Painting at the Edge of Visibility:

The Art of Qiu Shihua

Chang Tsong-Zung

At the edge of visibility a view becomes a vision. Qiu Shihua’s paintings endeavour to bring the viewer back to the starting point at which sight begins to differentiate forms, and the mind constitutes a visual world.

Qiu’s artistic journey has been a pursuit of the limits of painting. He does not go beyond those limits; he stays within the parameters of perspective, colour, and shape. He does not transgress. What he does, however, is to challenge the conventional concept of visibility. By taking us to the outer reaches of visibility, he transforms both painting and viewing into a spiritual exercise.

One enters Qiu’s paintings as if slipping into the morning mist. Whiteness dominates, shifting in a variety of shades. Gradually the eyes make out the view: the vague fold of trees, and fainter woods afar. Eventually one seems to see, or sense, every detail, down to the play of light on the tufts of grassy fodder. Most of Qiu’s paintings give the impression of entering the world at a moment of fullness when its mysteries are about to be revealed: light at daybreak, first darkness at dusk, the moment when sound breaks the fullness of silence.

After graduating from the Xi’an Art Academy in 1962, Qiu took menial jobs and survived the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) as a sign painter for a cinema. He remained in Xi’an until 1984. Throughout those twenty-two years Qiu lived on the expansive yellow loess plains of China’s northwest, on the edge of remote deserts. His view was little more than earth and sky, yet he perceived a wealth of variations in them. He discovered that when the mind is completely quiet, to degree zero, the senses become fully alert, capable of celebrating the slightest sensation and feasting on the flat taste of water. Qiu’s art seeks to bring the same sensitivity to the viewer’s mind. “My previous paintings were mostly concerned with emotions, so they were rich with moods. Now I am more concerned with the ‘origin’, the genesis of experience,” says Qiu.

For Qiu, the fullness of experience arrives at the moment before form appears; a painting must capture the spirit of this moment. What comes before form is ‘spirit’ and ‘rhythm’, which make harmonious energy. This instant, when energy and life have yet to split into specific forms, contains all kind of possibilities and is therefore the source of life. This is the moment of creativity sought by Qiu. The creative mind arrives at this state through contemplation, and the path followed by Qiu is Taoist meditation. In mediation, the cosmos appears like a white mist, and one finds oneself in a world of white light. In such a state, time and space become immaterial; human passions have no place. Here the mind finds refuge, seeking neither vision nor imagination.

Qiu Shihua’s first contact with Taoism was through his father, a laconic man, who took him to temples that survived the ravages of the Communist revolution. In these deserted temples, they would do nothing but sit in silence for hours. Qiu remembers being puzzled but impressed with the serene atmosphere.

Qiu Shihua approximates the state of quietude in painting by reducing the picture’s sensory agitation. All elements of contrast, such as light, colour and shape, are reduced to the minimum. The eyes are forced to distinguish between shades of white upon white. Within the subtle gradations of tones, form is defined by the faintest differentiation. Qiu works with an axiom of economy, aiming to capture the fullest substantial content in the paintings with minimal material painterly touches.

When the mind is tempted to respond to the slightest quiver of suggestion, sight and imagination come together to enhance vision. The viewer is able to see an even sharper reality than what the artist may have intended. As a result, the experience of seeing is paradoxically enriched by the elimination of visual information.

Qiu’s pictorial world is a weightless realm of light and energy. Its substance lies not in physical bodies but in presences. By broaching formlessness, the artist achieves the fullness of form. Lao Zi said: “The more knowledge one sheds, the more Tao one gains.” From the perspective of Chinese art, Qiu Shihua’s quest seems to be a rediscovery of the fountain of its tradition, in which the art of the mind is created in the glory of nature.

The tradition of Western art, particularly oil painting, has a relatively short history in China. But its doctrines of realism have become the norm of art education under the Communist system. The art of Qiu Shihua is born out of this background, but has shifted to merge with the great tradition of Chinese landscape painting. For Chinese classical art, nature is the idealized realm in which the world-weary mind seeks repose. Without discarding his received training in oil painting, Qiu has transformed oil painting into a contemporary voice of the Chinese tradition, to remind us that the currency of art transcends cultural boundaries by speaking directly to our souls.

The faith in sublimity in nature held by Qiu Shihua finds the closest Western parallel in the Romantic artists. It is no accident that Qiu holds artists like Friedrich, Constable and Turner in high esteem. But perhaps a more fruitful comparison would be with contemporaries whose Romantic heritage leads to artworks that show a kindred sensibility as Qiu’s. The blurred landscapes of Gerhard Richter come naturally to mind. Richter had said: “I believe quite simply that we have not yet gone beyond Romanticism. The paintings of that era are still a part of our sensibility.” (Catalogue, Centre Pompidou, Paris 1977) Although he champions diverse styles, his attitude toward artistic creation as a force of nature – that art creates as nature creates – adds meaning to his figurative landscapes. “You cannot represent reality. What you make only represents itself; in other words, it is itself reality.” (Richter, 1972) The seductive quality of Richter’s paintings lies in the longing for an undefinable, enigmatic vision. While Romantic nature opens man to the unfathomable, with intimation of a tragic vision, the realm of the formless in Taoist nature encompasses both chaos and pristine origin. The enigma which Qiu investigates in his paintings is the spiritual centre of the human being, which lies at the heart of mystery of this Taoist nature. The realm of formlessness also points to the mental state preceding thought and vision, in which wisdom and intuition reside. If Qiu’s art has a purpose, it would be as inspiration for the meditative mind, leading the viewer to his own nature.

1996