There is a wonderful image of a monkey
reaching for the moon in water, by the Zen poet painter Hakuin ekaku. This
image comes from a different tradition and culture to the Watteau (Post 21st March) and in many
ways it is far more knowing, more sophisticated in its manipulation of time and
materials. Hakuin comes from a calligraphic tradition and the text that
accompanies his image is an integral part, the flow of lettering echoing the
flow of the drawing, one form of communication, supporting and being part of
the other. This is a rough translation of the text into English, but what it
misses is the way the actual shape of the letterforms works with the drawing
and there is no English typographic equivalent suitable.
The monkey is reaching
For the moon in the water.
Until death overtakes him
He'll never give up.
If he'd let go the branch and
Disappear in the deep pool,
The whole world would shine
With dazzling pureness.
Time and weight
compact together in this drawing to achieve a delicate communication that
transcends cultures. This drawing is made using a brush and ink. Brush and ink
drawings are unique as they are like a seismic record of the body movements of
another human being. There is no room for error, each movement of the brush
leaves a clear trace of its passage, the speed of travel recorded in the amount
of ink left and the size of the mark thickening and thinning as the arm is
raised and lowered above the paper.
When you mix ink
using an ink stick and a graded slab you can keep the ink dark and thickly
saturated with pigment at the shallow end of your slope and if you don’t stir
the water the main pool of liquid remains lighter in tone as it is less
saturated with ink. Now imagine this pool of ink being touched by the tip of a
long soft brush, as if the monkey’s fingers were themselves about to touch that
delicate liquid’s surface. Try and hold
this image in your mind’s eye.
The drawing feels as
if it was started in the top right-hand corner. Dark saturated ink forms the
branch from which the monkey will hang, a single twisting movement of the brush
establishes the slightly gnarly quality of the wood, this is followed by a
stroke carrying less saturated ink which blends into the darker liquid while
wet on the surface of the support, the artist’s arm now pulling down as the
lighter ink makes the monkey’s arm, then looping and slightly increasing the
pressure, the monkey’s body and head are at the same time made and caught
between this falling line and a new much thinner line that falls down from the
monkey’s left shoulder, this finally ending in the thinnest of fine brush drawn
lines as the monkey finger touches the surface of the water. As you see this single finger touch the water,
try and re-visit your mind’s eye view of the brush tip touching the ink pool.
The finger as it
touches the bottom of the support indicates the lower extremity of the tall
thin rectangle, this tying the image between its top and bottom edges. It also
looks like an extension of the bamboo itself, the monkey and its support now
blending into one.
On the right-hand
side of the monkey’s hanging arm we see the faint trace of a trailing branch
indicated in parallel it feels with the written text that exists on the arm’s
left hand side, both text and image fall into the space, and increase our sense
of holding on, the text becoming part of the thin straw of support that lies
between hanging and falling. As we read the text the secondary meaning of
illusion reaches us, the moon in the water fascinating the innocent monkey, its image
thought of as an alternative reality.
Finally two thin
curved light lines are used to indicate the body and head, just enough of a
mark to establish the boundary between support and image, between abstract mark
and symbolic form.
Another visit is now
made to that small pool of ink; the brush tip picks out a darker pigment
saturated load and spots in two childlike eyes, a nose and a few toes.
This drawing is done
within seconds. The ink remains fluid at all times, each stroke blends into
another, sitting into the support effortlessly as the brush leaves its traces.
This type of drawing
is controlled by the elbow. The fluidity of movement comes from years of
practice, the elbow moving in two plains at once, horizontally, left/right and
top/bottom as well as up and down. The up-ness and down-ness controls the
thickness of the brush-stroke, together with the speed of movement, which
allows for either more or less pigment to be drawn from the brush. The support
is always laid flat and not vertical as with an easel held drawing, the
artist’s hand holding the brush in a parallel plane above the support. If you
try drawing in this way it takes a while to maintain control over the elbow,
because western artists tend to work from the wrist, but once you are practiced,
you will find that the rhythm of movements are far more flowing and that curves
and straights are much easier to establish because you are working with the
natural arcs and rhythms of shoulder to elbow, rather than finger to wrist.
We know this image
is about falling because it relates directly to our experience, in proportion
this image is more than twice as high than it is wide, the monkey’s body
dangles in space, the top of its head exactly hitting the rectangle’s central
division, this key point on the one hand holding the image up and at the same
time taking the weight downwards and swinging it slightly off centre as the
body falls to the right of the head. This starts a rocking, swaying movement
within the fall, it is animate, alive and yet gentle. The soft curves and
rounded nature of these forms suggesting that this monkey is young and
inexperienced, the baby-like large forehead, head body proportion and eye
placement further suggesting this reading.
The artist moving
the brush with calm assurance over the support, has concentrated his time, has
practiced these moves in his mind and now we as observers can re-play these
moves every time we look at the image. Time is held within action.
The dry ink, we know
was wet, the monkey is about to touch what we know from the text is water. Will
he fall into an illusion or not? Will we as observers do the same? Do we echo
the body movements of the artist as we become aware of his actions? Do we, like the monkey, never
give up in our attempts to grasp the ungraspable? The age of this monkey is both ageless and an infant, young and old at
once, like all experiences it is fresh but quickly frozen in memory, held
between thought and action.
This simple image
flickers in and out of the tick-tock of the mind’s eye, if we don’t attend to
the way it was made perhaps we can’t really grasp the full possibility of what
it means. The stroking of liquid ink is like the gust of wind in long hair, and
in that moment it is breathing and without breath the image will not live.
Patrick Ford (an
ex-student who has lived for a long time in China) has commented on related issues withIn Cantonese and how time is expressed, he comments, “sometimes a
single word added to a sentence changes it from the present to the future
tense. For example: 'Sik fan' = 'eat' or
'eating' becomes 'I have eaten' simply by adding 'Jor' = 'Sik jor fan'. This
jor changes many sentences into the past by its presence.
There are other examples of this notational aspect -
every object has a signifier, you cannot simply say '1 cup', you must use a
signifier for cup = 'go'. Yat = 1, 'bui' = cup, so whereas in English we would
say 'Yat bui' in fact you must say 'Yat go bui. (One round shaped thing which is a cup)
'Go' is the signifier for round things, 'Tiu' is the
signifier for long, thin things (like bananas for example). Sometimes the
signifier is more recognizable, such as 'Doi' = 'pair'.
We relate sounds or marks to certain,
accepted meanings. The difference between the tense structure in the examples I
have given is actually very small, often a single extra word, so similarly in a
drawing the addition of crucial marks, specific placings or particular
relationships, compositions and so on could also affect this transformation of
tense.
In the case of Hakuin Ekaku’s image the fact that there are signifiers for both round
things and long thin things, and that small differences can change tense
awareness, means that it is possible to argue that the oscillation between
action and inaction as proposed by the poem and the image structure is further
reflected in the syntactical make up of the Chinese language itself.
The monkey was hanging from the tree, is different to
the monkey hung from the tree. The monkey has always been hanging from the tree
and will always hang from the tree is of course what the image implies. The
monkey continues to hang from the tree, every time we see the image we are
re-affirmed in the fact that it still hangs and long may this be the case.
See also:
More thoughts on drawing time
Drawing and time
Richard McGuire's 'Here' Using cartoon languages to articulate complex layers of time.
See also:
More thoughts on drawing time
Drawing and time
Richard McGuire's 'Here' Using cartoon languages to articulate complex layers of time.
No comments:
Post a Comment