Part 08 The Beauty of Line in Phantom Painting

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Chinese calligraphy and Western abstract painting belong to two different aesthetic categories. The former is an artistic form evolved from square Chinese characters, while the latter is a transformation of Western color painting. In terms of artistic innovation, the two have similarities and similarities; In terms of creative methods, there are fundamental differences.

Firstly, Chinese cursive script also belongs to abstract art, with its main constituent elements being lines written with a brush. In Western abstract paintings, the constituent elements are also lines and dots, while the more prominent ones are usually various color blocks and geometric shapes. Western abstract painting is relative to realistic painting that realistically and vividly reflects objective nature. In Europe and America, since the 14th century, realistic painting has always been a leader in the art world, with strong influence and widespread acceptance by society. Its influence has been far-reaching, and a large number of outstanding oil painters and works have emerged. Da Vinci's creative notes also specifically demonstrate that the main theme of painting is to faithfully depict the objective world, which is revered by the West as an unfortunate classic of art theory. In stark contrast, abstract painting, which appeared relatively late, was in an awkward position from the beginning and was rarely appreciated and sought after by others. The reason is that abstract painting fundamentally negates the creative philosophy of realistic painting that reflects nature and society, and needs to start anew and compete with the realists. Its creative method is to completely abandon the reproduction of natural phenomena, that is, completely deviate from tradition, and use points, lines, color blocks, and geometric shapes to stimulate the audience's inner resonance.

Calligraphy is also an abstract art, although it is not a painting or a specific image, it is a creation that contains artistic life and has an artistic style and charm comparable to painting.

The mother form of Chinese calligraphy is Chinese characters, from oracle bone inscriptions, inscriptions on gold, to small seal script, and then to official script, regular script, line script, and cursive script. The later the script appears, the farther it is from the image of hieroglyphs; On the other hand, the more simplified the font structure, the faster the writing speed, and the greater the distance between it and the pictogram. Therefore, compared to the various forms of seal script, official script, and regular script, although there have been changes, there is little change in the appearance of pictographs in running script such as "Preface to the Orchid Pavilion" and "Manuscript for Sacrificing Nephews". By the Tang Dynasty, Zhang Xu and Huai Su's cursive script, Song Dynasty Su Shi and Huang Tingjian's cursive script, and Ming Dynasty Xu Wei and Wang Duo's cursive script, the traces of pictographs have disappeared even more. Due to the long distance between cursive script and hieroglyphs, there is a huge difference between the two. However, Chinese people who have been influenced by traditional ethnic culture for a long time can still roughly understand that cursive script evolved from block Chinese characters, knowing that it is a unique and artistic Chinese character, although many of them are not recognized. But Western abstract painting is different. Not only do the general public not understand what the crisscrossing color blocks and geometric shapes in the painting are, but they also do not know what kind of connotation and theme abstract painting is displaying. Most viewers do not, as abstract painters claim, "stimulate the rhythm of the inner heart and emotional resonance.

Among Western abstract painting artists, Kandinsky and Kuska, as well as later Malivich and Mondrian, all experienced the wisdom and perseverance of excellent artists to develop abstract art, and consolidated the experiments of abstract art through their own theories. Therefore, the famous German aesthetic critic Arsen Polibni highly praised them as "the four great founders of abstract painting

Innovation is the means of development and the driving force for the development and progress of things. Only through innovation can we carry on and open up the future. Whether in the East or the West, whether in calligraphy or painting, there is no exception. The successive emergence of various forms of Chinese calligraphy is the result of innovation and the progress of calligraphy art. Western abstract painting can break through the original realistic methods and find a new way to transform the old creative methods, which is also a commendable innovation. Therefore, it can be said that the emergence of various forms in the history of Chinese calligraphy, as well as the emergence of abstract painting in the history of Western art, reflects the law that objective things must develop from simplicity to prosperity, from single to multiple. Secondly, with the development of production and social progress, people's demands for artistic aesthetics will also increase. They hope that new forms of art will continue to emerge to meet subjective aesthetic needs, which is another important reason why calligraphy and abstract painting have the same appearance.

Chinese calligraphy, especially the cursive script that is farthest from pictographs, is also a visual art form. The viewer perceives its beautiful beauty through its flowing and tumbling lines. It can be said that Chinese calligraphy allows viewers to see images and generate rich associations from the abstract. Abstract painting, on the other hand, aims to create a musical sensation directly through the viewer's visual experience. Here, auditory perception becomes the dominant aesthetic in painting. In theory, this is highly subjective and one-sided. The creative concept of "seeking fish through luck" is also the key to the success of Western abstract painting to this day.

Chinese calligraphers have always respected tradition and the principles of artistic creation established by sages, viewing tradition as fundamental. Since ancient times, every innovative calligrapher has been an excellent inheritor of traditional art. Huai Su, a master of cursive calligraphy in the Tang Dynasty, introduced his innovative calligraphy practice through personal experience, calling it "aiming for novelty without any fixed principles". The novelty of appearance and style refers to the high-level pursuit of the aesthetic of cursive script, while "no rules" refers to breaking through the constraints of old rules, using open concepts and broad mindedness to create new beautiful art forms, but not abandoning traditional pen and ink tastes. In short, it can not only inherit the essence of the ancients, but also dare to explore and create new. This reflects his dialectical concept in the innovation of cursive writing.

Liu Youju, the founder of illusionist painting, is a senior calligrapher. He is good at cursing, and his calligraphy runs smoothly with profound skills, providing a solid foundation for his use of calligraphy in painting.

French painter Matisse's pen sketch uses a pure line to express his own world. From the innocent and casual lines, we seem to see the painter's unfailing childlike innocence in his heart. His lines are a straightforward emotional expression. The Austrian expressionist painter Schiller's work "The Painter and the Female Model in front of the Mirror" expresses complex perspective relationships with simple and lively lines, reflecting the painter's simple and simple artistic style.

The artistic principles and ultimate goals of the pursuit of lines in Chinese and Western painting art are the same. In the long history, Chinese painting has gradually developed into an Eastern art that uses lines as bones, linear objects, and lines to convey spirit, and the lines themselves have independent aesthetic value. In the evolution of history, early Western art, represented by ancient Greece and Rome, retained linear shapes while creating a painting art form that portrayed objects through light and shade, light and shadow, and color.

The lines of Chinese painting not only represent the outline and structure of objects, but also convey the painter's subjective emotional state and artistic spirit. The emphasis of Chinese painting is on the separation of lines, white cloth, and interlaced movements. Lines are no longer the lines themselves, but contain emotions and meanings beyond the lines, conveying more information. The role of lines goes beyond the requirements of shaping the body and becomes a means for the author to express their will, thoughts, and emotions.

Chinese painting is a form of imagery, and its creative characteristic is that "the likeness of a person's image must be in its form, and the likeness of its form must be based on its backbone. The backbone and likeness of its form are all based on the intention, and belong to the use of the pen". It does not pursue "likeness of form" as its ultimate goal. Therefore, there is a poem by Su Dongpo in the Song Dynasty that "on painting, likeness of form can be seen in the neighborhood of children". Mr. Qi Baishi also said that "the beauty lies between likeness and non likeness". The creative principle of Chinese painting is "learning from the outside and obtaining the source of the heart", and its aesthetic standard is "vivid charm", emphasizing "writing the spirit with form", "surpassing the outside with imagery", and "expressing emotions based on objects". The establishment of these standards and principles provides a vast and free space for Chinese painting painters to pursue the character of line alone. The painters use the light and heavy strokes of the brush to express their temperament and form their sadness and joy, as well as the ups and downs of the touch, and the intensity of dryness and dampness.

The mural art of Yongle Palace in Shanxi, which has been preserved to this day, represents a high level of artistic achievement in Chinese character line drawing with its majestic, grand momentum, character shapes with both form and spirit, and the incisive, free and exquisite line drawing strokes. At the same time, it also demonstrates the author's superb line drawing skills and the exploration of the interesting spirit of line by ancient Chinese artists.

The establishment of the theory of "imagery" in Chinese painting is rooted in the rich traditional cultural soil of the Chinese nation for thousands of years, and is gradually developed and evolved under the influence of Lao Zhuang, Buddhism, and Confucianism. The concept of "hidden and exposed" in Chinese painting and calligraphy lines reflects the Confucian philosophy of the "golden mean". Chinese painting emphasizes "inner beauty", while lines require "no stimulation or encouragement", "hiding but not revealing", "introverted", "reserved", "hiding sharp strokes", and so on. This is consistent with the Chinese people's survival mentality of "unity between heaven and man" and "returning to nature".

The lines of Chinese painting are also imbued with the essence of Laozi and Zhuangzi philosophy and the Zen principles of Buddhism. The lines are no longer single and mechanical, but lively and lively. They contain a lot of information, full of mystery, philosophy, profoundness, and a sense of nature.

The Wei, Jin, Northern and Southern Dynasties period was an important stage in the development of Chinese line drawing. During this period, "metaphysics flourished", and a large number of painters, represented by Gu Kaizhi, pursued a wayward and unrestrained style of "Wei and Jin" that was not limited to etiquette, form, simplicity, and transcendence. We can see the artistic characteristics of Gu Kaizhi's works of "spring clouds floating in the air, flowing water flowing on the ground" from his handed down copies of "The Illustrated Scroll of Women's History" and "The Illustrated Scroll of Luo Shen Fu". He uses tight and continuous threads, with smooth and round turns, and a graceful and graceful demeanor, like "spring silkworms spinning silk".

The "Luoshen Fu Tujuan" depicts a love story in the literary work "Luoshen Fu" by Cao Zhi, one of the leading figures in Jian'an literature. The Luo God in the picture walks lightly and gracefully. The author, with skilled line drawing techniques, showcases a romantic realm that is as if crying, as if at ease, as if in a dream, as if in a fantasy, and as if in a fusion of gods and humans.

The rich information conveyed by the lines of Chinese painting is manifested by its unique texture of rigidity, softness, swiftness, turning, pressing, and ink color changes. Its exquisite line shape can evoke visual plane associations in the audience, while also evoking a visual sense of space.

Since the Song and Yuan dynasties, with the establishment of literati painting standards and changes in creative concepts, as well as the widespread use of rice paper, calligraphers and painters have increasingly felt that controlling ink color can expand the expressive space of their works. The works of the Eighth National Congress, Liang Kai, and Wang Duo's "Rising Ink" have a sense of depth and volume, which is the spatial sense conveyed by the lines.

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In artistic creation, lines have an infinite variety of forms of expression. It can be said that there are as many forms of lines as there are works. However, as long as we temporarily ignore the personality differences between artists and artworks, we can still find some relatively stable formal rules. In artistic works, they constitute the basic attributes of lines.

Here, we have four aspects of judging the nature of lines: firstly, all lines in art are traces and existence, serving as carriers of spiritual activity, as Roger Fry said: they "directly reveal the artist's personality". Secondly, line is the simplest and most intuitive way to present objects, and it is the carrier of objects. In all types of reproducible painting, lines can play such a role. Sometimes, the screen can fully convey the connotation of reproducibility solely by relying on lines. For example, early human stone carvings and rock paintings, ground paintings, cave murals, Chinese white drawings, white paintings, and pink prints. The same is true of linear sketch art in the West, with works by masters such as Holbein and Engel being typical examples. Thirdly, both the lines themselves and the combination of lines in the screen are decorative. This characteristic may be implicit or explicit, sometimes following the object image, and sometimes independent of the demand for reproducibility. However, decoration always exists. Fourthly, abstract and conceptual lines also influence artistic creation. On the screen, this type of line is invisible, but at the same time, it is ubiquitous. In Western art, it is manifested as the law of perspective, designing the screen entirely based on pure geometric principles. In traditional Chinese painting, it refers to "shi" or "qi", presenting a flowing and endless charm.

Based on the above four cognitions, artists have created extremely rich line forms, greatly enriching our artistic history tradition. From our visual experience, objects are presented in space by volume, and due to the perspective relationship of volume, the phenomenon of the disappearance of the volume edges of objects naturally occurs, which is commonly referred to as contour lines. When we say we see a shape, we refer to this contour line. It is a stable and regular visual phenomenon. Due to the common visual perception structure of humans, there will be no differences in the recognition of object shapes. The true difference comes from our internal psychological structure. The results we depict for the same apple are vastly different. Therefore, the lines that appear in painting are entirely products of the spatial environment created by humans, or more specifically, products of human spiritual activities.

Compared to Chinese painting, Western painting materials and tools are much more abundant, which reflects greater variability in the expression of lines. Pens with different characteristics, such as pens, pencils, charcoal pens, colored chalk, brushes, and the painting materials used, will clearly present the different attributes and characteristics of the materials themselves on the screen. The lines drawn on paper of different textures or on cloth of different textures will also present different visual sensations. In addition, while the author controls the strength and speed of the tool, it can also result in differences in the thickness, thickness, and strength of the lines, resulting in different visual effects that naturally vary and have their own characteristics.

From Liu Youju's illusion painting series, we can better perceive the unique artistic value of his works by using the aesthetic of calligraphy to explain the charm of his lines.