To Chinese artists, line—rather than the light and shadow of much Western art—was the basic structural element of all painting, as it was of calligraphy. A high premium was placed on the skilled manipulation of the brush, which was made of a bone or wood handle fitted with unusually soft, flexible bristles. In the calligraphy above, done with such a brush, one of Hsieh Ho's primary canons of art is expressed in the four Chinese ideograms "Structure-Method Use-Brush." Indeed, the mastering of brushwork was considered so necessary in giving life to a painting that one art critic described the brush as an extension of "the arm, the belly and the mind"; another called brushwork an artist's "heart-print."
Like calligraphers, Chinese painters practiced for years to develop the muscular control necessary to execute swift, delicate strokes. Every artist tried to perfect his brushwork until it bore an imprint as p. ersonal as his handwriting. When a painter had mastered this technique,'his strokes were said to resemble a dance—full of energy, movement and life. As one master put it, brushstrokes should be "like a flock of birds darting out of the forest, or like a frightened snake disappearing in the grass, or like the cracks in a shattered wall."
DYNAMIC LINES animate two Chinese gentlemen portrayed on a Third Century ceramic tile (left). Curving lines of varying widths impart a feeling of movement as the men engage in conversation.
CALLIGRAPHY'S INFLUENCE on painting is seen in the facile brushstrokes that depict the face (detail, right above) of one of the men on the tile. The main lines of the painting were done with the same kind of quick, fluid motions as the calligraphic symbols shown at the right, and both have the desired quality of "life."
FAITHFULLY RENDERED FORMS make this record of a court party, painted a thdusandyears ago, bubble with life. Its carefully drawn women with their delicate, flowered robes are both convincing and graceful. The painter's masterful eye for detail is indicated by his treatment of the puglike dog lying under the table (above).
The purpose of the painter was, in the words of an artist of the Fourth Century, "to portray the spirit through the form." The ability to draw good likenesses was gradually learned over the centuries. By the Ninth Century, when works like the court scene below were being painted, artists more than satisfied the stipulation of Hsieh Ho's canon, which is symbolized at left by the characters "Fidelity-Type Depict-Form."
This canon, however, became the focus of a con
Tinuing debate among Chinese artists and critics. Which was more important; exact representation or free expression? Virtually all artists agreed that the subject of a painting should have recognizable form, but many felt that the spirit of the subject waJ even more important. One Ninth Century critic, striking at the root of the problem, declared that an artist who could capture life necessarily had to be adept at representation-but that a good representationalist could not always capture life.
World History
