Images With(In) Books

After visiting Yun-Fei Ji’s exhibition in the Wellin Museum, I was also struck by some of the discrepancies between the meaning we took from some of Yun-Fei’s work, and what he consciously meant to convey. As Lainie mentioned, it was interesting that Yun-Fei seemed to be unaware that he had placed many of his figures on the left side of a piece, while it was something that a member of our class noticed and asked about its significance. I also felt that our class conducted a lot of discussion regarding the implications of presenting art in a hand scroll form versus a codex form, etc. before we met with Yun-Fei, and that his responses to our questions regarding the relationship between form and content were a bit more vague than I had expected. I think this speaks to the importance of the viewer when we discuss art, as well as how we read images. In my opinion, readers and viewers almost always construct at least some of the meaning that they elicit from visual art and literature. While some artists create art with the intention of provoking a specific discussion, and doing so by very employing purposeful techniques to create symbolic meaning, other artists create art with the sole purpose of provoking open-ended discussion. In other words, some artists choose to leave the viewer with more responsibility to figure out what the work “means,” than other artists do. Yun-Fei definitely has a specific environmental, social and political subject matter he wants to address and comment on, as is evident from his responses to our questions about his upbringing, inspiration, etc., but it seems that we’ve also created a lot of meaning through or individual interpretations within our understanding of the subject matter Yun-Fei aims to present.

The passage of time in art seems to be something that Eastern traditions consider much more than Western ones. The hierarchical nature of landscape paintings as well as the method of reading a scroll both lend themselves to an understanding of time as a part of the elements of nature. Meanwhile, Western art tends to be more interested in the formal techniques of fleshiness. I can’t remember whether Yun Fei Ji mentioned this in our class talk or at his gallery talk later that afternoon, but he has been trained in western oil painting in addition to traditional scroll painting. The reason he uses the Eastern tradition to portray his work, excluding cultural factors, is because oil paints are too fleshy- they are meant to capture a single moment and all of its protruding, rounded, subtly colored forms. The gesture of ink, on the other hand is much more representative and plays with the universal understanding. In contradiction it both removes the object from the flow of time and places it within the context of a period of time. The object by itself is the universal representation- something that we saw emphasized in My Name Is Red. The object within the hierarchy of the landscape, puts that universal object within the context of a specific time frame. It is removed from the world that we experience everyday.

Scrolls and film have a lot in common from a temporal perspective, so I was particularly interested by the fact that Yun-Fei Ji acknowledged that a large portion of his influence came from film. If we consider the era when film was still used for commercial cinema, films were stored as large spools that were unwound gradually, revealing a narrative. Even the title panel and colophon panels have rough filmic equivalents in the opening titles and closing credits, and silent films also would have had intertitles interceding at points in the narrative for the sake of clarity. There is also something very filmic about Yun-Fei’s work in that the border of the scroll composes a frame that surrounds a two-dimensional image that has the illusion both of depth and temporality; as we look at the scrolls on display, they seem to be passing by before our eyes because our eye travels so freely throughout the frame and each detail seems to connect to the next, like moments in time rather than static images on a piece of paper.

I regret not asking Yun-Fei Ji about which films in particular influenced him, but I personally noticed a connection between his work- particularly the issues of frame, depth, and time- and an experimental film called A Day on the Grand Canal with the Emperor of China (or Surface IS Illusion but So Is Depth). In the film, an artist, David Hockney, unfurls a scroll called The Kangxi Emperor’s Southern Inspection Tour (1691-1698), scroll seven. As he does so, he draws our attention to the intricate details of the paintings and their artistic significance. The narrating artist points out the way that depth is constructed in the scroll through a unique style of perspective that is not a representation of natural space but rather directs the eye to the emperor, much as the Persian illuminations flattened perspective to achieve similar worshipful acts of viewership. The perspectival relationship between surface and depth becomes complicated, especially to western viewers accustomed to Quattrocento rules about vanishing points and horizons. However, as the title suggests, the film is more than a didactic exploration of one example of Chinese scroll art. The film is also a commentary about our interactions with artworks that have a time element.

In Day on the Grand Canal, we have to change our expectation of what the pace of a film should be in order to appreciate what the pace of the artwork is. We can choose to be immersed in the scroll and follow the canal and its tributaries, or look across a field, or go down the alleys separating the houses. We can pay attention to the perspective and sight lines and look at the illusion of surface and depth. But one thing we cannot do is step back from a scroll painting and look at it within a frame, like a picture. The film necessarily imposes a frame around the scroll because the frame is a substitute for our eye, which cannot see everything that is to come. Even in the exhibit of Yun-Fei’s work, were the scrolls were displayed along the walls, we have to move in time and space in order to keep up. It is meant to move, to unfold; it is not a static experience of place. Both film and scrolls are two-dimensional forms that contain illusory three-dimensional spaces and both forms can be seen as gaining their motion from close, repeating forms that are blurred together into continuity by the eye and mind. Scroll and film achieve a kind of unity: the narrator unfurling the scroll in front of the still camera is a visual metaphor or equivalent for the movement of film past the camera’s aperture. And the spooling of film first through a camera to record the image and then through a projector to make the record viewable is similar to the twofold process of creating the scroll gradually and unfurling it gradually. The two scrolling motions become unified in the process of exploring temporal artworks.

I was glad we had a chance to meet with Yun-Fei Ji in class today and get to hear directly from the artist about his work. It was very enlightening to hear about his work and the historical influences on his art. The time period he grew up in China was extremely turbulent. I studied abroad in China over the summer and was able to hear about the time period from others who’d lived through it, and I find it very interesting to hear different people’s perspectives about the period. His discussion about art he saw as a child in the history museum and how it was altered, in addition to the fact that we can’t read Yun-Fei’s works because it is written in Chinese reminded me of another Chinese artist I’ve studied whose work is also influenced by the Cultural Revolution. This artist named Xu Bing made one piece using thousands of fake Chinese characters to respond how language was used in the Cultural Revolution to push the ideas of Mao. He made characters that are aesthetically made to appear to be real characters, but have no meaning and make audiences uncomfortable because they are incomprehensible. I find works that respond to this time period and China’s current environment to be very fascinating. As an artist myself, I always appreciate getting to hear the perspective of the creator and understand better what they are responding to when they make their works.

It was a privilege to meet Yun-Fei Ji at this morning’s class session. I found it really beneficial to put a face to the work, as studying art so often without seeing the artist himself can make the work seem like an entity of its own. I found it insightful to hear about his upbringing in a Chinese army camp outside of the more urban environments that I picture when I think of China, and how the folktales he learned from his Grandmother translate even today to some of the more grotesque figures in his pieces.

That said, I was surprised when it was noted that many of his figures are on the left side of his works, but Yun-Fei was not even aware himself that he did this. It made me question as an interpreter: Are we as interpreters giving the artist too much credit if he himself admits a lack of intent in something we may take as symbolic? Are we reading too deeply or assuming that everything single detail has meaning, when, as Yun-Fei suggests, some things “just happen”? Where is this line of interpretation?

I also would have liked to hear a little bit more about his 3-D piece. What inspired him to produce such a radically different piece from the rest of his works?

 

I thought it was really interesting that Yun-Fei made his artwork with the notion that it would eventually be mounted on a wall in a gallery, and so he broke it up into sections. When I first saw the exhibition, I think I was a little overwhelmed by the intense detail and large size of the artworks, and it was difficult for me to get the full story because I couldn’t see everything at once. I was probably too distracted from seeing so many images to notice the sections; in other words, losing sight of the forest for the trees. However, the more time I spent with the artworks, walking past them on various occasions, I was more easily able to see the progression of the story and piece its parts together, especially for The Village and Its Ghosts. I think for that piece, the fact that it wraps around the outside of the moongate structure helps facilitate me processing it, because I am physically unable to see the whole thing at once. As a side note, I found that Yun-Fei’s explanation about how he made artworks with the idea that they would be in an gallery further reflects his struggle between private and public viewership/use of art, which was brought up when he commented that he recognizes a show is a public presentation of his private observations.

Towards the end of class, I asked Yun-Fei what the figure on the bottom right of this photo was:

He said that it was one-half of a sculpture he had made that got shipped back to him from Belgium to be fixed. I wonder if that 3D process has also influenced him like his experience at Dieu Donné has (I forgot to ask him though!).

Also, I thought this animated version of the Song dynasty scroll Along the River During the Qingming Festival at the China Art Museum in Shanghai was really cool. Thinking back on when I went, I feel like because the animated scroll was so large (basically an entire room dedicated to it; at 11:32 the whole thing is shown) and we were small in comparison, it kind of felt like it was being unfolded, or rather, like we were part of the unfolding.

 

The print workshop was very effective at communicating the intense and tedious nature of the printing process. Despite the time it took to accomplish relatively little, it was very fun to experience the process in person. The galley was more difficult to set up than I was anticipating, and deciphering the correct way to line up each letter was also more challenging than I was expecting. The actual act of using the printing press was very easy and it was very satisfying producing a clean print. I enjoy immersing myself in the process of creating the art form we are studying because it provides a unique lens to view the artwork that would be unattainable without actual experience creating the art ourselves.

 

 

 

It was really nice to have such a fun class this Wednesday amid all the midterm craziness. After being stuck in the library all week, Dunham basement was a nice change of pace, which is something I never thought I would say. Learning how to use the printing presses and set up a galley was a lot more intense that I thought it would be, and I was a little nervous about using such a complex machine by myself. Professor Rippeon was able to explain it all very simply though. It was fun to look around the room and see what everyone else was printing. Just like with the scriptorium, I was impressed by the creativity of everyone in the class. I am excited to see everyone’s finished projects when we come back from break.

After analyzing Goya and Blake’s works over the past few weeks, having the opportunity to print added an extra layer of knowledge to appreciating their creations.  I had never used a letter printer before and really enjoyed the process.  I also now have a newfound appreciation for the process of putting the letters in their correct places, as I struggled to make sure we had the correct order and lineup of the letters so words didn’t print backwards.  This process was not only fun to participate in, but it also exposed me to the entire process of printing that Goya and Blake would have engaged in.  This immersive process allowed us as students to get a better idea of how the images we are learning about were created, which adds depth to our knowledge of their works.

When I thought the about the printing press, I always thought it was an invention that got a lot done in little time. That may still be case for mass production. Durning the workshop on Wednesday, I noticed the time it takes to print a sentence. I began to question how long it took people to complete a whole page of written text. It took a bit of time to create a sentence. My partner and I had to look for each letter and properly place it in order to print right. I found the process tedious and shudder to think how long it took to piece a book together.

I find the change from written calligraphy to print sad. While it may have made the task of producing books faster it did reduce the amount of illuminators. Not only were they now putting emphasis on the text but illuminations were now being left behind.