My Take on Appreciating Chinese Calligraphy (Part I) 我欣賞中國書法意見（第一部分）

Warning:  I am not a professional scholar on the subject of Chinese calligraphy.  I am merely an amateur connoisseur of Chinese calligraphy  Corrections and constructive criticism are welcome.

聲明：  我不是中國書法專家。我只是個中國書法業餘愛好者。歡迎各位的批評和指教。

A master calligrapher makes his craft look effortless.  It takes only 5-10 minutes to write 10 to 100 characters, but masterpieces are treasured and save for millennia.

書法工藝外觀看來不費絲毫力氣。寫出幾十百字只要幾分鐘，但被視為佳作就能珍藏幾千年。

I have tried a few times writing calligraphy, and it requires hand and mind to flow as one.  I don't say this in a artsy or flowery sense, any doubts or  wanderings of the mind literally translates to the hands.  The slightest twitch can ruin a masterpiece.

我自己只試過毛筆幾次而已。書法需要手於心靈相通。我說的不是藝術氣息或華麗感，而是心裡的一絲懷疑就會影響到手的動作。手的細微抖動能毀掉傑作。

I'm not going to start the discussion of Chinese calligraphy in chronological order with oracle bones from the Shang Dynasty.  I will start with the most familiar.

首先，我不按時間順序從商朝甲骨文談起書法的字體演變。我先講各位比較熟悉的。

The most commonly used script that's still used in practice today is called "Kaishu"（楷書）.  Calligraphy taught in the Far East teaches Kaishu first in standard public education.  While American schools used #2 carbon pencils to write between comically large lines, Chinese students jump into the deep end of the pool and use the same tools as calligraphy masters.  The four basic tools are called "The Four Treasures of the Study Room" (書房四寶), they include the paper, paperweight, brush, and ink.  Albeit, beginners get to use grid paper like this:

現在最常用的字體是楷書。  東亞地區教書法先用楷書做標準字體。而美國用二號鉛筆碳寫字在滑稽的大線裡面，中國學生跳進池深側而用書法大師的工具。  基本工具稱為“書房四寶”，  它們包括筆，墨，紙， 硯。  儘管，學徒用九宮格紙：

(Source)

Once a calligrapher starts, everything is about copying previous masters.  But how can copying be a creative form of art?  Without originality in calligraphy, is it even an art form authentic to the expression of the creator?

要成為書法家都從擬摹以前的名家著手。但抄寫如何稱為一種藝術？  書法沒有原創的話， 這種藝術形式真實傳達創作者的意念？

I respond with the master mimicker, Zhang Daqian 1899 - 1983 (張大千)：

我舉模仿大師，張大千1899 - 1983：

(Source. I hope I age as gracefully as him when I'm old)

Zhang Daqian was known mostly for his Chinese painting, but the brush techniques in painting derive from writing characters.  Although his works are fairly contemporary to the time scale of Chinese history, he was able to re-discover painting techniques lost for 1300 years when he studied the Dunhuang caves.  Even today, some paintings that were originally thought to date from the Tang may have been Zhang Daqian's works.  That's like someone during the Great Depression painting Da Vinci fooling professional historians today!  Except the forgeries of Zhang Daqian were older than Da Vinci by another 500 years!  It was his ability to mimic that helped rediscover the techniques of ancient painting.

張大千的作品多為中國繪畫，但繪畫技術啟發自書法。雖然他的作品表現了當代中國歷史的時間尺度，但當他研究敦煌石窟時期，  他重新發現失落了1300年的粉刷技術。即使在現在，有些繪畫原先以為可上溯唐朝，事實上卻可能是張大千的作品。這就像大蕭條時期的達文西的繪畫愚弄了今日的專業歷史學家！  但張大千的贗品比達文西通過年長另外500 年！  他的模仿能力幫助世人重新發現古代繪畫的技巧。

(Even the color pigments Zhang used were authentic to the Tang Dynasty!  The colors dude, the colors!)

(Source.  East and West meet! Starting from left to right:  Pablo Picasso, Zhang Daqian, Xu Wenbo (Zhang Daqian's 4th wife))

The act of copying also preserves calligraphy and it's influence on people over time.  Imagine if there was a secret original copy of Beowulf was saved, and every major literary and historical figure decided to attach an their own commentary after reading appreciating the masterpiece.  Let's say Chaucer, King John, Shakespeare, King Edward II, Keats, Aquinas, Dickens, and George Washington all wrote something.  English majors would build a cathedral and have a nerdgasm of excitement, worshiping this document.  Such a document exists in the Chinese literary culture called "Sunny after Snow"  by Wang Xizhi (303 AD to 361 AD).

複製的行為還保留了書法及其對人們長期的影響。試想一下，如果有貝奧武甫的一個秘密的原件被保存，和每一個主要的文學和歷史人物決定閱讀欣賞的佳作後附加一個自己的評論。比方說，喬叟，約翰國王，莎士比亞，英國國王愛德華二世，濟慈，阿奎那，狄更斯和喬治華盛頓都寫了些什麼。英語專業的學生將建立一個大教堂和有興奮地崇拜這個文件。中國文學文化的存在一份名為 “快雪時晴帖”的書札王羲之（公元303至公元361 ）。

The entire scroll is much longer.  Here's the full version.  The right side with the blackened paper is Wang Xizhi's original calligraphy. It's only four lines of poetry, 28 characters.  So what does Wang Xizhi have to do with Chinese calligraphy?  Wait for part II!

整個捲軸更長。下面是完整版本。右側的熏黑紙是王羲之的書法原創。它只有四行詩， 28個字符。那麼，王羲之與中國書法有什麼關係呢？等待第二部分！

Feel free to leave a message for requests on future blog topics.

隨意留言給未來的博客主題的請求。

The Chinese Art Book: Music in Visual Art

Marquis Yi Bell Set, 433 BC

Dancing Figure and Musician, 2nd Century BC

Sound are longitudinal waves that propagate through air.  For those who are fortunate enough to have a sense of hearing and sight, we instinctively correlate the size and weight of an object to its sound.  We can feel the vibrations of the instrument as it moves through our bodies.

Some music in Chinese history was used for ritual and ornate state ceremony.  In this case, the bells in the picture above are black, heavy looking, and regular it its pattern and adornments.  Everything about this piece is deliberate and controlled.  They don't appear to be household objects, too heavy to be practical.  They appear to serve a grand purpose.  The size of the bells imply the sound carries over a large distance.  The picture above isn't from The Chinese Art Book, but there are also long wooden rods used to strike the bell.

The figures on the bottom are curvaceous and asymmetric, suggesting imbalance and movement.  I will assume for now that the figures are female.  The dance figure on the left has these long sleeves that accentuate her arms.  The movements are meant to take space with the purpose of attracting attention.  The figure looks as if she's mourning over a tomb, but it's a 25-stringed instrument that sits on the ground.  The position of her heads shows her direction of focus, and the hands are poised, ready to use the fine motor skills of her fingers to pluck complex chords and melodies.

The instrumentalists in the following video look dorky, but this is an accurate historical recreation of music from the Warring States period.  Ancient music sheets survived along with someone having the foresight to label each bell with its respective note.  The dance sequence is based on small models and historical painting:

I'm not sure what to make of these pieces.  I can only imagine myself an emperor of my court.  As all of my ministers are wining and dining in front of me, I am sitting on my throne, listening with my eyes closed as I consider the present moment of my empire.  I'm hoping no one assassinates me.

The Chinese Art Book: Text and Permenance

Diamond Sutra 868AD  

Stamping on Water, Song Dong, 1996

Note: The man is holding a seal carved with  "水," the character for water.

The Diamond Sutra is the earliest example of printed text that exists today.  This piece depicts a monk kneeling and prostrating himself in the front of the Buddha and enlightened deities.  The power of the written word derives from it's ability to create ideas that surpasses an individual's imagination.
Yet the written word on text is immobile.  It needs the human agent to influence action.

I find it ironic that the earliest published book is a Buddhist text because Buddhism preaches suffering from the attachment to identity.  The very nature of text is to identify and categorize.  Ideas of human beings are based on how humans relate the outside world to our own perceptions.  Buddhism claims perception in itself is a form of illusion, impermanent as nature erodes and constantly shifts identity.

When Song Dong attempts to imprint a human label onto nature, the label has no permanence.  The water has no ability to self identify, or hold onto such a label.  The liquid simply returns to it's original state and continues to flow.  Man cannot force nature to accept a label.

Song Dong's piece also shows how text relates to the flow of time.  Text will always be about recorded thoughts from the past.  Ink holds and maintains ideas when it attaches to paper, but the the of the present moment becomes the past.  The present in infinitesimally fleeting.  Nature needs no sense of self identity and continuously changes.

This contrast reflects upon the power and weakness of text.  If humans cling nurture the values of the past, text can multiply and remain within our social consciousness.  But just imagine what would happen if we placed The Diamond Sutra into the water.  Ideas that have life on paper would disintegrate into the impermanence of nature.  Perhaps we have to accept that even the grandest and deepest of human thoughts must dissipate into the constant shifting of nature.

The Chinese Art Book: Introduction

I remember one of my professors explaining how viewing cultural history from a chronological perspective generalizes the narrative as progressive, or future work "improves" from the past.  This isn't just a symptom of our capitalist society, where the passage of time provides growth.  It's also been used by Chinese dynasties to criticizes the flaws of the past.  Historical narratives written by dynasties tend to distort the narratives of its previous dynasty.  This doesn't mean that everything in the past must be inferior to the present, but we should at least be aware of such distortion trying to explain the values of a culture.

So the next thing I'll attempt is a series of art critique in The Chinese Art Book by Colin Mackenzie, Katie Hill, and Jeffrey Moser. Chinese art seems completely alien to the Western world because the viewer has to relearn all the historical context and baggage behind the art.  At least Western art is familiarized in our everyday world, like the mosaic in a church or lingerie on a billboard.  But why is Confucius on a can condensed milk? Question for the philosophers.

The Chinese Art Book does not place the pictures of artistic works in chronological order, rather each open page is a binary to the other side.  As the book jacket puts it, "The dialogue between each couple invites meanings that often go far beyond those of the individual works."
The next project I'll attempt on Blogger will attempt to figure out why The Chinese Art Book makes these binaries.  I will try my best to make these themes relatable to those unfamiliar with Chinese culture, but at certain point I'll have to delve into Chinese history.  Understanding Chinese culture is like trying to understand an episode of the Simpsons.  I remember showing The Simpsons to a guy from Shanghai, and I had to pause the video every 10 seconds because each joke derived from a unique aspect of American culture.  When a Westerner looks at Chinese culture, it's like a version of The Simpsons that lasted 3000 years.

My Tumblr thing was a complete failure.  It was boring and completely devoid of context.  Pandering to the internet crowd was pointless. Screw it, I'll write what I want. I want to do this because my bigger project involves delving into Chinese art, trying to pinpoint the artistic details that the Chinese saw in art.

博客介紹： “中國文化” 是什麼？: What is "Chinese Culture" for?

(Source： http://www.indiewire.com/film/marina-abramovic-the-artist-is-present)

要了解這句話先就要先除去籠統且陳腔詞濫調的刻板印象。我們先看這模糊句子的完全相反：Marina Abramovic's: 有一位藝術家在場。

To understand this phrase you have to remove the mask of stereotypes and clichés that weigh it down. Let's look at something that’s the complete opposite of this ambiguous phrase: Marina Abramovic's: The Artist is Present.

看來有一位小姐穿着笨重的裙子坐在椅子上，盯著對面座位的其中一人。觀眾看完了就換位盯着Abrimovic. 沒什麼了不起。不過，Marina Abromovic 三個月來，都在博物館的營業時間裡坐在這張椅子上！ 她也不是只坐着發呆。如果對面觀眾對現在時態想得開，她盯着全神貫注。雙位手無寸鐵，觀眾感覺到一個無借口,無自傳，最純凈的感情。

It appears to be a woman sitting in a large clunky dress staring at a member of the public across a table. Once a viewer is done, the person leaves and another sits staring at Abramovic. Nothing special. But Marina Abromovic has sat on this chair during museum hours for 3 months! She's not spacing off either. If the viewer on the other chair is open to the present, she stares straight into you with full concentration. Both are defenseless, the viewer senses emotion in it's purest form without hiding behind ego or pretext.

和一般認知的中國文化是完全相反的。文化是舊的，傳統的，充滿象徵意義。可是有意義嗎？

The general perception Chinese culture is the complete opposite. Culture is old, traditional, full of symbolism. But is is meaningful?

我忘記那個統計，可是大家都談到中國超過整個世界的算數和科學技巧。這究竟是根據“中國文化” ？我不確定。論語第一句不是說，“學而時習之，不亦樂乎？” 這些孩子高興得泡選擇題答案? 中國人和外國人都有這種先入為主的概念，教育將等同於成功，而只有少數人質疑測試本身是有意義的. 在漢代科舉約幾乎百年之後，那個時代充斥著腐敗和賄賂。我懷疑孔子設想他的前任，爭取SAT完善。文化不只是為了經濟發展。

I forgot which survey, but there's always talk that China surpasses the entire world in math and science. Was this due to "Chinese culture" ? I doubt it. The first line of the Analects quotes, "If there is the practice of learning, is there not joy?" Were these kids happy when they were bubbling their multiple choice answers? Both Chinese and non-Chinese have this preconceived notion that education will equate to success, but rarely do people question if the test itself is meaningful. Barely after 100 years after the civil service exam during the Han Dynasty, it was riddled with corruption and bribery. I doubt Confucius envisioned his predecessors to strive for perfects on the SAT. Culture isn't solely for economic progress.

像觀眾看着Marina的眼睛，我們必須放棄自己的自負和偏見試圖尋找背後文化的意思. 中國的文化不是因它原有的特色產生意義，它的意義來自通過我們可以感受到其中的價值。希望我繼續寫博客，能讓讀者現學習的快樂。

Like a viewer looking into Marina's eyes, we have to let go of our own ego and prejudice when trying to find meaning behind culture. Chinese culture isn't meaningful because of it's traits, it's meaningful through the values we can sense and intuit. I hope that as I continue writing my blog, my viewers will find joy in learning.

My Take on Appreciating Chinese Calligraphy (Part II): Expression, Alcohol, and Transcendence

Let's start with the basics.  Ou Yangxun's (歐陽詢) (557–641) calligraphy is typical style elementary calligraphers.

Notice that the characters are very regular.  The strokes also have a uniform depth, and within each region and aspect of each character, there are vertical, horizontal, and circular symmetry.  The vertical and horizontal strokes bulge and narrow ever so slightly to give characters a sense of fullness.  This is an example of structured and standard calligraphy where effort and a sense of calm is required.

How writers control the brush expresses emotion in calligraphy.  Thick places tell where the calligrapher paused, while thin lines suggest faster movement.

Wang Xizhi's (王羲之) "Preface to the Orchid Pavilion" (353 AD) is the magnum opus of Kaishu script.The original piece was destroyed when a greedy king buried it in his tomb.  The oldest copy of closest to the text dates roughly 300 years after Wang wrote his orginal.  Not only are the words aesthetically pleasing, the meaning behind the text itself inspired me to major in Chinese.

(Source.  The text starts on the upper right corner with "永和")

The text is a description of a gathering of scholars enjoying a fancy drinking game (it involves floating shots down a little stream).  The text was written the moment the calligrapher was with with his scholar friends.  The beginning of the text describes the merriment and bliss the calligrapher experiences, but as the night progresses he questions the insignificance of his spatial and temporal existence. Wang feels the reality of his mortality.  One can imagine the spontaneity and anxiety of his words as the text progresses from right to left.  His words aren't valuable because they fit the standard norms of Kaishu, but its captures and displays what Chinese calligraphy is able to express.

Here is Emperor Huizong's (徽宗) calligraphy:

(Source.  This is the phrase for "parakeet.")

Emperor Huizong of the Northern Song Dynasty (1082-1135 AD) was known for his "slender gold script" (瘦金體).  Notice that his characters are very thin.  Some of his strokes leave residue as he continues to the next stroke.  One calligraphic scholar noted that to accomplish such rapid movement, he must have used only the tip of his brush without pausing very much.  One can read through his calligraphy that he was an impulsive emperor.  Textual evidence of an extravagant pet rock collection confirms this.

The next piece is by a scholar official named Huang Tingjian (黃庭堅), a generation older than Emperor Huizong of the Northern Song Dynasty.  This is beautiful example of grass script (草書).

The calligraphy is now incomprehensible compared to standard Kaishu.  This obviously wasn't used as a means of communication.  This calligraphic form was motivated by the need to express a transcendence of reality.  The words are very fluid, which translates from the calligrapher's very fluid hand movement.  Usually either the calligrapher was really drunk, in a high meditative state, or both.  Not only was alcohol associated with rambunctiousness and high energy merriment in Chinese culture, alcohol was also associated with sophisticated scholarly gatherings and literary composition as we have seen previously with Wang Xizhi's gathering.  Try to imagine a group of American writers from The New Yorker, drinking martinis together as they compose short stories.

One has to see the calligrapher's actual hand movements to really understand the essence of the art of calligraphy.  The act of writing calligraphy is also performance.  Here is the text (Su Shi's "On the Topic of the West Forest Wall" 蘇軾 題西林壁) being written in many different calligraphic styles. (I also love the background people's reactions, especially when the calligrapher stretches the last character.)

Kaishu script:

Cursive script(行書):

Grass script:

Of all the calligraphy I have seen, I will die happy if I ever have the chance to view the following piece in person.  Su Shi's "Cold Food Festival" (蘇軾  寒食帖) was written in 1082 AD during the Northern Song Dynasty.  The piece is currently in the Taipei Palace Museum of Arts.

(Source.  Full scroll here.)

Su Shi was sent to exile for being accused of libel in his published poetry.  The text is about how the passage of time and beauty of spring cannot penetrate the loneliness of exile.  The strokes he uses are thick relative to the size of his characters, and simultaneously the words are very orderly and compact.  Compared to regularity of characters in court documents he wrote, the variety in size and shape emphasizes the distress he feels.  As the text progresses towards from right to left, the words get bigger.  He starts to lose some control of his brush not from dramatic anguish, but from a deep melancholy.  The brush strokes are slower because the strokes get thicker.  It's as if I could see him 1000 years ago, sobbing quietly in pain as he realizes the anticlimax of his life as he fades towards insignificance.  Little does he know that he would be one of the most revered figures in Chinese culture.  At least he's at list a favorite on my list.

Unlike portraiture or a painting, Chinese calligraphy can convey what the calligrapher felt the very moment the characters are written.  Even thought Chinese calligraphic works are only humble pine soot and paper, it reminds us that the length of individual human legacy is not defined by what one owned or the popularity during one's contemporary time.  Rather we remember how others made us feel.  Chinese calligraphy in it's most basic form is an art form that expresses the human condition.

Understanding the Opposite Sex

在戀愛過程中，女人往往聽不懂男人的話。

Through the course of a relationship, women typically don't understand what men say.

傾城之戀   作者：張愛玲

Love in a Fallen City   by, Eileen Chang

The Most Basic Rules of Chinese Sentences

Modern Mandarin unfortunately does not have a standard primer or document that every Mandarin speaker agrees upon.  English had at least three centuries of debate and scholarship to form the basic rules of English grammar, but Mandarin had less than a century due to political reasons.  

Fear not!  Here are a few basic rules that govern Mandarin:

1)  Basic sentences follow the subject-verb-object structure (SVO):

The most famous example of this sentence in English is "I kick the ball" (There's a paper written by an academic, but unfortunately I can't find the source).  You can easily identify the sentence components.

The sentence in Mandarin is: "我踢球."  It literally translates to "I/kick/ball."  Notice that "the" is missing, which leads to the next rule.

2)  Chinese is a pronoun drop language, or pro-drop.

After the pronoun is mentioned once, it usually doesn't appear afterwards.  A Mandarin speaker who is starting to learn English tends to drop pronouns.  It may sound blunt and a bit rude, but the overuse of pronouns sounds awkward not just in conversation, but in prose as well.  

For instance, in the English sentence "The book is front of the pencil" translates to "書在鉛筆前面,” which literally translates to "Book/at/pencil/front."

3) Chinese is a left-branching language.

This means that the modifier of basic elements of a sentence placed to the left.  English is a hybrid of left and right branching, but Chinese tends to be more strictly left branching.  So going back to the first example, if I want to add that the ball is yellow, I say "我踢藍球."

Most other rules you have to memorize, play by ear, or apply to specific cases.  Hopefully, this is a good starting point!

The Art of Mandarin

A friend of mine who's a profession writer told me that a blog must accomplish one of two things: express relatability or express expertise.

Even after publishing around 100 posts, my blog had content, but it didn't have a sense of purpose.  I left my blog on hiatus over the summer partly because I was afraid my blogs would be ignored.  I assumed that most people would rather consume infotainment, nothing that would hurt their heads. But I realized that I didn't need to cater to people who wanted distraction and entertainment.  I needed to write for the sake of writing, or art for the sake of art.

The other reason for my hiatus was because I started writing my novel.  Yes, I'm one of those people at social gatherings who start my conversation with "I'm working on this book about...," only to drone on about a half coherent plot.  My novel will tie closely to the themes of my blog.

Why titled, "The Art of Mandarin?"  "Tranquil Polmelo" doesn't roll off the tongue. My blog also isn't a guide to teach people Chinese.  There are plenty of websites that can help you the basics, or Google linguistics papers on the grammatical uses of particular Chinese words.

My blog is going to be about how Chinese sentences convey meaning and how meaning coveys the art of writing Mandarin.

100th Post! Consciousness and Art

Last time I mentioned how during the Northern Song Dynasty, a piece of art called "Tearful Citizens" convinced the emperor to stop Wang Anshi's extremist economic policy. I like to believe that when Emperor Shenzong first saw the painting "Tearful Citizen," he realized he was a fallible human being.  Instead of logic, an innate feeling for compassion for our fellow man shifted political dialogue to better society.

Can art still do that?  Can art make us more conscious of the human state?

Recently I spent 6 hours at the Norton Simon Museum of Art in Pasadena.  I forced myself to slow down and spend at least 5 minutes on a piece of art that attracted me.  Specifically I'd like to talk about the biggest painting at the end of the 19th century hallway:  The Ragpicker by Edouard Manet.

(Source:  Norton Simon Museum)

As I sat on the bench, staring intently at this painting for half an hour, I noticed many people would barely glance at the piece.  Only one person bothered to appreciate standing for a minute before moving on. 

The caption next to the painting explained how Manet was trying to romanticize the freedom of the paper collector, unbounded from the birth of urbanization and modernity in Paris.  

At a glance our instinct is to dismiss the ragpicker as not worth noticing, but if we put ourselves in Manet's time, most paintings depicted opulence, joy and luxury.  Why spend so much time and effort on something so low-brow, so common to reality?

I first noticed the tall sturdy stick the old man carries in is left hand.  Though the hand is course and rough, the glow and roundness shows power in his hand.  While the left hand provides balance, the right grips his earnings, and opportunity to live for another day.   The ragpicker's hat tilts upward, and provides movement in his eyes.  He's looking upward for another chance towards opportunity.

It's easy to live with money.  Not only does the ragpicker have to live with the burden of carrying his garbage, what's heavier is the burden of poverty.  His shoulders are slack, and his legs bow outward not because of the weight of the refuse he carries.  Instead the brown sack he carries is empty.  His body is distorted because he carries the burden of poverty.

In many ways, aren't we just like the ragpicker?  Aren't we trying to sift through the junk and dirt of the human world to find value?  Manet piece show's that even with nothing, we still are the same human being. 

Kitsch Helps Us Come to Terms With Horror

Spoiler Alert!!!: Scottsboro Boys, Bleach (Anime)

Kitsch is difficult to define, but I like to put it this way:  It's something that tries to exaggerate meaning when it's not there, like a gilded cardholder or pink flamingo garden ornaments.

Sometimes when the world pushes inhumanity to the extreme, and a serious objective narration of the account may not suffice because any attempt to recreate its essence will in some way demean it.

I recently watched the Scottsboro Boys at the Ahmanson Theater.  It's about the wrongful persecution of a group of nine African-American teenagers in Alabama during the Great Depression.  Two Caucasian Alabama women accused the boys of gang raping them.

It was doubly kitschy because it was a circus act within a broadway musical.  The audience knew that obvious inconsistencies, like African American boys playing the part of southern Alabama women, but the musical progresses and gradually stings the audience of the pain of the inmates.

My favorite song was "Southern Days."  Before the verdict was read to the boys, all of them were imagining how they would spend the moment leaving jail.  When all expound their hopes, the interlocutor enters the scene and attempts to convince the boys to remain in the South.  With forced faces they all begin to sing a folk song about the South.

These lines completely shifts the tone of the number:

HOW THE SIGHTS AND SOUNDS
COME BACK TO ME!
LIKE MY DADDY HANGIN’ FROM A TREE.

It completely shatters the song's attachment towards Southern nostalgia.

Nostalgia is the greatest threat to history.  At least censorship or forgetting history allows room for one to wonder if pain occurred, but nostalgia erases history AND seduces one to accept a comfortable narrative.

The danger of nostalgia also reminds me of Japanese anime.

(source)

When Ben Lewis interviews Takashi Murakami, Murakami talks about how after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, after 30 years Japan creates children's television shows that depicts cartoons of this image.

I didn't realize this until I wrote this blog, but the reverberation of this incident is STILL in modern day anime.

SPOILER ALERT FOR BLEACH!!!

This video is the climax of the Bleach series.  Fast forward to 25:00:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMFTwjj7lO0

I'm skipping vital details, but the flowy hair guy has to kill the evil butterfly looking thing.  The entire Bleach series hinges on this moment, but if you have no idea what's going on, this final explosion of raw power from the protagonist is eerily similar to an atomic blast.

Victims of the atomic bomb blinded and deafened by the explosion explain how they saw something as bright as the sun, and couldn't hear anything because their eardrums would rupture from the shockwave.

When we look back into a traumatic history, we cannot recreate the event to convey the feeling.  Ironically kitsch allows us to look without altering the feelings of history.

 

 

Instagram and the Retro

When I first saw someone instagram a photo on facebook, I reminded me of my parent's wedding picture.

I thought, "Oh how nice, looks very retro chic."

Then it became too much.  Not everything needs to have a sense of nostaligia.  I remember one of friends instagram-ed a plate of pickles and salami I cut.  Why does preserved food need to evoke a warm fuzzy feeling?  (If you do, you should call a doctor.)

I think it speaks to a deeper, more disturbing symptom beyond being an annoyance:

 We live in a culture that does not value historical context.

 Big Brother isn't systematically erasing history.  We intuitively feel the need to feel history, but most of us can't figure out how to analyze it.  Using our hearts instead of our heads, most of us simply  "feel good" about the good times, and suppress or ignore the bad.

For now let's talk about feeling nostalgia in art.

Whenever I look at a piece of art, I only ask one question:

Why does it make you feel?

It's a bit cliche, but for me this is how I define art.  The artwork may or may not need the aid of historical context.

In this case let's talk about a very famous instagram painting.

《谿山行旅》范寬  -  The Stream and Mountain Traveling Path by Fan Kuan

Late 10th century Northern Song Dynasty.

The scene depicts travelers passing by Cuihua mountain in Shanxi province ( 翠華山  陝西省)。Legend has it that Laozi climbed this mountain to escape the world a hermit.

This Taiwanese art historian points out a few interesting facts:

1.  This painting is a really cool version of Where's Waldo.  People knew this was a Cai Kuan painting because of the seals of later artists, but his actual signature wasn't found until 1971!!!!

2.  Cai Kuan painted this from memory.  He wasn't painting this live.

3.  The Song Dynasty had a whole array of colors to use to paint, but he chose black.  He paints using some Tang techniques, or from his point of view techniques that are 300 years old.  That's like someone now using techniques from Rococo France.

Time to bust out my inner Sister Wendy!

The mountain instantly grabs your eye.  Remember, this painting is roughly 4 feet tall.  Paradoxically, even though you understand the size and magnitude of the mountain, it's also obscure.  We have to also notice the negative space in the painting.  The misty clouds that separates the background with the foreground.

Whenever an artwork attempts to evoke the past and nostalgia, time inevitably takes detail from us, leaving a partial void.  When I imagine myself being a later Chinese scholar or emperor looking at this painting, I can't help put feel humbled by this mountain.  Even this majestic mountain must naturally fade away. Time's arrow is as naturally fades the moment, but the majestic beauty of the moment still exists in front of us.

One's  ego must relate to the didactic truth in this painting.

Perhaps we instagram to emphasize to the viewer that this image was significant to someone, and that specific moment will slowly fade away with time.  It makes us more conscious of the value of the moment.