THE FOUR HONORABLE KNIGHTS
THE FOUR HONORABLE KNIGHTS
One wish: to sleep one night under the plum blossoms (Ryoukan Taigu, 1758–1831)
Since ancient times, the main themes in the works of traditional Eastern painters were mainly pines, bamboo and plum trees. This group was called the “winter triumvirate” and represented the most valued themes within the framework of their visual culture. Like any artistic discipline, this art has been revised over time and this selection has been expanded.
During the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), Chen Jiru 陈继儒 reorganized the themes of his painting in a different way. He also considered the study of bamboo 竹 (take) and the flowering plum 梅 (ume) to be fundamental, and added the wild orchid 蘭 (ran) and the chrysanthemum 菊 (kiku), thus establishing “The Four Honorable Gentlemen”. An in-depth study of this set involves internalizing each gesture, making its specific strokes your own, and thus acquiring the skills necessary to paint the great theme of the Taoist tradition: the landscape.
Oriental painting, which focuses its interest not only on obtaining a final image, but also as a vital practice, consists of repeating over and over again the specific, patterned brushstrokes that characterize it. It is also important to note that for that civilization, pictorial themes go far beyond their mere visual representation, where highly valued values such as austerity, perseverance, detachment and serenity are cultivated.
The orchid flower, for example, announces the arrival of spring. The petals of its flower are drawn from the outside towards an empty centre on which its beauty is based, which is associated with the feminine, the ephemeral and the evanescent. Both when painting the flower in solitude and when composing a rod of orchids, the artist's virtue lies in varying the pressure of the stroke in a very short path of the brush and once the form begins to emerge, the challenge will lie in visualising the precise empty spaces. In any case, "Painting the wild orchid allows us to delicately discover the true greatness of the smallest things" (Manriquez; 2010 p.101). Its lanceolate leaves - which vary their size subtly along their path - accompany the beauty of the flower in spring and are born from an area very close to the rocks of the high mountains. These leaves are distributed leaving a space available between them that is called the “pheasant's eye” or the “elephant's eye”, where much of its essence lies.
On the other hand, bamboo symbolizes summer, expansiveness, and suggests a strength acquired thanks to its flexibility and adaptability. To understand in depth the qualities of this honorable gentleman, one must study the four elements that compose it: the stem, its nodes, the branches, and the growth of its green leaves. There are at least two different techniques for painting bamboo stems, depending on the location of the brush bristles and their weight; one will require greater technical mastery than the other, and we can thus obtain a great variety of textures. Likewise, bamboo knots have multiple forms of realization, varying their shape depending on the Chinese or Japanese tradition from which they come. Finally, the beautiful bamboo leaves require gratuitousness in the movement that precedes and follows them in the stroke, and above all, they imply successive patience.
Once you have learned how to paint a bamboo, the challenge of painting large-format bamboo forests begins, in which materials appropriate to the size are usually used, and the involvement of the body begins to be a key element in the painting exercise. Based on my practice, I recommend starting by painting bamboo, although in China it is said that “it takes half a lifetime to learn to paint bamboo, but a lifetime to learn to paint orchids” (Nan and Xiaoli, p. 50).
Unlike the cherry tree 桜 (sakura) that blooms when spring is already in full bloom, the plum tree, another honorable gentleman, blooms before the end of winter, symbolizing the constant capacity to renew itself. Both the trunk of the bamboo and the plum tree require a combined load of ink for the volume to begin to emerge, but while the first is supported by a straight, ascending and vigorous stroke, the trunk of the plum tree is serrated and irregular, structured from a central branch and developing its secondary rods from which the flowers are born (with their pistils and stamens).
Finally, the chrysanthemum: the Japanese imperial flower, which is also often called the golden flower. “It is a flower highly valued by the Japanese, its circular shape in which several layers of petals converge in a center, has made it a symbol of family unity, being used since the 10th century, as a representative emblem of the Japanese imperial family” (Manriquez, 2010; p. 127). The small petals -which have a certain familiarity with the petals of the orchid- are grouped and superimposed around a center from which they emerge, leaving interstitial spaces where the light of day can be glimpsed. It is accompanied by the flexible stem and its rough leaves that, due to so much weight, tend to bend towards the ground, leaving the beauty of the flower above the composition and as the protagonist of the image. These motifs that arise from the observation of nature, should not be understood as an exercise of mimetic transcription of the original, but as a personalized interpretation of it. It is therefore advisable to take walks to contemplate nature, read poetry and oriental literature about the landscape, and look at and copy those works of the great masters that resonate most with us. The latter should be read within the framework of the Chinese learning system and not as the impossibility of creating a significant work, since practicing the specific technique also implies taking advantage of what has already been learned by our ancestors. We know that there is a lot of intrinsic wisdom in the oriental arts. This pictorial practice constantly surprises us with its teachings. Perhaps the one that enlightens us the most has to do with the possibility of understanding the difference between plenitude and achievement: “the difference between doing something well, simply, and doing it for other people or for myself” (Huang, 1980; p. 127). Article written by Luciana Rago, published in the magazine Verdemente - February 2014
