The Dao of Art Appreciation (Part 2)

Mike Harty

There is a famous Daoist story from China that is called “The Taming of the Harp”.

Many, many years ago, in the Dragon Gorge of Henan province there was a huge paulownia tree that towered over al the other trees in the forest. It was so tall that it could talk with the stars, and its roots were so deep that they coiled down around the great silver dragon which slept deep in the earth.

One day, a powerful magician chopped down the tree and made a wonderful harp from its wood. But the spirit of the tree was so powerful that even the greatest musicians could not tame the harp or make music on it.

For generations, this extraordinary harp was one of the prized possessions of the Emperor of China, but while many tried, none of the court musicians could ever get the harp to make anything but the harsh and ugly sounds.

A master harpist named Beiwo came to the court, and the Emperor offered him the harp to play. The court musicians stood around sniggering, waiting for the famous musician to fail as they had failed before. But Beiwo quietly took the harp, and gently caressed it, just as an experienced horseman would approach an unruly colt. Then he softly ran his hands over the strings as he sang.

He sang of the forest and the seasons, of the mountains and the flowing rivers. And the spirit of the tree awoke and remembered its life in the forest. It imagined the breeze in its branches, and the chattering of the waterfalls, and the dancing flowers, and the pattering rain, and the calls of the birds. It remembered the changes from season to season; the gleam of moonlight and the glistening snow.

Then Beiwo changed key and sang of love, and the tree followed with laughter and tears. And he sang of war, of the clash of steel against steel, the shouts of men and the trampling of horses. The heart of the harp rose like a storm over the Dragon Gorge, and the music filled the court.

Then Beiwo stopped singing, and the harp was silent.

The court musicians were dumbfounded. No one before had made such music, and no one before had caused the harp to play. The Emperor asked Beiwo how he was able to make music on the harp when so many people before him had failed.

Beiwo answered, “Perhaps it was because the others sang of themselves. I let the harp chose its own theme. In fact, I don’t know whether I played the harp or the harp played me.”

Okakura Kakuzo, the Japanese intellectual who was one of the influences on the then emerging Lingnan school of Chinese painting, used this story to illustrate what he called the “mystery of art appreciation”. To him, a great piece of art is like Beiwo, and we are like the harp. When a masterful piece of art reaches out of its medium to touch us, we respond to it, just as the harp responded to the gentle touch of the master musician.

“Mind speaks to mind. We listen to the unspoken, we gaze upon the unseen. The master calls forth notes we know not of; memories long forgotten all come back to us with a new significance. Hopes stifled by fear, yearnings that we dare not recognise, stand forth in new glory. Our mind is the canvas on which the artists lay their colour; their pigments are our emotions; their chiaroscuro the light of joy, the shadow of sadness. The masterpiece is of ourselves, as we are of the masterpiece.”

The Dao of art appreciation asks that you approach any work of art with a humble and an open mind. You should not consciously ‘judge’ it with your intellect, because if it is truly a great art work, your intellect is not capable of responding accurately until you have reacted emotionally. And once you have become part of the painting itself, the intellectualisation is meaningless and unnecessary.

Again from Mr Okakura comes the story of a famous Song dynasty critic who once said “In my younger days I praised the master whose pictures I liked, but as my judgement matured I praised myself for liking what the masters had chosen to have me like.”

Is this a selfish attitude? There are aspects to Daoist philosophy that cause it to be sometimes accused of promoting selfishness. And while this criticism may be well founded from a traditional western point of view, it is also not unreasonable but also timely to stop and examine the ethics of selflessness. There are a number of rationalisations for selfless behaviour; they run from “a sense of duty and moral obligation”, through “wanting to intervene on the side of the underdog”, to “a feeling of pity for those less fortunate”. But a Daoist explanation (if one should ever be needed) would be simply that it is in one’s nature to help others. No further explanation or answer is required.

Where the Christian/Judeo/Islamic belief is in a deity who demands obedience to a set of laws and principles, the Daoist sees the need for harmony with nature. And that is the crux of the difference. The Daoists never need “surrender their will to God” any more than they believe they should try to control the forces of nature.

The perfect answer to anyone who might tell you to “stop being so selfish” is to ask them “For whose sake do you want me to be unselfish?” In fact Raymond Smullyan asks the question (particularly of clergymen): “How do you think of altruism? Do you think of altruism as sacrificing one’s own happiness for the sake of others or as gaining one’s happiness through the happiness of others?” After you have pondered this question of yourself, ask a few friends and watch their reactions.

Shitao (1641-1717 CE) wrote: “I meet the world as it comes, yield superficially to the hustlers, and thus achieve peace of mind. With peace of mind comes a painting. ... When one contemplates the One (unity of all things), one sees it and that makes one happy. Then one’s paintings have a mysterious depth which is unfathomable.”2

What Shitao wrote about the painting of paintings can be equally applied to the viewing of paintings. Because only when “one contemplates the One” in a painting will you allow your mind to stop analysing and judging, and your heart will respond. And only then will you become one with the painter and share the experience of the soul of the painting.

Remember, in a great deal of Chinese brush art, it is not so much what has been put onto the paper, as what has been left off. The single brushstroke that is the bark of a gnarled and ancient pine tree, or the feather on a bird’s wing, or the leaf of bamboo is just a brushstroke. Yet by the way that it stimulates your emotion, can be far more real than any photograph of the tree, the bird, or the bamboo forest.-- Art CV Art CV