Songs of Nature: On Paintings by Cao Jun

By John Sallis

The work of the contemporary Chinese painter prompts reflections on nature, art, and music from one of America’s leading philosophers.

This text by John Sallis carries out a series of ruminations by taking up Cao Jun’s art and thought, with a focus on questions of the elemental. Sallis’s reflections are not a matter of simply relating art works to philosophical thought, as theoretical insights and developments run throughout Cao Jun’s writings and inform many of his artistic works. Sallis maintains abundant points of contact with Chinese philosophical traditions but also with Western philosophy. In these reflections on art, Sallis poses a critique of mimesis and considers the relation of painting to music. He affirms his conviction that the artist must always turn to nature, especially as reflections on the earth and sky delimit the scale and place of what is human. Full-color illustrations enhance this provocative and penetrating text.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Feb 4, 2020
• ISBN: 9780253046628

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EPIGRAPHS CANNOT BUT REPEAT themselves, occupying, at once, two distinct places, set in both without being displaced from themselves, belonging both outside the text and within it as its beginning, even as a beginning before the beginning, hence turning again to the outside, revolving there in the space that opens the text. Semantic identity between the written epigraphs and the text proper can be confirmed only by passage through the entire text.¹ The logic of this parergon becomes all the more complex when the epigraph is an image: precisely because it is an image, it does not belong to the text, falls outside it with an insistence exceeding that of any written epigraph. And yet, the image belongs to the text, in which its very relevance is laid out and for which it is to supply a certain illumination.

FIGURE 1. Cao Jun, Cleansing the Mortal Heart in the Clear World, 2016. Ink and watercolor on paper, mounted on board, 108 × 78 cm.

The epigraphic image set here in the textual opening—though necessarily without its parergonal revolution being fully represented—is an image of a painting by Cao Jun. Another parergonal revolution is broached within the painting itself by the presence of an inscription on its surface. For the inscription both belongs to the image, since it is written there on its surface, and yet, as writing, specifically as calligraphy, it is distinguished from the image. This difference—set within identity—is attested most conspicuously by the cases in which the inscription was added much later by someone other than the artist himself. An extreme case is that of the painting Early Spring (figure 2) by the Song Dynasty master Guo Xi (ca. 1001–ca. 1090). While a portion of the inscription merely states the title, the date, and the name of the painter, there are also several columns of characters that constitute a poem. Though in style and content the poem is appropriate to the painting, it was added nearly seven hundred years after the painting itself was done. Thus, in this case the greater part of the inscription is differentiated from the painting in several respects: by the span of time, by the identity of the inscriber (in this case probably Emperor Qing Long of the Qing Dynasty), and by the art form, poetry rather than painting.² And yet, the poem belongs to the painting both by expressing its spirit and by its placement on the painted surface. It is from within this structure of identity and difference that the image can show what the inscription says and the inscription can say what the image shows.

Yet, it is not only as inscription that language is brought to bear on the image. For all Cao Jun’s works possess titles, which in many cases are highly poetic and which never are reduced to mere enumerations or to the empty title untitled. Each title, without exception, supplements the image, setting linguistic expression in relation to it in a way distinct from the inscription, even though the title is sometimes repeated in the inscription. The bearing of the titles takes several forms, and it functions in various ways. In many instances the title designates what is depicted in the image, or rather, it serves to reveal what the painting, in its concrete forms and its array of colors, aims to bring to light. For example, in Endless Green Mountains (figure 3) the foregrounded mountain is to a degree obscured, and, as the title declares, it is the distant peaks that constitute the object of the painting as they recede in a gesture of endlessness and display a greenish hue not presented in other parts of the work. Furthermore, in this painting there is displayed not only this spatial recession but also a temporal distancing, a recollection that the inscription connects with the images. It reads: To recall the trip to Chile years ago. New York, 2016 summer. Thus, through its inscription the painting lays out the temporal interval between a past voyage recollected in the work and the present in which the recollection takes place. In turn, this recollection reflects on the painting, identifying the endless green mountains as re-creating those of Chile.

FIGURE 2. Guo Xi, Early Spring, 1072. Hanging scroll, ink on silk, 158.3 × 108.1 cm. Collection of the National Palace Museum, Taipei.

In many of Cao Jun’s paintings such as those of landscapes and of lotuses, all three moments—image, inscription, and title—belong to the work as a whole and coalesce to determine its sense. In the more abstract paintings that constitute the Space Series, the absence of inscriptions renders the titles still more decisive.

Insofar as paintings are installed within the difference between image and word, between depiction and language, and in some instances between two distinct linguistic moments as well (title and inscription), there is a sundering of the otherwise inclusive identity of the artist, a differentiation of origin. The work will have originated from at least two artists (painter and poet), who typically coincide in a single individual, though not necessarily, as shown by the example of Early Spring.

The title of the painting (figure 1) introduced at the outset as one of the two epigraphic units is among the most poetic, though not just in the sense that it is metaphorical; for world, if taken in a rigorous manner, is quite other than a simple metaphor. The title is, rather, poetic in the sense that the words bring something forth, in a way analogous to the way an artisan brings forth an artifact by making it. Poetic words are evocative, calling forth before our vision a schema of happenings that otherwise resist disclosure. Cleansing the Mortal Heart in the Clear World announces two correlative happenings, which coalesce into a single event. One moment consists in a clearing of the world depicted in the painting: apertures within the obscuring, color-splashed expanse expose areas of the foregrounded mountain’s surface that would otherwise have been blocked from view; and the outline of far-distant mountains, otherwise not visible, can be seen through the transparent air of the clear world. The correlative moment consists in an extension of vision to the areas that are cleared and to the distant mountains that, within the clear world, can be seen. In this way vision is drawn to the earth as, held still in reserve, it is granted a certain visibility, and mortals are prompted to take to heart their bond to the earth. In the image the painting displays all the features that, from the Song Dynasty on, have been required for works of this kind: the master mountain, the other mountains in the distance (their distance represented by a lightening of shade), waterfalls, and a river flowing around the base of the mountain. The image is one of mountains and waters, expressed in the word shan-shui, translated in the West as landscape (Landschaft, paysage), despite the contrast between a composition of mountains and waters and one that in most cases depicts expansive planes and rolling hills. Cao Jun has retrieved the ancient Chinese tradition of landscape painting, and yet, most notably in the use of color-splashing, he has brought modern techniques to bear on it. The inscription on Cleansing the Mortal Heart in the Clear World confirms what the title says and what the image shows: To draw mountains and rivers, one must understand their soul and spirit, as the woodsmen and fishermen are capable of doing. Certainly it is important to read and study the classical works of the ancient scholars. However, it is inadvisable to divorce oneself from reality and simply follow what others have said. Yet, conversely, an attachment to the dictates of tradition as setting a limit to innovation is imperative. In Cao Jun’s words: Innovation cannot go against traditional roots no matter what the form is, as a complete fabrication is bound to be abortive.

FIGURE 3. Cao Jun,Endless Green Mountains, 2016. Ink and watercolor on paper, mounted on board, 108 × 78 cm.

This coupling of the ancient Chinese tradition and the experience of nature is displayed in nearly all of Cao Jun’s landscape paintings. In Spring’s News (figure 4), for example, the master mountain is depicted in the foreground along with others that recede from it into the distance. There is water in the form both of waterfalls and of a lake or river into which the water cascades. There is an obscuring cloud. And yet, life is present in the guise of birds, and, most significantly, there are large areas of blue and of green, which have been produced by the modern technique of color-splashing and which add to the painting elements of brilliant color that, while prominent in nature (sky, forest, etc.), are not to be seen in classical Chinese painting executed exclusively with brush and ink.

The bond that Cao Jun’s art affirms to classical Chinese painting is voiced when he declares—not without a bit of hyperbole—that the painter must have read thousands of books. Yet, he also insists—with, it seems, less hyperbole—that the painter must travel thousands of miles, not only to become acquainted with the masterpieces both in his own country and abroad, but also to experience nature in its