Critical Reflection of Unit 2

Critical Reflection Of Unit 2

This critical reflection expands on our earlier discussions about artists from Unit 1.

Part 1

Focusing on Paul Gauguin and Michael Armitage. While both artists challenge Eurocentric traditions through their use of color and unconventional materials, their approaches reveal stark differences in perspective, particularly regarding colonialism and cultural identity.

Gauguin’s late-career works, created during his time in Tahiti (1891-1903), are often interpreted as a rebellion against Western modernity. Paintings like *Where Do We Come From?* (1897) present Tahiti as an “unspoiled Eden,” using flat, vivid colors and simplified forms to construct an anti-industrial utopia. However, this romanticized “primitivism” carries problematic colonial undertones. His depictions of Tahitian women—frequently objectified as “noble savages”—simultaneously critique European hypocrisy and perpetuate Orientalist fantasies. Essentially, Gauguin’s Tahiti is less about authentic Polynesian culture and more about projecting a Western fantasy of escape from industrialized society.

In contrast, Michael Armitage grounds his work in the specific histories and contemporary realities of East Africa. His choice of *Lubugo* bark cloth, a Ugandan material traditionally used in burials, transforms the painting surface itself into a metaphor for colonial trauma. The cloth’s natural cracks and repair marks, visible in works like *Curfew* (which depicts Kenyan police violence), physically embody the fractures and resilience of postcolonial societies. Unlike Gauguin’s exoticizing gaze, Armitage blends European oil painting techniques with African folk art symbols—such as the recurring baboon motif in *The Conservationists*—to dismantle simplistic Western narratives about Africa. His work emphasizes the layered complexity of cultural identity, refusing to reduce African experiences to either “primitive” stereotypes or victimhood.

Both artists experiment with non-traditional materials to subvert Western art conventions, but their motivations diverge. Gauguin’s woodcuts and ceramics, like *Self-Portrait with Halo and Snake*, prioritize formal purity through flattened perspectives and decorative lines, reflecting his desire to escape industrialized aesthetics. Armitage, however, embeds political meaning directly into his materials. The fragility of *Lubugo* cloth—its cracks becoming part of the artwork—mirrors the violence in his subject matter, creating a tension between destruction and repair. For him, material choices are not just aesthetic but deeply symbolic, connecting colonial history to present-day struggles.

Their legacies further highlight this contrast. Gauguin’s “Synthetism,” with its bold colors and symbolic simplification, paved the way for movements like Fauvism and Expressionism. Yet his work remains entangled in colonial-era power dynamics. Armitage, influenced by Peter Doig’s magical realism, incorporates fragmented digital-age visual language—such as the distortion of events through social media—to reflect contemporary globalized consciousness. His art demands active interpretation, requiring viewers to piece together cultural references and historical echoes.

Ultimately, Gauguin’s art represents a colonial fantasy of retreat, framing “civilization” and “primitivism” as irreconcilable opposites. Armitage, however, constructs a dynamic dialogue between cultures. Works like his *Paradise Edict* series juxtapose European classical compositions with East African mythology, creating a hybrid visual language that resists cultural hierarchy. Where Gauguin sought escape, Armitage confronts entanglement—proving that art can both expose colonial wounds and imagine new forms of coexistence.

Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?
1897 by Paul Gauguin

Part 2

This part explores the artistic innovations of Wang Mian, the Yuan dynasty painter who preceded the Early Song monk-artist Mu Xi, and examines how their distinct approaches to structure and philosophy shaped Chinese ink painting. While Wang Mian revolutionized ink plum blossom painting through calligraphic minimalism, Mu Xi’s Zen-inspired works deconstructed conventional visual logic—two paradigms that continue to inform contemporary artistic practice.

Wang Mian’s ink plum blossoms marked a pivotal shift in Chinese painting, transitioning from the meticulous *gongbi* tradition (exemplified by Song dynasty monk Hua Guang’s “circle method” for outlining petals) to expressive *xieyi* spontaneity. His groundbreaking “boneless ink plum” technique discarded outlines entirely, using graded ink washes to define petals and calligraphic brushstrokes to capture branches in single, fluid gestures. This reductionist approach—condensing the plum’s essence through minimal marks—resonates with my research into “structural-color synthesis.” For instance, a single dry brushstroke in his works suggests the gnarled texture of aged bark, proving that economy of form can heighten symbolic potency. In *Early Spring on Southern Branches*, Wang employs an “S”-shaped compositional rhythm: the main branch diagonally slices through empty space, its upward-curving tip counterbalanced by downward-drooping roots. This dynamic asymmetry embodies the Taoist concept of yin-yang equilibrium while metaphorically expressing life’s surge through winter’s austerity. The painting’s voids—read as mist, sky, or snow—parallel my exploration of blank space as sites of genesis/annihilation. Through such innovations, Wang transformed plum painting from botanical illustration into philosophical discourse, merging literati calligraphy’s kinetic energy with nature’s organic rhythms.

Placed within broader art historical contexts, Wang Mian’s work contrasts sharply with Mu Xi’s Zen-informed aesthetics. Where Wang built dynamic structures through calligraphic brushwork (as seen in *Southern Branches*’ spiralling momentum), Mu Xi’s *Six Persimmons* employs deliberate spatial ambiguity to dissolve traditional perspective. The Yuan painter’s plums grow according to an internal “living order,” their branches mapping cosmic vitality through calculated imbalances. Mu Xi’s persimmons, however, float in undefined space—their placement rejecting hierarchical composition to mirror Zen’s non-attachment to form. My comparative analysis of these works reveals two systems of visual grammar: Wang’s plum blossoms channel Confucian ideals of self-cultivation through disciplined brushwork, while Mu Xi’s Zen arrangements embody Buddhist emptiness through radical simplification. Yet both share a profound interrogation of essence over appearance. Wang’s ink washes distill the plum’s resilience into gestural traces; Mu Xi’s persimmons become meditative objects stripped of decorative detail. Their methodologies—one additive in its calligraphic energy, the other subtractive in its Zen austerity—demonstrate how structural choices become philosophical arguments in classical Chinese ink painting.

Early Spring on Southern Branches
by Wang Mian

This part examines *Ink Orchid*, a seminal 14th-century literati painting by Zheng Sixiao, a Song loyalist artist contemporary with Mu Xi. Through minimalist brushwork and potent symbolism, the work embodies the political anguish and unyielding ethos of scholars who resisted Mongol rule after the fall of the Southern Song dynasty.

Zheng Sixiao (1241–1318) adopted his name—literally “Longing for Xiao [a component of the character Zhao, the Song imperial surname]”—as a coded protest against the Yuan regime. Created in 1306, *Ink Orchid* depicts a rootless orchid suspended in void space: two slender leaves arching upward with tensile grace, flanking a solitary bloom. Orchids, long symbolic of Confucian virtue in Chinese culture, become here a visceral metaphor for displacement. Zheng’s inscribed poem beside the image sharpens the political edge: *“I once bowed and asked the ancient sage-king: Who are you to enter this land? / Before this painting existed, my nostrils flared—the air still carries our ancestors’ fragrance.” The rootless plant, as Zheng declared, symbolized “soil seized by barbarians,” a direct rebuke of Mongol occupation. His refusal to paint orchids for Yuan officials—reportedly stating, “My head may be severed, but my orchids will not be taken!”—cements the work’s status as an act of ideological resistance.

Formally, the painting aligns with Mu Xi’s Zen-inflected minimalism, using monochrome ink to capture the orchid’s essence through tonal gradations. The leaves, rendered with “praying mantis belly” (taut, calligraphic strokes) and “nail-head rat-tail” (contrasting thick-to-thin brushwork) techniques, balance strength and delicacy. Unlike Mu Xi’s spatially ambiguous *Six Persimmons*, however, Zheng’s composition centers on absence: the missing roots and soil scream louder than the depicted subject. This radical emptiness—later echoed in Bada Shanren’s fish-eye voids and Zheng Xie’s “wild eccentric” bamboos—transforms negative space into a political statement, visualizing the cultural rupture experienced by Song loyalists.

Scholars debate whether the rootless orchid’s patriotic symbolism was amplified by later generations. Some argue Zheng’s primary concerns lay in synthesizing Daoist and Buddhist philosophies, as seen in the painting’s blend of spiritual austerity (the single bloom as meditative focus) and worldly defiance (the poem’s combative tone). This duality reflects the complex role of Yuan literati artists, who navigated between inner cultivation and outward resistance.

Ultimately, *Ink Orchid* transcends its historical context. As both a technical milestone in ink painting—reducing form to its most essential lines—and a prototype for politically charged art, it demonstrates how aesthetic choices become acts of cultural preservation. Zheng’s defiant minimalism influenced centuries of artists who used “wild spontaneity” to challenge orthodoxy, proving that a single rootless orchid could carry the weight of a lost nation’s soul.

Ink Orchid
by Zhao Sixiao

Part 3

Wu Hung’s book *Art and Materiality* reshapes how we understand Chinese art by flipping the script on traditional art history. Instead of fixating on images or objects, he argues that materials themselves—clay, jade, ink, even gunpowder—are active storytellers carrying cultural DNA. From prehistoric rituals to contemporary installations, materials aren’t just passive tools; they’re collaborators in shaping human meaning.

Take Neolithic jade carvers: their painstaking work on ritual blades wasn’t just about making sharp tools. The act of polishing jade into impossibly thin ceremonial axes (as seen in Dawenkou culture) transformed stone into spiritual currency. Fast-forward to Longshan black pottery—its eggshell-thin walls, useless for daily chores, marked the birth of art as deliberate “uselessness.” Jump to Buddhist statues: Tang dynasty sculptors mixed ground jade into stone to make figures glow with unearthly light, a material trick to manufacture divine presence. Qing dynasty potters embraced cracked flambé glazes as cosmic accidents, turning kiln “failures” into philosophical statements about nature’s unpredictability.

Wu’s genius lies in connecting these dots through three material networks. First, the social web: a Buddha statue’s inscribed donor list reveals 6th-century patronage politics. Second, material mimicry—when Han dynasty potters shaped clay to look like jade bi discs, they weren’t just copying; they were democratizing sacred symbols. Third, cross-cultural alchemy: Persian glass became Chinese temple lamps, its foreignness sanctified through adaptation.

Contemporary artists take this further. Cai Guo-Qiang’s gunpowder explosions on paper fuse destruction and creation—the blast’s ephemeral burn mirroring ink’s permanence. Xu Bing’s *Book from the Sky*, with its meaningless pseudo-characters, turns paper’s cultural weight against itself. Here, materials aren’t just carriers of meaning but saboteurs of tradition.

Yet Wu’s theory has gaps. His laser focus on 3D objects sidelines ink painting’s paper-and-brush alchemy. The “material determinism” angle risks oversimplifying—does jade really *make* Confucian virtue, or just reflect it? And where’s the digital realm? NFTs and AI art’s dematerialized chaos challenges his physical-centric framework.

Still, his anthropological approach cracks open art history’s Eurocentric biases. By comparing Chinese jade’s moral symbolism with West African wood’s spiritual vitality, Wu champions non-Western material philosophies as equal players, not footnotes. Future research could map how materials morph across empires—why did Ming porcelain blue cobalt from Iran become “Chinese” to Europeans? How do recycled plastics in Lagos street art echo ancient ceramic reuse?

For me, Wu’s book is a fun way of seeing. Those Qing potters who dialogued with fire, Zheng Sixiao’s ink mourning a lost dynasty—they remind us that materials hold memories. Inspired by this, I aim to experiment with accessible materials in my current practice, exploring how pigments and canvas can transcend flatness to evoke texture and dimensionality—perhaps my own small act of letting materials “speak.” After all, as Wu shows, a cracked shard of Song dynasty celadon isn’t just debris; it’s a civilization’s whisper across time, waiting for hands—and minds—to revive its story.

‘Art and Materiality'
Book by Wu Hong