Li Cheng: A Solitary Temple Amid Clearing Peaks 10thCentury
David Edgar's drawing conference presentation on the void left a lasting impression on me and set my mind to thinking about the various ways that we use empty space to help us come to terms with reality. It is as if we need to think about what is not there in order to get any sort of grasp on what is there. This is not then just about drawing, it is also about religion and philosophy.
Chinese ink wash landscape painting had by the 10thcentury evolved to a point where clouds, mist, sky, and water were often left unpainted. Their presence was instead suggested by the carefully rendered edges of other elements such as the texture of rocks or foliage. These were treated so that their forms faded out into nothing and the way this was done could intimate the difference between mist and cloud, or water spray and sky. This approach reflected the Taoist idea of qi (chi), a recognition that the universe emanates or is constructed from some sort of formless originating energy. By leaving large surfaces of untouched silk or paper, the artist could help the observer think of the ink washes as forming representations of rocks, foliage and mountains, as well as facilitating an awareness of nothingness or the potential of the void to engender somethings. The bare surfaces of silk being the spaces out of which forms emerge. In the West we sometimes refer to this as “negative” space, but perhaps it would be a better idea to call it ‘positive’ space. The Taoist philosopher Lao Tzu in the Tao Te Ching expressed the idea like this in Chapter eleven:
Thirty spokes unite around one hub to make a wheel.
It is the presence of the empty space that gives the function of a vehicle.
Clay is molded into a vessel. It is the empty space that gives the function of a vessel. Doors and windows are chisel out to make a room.
It is the empty space in the room that gives its function.
Therefore, something substantial can be beneficial.
While the emptiness of void is what can be utilized.
It is the presence of the empty space that gives the function of a vehicle.
Clay is molded into a vessel. It is the empty space that gives the function of a vessel. Doors and windows are chisel out to make a room.
It is the empty space in the room that gives its function.
Therefore, something substantial can be beneficial.
While the emptiness of void is what can be utilized.
Below is a different translation and when centred rather than ranged left the gap between stanzas is a much more satisfactory resolution of the idea of the poem as visual form.
We shape clay into a pot,
but it is the emptiness inside
that holds whatever we want
but it is the emptiness inside
that holds whatever we want
We hammer wood for a house,
but it is the inner space
that makes it liveable
but it is the inner space
that makes it liveable
From: Mitchell, S (2006) Tao Te Ching: A New English Version London: Harper
Pine Trees: Hasegawa Tōhaku, Tokyo National Museum
In Japanese art there is a concept of 'yohaku no bi', (余白の美), sometimes translated as ‘the beauty of the remaining white’, or ‘the space left empty’. This is a concept that was borrowed in about the 12thcentury from Taoist influenced Chinese images of landscapes, such as Li Cheng's. 'Yohaku' describes the white space in a drawing as an unfilled space, a gap or in certain cases a margin or edge-land. In Japan these spaces were seen as related to the Zen Buddhist concept of emptiness; kū 空 (the void) and mu 無(absence or nonexistence). Space was central to the creation process, and was reflected in the Buddhist notion of emptiness as being the ultimate reality and therefore a field of infinite potential. Pine Trees by the 16th century artist Hasegawa Tōhaku is a wonderful example of how visual images could reflect this way of thinking. It is as if these images of trees emerge unaided from the stretched membrane of silk, their oscillation between solidification and dissolution being both a product of the artist's awareness of atmospheric conditions and a religious moment of contemplation on the transience of all things. Transience is frozen in time by another image that embraces emptiness Maruyama Okyo's 'Frozen ice'. This image is painted on a low two-fold screen ('furosaki-byobu') and would have formed a backdrop to a Tea Ceremony. Its minimalist composition is typical of the visually austere taste of the Edo period. The minimal rendering of the ice cracks is beautifully controlled and suggests an absolutely flat surface of ice receding far into the distance. Each brush stroke has to be therefore executed with a sharp, unwavering precision. This is a wonderfully spiritual work.
It is interesting to look at Robert Rauschenberg's erased De Kooning in this context.
Rauschenberg: erased De Kooning
Instead of a conceptual move, it could be read as a spiritual riposte to De Kooning's worldly success. By erasing the drawing he was removing the artist's ego. Ego creates desire and greed, which leads us to dissatisfaction and suffering. To eradicate ego, you need to practice non-attachment, to things, people or ideas and Rauschenberg, it could be argued was in making this gesture, demonstrating that it was possible to move beyond our attachment to the idea of art.
Rauschenberg on the erased De Kooning episode
Absence can become very personal. A few years ago I found myself standing alone in the Polish pavilion in the Venice Biennale. It was 2011 and the Israeli-born artist Yael Bartana was exhibiting three films about Poland and the absence of Jews.
Yael Bartana: And Europe Will Be Stunned (2007–11)
I found myself staring at a video sequence that struck deep. I was suddenly caught up in a call for the return of 3,300,000 Jews to the land of their forefathers. Poland was empty of Jews and my father's family were of Polish Jewish heritage, my grandmother, Lily Lucy Singer dying when I was very young, too young to find out anything from her about her history. Bartana's films occupy a space between documentary, propaganda and fiction and as you watch them you become unsettled as to what is real and what is a construction. There was one sequence in particular that got to me. A young activist, played by Sławomir Sierakowski (founder and chief editor of Krytyka Polityczna magazine), was delivering a speech in the abandoned National Stadium in Warsaw. In this speech he speaks to all the Jews that have left Poland and urges them to come back. I was suddenly overcome with an existential loss. I was for a moment defined by a lost past, a past I had not experienced, and could only reconstruct by looking at old marriage certificates and one single photograph of my great great grandfather Shepsel Sanderwitch's grave in Manchester.
Shepsel Sanderwitch: Memorial stone
Sometimes when trying to open out possible pedagogic approaches or positions that can be taken in relation to art work I can forget that these things can get very personal and go beyond rationality and a balanced position taking.
The concept of representing empty spaces has been at the centre of Rachael Whiteread's work for many years and the void of negative casting was used by her to create a "counter monument" to the loss of European Jews because of the Nazi genocide.
Rachael Whiteread: Drawing for Judenplatz Holocaust Memorial: Vienna
Rachael Whiteread: Judenplatz Holocaust Memorial: Vienna
This use of negative space was personally very poignant but I would hope it is also something that resonates far beyond my own personal feelings and illustrates how by working sensitively with absence, gaps and spaces, a void can become full of meaning.
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