A bit of artistic insight |The Origin of Chinese Abstract Art

When people regard Kandinsky as the pioneer of abstract art, the East had already embarked on abstract exploration through ink and brush thousands of years ago.Chinese abstract art is not a follower of the West; its root lies in calligraphy, with the spirit of “expressing the intention freely” and the philosophical thought of “the formless is the form” running through it.
Calligraphy is the direct source of Chinese abstract art. In Zhang Xu’s “Four Ancient Poems”, the cursive lines break free from the constraints of the meaning of the characters and externalize emotions with the rhythm of suddenness and slowness. “Carrying the meaning through lines” predates Western abstraction by a thousand years and accomplished the transcendence of the figurative art. The thickness, thinness, dryness, and wetness of the brushstrokes, as well as the lifting, pressing, turning, and connecting, are themselves the rudiments of abstract language, distinct from the unique system of Western points, lines, and planes.

“Expressing the intention freely” and “the formless is the form” constitute the spiritual core of Eastern abstract art. Traditional literati paintings abandon realism and convey the spirit through simple brushstrokes and blank spaces. Zheng Banqiao’s bamboo and Xu Wei’s splashed ink all directly strike the spirit by “expressing the meaning” rather than “painting the form”.”The formless is the form” in the “Tao Te Ching” reveals that the highest level of abstraction transcends the constraints of form, such as the flying movement of cursive script and the evaporation of ink, carrying the tremor of the soul in the coexistence of “existence” and “non-existence”.

Contemporary abstraction is still a continuation of this tradition. Ding Yi’s cross, Zhang Yu’s fingerprints, inherit the “process-oriented” of writing and the “spirituality” of expressionism, while Yu Youhan’s “circle” series pushes the writing nature deeper. His “circle” conforms to the spiritual concept of Zen Buddhism, using the weaving of dots and short lines to continue the rhythm of brushstrokes. The transformation of the circle always carries the breathing sensation of writing, making “the formless is form” concrete in the contemporary era.

These explorations jointly confirm that Chinese abstract art originated from the Eastern wisdom of calligraphy and ink, is a commitment to “expressing freely” and “formlessness”, and makes its unique value increasingly clear.

The tea for today is all gone. Next time, I’ll brew a fresh pot and enjoy art with you again.