Chinese tradition in landscape art.
Landscape painting and calligraphy were the ultimate expressions of art in traditional China.
The ideal for the scholar was to commune with nature, walking among the mountains and streams, but this was generally not practicable for a busy official, so taking out a landscape painting and allowing the mind to wander its paths was a substitute for this.The painting below is attributed to Gong Xian (1618–1689). Gong Xian's life was greatly affected by the cataclysmic changes resulting from the fall of the Ming dynasty. His hopes for a comfortable life as a scholar official were dashed and although he is regarded as part of the wenren 'literati' painting tradition, he was forced to 'abase' himself and become a professional painter.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/objects/tMHtSqOqR_aU_hVwROmKyw
Elements of the traditional landscape by Gong-Xian can be seen in the work of the contemporary Chinese artist, Cai Guo-Qiang now living in New York.
Born in 1957 in Quanzhou, Fujian Province, China, Cai Guo-Qiang received a BFA in
stage design from the Shanghai Drama Institute in 1985. He lived in Japan from 1986 to 1995,
after which he moved to New York, where he has lived and worked ever since.
Cai first began experimenting with gunpowder in 1984 and developed his signature
explosion events and related gunpowder drawings in 1989.
He mines gunpowder’s charged identification with China, where it was invented,
to create allegorical sociopolitical commentaries that riff on saltpeter’s
paradoxical associations with ancient medicine, ritual fireworks, and modern violence.
By using explosives as pyrotechnical events outdoors or as a medium on paper,
Cai recast a charged Chinese material to stake his contribution to the emerging global art scene. He also made the case that the catharsis of destruction and creation links art and war.
In his varied practices and materials, Cai draws freely from ancient mythology, military history,
Daoist cosmology, Maoist revolutionary tactics, Buddhist philosophy, pyrotechnic technology,
Chinese medicine, and images of terrorist violence.
Installation view of Unmanned Nature, Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, 2015
Photo by Michael Pollard, courtesy Whitworth Art Gallery
Review by Jamie Barnes, May 2015. The North/South Art Blog.
Several friends had told me about this exhibition at the re-launched Whitworth and I had seen
images of Guo-Qiang’s gunpowder drawings in the space. However, when I saw the installation for myself it was like a punch in the solar plexus. I stood in awe not only at the installed drawings themselves, but also at the accompanying video playing outside the entrance to the exhibition space.
This 10 minute video showed various firework displays Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang (pronounced Sy Gwo-Chang) had orchestrated using ‘black fireworks’ and a 2 minute sequence about how he made the gunpowder drawing. Black fireworks are designed to be used in daylight and use coloured powders instead of light to achieve their effects.
Guo-Qiang uses these fireworks to create carefully controlled and instant drawings in the sky ranging from graphic ink-type effects and ‘black rainbows’ to veils of textured smoke pricked with points of light. I had literally never seen anything like this before, and stood open-mouthed in front of the screen. In fact I could have happily sat and watched this in a video room for hours.
I then entered the gallery room to see the large gunpowder drawing.
The drawing is 45 metres long and four metres high. It is drawn onto 15 separate sheets of Japanese hemp ‘paper’ which is tacked to the wall and is presented behind a large lozenge-shaped shallow infinity pool (three visitors have stepped into the pool to date, mistaking if for glass!). The artwork looks exactly like an outsized Chinese ink wash drawing of a mountain landscape in sepia and black with a large abstract sun burning in the sky. However what looks like ink is actually burnt gunpowder.
The drawing was made in Hiroshima in 2008 for the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art’. This is the first time it has been seen outside of Japan. It took months of negotiations to get it to Manchester and it finally arrived rolled into four giant tubes packed in two crates. It is the first exhibit to grace the Whitworth’s new ‘Landscape Gallery’.
To make the drawing Guo-Qiang laid out the 45 metres of paper sheets inside a large gymnasium in Hiroshima. He then spread, sprinkled and brushed different colours of gunpowder over the paper in a very controlled way to draw the image. He used paper stencils laid over the paper to help define the lines in the landscape and to create the sun form, he then placed fuses amongst the gunpowder. After hours of careful drawing, he laid large sheets of cardboard over the drawing and placed small weights and rocks on top of the cardboard.
He then lit the gunpowder and it momentarily ignited, then was extinguished as the cardboard suppressed the oxygen. At this instant the drawing was formed or ‘fixed’ onto the paper. In this way it is a little like printmaking, where the printmaker spends days and weeks thinking about, preparing, working, and inking the etching plate, then image is formed in just a few seconds as the paper passes through the press. When we look at Guo-Qiang’s drawing, we see scorch marks, ingrained gunpowder, and thin veils of watery background wash which make up an impressive experience to the viewer. We are able to get right up close to the drawing & I fancied I could even smell the gunpowder itself. Add to this the experience of seeing the drawing reflected in a pool, it all adds up to a powerful, impressive and contemplative experience.
In the video below, Cai Guo-Qiang talks about his work and how and how destruction has become part of the creative process.