2. Asymmetry
不均斉
fukinsei
不均斉
fukinsei
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| Xia Gui (1195-1224). Untitled album leaf. |
Both Chinese landscape painting and Japanese gardens avoid
symmetrical organisation in a composition, it is one of the major differences
between the approach to representation between Western and East Asian art. Symmetry
in Asian art is seen as evoking a balance of elements in which there is no
possibility of flow or movement of ch’i, 気 (ki
in Japanese). Ch’i in this sense
refers to vital energy as an essence of all life, a primordial force that
powers the universe, it is generated by the interaction of the opposing, yet
mutually dependent, qualities of yin 陰 and yang 陽 (Jp. in/yo). In Eastern thought because the one contains the seed of the
other, yin is constantly moving
towards yang; the one gives birth to
the other in a constant state of transformation. The duality is only apparent,
as the two qualities are in fact indivisible from each other. Hence the notion
of a stable balance of two forces leads in the Eastern view to a state of
stagnation, or a moribund state that is essentially ‘lifeless’.
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| Screen painting. Manchu-in, Kyoto |
It takes
just a cursory glance at a Chinese landscape painting to grasp that the organisation of a composition is asymmetrical, and likewise a glimpse of a
Japanese garden shows that here too there is no concern to construct a
composition using symmetry. The Japanese garden is an attempt to present Nature
as an essence, and if one looks at natural scenery it is also immediately
obvious that symmetry is not directly expressed in Nature.
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| Daigo Sambo-in, 16th C garden. Fushimi, Kyoto |
Asymmetry is not the same as a random assemblage of
elements, in both Chinese painting and the Japanese garden there is order,
carefully contrived yet to a certain extent hidden from view. It is quite
common in the practice of creating a garden in Japan for the garden creator to
strive to ‘hid the hand of man’. That is to cloak the composition in a veneer
of ‘naturalness’, whist yet remaining
very much a work of man’s hand. The garden just as much as is a painting, is a
work conceived and executed by an artist. His or her experience of Nature is
filtered through their creative sensibility so finding individual expression
through the medium of a traditional cultural form.
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| Shukkei-en garden. Tokyo. |
Asymmetry allows a greater degree of involvement by the
viewer as the sight lines and perspectival framework is not rigidly imposed.
The eye of the viewer has a freedom to move as it wishes, finding areas of
interest as it travels around the scenery being presented. In a Chinese
painting it is an immersive journey that the viewer makes in allowing his eyes
to travel about the picture plane. This is also true in the garden context,
where the viewer will deconstruct the garden before him, and then reconstruct
the garden as an interiorised experience. Symmetry and the Western sense of
perspective tend to exclude the viewer, setting the viewer outside of the
composition as someone who looks in from the ‘outside’. The contrary is true in
a landscape painting or Japanese garden where the viewer is central to the
whole process of perception and recognition. In both paintings and gardens the
intention is to take the viewer beyond the apparent reality of the scene being
presented in front of him. To search for and find an essence that draws the
viewer and viewed into a harmonious entity, where there is no longer a duality
of perception. In this sense the painting or garden creates the viewer, as much
as the viewer creates the painting or garden.
“One should not take outward beauty for reality. He who does
not understand this mystery will not obtain the truth.”
Ching Hao, Sung dynasty painter 10th C
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| Huangshan mountains, Anhui province, China |
In further blog posts in this series I will be looking at
triadic composition and the techniques of perspective used by the painters, and
find correspondences in the Japanese garden tradition.
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