Songs of Nature

John Sallis

Description

This latest philosophical text by John Sallis is inspired by the work of contemporary Chinese painter Cao Jun. It carries out a series of philosophical reflections on nature, art, and music by taking up Cao Jun's art and thought, with a focus on questions of the elemental. Sallis's reflections are not a matter of simply relating art works to philosophical thought, as theoretical insights and developments run throughout Cao Jun's writings and inform many of his artistic works. Sallis maintains abundant points of contact with Chinese philosophical traditions but also with Western philosophy. In these reflections on art, Sallis poses a critique of mimesis and considers the relation of painting to music. He affirms his conviction that the artist must always turn to nature, especially as reflections on the earth and sky delimit the scale and place of what is human. Full-color illustrations enhance this provocative and penetrating text.

List of illustrations

1. Retrieve

2. Spaces

3. Vision

4. Silent Music

5. Musicality

6. Hermeneutic

7. Earth

Index

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Épistémologie
• Philosophie de l'esprit
• Movements
• PHILOSOPHY
• Philosophie et théologie
• Kandinsky
• History of art
• John Sallis
• Asian art
• Sallis
• Phenomenology
• Guo Xi
• General officer
• Wassily Kandinsky
• Asian
• Art
• General
• Vassily Kandinsky

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 04 février 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253046642
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 11 Mo

Extrait

THE COLLECTED WRITINGS OF JOHN SALLIS I/24

This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
2020 by John Sallis
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z 39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Cataloging information is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-0-253-04660-4 (hdbk.)
ISBN 978-0-253-04661-1 (pbk.)
ISBN 978-0-253-04663-5 (web PDF)
1 2 3 4 5 25 24 23 22 21 20
Involved in tradition with the greatest efforts, devoted to creation with the utmost daring.
-Li Keran (cited by Cao Jun)
Eastern imagism and Western abstraction are fused.
-Cao Jun
The images on my canvases are the hymns I write to nature.
-Cao Jun
Contents
List of Figures
Acknowledgments
1 Retrieve
2 Spaces
3 Vision
4 Silent Music
5 Musicality
6 Hermeneutic
7 Earth
Postlude
Index
List of Figures
1. Cao Jun, Cleansing the Mortal Heart in the Clear World
2. Guo Xi, Early Spring
3. Cao Jun, Endless Green Mountains
4. Cao Jun, Spring s News
5. Cao Jun, A Way to a High Official Position
6. Shi Tao, The Waterfall on Mount Lu
7. Zhang Daqian, Panorama of Mount Lu
8. Wassily Kandinsky, Kochel-Snow-Laden Trees
9. Wassily Kandinsky, Mountain
10. Cao Jun, Cascades of Color Flowing in Gold
11. Cao Jun, The Return of the King
12. Cao Jun, Endless Rivers and Mountains
13. Cao Jun, Mountain Peak at Ease
14. Cao Jun, Arrival of Auspiciousness
15. Cao Jun, Sea of the Sky
16. Wassily Kandinsky, Composition IV
17. Cao Jun, When in April
18. Cao Jun, Seeking Dream Space
19. Cao Jun, Poetic Water
20. Cao Jun, National Spirit
21. Cao Jun, Toasting to the Spring Breeze
22. Jacob van Ruisdael, View of Naarden
23. Jan Asselijn, River Bank with Herdsmen
24. Cao Jun, Misted Mountain and Trees
25. Cao Jun, Pulsating Space
26. Cao Jun, Colorful Time
27. Cao Jun, The Mountain Looks like the Sea
28. Cao Jun , The Scene of Solemn
29. Cao Jun, Rainbow-Colored Costumes of Land
30. Cao Jun, River of Stars Crossing Time and Space
31. Cao Jun, Boundless
32. Cao Jun, The River of Melody
33. Cao Jun, Beauty All Over the Mountains
34. Eduardo Chillida, Listening to Stone
35. Eduardo Chillida, Silent Music
36. Wassily Kandinsky, Sketch for Composition II (Two Riders and Reclining Figure)
37. Cao Jun, The Pure Autumn
38. Cao Jun, Hidden Fragrance
39. Cao Jun, The Fountain of Wisdom / Spring of the Soul
Acknowledgments
I OWE UNLIMITED GRATITUDE TO CAO JUN FOR NUMEROUS HIGHLY ILLUMINATING discussions of his art and for permission to include the images of his works that appear in this book. I am grateful also to those who undertook the difficult job of photographing the painting shown on the cover: Christopher Soldt, Gary Gilbert, and Bruno Malisheski. I am grateful for permission granted by the Collection of the National Palace Museum for complimentary use of the image of the painting by Zhang Daqian; and for that granted by Zabalaga-Leku, Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York 2018, to reproduce images of the two sculptures by Eduardo Chillida. Thanks also to Miguel de Beistegui, who first introduced me to Chillida s work and from whose book In Praise of Chillida the images were taken. I owe special gratitude to Nancy Fedrow for her invaluable assistance in preparing the manuscript, especially in securing the images and in overseeing their placement in the book. For help with the numerous issues that arise during the preparation of a book containing both text and images, I want to thank Ashante Thomas and David Miller. Above all, I am grateful to my editor and friend Dee Mortensen for her generous encouragement and continuing support.

Boston
September 2019

1
Retrieve
EPIGRAPHS CANNOT BUT REPEAT themselves, occupying, at once, two distinct places, set in both without being displaced from themselves, belonging both outside the text and within it as its beginning, even as a beginning before the beginning, hence turning again to the outside, revolving there in the space that opens the text. Semantic identity between the written epigraphs and the text proper can be confirmed only by passage through the entire text. 1 The logic of this parergon becomes all the more complex when the epigraph is an image: precisely because it is an image, it does not belong to the text, falls outside it with an insistence exceeding that of any written epigraph. And yet, the image belongs to the text, in which its very relevance is laid out and for which it is to supply a certain illumination.

FIGURE 1. Cao Jun, Cleansing the Mortal Heart in the Clear World , 2016. Ink and watercolor on paper, mounted on board, 108 78 cm.
The epigraphic image set here in the textual opening-though necessarily without its parergonal revolution being fully represented-is an image of a painting by Cao Jun. Another parergonal revolution is broached within the painting itself by the presence of an inscription on its surface. For the inscription both belongs to the image, since it is written there on its surface, and yet, as writing, specifically as calligraphy, it is distinguished from the image. This difference-set within identity-is attested most conspicuously by the cases in which the inscription was added much later by someone other than the artist himself. An extreme case is that of the painting Early Spring ( figure 2 ) by the Song Dynasty master Guo Xi (ca. 1001-ca. 1090). While a portion of the inscription merely states the title, the date, and the name of the painter, there are also several columns of characters that constitute a poem. Though in style and content the poem is appropriate to the painting, it was added nearly seven hundred years after the painting itself was done. Thus, in this case the greater part of the inscription is differentiated from the painting in several respects: by the span of time, by the identity of the inscriber (in this case probably Emperor Qing Long of the Qing Dynasty), and by the art form, poetry rather than painting. 2 And yet, the poem belongs to the painting both by expressing its spirit and by its placement on the painted surface. It is from within this structure of identity and difference that the image can show what the inscription says and the inscription can say what the image shows.
Yet, it is not only as inscription that language is brought to bear on the image. For all Cao Jun s works possess titles, which in many cases are highly poetic and which never are reduced to mere enumerations or to the empty title untitled. Each title, without exception, supplements the image, setting linguistic expression in relation to it in a way distinct from the inscription, even though the title is sometimes repeated in the inscription. The bearing of the titles takes several forms, and it functions in various ways. In many instances the title designates what is depicted in the image, or rather, it serves to reveal what the painting, in its concrete forms and its array of colors, aims to bring to light. For example, in Endless Green Mountains ( figure 3 ) the foregrounded mountain is to a degree obscured, and, as the title declares, it is the distant peaks that constitute the object of the painting as they recede in a gesture of endlessness and display a greenish hue not presented in other parts of the work. Furthermore, in this painting there is displayed not only this spatial recession but also a temporal distancing, a recollection that the inscription connects with the images. It reads: To recall the trip to Chile years ago. New York, 2016 summer. Thus, through its inscription the painting lays out the temporal interval between a past voyage recollected in the work and the present in which the recollection takes place. In turn, this recollection reflects on the painting, identifying the endless green mountains as re-creating those of Chile.

FIGURE 2. Guo Xi, Early Spring , 1072. Hanging scroll, ink on silk, 158.3 108.1 cm. Collection of the National Palace Museum, Taipei.
In many of Cao Jun s paintings such as those of landscapes and of lotuses, all three moments-image, inscription, and title-belong to the work as a whole and coalesce to determine its sense. In the more abstract paintings that constitute the Space Series, the absence of inscriptions renders the titles still more decisive.
Insofar as paintings are installed within the difference between image and word, between depiction and language, and in some instances between two distinct linguistic moments as well (title and inscription), there is a sundering of the otherwise inclusive identity of the artist, a differentiation of origin. The work will have originated from at least two artists (painter and poet), who typically coincide in a single individual, though not necessarily, as shown by the example of Early Spring .
The title of the painting ( figure 1 ) introduced at the outset as one of the two epigraphic units is among the most poetic, though not just in the sense that it is metaphorical; for world , if taken in a rigorous manner, is quite other than a simple metaphor. The title is, rather, poetic in the sense that the words bring something forth, in a way analogous to the way an artisan brings forth an artifact by making it. Poetic words are evocative, calling forth before our vision a schema of happenings that otherwise resist disclosure. Cleansing the Mortal Heart in the Clear World announces two correlative happenings