The Virtual and Real Spatial Poetics of Cho Yeou-Jui
Read Different Landscape with Cho, Yeou Jui
Liao, Xin Tien (Taiwan Culture Research, College of Culture, History, and Language, The Australian National University; Professor of Graduate School of Art-Culture Policy and Management, National Taiwan University of Arts)
The western landscape paintings have been developed in Taiwan for at least 100 years since the Japanese colonial period. Technically, the scenery painting developed for a century should accumulate some fruitful outcomes; however, our art creation education has regarded modernism as the only principle. Painting what eye can see is the only and ultimate goal of landscape paintings, which results in an imbalance phenomenon: doing more than describing, seeing more than thinking. Under the sever gap between seeing and thinking, what is the goal to do landscape paintings outside is my reflection on my years in the department of arts, and I believe that the current situation is quite the same. Our knowledge about the art of landscape paintings is limited by beautiful landscape and good-looking design. The landscape paintings by Cho, Yeou Jui remind us that landscape paintings embody deep, thoughtful meanings.
This judgement is not agreed by everyone. In the Japanese colonial period, landscape paintings did show magnificent discussion and performance, for example, the local perspectives by Tai Chan, strong landscape as the characteristic of Taiwanese landscape paintings by Kinichiro Ishikawa, the dialectics between realism and abstractism by Wang, Pai Yuan, and the geomorphological judgement on Tai Chan by Shiotsuki Toho. After the Japanese colonial period, landscape paintings became a major course in art education. In the 1970s, the prosperous development of landscape paintings made the agricultural landscape in Taiwan become the goal of cultural art activities, coupling with strong local and cultural sense of belonging. Cho is raised by this period which emphasized the delicate style of realism. However, the Taiwan landscape paintings focused on external descriptions more than internal logical dialectics, which was different from the development of the western landscape paintings. Recently, I retranslated the Landscape Intro Art by Kenneth Clark (published in 1988, China). The book defined landscape paintings were the visual representation history between Europeans and natural relationships and discussed conceptions, emotions, atmospheres, topics, and elements. Additionally, the performance types of layouts, colors, and shapes were used to reflect the attitudes and creation of artists toward the nature. Kenneth Clark emphasized that spirits is the life of landscape painting, and visual thinking is the body. I would like to quote the last paragraph in his book, “The best perspective toward landscape paintings are the extension of sentimental fallacy and the function of our emotional focus… Finally, our extending natural perspectives can use new and beautiful images to enrich our minds… I believe that all the science and political systems in the world, as well as atom bombs and concentration camps cannot destroy human spirits totally. The spirit can always give itself a visible shape successfully. However, we shall not know what kind of the spirit,” to examine the quality of landscape paintings. In other words, extremely beautiful landscape paintings are not quality and good landscape paintings, but thoughtful landscape paintings and layouts can deeply and fruitfully reflect the complex micro-perspective of people on environments. The landscape paintings by Cho need viewers to dialogue, communicate, and interact with the art work. In my own opinion, her work can not only earn attentions from viewers and can be examined by art history and the spiritual demand of human. This is difficult to explain in the Taiwanese art environment because we are used to the sweet and non-difficult landscape paintings, not even mention to the picturesque. We expect landscape paintings can amuse ourselves, and why take it so serious? That is acceptable if we are watching landscape paintings and the art of landscape paintings, instead of watching landscapes. The human perspective of landscape paintings is the core value. In this context, the landscape paintings by Cho seem showed another function: Challenging and educating our “visual landscapes and landscape visuals.” Another mission of Cho is that she brought different visual shocks and styles to the history of landscape image creation in Taiwan. Any category of art history has extreme ends and brings unusual stimulus; in my own opinion, Cho is meant to be the extreme type in the history of the Taiwanese landscape paintings. She shaped different landscape images to bring us different landscape journey.
Cho earned her fame in her early time. Her landscape paintings surprise viewers like cats which are silent and appear without reasons. The landscape paintings by Cho have a strong sense of confusion: No clear topic, no visual-guided path, no start and end layout, and sprinkling water/oil spots and large-area coverage. What kind of landscape is ti? How to interpret and watch? If we start from the fundamental theory of landscape paintings and if we believe the human-natural relationship transmitted by every things and four seasons in the world. The landscape paintings by Cho reflect her perspective of the nature, with strong sense of philosophy and speciality. She always experiences the nature from a micro (small and miracle) perspective, which is different from the topics of landscape paintings in the western art history, including lines of trees, meandering rivers, distant castles, and dramatic lights and shadows. However, you can still observe some implicit echoes. First, her interest and processing on texture have the meaning of da Vinci’s experience, that is, a kind of free visual imagination and travel, like da Vinci said, “Adding new, speculative thoughts in norms might seem trivial and funny; however, these thoughts are still valuable and can accelerate the spirit of invention. You should see some wet walls and stones with various colors. If you want to invent some scenarios, you can identify these similar, extraordinary landscapes dressed with various mountains, ruins, rocks, trees, plains, and hills. Then you see fighting scenarios and strong figures with violent behavior, facial expressions, cloths, and countless objects, and you can simplify them into complete and appropriate styles. The walls are like bell sounds and the bell strikes can be imagined as diverse characters.” Clark interpreted, “It demonstrates an essential element in the imaginary landscape through the interaction between consciousness and unconsciousness, through shape chaos, and through the specific ways presented by bush, fire, and cloud.” The majority of texture materials in Cho’s landscape paintings are shapeless shadows, instead of the trace on object surface. Therefore, the texture poetics introduced by Cho have a strong sense of personal terminology. Secondly, the water spots are the most difficult to be understood. The impact of the nature on vision is not fresh. Our visions are always disturbed by air, eye diseases, discomfort, and sudden objects. We thought we can clearly see objects, which is resulted from cognitive education (i.e., the rational operation under scientific logics). However, we are deaf and blind and make mistakes frequently. We use our week senses to experience the truth of lives, and this is the experience that the majority of us possess. If you had read “Thinking, Fast and Slow” by the winner of Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, Daniel Kahneman, you would know how easy to cheat our vision. Therefore, the result of cognition cannot be tested, and our imagination and creativity become flexible and rich. Monet’s experience is the pioneer of the cognition difficulty, who created magnificent landscape paintings through disturbed visual experiences and detached and purified within. He told an American student, “I hope I am born blind and become normal suddenly, so I can paint while I do not know objects.” We record and represent visual impressions, and we do not replicate all the lights and shadows as precisely as cameras. We prevent the precise record as the mission of landscape paintings, and the mimicry of the nature have the essence of creation. Third, Turner’s experience is poetic fantasy. Clark described a lady had looked a mild old gentleman sitting in front of her put his head out of a train window in a rainy day. When he returned, rain drop fell from his head and he closed his eyes for about fifteen minutes. Meanwhile, she put her head out of the train window, and she got wet also. In the next year, she met the work “Rain, Vapor, and Speed” in the Royal Academy of Arts and heard a sentimental voice said, “Just like Turner, right? Who had seen this mess?” If anyone got caught by storm like Turner, you would prove that his observation is true. This natural experience reminds us that the aesthetic experience and aesthetic representation of artists can be so different and similar and becomes the classic interpretation of landscape images. After the experience sharing of da Vinci, Monet, and Turner, can we still believe that landscape paintings are to mimic the nature and delight our eyes? The landscape paintings by Cho like other artists who want to break through seeks and explores the shape and visual thinking of landscapes inspired by the nature.
However, the landscape paintings by Cho are not categorized in the tradition of the western art history. Her landscape is lonely, urban, indifferent, and thoughtful, and therefore, not personal and cannot be easily categorized and interpreted. She separates herself from landscapes layer by layer and slowly paints, fosters, and develops in dark corners, and then leaves the most space to serene sky and rivers. Although these natural elements are presented in her paintings simultaneously, none of them is abrupt. We can see tension but not debate. The implications of special layers are formal and abstract. The overall result is the philosophical thinking of natural reflection and shape composition. What kind of life and natural experience make the landscape paintings by Cho so independent (though she lives closed to urban area)? What kind of experience makes her decide to give a destructive mark- water/oil spot on this non-aggressive nature (or harmony)? This ascetical landscape, self-torture landscape remind me the first chapter in “Fengjing Luyi” that describes the human fear of the nature, resulting in building a sealed garden for self-entertainment. The western landscape paintings have started from this discomfort and fear and through science to step outside to seek wonderful places. The wonderful place of Cho is distant and uncertain, which is Kakotopia not Utopia. The natural swaying under the visual trance makes us no place to live and rest. We are safe, the dirty spots signify that we look out through glass windows, but we still feel unsafe, a sense of emptiness and helpless. Therefore, we do not focus on landscapes but on the disturbances. Or, we have to readjust our watching and thinking models on landscapes. The evolution of landscape paintings is to remove unnecessary and reserve necessary, but Cho is not, she remove necessary and reserve unnecessary. This is the source of confusion and her landscape strategy. She turns simplicity into complexity and presents macro perspectives in micro perspectives.
As a traveller in foreign countries for years, her landscape paintings create a different and challenging condition to read landscapes for us.