Images With(In) Books

Through our exploration of Jun-Fei Ji’s intimate, artistic universe, I was fascinated by his use of scrolls as a medium for storytelling. When compared to today’s ‘book’, I feel the scroll presents a fascinating platform in which to explore the boundaries of narrative. So why don’t we use tactile scrolls anymore (besides when replicating the traditional style)?

Like, why? Scrolls are awesome.

The invention of the codex spelt the end for scrolls. Some of the supposed “advantages” of using a codex were the ease of bookmarking (or indexing through pagination), the protective cover, the ability to have text on both sides of the material, and its economical capacity to be reproduced in a more compact text for convenient religious reflection (think Book of Hours). Yet, no one asks what we lost in adopting the codex as the conventional ‘book’.

In speaking with Professor Serrano, the scroll, when viewed as ‘a book with only one page’, raises fascinating temporal possibilities for the author. As the images transcend between each other, the story can be both read backwards and forwards, from the middle outwards etc. The opportunities are endless. And this is not even considering the meta-fictional possibilities: Why not have texts on both sides of the scroll? Why not have the scrolls loop back around to the beginning and have a never-ending story? Or cut holes in the scroll and have the words fall through to the other side? And so on.

You see, the scrolls identity as a traditional artifact, as almost a sculpture, both constrains and liberates it as a medium for narrative in contemporary society. Its traditional identity pigeonholes it as purely historical (Yun-Fei Ji scrolls are in the traditional style) and yet the scroll is filled with creative possibilities, as it is simultaneously viewed as both sculpture and narrative.

Of course, scrolls still exist today, both as religious objects (i.e. hanging scrolls) and in a digital capacity as we scroll down our computer screen. But the tactile scroll no longer exists, outside of the traditional aesthetic, as a medium for contemporary narratives or academic papers or, indeed, art in general. I would love nothing more than to see the Burke Library filled with both books and modern scrolls!

But the codex wins out over the scroll because we privilege the notion of pagination as a good thing. Julius Caesar famously made his scrolls into concertinas for ease of reading and we do the same today for the modern concept of a codex. Today’s book is, in many ways, just a concertina scroll.

Concertina Scroll:

But don’t we always say that we want to get lost in a story? Is there not something wonderful about knowing you may never be able to find your way back to what you’re reading (at least without significant effort)?

In the same way that we see rainbows and not the sky, we might love a story more if it too is fleeting.

When viewing the exhibit of Yun-Fei Ji: The Intimate Universe and talking with the artist himself, I couldn’t help but continuously make connections between what he was saying about his artistic process and my own group’s work on our collaborative illumination.  For our project, we tried to make references in the artwork that would reflect the poem we were using, but also chose images that could be understood by a modern audience.  In a similar way, Yun-Fei Ji spoke about making his own work relevant and taking as many different approaches as possible.  How did we as a group take an eighteenth century poem and make it relevant?  By taking a few different approaches to our artistic depictions and layout, as Yun-Fei Ji recommended.   He also spoke about working with line and space, which my group came into contact with when deciding on the layout and format of our illumination.  Hearing Yun-Fei Ji speak on his artistic process and giving advice was incredibly helpful as my group was creating our own work of art.

While finishing up the illuminated page project, I started thinking about how illuminators of the past divvied up the work of illuminated pages. I seem to recall that the master illuminators and the apprentices from My Name is Red divided up work by complexity, with the easy sort of “filler” going to the apprentices and main subjects painted by the masters but I could be remembering the facts wrong.

Anyways, I was wondering if more “western” illuminators divided up the work any differently, or if they just worked on different pages altogether? Does anyone have an answer?

During Yun Fei Jin’s, I was interested on the type of medium he chose to work with. I believe working with ink is one of the most difficult things to do. Not only this but he also includes calligraphy into his works. He  admitted that learning calligraphy was a difficult process to learn. I believe his brush strokes had to be precise in order to get the impact he wanted. Unlike oil paints, where can paint over it if we make a mistake, with ink it is really difficult to hide mistakes. I have tried working with ink and it was one of the most difficult mediums to work with. I can tell that Yun Fei Jin has mastered this medium. I was somewhat suprised that he had a bit sculpture.

Aside from the artist visit, this week our illuminated pages were due. My partner and I decided to work with various mediums through out our piece. Our main mediums were ink and water colors. The Nike was specifically used to write our illuminated letter and text. Once again, I felt that writing the text one of the most challenging things about the assignment. We used our print we got at the print workshop so we tried to keep the text consistent thought the work. I think writing the text was the most time consuming part of the assignment. What was the most time consuming part of the assignment for you guys?

 

I really enjoyed talking to Yun-Fei Ji. Probably my favorite part was when someone asked about his intentions for an aspect of his scroll and he responded, “I did that?” I think it’s interesting how viewers often deeply analyze art, when the artist doesn’t always make choices for specific reasons or to portray a specific meaning.

At times I felt that Yun-Fei didn’t always answer questions thoroughly, but everything he had to say definitely illuminated his work in one way or another.  Overall, the visit was great.

What I mostly admired about Yun-Fei’s The Intimate Universe is that it triggered interesting and significant questions about a critical social issue that has been spreading around the globe: the replacement of countryside with urban areas regardless of whatever cultural values lost in process. This is a terrifying modern threat that has been progressing since early 20th-century. While I believe that the abandonment of heritage has started with Futurism, what I would like to discuss here is the responsibility of artists toward the pressing social issues they observe in society.

The local people in The Intimate Universe seemed quite alienated because they were forced to leave their only home. I heard from Katherine Alcauskaus, Collections and Exhibitions Specialist at the Wellin, that the baskets portrayed in the paintings are characterized by different weaving styles, in fact, each tribe in the Chinese countryside has its own unique style of weaving baskets, this emphasizes the richness of these people’s cultures and how pitiful it is that their heritage is being neglected as if it is not a valuable part of the country’s heritage and history. Even though people have advanced in the use of technological devices to build big cities, they are drastically ignorant when it comes to the cultural aspect. Yun-Fei was fortunate enough to be introduced to the countryside world when he was growing up, but people our age in China would not have the chance, so the government has robbed this generation of a valuable cultural experience in the name of “urbanization.” This led me to think about the significance of art and the value it gives to society.

Goya’s Caprichos also provide insightful social critique. I mostly find Correction a great representation of the delusive power of the church in the pope’s seemingly benign look.

So did Rembrandt provide remarkable social critique when he portrayed the deplorable condition of 17th-century beggars in Europe in a beautifully humane style, which we can see in Peasant Family on the Tramp, unlike his contemporaries and predecessors, like Jacques Callot, who portrayed beggars as repulsive, lacking creatures as we can see in Beggars with Crutches and Wallet . This is the artist’s responsibility toward society that has greatly diminished in the modern age.

I am mostly confused about what has changed to make art in the modern age mostly about entertainment when social problems have only increased and intensified.

 

A question I had for Yun-Fei Ji was if he had ever studied Francisco Goya. The demons he depicts in his work, especially in the most recent scroll, seem to mimic Goya’s style. Although I did not get to ask this question myself, someone in our class asked a version of it. I expected Yun-Fei to know of Goya, but his response was more enthusiastic than I expected. Francisco Goya is an artist Yun-Fei has heard of and admired. In the exhibit, the scrolls outside and inside the moon gate had the most figures mimicking Goya’s dark, animalistic figures. There were human qualities but the forms were still had grotesque elements. When I observed this and came up with my question, I thought, how does Yun-Fei retain his own personal style while trying to incorporate themes from Goya’s work? How does any artist keep themselves from crossing that line of copying another artist?

THe best way to do that is to add another type of style to the one the artist wants to imitate. Yun-Fei still creates his own style by combining the techniques of traditional chinese scroll art with modern themes. Landscape plays an important role, but there are industrial objects, such as freighters and decaying buildings situated throughout the works as well. Yun-Fei also uses a different medium than Goya. Even though his most recent scroll was mostly black and gray, looking like Goya’s Los Caprichos at first glance, the brush strokes in the scroll create a completely different texture than the aquatint printing method Goya used. In similar way, my group mimicked Goya’s style for our collaborative project but we used watercolors and a felt tip pen, and a different illustrating style to create our own approach to the piece. Incorporating other artist’ styles can give us a better understanding of those works.

 

Meeting Yun-Fei Ji on Wednesday was very inspiring. Being able to hear him talk about his work was a very interesting experience. it is not often that you get to hear artists talk about their work in such an intimate environment. While he may be soft-spoken, he gave valuable insight into the art he creates. His work is extremely conscious about the environmental state of China, which I admire. Art can often be hollow in meaning, and hearing Yun-Fei speak on behalf of his work shed light on how impactful it can be. I got the sense that Yun-Fei had a lot to say about China, and uses his art as a medium to express his thoughts.

A lot of his work that was on display in Wellin – particularly the scroll that wrapped around the center wall structure – seemed to exist in an undefined dimension. In other words, the presence of the ground and sky and so on was not the most defined. This was displayed the most inside the center wall structure; The scrolls displayed there took on a darker tone and seemed to float within the borders of the page. This creates a very interesting effect, as if Yun-Fei is not depicting a scene but rather a stand-alone idea that he is trying to get across to the audience. Overall the experience on Wednesday was an extremely interesting one, in which I learned a lot about Eastern art as apposed to Western art, which I am more accustomed to seeing.

When deciding which questions I wanted to ask Yun-Fei Ji on Wednesday I had some interesting thoughts about how he might respond to what I asked. Although I did not get to ask him this question, I wanted to know whether or not he had a favorite piece in the exhibition. This got me thinking about the artist’s perception of his/her own artwork. Surely an artist’s judgment of a piece of art must differ in some ways from that of the casual observer. An artist judges more than the aesthetic quality of the art and the underlying motifs and themes (that an observer may judge) because he/she knows what his/her intentions were. I imagine this struggle between perception and reality as being similar to what it is like to visit somewhere for the first time. For example, when your friend talks about his house repeatedly you develop a perception in your mind’s eye of what your friend’s house looks like. When you finally visit, however, it is almost invariably far from what you imagined. Similarly, I imagine that an artist’s final product often strays from what he/she originally intended. Perhaps the discrepancy is a good thing, and changes were made throughout the process to enhance the quality of the final product. On the other hand, errors in execution may cause the final product to be different from the intended product in a negative way. Even if the intended product and the perceived product are in agreement, the author’s knowledge of a difference in intention and reality (or a lack thereof) adds an extra level of judgment when considering his/her own piece.

I experienced this phenomenon myself while working on my collaborative project. Our initial idea was similar to what we finished with, but we made small changes along the way that changed what I was expecting our project to look like. When others look at our project they may find it to be aesthetically pleasing, have an interesting commentary, and resemble the work of Francisco Goya, but they will never know (for better or for worse) what we expected the work to look like. As a novice artist, I do not have a lot of experience comparing perception and reality, so I would be interested to know what some of the artists in our class think about this. Is this ever a source of frustration, or is this something you hardly even consider? Do you think knowing what your initial intentions for a piece were adds an extra level of judgment for your own work?

Due to the time constraints of the letterpress workshop, groups could not typeset more than a line or two from their text of choice. While the selected excerpt might have been a nice stand-alone sentence or a small analog of the text’s content, it could not provide a full and robust picture of the work. There is something necessarily lost in reduction. In my group, the subsequent illumination picked up the slack and fleshed out the neglected elements of the piece. We settled upon an illustration that would not only augment our printed words, but also expound on the topic presented in the poem we chose. In this sense, we unified the literary and artistic elements of our manuscript – the result being a harmonious multi-media argument.

We have seen a similar coalescence of the verbal and non-verbal in William Blake’s “Songs of Innocence & Experience”. Granted, Blake published entire poems, but he considered the implications of his words and wrought illustrations that would echo the motifs of the poem. For instance, Janelle Schwartz drew our attention to The Sick Rose, which was framed by circular boughs and flowers. Essentially every element of the art could be plausibly interpreted as significant to the meaning of the poem.

Consequently, the reader is moved not only the power of the words, but the aggregate of the visual elements of the page. This creates a considerably more immersive experience.