East Art West Art

A friend recently posted something on social media about the difficulties he faced teaching art in China. I am being rather loose in paraphrasing here, but the chief complaint was that although his student’s work was technically proficient, he felt that it lacked a certain creative spark and spontaneity. The students, he lamented, were also not versed in art history as well as he would have hoped.

Having spent so many years studying art in China, this post and the responses interested me very much. During those years, I was impressed by the depth, complexity and ancient origins of Chinese art. Several lifetimes of study could not even begin to serve it well. What also impressed me was how poorly understood and isolated Chinese art was outside of the specialty disciplines of art historians.

Judging from the response to my friend’s post, this is still true in large part today. My friend was most likely teaching oil painting and perhaps some history of western art. I cannot evaluate the quality or depth of his student’s painting because no images were posted. I do recall that all those years ago, when I was studying Chinese art and language, oil painting was taught by professors trained by the Soviets. The gist of the post did make me wonder whether or not that legacy was still an influence.

What did surprise and disappoint me were other conclusions that Chinese artists do not understand spontaneity, improvisation, or ingenuity. How, I wondered, could anyone conclude such a thing given the improvisational nature and spontaneity of calligraphy? Or the ingenuity and spontaneity of ink painting? I mentioned such things on the thread...to the sound of crickets as the saying goes. I then had to remind myself that the writers were most likely not aware of Chinese art history at all, let alone the history of Chinese writing.

I suppose what perturbed me for a few days after reading the above comments was the unspoken is art history. Perhaps from a western perspective, and a western understanding of art this is so. But could not this grip be loosened just a bit in order to at least acknowledge that other cultures have a history and art equally complex, equally compelling as our own?
thought that Western art history

For a few days, I completed sketches I had made previously of early Greek and Hellenistic statues. But I included a new twist in order to complete them. On the kneeling figure I wrote ancient Chinese seal script characters, signed my name in Cyrillic, and made a cross cultural linguistic pun in Chinese and Latin. On the back view of the kneeling figure I wrote Chinese calligraphy in running hand (script) style. I do hope these drawings have nuance - although more likely they are now just obscure!