This Moment One Brushstroke

It had been a long day of drawing at the National Gallery. Weak-handed and bleary-eyed, we congregated in the room we started the day in to review our work. We were scolded and praised, as we had been the entire week as students of the Drawing Marathon at the Royal Drawing School in London. Painfully aware of our waning attention, our teacher left us with parting words that cut with the sharpness of a suddenly drawn sword: Anyone who talks about negative space in art doesn’t know what they are talking about. 

Not one of us said a thing. We looked at each other and snickered. Her proclamation, though, has haunted the halls of my mind, the entangled corridors and twisting staircases which have been constructed of supposed knowledge about art. Since a house is only as strong as the foundation upon which it is built, it stands to reason that to occasionally check that the foundation is in good order, and no cracks have begun to show, is a sound principle to abide by. Therefore, however absurd her proclamation may sound upon first hearing, it is worth considering; if only to strengthen the position of negative space as a principle in art, or to allow its weakening, so a higher truth about the nature and effects of space in art can be revealed. 

First, in order to understand space in the pictorial sense, it is necessary to pare away all that is inessential in its study, and that which would obscure it. While Western art has its masterpieces and sense of space, to be sure, its most common disposition is to fill up the entire pictorial plane so that not one area of it is left untouched. We would be better to examine the equally masterful art of the Eastern tradition, that, within the bounds of the ground it is placed on, has visible and discernable areas of absences of medium within it. This approach is akin to a beginning learner of chess starting their study with the endgame-with the least amount of pieces on the board-in order to more clearly see the first principles of the game upon which all else is built. To start with a full board would distract and confuse; putting the learner in danger of improperly placing reverence and priority on ephemeral technique. And in our case, mistaking a fully covered pictorial plane as the prerequisite for the highest quality of art. 

As we set our eyes on the East, let us consider Hasegawa Tohaku’s Pine Trees (c.1595). A registered National Treasure of Japan painted on a pair of two six-fold screens, it was declared to be the first of its kind in scale depicting pine trees as its subject matter. It is a suibokuga painting–literally translated as ink water [sui] drawing [boku] art [ga]–which is a Japanese art form also commonly referred to as sumi-e or ink wash painting. It was a Chinese immigrant, Josetsu, who is considered to be the father of the art, presumably being first influenced by Chinese ink painting masters of the Tang and Song Dynasties. In relation to Tohaku, Josetsu could be considered his–artistically speaking–great-great grandfather, as Josetsu taught the Zen Buddhist monk Tensho Shobun, who taught the famed Sesshu of the painting, Broken Ink, who taught Tohaku. Upon close examination of the paintings of this genealogy, a technique stands out as being one of their hereditary traits. The technique is haboku–broken ink–and its implications on our focal point of study are significant. 

Fig. 1

Fig. 2

Hasegawa Tohaku, Pair of six-fold screens, “Pine Trees”

National Treasure, Tokyo National Museum

Image: TNM Image Archives

Zooming into Pine Trees, on the first pair of the six-fold screens (Fig. 1), haboku is most prominent from the fourth to sixth panels. On the fourth panel, starting from the ground, there are the lower halves of two tree trunks; and suddenly, a break–before the top halves of the trunks reemerge in their splendor of monochromatic pine needles. We must remember that only the mediums of ink and water are used in this painting, and thus, any shift in perception of color is due to the nature of the ground and the degree of ink and water used or the complete absence of it in certain areas of the composition. In this case, it is safe to assume that the “space” between the lower tree trunks and the top trunks is, more accurately, an absence of medium. 

What is implied in the term absence of medium? Most literally, in regards to the painting of our analysis, it is the absence of ink and water. Most importantly, it is not negative space, or space at all, for several reasons. 

The first problem is the inadequacy of the word space itself. Whatever may be deliberately left untouched on an artwork, in the sense that the medium used does not touch the ground used, is matter itself, which occupies space. How do we know an untouched part of a work is matter and not space? Because it, quite literally, is a substance-whether canvas, paper, silk, or any other material-and that material has within it vibrating particles, full of kinetic energy, even if the object itself is not moving (Britannica 2019). This distinction is vital, because it more accurately characterizes what we’re looking at, and thus, our way of looking will thereby be further refined and what we see can now reveal a world of myriad meanings and implications that were not available to our perception before. This also makes void the term “negative space”; as it is not space that is around forms in a composition, but matter, and it is impossible to characterize matter as negative or “empty” in any way-at least, if precision and rigor of definition are what we are after-as it, proven by science, is full. Now I imagine our teacher that day in the National Gallery the one to be snickering, and I beginning to see the subtle cracks in my foundation of artistic knowledge. 

What an absence of medium communicates in a work of art-and perhaps this is where so much of the confusion lies-is a feeling of space. It is why we feel a sense of balance and relief in contrast to what else is shown, but it is not those things in and of itself. Returning to Pine Trees now, the moment of haboku between the lower and top halves of the tree trunks can be looked at with proper clarity and a higher degree of sensitivity and perception. 

What we first see in this area of an absence of medium is the ground which the art is painted on, which is paper (Tokyo National Museum 2016). Considering this paper in relation to the entire composition we can ask a series of questions that reveal deeper levels of meaning. What does the material of paper communicate in itself? How do its qualities contribute to the overall effect of the painting? What are its historical and cultural symbolisms and implications? Why is paper the most fitting ground for this painting, and not another material? How does the shade of the color of paper integrate into the whole? Why at this particular area in the composition is medium absent, and not another? These are rich, important questions to ask upon analyzing an artwork in service to evaluating its quality that are obscured by a canvas that is filled to the brim with paint. 

Staying within this haboku moment in Pine Trees, let us now zoom out. Ground aside, what is this absence of medium revealing about the painting? What is it inspiring in the viewer? If our senses are correctly tuned, we would feel a beautiful tension. The elements of this are that more obviously, our mind wants to fill the gap between the lower and top tree trunks, as we yearn for a full display of what we’re beholding. Withdrawing this retinal pleasure puts us in a position of want, which builds the tension in us and also the tension in the painting the longer we look at it. It is even heightened by, more subtly, the position at which the lower trunks are cut off and the position at which the top trunks emerge. For it is the degree of separation that either adds to or subtracts from the degree of tension that is felt, and here it is done masterfully with regards to the whole, as not being so intense it distracts us from other parts of the painting, but it is just the right amount at the right time as the eye moves across, as though reading a piece of music, excellently composed.

But why should we be predisposed toward noticing and valuing degrees of tension? For with tension, there is a sense of uncertainty, something being there that we do not yet understand. It could be said, then, that tension, in its effect, is mystery; the predecessor of all understanding, as we feel more compelled to come closer and actually look, than if we were presented with the clear certainty of the tree trunks in their full form. Being made aware that we don’t know something, we are moved to find out what we now know we do not know, because otherwise, without this precious knowledge of unknown knowledge, we become too sure of ourselves. This is usually accompanied by a malicious stagnancy and visual stupor that degrades our ability to look at, understand, or make art, with any degree of excellence.

What is then layered onto this tension is mitate, the Japanese concept of many layers of meaning compounded onto one another, specifically in regards to painting (Walker 2017). The sudden break between the tree trunks has our mind fill it with puffs of light mist, hints of other tree trunks deeper back into the grove, a pathway leading up to the blanket of snow resting on the mountaintop. Japanese aesthetic concepts such as yugen: subtly profound grace, not obvious, miyabi: highest grace, and shibui: simple, subtle, unobtrusive beauty linger in this in-between, and evoke the words of 14th century Japanese playwright and aesthetician, Zeami Motokiyo:

“To watch the sun sink behind a flower clad hill

To wander on in a huge forest without thought of return

To stand upon a shore and gaze after a boat that disappears behind distant islands

To contemplate the flight of wild geese seen and lost among the clouds

And, subtle shadows of bamboo on bamboo.” (Waley 1921)

In like manner, haboku is deployed across the entire composition of Pine Trees, in varying degrees, and it is the ground from which arises an acute and profound realization in the viewer: I am not really looking at pine trees at all. For the act of looking is more than being able to discern the object. The viewer begins to penetrate the invisible reality, the Spirit of God, that underpins the pine trees and understand what the pine trees are representative of. An indescribable beauty, a soft, subtle quietness, a certain austerity that strikes us in how the pine tree on the twelfth panel seems to swing violently left into the composition (Fig. 2), moved by a whip of the wind whose sound we are just now starting to hear. Then, more sounds join in to create a chorus of drops of rain, the bending of bark and the crackling of leaves, the damp ground beneath our feet. But this is all dwarfed by the omnipresent sound of silence that seems to subject the entire painting to itself; this is the space we cannot see or touch, but is felt mightily.

The implications this effect has on the making of art is equivalent to a Copernican revolution. The last end of art, whether it was conscious or not, shifts from fullness of the plane, dramatic uses of color, and majesty of depiction to how we can most potently communicate a depth and richness of feelings and ideas by means of not forced economy for its own sake, but an economy that accords more rightly with the true nature of things. For if an area of haboku, inconspicuously profound yet plain in sight, as it is on the fourth panel of Pine Trees, can contain within it, it seems, an entirety–considerations of ground and material, ways of thinking and ways of living, lives of those who have come before and who have come after–then the natural conclusion we must infer is not that our habitual methods of artistic communication should be done away with, but are wanting. It was not that humanity had got it wrong about the existence of the earth and the sun, but we didn’t understand their proper relationship to each other, and the resulting and far reaching implications of seeing their proper relationship accurately. As it concerns the arts, if much more can be communicated with a significant degree less, a heavy onus now weighs on all of our faculties to ask why?

Why is it that less communicates more? It is not that “less” is equal in any sense to “more”, or that in and of itself “less” correlates to “more”. Or that “less” correlates to “depth” or “richness” or “feeling”. Or even that “less” is a precursor to “more”, or that “less” alone somehow contains within it the ability to express “more”. It is the degree of concentration and quality of that concentration of the nature of the “less” that is the “more” and that is what is brought forth in such high potency. Not only that, but what the “less” does is immediately confronts, culls, and refines our awareness as it is drawn to both what is visible and invisible on the pictorial plane, to a greater degree than when it is obscured, and thus we gain far more from the work as a whole. For what does not enter our awareness cannot be analyzed or made use of, and this is precisely the value of economy, in that it is a subordinate end; meaning it is not the ultimate end, but is valuable in and of itself for its singularity of focus–for it is never deemed desirable to be haphazard–and also a subordinate means to an even higher last end, which is greater understanding. 

Look closer and look again is what these untouched areas in the pictorial plane call us to do, urging us to treasure both their subtlety and clarity which rest and interact in perfect harmony. It is in this ‘emptiness’ in art that timeless art is created; as the zooming in of our lens paradoxically allows us to see far more than when we are merely standing and scrutinizing with a false sense of certainty. Pine Trees echoes from centuries past just as the poetic embrace of the words of Zeami Motokiyo, filling us with a sense that perhaps we get it now; and yet there’s a vague, nagging sense that it’s only just begun.

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Note:  It should be noted that the painting Pine Trees and Zeami Motokiyo’s words describing the concept of yugen did not influence each other (to my knowledge) and are not connected in any way in terms of one trying to reference the other. They should be viewed as distinct and separate entities.

References:

Britannica (2019). Kinetic Energy [Online]. Available from: https://www.britannica.com/science/kinetic-energy

Hara, K (2009). White. Zurich, Switzerland: Lars Muller Publishers, pp: 36-39 

Lexico (2020). Negative Space [Online]. Available from: https://www.lexico.com/definition/negative_space

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2018). Japanese Aesthetics [Online]. Available from: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/japanese-aesthetics/#YuugMystGrac

Tokyo National Museum (2016). National Treasure Gallery: Pine Trees [Online]. Available from: https://www.tnm.jp/modules/r_exhibition/index.php?controller=item&id=4272&lang=en

Waitzkin, J (2008). The Art of Learning. United States of America: Free Press; Reprint Edition (21 July 2008)

Waley, A (1921). The No Plays of Japan. Project Gutenberg. Ebook version released July 26, 2013 to public domain. Available from: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/43304/43304-h/43304-h.htm#Page_258

Walker, Sophie (2017). The Japanese Garden. London: Phaidon Press; 01 Edition, pp: 117-120