Shamanism and Taiwanese Avant-garde art

Shamanism plays a great role in the aesthetics of Eastern Asia. As it is shown in 2.1.3, even the character for the Chinese word for beauty mei ( 美 ) is seen by Gao Jianping⁴⁹⁷ and by Li Zehou⁴⁹⁸ as linked to a shaman-like figure dancing and wearing a goat mask or with headdress decorated with plumage.

The link of shamanism and sublime aesthetics is strong. Shamanism is one of the earliest religions, so it has something to do with what Lyotard calls nostalgic mode of the sublime. Shamans are viewed by believers (shamanists) as people who know a real way to communicate with the Absolute. The powers of the shaman are gained through painful transformation, shamanistic initiation which definitely demands bravery.⁴⁹⁹ Moreover, shamans are not allowed to receive payment for their services,⁵⁰⁰ so it is a selfless commitment to the duty. Furthermore, shamanism often involves trance, particular experience with visions of falling and flying through tremendous space.⁵⁰¹ This experience is particularly important for abstract art, as an argument on Kandinsky's shamanism by Pegg Weiss suggests. The shamanist link with the sublime aesthetics will be presented in more detail below along the material from the Avant-garde art.

497 Gao Jianping (2001), ‘The Original Meaning of the Chinese character for 'beauty'’ in Filosovski vestnik, vol. 22 (2), p. 143.

498 Li Zehou (2010), The Chinese Aesthetic Tradition, Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, p. 2.

499 Armando R. Favazza (2011), Bodies Under Siege: Self-mutilation, Nonsuicidal Self-injury, and Body Modification in Culture and Psychiatry, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, p. 24., Evgeny A. Torchinov (2017), The Path in transcendence: Religions of the world. Psychotechnics and transpersonal states, Saint Petersburg: Palmira, pp. 126-128.

500 Sergey A. Tokarev (1990), Early Forms of Religion, Moscow: Political Literature, pp. 266-267., Evgeny A. Torchinov (2017), The Path in transcendence: Religions of the world. Psychotechnics and transpersonal states, Saint Petersburg:

Palmira, p. 129.

501 Mircea Eliade (2004), Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, (tr) Willard R. Trask, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, p. 4.

The link of the Avant-garde art and shamanism is well established. Thus, Kandinsky has a strong connection to shamanism not only through his ethnographic studies during his student years. Kandinsky is also proud of his relations to Siberia and Altai through his father's bloodline.⁵⁰² Weiss draws a striking parallel between the ritual of the enchantment of the shamanistic drum and the essay by Kandinsky Empty canvas, etc («Пустой холст и так далее», 1935).⁵⁰³ In the ritual shaman tries to animate the drum, by addressing it and hearing the answer of the spirit helper 'here am I':

You who rides amongst the thunder Who playfully with lightning comes Autumn cloudgreat with thunder Vernal cloud rich with lightning Come ...⁵⁰⁴

After every address to a spirit, the shaman takes the role of that helper, as if the spirit appears and says 'here am I'.

In the essay, Kandinsky is addressing the empty canvas which for the artist only creates a false impression of emptiness, but in fact is "full of tensions with a thousand soft voices, expectant." For Kandinsky each of the element announces itself when appears on the canvas, "here I am." "Each line says 'Here I am.'" "Black circle is a distant thunder, a world for itself that seems to concern itself about nothing.... 'Here I am.'"⁵⁰⁵ All these voices come together for Kandinsky in the painting as a chorus of 'here

502 Pegg Weiss (1986), ‘Kandinsky and 'Old Russia': An Ethnographic Exploration’ in Syracuse Scholar, vol. 7 (1), pp. 44-45.

503 Ibid., pp. 55-56.

504 Quoted as in Pegg Weiss (1986), ‘Kandinsky and 'Old Russia': An Ethnographic Exploration’ in Syracuse Scholar, vol. 7 (1), p. 55.

505 Quoted as in Pegg Weiss (1986), ‘Kandinsky and 'Old Russia': An Ethnographic Exploration’ in Syracuse Scholar, vol. 7 (1), p. 56.

I am'. Weiss shows quite clearly, that Kandinsky should be exposed to the above quoted shamanist text in his student years of ethnographic studies.⁵⁰⁶ This parallel of the shamanistic response of the drum as a spirit helper and of an artwork can be seen in much earlier Kandinsky as well. Thus, in On the Spiritual in Art (the first German edition is 1911) Kandinsky writes how art which uses all the potential of the beginning of the 20^th century will be able in the future ''instead: 'I was' - to say 'I am.'''⁵⁰⁷

Another strong link between Kandinsky and shamanism is a metaphor of art as healing. If a shamanistic ritual is usually a performance with poetry and music with a purpose to relieve an ill man or influence climatic conditions, it finds a parallel⁵⁰⁸ in Kandinsky search for spiritual cure and how often Kandinsky speaks about salvation of the 'cracked vase of the Modern soul'.⁵⁰⁹

Weiss has a big task to link Kandinsky and shamanism, a task which needs a lot of secondary literature and a multidisciplinary approach. She deals with art studies on Kandinsky and Religious studies on shamanism. The main line Weiss creates, that of the salvation through art, seems to be firm and reliable. However, Weiss' approach has mistakes, unavoidable in such a huge scale project.⁵¹⁰ Moreover, a lot of new research is

506 Quoted as in Pegg Weiss (1986), ‘Kandinsky and 'Old Russia': An Ethnographic Exploration’ in Syracuse Scholar, vol. 7 (1), 55.

507 Vasily Kandinsky (1992), On the Spiritual in Art, Moscow: Archimedes, p. 14.

508 Pegg Weiss (1986), ‘Kandinsky and 'Old Russia': An Ethnographic Exploration’ in Syracuse Scholar, vol. 7 (1), p. 47.

509 Quoted as in Pegg Weiss (1986), ‘Kandinsky and 'Old Russia': An Ethnographic Exploration’ in Syracuse Scholar, vol. 7 (1), p. 71.

510 (1) The concept of 'dvoeverie' (double-believe system, that of pagan beliefs and of the Christian creed) taken from Russian folklore studies play a major role in the article ‘Kandinsky and 'Old Russia'’ and it seems to be viewed as locally unique and hence somehow shamanist (see Weiss, Pegg (1986). ‘Kandinsky and 'Old Russia': An Ethnographic

Exploration’ in Syracuse Scholar, vol. 7 (1), p. 50, p. 52, p. 57, p. 58, etc.). The problem is that it is a feature of all Christian cultures: in the British islands people traditionally believe in Christ as well as in goblins and fairies, in Russia people traditionally believe in Christ as well as in domovii and rusalki. Because of this specific interpretation of dvoeverie for Weiss it is enough for a painting to have some binary opposition to be linked to shamanism. It is the case with the analysis of Motley Life (Weiss, (1986), p. 50.). (2) The interpretation of word 'poganye' by Weiss is wrong on a basic dictionary level. For Weiss 'poganye' is a 'derogatory Russian term' to call the Komi people before the baptism

published after Weiss groundbreaking approach to Kandinsky.

There are incredible rich aesthetic elements in the shamanist tradition, to the degree that some researchers try to explain the origin of art through shamanism.⁵¹¹ It is hard to speak of shamanism in an aesthetic context, because shamanism is 'an academic construct'⁵¹² and on the other hand, ''[t]he term art has endured a similar process of homogenization, having also emerged as a concept in the West in the eighteenth century, defined according to Kantian and Hegelian aesthetics and notions of genius, connoisseurship, and taste; in the early twenty-first century, almost any form of visual (and material) culture can be incorporated into the art dealer-critic system.''⁵¹³ The

'suggesting something unclean because of its etymological association with the word poganke, a poisonous mushroom' (Weiss, (1986), p. 48). The problem is that 'poganye' is derived from Latin 'paganus' with the same meaning (and origin) as English word 'pagan' – 'outside the city', non- or pre-Chrisitan. Thus, there is no special relations to Komi in the word 'poganye'. The poganke is the Russian word for a toadstool. So the relation is also contrary than suggested – it is not the mushroom the one who gives the meaning to the 'pejorative term' for the group of people, but the involvement of the toadstool in old pagan (most possible shamanistic) ritual life gave the mushroom its name. (3) After showing the role of an object like a hobbyhorse in Siberian shamanism, Weiss switches to the material from Kandinsky's childhood

memories when the yet-to-be-artist likes hobbyhorses (see Weiss, (1986), p. 54.). This argument does not work, because not all children who like hobbyhorses are, thereby, shamans. (4) Weiss uses the woodcut with an image of the Russian Tsar Vasily III from Sigmund Freiherr von Herberstein (1556), Rerum Moscoviticarum commentarii (…). It has a heraldic emblem with a naked horseman ("the inset heraldic emblem depicting St. George and the dragon." (Weiss, (1986), p. 53.)). Weiss analyses the naked horseman in the comparative perspective of shamanistic ritual and Kandinsky's horsemen. The fact that the horseman is naked lets Weiss linked it to pre-Christian folklore and by this directly to shamanism. The problem is that Russia (until Peter I and 18^th century) did not participate in the European heraldic system and therefore does not have any 'heraldic emblems' in the 16^th century. The emblem from Rerum is pure fantasy by German artist from the 16^th century. Even if 'Ezdez'- horseman is one of the symbols of the principality of Vladimir and later of Moscow, he is never naked, wearing a chain mail and a helmet of a knight, as Medieval coins show it. Another illustration from Herberstein (Weiss, (1986), p.53), with the 16^th century noble cavalrymen is interpreted as an image of 'streltsy', which is a name of non-noble infantry of 16th-18^th centuries. Fortunately, all these mistakes and shortcomings are in the side arguments, and do no harm to the main line of the article by Weiss.

511 Andreas Lommel (1967), Shamanism: The Beginnings of art, New York and Toronto: McGraw-Hill Book Company.

512 Robert J. Wallis (2004), ‘Art and Shamanism’ in Shamanism: An Encyclopedia of World Beliefs, Practices, and Culture, (eds) Mariko Namba Walter, Eva Jane Neumann Fridman, Santa Barbara, Denver, and Oxford: ABC-CLIO, p. 21.

513 Robert J. Wallis (2004), ‘Art and Shamanism’ in Shamanism: An Encyclopedia of World Beliefs, Practices, and Culture, (eds) Mariko Namba Walter, Eva Jane Neumann Fridman, Santa Barbara, Denver, and Oxford:

ABC-pairing of the two started earlier than Weiss' approach to Kandinsky and receive some criticism. The main problem is the risk that ''off-the-cuff use of the term shaman strips shamans, art, and the material culture in question of context.''⁵¹⁴

The elements of shamanism are palpable in both Taiwanese and Russian materials.

Of course the latter is much younger than the former, but for the purposes of the comparative aesthetics of Avant-garde art the two can be compared. This case is also unique due to the proximity of Chinese and Russian aesthetic traditions to the region where people who practices shamanism in a strict sense of the word live. So that the problem of decontextualized model building in the style of Mircea Eliade or 'core shamanism' by Michael Harner can be avoided, and concerns expressed by Robert J.

Wallis and others can be addressed.

In Russia the traces of shamanism are strong in the European part, especially in the North, and in Siberia shamanism is preserved and can be viewed as one of important living examples of this tradition. Even the word shaman comes from Siberia, from a word of the Evenki language with a meaning ''which one can roughly render as 'agitated,' 'excited,' or 'raised.'''⁵¹⁵ The word is saman (шаман in the subdialects⁵¹⁶ of the Southern Evenki dialect, in Symskiy subdialect, Podkamennaya Tunguska River subdialect, Nothern Baikal subdialect) or xaman (hаман in the subdialects of the Nothern Evenki dialect, in Erbogochenskiy, Ilimpiiskiy subdialects and in the Solonskiy language or Suolun language (索倫, a group of Evenki living in China)) as well as aman in Baykitskiy subdialect of the Southern Evenki dialect.⁵¹⁷

CLIO, p. 22.

514 Ibid., p. 24.

515 Andrei A. Znamenski (2007), The Beauty of the Primitive: Shamanism and Western Imagination, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, p. viii.

516 Translation of Russian philologic term 'говор' since it has no direct equivalent in English and sometimes is used as a synonim of 'subdialect' ('субдиалект').

517 See enty 'Саман шаман' in Comparative Dictionary of the Manchu-Tungus languages, (executive ed) Vera I. Cincius (1977), Leningrad: Science, vol. 2, p. 59.

A shaman is usually viewed as a special practitioner who is responsible for the communication with the spirits. The shaman has a big authority in his or her group, but he is not a 'religious professional', in a sense that it is not his or her 'permanent occupation', but rather a special function along that of a hunter-gatherer, deer-breeder, fisher, herder and so on.⁵¹⁸ The shamans often do not accept any material benefits for their services,⁵¹⁹ a feature which puts them close to commonsensical view on artist as a 'selfless servant of a lofty ideal'. Mircea Eliade (1907-1986) tries to present a view on shamanism as a tradition necessarily linked with a trance or another special altered state of mind. Eliade creates a formula: ''shamanism = technique of ecstasy''.⁵²⁰ However, this idea is viewed as obsolete by many contemporary scholars, due to the problem that too many traditions related to shamanism are not related to any form of an altered state of mind.⁵²¹

One of features of Siberian shamanism is so called 'shaman sickness' a cultural conception of a specific stated of the health of a future shaman during his or her childhood or teen years, which is regarded and felt by the subject as illness and can be 'cured' through the initiation in the state of the shaman.⁵²² The description of this state vary from emotional instability, nightmares or insomnia to psychotic states with hallucinations and self-mutilation.⁵²³

Russian background in shamanism is complex through direct encounter with this

518 Sergey A. Tokarev (1990), Early Forms of Religion, Moscow: Political Literature, pp. 266-267.

519 Evgeny A. Torchinov (2017), The Path in transcendence: Religions of the world. Psychotechnics and transpersonal states, Saint Petersburg: Palmira, p. 129.

520 Mircea Eliade (2004), Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, (tr) Willard R. Trask, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, p. 4. Cursive text is as in the original.

521 Andrei A. Znamenski (2007), The Beauty of the Primitive: Shamanism and Western Imagination, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, p. viii.

522 Evgeny A. Torchinov (2017), The Path in transcendence: Religions of the world. Psychotechnics and transpersonal states, Saint Petersburg: Palmira, pp. 126-128.

523 Armando R. Favazza (2011), Bodies Under Siege: Self-mutilation, Nonsuicidal Self-injury, and Body Modification in Culture and Psychiatry, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, p. 24.

phenomenon and traces of cultural memory palpable through oral tradition. Evenki word

saman or shaman long time ago enters Russian language. At least as early as the very

beginning of the 20^th century the word start to penetrate into the ideomatics.⁵²⁴ The first appearance of the term can be found much earlier, in bureaucratic documents of the 17^th century.⁵²⁵ Speaking of cultural memory specialist speak about shamanist elements in a wide set of genres of Russian literature, from the oral epic tradition to modern novels and poetry. For instance, the poem The Prophet by Alexander S. Pushkin (1799-1837) resembles the shamanist initiation according to Evgeny A. Torchinov.⁵²⁶

In the context of the deep interest by Kandinsky in horse archers, the interpretation of shamanist elements in bylinas related to the fight of Ilya Muromez and Brigand Nightingale as given by Anne Ferlat is particularly striking.⁵²⁷ A bylina is a folk epic, and bylinas related to Ilya are something any Russian child knows. Kandinsky can not be an exception. In this story, Ilya challenges Brigand Nightingale, a supernatural creature who kills with a power of his whistle. ''He [Nightingale] whistles like a bird, suggesting the celestial level; he hisses like a snake, suggesting the chthonic level (the Underworld); and he roars like a ferocious animal, suggesting the terrestrial level.''⁵²⁸ Moreover, Nightingale is sitting on a tree, in accord with the shamanistic motif of World tree, which unite the three levels of the world. Ilya, while sitting on a horse back (which is important for Kandinsky's horse archer motif) hits Nightingale in the eye. It is also a shamanistic motif of a body part exchanged for a wisdom or passage between the levels

524 See entry 'Shaman (Шаманъ)' in M. Popov (1911), A complete dictionary of foreign words that have come into use in Russian language, Moscow: I. D. Sytin Publishing, p. 433.

525 Sergey A. Tokarev (1990), Early Forms of Religion, Moscow: Political Literature, p. 267.

526 Evgeny A. Torchinov (2017), The Path in transcendence: Religions of the world. Psychotechnics and transpersonal states, Saint Petersburg: Palmira, pp. 129-130.

527 Anne Ferlat (2004), ‘Russian Folklore and Shamanism' in Shamanism: An Encyclopedia of World Beliefs, Practices, and Culture, (eds) Mariko Namba Walter, Eva Jane Neumann Fridman, Santa Barbara, Denver, and Oxford: ABC-CLIO, pp. 509-512.

528 Ibid., p. 510.

of the world.⁵²⁹

Unfortunately, Anne Ferlat does not say which version of the bylina she uses. In probably the most fundamental collection of Ilya Muromez's epics, Ilya Muromez edited by Anna Astakhova (1886-1971) and published in 1958, there are 7 bylinas with this story as well as a variant in a form of fairy tale. In the version in bylina number 6, written from great singer of the bylinas Trofim G. Ryabinin (1801-1885), a peasant from Russian North, the elements Anne Ferlat is mentioning are absent.⁵³⁰ An 'old Cossack', Ilya Muromez fought a bandit, as any historic knight could do. During the fight, Nightingale is whistling like a bird and is crying like a beast, but no snake is mentioned and the crying creates an impression of a war cry rather than that of a supernatural ability.

However, in the bylina number 8, written from another famous great singer of the

bylinas Gavrila L. Kryukov (1824-1913), a peasant from the White Sea, far in the North,

elements Ferlat discusses are all at a place. Moreover, Kryukov presents an interesting topology, the path to the Brigand Nightingale is through the three 'outposts' (zastavi, 'заставы'), the first outpost is the dark forest, the second one is in the black dirt (is it a swamp or the Underworld?) and the third one is a river with Kalin bridge,⁵³¹ a mystical bridge of Eastern Slavic folklore, which is separating the world of the living and the world of the dead according to Vladimir Propp.⁵³² Before shooting the Nightingale, Kryukov's Ilya enchants his arrow with these words:

529 Anne Ferlat (2004), ‘Russian Folklore and Shamanism' in Shamanism: An Encyclopedia of World Beliefs, Practices, and Culture, (eds) Mariko Namba Walter, Eva Jane Neumann Fridman, Santa Barbara, Denver, and Oxford: ABC-CLIO, p. 510.

530 See Trofim G. Ryabinin (1958), ‘Ilya and Brigand Nightingale’ in Ilya Muromez, (ed) Anna Astakhova, Moscow and Leningrad: USSR Academy of Science, p. 31.

531 Gavrila L. Kryukov (1958), ‘The first journy of Ilya Muromez’ in Ilya Muromez, (eds) Anna Astakhova, Moscow and Leningrad: USSR Academy of Science, p. 54.

532 Vladimir Ya. Propp (2000), Russian fairy tale, Moscow: Labyrinth, p. 232.

'fly my arrow to the sky, hit not the air, hit not the earth, hit not the wood, but hit Nightingal's right eye.'⁵³³

So, Kryukov's Ilya reminds a shaman. He even enchants his bow as shaman enchants his drum or Kantinsky his canvas in Weiss' example. Ferlat believes, the point of the story of a fight between Nightingale and Ilya can be seen as 'the story of an initiation' in which Ilya is the initiator of the brigand, or it is the initiation of Ilya, who becomes a shaman after initiation in a form of a fight. The bylina could also be seen, according to Ferlat, as a description of a battle between two shamans.⁵³⁴ The last version fits a Kryukov's story the best. A victory over famous brigand, a distant daily event could just be reinterpretation according to the rules of 'shamanist warfare'.

The Taiwanese shamanistic background is very rich. Both Austronesian and Han ethnographic material can provide information on figures analogues to the shamans of Siberian Evenki. Among the Austronesian population of Taiwan figures reminiscent of shamans are common. It is a rule for Austronesian societies everywhere else. The cikawasays of the Amis people can be seen as an analogy of Evenkian shamans, who have given the name for shamanism, Korean mudangs, practitioners of West African Vodun⁵³⁵ and so on. Cikawasays are ''spirit masters whose sexes include males and females''.⁵³⁶ The ethnographic material related to the Han side of Taiwan leads to Chinese shamanist tradition, which is probably the oldest such tradition with written

533 Gavrila L. Kryukov (1958), ‘The first journy of Ilya Muromez’ in Ilya Muromez, (ed) Anna Astakhova, Moscow and Leningrad: USSR Academy of Science, p. 54.

534 Anne Ferlat (2004), ‘Russian Folklore and Shamanism' in Shamanism: An Encyclopedia of World Beliefs, Practices, and Culture, (eds) Mariko Namba Walter, Eva Jane Neumann Fridman, Santa Barbara, Denver, and Oxford: ABC-CLIO, pp. 509-512.

535 胡台麗;劉璧榛(2010), 台灣原住民巫師與儀式展演, Taipei: 中研院-民族學研究所, p. 2.

535 胡台麗;劉璧榛(2010), 台灣原住民巫師與儀式展演, Taipei: 中研院-民族學研究所, p. 2.

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