「Look at the Picture and Talk about the Painting」Mu Xi: Using Empty Spaces to Capture the Spirit of Song Dynasty Painting

Six plain fruits, blank spaces all over the paper – this painting titled “Six Persimmons” has endured for eight hundred years and has become a model in both Chinese and Japanese aesthetics. It was created by the Song Dynasty Zen monk Mu Xi.

Above the peak of the minimalist aesthetics of the Song Dynasty, Mu Xi, as a Buddhist monk, integrated the spiritual concepts of Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism into a “subtractive art”. He discarded complexity and used blank spaces to eliminate redundancy, allowing the essence of things to become the core of aesthetic appreciation. He pushed the characteristic of Song paintings – “any blank space in the painting is a wonderful scene” – to the extreme. The emptiness is hidden in the plain white background, simplicity is revealed through the simple brushstrokes, impermanence is concealed in the sparse fruits, and each blank space is an expression of “enlightening the mind and seeing the truth” in the form of Zen wisdom.

His paintings were transported to Japan, and the Zen philosophy and the aesthetic of desolation in them perfectly matched, becoming a spiritual bridge connecting Chinese and Japanese Zen. From the minimalist core representative of Song paintings to the practitioner of Eastern Zen, Mu Xi’s blank spaces transcended borders and eras.

The blank space is not merely the empty space without ink and brushstrokes, but rather the practice of a spiritual state. It enables art to transcend techniques, embodying the ultimate wisdom of Eastern aesthetics – “winning the essence through simplicity and carrying the truth in emptiness”.

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