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2012/06/08

Mastering Life: Zhuangzi’s Parables of Craft

Filed under: Art and Philosophy,Homage: Writers — Tags: Illustration, Ink Brush, Philosophy, Process, Sketch, Zhuangzi — fred @ 07:50

Zhuangzi is a collection of parables and philosophical dialogues on Daoist themes, dating to the third or fourth century BCE, and attributed to a writer named Zhuang or Zhuangzi or Chuang Tzu. Much of the material is satirical or fantastical, using wild imagery, odd turns of phrase, and absurdity to crack conventional and complacent ways of thinking. It mocks the Confucian impulse to reform the world as well as the logician’s claims to pure reason (even though it often puts its arguments in the mouth of Confucius and other traditional sages). It argues for radical acceptance of the world, suggesting that we should give up complaining and striving, and instead seek to discover our oneness with the mysterious forces that make and move the world.

Zhuangzi likes to find transcendent principles in humble places, and many of the stories talk about the special skills of servants and artisans. I find these passages particularly relevant to the creative practice, though of course they are metaphors that can lend their meaning to many aspects of life. In this post, I’ve selected four parables of craft from the Zhuangzi. These excerpts are from Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings, Columbia University Press, 1964, translated by Burton Watson, a version both scholarly and literary, rollicking and lucid.

Bell Stand, 2012, by Fred Hatt

Woodworker Ch’ing carved a piece of wood and made a bell stand, and when it was finished, everyone who saw it marveled, for it seemed to be the work of gods or spirits. When the marquis of Lu saw it, he asked, “What art is it you have?”

Ch’ing replied, “I am only a craftsman – how would I have any art? There is one thing, however. When I am going to make a bell stand, I never let it wear out my energy. I always fast in order to still my mind. When I have fasted for three days, I no longer have any thought of congratulations or rewards, of titles or stipends. When I have fasted for five days, I no longer have any thought of praise or blame, of skill or clumsiness. And when I have fasted for seven days, I am so still that I forget I have four limbs and a form and body. By that time, the ruler and his court no longer exist for me. My skill is concentrated and all outside distractions fade away. After that, I go into the mountain forest and examine the Heavenly nature of the trees. If I find one of superlative form, and I can see a bell stand there, I put my hand to the job of carving; if not, I let it go. This way I am simply matching up ‘Heaven’ with ‘Heaven.’ That’s probably the reason that people wonder if the results were not made by spirits.”

Ferryman, 2012, by Fred Hatt

Yen Yüan said to Confucius, “I once crossed the gulf at Goblet Deeps and the ferryman handled the boat with supernatural skill. I asked him, ‘Can a person learn how to handle a boat?’ and he replied, ‘Certainly. A good swimmer has acquired his ability through repeated practice. And, if a man can swim under water, he may never have seen a boat before and still he’ll know how to handle it!’ I asked him what he meant by that, but he wouldn’t tell me. May I venture to ask you what it means?”

Confucius said, “A good swimmer has acquired his ability through repeated practice – that means he’s forgotten the water. If a man can swim under water, he may never have seen a boat before and still he’ll know how to handle it – that’s because he sees the water as so much dry land, and regards the capsizing of a boat as he would the overturning of a cart. The ten thousand things may all be capsizing and turning over at the same time right in front of him and it can’t get at him and affect what’s inside – so where could he go and not be at ease?

“When you’re betting for tiles in an archery contest, you shoot with skill. When you’re betting for fancy belt buckles, you worry about your aim. And when you’re betting for real gold, you’re a nervous wreck. Your skill is the same in all three cases – but because one prize means more to you than another, you let outside considerations weigh on your mind. He who looks too hard at the outside gets clumsy on the inside.”

Herder of Sheep, 2012, by Fred Hatt

T’ien K’ai-chih said, “I have heard the Master say, ‘He who is good at nourishing life is like a herder of sheep – he watches for stragglers and whips them up.’ ”

“What does that mean?” asked Duke Wei.

T’ien K’ai-chih said, “In Lu there was Shan Pao – he lived among the cliffs, drank only water, and didn’t go after gain like other people. He went along like that for seventy years and still had the complexion of a little child. Unfortunately, he met a hungry tiger who killed him and ate him up. Then there was Chang Yi – there wasn’t one of the great families and fancy mansions that he didn’t rush off to visit. He went along like that for forty years, and then he developed an internal fever, fell ill, and died. Shan Pao looked after what was on the inside and the tiger ate up his outside. Chang Yi looked after what was on the outside and the sickness attacked him from the inside. Both these men failed to give a lash to the stragglers.”

Confucius has said, “Don’t go in and hide; don’t come out and shine; stand stock-still in the middle.” He who can follow these three rules is sure to be called the finest. When people are worried about the safety of the roads, if they hear that one traveler in a party of ten has been murdered, then fathers and sons, elder and younger brothers will warn each other to be careful and will not venture out until they have a large escort of armed men. That’s wise of them, isn’t it? But when it comes to what people really ought to be worried about – the time when they are lying in bed or sitting around eating and drinking – then they don’t have sense enough to take warning. That’s a mistake!”

An Ox, 2012, by Fred Hatt

Cook Ting was cutting up an ox for Lord Wen-hui. At every touch of his hand, every heave of his shoulder, every move of his feet, every thrust of his knee – zip! zoop! He slithered the knife along with a zing, and all was in perfect rhythm, as though he were performing the dance of the Mulberry Grove or keeping time to the Ching-shou music.

“Ah, this is marvelous!” said Lord Wen-hui. “Imagine skill reaching such heights!”

Cook Ting laid down his knife and replied, “What I care about is the Way, which goes beyond skill. When I first began cutting up oxen, all I could see was the ox itself. After three years I no longer saw the whole ox. And now – now I go at it by spirit and don’t look with my eyes. Perception and understanding have come to a stop and spirit moves where it wants. I go along with the natural makeup, strike in the big hollows, guide the knife through the big openings, and follow things as they are. So I never touch the smallest ligament or tendon, much less a main joint.

“A good cook changes his knife once a year – because he cuts. A mediocre cook changes his knife once a month – because he hacks. I’ve had this knife of mine for nineteen years and I’ve cut up thousands of oxen with it, and yet the blade is as good as though it had just come from the grindstone. There are spaces between the joints, and the blade of the knife really has no thickness. If you insert what has no thickness into such spaces, then there’s plenty of room – more than enough for the blade to play about in. That’s why after nineteen years the blade of my knife is still as good as when it first came from the grindstone.

“However, whenever I come to a complicated place, I size up the difficulties, tell myself to watch out and be careful, keep my eyes on what I’m doing, work very slowly, and move the knife with the greatest subtlety, until – flop! the whole thing comes apart like a clod of earth crumbling to the ground. I stand there holding the knife and look all around me, completely satisfied and reluctant to move on, and then I wipe off the knife and put it away.”

“Excellent!” said Lord Wen-hui. “I have heard the words of Cook Ting and learned how to care for life!”

Illustrations for this post are all ink brush on paper, 18” x 24” (46 x 61 cm).

An earlier Drawing Life post, “A Useless Tree”, is based on another tale from Zhuangzi.

Note: There are several editions of Burton Watson’s Complete Works of Chuang Tzu and Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings. The latter is basically a selection of chapters from the former. A newer edition of Basic Writings has been amended to use the pinyin transliteration of the Chinese names (i.e. Zhuangzi replaces Chuang Tzu) in the title as well as in the text. Zhuang has inspired many writers, and besides the various academic translations there are selections of his stories retold by Christian mystic Thomas Merton and Jewish philosopher Martin Buber.

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2012/05/03

Navigational Perception

Filed under: Studying Perception — Tags: Art and Society, Figures, Navigation, Perception, Philosophy, Process, Technique — fred @ 14:17

Marshall Islands stick chart, a map of islands, ocean swells, and currents, original source of photo unknown

Synchronicity is a concept describing how seemingly unrelated things take on meaning by being experienced concurrently. Years ago a friend gave me the Fall 1991 issue of the magazine “Whole Earth Review”. It is 144 pages densely filled with a wide variety of articles on technology, ecology, and human potential – the promo on the inside front cover starts, “Mayans, Hawaiians, and Tibetans. Virtual reality, psychedelic alchemy, neuro-tarot. Youth culture and elder care. Teaching lumber companies not to trespass. Radio as anarchic medium. A grandmother’s advice on childrearing. Zines. Independent music producers. Lucid dreams.” Lots of interesting thoughts and speculations there.

There were two articles within that issue that stuck with me and that have informed my thought and my creative process ever since. The magazine draws no particular connection between the two articles – it puts them in separate sections – but both have to do with developing special perceptual skills for purposes of moving through the world. If I hadn’t encountered these articles in the same place, they might not have made such an impression on me, but their alignment opened a door for me about how we can train and expand our perception of the world, not through drugs or mystical experiences, but through simple practice.

For me, artistic development is about learning to perceive more deeply, to notice beauty that most miss. Mass commercial culture is all about bombarding people with sensations, pushing their buttons and pulling their strings. By appreciating subtle things and enjoying all the fantastic phenomena the world gives us for free, we can liberate ourselves from commercial mind control. But even if you don’t care about all that and just read this blog for the drawing tips, there’s no technique more powerful than learning to see more when you look.

So, back to “Whole Earth Review” – both of the articles I’ll be talking about are available in full online, and you’ll find a list of links at the bottom of this post.

Cover of “Whole Earth Review”, Fall 1991 issue

“Nightwalking: Exploring the Dark with Peripheral Vision” tells of its authors Zink and Parks’ experiments in enhancing peripheral vision. The human eye contains two types of light sensitive receptor cells. Cones, densely packed in the center of the visual field, see color and fine detail. Rods predominate in the outer circle of the visual field. They see neither color nor fine detail, but are far more sensitive than the cone cells in dark conditions. The visual cortex uses this peripheral rod vision for orientation and to notice movement happening away from our point of focus. (See my earlier post, “Exercising Perception”, or my guest post on Daniel Maidman’s blog for more detail on all this.)

Peripheral vision is usually a subconscious process. Zink and Parks found that they could expand their conscious attention into the peripheral visual field by locking their central vision on the end of a stick attached to a hat and extending about a foot in front of their eyes. When the focal point is immobilized, awareness is free to move elsewhere. They practiced hiking in the desert, over very uneven terrain, this way, and found that they were able to move smoothly and sure-footedly, avoiding obstacles and pitfalls without looking at them.

Even before I read this article I had been doing perceptual experiments on my own. I had often tried walking around the city with my eyes crossed, which is essentially the same thing Zink and Parks were doing, and had discovered the fascinating ability to watch things happening far away from my line of sight, even simultaneous things on opposite sides of me.

New Mexico Desert at Night, photographer unknown

Since the peripheral visual field is dominated by rod cells, noted for their high sensitivity to extremely low levels of light, Zink and Parks decided to try the technique walking in the wilderness in the moonless night. If you’ve tried walking on a moonless (or new moon or crescent moon) night far from artificial light sources, you know how hard it can be to see where you’re stepping or what’s around you. Zink and Parks again used the hat with a stick in front, adding a dot of phosphorescent paint to the end of the stick, and again went hiking in the New Mexico wilds. They found they were able to see all sorts of things one would never see by normal looking in the dark – rabbits and bats moving around them, the faint bioluminescence of decaying wood. They were able to move swiftly and safely over rocks and ravines. (I wonder if anyone has tried this in a dense forest at night – that would be much darker than the open desert landscape, even on a moonless night.)

Nightwalking participant, from Australian site NLP Cafe Brisbane. This nightwalker’s hat has a glow-in-the-dark plastic heart instead of a dot of phosphorescent paint as described in Zink’s original article. Photographer unknown.

In my own practice as an artist, I’ve found the ability to move my awareness into the peripheral visual field is a vital skill. I can look at a detail with my sharp central field and still maintain a sense of the whole of what I’m looking at because the peripheral vision is taking it all in. Many observational artists intuitively squint at their subject – this disables the sharp vision, helping you to see the whole pattern. A deliberate practice of developing peripheral sight can be even more powerful.

Centered on the Feet, 2012, watercolor on paper, by Fred Hatt

The second article that struck me in the Fall 1991 issue of “Whole Earth Review” was “The Soft, Warm, Wet Technology of Native Oceania,” Harriet Witt-Miller’s piece on the traditional navigation techniques of the peoples of the Pacific islands. Eighteenth-century European explorers were astonished to find that the far-flung islands of the Pacific, widely scattered across thousands of miles of open ocean, had nearly all been settled long ago by people with outrigger canoes who had no sextants or compasses or chronometers. How did they cross such distances, and find tiny dots of land in the vast expanse of ocean?

Micronesian Proa, still from “The Navigators”, a film by Sam Low

These cultures, now tragically threatened by rising sea levels, had highly sophisticated methods of accurate maritime navigation, all based on direct observation rather than on abstract patterns such as latitude and longitude or the geometrical satellite array of the Global Positioning System.

GPS satellites, original source of illustration unknown

Traditional Pacific navigators or wayfinders learn to observe very subtle things. They can look at the light reflecting off the bottom of a distant cloud and tell whether it is over green land or over a coral atoll’s crystalline lagoon, thus detecting islands beyond the horizon. They know the stars and the way their arcs of movement change with the hour and the season. They observe the behavior of sea birds and the properties of water and floating debris to determine in what direction lies land. They have a deep understanding of the movement of wind and water currents. They learn to distinguish the constant patterns of ocean swells from the shifting surface waves by sensing the deeper movements with their scrotums resting on the bottom of their boats.

Currents of the Pacific, warm currents in orange, cold currents in green, original source of map unknown

The Micronesians map their world with “stick charts”, made of palm sticks. According to the caption of the below illustration from Witt-Miller’s article, credited to “Exploratorium Quarterly”, “Curved sticks showed prevailing wave fronts, shells represented the locations of islands, and threads indicated where islands came into view.”

Micronesian stick map, illustration from “Whole Earth Review”, Fall 1991 issue, page 67

Western ways of knowledge and technology have often been about superimposing an abstract pattern over the real world, and operating according to the abstraction. For the visual artist, that traditionally means systems of linear perspective, canons of human proportion, color theories, etc. For the contemporary artist it may also include the abstracting analyses of critical theory and semiotics.

Proportions of Man, 1557, by Albrecht Dürer

I understand and use such abstractions – well, critical theory, not so much – but in my own practice of observational figure drawing I stay much closer to the Pacific wayfinder’s method, looking at subtleties of reflected light, following the swells and hollows of the model’s body as though I am moving across a territory. I look at the points of inflection, such as nipples or kneecaps, in terms of angular relationships and the flowing patterns that join them, as the sticks connect the shells on a Micronesian sailing chart. My process is tactile. I feel my way along.

Hands Reversed, 2012, black watercolor on paper, by Fred Hatt

All of these different kinds of observation are happening simultaneously, or in quick succession. Part of my mind is aware of the peripheral view. Part of it is looking at the colors in the shadows or the direction of hairs on the body. Part of it is mapping the points and following the flows. Part of it is focused on my paper, my brush, my colors. It is impossible to coordinate all these factors into a systematic method I could describe or define. The magic that makes it work is intuition, the power of the mind to integrate a torrent of incoming sensations, conscious and not, into a coherent experience. Intuition is trained by practice, not by theory. It must be rigorously exercised, and then it must be trusted.

As I have pursued my artistic discipline, I have been deeply informed by these ideas of navigational perception. To draw or paint or sculpt from observation is to explore, to discover, to wonder.

Both the short articles cited here are full of details I haven’t mentioned, and well worth reading for themselves:

“Nightwalking: Exploring the Dark with Peripheral Vision”, by Nelson Zink and Stephen Parks

“The Soft, Warm, Wet Technology of Native Oceania”, by Harriet Witt-Miller

Both articles were originally published in “Whole Earth Review” No. 72, Fall, 1991.

2012/04/10

Ritual of Enchantment: Human Clay

Filed under: Dance,Movement Drawing: Performance Collaboration,My Past Events — Tags: Art Modeling, Body Paint, Butoh, Chashama, Claire Elizabeth Barratt, Collaborations, Dance, Exhibits, Experimental Performance, Figures, Hisayasu Takashio, Ink Brush, Installation, Movement Drawing, NYC, Process, Sculpture, Shows, Sketch — fred @ 21:52

Claire Elizabeth Barratt in Human Clay, a motion sculpture movement installation by Cilla Vee Life Arts, presented by Chashama, 2004, photo by Fred Hatt

One of the most venerable functions of art is to transform the environment, to create a sacred space or a magical moment, to inspire the imagination or to open the mind to contemplate mysteries. This may be the impulse behind the painted caves of the Ice Age, and it is why places to pray and places to play are often designed as majestic spaces, or filled with images or music, beautiful light, fine materials, costumed performers, ritualized actions, and sensual delights such as incense and candles.

It is a common conceit of modern society to think we’re past all that, or to segregate such things to churches and carnivals and festivals, to dismiss them as kid stuff or god stuff, therefore not real. The paradigm for the contemporary art gallery is the industrial space with plain white walls and bright track lighting, the better to display work that is formally reductionist, coldly conceptual, or ironic, and of course, always very, very expensive.

Naturally there’s a counter-movement. I’ve always been drawn to alternatives to the white box gallery, and have mostly shown work in unusual venues or as part of collaborative multimedia happenings. One of the organizers of such events is Claire Elizabeth Barratt. She’s a dancer, performance artist, and installation artist, but I’d say her real art form is to bring diverse artists together in loose collaborative events that aim to create enchanted spaces. Under the banner of Cilla Vee – Life Arts, she’s produced countless events in a wide variety of environments.

In June, 2004 and again in August, 2005, I created live ink drawings as part of Human Clay, a production Claire calls a “Motion Sculpture Movement Installation”, melding elements of visual art, dance, and live music, all improvised in the moment. It was what some people call an “ambient performance.” A variant on “ambient music“, this term generally describes an event with a designated run time but no beginning, middle or end, so the audience can come and go at will, taking a momentary taste or settling into the experience for as long as they wish.

Human Clay was done in one of the 42^nd Street storefront window spaces hosted by the NYC arts organization Chashama. (I’ve written previously about solo drawing performances I did in Chashama’s windows.) In this space, people could see the performance through the window from the public sidewalk, or they could come in and sit down on the opposite side of the stage, with the city street as backdrop. I believe the performance went on for four or five hours each time it was done.

In this post I’m presenting pictures of all the drawings I made during the 2004 and 2005 performances of Human Clay, interspersed with photos of the 2004 performance that I took during breaks from drawing.

Hisayasu Takashio, sculptor, in Human Clay, a motion sculpture movement installation by Cilla Vee Life Arts, presented by Chashama, 2004, photo by Fred Hatt

Claire’s description of Human Clay calls it “a constant shifting of landscapes composed of human, rope and twisted tree branch sculptures. The sculptor fervently constructs, molds and forms these elements in a race against time before they give in to gravity and gradually melt towards the ground.” The sculptor, shown above, is Brooklyn-based Hisayasu Takashio.

Fred Hatt drawing in Human Clay, a motion sculpture movement installation by Cilla Vee Life Arts, presented by Chashama, 2005, photo by Marc Dale

While the sculptor was moving his dancers and objects into ever-shifting arrangements, I was using them as models for brush sketches. I had hung long strips of white paper throughout the interior of the space, and over the few hours that the performance went on, I recorded my impressions of the fleeting tableaux with my dancing brush. As each pose was set, it would only hold for a few seconds before heaviness or the impulse to move caused the fragile structure to collapse, so I had to use my quick-drawing skills. There’s a shot of me drawing, above, and the finished panel below. As you can see, the drawings are quite large, so I could move the brush freely, and didn’t have to worry about crowding the paper too quickly.

Drama, left panel, ink drawing by Fred Hatt from Human Clay performance, 2005

Normally, a sculptor’s work is long-lasting, but this sculptor was working with living bodies and transient arrangements. It was up to me to capture what I could, covering the walls with my linear impressions of the slow, shifting sands of the dance.