“An art historian could put together a chronology of his career just in terms of the multiplicity of diverse lines that he has produced. (...) There were the ultra-thin marks made by a kind of pen called a Rapidograph, with which he created drawings modelled with line alone - no shadows. Then, quite didffereds, the works in colored crayon and pencil (...) the chunkier reed-pen strokes of portraits from the end of the decade(...) the later ones drawn with a brush, including watercolours from 2003 (...)” (Gayford, 2021, p.83)
Without any doubt, the line ended up being one of the most important elements of my work during all the duration of my MA, from the beginning, with my first sketches, until my final paintings on canvas. The gesture through the line became the essence of my practice.
Different cultures have different ways to undestand the line in painting and drawing. While doing my research I understood that both Chinese and Japanese painting traditions have a different relationship to the line meaning in comparison to the occidental culture. As an example, according to the Chinese artist Chang Dai-chen’s philosophy, the gestural painting, the line is linked to an idea of purity in the spirit of the painter defending that his success invariably "(...) depends on his ability to make “the spirit dwell in the purity when it’s done." (Zhang, 2019, p.10).
I also came across the Japanese printmaking tradition of using the black line just like the artist Koizumi Kishio did with his Tokyo printmaking series of works developed between 1928 and 1940.
While reading the book Principles of Chinese painting, by George Rowley, I also came across this idea of the mood, the feelings and sensations being connected to how the line can be used to depict nature.
“In the painting of themes from nature, mood was the essence of the subject. Bamboo was painted in every kind of mood, quiescent or windblown, in sunshine or in rain, with dew, frost or snow upon it, in the morning and in the evening, each effect so subtly rendered that it sometimes scapes us.” (Rowley, 1970, p.18)
There is also this interesting connection between the impressionists’ painting en plein air and the tradition of being close to nature in the Chinese painting philosophy. Both are connected to the capture of the gesture in the moment, and I can relate both practices to my own.
“Derived directly from the artist’s experience of nature and were expressed in the rhythmic language of painting” (Rowley, 1970, p.19)
Finally, the idea of using the line in my practice is also associated with a simplification of what I was depicting, an attempt to capture only the essential. Chinese art is precisely “an art of extreme elimination, simplification and suggestion.” (Rowley, 1970, p.36)
Artists and authors
David Hockney
George Rowley
Hokusai
Koizumi Kishio
Chang Dai-chien
Books, exhibitions and others
Gayford, M. ; Hockney, D. (2016) A History of Pictures. London: Thames & Hudson
Gayford, M. ; Hockney, D. (2021) Spring Cannot be Canceled. London: Thames & Hudson
Rowley, G. (1970) Principles of Chinese Painting. Princeton: Princeton University Press
Leff, C. (2003) Tokyo: The Imperial Capital. Miami: The Wolfsonian-Florida International University
Johnson, M.; Zhang, J (2019) Chang Dai-chien Painting from Heart to Hand. San Francisco: Asian Art Museum