The Dao of Art Appreciation (Part 1)

Mike Harty

Daoist philosophies are at the same time both the simplest and the most complicated of thought patterns. They are simple because the Dao is undemanding, unjudgemental, loving and eternal; complicated because for people brought up within the monotheistic judeo-christian-islamic culture framework, there is a confusion that occurs when the concept of Dao is applied to conventional concepts of God.

Perhaps one of the best explanations of this difference between eastern and western philosophies can be found in an extraordinary book called “The Tao is Silent”, where the author talks about a friend who everyday ‘takes a nap’, while the author often falls asleep while reading, which he points out is very different from deliberately taking a nap.

He wrote: “I think this is all that Chinese philosophy is really about; the rest is mere elaboration! If you can learn to fall asleep without taking a nap, then you too will become a Sage. But if you can’t, you will find it not as easy as you might think. It takes discipline! But Eastern, not Western style. Eastern discipline trains you to ‘allow yourself’ to sleep when you are sleepy; Western discipline teaches you to force yourself to sleep whether you are sleepy or not.

“Throughout history, it has been recognised that the human mind is capable of two kinds of knowledge, or two modes of consciousness, which have often been termed the rational and the intuitive, and have been associated with science and religion, respectively.”

The late Alan Watts wrote in “The Way of Zen”: “The reason why Taoism and Zen present, at first sight, such a puzzle to the Western minds is that we have taken a restrictive view of human knowledge. For us, almost all knowledge is what a Taoist would call conventional knowledge, because we do not feel that we really know anything unless we can represent it to ourselves in words, or ... the notations of mathemetics or music.”

So what is the difference between the Dao and God? In the first place, a Daoist feels no need to justify whether the Dao exists or not; the Christian strives to convince the heathen and the atheist that God exists in order to save their soul; the atheist claims that belief in God is mere superstition. The Daoist sage “sits quietly beside the stream, perhaps with a book of poems, a cup of wine, and some painting materials, enjoying the Tao to his heart’s content, without ever worrying whether or not the Tao exists. The Sage has no need to affirm the Tao; he is far too busy enjoying it.”

Daoist philosophy in painting affects the way the artist interacts with the subject to be painted. I will always remember artist Amy Huang seeing a Grevillia flower at the first Australian Painting Society exhibition at Inala. She was immediately captivated, and insisted on painting it there and then. Norma Gall had set up a painting table with paper, inks and brushes, and Amy sat down, the flower between her fingers. As she prepared to paint, she slowly twirled the flower backwards and forwards, gazing intently at it. Naturally, I thought she was looking for the best angle, the most typical aspect of the flower to paint.

But no! Even when she picked up her brush and began to trace the curves and spirals that make the flower what it is, she continued the twisting and turning between her fingers. And as her painting emerged from the page is became more and more obvious that Amy was not painting a portrait of a particular flower, but was capturing the essence of Grevillia.

This is the Daoist difference. And it is the same difference you see in Andrew Lo’s rainforest paintings, that have the heat and the moisture of the forest, with all its sounds and smells captured; and in his depiction of the coastal downs, with their dotted tree lines tracing the creeks and rivers. Andrew’s paintings are not photorealistic recreations of the Australian landscapes, they are the spirit of the land; and they exist because Andrew has found a oneness with the land. This is the Dao of painting.

Yin and Yang

These ideas are central to the Daoist thought process. They refer to the eternal duality of nature, of life. The symbol of the circle divided, one segment white, the other black, is almost universally recognised. But not universally understood.

In the first place, most westerners see this graphic as a statement of the duality as finite and permanent. That black and white, female and male, soft and hard, et al, exist as absolutes. An ‘either/or’ kind of situation. Similarly, most westerners also fail to notice the small white dot in the black segment, and the small black dot in the white segment. The great significance of these dots is the recognition that life is in constant flux. That in blackness there is always the seed of white, and that in maleness is always the seed of femaleness. There are no absolutes.

So, in developing the concept of a painting, in conceiving a piece of calligraphy, in designing a seal to be carved, or in deciding where an inscription, signature and seal should go to complete the painting - all demand consideration of the yin and the yang.

From a more philosophic point of view, let me share with you these words:

“At the root of Chinese thinking and feeling lies the principle of polarity, which is not to be confused with the ideas of opposition or conflict. In the metaphors of other cultures, light is at war with darkness. life with death, good with evil, and the positive with the negative, and thus an idealism to cultivate the former and be rid of the latter flourishes throughout much of the world. To the traditional Chinese way of thinking, this is as incomprehensible as an electric current without both negative and positive poles, for the polarity is the principle thet + and -, north and south, are different aspects of one and the same system, and that the disappearance of either one of them would be the disappearance of the system.”

Wu Wei

At the heart of Daoist [philosophy is the concept of ‘wu wei’. This translates literally into “without doing” or “without action”, and leads us into the conundrumistic “actionless action” and “artless art”.

A very elegant example of wu wei comes from the writings of Zhuang Zi, quoted by Benjamin Hoff:

“At the gorge of Lu, the great waterfall plunges for thousands of feet, its spray visible for miles. In the churning water below, no living creature can be seen.

One day Kong Fu Zi (Confucius) was standing at a distance from the pool’s edge, when he saw an old man being tossed about in the turbulent water. He called to his disciples, and together they ran to rescue the victim. But by the time they reached the water, the old man had climbed out onto the bank and was walking along, singing to himself.

Kong Fu Zi hurried up to him. “You would have to be a ghost to survive that,” he said, “but you sem to be a man, instead. What secret power do you have?”

“Nothing special.” the old man replied. “I began to learn when very young, and grew up practising it. Now I am certain of success. I go down with the water and come up with the water. I follow it and forget myself. I survive because I don’t struggle against the water’s superior power. That’s all.”

The Dao is like the water. If we want to live happy, healthy and productive lives, then we must learn to “go where the water wants us to go”; to harmonise ourselves completely with nature.

Then we can ‘become one with the forest’, and use the methodless method to create works of art which are completely free and living expressions of nature, and that emerge effortlessly onto the paper.