending ebb and flow of dynamic change, the constant interactions between the object and the subject, in which we see the workings of objects in development, observing and creating a subtle, quiescent atmosphere. The Western understanding of the present in English, the verb ‘to exist’, is attributed to the noun form of the verb ‘to be’, and can also be understood to mean that ‘beingness’ is conducted in the present moment. Since ‘existing’ is the same thing as ‘being present’ or the now, because it is in the theatre of the present, therefore it has been affirmed as existing. In Chinese ‘to be present’ (zai or zaichang) is simultaneously a term for the present itself.

The Chinese conception of the world neither rests on the objective physics of Aristotle physics nor the subjective psychology of Augustine, but in a commonality of subject, object, Heaven, and Earth. Time does not exist in a neutral, objective manner, nor is it a subjective sense/understanding: it is a cycle of exchange between the four seasons, between yin and yang. Time is present in the changes in the weather, and in the cycle of seasons celebrated by every agricultural festival; it is present also in the continual interchange between yin and yang. Agriculture, nature and human activity are developed in accordance with both human relations and heavenly will. The subject in this way is integrated with the constant flux of the objective world, constantly interacting with the object.

When my understanding of the art of painting was still very superficial, I had the good fortune of being mentored by Mr. and Mrs. Cao once or twice a week in private sessions that I still cannot forget. They helped nurture in me a more genuine understanding of how to observe the world, so that my later theoretical studies could be founded on a more direct and authentic knowledge; at the same time these sessions allowed me to develop a deeper understanding of Xiaoyang’s artistic methodology and thought processes. Consequently, my comparative discussion of shanshui and landscape takes place on a historical, cultural and physical level.

When an artist sketches a landscape (fengjing) and composes his picture according to the method of Western perspective, is he merely turning his subject into an object? Is he not also enveloped in the scents of nature, the humidity of the air, the sensation of a breeze wafting by, and the warmth of the sun? Can it be that he is simply laboring to express his control over nature? Or has he forgotten that he is just one small part of the vastness of Creation? In seeking to learn from nature, the artist shares something important in common with every Song-dynasty shanshui artist who strove to attain the state of oneness with Nature, and also with any Renaissance painter who strove to understand God’s plan through his close observation of Nature. Just as we exclaim over the uncanny ability of the Song painter to understand the true nature and pattern of things and to capture the minutiae of creation, and his ability to wield his man-made implements to recreate the acts of Creation, we can also marvel at the humanistic approach of the Rennaissance artist, the meticulous and conscientious way in which he seeks to understand and capture the cosmic design through his careful sketches from Nature. In Florence they called this ‘disegno’— sketching as a means of approaching the ideal form (logos) of the objects of the world. We cannot say that the Renaissance artist did not share the Song painter’s exquisite awareness of Man’s place in the universe between Heaven and Earth: compared to both, those of us living in the modern world inhabit an artificial greenhouse isolated from the changes in season and the patterns of the crops. Equally, we cannot say that because the Song painter was unaware of Plato’s Theory of Forms, that he lacked the Renaissance artist’s powers of observation vis a vis the external world; for the Song artist was not only following the metaphysical Dao, he also was seeking to capture the forms of the observable world.

Xiaoyang was born into the world of the print artist, the world of Western painting, but in the end he has returned to a deep awareness of the Chinese shanshui tradition. Pastoral paintings and landscapes flourished in Europe in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as seen in the eternal cycle of seasons depicted in the rural countryside of Jean-François Millet’s work, and the sacred solemnity found in the scenery of German romantic painter Johann Friedrich Overbeck. These paintings found an enthusiastic reception in a Europe that was in the throes of industrialization—a Europe that was in fact similar to China today, in the throes of a rapid and ubiquitous process of modernization and industrialization. Whether it was a French pastoral painting or a German Romantic landscape, all were responses to and reactions against the social unrest and alienation brought about by industrialization and capitalism.

Pre-modern Chinese lived with a different system, a more authentic system of shanshui, which the literati termed a ‘cultivated shanshui’: the shanshui garden created by the symbolism of artificial mountains, or the shanshui painted on screens; framed within a hanging scroll; contained within the handscroll shelved amidst scrolls of poetry and calligraphy; residing in the pengjing (basin landscape) placed upon the scholar’s desk. People of the time did not only sojourn through cityscapes and physical landscapes, but also undertook spiritual sojourns through the shanshui constructed by poetry and calligraphy, gardens and paintings. When I walked among the misty paths of Huang Shan mountain, encountering the exhilaration on the faces of the other hikers there, and following the undulations of the meandering mountain paths, I suddenly understood the unique cultural significance of the Chinese concept of you (to sojourn, roam, wander)—people in movement situated within the turning of all creation, and the presence of the heavenly principle (tianli) reflected in human activity.

We live in an age of Le Corbusier’s La Ville Radieuse (The Radiant City), and continue our quest for development in big cities (in addition to the wide highways in new cities for cars). The culture of you/sojourning is absorbed into our new modes of living, to the extent it that becomes a fictitious, virtual wandering. For Xiaoyang, the intentionality of his paintings is not so much to provide the viewer with the experience of sojourn, but rather to engage in a process of self-cultivation. Through the intensity with which he creates his marks on the paper’s surface, Xiaoyang seeks to discover a spiritual detachment from an increasingly fast-paced world, a kind of personal, contemporary vision of Shangri-la. Art today is created and self-defined in an active mode of capitalistic production; Xiaoyang’s passivity towards the market has effectively opened up for him an alternative aesthetic existence.

A few years ago Xiaoyang and I were discussing where creative inspiration comes from, and he posed a question to me: ‘Is the subject more important, or the image?’ I said the ‘image’, whereas Xiaoyang was of the opinion that the subject was more important. Although he patiently explained his viewpoint to me, at the time I did not really grasp the true significance of his words. For contemporary artists, the subject is merely an insignificant point of reference: what is most important is that an artist has a uniquely individual form of expression. This has been the case since the mid-nineteenth century emphasis on ‘art for art’s sake’. The subject is an intermediary; no one cares if it is correct or realistic—it could simply be a collage of photographs that has been offhandedly combined and put together. Since the advent of early twentieth-century avant-garde abstraction, we have become accustomed to discussing art as being composed of abstract dots, lines, surfaces, and overlooking our experience of the actuality of the object. On the other hand, the Chinese literati tradition has produced an appreciation for the abstract beauty of brush and ink and a high regard for the inherent allusiveness of brush-play. Xiaoyang once expressed his doubts about this tendency towards symbolism, since his extemporaneous shanshui paintings do not share the referential character of traditional guohua brush painting, where every stroke has its own provenance.

This kind of disciplined, referential system in fact gradually moves further away from Nature: as per the theory of modular systems proposed by art historian Lothar Ledderose, is this not a kind of split between culture and nature? The materials of brush and ink constitute a module that was freely assembled and recomposed by literati artists, to take form as myriad shanshui paintings of all types. Even though they have maintained the concreteness of a landscape perspective, there is little difference in their internal logic and that of the composite photographic image of contemporary art. Xiaoyang’s control of charcoal as an artistic medium, his physical engagement with nature, his comprehensive training in and refinement of Western painting techniques, all combine to create a fluid form-memory, so that his sketchbooks are full of myriad expository visual expressions. He says that this constitutes a return to the methodology of the Northern Song; but I think that this is a methodology that allows the vitality of life to emerge, engendering not only intellectual pleasure but also an emotional reaction that you can feel coursing through your veins!

Unlike the majority of artists in today’s technology-saturated society, for whom Photoshop has become their ‘best friend’, Xiaoyang does not emphasize complete control over the image. Even as many contemporary artists use the excuse of being inspired by Richter’s concept of the photographic duplicate to create innumerable non-originals, Xiaoyang has never leaned towards a superficial posturing of ‘What is art?’, pretending to be immersed in questions of ontology, but rather has always maintained an incomparable humility, retreating into the divine spirituality of his object. I am often surprised by how knowledgeable he is about the different forms of trees — where they begin to split into branches, how long each branch and leaf is, where the markings of elm trees come from. He has almost become a plant morphologist, a process inseparable from the long periods of life sketching outdoors in Nature. This is what he means by ‘the importance of the subject’. For me, this is embodied in the humility and gentleness with which he faces Nature, as he attempts to become one with Heaven and Earth.

In this sense, Xiaoyang is an extremely traditional artist, continuing to use the ancient (pre-modern) methods to comprehend the world and to paint his shanshui and landscapes. At the same time, compared with the majority of contemporary artists, he is also a true iconoclast, embracing and insisting on his own alternative path. Perhaps we could say that contemporary artists living in an age of digital copying have changed the conditions of the question ‘what is painting’ from within: On one hand, they have accepted the many conveniences that technology gives to visual expression, constantly mediating between the various intermediaries of the image. On the other hand they also remain fixated on creating the appearance of the hand-made painting. When compared with Song-period shanshui paintings or Renaissance landscape paintings, the contemporary use of photographs as intermediaries in the painting process appears to be precisely what Heidegger described as ‘technological alienation’.

Given the contemporary condition, we can say that the traditional distinction between shanshui and landscape painting grows ever more insignificant.

(Translation by Fernanda Lai Oon Kei and Valerie C. Doran)

(Note: This text is excerpted from Jiang Jun’s original Chinese essay)

風景和山水

繪畫的第三條路？

姜俊

    一 、

師從曹公多年，萬沒料到今天要對他的畫寫點東西，內心不免忐忑不安。 我沒經過什麼國學訓練，只是胡亂讀了點西學，他的畫又一派北宋氣象，確實在這個脈絡中掏不出什麼真知灼見，也只能在粗淺的文化比較上談談曹公的畫了。

據說，關於他的畫有過“山水”和“風景”的範疇之爭，多少簡單地可以歸結為中國式風景和西式風景的區分。雖然曹公對於正名問題興趣缺缺，他更多地是以一個實踐者的角度切入，但俗語說“名正言順”，我也就以這個由頭牽條線來談談他的作品，從山水和Landscape之文化異同開始來順一下言。

古英語和德語一樣，都屬於日爾曼語支。在德語中風景為Landschaft，它由Land（土地，國家）和一個尾碼schaft組成。 而schaft又源自德文詞schaffen（創造），這個詞在古日爾曼人的理解中是對一塊土地的創造。也就如他們的另一個詞一樣，Freundschaft（友誼）——朋友的創造（Freund-schaffen）。在12世紀的古德語中，Landschaft一詞是指生活在一塊土地或地域中居民的總稱，直到文藝復興，這個詞才變成自然空間中一個片段的截取，到16世紀這個詞才擴展到英文中成為Landscape、荷蘭文中Landshap。 在其中我們不難看出世界神創論在語言中的體現，它無論是基督教式的、希臘神話式的，還是北歐神話式的，風景都是被人從混沌的世界中解救出來的那一片土地，這個風景多少存在於那個客觀的規劃和秩序之中。

中文中，山水則是山和水之組合、交融。山為陽，水為陰，陰陽互動，則萬物生。因而山和水的互動也構成了成千上萬種風景的可能之形態。在此，生命的起點不是在一個雷電交加的夜晚由那位主動的創世主和被動的世界（被造物）突然構成的，而是在無聲無息的陰陽互動和交合中慢慢展開。它也不涉及主體的人和客體的世界之間的對立，因此，中國從來沒有可以和古希臘媲美的創世神話也沒有荷馬史詩般恢弘的英雄傳奇。

二戰後海德格爾被禁止授課，其間他和中國學者蕭師毅在托特瑙堡(Todtnauberg)的小屋中試譯了《道德經》。而其後我們仿佛也可以在他那四位一體的構造中（天、地、終有一死者、神）看到老子的天、地、人，以及其間運轉不息的大道。

“當天、地、人、神聚集在一起，萬物就向我們敞開在澄明之中；人在詩意中棲居而存在著”，這些晚期典型的海德格爾式描述不是純粹的對詩意生活的美好追求、對世外桃源的嚮往，而是有一個對世界技術工具理性化的嚴肅回應和抵抗，也就是對現代化，工業化，資本主義化所造成的世界扁平化的反抗。海德格爾區分了“製作型”（hervorbringen）和“發生型”（geschehen），他在分析現代技術工具之異化的問題時，把病症推演到最早古希臘時期哲學的形成。當世界被柏拉圖理解為理念和表像的二元對立時、當表像被認為是對理念的模仿時、當理想國被設置為一個烏托邦的典範時（一個理念完美的國度），現代化中對世界粗暴的工具技術化就已經潛伏其中。而最關鍵的就是設立了創造或製作的主體和被動的材料之間的關係，科學就是奠基在這樣的基礎之上。而相反，“發生型”不區分主動和被動，不試圖明確世界的意義，它包涵了多維度的理解和詮釋，讓各自不同的因素共振。它生生不息地在關係網絡中運動，它無法被抽取、被概念化。在中國，我們把它喻為氣，它似乎就是推動著陰陽互動的那股勁道。

因此，我們在西方風景概念(Landschaft)和中國充滿意向性的山水一詞中看到了本質上對世界不同的兩種理解——世界是被創造的？還是悄無聲息地生成。創造（製作型）發展到現代，伴隨著笛卡爾主客體的劃分和人之主體性的形成，它把世界看作一個外在於人的客體圖像，一個可以被主動的人所征服和改造的客觀材料，當今的工具技術就是在此誕生。它試圖簡化世界的多樣性，試圖通過單一的理性標準衡量一切，它把一切不符合它規範的世界想像駁斥為謬誤和迷信。 最後它成為了活物，和資本主義生產邏輯一起規劃著我們的日常生活，把我們的人性擠壓到他工具理性生產的模件中。我們生活在人工自動化的時代，我們的身體逐漸脫離自然、脫離日常晝夜的差別、脫離了四季的更替，我們五穀不分、四肢不勤，我們生活在一個由生產和無止境消費所主導的人工化隔離區域。

柄谷行人在《日本現代文學的起源》中追述了這個從明治維新開始的現代化過程，也就是海德格爾所批判的——把周遭世界客體化，物件化的過程。他稱之為“風景的發現” （風景の発見）和伴隨而至的“內面的發現”（主體性的發現）。這個從在山水中游觀到觀察外在風景的過程不只是一種文學風格或圖像風格的轉變，而更是一種世界觀的轉變。用海德格爾的話說，是一種從“發生型”轉向“製作型”的過程，是一種從陰陽生萬物的體認，天地人合一的追求過渡到唯物質的理性生產邏輯的過程。人不再從天地流變中、世代更替中；不再從追求人倫和天理合一中去描寫周遭，來生產出山水畫這樣的表現方式，而是從定點、運用焦點透視，以我為尊地把周遭看成靜態的客觀現象，並加以描繪（文藝復興發明的焦點透視）。

在中國，人倫和天理一致性框架的分崩離析伴隨著對儒教的批判、新文化運動的興起，以及整個中國現代化的風起雲湧。 它的起點不在於對西方科學和技術學習，而是首先出於語言、文學改革和藝術觀察中視角的轉換。 我們不再是那個在天地間和萬物共在的此在（Dasein）、那一隨著各種不同情景而不穩定著的可變之存在、敬畏著天地諸神的終有一死者，而是“我思故我在”的主體（Subjektum——認識世界的基點），萬物因我的觀看而成為在定點透視線上各就各位的客體（Objektum——對立著的透射）。主體性的現代小說和白話文的一起確立，使人們突然間發現自己自立於世界，成為了一個自由之主體。只有語言和感知發生轉變，才會在意識層面上接受西方的自然科學和技術理性（自然科學正是奠基在主體和客體之分裂中），從而被拖入資本主義和現代化新的規劃中不能自拔，他又成為了新形式的奴隸。

在觀風景畫中，雖然毫無疑問地賦予了觀眾絕對的主體地位。觀眾在一個層面上獲得了對統一空間的把握，從而找到了自己外在於畫面的那個安全位置（主體）；另一層面上，也被固定在過去發生的那個時間點上，似乎這個過去將永遠在當下敞開著。

在觀山水畫時，我消融在黑白構成的山水之間，和眼光的移動、和卷軸的打開閉合一起獲得了莊子所說的逍遙遊。我突然從俗世的身份、責任，以及人際網路中解放出來。在觀中，我既擺脫了空間的定位，也游離出了時間。“游”是一種外在和內在的反復，它開啟了進入逍遙的門徑，達到物我兩忘。

在西畫史上，直到17世紀，早期風景也只是作為背景出現在繪畫中，之後普桑和洛林被認為是第一批從事風景畫的歐洲畫家。他們的繪畫大都呈現懷舊的古代建築和神話人物，以及聖經世界，並嚴格地繼承了文藝復興流傳下來的透視法則。相比歷史畫、靜物和肖像畫，風景畫並沒有絕對地恪守焦點透視，空間和時間多少處於一個曖昧的狀態。 而直到塞尚的風景畫，才被認為是打破了時間和空間的統一，形成了多維度的視角。

從透視法開始確立起的歐洲繪畫就逐漸試圖在一個畫面中統一時間和空間。在透視主導下的空間彰顯了時間的切片，與主體視線對空間的把握。因此，過去片刻將永久地凝固在延續的當下，向觀眾們敞開。“時間”的德文“Zeit”源於古德文“zît”，原是切掉（Abgeteilt）的意思。英語的“time”源自於古日爾曼語“timon-”，意思是分裂。 這不得不讓我們思考歐洲語言的時態問題，它不正是時間即切割的含義——過去、現在、將來的分段式敘述結構嗎？“時間”這一詞的漢字組合來自於日本對英語time的翻譯，第一次出現在1874年的《朝野新聞》，中國直到1907年才從日本引入這一新造詞。之前東亞並沒有時間和空間分割的理論認識。

為了讓我們更好地瞭解西方焦點透視中時間和空間的統一，以及其思想源流，這裡我簡述一下西方時間概念的兩種理解。無論哪一種都強調當下（Gegewart）——也可以認為是時態中對現在時的執著。

首先是亞里斯多德對時間的描述：他把時間解釋成為“當下”、“此刻”或“現在”構成的連續系列。時間是由無數個同質性的“當下點”按照先後次序依次排列。當這個當下轉成了過去，那個未來立刻變成當下，以此類推。因此，時間在這樣的意義上是一種無數個當下的連續發生。亞里斯多德把時間定義為“依先後而定的運動的數目”（亞里斯多德《物理學》）。“依先後而定”指均勻計數的方式，“運動的數目”指按此方式衡量運動所得到的一個個數目，即“現在”或“當下”的系列。按照這個定義，時間是間斷性和連續性的統一。時間的間斷性表現在“現在”或 “當下”的前後之分，連續性表現為 “現在”或 “當下”的均勻延續。他說“現在就是能被計數的先後數目，無論在先還是在後，現在作為存在是同一的，但又不是同一的，因為現在在計數過程中有先後之分。”（同上《物理学》）

這裡要注意的是，對時間和現在的描述是出自《物理學》一書，因此亞里斯多德所開創的西方形而上學（metaphysic，即物理之後的意思）是在物理的基礎上把世界理解為運動式的。

在神學傳統中，教父學哲學家奥古斯丁在其《懺悔錄》中有其對語言結構和時間的反思。他對過去——現在——將來的表述和亞里斯多德不同，也是反亞里斯多德的。書中說時間不是物理運動，也不是客觀存在，而是意識的運動，時間是被感知到的。他認為“過去是現在對流逝的追憶，現在是現在對當下的感知，將來是現在對未來的期待。” 亞里斯多德對當下的討論是物理學式的、客體本位式的，而基督教教父學對當下的討論是從心理學主體本位切入。這兩個對時間的理解預示著文藝復興以降歐洲繪畫的一種努力：把已經消失的過去留存在當下，讓過去時變成永久的現在時， 這正是通過焦點透視的法則來達到的。

1766年德國藝評家萊辛在《拉奧孔》一文中強調了畫作中“時刻的純粹性”成為繪畫作品的一個標準。他認為繪畫和雕塑是空間的藝術，因此時間只是對片刻的凝固；相反，文學和音樂是時間的藝術，因為它們在閱讀中展開。任何超出畫作要旨的東西都不合法，干擾了畫面經驗的純粹性。他建議畫家應該“選擇最意味深長的時刻，由此可以容易地猜測出此前和此後的事情”。歐洲的語言往往區分觀看（watch）和閱讀（read），這一思想在18、19世紀的學院藝術理論上如同萊辛所提出的那樣非常明確。 我們在之後的印象派藝術中也可以更鮮明地看到繪畫對瞬間片刻的表現這一主題。

中文中沒有區別觀看和閱讀的差異，觀和閱都是一種運動的過程。對書法的閱讀，需要用時間一點點展開；同樣，對山水畫的觀看，也往往是如同旅人一樣，游走於黑白交替的墨蹟之中，欣賞筆墨造成的抽象美。晚期山水畫中都會題上文字，正體現了這一理念——觀看和閱讀的同構。中文中也不存在時態，所以對時間的觀察並非切斷式的，而是連綿式的。我們不停留在當下，而在於周而復始之變動、主客交互，就是在發展中去看到事物之運作，體察和營造那隱而不顯的氣和勢，並非在當下的時間切片中看某一個客體的在場之顯現。西方對當下的迷思來自於對形而上學之存在（das Sein）問題的執著。在英文中“存在”歸於系動詞be的名詞化形式，也可以認為是be的現在進行時。因此存在就等於“在場性”，而且是在當下，因為它在場了，所以被確定為存在。“在場性”（present）一詞同時又是語法中對現在時的稱謂。因此海德格爾對於形而上學的批判都歸結為對在場性的迷思，以及對本質（Sein）和在場性（Abwesenheit）互相等同的批判。古希臘人在無意識的狀況下把對本質的確立作為在場性去理解，這一傾向導致了現代性的生成——世界的客體化。因為它把當下從時間流中隔斷出來，單獨的物也就此在時間的片段中被隔離出來成為客體，喪失了它和世界（Welt）的聯繫。今天的技術理性就是奠基在這樣的一種世界觀上的。

中國人對世界的理解既非亞里斯多德的物理學式（客體視角），也非奥古斯丁的心理學式（主體視角），而是一種主客間性的天、地、人共行。萬物流變於蒼天之下。時間是非客體的存在，也非主觀的感知，而是四季陰陽的更替迴圈和人事轉變。它伴隨著每一個節氣中的對天氣的經驗，配合這樣的天氣和陰陽更替，農業勞作也相應地展開，自然和人事一一對應，人倫和天理同構。順應自然，就是讓主體融入到客觀世界的變遷中，形成主客交互型。

二、

當我還對繪畫處於懵懂期時，就有幸師從曹公夫婦，每星期一到兩次的單獨輔導讓我至今難以忘懷。他培養了我觀察世界的方法，也為我之後的理論學習同樣打下了知性上的基礎，同時也讓我更多地瞭解了他作為一個畫家工作的方式和思考的路徑。以上，我在歷史文化和哲學理論的層面上展開了對於山水和Landscape（風景畫）異同的討論。這些零零總總對於一個投身於感性實踐的畫家不免多餘，在這個維度我非常同意曹公對於此討論的輕視，就如同英國畫家培根把法國哲學家德勒茲對他繪畫的書寫《感覺的邏輯》視為無物，以及不知所云地過度發揮。

當一個畫家在寫生中面對一片風景時，用西方的透視法構圖時，他難道只是把對象設置成為客體嗎？他感受不到自然氣味的籠罩、空氣的濕度、風拂過肌膚帶來對空曠的體估，以及陽光的溫度？他難道只是專心致志地通過他的辛勞來彰顯主體對自然的征服？還是他忘記了他是和天地共存的那千萬億渺小中的微不足道？他師法自然就如同宋代的任何一位追求天人一體的山水畫家，也如同文藝復興試圖通過對自然的觀察理解上帝之真理的每一位藝術家。當我們驚歎於北宋畫家格物致知的能力，對萬物造化細緻入微地體察，對人造器具巧奪天工的再現；同時我們也能看到文藝復興的一代人文藝術家們如何兢兢業業試圖盡力通過他們的素描接近世界的真理。在佛羅倫斯他們稱其為“disegno”——意為對世界理念（logos）的逼近。我們不能說那一代的歐洲藝人們沒有宋人那樣意識到自己是處於天地之間開放性的存在，和他們二者相比，我們卻五穀不分，四體不勤，被隔離在四季恒溫的現代化溫室中，早已忘記了什麼是自然的樣貌；我們也不能說宋人由於不知道柏拉圖的模仿說而缺乏了文藝復興藝人們對外在世界的觀察，他們並不是只是在跟隨形而上的道，也追逐那可見的表像。

曹公版畫出生，西畫一圈，最後還是回歸中國傳統山水的遊觀。在18世紀末到19世紀的歐洲，也出現過風景畫和田園畫的熱潮，比如米勒的鄉村田園中那靜穆永恆的四季迴圈，比如德國浪漫派弗裡德里希神聖肅穆的奇異風光。這些繪畫在當時歐洲工業化城市中獲得了非常好的市。當時的歐洲如同當今的中國，正處於如火如荼的現代化和工業化時期。無論是法國的鄉村田園畫還是德國浪漫派風景，都是對工業化和資本主義化導致的社會動盪、人與自然的疏離等狀態的回應和反抗。前現代的中國人生活在不同的山水系統中，真實的山水系統、被文人墨客所命名的文化的山水、假山所營造的符號化的山水園林、屏風上所描繪的山水、牆上掛著的立軸山水，和詩文書法一起放在架上的卷軸山水、擺在案頭微型的盆景山水。人不只是在城市空間中和真實山水中游走，而且還在詩文、園林、圖像組成的山水中精神性地遊走。當我在黃山霧靄中看到興致勃勃的遊人和沿山而建的山道起伏蜿蜒時，突然意識到“游”在中華文化中獨特的意義——行動中的人處於天地萬物運轉之間——人事和天理的交相輝映。 我們在今天柯布西耶“明日之城”式的、並繼續在空間向上發展的中國各大城市中（況且新城中的寬闊公路只適合汽車行駛），讓“游”的文化也產生了新的形態，甚至成為一種虛擬的網遊。對於曹公來說，他繪畫中的位置經營並非刻意為了提供觀者一種意向上的遊，他更多的是一種自我修行，從紙上的勞作中尋求精神上脫離今天在加速度中的俗世，仿佛一種今天意義上個人虛幻的世外桃源。當今的藝術品是在一種資本主義的生產方式中定義自我，而曹公對市場的消極回應也為他打開了另一種美學的生存形態。

生活在今天這樣一個數位複製圖像蔓延的時代，人的視覺通過攝影來感知世界，我們總是傾心於早期文藝復興畫家，如Piero della Francesca的迥異造型 ，或者南宋梁楷介於人和怪之間的高僧形象。在一個沒有攝影作為一切視覺經驗參照的年代裡，我們的視覺感知到底是如何的呢？ 如今，眼睛早已經不只被攝影技術同化，當今的繪畫區別於前現代繪畫，它不再是對自然的模仿，而是對作為仲介的照片的模仿——照片成為畫家的唯一對象早已經不是秘密。

幾年前，當曹公談到寫生感悟時，問我，對於繪畫來說“是物件重要，還是畫面重要” ，我選擇了“畫面”，他認為“物件重要”，並不厭其煩地論證了其看法，描述了他畫畫中的感悟，但那時我並沒有明白其深意。對於今天的畫家來說，物件物早就是無足輕重的參考，更重要的是我們作為畫家那獨裁式的個人性表達，這也一直是19世紀中葉“藝術為藝術”以來的看法。物件只是仲介，沒有人關心他是否看上去正確或真實，所有的物件可能只是照片的隨意組合和拼貼。從20世紀早期先鋒派抽象藝術以來，我們已經習慣了只討論畫面中抽象的點、線、面、構成，而忽視了現實中我們對物的真實感知。另一方面，從中國文人畫的傳統以來出現了一種對筆墨抽象性的審美和對筆墨本身典故遊戲的推崇。曹公曾表達過對這一符號化傾向的懷疑，他默寫的山水並非如同傳統國畫那樣來自於前人的總結（每一筆都有出處）。因為這樣自律的典故系統和自然漸行漸遠，按照德國東亞藝術史家雷德侯模組化的說法，何嘗不是一種文化和自然的分裂呢？筆墨材料作為模組被業餘文人畫家們自由組合和再構，形成了無數大同小異的山水圖像。他們雖然保持了山水畫視覺的具象性，但內在邏輯上並不會和當代的圖像拼貼有太大的不同。 在曹公那裡，對繪畫材料木炭的把握、對自然身體力行的感知、常年精湛的各種西畫技巧的修行，共同在記憶中打開了造像的流淌，構成了他本冊中默寫山水的萬千姿態。他說，那是對北宋的回歸，我覺得，那是帶著氣動的生命湧現，不只是知性的，而更是毛細管中的感性！

正是在這樣的一個數位技術橫行的時代，除了照片，PS成為每個當代畫家必不可少的“好朋友”時，曹公並沒有如同今天大多數畫家那樣強調自己對畫面絕對的主權；當無數個基於裡希特的觀念影像繪畫不斷批量重複時，他也沒有把繪畫本身推向“何為繪畫”這樣貌似深刻的本體論問答中，而是帶著無比謙和，隱退在物的靈光之後。我常常驚訝於他對各種不同樹種形態的瞭若指掌——從哪裡開始分叉，枝葉是如何長的，榆樹的節從何而來。他幾乎成為了半個植物形態學家，這些都離不開長期的戶外寫生實踐，那便是他所謂的“物件的重要”，對我來說，就是面對自然的謙遜和平和，試圖把自己融入到天地之中。在這樣的意義上來說，他是最傳統的畫家，繼續用前現代的方式體悟世界，畫著山水和風景。同時，和眾多的當代畫家相比，他又最具差異性，堅持著自己的另類與不群。或者說當代的畫家們，他們與時俱進地在數位複製時代下從內部改變了“何為繪畫”的條件：一方面，他們接受了科學技術為視覺表達帶來的各種便利，在圖像的仲介中不斷的仲介著；另一方面卻始終停留在貌似手工藝形態的繪畫上。因此面對宋人山水和文藝復興風景繪畫，當代以照片作為仲介的繪畫工作方式本身就是海德格爾所謂“技術異化”。 面對今天的情態，在歷史傳統中的山水和風景的區別也就顯得無足輕重了。

SHANSHUI: A VIEW
An Appreciation of Cao Xiaoyang’s Art

Sun Shanchun

 ‘Therefore observe it diligently, go by it and do not depart from nature arbitrarily, imagining to find the better by thyself, for thou wouldst be misled. For, verily, ‘art’ is embedded in nature; he who can extract it has it.’

                                           —— Albrecht Dürer

The reason I’ve quoted Albrecht Dürer above is not so much that Cao Xiaoyang is also a printmaker, but rather on account of two grand words that Dürer mentions: ‘Art’ and ‘Nature’. Both are objects of human admiration and pursuit, by many different means and for many different reasons. The multiplicity of ways in which Art and Nature are discussed has in fact greatly enriched human culture. And then there is also the multiplicity of ways of making ‘Art’. But what about Nature itself? What do we ‘do’ with it? As the modern world becomes increasingly more ‘acculturated’ it seems natural for the word ‘nature’ to be applied to human beings. Art is a human activity — it is the ‘culture’ we impose on Nature. As the world’s population explodes, where has nature gone? Some philosophers say, nature has receded, just like a hermit retreating deep into the woods, making friends with the wild landscape and the creatures who inhabit it. Is it possible that ‘retiring’ Nature has already succeeded in covering its tracks and disappearing completely from our purview?

Scholars such as Alexander Wilson say that landscape is a complicated product of civilization, a way of perceiving the world, an imaginary of how humans and nature interact. Landscapes are the collective and societal thoughts and actions of people. This is not difficult to understand: for westerners, landscape is also a culture and a philosophy, even if their narratives of landscape do not seem to contain as many ‘principles’ as ours. Neither our ‘shanshui’, nor their landscapes, are merely mountains and rivers, landforms and water patterns; they represent a realm hidden deep within us, and deep within them, even though many are not conscious of this. Artists like Cao Xiaoyang use their own hands to engage in a kind of artisanship, and through action they bring the landscape directly into their own lives, so that it becomes part of their very being. That is at least how I understand it. In their paintings, one witnesses the subtle intricacy and the innate difficulty of the handmade creation.

Many of Cao Xiaoyang’s works are sketches from nature; one could say he takes Creation as his master. But while the things of Creation are active, changing in accord with the human affairs that impact them, Creation itself is hidden, unmanifested. There are theorists such as the painter Fu Baoshi who say that an ideal shanshui should accurately depict reality, which is in fact not possible. Yet this statement is worthy of consideration. This is how his argument ‘should’ be interpreted: If a painter can truly comprehend the creative function of nature and harness the power of its/her (should we call Nature ‘it’ or ‘her’? This small detail is a source of some anxiety for this writer) eternal Dao, then he could paint the ‘real’ landscape. But such ability belongs only to those enlightened few who have truly grasped the Dao. A painter, however, is only a mere mortal. He uses ‘human’ eyes to investigate, to feel, and to portray shanshui. There are many things he must study, and more than one path he must follow, in order to learn how to see, to feel, and to portray.

Here we are speaking about shanshui in the human context: and this is where we encounter the big question of tradition. Tradition can be described as people’s constant and diligent effort to establish an eternal, unchanging consistency: as such, it ‘should’ be to some degree in correspondence with, or in opposition to, the Dao of Nature. Therefore, tradition is also problematic: it cannot solve all difficulties at once. Tradition can convert people, but this conversion necessitates making a choice; it can give people a sense of belonging, but this belonging comes with a price. Tradition is in fact a living thing, because it lives on through those who believe in it — it dwells within the believers. Tradition is also a way of life; a way of life that becomes heavier and more complex the longer it endures through history. For a painter, tradition gives him ways of viewing the world, but never just one way.

To put it another way, all traditions require that you actively purse and painfully determine your choice: what to throw away and what to keep, whether to forge ahead without looking back or to linger and explore the territory: it is all up to you. Tradition is not an answer, just as life itself is not an answer. And it’s the same for those who paint shanshui, who seek to ‘learn from Nature how to reach the source within’: one must study, one must choose.

Tradition can also confuse people. Those who have seen Cao’s work often will start talking about the classical elegance of Song-dynasty shanshui paintings and mourn the loss of the ancient methods. Painters think about this too; it is an inescapable question. However, artists still must paint; and thus they must seek out the traditions that exist within their own minds and hearts, and harness the inner wellspring that connects them to the dao of Nature. These shanshui must be his own shanshui, must be his own tradition, must be his own self: his own present, in this moment and as it begins to move into the past.

It is my longstanding insecurity as a viewer that Cao Xiaoyang has touched: living in the modern world I, (and the ‘some people’ I mentioned before), must suffer this fracture: Tradition is majestic, shanshui is profound, but we can only view these things, engage with these things, from within our identity as contemporary people; and then we must make our own decisions and create our own methods accordingly. The artist is sincere and honest: he tells us frankly about his interactions with tradition and his yearning for shanshui. Yet neither the line, the ink nor the colour washes of traditional Chinese shanshui painting directly exist in his work; strictly speaking, from the point of view of tradition, his shanshui paintings cannot really even be called shanshui. To be frank, what he creates is really a contemporary artist’s ‘interpretation’ of traditional Chinese shanshui painting. So, where, then, is shanshui? Where is tradition? Standing in front of Cao’s work, these are the fundamental questions that materialize before us, channeled through the medium of charcoal on paper and tinged with an edge of loneliness, of quietude.

People have always yearned to return to Nature, to ‘become’ Nature. An admirer of the 19^th-century painter George Inness once commented: ‘He himself is nature.’ For me, at a time when civilization has developed to such a point, and culture has matured to such a point — or rather has over-matured and decayed into such violence — attempting to think about concepts like ‘style’ and ‘method’ gives me the shivers, never mind thinking about ‘nature’. Our bodies are infiltrated with myriad uncertainties and deep-rooted anxieties; and culture grows and emanates from the body — perhaps it has always been this way. As Buffon said, ‘Style is the man himself.’

I am going to take a risk here and say that Cao Xiaoyang, himself, wants to ‘become Nature.’ Or to put it another way, he wants to ‘make’ Nature, to enact Nature. If such longing did not exist, then why would we have concepts such as ‘soothing the spirit in Nature’ (changsheng) or ‘Man and Nature are One’ (tian ren he yi)? If this kind of longing did not exist, there would be no poetic connections between men and mountains, and all the poems celebrating these connections would not exist. This is why the shanshui that Cao Xiaoyang so lovingly brings to life on paper has such power to move us: it allows us to travel through many different trajectories, to encounter the ‘obscure and indistinct’ nature of the dao, and to dissolve time — wandering freely through time present and time past.

February 2013, at the Erji Studio, Hangzhou

(Translation by Felix Chan Ho Yuen and Valerie C. Doran)

 (Note: This text is excerpted from Sun Shanchun’s original Chinese essay)

山水•觀：

──寫在曹曉陽的“所謂”山水面前

孫善春

不要依靠你自己的觀念而背離大自然，更不要以為你能夠創造出更美的圖畫……因為藝術深深地植根於大自然；只有在大自然中發現了藝術，才能真正地擁有。

──丟勒

引用丟勒，並非由於這裡的曹曉陽是版畫家；真正的原因是他話中的兩個大詞：“藝術”與“大自然”，而且二者都是令人景仰追慕的，以不同的方式與理由。事實上，談論藝術，談論大自然，走近藝術，走近大自然，都有太多的路徑可選，這是人類文化的豐富饋贈。而且，“做藝術”，大家都真地看到或知道，也是千姿百態的；可是，拿“大自然”我們能“做什麼”？“自然”這兩個字，對文化人來說是相當玄妙的。加上個“大”字，更讓人有距離感。不管怎麼說，“自然”已經自然而然地也可以拿來說人類了，因為世界越來越文化了：藝術是人為之物，是人對世界自然的“文化”。比如，人類的數目越來越多了。大自然到哪裡去了？有哲學家說，自然隱去了，退隱了。像人一樣，歸隱山林，退居林下，與山林野物為友去了。不知道，這“身退”的自然是否已經“功成”方才隱跡？

誠實地說，對有些人來說，如今不得不在這樣的背景下來說話，也不得不在這樣的幾句前提下來說畫了。面對曹曉陽的作品，許多人會脫口而出：山水。有藝術史知識的觀眾，當能聯想到荷蘭英語德國俄羅斯乃至美國等所在的風景畫。這並非諷刺：我們擁有許多的知識，但我們如今並非擁有滿意數量的與土地相關的山水或風景經驗；於是，旅游成了全地球的大問題，它成了生活方式。天下一家，環球同此涼熱，我們的“山水”與別人家的“風景”只是一個LANDSCAPE，原來跟土地離分不開；而這個LAND十分稀缺，也只有越來越人化，越來越不自然了。此外，我們想自然而然地以我們中國人的方式來山水生活，也不得不日益受到煩擾；雖然，你仍然可以選擇“臥游”，“神游”，有你自己心中的“山水”，都市叢林的“風景”。

學者如亞歷山大•威爾遜說，風景乃是一種復雜的人類文明的產物，是一種看待這個世界與想像人們與自然之關係的方式，是人們社會性和集體性的所思所想和所作所為。這並不難於理解：西方人那裡的風景也是一種文化與哲學，儘管他們的關於風景的論述中仿佛沒有我們那麼多的道理。我們的山水，他們的風景，原來並非只是山與水，地質與水文等；它們也就在我們與他們的人那裡藏著，許多人甚至並非怎麼明了。現在，我們知道得較多了；畫家，更會困惑得較多。因為他們要做，要動手，要幹“手藝活”：對這裡的畫家曹曉陽來說，他們要“動手為藝，讓山水進入他們的生活”。至少筆者正是這麼理解。從他們的畫裡，可以看到手藝的精微與艱難。

因為山水是難的。

就中國而論，山水起於人物之後，原來只是配景，後來漸漸獨立，演變，一至成為高深難測的高級藝術形態。說它“難測”，實是因為“天心難測”，“天道無情”之類的語言；而且我們看到山水時實在難以不作如是想了：我們“太文化了”，像尼采所說。山水，於是仿佛處於人間與天道之間的中介位置，煙雲神秘，引人入勝。但“天地無言”，內中奧秘，唯有能者得之。對於畫有志於山水者，古人的教誨是“外師造化，中得心源”，這話可說是總結性的，其中當然有太多的問題，尤其要擺在畫家跟前。外師造化如何師，中得心源如何得，而且，這“外”與“中”如何能打通一體，實在是難而又難。因為千萬不要忘記：造化是天地之功，非人類努力所成。而藝術，永遠是人的事情。

曹曉陽的許多作品是寫生的，可以說是師造化；但造化之物是動的，與人事俱變的，而那造化是隱而不彰的。有論者，如畫家傅抱石，說理想的山水，當然應該是要畫的和真的一模一樣，而這是辦不到的。這話很值得思索。或者“應該”這麼理解他的論點：如果畫者能夠看穿領會大自然的造化之功，捕捉到了它/她（稱大自然為“它”還是“它”？這細節令筆者感情上出現波動）的恆常之“道”，那就能畫出真的山水了。這是得道之人的功夫。而畫家非至人神人完人等，他會以“人”的眼睛來看山水，來感受，來傳達，而且他還要學習，學習來看，來感受，來傳達；而學習的材料是複數的，道路是並非唯一的。這裡即是關涉人事的山水，這裡的大問題是傳統。傳統，或者可以說是人持續努力而設定維持的恆常不變，它與天道，“應該”有著相當的對應，或者對抗。

所以傳統也是難的。它並不能一勞永逸的解決所有難題。它可以讓人皈依，但這皈依需要選擇；它可以讓人有歸屬感，但這歸屬感需要代價。傳統其實是活的，因為它必要借助相信這傳統的人而活，它要活在這人身上；它通過這人的活而活成傳統。傳統，就是一種生活；這生活因為綿長的歷史而深重復雜。對於畫者而言，傳統給予其觀望世界的樣式，但這樣式從來不是單一。換句話說，所有的“傳統”都是要你去主動追求且痛下決心進行抉擇的；放棄與堅守，直行不顧還是左右周游，都取決於你。傳統不是答案，也如人生沒有答案。畫山水者，欲“外師造化，中得心源”者，也是一樣，有待學習，有待選擇。

傳統讓人困惑。看到曹曉陽作品者，往往會說起宋畫山水之高古，繼而慨嘆古法之不復，風雅久不作。畫家自己也會念叨念叨，不會逃出這樣的問題，只是他還要畫：尋找他們心中的傳統，把握自己“心源”中接通的“造化”的天道。這些山水，必須是他的山水，是他的傳統，他自己：他自己的現在，正在走過去的現在。

於是，曹曉陽觸動我的，正是長久存在我這樣的觀者心底的不安：身為現代人，或者如前面說的“有些人”，不得不經受著分裂：傳統是偉大的，山水是高遠的，但我們只能以一個現代人的樣式來觀望，來看待，進而進行自己的擷取，採摘，選擇與創造。這畫家的努力，真誠而坦白，用自己的的方式，訴說著與傳統的交往與對山水的渴望。傳統中國山水畫，線，墨，色，在他們這裡都不是直接存在的；從傳統的約束性一面來說，他的山水都稱不得“山水”二字。他們的努力，直白講來，可謂現代藝術家對中國傳統山水的“翻譯”：山水在哪裡？傳統在哪裡？這樣的根本問題，就通過他們的紙上炭筆作品，帶著孤寂與寧靜，現身於觀者面前了。

於是，我看曹曉陽這裡的山水/風景，常感孤寂。“以其境過清，不可久居，乃記之而去。”這樣的古人語自動般地跳了出來。西方藝術史家談風景畫，常追溯古羅馬詩人維吉爾之“阿卡迪亞”，那四時如春的完美田園，堪比我們的桃花源。在歷史中，它成為平靜的鄉村。康斯坦布爾曾說“風景的本質”乃是“人對鄉村生活的情感”，並在致戀人的信中引用了英語詩人湯姆森的詩《四季》：優雅而充實，心滿意足，隱居的生活，線材的靜寂，友誼和書籍，勞逸有序的生活……而這些，更多地已經化作了理想與追憶。風景與山水，與現今時代就有了各自的距離。

“我也曾在阿卡迪亞。”這句雋語曾因引起多少西方人的感觸傷情！曹曉陽的作品裡，多見的是克制。這克制，或可以說是來自西方風景畫的孤寂理想，也來自於中國古代山水傳統中求道的高標。中國人的理想，是不是可以說不單是成為可以欣賞洋洋之山與浩浩之水的人，成為兼有“仁愛”的愛山水的人，甚或具備山水獨立無言超脫人世意味的人？對一個現代人來說，對不一定具有末世情懷的文化人來說，這樣的人可謂一種“超人”：超人，是通向未來的道路。

人，總有著重歸自然的渴望，成為自然的渴望吧。“他自己就是自然。”當年，有位崇拜者這麼評價19世紀的風景畫家喬治•英尼斯。在文明如此發達文化如此成熟或過度成熟到暴力的時節，身為一位閱讀者，想到風格、手法等語詞都不由心裡發怵，難得“自然”。在我們自己身上，內嵌著或被植入了許多的不確定與深深的不安分，文化就生長在我們身上，可能很早以來就是如此。“風格即人”，當年的布封先生這麼說。說到這裡，不禁冒昧一言：畫家曹曉陽，如果可以這麼說，也是渴望成為自然的吧；換言之，他要“做”自然。若非如此，如何暢神，如何天人合一？若沒有這渴望，也就不會有“相看兩不厭，唯有敬亭山”的意思。於是畫家曹曉陽的一種山水，這眼前紙上的努力之功，令人感動──感動的意思是：令人聯想多方，恍兮忽兮，暫不知今夕何夕。

  2014年2月30日，於古武林二集軒