Vs. Dmitriev. Chinese reality

Apollo No. 5, 1914

Chinese Reality[I]

dmitri

The art histories of individual peoples are strikingly similar. Submissive Mysterious Destinations n¾They do the same thing. But these are not separate, self-contained circles thrown by someone and for some reason into eternity. By the same predestination, one circle, making its way, closes with a circle already completed. Here are the links of a chain, the beginning of which we know vaguely, or rather, we do not know at all, how incomprehensible to us is its end, which extends into the distant future.  centuries. But we see the circles closest to us, we compare them and we build on these comparisons our guesses about the incomprehensible link to which we ourselves are chained.

At first, every national creativity is “futuristic”, the same authoritative suggestion rules the inspirations of artists, makes their aspiration to the “golden age” prophetically consistent and tensely direct. These are Italian primitives and quattrocento. Final step¾The zenith and together the verge of fracture. National creativity reaches the highest tension, touches some protected line and ... stops. Geniuses raised by this time, become for the next generations and sweet.  and deadly poison. Art becomes conservative; inspiration looks back, is supported by rational theories, scientific research, and at the same time it is blind.¾  squashed by the shadow of a brilliant past.

Attempts by different Marinetti[II]To obtain freedom for oneself through denial, destruction. Only the fatal evil, the tragic power of genius over subsequent sons of the same culture, is more sharply overshadowed. Chinese Art Has Passed the Path We Have Designed[1].  “Palace”, “Birds and Flowers”, “Eagles” show us the high skill to which Chinese creativity rose during its heyday, in the era of the T’ang’s (VII-IX centuries) and Song’s (X-XII centuries), but at the same time they show us the limit of Chinese achievements.The art of the next centuries already bears all the hallmarks of the conservative, has already been turned by a vain dream to the faded past, already only dreams of that joyful "futuristic" inspiration that gave these "Eagles" such strength, "Palace" such a smoky charm, made it such a beautiful embodiment of the ideal of the Heavenly Empire. In this case, I’m not just talking about my personal excitement.Chinese artists of the following centuries turned their eyes to this picture as an inaccessible model, as an ideal. The "Palace" is part of a lost strip of silk on which an extensive composition was deployed. Perhaps this is just a shard that survived an amazing work.[2]On the side of the painting is the following Chinese inscription: "The painting depicts the Kieou-tch'eng Palace, painted by Si Tchao-tao, during the T'ang era." Chef-d'oeuvre. "

If the exquisite minting of leaves in "Flowers and Birds" seems to us only a beautiful convention, perfectly sustained "stylization", it would be wrong to assume the same attitude to Chinese painting of its creators. We admire the style of China, we contrast it with the realism of Europe, and yet the Chinese extol their artists for doing the same thing.¾European¾For their perfect beauty, for the powerful reality of their creations. This “palace”, shaky and together distinct as a web, these “eagles”, protruding like ingots of silver, out of the gloom of slightly touched silk, seem the limit of reality to the admiring Chinese. Landscape.¾It is as if we were lying as if we were lying."La peinture chinoise", strap. 30 and leaflet. XVIII), where a much larger dose of the virtuoso craft of calligraphy is mixed with a small dose of life realism, evoked in the Chinese audience the complete illusion of life. It's¾a piece of silk, slightly touched by paint: the ripples of the lake are barely marked, the silhouette of the rock is drawn through the mist, the smoky branches of the tree curved under the pressure of the autumn wind, a string of birds slides over the water ... bottom of the picture¾A narrow boat in which two scientists were thinking. Over the landscape¾The delicate knit of Chinese writing, so wonderfully in harmony with the fine outlines of the drawing, conveys to us the delight of the Buddhist monk: "Rain and gusts of wind cut off the last leaves; birds rose and disappear in the setting sun; the heart that has known eternity is indifferent to everything; but why does it tremble with secret longing?" There is a widespread opinion about Chinese culture and Chinese creativity as something touchingly naive, childishly funny.Perhaps our Chinese toys best characterize the European's relationship to the Celestial Empire.¾houses with comic roof squirts and cute porcelain dummy. Meanwhile, we now venture to say that the art of China, in the strength of its realism, is equal to the art that has so long oppressed Russian art by imperious hypnosis.¾Italian art. And here and there we can indicate a magnificent and fatal zenith, we can count several centuries when national creativity, struck by a great and painful disease.¾It seeks in vain equality, or oblivion, or a new heaven. Therefore, both here and there we can talk about the ultimate power of beauty and realism, because this and that art.¾The ideal has been achieved. The end of the XVI century gave Italy the Academy of Arts, in China at the very beginning of the XII century was founded "Academy of Painting and Calligraphy" Emperor Houei-tsong, i.e. also at the very beginning of the slope and for the same purpose.¾to consolidate what has been achieved. Mysterious will, poured into national creativity inspired by trepidation, suddenly dried up. And, of course, it wasn't the weak human forces that had to pour new water into an exhausted source. The fruits of the Academy are the same for all peoples. Same deadness.¾grimace¾What Repels the Paintings of Annibale Carraci[III]or Guido Reni,[IV]Literally the same, makes us indifferent to Emperor Houei-tsong's Eagles. Instead of inspiration¾Craft calculation; instead of creative pathos¾mental trickery. We will never say that there were no talents in the centuries following the Song era. No.¾They were probably as strong as they were in the brilliant T'ang period, but talents are doomed. The impulses of their inspiration are doomed to fruitlessness; they try to open the doors that have already been opened, to see the ideal that has already been embodied. They are cursed with the most terrible word in art.¾  uselessness; it distorts their inspiration, crushes it and kills it. If we compare the “Priest” with “Beauty with a peon” of the Ming era (XV-XVI centuries) and then with the “Emperor” of the Ts’ing era (XVII-XVIII centuries) or with such an exemplary work as “Portrait of an ancestor” from the collection of S. I. Shchukin (XVII century).[3]If we look at the differences between these works, our words will be similar to those we define European Baroque. "Portrait of a priest", although referred to the XIII or XIV century, but only in the form of conjecture[4] In any case, we can say that this image bears all the features of the best tradition of Chinese art. The drawing is simple and accurate; the features of the face, the eyes are outlined by a hand, not yet constrained by a preconceived theory, because it gave an unexpected but beautiful achievement. This is a different kind of Chinese beauty. Here, simplicity and accuracy are exquisitely calculated. We will not find in this work the features of the accidental hand of a trembling.It would seem that because it should be even more perfect, but in the "Priest" flinched features have preserved a precious thrill of inspiration, here we hear an unpleasant "cold"¾It is so familiar to us in the Western false class. Finally, the technique of the “Emperor” reminds us of the efforts of the followers of Michelangelo, at least Sebastiano del Piombo.[V]. This picture shows us a style complicated and tortured. To achieve strength, twist the lines, sharply outline the movements. But often in the artisan works of this period (T'sing) the result is the opposite: instead of greatness.¾cartoon[5].

Chinese art in the periods of its formation perceived various outside influences. Let us call Chaldea and Assyria, then India, then Persia. Buddhism, which has spread since the third century, has given one holistic spiritual adhesion to the Heavenly Empire, and since that time Chinese art has been moving towards its inner self-determination. That it reached it during the T'ang period proves to us China's continued insensitivity to outside influences.The Mongolian influence of the Yuan era (XIII-XIV centuries), somewhat refreshing Chinese painting with a craving for realism, was forgotten by the Ming and Tsing eras, which again turned, in search of strength and beauty, to the eras of the Tang and Song. It is instructive that the efforts of missionaries, Jesuits and Dominicans in the sixteenth century¾instilling in Chinese art the beginning of European¾It was in vain that the English tried to start a drawing school in Canton in the early nineteenth century. The Chinese are sticking to their models. How can we explain this obstinate ignorance of the Heavenly Empire of the superiority of European painting? But is this superiority so obvious?

The religions of China (Buddhism, Confucianism, the teachings of Lao-Tze...) have one concept, characteristically uniting them and together sharply different from the beliefs of the West. The visible world¾Only a dream that a wise man should not believe. “There is no evil.¾neither virtuous nor small¾neither great nor low¾nor high[6].  The ideal and meaning of life¾Renunciation of all appearances, of all desires and aspirations, and¾The Ineffable who weaves this minute and bizarre dream that we call life. China rejects most powerful tool of European painting¾Light and shadow, but deliberately rejected, because light and shadow are accidental, and should not be designated. We may object that the very images of the world are just as accidental and minute, that Rembrandt gave the eternal by chiaroscuro, but ... there is a dispute between two world-conceptions.

Light and shadow, evil and good, life and death¾The struggle of these principles gave a powerful passion to European art. Here truth and beauty stand on the other side of evil and good, death and life.¾Only a passing haze. This gave Chinese painting its unspeakable sophistication, its light and refined fragility. Let's put next to "Beauty with a peon" and at least the Hermitage "Madonna Alba". What rude, full of accidental, inadmissible traits for a wise artist¾It will appear for the Chinese aesthete. And again, what conditional, superficial is  "Beauty with a peony" for a faithful European. "Non-resistance" made Chinese creativity slide through reality.¾The painting unfolded into a long silk ribbon of some of the first plans, into a brilliant web of cloud temples, flowers and birds.¾  It’s a hymn from this centuries-old hymn to world deception. If we believed as a Buddhist believes, wouldn't the art of the Heavenly Empire seem to us?¾Amazingly faithful, powerfully real? "Born" of the West¾His belief in the authenticity of life, monstrous or beautiful,¾It gave birth to the Schongauer devil.[VI]The sensuality of Rubens, the horror of Leonardo, gave us that tragic and beautiful "martyrdom of reality" that raised French art in the nineteenth century to exceptional world significance and seems to have ended with the shot of Van Gogh. But still, we do not have the confidence that allowed us to say firmly: European reality has disappeared.¾It's authentic.¾Chinese¾conventionally We are now groping for new scales, where Chinese “non-resistance” and European “struggle” will stand at an equal height, and to these values we may soon add a new one.¾guessable¾  reality transformed...