Confucius is fundamental to Chinese civilization, but he is of course not the only source here. There is a debate on the importance of Confucian and Daoist lines for Chinese art. Thus, Li Zehou puts Daoism second in his Chinese aesthetics and Susan Bush doubts the view by Nicole Vandier-Nicolas that Daoist and Buddhist mysticism played the most influential role for art of the literati. ''[E]mperors more committed to Taoism than to Confucianism or Buddhism were the exception rather than the rule.''237 But there is no questioning of the fact that Daoist and later Buddhist thought played a great role in forging Chinese classical art and has been a powerful element in Taiwanese Avant-garde art.
235 James jr. Behuniak (2008), ‘Confucius on form and uniqueness’ in Confucius Now: Contemporary Encounters with the Analects, (ed) David Jones, Chicago: Open Court, p. 52.
236 Sima Qian (1992), The Records of the Grand Historian, (tr) R. V. Vyatkin, Moscow: Nauka, vol. 6, p. 132.
237 Patricia Ebrey (2000) ‘Taoism and Art at the Court of Song Huizong’ in Taoism and the arts of China, (eds) Stephen Little and Shawn Eichman, Chicago and Berkeley: The Art Institute of Chicago and University of California Press, p. 96.
I do not take a stance in the debate between Nicole Vandier-Nicolas and Susan Bush, nor do I challenge Li Zehou or his pro-Daoist opponents. However, in this thesis, the section on Daoism and Buddhist influences comes after the one on Confucianism and is much shorter. In the case of Buddhism the reason can be purely chronological, Buddhism enters China long after Confucius. Daoism, on the other hand, is probably as old as Confucianism or could even be older. It is important to stress that the second place of Daoism and Buddhism in the thesis is only structural, more material related to Daoist and Buddhist influences can be found in sections 3.2.4, 3.3, 3.3.4 and 3.3.5.
On the other hand, we can try considering why Li Zehou believes that Daoism is less important to Chinese civilization and art than Confucianism. Thus, in the preface to The
Chinese Aesthetic Tradition he writes
[w]hat I mean by 'Chinese aesthetics' in this volume is Confucian-based traditional Chinese aesthetics. Because of the length and depth of its socio-historical foundations, and due to its rich development through the continual absorption and assimilation of various other schools of thought, Confucianism has formed the mainstay of Chinese culture, as I have demonstrated elsewhere.
This book considers the same phenomenon from the point of view of aesthetics.238
Indeed, the structure of Li Zehou's The Chinese Aesthetic Tradition reflects this view. The Tradition begins with prehistory and then has a chapter on Confucian aesthetics which is followed not by a separate chapter on Daoism, but by one on the Daoist-Confucian synthesis.239 Thus, without denying the influence of Daoism, the structure of the book by Li Zehou posits Daoism as a branch on a metaphorical tree
238 Li Zehou (2010), The Chinese Aesthetic Tradition, Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, p. ii.
239 Ibid., p. 76.
where Confucianism is a trunk.
The art by the literati of the Song dynasty is very important for Taiwanese Avant-garde art and to the history of Chinese art in general. It is art after the Daoist-Confucian synthesis, and again there are researchers who put Confucianism first in this period.
Thus, Susan Bush in The Chinese literati on Painting is arguing with Nicole Vandier-Nicolas's predominantly Daoist-Buddhist interpretation. For Bush
''it is possible to overstress the mystical view of creativity in the writings of Sung literati. It was important for the critics and connoisseurs – Tung Yu and Huang T'ing-chien – but less so for the painters – Su Shih and Mi Fu – who generally took a more practical approach to their art.''240
It is important to see that in both cases, with Li Zehou and with Susan Bush, the arguments are not about the denial of the Daoist influence, but rather about the limits of this influence. Moreover, it is, of course, possible to underestimate Daoist-Buddhist ''mystical view of creativity''. Guo Xi (郭熙, c. 1020 – c. 1090), for example, shows a powerful mystical inclination in his Early Spring (早春圖, 1072) and in his theoretical work, The Lofty Message of Forest and Streams ( 林 泉 高 致 ).241 In his art he was influenced by Wang Wei (王微, 415-443), whose Discussion of Painting (敘畫)242 shares many elements with The Lofty Message. Both texts use anatomical metaphors for the
240 Susan Bush (2012), The Chinese literati on painting: Su Shih (1037-1101) to Tung Ch'i-ch'ang (1555-1636), Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, p. 65.
241 For Russian translation see Guo Xi (1994) ‘The Lofty Message of Forest and Streams’, (tr) V.V. Malyavin in Anthology of Taoist philosophy, (eds) V.V. Malyavin, B.B. Vinogradsky, Moscow: Partnership.
242 Wang Wei (1923), ‘Discussion of Painting in East’, vol. 3, (tr) V.M. Alekseyev. Alekseev translates the title of Wang Wei's work as ''Тайны живописи'' which can be translated in English as 'The Secrets of Painting'. That can create a strange impression, but Alekseyev's translation is not because of exoticism. It is rather because 'Discussion of Painting', as Susan Bush and Shih Hsio-yen translate 敘畫, would be too dry in Russian, and just 'On Painting' as 敘畫 is often translated, would be unusual and awkward in Russian.
relations between elements of the landscape: the mountains are bones, while the waterfalls are veins full with running noble blood. Thus, the natural world is thought to include the human body and both are viewed as growing and changing. It is hardly surprising, since
''[o]ne of the earliest texts of religious Taoism, the Scripture of Great Peace (...), teaches a profound respect for the Earth as a living body. This section (...) explores the traditional Taoist concept of the natural landscape as sacred and reflecting the inherently divine structure of both the cosmos and the inner human body (i.e., macrocosm and microcosm).''243
Or, as Susan Bush and Shih Hsio-yen put it, ''[f]or Tsung Ping and Wang Wei, landscape painting evoked grander sympathetic responses to cosmic order, responses in which sensory stimulation brought forth thought and emotion that rose to mystical heights.''244
Just as it is the case in Vandier-Nicolas's view,245 Daoist and Buddhist elements are often hard to distinguish. The natural beauty is closer to the main focus of the Daoist tradition. The Buddhist element is also palpable, because, for example, Zong Bing (宗炳, Wade-Giles romanization: Tsung Ping, 375-443), another important theoretician of landscape painting discussed in the second chapter, was a devotee of Buddhism, as well as many other influential art theoreticians of classical China.246
243 Stephen Little (2000), ‘The Sacred Landscape’ in Taoism and the arts of China, (eds) Stephen Little and Shawn Eichman, Chicago and Berkeley: The Art Institute of Chicago and University of California Press, p. 357.
244 Susan Bush and Shih Hsio-yen (2012), Early Chinese texts on painting, 2nd edition, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, p. 10.
245 As it is presented in Susan Bush (2012), The Chinese literati on painting: Su Shih (1037-1101) to Tung Ch'i-ch'ang (1555-1636), Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, p. 64.
246 Susan Bush and Shih Hsio-yen (2012), Early Chinese texts on painting, 2nd edition, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, p. 23.
Again, there are authors, for whom Chinese aesthetics is predominantly Daoist, Xu Fuguan in the 60s or contemporary aesthetician Gu Mingdong247 can be examples of this tendency. Xu Fuguan is especially interesting because his Daoist aesthetics was created in response to Avant-garde art. Xu Fuguan's encounter with modern art has happened in 1960, during his visit to Japan, particularly in Kyoto's Museum of Modern Art.248 Despite Xu Fuguan's rich background in Eastern art, he strongly rejected Avant-garde art, reminding the stance of such Russian classicist and a critic of Avant-garde art as Alexandr Benios. Xu Fuguan had found Surrealism and Dadaism 'chaotic', 'dark', and 'ugly'. Although somehow sympathetic, Xu Fuguan had seen the root of the two art movements in the modern world, technology and capitalism, as well as in the tragedy of the two World Wars. However, despite being sentimental to 'anxiety' he sees at the roots of Surrealism and Dada, Xu Fuguan believes it to be an unacceptable response to these conditions.249
For Xu Fuguan, artists of Dada and Surrealism are retreating to the state of self-isolation because of anguish and both art movements are fundamentally flawed because of the absence of the connection with the society. Furthermore, Xu Fuguan formulated an idea that such art as Surrealism and Dadaism are fundamentally linked with communism. Thus Xu Fuguan greatly jeopardized many young artists in Taiwan and made Liu Guosong react with a defense of Abstract art.250 Or, as Téa Sernelj puts it
[i]n Xu’s opinion, modern art, and in particular avant-garde movements such as surrealism, Dadaism and Cubism, with their destruction of tradition and seeming disinterest in the idea of beauty, was leading to the destruction of human culture
247 Gu Mingdong (2016), ‘Patterns of Tao (Dao): The Birth of Chinese Writing and Aesthetics’ in The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 74 (2).
248 Lee Su-san (2013), ‘'China' in exile: The case of Xu Fuguan’ in Oriens Extremus, vol. 52, p. 120.
249 Ibid.
250 Ibid., p. 121.
as a whole. He believed that modern art was an expression of a turbulent, grotesque and dismal primitive life that would drag people backwards toward the complete end of civilization.251
Eventually, Xu Fuguan's criticism led to the notorious 'debate on abstract painting' (抽象畫論戰) and to the 'controversy over the culture of China and the West' (中西文化 論戰).252 Fortunately for Taiwanese Avant-garde artists, this criticism did not make new art in Taiwan impossible. But Xu Fuguan definitely put them in danger. Moreover, his ''ignorance of the distinction between avant-garde and abstract painting became the target of ridicule.''253
Xu Fuguan suggested an alternative to Avant-garde art, he wanted artists to follow the spirit of ancient Chinese art and thus cure the problems of the modern world. He expressed this view in the book The Spirit of Chinese Art (中國藝術精神, 1966).254 Xu Fuguan tries to replace the conflict between individual and society he sees in Avant-garde art with such Daoist notions as 'fasting of the heart' (心齋), 'ridding of oneself' (坐 忘), and absence of the ego (無己). Xu Fuguan provides in The Spirit a sharp criticism of such figures from the Western culture as Baudelaire, Breton, and Picasso, and suggests the Chinese spiritual heritage as a cure for the West. But afterward, when Xu Fuguan turns to Eastern artists, he surprisingly suggests for them to learn as much from non-Avant-garde Western art as possible.255
Moreover, the conceptual core of Xu Fuguan's comparative aesthetics is built on the problematical ground: Xu Fuguan sees a parallel between 'fasting of the heart' ( 心 齋 )
251 Téa Sernelj (2016), ‘Xu Fuguan's interpretation of Zhuangzi's though’ in Problemos Supplement, p. 95.
252 Translated as in Lee Su-san (2013), ‘'China' in exile: The case of Xu Fuguan’ in Oriens Extremus, vol. 52, p. 120.
253 Lee Su-san (2013), ‘'China' in exile: The case of Xu Fuguan’ in Oriens Extremus, vol. 52, p. 121.
254 The title translated as in Lee Su-san (2013), ‘'China' in exile: The case of Xu Fuguan’ in Oriens Extremus, vol.
52, p. 121.
255 Lee Su-san (2013), ‘'China' in exile: The case of Xu Fuguan’ in Oriens Extremus, vol. 52, pp. 121-122.
and Husserl's bracketing256 as well as a parallel between Schiller's (Kantian) notion of (free) play and Zhuangzi's wandering with ease.257 Both parallels have their own problems that Téa Sernelj has presented in her article. But besides them, there is also a problem of commensurability: if Zhuangzi is in parallel with both, with Husserl and with Kant, it is quite worrying that there is a considerable difference between Husserl and Kant, between the purpose of bracketing and the role of free play in the third Critique.
The former is a way of researching intentionality and the latter is a way to define beauty.
Both conceptions are not strictly related to self-cultivation. Or, as Li Zehou writes in regard of the former, Zhuangzi's emptiness ''is somewhat akin to Husserl's notion of pure consciousness, but it is not epistemological.''258
According to Xu Fuguan there are even more people in parallel with Zhuangzi, and even more differences can be found between them. Xu Fuguan compares Zhuangzi with Heidegger, Hegel, Hermann Cohen, Ernst Cassirer, and Theodor Lipps.259
Xu Fuguan's comparative approach still deserves attention despite its problems, because of unique attention to Zhuangzi in aesthetical perspective. Besides Xu Fuguan, there are other scholars with views how Daoism influences Chinese aesthetics. Thus, Gu Mingdong theorizes the conception of wen (文):
(1) wen (writing) as manifestations of the Tao is an instance of 'humanized nature'; (2) the birth of wen marked the beginning of reflections on literature and art, hence inaugurating aesthetics in the Chinese tradition; and (3) the early discourses on wen have determined the distinctiveness of Chinese aesthetic consciousness.260
256 Téa Sernelj (2016), ‘Xu Fuguan's interpretation of Zhuangzi's though’ in Problemos Supplement, p. 104.
257 Ibid., p. 101.
258 Li Zehou (2010), The Chinese Aesthetic Tradition, Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, p. 81.
259 Téa Sernelj (2016), ‘Xu Fuguan's interpretation of Zhuangzi's though’ in Problemos Supplement, p. 106.
260 Gu Mingdong (2016), ‘Patterns of Tao (Dao): The Birth of Chinese Writing and Aesthetics’ in The Journal of Aesthetics
For Gu Mingdong the aesthetic understanding of wen begins with The Literary Mind
and the Carving of Dragons (文心雕龍) by Liu Xie (劉勰, c. 465-521). According to
Gu, after Liu Xie, the idea of the patterns (wen) of the Dao, ''the two cardinal concepts in Chinese metaphysics and art, dao and wen, became self-consciously connected, marking the conceptual fusion of philosophy and art''.261 This argument puts Daoist aesthetics chronologically after that of Confucianism, since the Analects discuss beauty directly and even if not all of it goes back to the lifetime of Confucius (551-479), a thousand years before Liu Xie, the codification of the Analects happened in Han Dynasty (206 BCE – 220 CE),262 three centuries earlier. Of course, there is a possibility of Daoism before the known texts, but Confucius also built on the poetic and musical tradition of Zhou dynasty.The most important element of wen to Gu Mingdong is its function of the symbol of the absolute, of Dao, where ''wen is like the signifier while dao is like the signified in a sign.''263 According to Gu Mingdong it is somehow close to Plato's dichotomy in the theory of form, but also very different from traditional Platonism. As it is often the case with comparisons of the Western and Chinese thought, the opposition of wen and Dao is less radical, the two are closer to each other and the theory itself is more like a sort of monism: ''in the relationship between wen and dao, the resistance to signification is considerably smaller as they are conceived to have a motivated relation or natural link.''264
One of the most fundamental aesthetic conceptions in Zhuangzi is, without a doubt,
and Art Criticism, vol. 74 (2), pp. 151-152.
261 Ibid., p. 152.
262 Tae Hyun Kim and Mark Csikszentmihalyiin (2014), ‘History and Formation of the Analects’ in Dao Companion to the Analects (ed) Amy Olberding, Dordrecht, Heidelberg, London, New York: Springer, p. 21.
263 Gu Mingdong (2016), ‘Patterns of Tao (Dao): The Birth of Chinese Writing and Aesthetics’ in The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 74 (2), p. 161.
264 Ibid.
the story of cook Ding, who never changed his blade since achieving the perfection. His story shows how harmonization of the most mundane activities can lead to the ultimate beauty and spiritual perfection. The story of cook Ding has been important already to Xu Fuguan's interpretation and still attracts attention. Thus, David Chai recently has seen a dance in cook Ding's work because of the comparison Zhuangzi made between cook Ding's work and two pieces of ancient Chinese music, the Mulberry Forest and the Jing
Shou:
[a] dance with two pieces of music normally associated with sacrifcial ritual: the
Mulberry Forest and the Jing Shou. This is to say, cook Ding’s movements are
carried forth with such relaxed ease that the undoing of the ox takes on the qualities of a carefree dance; figuratively in the form of a Shang-era dance whereby the cook prepares the sacrifcial meal unseen and unheard, and literally as a shamanic rain dance invoked exclusively for the audience of the king.265The Mulberry Forest is another name for a piece of music from the Shang dynasty, while the Jing Shou is a movement from a shamanic rain dance called the Xian Chi.266 All these elements of Daoist aestehtics, that of shamanism, a special view on the nature and natural beauty, especially as it is given in aesthetic skeuomorphism, play a significant role in Taiwanese Avant-garde art and will be presented in more detail in the second chapter.
265 David Chai (2019), Zhuangzi and the Becoming of Nothingness, New York: State University of New York Press, p. 51.
266 Ibid., p. 184.