Leaning on a Balustrade, Inviting Memory

In the “temporal dictionary” of classic Chinese artifacts, we often come across lexical items that convey feelings of heartache. This mood results from a living thing’s sensitivity to change. A being that is truly alive will always respond to change, unless it has no sense of warmth and chill, no awareness of bodily pain, no consciousness of mortality and separation. Moments of such “sense” and “awareness” and “consciousness” accumulate until a person’s attention is drawn to another place. This “other place” is usually expressed through written words or pictures. We acknowledge the existence of such an “other place,” and we acknowledge its powerful pull. A solitary being often places reliance upon it and looks to it for continuance.
Yao Yuan was born in Zhuji, Zhejiang Province, but for a long time she had no knowledge of the ancients from that area—Wang Mian, Yang Weizhen, Chen Hongshou. As an infant she went with her parents to live in Luzhou, an area in Sichuan Province. Her environment was a chemical plant set up deep in the mountains of Sichuan. It was a place of beautiful scenery, “nestled in among mountains and rivers.” However, in the interests of national defense, factories such as this were situated at a distance from districts having normal amenities. “We were seven kilometers away from the nearest town. Sometimes on market days our parents would take us along when they went to market on foot. Often I grew tired from walking and was carried home on my father’s back. We lived in a rural setting, and we often used to roam about in the fields. But the amenities district had stores and two-story buildings; it had lights and a ball field and an outdoor movie arena. That place was envied by people for kilometers around.” Although her father’s experience with political movements had ended by this time, her childhood experiences were hardly enriching. “My parents went of to work, and I was ordered to stay at home, sitting on a bench. Around that time I started drawing anything that came into my head. I drew little flowers and creatures that charmed me. Sometimes my mother would take me along to work. She was a doctor then, and I would amuse myself by drawing on prescription forms…My memories of interior life are gray, but my outdoor memories of mountains, streams, plants and weather are colorful. It was a landscape rich in natural colors, green and blue, with distant ridges shaded in violet, and waterfalls in the ravines yellow after a rain. The river water was green in springtime, and in summer it changed to a churning yellow current. There was a grove of longan trees on the riverbank, and fragrant orange blossoms. Layered silhouettes of bamboos were bluish in the morning mist. Children of farm families used to race along the riverbank with squealing cries. Toward evening there was a whole rainbow of colors in the sunset clouds; the moon was bright in the clear night sky…” There was nothing remarkable about such experiences, but they indicate her earliest recognition of the natural environment. Such recognition can prompt one to feel instinctive love, and environment has a subconscious influence on one’s passions. She used to “roam about the fields and slopes behind the school building, hunting for flowers and berries.” She gazed at flowers, noting the process of change from buds to mature blooms. She observed the ripening of wild fruits, noting that each had its own beautiful color. She drew little pictures of flowers, birds, and people who charmed her. When she entered primary school, her mother borrowed a copy of the Mustard Seed Garden Painting Manual from the reading room at the factory’s technical school. Yao Yuan took lessons in painting from a teacher named Wang at the technical school. “I learned from Teacher Wang how to paint bamboo, how to paint the joints, and how to paint orchid leaves. At home I used newspaper as rice paper, and I painted many practice pieces with the Mustard Seed Garden Manual open in front of me. That book had a deep influence on me, and its bird and flower motifs have always been a part of my memories as a painter.” But her childhood experience with painting was not to continue. Painting had no place in her life, except as a hobby, for she was required to study hard at all times for her exams. She was not allowed to paint, for that was seen as a distraction. “Sneaking away to paint pictures” was a great pleasure to her as a teen-ager. The rigid, useless teaching methods at school filled her with instinctive repugnance. Spurred by the rebelliousness of budding youth, she went so far as to run away from home.
Running away put me on a path that led to painting. As a problem student, I attracted the attention of the principal. The principal was a cultured, learned college professor who had been assigned the top post at our middle school. He had a talk with me and easily figured out what had caused my difficulties. He knew that I had ability in painting, so he let me take part in our school’s painting class; he also told me that I could sign up for entrance exams to art school. When we started sketching plaster busts and drawing still-life pieces in pastels, I felt it was difficult, but the teacher said I was progressing quickly. I signed up for exams at only one college—the Nanjing Normal University Art School. Unlike many students I did not take entrance exams for Nanjing Art Institute, or Suzhou Silk Products Institute, or Wuxi Light Industry, or even the Central Academy of Fine Arts. I had little in the way of high ideals. I told myself I’d be content just passing the test so I could paint.
College provided conditions for Yao Yuan to devote herself to painting, but this did not mean she would automatically become an outstanding painter. During her college studies she read E. H. Gombrich and various illustrated histories of traditional Chinese art. Paintings that remained in her memory included Zhou Fang’s “High-Toned Women with Flower Hairpins”; Zhang Xuan’s “Spring Outing by the Reigning Lady of Guo Kingdom”; Zhou Wenji’s “Han Xizai’s Night Banquet”; Wang Ximeng’s “Three Hundred Miles of Mountains and Rivers”; Zhao Zi’ang’s “Autumn Weather with Magpies and Flowers” and “Horses Drinking in Autumn Suburbs”; Qian Xuan’s “Mountain Dwelling”; and Huang Gongwang’s “Mountain Dwelling at Fuchun.” Being young, she still found it difficult to understand some painters’ outlook of detachment. Thus her interests remained focused, for the most part, on highly decorative works by Chou Ying, Lan Ying, Chen Hongshou, Ren Weichang, and Ren Bonian. She also had a secondary interest in figure painting. In her senior year, the ideas and tastes of her teacher Fan Yang had an obvious influence on her. “I didn’t specifically imitate my teacher’s technique and painting style. The important thing was, I became convinced that I would keep on painting the rest of my life: I would work at painting and become a painter.” Meanwhile, Yao Yuan tried to stay abreast of styles and techniques that were favored by well-known Nanjing painters. “For instance Xu Lele painted people with big noses, and Zhou Jingxin painted characters from Along the Water Margin. Some painters would elongate the necks of beautiful women, or do something with their fore-arms and cheeks. The emphasis was on exaggerated traits and novelty.” At around that time, Yao Yuan painted studies of work by Shi Tao, Ba Da, and Kun Can, but it was no easy matter to understand the world evoked by these masters of the inkbrush. Yao Yuan was still a student, and there had been nothing extraordinary in her life experiences up to then. In that staid institutional setting, to enter a national exhibition and win a prize was the ideal of most art students who intended to pursue painting after graduation.
As a young painter, Yao Yuan’s course of development seems to have been far from smooth, since it was repeatedly interrupted by “respectable activities.” Like the majority of other art school graduates, she was swept along with the tide of “art as a livelihood.” “I made countless design drawings and rushed about the city at all hours, explaining my ‘design proposals’ to all sorts of people.” But for eight long years she did not paint a single painting. It was a suffocating life-style for her, for she could hardly bear the constant submission to others’ will. Finally she broke away from that constraining way of life and began to paint again.
“Breaking away from restraints is my way to freedom—psychic and physical freedom. If it hadn’t been for that long, pent-up period of troublesome work, I could never have painted the works that came afterward. In order to find myself, to be free and at ease, I had to invest all that time and experience beforehand.”
After her eight-year hiatus, Yao Yuan knew nothing about developments in the art scene. “I did not watch television or news; I did not read magazines; I did not socialize with painters. I simply made a trip to West Sichuan, and I was struck by the sacred beauty of the landscape. My state of mind harkened back to ten years before, when I had visited Kangding and Litang and had been moved tremendously by that plateau with its snowy peaks. So all I cared about was getting that landscape down on paper.” Here Yao Yuan is referring to her long scroll “Scenes of Changping,” a work composed of thirty panels which took two years to complete. “The important thing was not just producing that large, densely detailed piece; the two-year process of painting it helped me get past the narrow horizons of my student years and the eight-year period when I didn’t touch a brush.” During her work on this project, she began in earnest to make close observations of nature. Her discipline in brush technique and ability to emulate ancient painters also grew by leaps and bounds.
When I first started painting I was looking at works by a few contemporary painters. But as I got deeper into my project, I looked into more old-time artists. This happened because the paintings I initially thought were amazing did not hold up somehow under further looking. As I painted my long landscape scroll, all I could do was learn from the ancients along the way. That was a fairly quiet time for me, in a run-down residential building, with a roof that leaked in the rain. The people I associated with were ordinary types who had nothing to do with painting. What weighed on my mind was a pending divorce. Again it was a matter of breaking away and resisting: just as before I was rebelling and seeking the inner plane of existence that I aspired to. Back then I felt that unless I painted a long scroll I could not begin anew in painting, though I did paint small ink works here and there. It was also during this project that I took a trip to Huangshan….
The experience of going to Huangshan was not unusual: after all, hordes of painters make excursions to famous mountains and rivers every year. But Yao Yuan’s unusual perspicacity began to come into play. She began to leaf through portfolios of work by the “Four Monks”[2], and she began to discover where the painters got their spiritual enrichment. For instance, by going to Huangshan, she found evidence for the statement that “Hong Ren got at Huangshan’s essence.” Not only did she notice the angular planes of his mountain rocks, she also grasped his unique qualities: “pared-down, openly spaced, clean, somber, relentlessly cold, with keen inner substance.” As a result of these experiences at Huangshan, Yao Yuan worked out a way to “paint two screens, depicting two sides of Pacing Fairy Bridge. One side was a cliff overlooking a deep gorge, with craggy peaks in view beyond the cliff face. I added a touch of mineral green for color, representing the lush foliage of midsummer. On the other screen was a stone pinnacle jutting upward, representing the secluded, deserted setting of Pacing Fairy Bridge, a place seldom visited by travelers. By that time I greatly appreciated the lofty silence and the bracing, unspoiled quality of Hong Ren’s paintings. This was suited to my mental state at the time, for I felt disenchanted with things in general; I felt the tide of events was out of my hands, and I couldn’t help feeling dejected and sorry for myself. There was no way to dispel those feelings except by painting pictures. Later I went to Huangshan several times, and each time the place touched me in a different way.”
After painting her long scroll, Yao Yuan also completed “Snow Peaks and Autumn Hues.” In painting this dense, full composition, her aim was to take stock of all the problems she had encountered while working on her long scroll. It is like solving a mathematics problem: after going through all those elaborate operations there has to be a conclusion, which one may feel as an inner necessity. Yao Yuan created this painting for the Tenth National Exhibition, but it was not chosen for a prize.
She went through upsetting changes in her state of mind. Even little problems, emotional and practical, would stir hard-to-describe feelings. She found an expressive outlet for such feelings in snowy scenes of Huangshan or in flowering plants with broken branches. A person’s sad moods and disappointments have no direct relation to art. Yet she was able to make the branch of a tree—or pink peach blossoms, or an untended quiet corner—correspond to her inner state. This ability marked her difference from people who keep their complex inner life bottled up. She herself puts it this way. “I suspect I may remain in this frame of mind indefinitely, because I always gravitate toward moods that the ancients inspire in me; I always sigh at such lines as ‘human life will always hold sorrow, and water will always flow eastward’.” Given this state of mind, a painter who works with inkbrush and rice paper will naturally seek out kindred spirits among the works of the ancients. At this new stage of searching, what one gets from ancient artists is not just an impression gleaned while copying or doing study pieces. The key here is to “read something else behind the brushwork.” At her one-woman show of 2005, viewers were struck by the indefinable spaciousness of her paintings. After that exhibition she spent a summer vacation travelling to Yuntai Mountain and Luoyang in Henan Province, as well as to Hua Mountain in Shaanxi. The Longmen Grottoes had a great “impact” on her. “The crumbling buddha-niches made me appreciate the essential qualities of stone. It can be an inert lump, but it can also be a spiritual presence undiminished for a thousand years: It can inspire those who come later to praise and worship it. It stands before them, and they cannot go beyond it.” Upon returning to Nanjing, she began work on her “One Flower, One World” series. This series was completed in intermittent bursts of work, but one thing is clear: by this point the strongest influences on her were coming from pre-existing culture, not directly from something seen in real life. In fact, an individual’s experience and emotional life have no direct relation to art. And yet, when any person sets out to make a thoroughgoing self-interrogation, threads of relatedness will be seen to extend outward in all directions [including the area of cultural representation]. This universal experience tells us something about the connections between a person and her social, historical context. When Yao Yuan saw Hong Ren’s original work “Forest Spring on a Spring Evening” at the Shanghai Art Museum, she had a new realization:
I turned past a partition wall and there in front of me were some late-Ming paintings; of course they were all were fine works. But to have Hong Ren’s piece appear before me suddenly, just when I turned that corner—that had an impact on me. It spoke to me of sorrows borne in secret, but also with indomitable strength. Maybe I really was able to read the message in that painting. I hardly think I could have been misreading it or interpreting it fancifully. But in my eyes, many of the paintings around it paled in comparison. I ran into a teacher I was acquainted with, and I spoke of what I felt. As I spouted off, I said that not even Dong Qichang could come close to this, that none of Dong’s works had comparable impact. The teacher said laughingly, ‘So, it would seem that even Dong Qichang is beneath your notice.’ That remark scared me, so afterwards I did not dare to speak recklessly. In my view, there is a distinction of high and low in art. Two pieces may both be famous works that have stood the test of time, but there is a distinction in the intensity with which they move you. I lingered for a long time in front of that painting. The next day I went back to Nanjing and, standing at my desk, I let my brush go where it wanted. I was still thinking of that painting by Hong Ren, so the landscape I painted resembled the one in his painting. At the same time I was moved by the gentle sunlight outside the window, and my heart pulsed with warm feelings. Before I knew it, my brush had painted crab flowers in full bloom. There was a retiring, maidenly manner to those flowers that sent a shiver through me. I was feeling that my ‘vermillion lips and red sleeves were all for naught,’ and that the springtime of my life was going to waste; I sighed at how easily the brightest bloom can fade, and that nothing can avail against the onrush of time. In a single piece I painted a landscape and a close-up of flowers, and both were statements of the same theme—namely, the sublimity of a natural setting, but at the same time, the loneliness of seclusion in a deserted valley. My present-day mood tallied with the mood of an ancient painter, though we were working with different subject matter. Yet I still haven’t found a definitive balance point between tradition and modernity, between continuity and innovation. What I said above is just a provisional accommodation, a method of sorting out elements.
These responses were not only implicit in her ensuing “Screen Series,” they appeared clearly in many other works. By this point, her personal responses were turning towards abstraction, for it was only through the atmosphere arising out of shapes and compositions that the painter could relieve her melancholy preoccupations.
Even in her student years she had enthusiastically done studies on the abstract technique of Shi Tao, that “genius disdainful of all eras.” Yet she had not come away with a deep understanding of Shi Tao’s spirit. When she looked carefully at Shi Tao once again, and when she took his portfolio to Huangshan and searched for his traces, she felt that it was “hard to identify which peak he had in mind.” She also felt that he had touched upon the true sensibility of Huangshan. In this respect, it would seem, Shi Tao was different from Hong Ren. Yet in her new encounter with Shi Tao, she understood things in a different way:
Actually a mountain has no sensibility: it is one’s own sensibility that hits upon the landscape’s gradual transforming effect on the painted work. I have found both Hong Ren’s cold remoteness and Shi Tao’s passion to be infectious. By now I realize that to learn from Shi Tao, you need to have independent spirit and insight; you need to have your own unique stance. Shi Tao is known for the ‘uninhibited verve of his brush which overleaps all ruts.’ Thus the person who learns from him had better possess similar character. Even if the learner has this kind of mental force, what she paints may have totally different features from Shi Tao’s work. They are kindred in intent, that’s all: there is certainly no crude duplication on the literal level of brushwork or composition. This is like traditional Chinese crafts, in which you approach the master’s level of skill through true understanding, not by copying each move and trick in a visible way. I believe in ‘sudden enlightenment.’ A lifetime of cultivation may not be as good as a moment of insight. If you don’t transcend yourself periodically, in the limited span of a lifetime how can you reach a height that ordinary people cannot?
After her one-woman show in 2005, Yao Yuan no longer had a simplistic understanding of what painting (or “art”) might be. She no longer hoped to seek possibilities of understanding in landscape, but instead wanted to project her inner wondrousness onto flowers, birds, and branches. At the same time, the stones in those Southland gardens, those mottled traces and ripples, summoned up insights and powerful responses in her heart. She went seeking back and forth, between transient natural objects and the legacy of ancient painters. In the beginning she was after self-understanding, but over time she knew that was still too simple. Gradually she began to seek self-understanding through understanding others. She expanded her scope of understanding, seeking it in the air and sunlight or in the rainy conditions of any vista she passed through. It became clear that understanding deepens along with time’s passage.
As some scholars have noted, the basic modality of China’s classical documents is one of remembrance; what is more, it is precisely remembrance of the constantly vanishing past which constitutes fidelity to an enduring “plane of being.” Reminders uttered by the Buddha, written appeals to conceptual thought, awareness stimulated by the flux of natural objects, or even the unfolding of a graceful melody—all carry such an implication. In view of this, Yao Yuan’s brush and inkstone end up being tools of remembrance. Those traces left by her brush-tip—the tumbled garden walls, mist-hidden mountains, and withering flowers—become our basis for grasping a special kind of remembrance.

Head Spinning with Wine among Flowers Last Night;
Stones Grown with Moss along the Path This Morning

Yao Yuan has lived most of her life in a setting not far from traditional gardens, but her initial understanding of gardens was limited to externals. Stories about famous gardens in history can lead a person to revel in the atmosphere of old gardens. In her reading the painter has revisited impressions of garden settings which she first encountered in the classical novel, A Dream of Red Mansions.
Upon entering a garden, in the space of a few yards, we may find a steep path going into the mist. With each step a new scene of boulders and glens unfolds. Walkways lead from one loggia to another, winding among rockeries…. To amble through a formal garden is like savoring a poem or enjoying a painting. What’s more, the roots of gardens and literature are inextricably bound together. In whichever era Chinese gardens were discussed, they could never be separated from poetry and essays. The structural scheme of gardens emerges from the literary imagination; the existence of gardens needs writing to be made known. One speaks of a garden’s structure having a ‘well-proportioned style.’ It has to be an integral whole, a union of spontaneous nature and human effort. And yet a garden is something in which ‘the artificial takes on a truth of its own.’ I suppose we can say ‘when artificial things are truthfully made, the artificial can also be real.’
Conceptions of the past are bound to differ according to person and period. Yao Yuan noticed the gap between “childhood intuitions” and the knowledge “that comes with age.” For instance, she discovered that nature within a garden is “not at all natural.” Those small bonsai-style scenes, the contorted flower-bearing trees, the carefully chosen stones.…In these things she discovered “unnaturalness.” Of course, she knew the ancients’ attitude toward stones, and she appreciated the heaven-endowed nature of stones, knowing that large ones have grand contours like high mountains and the small ones are delicate-grained like fine jade. Jade too is a stone. The ancients loved stones because “though no larger than a fist, they hold as many fascinating details of a massive boulder.” As for the taihu rocks which are unique to the Southland, they can almost be seen as gemstones or curios. This goes against the solacing detachment one can find in a natural landscape. Yet the ancients had plenty of historical reasons and habits which caused them to build gardens, where one can “get a taste of wildness without going outside the city wall.” This is a particular aftermath of the Southland’s history. For a person who is sensitive to time, the aesthetic question of gardens is not about why the ancients did not just go out into nature, or why some ancients did repeatedly venture into nature. Right from the start of her fascination with gardens, Yao Yuan took them on their own merits. We moderns, descendants of those who survived, have learned from history that the physical body has its limitations.
Leaving home to travel was inconvenient for the ancients. A trip was a ‘thousand miles of wind and frost,’ and at the start of a journey, ‘the rugged road was a dismal prospect.’ It was nothing like nowadays, when we can go north of Hangu Pass or south of the Yangzi River anytime we please. If we want to see something, we just take off and go. That’s why I forgive the ancients for their painstaking endeavors to make these gardens serviceable. This is what they had to settle for. What is more, in the old days, women of good families could not venture out of doors; they had to resign themselves to being shut within a garden. Anyway, to stay home and take care of your health, to let the sun waken you and sit outside at night; to gather with fellow lovers of literature and drink wine in a pleasant setting—what could be more carefree and enjoyable than to do these things in your own garden?
Such a opinion can be gained from books, by eyes which have not actually witnessed such things. One can also get such an impression during a short visit to a garden. But when the garden setting becomes part of one’s everyday experience, a change will happen in one’s responses:
This was the same garden I had strolled in ten years before. But after that I went into a hiatus. I did not ponder anything or study anything. I did not paint pictures. Ten years later I revisited Clumsy Governance Garden and Remain Here Garden and Hazy Waves Pavilion in Suzhou. It was a chilly, cloudy day, not a good day for an outing, in the middle of a cold winter, but without no snow on the ground. Strolling through a garden gave me a feeling like what is described in poems and lyrics: ‘Fine trees flourish and perennials are lush; odd rocks jut up and a clear current running through. Cool gazebo and heated lodge, pavilion and belvedere are open to wind and moon. Where things should be high they are high, where things should be low they are low, and each view unfolds into the next.’ To linger in such a place is a heady pleasure. Even blustery desolation lends it charms which surpass a day of perfect spring weather. Each fresh aspect of the garden’s loveliness brought a sigh to my lips, and my eyes were overwhelmed by all they had to take in. Although my outing was hurried, back home the memories kept revolving in my mind. I was entranced with that garden, and felt that I should not commit brush to paper carelessly. I needed to give it some thought before picking up my brush to paint it. It was so perfect in itself that I worried my version would ruin it. That would be like forcing one’s intentions on a beautiful woman. It would be better to paint a serving maid first, a partial view of a dress-hem or midriff. I simply didn’t dare to start daubing recklessly. The garden’s intricacy, its winding indirection, had a hold on me. No matter what one’s mental state might be, there would be a place to stop and gaze, and the scene would answer to one’s feelings. It is like some things about Kunqu opera that are so refined and elusive that you can’t explain them in so many words. And even when you do go to elaborate lengths figuring them out, sometimes you can’t help throwing it aside and sighing—Ai! What a bother!
Our painter clearly believes that any scene in a garden can be a painting—each knoll, rock, grassy clump, tree, wall, brick-and-tile verandah, or cornerstone…each path and casually glimpsed perennial plant. When Yao Yuan revisited the gardens of Suzhou, these things exerted a sway and stirred her tender feelings. Even so, the world that emerged from her brush was nothing like ordinary works on the subject of gardens, showing a verandah en toto, or the outline of a grove, or a path winding to hidden places. Yao Yuan did not gratify herself with literati-style refinement in ink. Instead, she was motivated to convey in brushwork her response to the meetings and partings and deep-seated regrets of life. Yao Yuan’s “Gardens” series was divided into two categories—one of tiny garden corners consisting of a few flowering plants and branches, and the other having to with “memory.” These works were all responses that followed from her resumption of garden excursions. What marks her works off from other works on similar subjects is that Yao Yuan totally put aside all concern with the overall physical features of gardens. She hardly even showed any regard for the treatment of gardens by the “new literati painters.” Apparently she felt there was nothing wrong with discovering the existential value of any negligible thing that one might stumble upon in a garden—camellias or plum blossoms or peach blossoms or a stalagmite, or perhaps some bedraggled branches, or even a few withered leaves. The garden setting was pushed into the distance and made obscure. In fact, her gardens became broken-down walls, lacking intactness, with all composition presented through fragments. It would seem that these things were brought in view merely as a cue for historical remembrance.
Lack of continuity is the defining feature of a “fragment.” But unstable composition and a wispy atmosphere makes even the “fragmentation” become unreal. This is doubtless an expression of her mood. Natural objects, whether intact or partial, have always existed as a function of moods and perception. Overcast skies and drizzle do not necessarily bring on melancholy, unless they overlap with a saddening incident. Sometimes the opposite is true: for instance, a decomposing plant may make a person feel dispirited, yet when overlaid by some small red flowers, it can be comforting. What is our grasp and view of phenomena after their passing? This is determined by each person’s inner world. The ancients were wont to adopt the view that intense attachment may dissolve into laughter; sadness at parting may transform into clouds and rain. Literati used to record our perennial human experience in lines like “We met in the time of peonies;/ We had our time together and now must part.” In the same way, a particular feeling compounded of gratitude for shared time and regret at parting can be transformed to visible shapes of trees, rocks, clouds, and rain. One’s grasp of “substance in words” comes from seeing their applicability to one’s own state of being. In the same way, one’s understanding of misty forms rendered in ink depends on a similar realization. When a person’s response transforms to supra-personal language, others can either sympathize with it or fall into a reverie based on their own experiential world. The “Garden Memories” series definitely grew out of memory, and that was surely based on the painter’s personal experience. But, more than that, this series came from analogies between her personal experiences and artifacts of transience. To a certain extent, such “memory” is diaristic, but if viewers can read those images of insubstantiality on rice paper, they will see more than a diaristic record. The purport of the “Garden Memories” series should come across clearly in these two lines: “Head spinning with wine among flowers last night;/ Stones grown with moss along the path this morning.” Time is relentless. Even a halcyon hour of fine wine and song and laughter—even the abundant beauty of shared affection while viewing flowers on a moonlit night—these things are rendered into insubstantial mist by the forces of time. Most people who visit a formal garden pass through quickly, and few observe the abounding details of time’s passing. But by virtue of her understanding, the painter is able to highlight such details. Flowers on a branch may be blooming, but they will soon be defeated by the dark night that absorbs all in its cycles. To say this will happen in one night is perhaps an exaggeration—though there are flowers that bloom for only one day—yet the temporal record of a plant’s life proves how fleeting a flower is. And yet, to allow room for hope in her compositions, the painter always gives pride of place to blooming flowers. Experience tells us that the pursuit of “eternity” is unceasing, though pursuit begins from unwillingness to accept the fading of beauty.

Who Will Come along to Ascend the Rocky Peak?
Climbing to the Overlook We Search for the Ancients

Why did the ancients go off to paint in secluded valleys and famous mountain areas? The explanation is that they lived in an agrarian society, in an era that was steeped in the thinking of Zhuangzi and Laozi. It is said that there is a relation between mountains and streams on one hand and men of benevolence and wisdom on the other. So when we read all those references to “natural creation” in the writings of the ancients, we should readily acknowledge this sort of thinking in the background. Yet actuality may perhaps be presented in a different way. Take for instance Mei Qing, who was a friend of Shi Tao. When he set out to explore Huangshan without a care and match wits with Shi Tao, he was already 45 years old. (His mountain-climbing days were approximately from age 46 to 48.) The painted works of Mei Qing that we can see today were done after he turned 50. The reason for this is very simple: most of Mei Qing’s life was taken up with his official career and political pursuits. Yao Yuan is fond of the Xin’an School painters; she is versed in the style of Mei Qing’s Huangshan Portfolio. One can see that the Xin’an painters’ understanding of “timelessness” was handed down from their predecessors. Indeed, the Xin’an painters were quite familiar with Ni Zan’s far-seeing detachment. But it was their intent to enrich their own artistic enterprise by staying close to their own “family mountains.” This tradition affected Yao Yuan as well. Yao Yuan’s affinity with Huangshan is instinctive, and her grasp of those mountains’ inner qualities comes from Mei Qing, Shi Tao, and especially Hong Ren. Instead of dealing with the mixed fortunes of officialdom as the ancients did, Yao Yuan had her troubles of daily life. Just as Mei Qing had to resign himself to certain experiences, we moderns have our own kind of predicament. Yao Yuan admits that the peaks of Huangshan—like soul-stirring lines of poetry by the ancients—stirred her as a painter. Yet it was her inner sadness that set the tone for her understanding and treatment of nature. Under the influence of her “dispirited and obstinate mood,” just being in that craggy landscape surrounded by pines and catalpa trees, breathing that pure bracing air, going into those lonely valleys or climbing Tiandu Peak amid chilly wind and rolling mist, she could feel herself “looking at things through the eyes of the ancients.” The reasons leading up to such a response were complex but, at any rate, our painter underwent an experience that was not merely personal. Knowledge from books, works in ink by her predecessors, personal experience, and the enduring presence of nature—these things caused her to commune with a certain stage of bygone time. Thus her paintings came to be composed of remembrance and of images she synthesized out of remembrance. The forms taken by nature can affect a person’s mood. If a person has knowledge of the ancients and has directly encountered their work, then her fascination with pellucid mountain air and gleaming snowdrifts will give her common ground with those who have had similar experiences. Influences on a person’s mode of expression are often just that simple, as we can learn from Yao Yuan’s own description.
Because she lives alone, she often feels a lack a sense of connectedness. The loneliness runs deep, and it is not something that can be dispelled just by getting together with people. Often she feels lonely even at social gatherings, and in a natural setting this mood is intensified. Love and disappointment in love invariably bring out her artistic creativity. Pacing alone through comfortless, deserted mountains, this wounded self-regard weighs on her all the more. Such a mood pours out in her painted works, because when she is being inspired by landscapes, that is the mood she is in. Her reading of scenery is primarily a response from within: it is a state of mind, not a matter of good or bad scenery.
Unusual sensitivity is an inborn trait, and as such is not all that amazing. Yao Yuan can even be affected by the breath of nature from a small snapshot. A photograph can make her “sense the chilly, bracing mountain air, perfectly pristine, and so cold it reminds me of sad things.” “Gazing at Lotus Flower Peak in the snow, all is latent sadness and silence.” “The peaks and the sky nearly fade into the same overcast atmosphere; the gray of the snowy sky has thin slips of cloud showing now and then, but those too are gray, moving obscurely past the peak and obscurely disappearing. Only a large patch of drifted snow on the rocky slope shows a snowy gleam. The sorrow in my heart wells up unbidden, merging with the leaden gray sky and the lonesome snow peak, as if only in this way can my feelings respond to the scene. Anyway, the sadness is there, and it is genuine.” Such responses naturally lead a person to seek routes of expression. Thus Yao Yuan quite naturally found the brushwork of Ni Zan, Mei Qing, Shi Tao, Hong Ren, and sometimes Yun Nantian. Yao Yuan was highly fond of Ni Zan, being affected by his force of character. As for Hong Ren, who knew Huangshan inside and out, he became a specific model for her to emulate and explore. Hong Ren had participated in the Ming-loyalist, anti-Manchu rebellion up to the age of 37, but he resigned himself to the tide of events and eventually took refuge in Buddhism and the thought of Laozi. The stone formations of Huangshan gave him a basis for his angular style, but what he really sought at Huangshan was the bracing air and stillness. This is not a matter of weather. Through the cycle of spring, summer, fall, and winter, the spiritual atmosphere of Huangshan presents varied guises. But a person who feels the weight of the world may prefer to portray the gloomy light of autumn. As I have noted in another context, it is not that such literati painters lack interest in spring, but that the beauty of spring may easily remind a sensitive person of the cold weather to come. Here we find a classic paradox: due to presentiment of utter loss, or fear of too much sorrow, some people may prefer direct portrayals of beautiful things at their height. Such a wish for stable, enduring beauty comes from remembrance of what was lost. Actually, everyone thinks this way to some extent. But seasonal plants and changes of temperature remind us that transience is unavoidable. The beautiful state of things from only a second before will rapidly fade into the mists of time. This is what is conveyed by scenes of Huangshan after a rain. When we stand on a vantage point, we can observe the spectral play of mist and the varying guises presented by mountain peaks as time passes: they go from hazy outlines to pale bluish shapes to golden or ruddy surfaces, sometimes in a single minute. After we leave and return to the city we can compare photographs of the same peak taken at different times. If we spend time reflecting on these changes—no help is needed from rationality—we may feel dispirited. Of course this results from a person’s sensitivity. At any rate, this process has resulted in the Huangshan rendered by Yao Yuan’s brush.
In her “Huangshan Series” Yao Yuan did not set out to convey a sense of “timelessness” or “detachment.” To pursue her own inner intention, she tried to convey in ink the “lofty purity” and “pristineness” that nature had bestowed on her. This is a subtle distinction in realms of being. “Timelessness” and “detachment” carry an air of bookishness, but of course they result from a search for transcendence that follows from bruising encounters with worldly ways. But in her search for a certain plane of being, Yao Yuan does not take this direction. This does not mean she has not consulted the views of the ancients or suffered from worldly reverses. Rather, it is her nature to pursue beauty without limit as a way of dispelling melancholy and heartache. The reason she is fond of snowy mountains is actually quite simple: the “lofty purity” that snow symbolizes is an aim she pursues. She hopes to return, again and again, to the snowy mountains she has seen, whether the snow-capped peaks of the Southwest or the snowy season at Huangshan. The important thing is not which mountains, but that the “pristineness” evinced by mountains in nature can cleanse the pollution of the heart. This is an inner need to slip free from worldly troubles that beset her. In the long scroll “Scenes of Changping,” she truly entered into an understanding of the ancients; she also entered into close observation of nature and the re-creation of inner experience through painting. She already had a grounding in basic knowledge about past painters, but changes in her life compelled her to deepen her understanding of many problems. “Snowy Mountains, Autumn Hues” did not surpass the basic ideas of the “Scenes of Changping” scroll. However, it scaled down and concentrated the features of that scroll into the dimensions of a single panel. Birds, flowers, leafy branches, snow-capped peaks, and clouds: all these elements were gathered into a dramatically conceived space. Here we notice that the painter has stylistically unified the objects and stand-alone techniques which were scattered through her earlier works. In her “Screen Series,” Yao Yuan emphasized spatial layout and partitioning. Several years of design experience helped her to get beyond traditional habits in her approach to space. In a highly forthright manner she partitioned off different mountain forms and mist conditions, by means of screens, to let the viewer consider different mental states through visual contrast. Take for instance the contrast between styles of Hong Ren and Mei Qing. Even so, Yao Yuan often used continuity of clouds or mist to integrate different segments of nature. A statement about the inner life is implied in this, namely, that different perceptions converge when one gets a taste of spontaneous inner nature, even though each painter follows his or her own route. Yao Yuan even used flowers in full bloom to symbolize the basic intent of nature—which is to let life go on forever, though if only in a cyclical mode. Her use of pine trees often has this aim as well. These natural objects, having been filtered through thousands of years of culture, cannot avoid doing double-duty as symbols. As long as we make good use of these symbols, we can receive the message of beauty that the ancients handed down.
Reading carefully, we come to another conclusion, namely that the portfolio Seventy-Two Scenes of Huangshan is still Yao Yuan’s most rounded-out performance as a landscape painter. She has gone to Huangshan in different seasons, and she has repeatedly perused Huangshan as rendered by Mei Qing, Shi Tao, and Hong Ren. She has also ceaselessly asked herself what her own Huangshan is. Most importantly, though the angular stones of Hong Ren have a special stylistic fascination, Yao Yuan has been able to see past this fascination and see the mournfulness of Ni Zan that lies behind it. Roiling mists will always give an impression of insubstantiality. When this is used in a composition, and the atmosphere fits well with such a composition, the result can be quite compelling. Yao Yuan renounced the beauty of Huangshan’s sunlit peaks, but she recorded the hoary indefiniteness that Huangshan had always suggested to the ancients. Sometimes, Huangshan in the sunlight can be seen as a giant cluster of rockeries, and the great monoliths appear to have been positioned there as a composition. People who have been to Huangshan will readily understand why the ancients might have described these great mountains as a terrarium display. Perhaps the ancients really did believe that the greatness of mountains has little to do with volume or scale. The important thing is what position we take to observe and understand them. Yao Yuan’s Huangshan has partial views, but also macroscopic views from mountaintops. At any rate, she intends to see all that is to be seen of Huangshan. Yao Yuan’s “Huangshan Series” absorbed a world-transcending quality from traditional literati landscapes. Yet she did not over-emphasize a mood of world-weariness, as the ancients were wont to do. In this way she avoided the air of contrivance that “new literati painters” often adopt. There can be no self-deception regarding the genuineness of a mental plane. If one is confident about a plane of being, why shouldn’t one pursue it according to one’s own lights!? And so, though grief may dog her footsteps, and though she may come upon reminders at every turn that “beauty does not endure,” she still believes that the plane of being at the peak is worth climbing to. To recognize the peak that is always there for climbing, Yao Yuan relies on her sense of what ceaselessly passes away in nature, and her need to convey it.

Excess of Spring Grief Ends in Illness
Look for It in the Depths of a Flower

In life there are all-too-many events that demonstrate to us: nothing remains unchanged or lasts forever.
We have to keep a smile, to give lonely people something to sustain them…
This summer I visited Luoyang and Longmen. In a drizzling rain at daybreak I climbed up to Fengxian Temple. I was awed by the Vairocana Buddha’s silent tenderness: a wordless radiance hung over that place like a dream, making me cross my legs and look upward in silence. Before long I felt the worldly dust being cleansed from my heart. I sighed in gratitude that the force of spirits and buddhas is still with us. Amidst the rain, Vairocana Buddha preserved his slight smile, and that added to the quiet depth. A thousand years of weathering and water-stains precipitated out as silence, heightening the contrast between our noisy world, with its common folk always in a tizzy, and the self-possession of divine beings.
After seeing the Buddha face-to-face, Yao Yuan wrote down some things she felt. Owing to the presence of such buddha-images and temples, no one can evade self-questioning in this life. 2005 was a year when our painter held a one-woman exhibition and her frame of mind was relaxed. She had let go of her erstwhile involvements, and she happened to make a trip to a “Buddhist site.” Afterward, she painted the “One Flower, One World” series. In front of the buddha-niches in these paintings, she placed various flowers of different sizes—plum blossoms, water lilies, peach blossoms, almond flowers, and crab blossoms. The composition of this series was remarkable: the painter juxtaposed life’s ebullience with a symbol of severance from worldly life. The attitude here is somewhat provocative toward other-worldly thinking. Here we see the extremes of two different worlds co-existing, so it makes sense to read this as the painter’s vacillation between worldly life and other-worldly ideas. To be sure, even though life is not as we might wish it, this is no reason for a person full of vitality to give up on life in the here-and-now. There is no need for such an extreme. In this respect, Yao Yuan has her own understanding:
We should be in awe of divine beings, if only because they cannot be depicted in simplistic terms. I only wish for my heart to be as clean and pure as a flower, spontaneous and joyous. Because of life’s beauty I linger in the red dust, not insisting on anything and not dismissing anything. When my mental state is cleansed, impatience and anger will dissolve, so I can feel at home anywhere. I am after all a worldly person who wishes for endless intoxication, nor for sobriety. How can I renounce a companion of flowerlike beauty or the rapidly disappearing years of youth? A worldly person wishes to keep company with a lover, even at the ends of the earth. An otherworldly person looks beyond the dreams of this floating life and has no entanglements. We vacillate between these two types of thinking: we look awhile at this, and then we pick up that. In the end we find it hard to choose between contradictory sides, and we cannot give either side what it fully deserves. I wish only to seek mental equili,, brium, to get along with myse, , lf and not to commit an offense against my spirit, that’s all. Buddhism speaks of seeing into one’s self-nature and becoming a buddha; it speaks of possessing buddha-nature in oneself. But I am a person of the dusty world: I can only yearn for that distant realm, which is to say, the Buddha is over there and I am here. I am glad my perceptions have not been dulled, that my conscience has not faded away, that my courage is still with me. I lean quietly over my desk, pursuing self-cultivation through my brush, in my beautiful way doing my own work.
In the past few years, Yao Yuan has gained insight into Buddhism and the Chan lineage. She speaks from her own understanding. She does not shrink from careful inward questioning just because of the great profusion of tomes about religious questions. In fact, one finds little sustenance for the path of cultivation in endless explanations of Buddhist scriptures at scholarly conferences, or in glib chatter about Chan thinking during idle moments, or for that matter in burning incense and bowing to the Buddha on holidays. At the same time, lectures on topics like “goodness is like water” or “wordless teaching” often turn out to be a means for the speaker to earn a worldly livelihood. As for insights that penetrate to the inner essence, these seldom win favor with crowds.
Yao Yuan persists in using the worldly symbolism of flowers. For instance, plum blossoms bloom in the tenth month, hinting at oncoming winter and death. But yet, their proud stance in the snow seems related to the tenacity of life, and to approaching spring—the time of life’s rebirth. The water lily can be taken to symbolize the painter’s concern for her own well-being. When the subject being treated is a high-altitude snow lotus [Saussurea involucrata], one readily associates this with the beautiful plane of being which the painter is pursuing. Stories of peach blossoms have always been ambiguous, but linking peach blossoms to a weathered buddha-niche surely makes us think of life’s transient beauty. Peonies are an image of the closing days of spring; almond flowers show zest for life; and crab flowers have a voluptuous look—all of these point subtly to psychic tendencies. Any person can project a mood or wish onto these symbols, according to her own experience and understanding. Perhaps Yao Yuan has her own definition of flowers. However, when meeting with a buddha who urges her to flee the snares of the dusty world, she does not truly see this as a summons to a higher good. She seemingly hopes that the blossoming of a “flower” can impart understanding of a plane of being. She cherishes this hope, even though the time-blasted niches and temple walls seem to be telling her that blooming is only for a moment…Even gorgeous beauty does not guarantee that one’s inner resolve to cultivate oneself can persist, for nothing is immune to ravages of time. An eternity is buried in the depths of a flower, but how are we to understand such an eternity?
Actually, no person’s understanding of life should come all at once. We hear of “sudden enlightenment,” but we rarely meet with modern examples of it. What most stories from history tell about are ongoing efforts of understanding and inner cultivation, in a context of work and daily life. Yao Yuan herself has picked up on this principle:
Sometimes I wish I could be like the ancient masters who found sudden enlightenment; I think of attaining to some higher plane of realization. But a healthy person does not label herself as healthy, and when you’re in the midst of joy or sorrow you can’t describe what joy or sorrow is. And who says a plane of realization can be told in words? But how can we keep from getting tangled up in joys and sorrows of daily life? What sort of mental state does it take to deal with this life? How can we have the fixity of purpose to cultivate ourselves, to keep a grip amid the ups and downs of worldly life, so that our intellect is not disordered and we are not disturbed by external demons; so we can preserve equanimity; so we see into our self-nature and awaken to the Way? We are edified by divine beings for no other reason than that they move us. I am not a Buddhist, and I don’t understand the profound message of Buddhist sutras. What I feel toward divine beings is only a tentative reverence. I’m aware that I have no power, so I harbor an implicit hope for something I can rely on, for a way of deliverance. My self-cultivation and concentration are not sufficient to speak of direct communication with the divine. I simply feel the smallness and insignificance of my life; I hope for something to guide me, and I hope the divine light will somehow show generosity to the common people of this world.
This kind of thinking forms the background to the “One Flower, One World” series. It is not difficult to see how the painter’s inner contradictions led to her particular forms of representation.
The use of ink, brush and rice paper gives a painter ready access to such psychic states. Yet life itself demands that we push forward with our questioning about the two extremes of birth and death. It is the inescapable wear and toll of worldly life that pushes a sensitive person keep questioning herself. What sort of mental state does it take to deal with this life? How can we keep from getting all tangled up in joys and sorrows of daily life? I recollect my study of painting, my college days, work, love…When so many trains of thought come all in a welter, I naturally sigh at what a dream this floating life is. How can I purify the air of my spirit? We realize that no person has the answer. How can there be an answer? What we find deep in a flower is not the essence of a flower, but fate; it is transience without beginning or end. The buddha-niches prompt viewers to think of an ultimate refuge, to search for deliverance. But who is able…who dares to state the final truth to which the Buddha was enlightened? That figure seated on a lotus throne in the shrine-hall wears a benign smile, but such a reminder only works with the help of one’s own awareness. After Sakyamuni achieved buddhahood, he spent the rest of his life venturing through wind and rain, living on alms and spreading his message. This kind of life story is a hint to us: keep a natural outlook and don’t fantasize about the possibility of buddhahood. Yao Yuan places symbols of beauty at the front and center of her compositions. She reveres buddhas and divine beings, but feels even greater reverence toward the loving regard of life itself.
Even now the one I admire most in my heart is Ni Zan. His paintings are aloof and collected. ‘In lucid emptiness they hold a diamond-like indestructibility.’ He was held up as the model of a lofty-minded recluse—that could not have been without reason. The plane he reached was, after all, outside of our reach, but we students of painting need to have spiritual reference point at the zenith.
Tradition in Chinese painting is a controversial subject. I have no point to make about the big questions. I only want to say that I believe the study of tradition is necessary, because that represents a height of civilization. In painting we don’t always need to give primacy to ideas. Our ability in painting should run parallel with ideas. That is the best route to learn from the tradition. As for level of vision, and authenticity, and resonant force and technique, these can often be raised in the process of studying. I myself feel that I’ve learned very little. I fall far short, and I have little to recommend me as far as knowledge and cultivation go. I need to do intensive remedial study; I need to rouse and motivate myself. I need to persevere in my practice, to fill in the blanks left by my past blind arrogance.
This is Yao Yuan’s confession. In such a confession, we can read the impasse of feelings and the continuation of thought. When a person sighs over what has happened to her forbears and to the natural world, we recognize this person’s sensitivity. And when we find that she has incorporated her own life challenges, along with experiences of the ancients, into an irreducible world of remembrance, then we will realize that her remembrance is not just directed at what our predecessors represent. In fact, her remembrance is for her own passing, and thus it is liable to be genuine and moving to others.

Essay completed February 22, 2007

Translation by Denis Mair
(completed February 22, 2009)

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Notes:
[1] Lű Peng is an eminent art historian and curator. His most important book is《20世纪中国艺术史》[History of Twentieth-Century Chinese Art], Beijing University Press, 2007.
[2] The “Four Monks” were late-Ming painters who weathered the transitions to the Qing era: Shi Tao (1642-1707), Hong Ren (1610-1664), Zhu Rong (1626-1705), Kun Can.