2011.3.2.下午4-7点.环铁艺术城张羽工作室

　　Ink and Wash, Being Natural, and Abstract Form.

　　Fingerprints - - Zhu Qi in conversation with Zhang Yu

　　Zhang Yu’s Studio, Huantie Art Precinct, Beijing, 4-7 pm, 2 March 2011.

　　Zhu Qi: How did you get started on Fingerprints? What sort of motivation lay behind it?

　　Zhang Yu: From the mid-1980s, I have constantly been engaged in carrying out exploratory experimentation in Chinese painting. Ultimately, following the logic of artistic development, I began to think about the problem of modern ink and wash painting. However, regardless of how you draw on Western elements or absorb Eastern elements, I discovered that there is no way you can fundamentally open up a distance to the tradition. For as soon as you take up your brush-pen, you will naturally, or unnaturally, find yourself existing within the inertia of traditional Chinese painting. Writing characters on xuan paper with such a brush will necessarily conform to the rules of brush and ink (bi-mo), and if you wish to break open that rule-bound phenomenon, the only way to let go of the rules is to lay down your brush-pen. Only then can you possibly consider the possibilities that the medium of ink and wash as such offers you, and the problems of this medium, and it was thus that I began making Fingerprints in 1991.

　　Zhu Qi: That is to say, you used a process of elimination…

　　Zhang Yu: The beginning of an idea is generally ambiguous. It is only through constant thinking and accumulation that the problem gradually becomes clear. Therefore it was necessary to employ a process of elimination. First of all I had to know what that which I was doing was not, before I could determine what I ultimately wanted to do. This was a fairly rational way of thinking about it. The format of fingerprints is a cultural concept of pledge or contract. This cultural concept grows out of an action. But the changes in spacing presented by your action in the contact of the fingerprint with the xuan paper also carries your character of indeterminacy or exploration.

　　Zhu Qi: Perhaps anyone might think like this, or perhaps not think of these connections? But you in some sense maintain a species of Western rationality, a logical relationship of subtraction or reduction, as I think of it.

　　Zhang Yu: Perhaps. The level of your thinking determines the level of problems it can solve. When I cut through the problem of brush-and-ink (bi-mo) in laying down the brush-pen, there were still people saying that what I was doing here was ‘finger-painting’. This is not the concept at all. ‘Finger-painting’ means replacing the brush with your fingers while retaining the connection with the standards of brush and ink. Fingerprints on the other hand are the traces left behind by an action. They are performance, not painting.

　　Zhu Qi: Didn’t the Fingerprints that you have just mentioned predate Inspiration (Lingguang, 灵光).

　　Zhang Yu: Yes, they’re from 1991, earlier than Inspiration.

　　Zhu Qi: This also means then that many people didn’t understand your Fingerprints against the background of the time. Yet I feel that the Fingerprints works of that time rather resemble star charts. How did you come to choose an abstract visuality that resembled star charts?

　　Zhang Yu: This was related to my feeling in facing a blank sheet of xuan paper at the time, and also with my own life experience. When I was very young I was sent down to the countryside with my parents and experienced those things that children shouldn’t experience. Those memories already seem very distant, yet also seem no older than yesterday. At that time, I was for unfathomable reasons thrown into a completely foreign world and seemed to drift in an endless dark night. Every morning in those days, I most unwillingly had to go and mind a few sheep that the family was raising, and in the winter, especially, I would sit alone under a tree, purposelessly staring at the desolate fields devoid of human life. In my memories it seems I often saw a long funeral procession clad in white, and their heart-broken wailing made me shiver. Man is so tiny in the natural world. When I looked up at the sky, at the vastness of the universe and the minuteness of life, which is perhaps only the glint of a sparkle in the air. That’s when those feelings began.

　　Zhu Qi: In which year did you begin Inspiration?

　　Zhang Yu: At the end of 1993 I took up my pen and began to experiment, and building on the enlargement of the black dot of a fingerprint, I established the basic pattern of Inspiration in 1994.

　　Zhu Qi: It seems that many critics were not too receptive towards this at the time.

　　Zhang Yu: The non-figurative exploration of modern ink and wash was mostly still rejected then. It was considered abstract, metaphysical, elitist art with no relation to society. Lu Hong was a representative example of those who held this viewpoint.

　　Zhu Qi: I notice there was a phenomenon in the ’85 New Wave, the combination of surreal images with post-realism (or ‘transcendental realism’, ‘beyond realism’, chaoyuexianshizhuyi, 超越现实主义). This combination is very interesting. Its background is the cosmos, but there might some political symbols in the foreground, which is why I call it post-realism, as it was at the time seeking to use this ‘cosmism’ to break the organizational structure of realism. However, what I find interesting is why there were so many people who went and did this. Of course, in this line there were, later, in the 1990s, in addition to new ink and wash, others again working in this direction, and basically hardly anyone was still doing oil painting at the start of the paradigm shift towards realist Pop-art.

　　Zhang Yu: The ‘Cosmic Flow’ of the mid-1980s to early 1990s was a characteristic of the development of ink and wash painting.

　　Zhu Qi: Did you pay any attention to the images of Cosmism at the time? Of course, you belonged in the system of ink and wash.

　　Zhang Yu: I paid no particular attention to them. For, as it was then only a few years since I had returned from the countryside, the feelings in my heart mainly consisted of my own memories. Nevertheless I noticed these works, which I thought of as surrealist. My 1980s Fan Painting series and Portrait series are connected with this.

　　Zhu Qi: Gu Wenda developed the symbols of this sort of Cosmism. Later he rejected some of them again.

　　Zhang Yu: What he really did was to combine the methods of surrealism with the brush and ink of the ink and wash tradition, to present the style of surrealist images. Some theorists call this era by the name of ‘Cosmic Flow’ (yuzhouliu, 宇宙流), and later lumped us together as one line. However, as for there being no such thing as ‘non-figurative’ in the history of Chinese painting, I am of the opinion that non-figurative patterns can be combined with ink and wash to evolve an even more effective expression through ink and wash. I have always stressed that non-figurative ink painting means the creation of ‘schemata’ (tushi, 图式).

　　Zhu Qi: What I meant was the contact with phenomena.

　　Zhang Yu: I understand, but what I was thinking was that the history of the development of landscape (shanshui), birds-and-flowers (huaniao) and human figures (renwu) in Chinese painting was one of ‘likeness shape corresponds to object’, an expression of feelings by means of scenes. But as for whether or not we could establish a landscape of the heart that was different from the tendency of traditional aesthetics, non-figurative expression was thus what I maintained at the time. I think that the connections between non-figurative expression and ink and wash are very close. Therefore, what Inspiration resolved was the question of schemata in ink and wash painting. These schemata were an expression presented by the experiences of the heart and the understanding of people and of this environment of survival.

　　Zhu Qi: Do you think that the development of Chinese painting is mainly about reality, or is it a form that is created by the use of lines as such, relatively speaking? One relevant area is boneless painting (meiyougufa, 没骨画法), another is colour-gradation technique (yunranjiqiao, 晕染技巧). Colour-gradation technique depends on the shaping of images. In the whole modern category, the technique of ink colour-gradation is used most commonly. In this there is a little bit of manifestational character (biaoxianxing, 表现性), but nevertheless it is mainly that same molding (zaoxing, 造型) of re-presentation (fuxian, 复现).

　　Zhang Yu: Line is, relatively speaking, the fundamental skeleton of any development with the characteristics of writing, but in any case it still is based on molding. However, there is no way its development can escape the influence provided by reality, as people and reality are connected.

　　Zhu Qi: Now wholesale ink-colour-gradation has become an independent art form, beginning perhaps from the 1980s or 1990s?

　　Zhang Yu: The artists of the 1990s, because of the tension of the needs of visual expression, made the large-surface ink-colour-gradation technique independent and enlarged it for the sake of highlighting it. Of course this was a problem that traditional ink and wash painting could not solve. Traditional ink and wash painting emphasized its own written quality and charm, and did not seek to produce visual shocks. It wasn’t the priority of that age.

　　Zhu Qi: Who was the earliest artist to ween colour-gradation of its dependence on molding and to turn it into an independent art-form?

　　Zhang Yu: As I see it, the distancing of colour-gradation from its dependence on molding was a direction in modern ink and wash. The emergence of experimental ink and wash was more deliberate. It mainly strove, in the construction of schemata, to emphasize the configuration of imagined space, and therefore emphasized the contrasts in the relationship between colour-gradation and structure, and the limitlessness achieved by colour-gradation.

　　Zhu Qi: I feel that for instance Gu Wenda had this idea in continuing the development towards an increasingly abstract ink and wash form in the line of Huang Binhong, but that he didn’t altogether throw himself into it.

　　Zhang Yu: Judging by his works, he doesn’t reach this standpoint. I rather see him as relying on some thing, such as a rock, tree, Chinese character, or the like. I feel that he wants to proceed from concepts.

　　Zhu Qi: Right. But when you made some very simple monolithic ink colours, what were you thinking?

　　Zhang Yu: At the time I was thinking how I could totally detach myself from pre-existing rules. To be nothing, as far as possible.

　　Zhu Qi: Were you self-confident at the time?

　　Zhang Yu: Very much so. For I felt that in this respect no artist in the history of the development of ink and wash painting had discovered this issue, and that to be able consciously, or unconsciously until now, to make this area a kind of knowledge to think about, was a space that could be developed. Further, I thought that there were very few people equipped with this ability.

　　Zhu Qi: Colour-gradation accordingly became even more independent.

　　Zhang Qi: Besides, my colour-gradation ink-work was completely different from the traditional format. My colour-gradation was wrinkle-and-rub (cunca, 皴擦) and accumulation of ink (jimo, 积墨): a work like this one hanging on the wall requires a hundred accumulated applications of ink. I don’t use ink in the traditional manner. To paint ink in this density, the traditional use of ink would require the effort of using dense ink colour of 50, 60 or 70 per cent, and a few layers would be sufficient. When I on the other hand achieve this degree of ink colour, I start from very shallow grey ink and gradually increase its darkness. In the palest ink, there might be only 10 per cent. In the application of this very thin 10 per cent ink, repeating it more than a hundred times finally leads to the black colour that you see, which makes it very rich, transparent and thick.

　　Zhu Qi: So you don’t use colour-gradation, you use an accumulation of ink.

　　Zhang Yu: This is not colour-gradation and ink-accumulation in the traditional sense, but is a hybrid use of wrinkle-and-rub, colour-gradation and ink-accumulation, applied over and over.

　　Zhu Qi: Nowadays many people are called ‘image of ink’ or Bokusho (moxiang, bokusho 墨象) artists. How do you view this question?

　　Zhang Yu: I don’t feel this is very important. In my opinion this name is a transitional term for a trend.

　　Zhu Qi: Some critics have said the same thing!

　　Zhang Yu: As a matter of fact, this kind of term is a transition that cannot be helped, but which produces in people who read it a blurry sense of emptiness, or metaphysical fantasy. As for ‘likeness’ (xiang, 象 ), it is perhaps closer to traditional aesthetics. I believe that there are many specific problems that cannot be explained by ‘bokusho/image of ink’ but it can refer specifically to a phenomenon, or to the works of particular artists. ‘Bokusho/image of ink’ elucidates one aspect.

　　Zhu Qi: Your Inspiration is interesting, in that there is also light in the context of traditional Chinese painting, not the external light of Western art, but rather a kind of light of the heart/mind. The Chinese Christian painters of the Qing Dynasty, such as Wu Li, added a kind of external light, and there are Tao Lengyue’s paintings of the West Lake, where the light of the moon appears. However this light of his neither resembles the external light of the West, nor the heart/mind light of early Chinese art…I wonder whether you yourself were aware of this at the time?

　　Zhang Yu: My treatment of light in Inspiration was emphasized by me in a fairly conscious way at the time, for I was very clearly avoiding the connections of these two aspects. Of course, my heart/mind feelings were not the same, so the special emphasis also was not the same.

　　Zhu Qi: This light of yours also did not seem to be ‘cosmic’ light.

　　Zhang Yu: The treatment of light in traditional ink and wash painting mainly comes from heart/mind feelings. This is partly for cultural reasons, and partly a question of epistemology, also there is the ability to master the materials. You once critiqued my work as ‘experiments in the interstice’ – rightly, I feel. I have consciously dodged those two kinds of light referred to before. What I am presenting is backlight, light that is masked, it is both psychological light and natural light – perhaps the light of the future, a reflection with a quality of indeterminacy.

　　Zhu Qi: At the time, what motivated you to make the Inspiration series? Was the very first Inspiration work directed at this kind of light?

　　Zhang Qi: I created Inspiration as a tactical move that arose because my Fingerprints were not being understood. I am an idealist. I knew the meaning of Fingerprints, and I knew that it was too far ahead of its time. Inspiration was an intermediate link in our stepping out of the tradition, and this kind of light was gradually understood when I embarked on the creation of Inspiration.

　　Zhu Qi: What was the connection?

　　Zhang Yu: In simple terms there are two aspects. First, there is my personal life experience. In 1992 I was in Moscow, and I had also spent some time in Leningrad. I went to see almost all the churches there, not deliberately but in a very natural way, wanting to experience that certain something. Perhaps this had something to do with my health. I can’t tell for sure. Although I am a fairly rational sort of person, I have my hesitant side, my sorrowful side, and I seemed able to find some strength by going into the churches. In the peculiar architectural structure of the churches, you naturally gaze upwards, towards heaven, into the dome. I was often moved by the beam of light cast by the dome. This was completely different from the light experienced in nature. Second, there was my thinking. In the museums of the West I saw many outstanding works of art, and I got a kind of awareness of what we should strive to achieve in the medium of ink and wash. We should not resist Western art in a superficial way. I remember when looking at Western modernist works in the Hermitage, sitting at a distance of a few meters or perhaps more than ten meters, that I could still feel the visual tension of the works. This was due to the expressive structure of the works, and to the materials used. In the West, the materials are added, positive, outgoing, where the materials of ink and wash are passive and introverted and, going by their visual effect, difficult to endow with visual tension. Our medium has one great limitation. It is reserved, or restrained. Well, would it be possible for the materials of ink and wash to solve this aspect of visual tension? If my works were placed side by side with the works of Western contemporary artists at a distance of more than ten meters, would my ink and wash works also be able to achieve the required visual tension? My first thought was to paint a large surface of xuan paper black. Then, thinking about how to produce the extraverted force of this black piece of xuan paper, I hit on the idea of a ‘schematic’ (tushi, 图式) structure. There was also the problem of whether it was possible to solve the treatment of light, and in this manner I resolved both the problem of the visual tension of the ink and wash work, and constructed the question of the schemata that didn’t exist in traditional Chinese ink painting.

　　Zhu Qi: Was there not a religious aspect to this?

　　Zhang Yu: It was a psychological impact, a force of religious feeling. However, it was not an experience of what we call conversion, but rather one of some kind of calling.

　　Zhu Qi: Are there any differences between that and your current work, then? Your Inspiration seems closer to Christianity, while your Fingerprints now seem closer to Chan (Zen) Buddhism.

　　Zhang Yu: Inspiration is my subjective understanding of the problem of art history in particular. Once I had solved this question, I wanted rather to return to the comparatively relaxed natural state of Fingerprints. In my opinion, the highest realm of art is the natural.

　　Zhu Qi: Why did you return from Christianity to Chan (Zen) Buddhism?

　　Zhang Yu: This was not a conscious decision. I arrived there as I, having re-entered the creation of Fingerprints, went deeper and deeper into that creation. In my opinion, being an artist is the same as being a human being, and the natural is the highest realm. In the consideration of problems of nature, you will certainly come face to face with the condition of Chan (Zen) Buddhism, for the core of Chan Buddhism is very close to nature and sets aside very many conscious human deliberations.

　　Zhu Qi: In that case, in which respects do you feel that the naturalness of Chan Buddhism is manifested?

　　Zhang Yu: I don’t agree with using art to manifest Chan Buddhism. Analysing this from the angle of the value of art, it doesn’t make sense. There are many works of this kind in traditional ink and wash painting. Chan Buddhism in my view belongs to the philosophical level. I combine my understanding of Chan Buddhism with my thinking on creative methodology. Method is the basis of being able to change all the technical levels of the past along with their visual formats. Chan Buddhism is a relevant factor. From the point of view of form, the best way to manifest this level is to make fingerprints using your fingers and water. This must be the closest connection. From the point of view of method, the creative process of fingerprint action is a relationship with the everyday passing of day after day. It is appearance without expression. Fingerprints are the format of the ‘One’. The ‘One’ is the foundation of all things. The ‘One’ of fingerprint performance is a serene, peaceful and balanced process.

　　Zhu Qi: And yet most people, when they make art with Chan connections, do not have any conceptions. Only a minority, such as Lee U-fan of the Japanese Mono-ha School, have some conceptions…

　　Zhang Yu: That’s right, this is a question of the understanding of each artist.

　　Zhu Qi: Some people can understand that ‘being natural’ that you refer to, but the concept that it solely means being natural, varies in its morphology with every stage of Chinese history. In its normal sense, it means that one must not actively go and change things.

　　Zhang Yu: This is the understanding of its normal sense, and is also an understanding in the past tense. What we are talking about today is art, so this is a question of its understanding in art. For instance, the repetition of fingerprint performance is like practising something.

　　Zhu Qi: Of course, ‘being natural’ refers to a very subtle repetition as such, or a kind of Chan Buddhist practice. What I mean is that you can do anything, draw circles, use drops of water.

　　Zhang Yu: This is a matter of fundamental format, but what meaning does this fundamental format express in artistic terms? We don’t need philosophy to understand art, nor do we need art to talk about philosophy. What I mean is: can our understanding of philosophy and Chan Buddhism be converted into practical method? The reason I emphasize nature is because I think that not only Chan and the Way, but in fact everything is in nature, and its basis lies in the relationship between man and nature. For instance, the ‘One’ of fingerprinting is the particular quality of the action of fingerprinting, and not due to its repetition. The format ‘One’ lies in its emphasis on conversion, returning to ‘One’ is the epistemological attitude expressed by the fingerprinting performance.

　　Zhu Qi: Do you interact much with your public? For instance, in your Fingerprint works, the viewers cannot experience the subtle feeling of your fingers touching the surface of the paper. Doesn’t this work only make sense to you yourself?

　　Zhang Yu: There has at times been some interaction. The understanding of the beholders varies. There are many levels and many imaginings, according to the experiences of each beholder. This is an interesting question.

　　Zhu Qi: Have you calculated how many possibilities there are?

　　Zhang Yu: No, I haven’t.

　　Zhu Qi: There is a sort of self-sufficiency about your works.

　　Zhang Yu: I don’t particularly wish to define my own thinking to the viewers. I believe that artistic expression should leave as much space to the beholder as possible, for the life experience of each person is different, and you cannot control everybody according to your own way of thinking. We all talk about being natural, but what each one of us says is different, for as the understanding differs, so too do the experiences. In 2004 I participated in the Yokohama Film Festival in Japan and screened a video work about fingerprinting. The audience around me constantly emitted sounds of “Ah!...” Their sounds kept on getting stronger. They had no way of imagining the ceaseless repetition of fingerprint performance, but were overawed by there never being an outcome to it. This is spiritually impossible to the ordinary person. Why did this ceaseless repetition make such a deep psychological impression on them? Also, various people who see my works say that the fingerprints seem like individual petals, like peach petals flying and dancing and filling the sky.

　　Zhu Qi: They naturally imagine that there is that kind of internal connection between fingerprints and nature.

　　Zhang Yu: Every time I press down my finger I am free and easy. It is not a deliberate action, but follows the feeling of the contact between finger and xuan paper.

　　Zhu Qi: Is this a feeling of yourself? Is it a visual one?

　　Zhang Yu: It is a feeling of myself. Some of it is visual, but more of it is psychological. Most of the public’s imagining is produced visually. They cannot come to your studio and see your actions. Fingerprinting is in fact an interactive relationship. You provide a foundation and allow the beholders a possibility of entering a space.

　　Zhu Qi: Right. Fingerprinting passes through the state of Inspiration, I imagine perhaps it concentrates all the power of attention on the fingerprints, there is a spiritual relationship of contact with the paper, and when you dip your finger in the water and press it onto the surface of the paper…do you ever misprint once your finger touches the paper?

　　Zhang Yu: No. This problem doesn’t exist. However I print, it’s always right.

　　Zhu Qi: In fact, Inspiration is a visual limitation.

　　Zhang Yu: You’re right. I worked hard in an attempt to push the visual presentation of Inspiration to its limit. Motivation and result corresponded completely.

　　Zhu Qi: Therefore I feel that the difference between them is that all the feeling of truth of Fingerprints is gathered before your eyes, where Inspiration is visually associated with the cosmos.

　　Zhang Yu: Fingerprints are the truth of nature, Inspiration is the truth of association and feeling.

　　Zhu Qi: And what is experienced is a quality of truth. Actually it is the truth of a condition, or that sort of abstract misconception.

　　Zhang Yu: That’s it.

　　Zhu Qi: Have you ever considered whether there are imaginings of landscape in the Inspiration series, such as an association to a cosmic constellation?

　　Zhang Yu: I have thought about this, but in a very unspecific way.

　　Zhu Qi: Will your next step still be to pursue this associative quality of images? In Western modern painting, what is pursued is not to let the beholder associate to a scene of photographic truth. The entire organization of the surface of the painting is all an abstract structure that presents the truth of the surface as such. It doesn’t let you look at the surface of a painting, but allows you to imagine again things that are outside of it. This was one of the beginnings of modern Western painting.

　　Zhang Yu: In fact, speaking of artistic expression, as far as I am concerned in particular, I have broken off that line of association to photographic truth. I rather pursue the feelings that come altogether from the heart/mind, or in other words: it is more challenging to create things that do not exist at all.

　　Zhu Qi: This way that the West follows is in fact very conceptually conscious.

　　Zhang Yu: I like concepts that arise naturally, and I like even more creation from nothing. This is not a structure of simple configuration, but a grasping of wisdom and a consciousness of understanding.

　　Zhu Qi: The heartfelt format of Chinese ink paining is different from the concepts of Western painting, but contemporary ink and wash has not yet opened up a formal difference to Western painting. The biggest problem now is that we are reforming ink and wash by reference to the morphology of modern Western painting.

　　Zhang Yu: This is how I see it: opening up a distance to the West is not a question of formal difference, but is basically one of method. I am not currently specifically considering what ink and wash is, but rather the method by which I want my artistic expression to be supported by Eastern philosophy. Its form should be an international morphology; the medium can be converted according to your expressive needs in an interrelated way. I feel that this is enough. If you stress the medium of ink and wash, it can easily constrain your thinking.

　　Zhu Qi: But there are some basic traditional connections that still remain in your works. The connection that the Chinese emphasize subjective control, and being natural, is probably still there.

　　Zhang Yu: Definitely, for ink and wash has already become ingrained in me. Why else would I believe so firmly in my conceptions, and persevere in my actions in this way? I have told Western curators that the problem of Chinese contemporary art is not what one imagines, nor is it a simple problem of the medium of ink and wash. In fact it is a problem of our own culture. This probably has to do with philosophy, but the key is the problem of how to transform things through method. What you paid attention to earlier is also valid, the nature of society, ideology, Pop…but that part is still really distant from the line of our tradition since time immemorial.

　　Zhu Qi: Chinese painting stresses that the spiritual character drives the form. This connection has been used by some modern Western painters.

　　Zhang Yu: But they have transformed it using their own methods. Their form of presentation is still their own connections – this is the wisdom of the Westerners.

　　Zhu Qi: The spiritual character of Chinese ink and wash is manifested in three aspects. Referring just to the spiritual character of these three aspects, they are, first, in the six canons of the Neo-Confucianist School of Principle, second, in the Chan (Zen) School of Buddhism, and third, in shanshui landscape painting, poetics and literature. I feel that in the modern transformation of ink and wash, Chinese painting is not purely a question of painterly quality. It has the support of the spirit of Confucianism, Buddhism and Daoism behind it. All the good painters are experts in Confucianism and Chan Buddhism.

　　Zhang Yu: This should reasonably be the case. However, in most cases that I have personally come across, they have indeed read some books, they may even be able to recite from memory with familiar ease and use many references in their written essays, and, superficially, they seem to have understood, but in fact they are mostly not experts. It is very important that artists and critics read the books and then come to some realization, and then, through that realization, that they become experts.

　　Zhu Qi: In fact some artists have not read many Buddhist books, but they have a feel for it.

　　Zhang Yu: Feeling is very important for artists. Feeling is the foundation of realization. In that year in Moscow, I don’t remember how many churches I walked into, nor how many different forms of architecture there were, but those rays of light descending from heaven remain forever in my heart. I Japan I deliberately entered Zen temples seeking experiences and answers.

　　Zhu Qi: What feeling did Zen give you when you were in Japan?

　　Zhang Yu: When I went to the Zen temples in Japan, the architecture deliberately emphasized a feeling of separation from the outside world. Although the connection with nature was very close, they very much created a site of energy that emphasized a sense of ritual. It made it very easy for me to enter that state of quiet in my heart/mind and serenity between heaven and earth.

　　Zhu Qi: And what were your feelings as an artist?

　　Zhang Yu: The moment I was cut off from connection with the outside world, and all that remained was to confront my own life, I couldn’t help looking up at the sky. In an instant those trifles disappeared from my mind, and there was, in a very natural way, an awareness in my life consciousness. I remember I meditated, motionless, for a long time in the Zen temple that day, and slowly my life and my consciousness entered their own universe. I perceived my own heart/mind, and perceived that cultivation practice was not a posture, but an attitude derived from the nature of the mind. This is indeed a realm, relaxed, pure, serene and natural. That’s right, what you just said about ‘abstract misconception’ was very interesting. Many people say that Chinese traditional calligraphy is abstract, and that the ink and brush of painting is abstract, and that therefore abstraction exists in the Chinese tradition. The truth is that this judgment is a misinterpretation. The foundation of calligraphy is Chinese characters. The structure of their shape is fixed. You cannot change their shape as you like. Its beauty is the beauty of structure and of brush and ink (bi-mo), and not an abstract beauty. As for the brush and ink (bi-mo) work in painting, you cannot isolate it, because brush and ink in isolation is meaningless. In the traditional culture of China, the key thing is the view of space and time, and the view of being natural. Space and time, and being natural, are what we should emphasize and develop. So-called abstraction is only a concept that we can use for the time being to communicate and link up with the international scene.

　　Revised by Zhang Yu 2012-04-22

　　Translation revised by AEMcKenzie/Wen Zai 2012-04-23.

　　New section + c470 characters.

　　Originally translated by Archibald McKenzie/Wen Zai 2011-03-21]