Who's being pedantic

I explored the availability of a power outlet during a painting demonstration planning session.  I needed a hair dryer for my gig.

Chinese Brush painting is not unlike watercolor in some ways.  We might be calling our techniques by different names but they are referencing the same principles.  We are all dealing with the collective results of  water, color and paper.

Xuan paper is the preferred paper we paint on and the absorbency of the paper is affected by whether it is sized or unsized with alum and the type of fibers that the paper is made from.  The ability to control ink tone is one of the virtues we look for in a brush artist.

Feathering in watercolor involved forming a gradient that goes from saturated to more transparent by adding water to diffuse the color.  In Chinese brush painting the diffusion can go both ways.

This is an example of saturated to light, or rich into light in our vernacular.  The addition of ink or color onto a still wet brushstroke created the effect often employed for painting duckweed in Chinese painting

Clean water is applied around the hairline to promote ink diffusion, to make the brushroke more fluffy.  It is not uncommon for Chinese Brush artists to hold two brushes in their hands, one with ink and the other one just a plain wet brush.

Here is an example of the opposite, light into rich.  Brush with clean water is placed in still moist dark spots to create the voids

The following is an example of using stale ink ( the ink becomes more viscous due to evaporation, but the binder in the ink has also settled out somewhat )  The dark spot tends to stay put where as the water content from the ink seeps outward to form a clear margin.

An example of  blooms by painting with coffee.  This reminds me of water stain from a leaky roof.  I
suspect the suspended fine coffee particles helped to create the dramatic border.

Unsized Xuan is more apt to record these gradients as the paper is more "indelible", relatively speaking.  It traps all the nuances of a brushstroke.  Sized or semi-sized paper on the other hand allows the ink or color to float a little bit longer before being latched on by the fibers, thus any gradients formed are usually more homogeneous and with smooth transition.

This is where my hair dryer comes into play.  I use it for many reasons; hastening the drying time notwithstanding.   Daft antics it is not.   I use it as if it was the stop bath in the darkroom.

Anybody who has ventured into a photo darkroom knows to take the photo paper out of the developer once the ideal amount of silver grains are formed and move it to the acidic stop bath to halt the chemical reaction.   Thus once I've attained an ideal diffusion or gradient with my ink or color, I would summon the power of heat and airflow to dry up my brushstroke to prevent further diffusion.
Thus instead of using a chemical, I use a tool; a hair dryer.

So my idea of using a hair dryer was not well received.  People had no access to electricity or a hair dryer in the old days was the reason given.

To simply loathe the idea of borrowing from relevant technology is beyond me.  Why must we pretend to be living in the past to be authentic.  Does dressing up in faux period wardrobe make us more credible?  Must we foster the stereotype of ancient Chinese to be convincing?  Should we be luddites?

I'm sure name chop carvers didn't have access to power tools or computer aided graphics back in the old days.  Should we be cooking our own soot and not use color dispensed from a tube when painting?  So why the double standard.  I mused, philosophically of course, how would the Witches Dance sound like in Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique if violins were not allowed to be played col legno.  How dare we strike the strings with the back of the bow?

For the eerie effects, your Honor!

A Duan inkstone was presented as a show and tell piece.  The inkstone is produced from stones of Zhaoqing, Guangdong.  Duan is the ancient name for today's Zhaoqing.  Duan Yan ( Yan means inkstone in Chinese) is known for the fineness of its stone, thus it is not detrimental to the brush and for its ability to produce a nice ink suspension, given the right ink stick.  Of course the ethereal workmanship and decoration motif must also be mentioned.

An expert immediately proclaimed that this inkstone can store ink overnight without the ink drying out and that it can produce 7 colors/tones of ink.

Chinese consider ink as a color, but the color of the ink refers to the different gradients and appearance of the ink spot.  Thus the ink is dark, light, watery, scorched, or stale. Commonly the 5 colors are meant to remind us that we need to have variations in ink tones.  Stale ink is interesting in that the ink is left out to evaporate and becomes more viscous.  At the same time the binder in the ink settles out a bit so the resulting solution diffuses with a prominent clear margin around the dark area due to the less amount of binder in the solution.  The contemporary paint Huang Binhong established the canon of 5 brushstroke methods  and 7 ink colors.  He added the interpretation of ink that is accumulated through repeated applications and scorched ink on a mostly dry brush to be written very slowly to allow the residue moisture from the brush to slowly seep out.

Thus the color/tone of the ink refers to how the ink is treated and applied and really has nothing to do with the inkstone per se.   As far as storing the ink without it drying out, it has more to do with relative humidity and dew point and the porosity of the stone.

Invariably the conversation veers to the type of brush we paint with.  The same expert gave some eyebrow raising comments.  The brush hairs are from the "autumn hair" of animals, meaning the hair that animals/birds grew in autumn in anticipation of impending winter, he uttered.  Autumn hair is a literal translation from the Chinese words 秋毫.  It means fine long hair.  It is used metaphorically to describe something that is minuscule and detailed.  These 2 words are used in the context when a person discerningly examine details, the individual is examining autumn hair.  A disciplined regiment who does not pilfer its citizens is said to not violate a single autumn hair.  Someone who masters the brush art is said to have wicked beauty permeating to the tip of the autumn hair.  It is plausible that such hair was employed for brush making in ancient history, or that the creme de la creme brush still uses such niche material, but to hype and exaggerate all Chinese brush as such is entirely unethical and not warranted.  I think.

Of course the audience oohed and aahed in bewilderment.

Must we routinely mystify and embellish our art and implements in order to gain accreditation?  Aren't the facts interesting and revealing by themselves?  Are we living vicariously through these half truths to justify the present?  Have we become snake oil peddlers?

Have I turned into a polemicist?

Who's being pedantic?

Are we narcissists

As the alder leaves turned fiery red and eventually vanished from the branches, and the silvery frost on my lawn each morning beckoned, the Earth Dog is ready to say Zaijian.  See you in twelve!

I could hear the oink oink from the Earth Pig in the distance, if I try hard enough.  Again I am faced with the proverbial question, what is this pig going to look like.

Artists in general are some of the most dichotomous beings on earth, I think.  We have to be sufficiently opinionated in order to put forth our ideas, yet vulnerable enough to reveal our innermost secrets.  We can't wait to make a statement and yet are ambivalent about the reception.  Of course there is this camp that insists we should have the fortitude to paint whatever we want and in whatever manner, and it is up to the viewer to understand and appreciate our works.  I am sure we can scream and demand and insist, but deep down inside we muse and second guess and long for acceptance. Rejection is a bitter pill to swallow.   Perhaps discontent, and the appetite for vindication, more than anything else, are the real fabric for creativity.   This might sound like an oxymoron but Johnny Carson once said that he is ill at ease at parties.  He would hide behind a curtain if he could.  I believe artists, and people who claim to be artists, are good at fulfilling a role; as Johnny did.  Within the confines of the prescribed role we find courage and confidence.  Outside of the pan, all bets are off.

I believe it is this insecurity that drives us to be control freaks.... sort of; and it is this fear of rejection that plants a deep seed in us, driving us to constantly compose and morph and reveal, always searching.

It is my assertion that creative people are people who can't stand status quo.   Creative people are not satisfied with the real world.   There is the omnipresent urge to alter the perception of what is real.

Why is there a need to paint a sunset ?  Isn't the sunset one of those perfect moments that the Creator forged?  To pose a gliding pelican against the setting yolk, to add a smidgen of crimson to the horizon, or to garnish the sky with lenticular clouds?  Creating "new real" from reality, the painter is not satisfied with the real sunset and creates his/her own.  The artists are suggesting that we look at matters from their point of view, despite the fact that whatever we perceive is still our own, and not that of the artists' myopia.  Yet we artists persevere, trying to change reality as we see it.  Molding our own world, our own reality.

Oh to jog our memory, one might say.  A photo or a painting or a movie clip is nothing more than a suggestion, a stimulus.  Art works are just tools, conduits to call up our own experiences.  We still have to form the image from our head, even while we are looking at a physical object.  Memory is a state of mind.

What are memories?  What are feelings?  Chemicals and electrical impulses in our brains.  When we look at the brain outside of our bodies, it is all but a blob of cold, damp, soft mass and yet we love, hate, empathize, think, create and invent with it.  Yet the topography of our receptor sites and movements of salt ions governed our psyche.  With the advence in AI and VR, could we be far from the future when our brains could be mapped and we could customize our experience?  We could have a virtual rent a movie or go to th  virtual Metropolitan Museum Of Art by tapping our skull with our cell phones!

Of course, when all else fails, there's always the route of chemical augmentation, since the chemical pathway in the brain is well documented.  Either the artist, or the audience may partake in this ritual.  This is the ultimate alteration!  Let's have a rave party.  Drug taking behavior seem prevalent for both performing and visual artists (emphasis on the word seem).  I wonder if there's an association between using chemicals and creativity.  Could this be the magic potion that sublimates what is real, albeit mundane, to something ethereal of our own imagination?  Is this how abstracts work?  Is this how minimalism works?   Berlioz composed the wildly successful Symphonie Fantastique while taking opium drops, albiet for medicinal purpose.  Could that have contributed to the genius of the piece, or was it a product of his manic depressive episodes?

A boutique ice cream business here concocted a turkey ice cream by mixing turkey with ice cream.  Wow that is going outside of the box.  It is now the love of the media and foodies pile on heaps of praises.  Can eccentricity and irrationality become celebrated traits given the right spin? I can only imagine the moment when the first person ever decided to see what fermented milk curd tasted like.   Because this person dared to go where no one has gone before, we are now blessed with Gorgonzola and Roquefort. How desperate must a person be to drink kopi luwak, a coffee brewed from partially digested coffee beans pooped out by felines.  Does exclusivity and being expensive lend credibility?

We are advancing into the field of Artificial Intelligence at a fierce pace.  We make robots that can think and feel and emote; just like ourselves.  Is this the final frontier for our creative minds?  We want to create a copy of ourselves and we want the credit for coding our creations.  Recently an AI generated piece of art was auctioned off at Christie for over $400,000.  Is that a validation of the image, the programmer, or the person who shelled out that huge sum of money.  How about paintings done by animals?  Paintings done by elephants and monkeys have been tauted as artworks.  If we put aside the fact that these are animal productions, do these "art works" harbor any intrinsic values?

Frankly I believe artists are narcissists, to a more or lesser degree.  We go to great lengths to make our views known, no matter how trite or infantile or meaningless. We paint, we perform, we take pictures, sculpt, weave, fire, and in my case, blog. Thank heavens for my soap box.

Please excuse my ranting with my sometimes sacrilegious, often mis-guided, but never nefarious statements.  These are actually questions that I ask of myself, and of others and the answers are as many and as varied as grains of sand at the Sahara Desert.   And just like the dunes in Sahara, they shift with the winds.  I could never get a straight answer.

Such behaviors beg the question, is this narcissism?  Are artists narcissists?

Artists are rewarded by putting their names on a piece of work, having their brand appear in trade magazines, gallery catalogues and museum brochures.  After all this is what the society deem as a proof of success, affirming the talents and efforts of said artists and bestow upon them a decorum of  validations, sometimes tethered to a ridiculously huge sum of moola.  Often times when these "proper" channels are not available, the creative mind still seek identity and glory by graffiti.  This is perhaps the most spontaneous, self-gratifying kind of self-expression.

I chanced upon a synagogue which walls are tagged with graffiti. No I am not talking about railroad cars or grain silos.

 What is unusual about this place is that the synagogue even erected a plywood faux wall and labelled it "Open Wall" to allow ( and perhaps promote? ) this form of expression.  It could be that the establishment saw the need for dialogue and promote its own relevancy by providing such a forum for expression.  Or it could be that by providing a legitimate venue for such behavior of expression that the synagogue would be less of a victim of defaced walls.  If you can't beat them, join them.  Regardless, people still deface the walls.

Is this a creative mind?  Narcissistic behavior?  Or plain insolence?  Is this art?  What is art?  What if these were done by Salvador Dali, would his fame change the perception of graffiti?


Time to step down from my rostrum and get on with my pigs.

First I must study them...... get the nuance of the animal....I can't remember ever painting a pig!

Sketch away!

oink  oink  oink