the usual interpretation of such legends places primary emphasis upon the extraordinary realism of the paintings and explains the events in reference to this realism, deducing it to be the very cause that made the paintings come to life. Such conclusions entirely miss the point of the legends, which should no more be thus interpreted than should the story of Myron's cow or of the cherries of Apelles. The afore-cited stories are all tales of magic, pure and simple.
In the East, until as recently as the turn of the nineteenth century, art and a belief in the magical powers of the artist were intertwined concepts. Even in our own age, therefore, the painter in Japan, just as in China, has not doubted that great art and magic are one and the same. Whether this has been explicitly admitted or not is of no importance. An implicit acceptance of the basic idea has been rooted so deeply in the Oriental mind that there has been no need for conscious expression. Mention may here be made of the magazine Tien Shih, a forerunner of the modern illustrated, which was published in Shanghai during the early years of the present century, just before the founding of the Republic. It reported contemporary events in a traditional style, with lithographs, and featured many "authenticated" instances of magic and the supernatural.
In a comparison between Chinese and Western painting, the unity of technique and idea in the former becomes more obvious. Western art lost its magical elements at an early date because of the influence of Christianity. It is true that certain aspects of the supernatural continued to be expressed, but only insofar as they had been transfused into the body of Christian thought. Technical skill, though, no longer had anything magical about it: it evolved from no formula of magic but rather from the search for ways of overcoming the problems presented by the various materials of artistic expression—a search that has always produced a different answer in each epoch. And once the unity of technique and idea had ceased to exist, doubts and perplexities concerning technique began to arise. It is precisely such doubts and perplexities that have destroyed more works of art, by preventing their creation, than have all the fires and floods and wars of history. The East has suffered from an equally destructive mechanism in that the almost ritualized technique which necessarily developed out of magic resulted in the mass production of skillfully executed but mediocre paintings.
From this short and incomplete survey we can see that until our own times no distinction was made between technique and idea in Chinese painting. The two concepts were one and the same. Hence those who seek to know the art of the East must study the technical significance of forms with just as much determination as they study the finished compositions. Most essentially, they must persevere until they reach the point of perceiving the real identity of those apparent opposites: material appearance and spiritual essence. Only from that point on will the world of Eastern art truly open itself to the Western observer.
BESIDES MAGIC, THERE IS YET A SECOND approach to an understanding of Chinese art: one which leads through Chinese philosophy. And this we may now try. We have already stated that in the East, and especially in China, there was no absolute division between magic, religion, and philosophy. Doubtless they were never, as in the West, fundamentally opposed to each other, even if in certain points differences or distinctions were recognized.
Some scholars assert that Taoism is the typically Chinese philosophy, having been the primitive philosophy of the Han race. They also suggest that Chinese Buddhism has taken over some essentially Taoist features. And one can agree that the Book of Changes, in the version which we know (until recently attributed to Confucius), in fact expresses a thoroughly Taoist attitude within the framework of its Confucian ethos, at least in the sense of presenting a typically Chinese state of mind.
In the works of the Taoist philosopher Chuang-tzu there occur two passages that are worth noting for our purposes. The first is the often-quoted parable concerning Prince Hui's cook; in the translation of H. A. Giles it goes as follows:
Prince Hui's cook was cutting up a bullock. Every blow of his hand, every heave of his shoulders, every tread of his foot, every thrust of his knee, every whshh of rent flesh, every chhk of the chopper, was in perfect harmony—rhythmical like the dance of the Mulberry Grove, simultaneous like the chord of the Ching Shou.
"Well done!" cried the Prince."Yours is skill indeed."
"Sire, " replied the cook, "I have always devoted myself to Tao. It is better than skill. When I first began to cut up bullocks, I saw before me simply whole bullocks. After three years' practice, I saw no more whole animals (but saw them, so to speak, in sections).
"And now I work with my mind and not with my eye. When my senses bid me stop, but my mind urges me on, I fall back upon eternal principles. I follow such openings or cavities as there may be, according to the natural constitution of the animal. I do not attempt to cut through joints; still less through large bones.
"A good cook changes his chopper once a year—because he cuts. An ordinary cook, once a month—because he hacks. But I have had this chopper nineteen years, and although I have cut up many thousand bullocks, its edge is as if fresh from the whetstone. For at the joints there are always interstices, and the edge of a chopper being without thickness, it remains only to insert that which is without thickness into such an interstice. By these means the interstice will be enlarged, and the blade will find plenty of room. It is thus that I have kept my chopper for nineteen years as though fresh from the whetstone.
"Nevertheless, when I come upon a hard part where the blade meets with a difficulty, I am all caution. I fix my eye on it. I stay my hand, and gently apply my blade, until with a hwah the part yields like earth crumbling to the ground. Then I take out my chopper, and stand up, and look around, and pause, until with an air of triumph I wipe my chopper and put it carefully away."
"Bravo!" cried the Prince."From the words of this cook I have learned how to take care of my life."
The second parable from Chuang-tzu concerns a certain "man from Ying" who had a scab on his nose no thicker than the wing of a housefly. He sent for a stonemason to have it cut away. The stonemason wielded his adze with such skill that afterwards the man's nose was quite unharmed, and he had not even changed color.
These and many other passages from Chuang-tzu have often been taken for Taoist parables. But, adequately interpreted, they have a much wider significance. They suggest that, although technical skill alone is not enough, a mastery of technique leads the artist beyond the material limitations of this world to a higher knowledge, a perception of Tao. So skill is not simply a necessary step toward Tao but rather a part of it. The command of technique leads, through assiduous practice, through the reconciling of the inward and outward, through the conquest of material difficulties, toward a final liberation. A mastery of technique that has become so instinctive that it is absolutely unconscious makes possible a transcending of technique, a liberation into the world of the mind and—from our point of view—into the world of art.
Just as brushwork and magic were earlier shown to be integrated, so now idea and execution, which on one level look like opposites, become identical on a higher level. And here we touch on a principle enunciated by Chuang-tzu and many other Chinese: the principle of the identity of opposites. This basic principle seems to be very typical of Chinese thought. It permeates Chinese philosophy, Taoist religion, Confucian ethics, and everyday life and language as well.
Within the philosophic sphere, the two contraries are known as Yang and Yin, the two primary elements, which are united on a higher level in the great creative principle of T'ai-chi, the father of all things. The contraries of Yang and Yin are found in a vast number of parallel contraries, of which we shall name only a few here: masculine and feminine, sun and moon, day and
