The China Project

189 Three Decades: The Contemporary Chinese Collection ZHANG Song Zhang Song’s three-screen video installation Seven character quatrain 2007 reflects on the senses and how these have been approached and viewed historically in Chinese aesthetics. In the central panel, a young blind girl reads aloud a poem by Ming dynasty poet Yang Rong (1371–1440) 1 , tracing the words with her fingertips. The poem describes the feeling of immersion in a painting, its power to affect the senses and convey the experience of an actual landscape. Reflecting on the poem and how it might affect this girl, Zhang Song poignantly comments: Green mountains, hibiscus, purple haze, spring rain, falling petals, rushing stream, human traces, dark moss, stone steps, streams, young grass, tranquil forests, early crow, cave mouth, white cloud, tree colours, ancient temple, straw canopy, peach garden blossoms. For [most people], these words have an immediate association with an image, and these images can be considered conventional, conceptual; as for the blind, they are otherworldly, utopian. In the experience of the blind they cannot even be called images. Then, what are they? Perhaps they’re nothing, or anything. 2 To the left of the girl is another ‘quatrain’ 3 , a vertical scroll painting by renowned Song dynasty artist Guo Xi entitled Early Spring 1072. Zhang Song’s choice of this famous painting is important, as Guo Xi was also a well-known art theorist. His 1117 treatise on landscape painting, Linquan Gaozhi ( Lofty Ambitions in Forests and Streams ), outlined his belief that creating art involved the ability to see beyond immediate material phenomenon and to experience nature directly through the mind. The viewer wonders exactly what the blind girl’s experience of the painted landscape is, as it is described in the poem, and if her perceptions are something that would be describable to a sighted person. To the right of the girl is an image of a real landscape with tall fir trees and open skies, conveyed through the medium of film. Once again, experiencing landscape on film is not something possible for the girl, and the viewer is implicated in a sense of loss caused by the ineffability of this visual landscape as expressed through the words in the poem. Each aesthetic form — poetry, painting, film — is interconnected, yet each offers a very different ‘language’ and means of understanding the external world. In Seven character quatrain , Zhang Song pairs traditionally contrary ideas — landscape and the blind, sight and insight, aesthetics and reality — allowing the viewer to understand or glimpse different forms of experience. endnotes 1 ‘Inscription on Minister Wu’s Landscape’ by Yang Rong (translation by Zhang Song, 25 January 2008). The high and steep green mountain seems to rise into the midair The numerous hibiscus flowers overlapping each other are a bit wet from the purple mist. Last night a heavy spring rain fell on the mountain, and the stream running through the valley is torrential now How many families are located behind the mound? A flight of stone steps covered with dark green moss ascends obliquely The devious stream turns here Along the stream, the narrow path has grass flourishing on both sides The moon sets into the deep and quiet woods, and the crows return home early The mountain is so desolate that there are barely any visitors around the cave entrance The clouds rapidly move past the trees’ twigs on the green mountain Indistinctively I seem to glimpse the trees of Cangzhou, and hear a bell ringing from an ancient temple in the distance When the sun rises beyond the thatched cottages, the chickens and dogs begin to make noises The smoke from the kitchen chimneys stretches for ten miles to the remote villages I nearly consider this bamboo valley a Chinese Shangri-la Then I realise the creator has understood the philosophical theories, therefore he reveals the inexplicable secrets through his brushstrokes. The minister loves this landscape and cheerfully embraces it, and hangs it on the white wall of a high-ceiling hall. It is difficult to seek beautiful scenery in the world, therefore this painting is more valuable than gold. It is really pleasant to read in this hall, and when facing this painting, you could almost feel the cool breeze stirring the woods and refreshing you. 2 Zhang Song, email to Abigail Fitzgibbons, Queensland Art Gallery, 6 December 2007. 3 A quatrain is a verse form; in Western poetry it refers to a poem of four lines. In Chinese poetry, there are seven and five-character quatrains, which follow rigid rules governing tonal patterns and rhyme schemes. Seven-character quatrains were a form developed in the eight century. Seven character quatrain (stills) 2007 Digital Betacam (PAL), 2:31 minutes, colour, stereo, ed. 1/3 / Purchased 2008. The Queensland Government’s Gallery of Modern Art Acquisitions Fund