Horst Seidl (Rome) – Dabai Zhu (Shanghai)

Reflections upon the essence of the works of art,

applied to some Chinese pictures

The Chinese thinker and painter, Dr. Dabai Zhu, was guest at the Pont. Lateran University, where he explained some of his beautiful aquarelle-pictures, which he had brought with him to Rome. In a meeting he entered in a fruitful colloquium with me and colleagues of the Faculty of Philosophy.

Let me first present Dr. Dabai Zhu who is a master in his field, well known in China. Born in 1951 at Shanghai, he studied at the Fine Art's College and at the Designing Department of the Tongji University at Shanghai. He specialized in the art of aquarelle-picture and made his career with a rich creation of pictures which were exposed in exhibitions at Shanghai and other Chinese cities as well as abroad. Some of his pictures were integrated in the collections of the Lu Xin Memorial Museum and of the Sushou Gouache Art Museum at Shanghai. Dr. Zhu is member of the China Water-Colour Artist's Committee and has the position of the Vice-Director of the Shanghai Yahon Gallery.

The works of Dabai Zhu joins the great Chinese tradition of aquarelle but succeeds also, in a happy manner, in integrating new modern styles of expression in this art, also European ones. On the whole, they seem to me very adapt to be confronted with Western picture. In the following, I limit myself to philosophical reflections on art, because my professional field is not history of arts but philosophy.

Considering with my friend Zhu his pictures in order to compare them with Western ones, I became aware that such a comparison is possible: Besides the differences we can find something in common, too, which is even essential for every work of picture-art. Therefore, before analyzing some of Zhu's aquarelles, I would like to communicate these considerations in general form.

1) Essential features of picture-art's works

In the considerations which the painter Zhu made with me on his picture-works, comparing them with Western ones, we observed some common essential features with which we characterized them in the following way. They are

inspired by an idea of the artist,

stimulating emotions,

using symbols,

having a beautiful form,

being realistic,

transcendent.

Hence we reflected philosophically upon these concepts. I could brought in my studies around reflections of this kind which great Western thinkers made already, from Plato, Plotinus, St. Augustin onward until to Kant, Schleiermacher, Hegel, Croce, Maritain, Adorno, Eco and others, without entering here in this topics in detail.

a) Inspiration

This conception presupposes a relationship between the artist and his public to which he wishes to communicate some idea by which he is inspired. In the field of picture-art, the painter tries to express in his works always an idea in this way that the spectator can grasp it. The pictures are not final end in themselves but serve as the material medium to bring the artist's idea over to the spectator.

b) Stimulating emotions

Art in general distinguishes itself from other intellectual activities by communicating itself to the public not only from intellect to intellect – as it happens with a scientific work – but from heart to heart. Picture-art speaks to the spectator not with arguments but with images evoking emotions. The human heart integrates intellect and emotions, sentiments.

Speaking to the human heart the works of art plays an important role in education because they transfer ideas / thoughts, accompanied by sentiments or affections. Indeed, what we take in with affections, not only with intellect, we assume quite more intensively. For this reason it is important whether the ideas / thoughts are good or bad. Hence we expect from a good artist an appreciable character and moral wisdom.

Further the artist must have the capacity to "translate", so to speak, an idea by means of adapt images. However, only wisdom has ideas which point to something meaningful important aspects of human life, with a moral impact. Certainly, art must not teach moral values (as instead ethics does) but contemplate them. In the classical sense, art is not practical but theoretical, will say contemplative.

c) Symbols, beauty

We pass now to the third concept: symbols together with beauty. Fact being that the artist's work, in our case the picture, bears an certain idea, it has to incarnate it in the material medium. The artist has to find the adapt images endowed with symbols in order to express his idea in the concrete material which is in picture/art cartoon, lines and colours. Thus, for instance, a house in the landscape can symbolize man in relationship with nature. When a man is represented in dark colours this can express sadness or difficulties of his life. On the contrary, limpid colours can reflect serenity or hope.

An indispensable feature of the artist's work is beauty which seems to be so important that a certain direction of aesthetics takes it for the proper final end of the work of arts. However, beauty cannot become the purpose of the artist's work, but rather accompanies every well arranged work. On the contrary, the theme of a work is rather always something important or meaningful of human life which the beautiful work sets out.

Seen more closely, beauty joins the purpose or final end of the work which is in the idea of the artist, when it is translated in the visible medium of the concrete work which is called beautiful. The successfully ordered, well structured disposition of the material of the work reflects, so to speak, something of the purpose or final end of the artist's idea which gives unity and beauty to the work.

d) Realism

This concept contrasts with a false idealism of the artist's work which should be avoided. On the one hand, the work must have an idea which inspires the public – otherwise it would remain a dead material thing – but, on the other, the idea must succeed incarnating itself in a concrete material and finding its realisation. Indeed, a good work will communicate to the public an idea which refers to the concrete real world in which we live daily in order to indicate something meaningful in it. Seen nearby, this world has two faces, so to speak: an external of visible things and men and an invisible hidden one, which concerns something essential meaningful internally in things and men. To this the artist's idea leads us penetrating their sensible external appearance. Consequently also the artist's work has two sides: the material visible one and the ideal one which refers the background of the visible things and men of human life, using the adapt means in symbols and images.

The realism as the Chinese painter intends it, aims, above all, at the relationship of the artistic work with real objects, in difference to "abstract" art which works without thematic objects. Avoiding abstract art, our painter does not exclude that his work may not be in a way "abstract" when he presents things making abstraction from all concrete details.

e) Transcendence

With this concept Dr. Zhu alludes to the proper aim of art namely to communicate something meaningful because it goes beyond this visible world of things and men, referring to something essential, which is meaningful for our life, as explained above. The artist uses his work in form of an imaginary, fictitious world, as material visible medium, in order to communicate himself to the public.

In this regard we observe a difference between the classical works of art and those of a contemporary art-direction. Indeed, whereas the classical works present the world with something meaningful for our life (which art tries to set forth), the questionable contemporary art-direction has a negative view upon this world and tries to substitute it by artistic imaginary world which alone would be worthy to be lived. The problem of this vision, however, is that the artistic world can never satisfy the deep human desire for a purposive life with a positive sense. The artist's work has to point out not to substitute it. The work of Dabai Zhu has this transcendent character.

Certainly, for Chinese people, today, transcendence signify only to go beyond materialism, prevailing still in great part of the world, in East as in West. However, many people has the conviction that man is more than matter. The cultural activities of man reveal a vivid testimony of this.

2) Dabai Zhu's address to the audience at the presentation

of his pictures

Reverend Fathers, Most distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is a honour and joy for me to speak before this distinguished audience, in the frame of the Congress on culture at which I may participate as a representative of Chinese culture. I have to thank sincerely to His Excellence the Rector Magnificus Rino Fisichella of the Pontificial Lateran University who has made possible my stay at Rome. I am also very thankful to the Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy, Monsignore Professor Gianfranco Basti, who has invited me, offering me the occasion to speak at this Congress and to show some of my watercolour pictures. It is a real joy for me to make studies in philosophy and Fine Arts at Rome together with Professor Horst Seidl.

Allow me, please, to explain, in a few words, my conception of Fine Arts in pictures. In the conversation with Professor Seidl I agree with him regarding the main features of the artistic work, which Chinese art has in common with Western art, as pointed out already by my friend Seidl, namely that the artist's work should be inspired by an idea, eliciting emotions, using symbols in images, being realistic, will say being related to our real world, and transcending it towards some meaningful final end of human life.

In painting with watercolour, which is a very transparent and airy-light mean, the special advantage is to use the light as own factor in the composition of colours of the images. The light can cause in us deep feelings of encouragement and hope.

On the whole, the painter, coming from the concrete things around him of everyday life, discovers, with his spiritual eye, meaningful topics which transcend the material casual circumstances in order to penetrate to a deeper sense of life. In doing so, charging the concrete objects with a deeper sense, he converts them in symbols of this sense and makes the work of art an incarnation of an idea in the material of cartoon with lines and colours.

I thank you for your kind attention.

3) Comments to some pictures of Dabai Zhu

Our painter has brought some aquarelle-pictures which were exposed at the Galleria "La pigna" of the UCAI (Unione Cattolica Artisti italiani) at Rome with great success. When he showed me the pictures beforehand I took up his explanations and integrated them in my commentary which I communicate in the following .

1. 梅岭三月 (meiling sanyue) La montagna Meiling in marzo

The first picture shows houses in a mountain-landscape, in winter. It has the title: "Mount Meiling in March", and is inspired by the impression of a life in poverty, in a scanty nature, in the cold winter-time. The scene is painted with grey colours, traversed by a strip of snow in white colour. But in the background we see some trees in tender green, as preannouncement of spring-time.

As common features with Western art-pictures we can recognize the symbolic by which the theme of poor life is expressed with simple cottages amidst an uncultivated landscape, painted in an austere beauty causing emotions of compassion. There rest, however, particular features, properly Chinese, indicating the intimate union of man with nature, as we love it in the Chinese pictures from ancient times, and which Western pictures, even those for instance of Gainsborough or of Shaftesbury, do no longer achieve.

2.丰收日 (fengshou) Il giorno della ricca raccolta

This picture shows a so-called natura morta. It is entitled: "The day of the rich harvest" and reflects the happy content welfare with mature fruits of orange, lemon and apple. The predominant colour is a warm joyful red.

Certainly we can compare this theme of natura morta with so many Western examples, for instance in Van Gogh. But for the Chinese people the colours have a larger range and intensity of emotions than for Europeans. In this case the red colour evokes rich feelings of happiness and joy. In addition, this is underlined by the beautiful composition of the picture which arranges the fruits on the table together with a vase and the basket.

3. 朝圣途中 (chaosheng tuzhong) Pellegrinaggio in via

The next picture presents us the view of a mosque of Cairo and has the title: "Pilgrimage on way". We see a solitaire man on the way to the sanctuary which is presented as a desert place, in white and lightly grey-brown colours. The symbolic which expresses the solitude is felt by us Western spectators equally as by the Eastern ones.

However, there remains a Chinese particularity in the profoundly inspired manner in which the pilgrim is represented. On the one hand, he is integrated the whole of the place bur, on the other, his solitaire appearance is very impressing. The message of the artist is that in front of the Divine everyone remains alone, like in a white desert, which reflects, however, at the same time something transcendent. We spectators accompany him with sentiments of full sympathy.

4. 西唐小景 (xitang xiaojing) Piccola veduta di Xitang

The following picture shows a barque on the water of an old village. The title tells us: "A little view of Xitang". It is traversed by a net of canals – the Chinese call it "Little Venice" – and has received the awarded prize by the UNESCO. The theme of the picture is the plain life connected with the nature, conserved in that village. It is symbolized by the simple barque, covered by tent-cloths and manoeuvred by a man with a rudder.

Also Europeans understand well this symbolic of plain life. Particularly those who live in modern big cities with dense traffic of cars would enjoy the atmosphere of silence on the picture, the idyllic solitude of that village. But we can feel also a Chinese particularity in the inspired manner in which the picture expresses the unity of human culture and nature. The barque and the houses are grown together with the water. And this symbiosis of both has some transcendent feature which evokes in us feelings of admiration, even of some nostalgia.

5. 故土 (gutu) Terra di patria

The next picture, entitled: "Earth of home-land", presents a woman kneeling on earth and holding in her hands a piece of earth like a precious treasure. As Dr. Zhu told me, she is his sister who lives outside of her home-country but remains attached to it. She is clothed in traditional costume, in red, dark and blue colours, in which she contrasts with the surrounding, painted in tender olive green and lucid strips, which embraces the woman.

The composition breaths an austere beauty and a realism, which does not reside in the concrete piece of earth but rather in the intense connection of the human being with earthen home-land. A transcendent realism which makes us think of our existence on earth- and beyond it.

6. 滢 (ying) Chiaro di cristallo

The following picture, entitled: "Crystalline clearness", shows plain houses, reflected in water. It gives us the impression that the houses constitute with the water an organic unity, in a clear crystalline form.

The beautiful composition, which presents the houses in simple rectangle square stones, let us think on Western cubism, what is underlined also by the abstract sounding title. However, the picture has nevertheless an object: houses besides a water. The spectator grasps quite well the message of the artist namely that he symbolizes with this composition the harmonious unity between human culture and nature.

7. 企盼 (qipan) Aspettare con desiderio anzioso

The last of the seven selected pictures, entitled: "Expectation with anxious desire", shows a woman standing in a half-opened door of the house, looking in the distance. As Dr. Zhu explained me, the woman is a mother who expects his son in vane, because he had been called up to the army during the war and died there.

The picture concentrates upon the face of the woman, which has strong, even a little bit virile features, decisive to meet the worst. The woman looks thoughtful, thus inviting us, the spectators, to transcend in thought the concrete scene: a woman in a half-opened door, comprehending the symbolic which is behind it. We grasp the profound meaningful background: the situation of everyone of us, standing in this world in attention to an uncertain future, but with a noble human character.

Our Chinese friends come to Rome with the attitude of attention, regarding truth and fullness of life. Can we answer?