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Gli insegnamenti della pittura del giardino grande come un granello di senape.
[Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting]
Chieh Tzǔ Yüan Hua Chuan
Edited by Mai-Mai Sze
Italian Translation by Riccardo Mainardi
Milan, Luni Publishing House, 2017
Review by Giovanni Mazzaferro
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| Front cover of the edition by Luni Publishing House (2017) |
Foreword
The Mustard Seed Garden Manual Painting is one of the most famous and widespread Chinese painting handbooks.
The first edition was published in 1679 and since then at least twenty editions
have been published. It seems indispensable, however, to clarify first of all
one aspect on the present edition, published in an Italian version by Luni Publishers
at the end of 2017. It was translated from the English version edited by
Mai-Mai Sze (1909-1992) [1], a Chinese artist and writer who lived almost
always in the West. Mai-Mai was the daughter of the Chinese ambassador in
England and was resident there from 1915 to 1921, moving then with her father
to the United States when the latter became ambassador to America. Her English
translation of the Chieh Tzǔ Yüan Hua
Chuan (this is the original title of the work) dated back to 1956 and had
numerous subsequent reprints. In 1989 Riccardo Mainardi translated Mai-Mai’s
English version into Italian (he did not work therefore directly from the
Chinese), bringing out the Insegnamenti della pittura del giardino grande come un granello di senape. Enciclopedia della pittura cinese, with the Milanese Leonardo Publishing House. This
translation, thus dating back to 1989, has now been reprinted by Luni
Publishers, without, however, that nothing of this was explained. Mind you, the
names of the curator and translator appear on the title page and on p. 6 the
publisher clarifies that "he tried
with all his possibilities to contact the translator of this work. The Publisher
declares ready to face the payment of copyrights according to the conventions
of copyright to those entitled". A minimum of historical
contextualization, however, would not have hurt, if only because the Italian reader,
scrolling through the introduction by Mai-Mai Sze, is faced with phrases like: "as all those who have translated from
Chinese into English know, it often happens that the literal translation of the
Chinese sentence gives rise to a sequence of meaningless words in English"
(page 11) and, of course, may feel disoriented.
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| Front cover of the edition by Leonardo Publishing House (1989) |
A painting manual
The Mustard
Seed Garden - let's say it right away - most likely indicated a place, that
is the garden of the villa in Nanjing which was the home of Li Yü, publisher of
the first version of the work, released in 1679. This edition was composed
originally of only one part, containing five books. Only the first book was
uniquely in text, and contained the 'general principles' of art, while the
later dealt respectively with the ways to paint trees (II), rocks (III), people
and things (IV), while the last presented additional examples of landscape
painting. In 1701 the same publisher published a second version of the manual,
strongly expanded and, this time, divided into three parts. In addition to the
first one, the second contained the Book
of the Orchid, the Book of Bamboo,
the Book of the Plum and the Book of Chrysanthemum. The third part consisted
of two Books, respectively intended for herbs, insects and flowering plants
(the first) and for feathers, furs and (other) flowering plants (the second).
Then, to complete the third part, there were two further books of illustrated
examples. This is, in essence, the 'classical' structure of the manual to
which, in 1818, a fourth part was added, which obviously had nothing to do with
original publisher and authors. At this point, we must speak precisely of the authors:
they were the three brothers Wang. Wang Kai was "the general coordinator of the work and the only author of the first
part, of which he also prepared the illustrative apparatus, a task that
required three years of work" (page 8). The 1679 edition, in essence, was
therefore written by Wang Kai (who appears in the opera under the nickname of
Lu Ch'ai), with a preface by the editor, i.e. Li Yü. The two brothers of Wang
Kai, i.e. Wang Shih and Wang Nieh, on the other hand, seem to have taken care
of the second and third parts that were added in 1701, also because they
specialized in painting flowers and birds.
The great value of the manual (and also the
reason why his success was so lasting) is its very rich iconographic apparatus,
which illustrated the different ways of painting trees, rocks etc. by the
painters of previous centuries. There is no doubt that, from a theoretical
point of view, the Manual did not
bring new elements. Mai-Mai Sze wrote: "The content of the manual and its attitude towards painting are based
on concepts and doctrines that have long been the heritage of this tradition of
thought, custom and ritual conduct. It is not by chance that many of the
passages mentioned in it are directly expunged from fundamental works of
previous ages [...] It is necessary
to explain that it was common practice to incorporate sentences, maxims and
long passages in Chinese writings and compilations without necessarily
specifying the source. In fact, it is believed that these quotations are placed
at the service of tradition, that is, they serve to pass it on and - by passing
it on - to maintain it and to strengthen it” (page 9). It is not
surprising, therefore, that, despite their editorial fortune, the Manual was not included in the famous anthology of Lin Yutang on the Chinese Theory of Art. Yutang wrote that the Chinese painting treatises, in
principle, say all the same things, sticking to tradition, and that for his
anthology he had chosen historically important texts, while trying to avoid
repetitions and highlighting innovative aspects. Thus, for example, the Six Canons of Painting, which in the Manual appeared in the First Book (page
32), actually dated back to at least the fifth century AD.
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| Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Paintig . Book II: How to paint leaves Source: Wikimedia Commons |
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| Mustard Seed Garden Manual Painting. Book III: How to paint human figures Source: Wikimedia Commons |
The importance of the Manual
The fact that the Manual did not present elements of particular novelty does not
mean, however, that it does not have its own importance, beyond the
extraordinary richness of the iconographic apparatus. Historically, the manual
was published just a few decades after the fall of the Chinese Ming dynasty
(1644) and the arrival of the Manchu Qing dynasty (of foreign origins). The
manual can therefore be interpreted as an 'identity' script, presenting the
knowledge developed in previous centuries: "it [the manual] represents the recapitulation of the criteria
established in the golden age of Chinese pictorial art; and, specifying its
basic principles and technical aspects, it transmits the most salient features
of the tao [the 'road to excellence'] of
painting. [...] It offers us a vision
of the heights reached by Chinese painting, moving from a period immediately
following those of the highest creativity and summarizing the permanent and
lasting aspects" (p.10).
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| Anonymous, Loquats and a Mountain Bird, Song Dinasty (1127-1279) Source: http://depts.washington.edu/chinaciv/painting/4courbf.htm |
Some aspects of Chinese
painting
Naturally, studying Chinese painting means
abandoning many of the canons through which we are accustomed to talking about
Western art. I would certainly not be able to give a complete and correct idea.
I would like, however, to point out some aspects that on the one hand seem to
suggest a parallel with Western painting, but which, on the other hand, soon
prove to be discordant. The first, very banal element, is that when we talk
about painting, in the West, at least from 1500 onwards, we speak in principle
of hanging canvases within a frame, while in the Chinese case we mean works of
art performed on rolls or on albums. There is a different physicality that
concerns not only the presentation of the work, but also the supports
themselves (almost always painted on silk or on paper, not on canvas).
The other big difference is that Chinese
painting was, much before the Western one and in fact along more than a
thousand years, landscape painting. In short, there was an enormous difference. In
Europe the artistic genre par excellence was the painting of history and that
of landscape was relegated to a minor genre; in China things were exactly the
opposite, so much so that the anthropic presence was the subject of an ad hoc
book of the manual, and not even the first, but the third, after that of the
trees and rocks, much more important. Here is an excerpt of what can be read in
the book's string: "In the tradition
of ancient China, the harmony of an artistic product reflects the universal
harmony of the Tao, the supreme and inscrutable Principle that has generated
the world and governs the secret rhythm of nature. It is no coincidence that
the dominant theme of great Chinese painting is the landscape, which is always
subtly realistic and at the same time metaphorical. Human figures and human
works never take their eyes off the central elements of the painting: a
mountain, a waterfall, a tree, a bamboo, an orchid. Their collocation
establishes a climate of symbolic correspondence and by analogy it refers to the
equilibrium established by the Tao between Heaven and Earth, man and nature,
gravity and lightness, full and empty, yin and yang. The Ch'i, universal
energy, an impalpable force, circulates in every living or inanimate thing".
Realism and metaphor: Chinese painting is 'natural', but declines this quality
in a different way from that understood in the West. Consider, for example,
what we read in the manual at the beginning of the Book of Rocks (with the term rock, we mean the single boulder, but
by extension also the mountains): "When
we judge the value of a person, the quality of his spirit (ch'i) has an equally
fundamental value of its physical appearance. The same is said of the rocks,
which are the supporting structure of the heavens and the earth, and likewise
have ch'i [...]. The rocks without ch'i are dead rocks, just like the bones,
without the same vivifying spirit, are bare, dry, inert bones. [...] It is
absolutely necessary to avoid painting rocks without ch'i. To paint rocks that
have ch'i, it is necessary to push their research beyond what is material and
within the intangible. [...] If the shape of the rock will not be clearly
impressed in the heart-mind of the individual, and therefore on the fingertips
[...] the painting will never reach full completion" (p. 135).
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| Shen Zhou, Reading in Autumn Scenery, XV Century, Beijing, Palace Museum Source: Wikimedia Commons |
Heart, hand, brush and
ink
We just read: heart-mind and fingertips. The
harmony between the artist's heart and hand was a prerequisite for painting
well. But it did not end up with the hand. The use of the brush played a
fundamental role in all of Chinese painting. Just consult the first book (the
one with the general provisions) to understand how important the role of the
brush in Chinese art was. We are not dealing with a simple object, but with an
extension of the hand, and therefore of the heart-mind. Most of the
prescriptions concerned the brushstrokes of the great masters. And the author
of the work was concerned with advising the amateur to imitate the brushstroke
of these masters. Only after having achieved the perfect harmony between heart
and hand, would the artist be able to "mold
all sorts of brushstrokes, of all the schools he believes, and in every
proportion. [...] In this more
advanced stage it is good to forget the classifications and to elaborate the
brushstrokes according to your own combinations. However, in the initial phase
it is not necessary to mix the various brushstrokes". I think it can
be said that this particular emphasis on the dexterity of the gesture (and on
the symbolic meaning that corresponds to the various techniques) marks a manifest
difference with the western artistic theory, where instead, at least since the
sixteenth century, the discussions on the 'nobility' of painting risked
overshadowing the practical aspects of the profession.
In symbiosis with the brush we find the use of
ink. Chinese painting is primarily a painting in ink. It is the tonality of the
ink that organizes the composition, its nuances "to distinguish what is near from what is distant, the clouds from the
reflections, the light from the shadow" (page 37), so much that
calligraphy and painting come, in fact, to coincide: "there is no difference between the brush technique applied to
calligraphy or painting: both require the same type of approach" (page
38). Colour, in this area, has an important, but secondary role, and always
comes after the ink, with clear functional purposes: "To paint the play of light and shade of the forests, the edges and the
fissures in the rocks on the mountains and the various tones of shadows in the
gorges and in the valleys, it is necessary to mix ink with colours. In this way the colour gradations will be
clear, and the depth and dimensions will be clearly highlighted"(p.47)
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| Mi Fei, Mountains and Pines in Springtime, XII Century, Taipei, National Palace Museum Source: The Yorck Project via Wikimedia Commons |
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| Li Cheng, A Solitary Temple amid Clearing Peaks, X Century Source: http://www.seattlecentral.org/faculty/cmalody/T3ma/chland8-10.htm |
A hierarchy of
painters
The harmony between the heart and the brush,
the mastery of the techniques, the type of brushstroke used, the vitality
impressed in the representation of the landscape are, in the final analysis,
the qualities that define the great artist. When this vitality works through
the painter, "the effect in his
painting is beyond any possible definition, and it is possible to say that the
painter belongs to the shên (divine)
class" (p. 33). I would actually be curious to better understand how
and to what extent this 'divinity' is distinguished from that of our “divin Raphael” or, again, from that nourished by profound
religiosity that has traditionally been combined with some figures of
particularly devoted painters, and as such capable of producing miraculous
images (think of the tradition of the Madonnas by Lippo di Dalmasio). Here it
seems that the attribute of the deity serves to build a ranking of merit, if it
is true that immediately afterwards it is specified that, a step further down,
"when the brush technique is high,
the colours are appropriate and the expression is clear and harmonious, the
painter can be included in the miao class
(marvellous and profound). When the form was made and the rules were applied,
the painter falls into the nêng (skilled
and accomplished) class" (ibidem): a distinction that, we would say
today, aims to specify the differences between the great artist and the mere
artificer.
NOTES
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