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Dedicated to Bamboo, again

(Picture: photographs by DS)

Bamboo 2

(23.6.2023) Perhaps a question that only a westerner can raise? No, rather a question that a curious and interested westerner has to raise: why, if we are told that a bamboo generally symbolizes and often represents an upright gentleman in Chinese painting, due to its growing upright, why then, why do we see, in one of the most quoted and shown, one of the most famous and representative bamboo paintings, a curved bamboo branch, curved in, let’s say: an s-shape?

This painting is by Northern Sung painter Wen Tong; the Google Art Project has it; and it is shown, respectively reproduced in the more specialized literature on bamboo painting. Not every book on Chinese painting does feature a reproduction of this painting, many classics actually do not (and I have checked them), and I am left without an answer by specialists.

Perhaps they do not have an answer. Perhaps the s-shape causes an irritation, because it is meant to be; but I don’t know.

So what I can do is: to think, to speculate, and to come up with a number of speculative answers, despite my obvious not-knowing (which I do concede). Perhaps someone else may come up with better answers. And perhaps even a specialist.

Theory number one) This bamboo is growing from a cliff. It is growing into the void, and since wind and weather are harsh, an s-shape is the result. Which means: this bamboo is particularly upright. It is s-shaped, due to exterior influences which it does withstand: a particularly upright bamboo, although it is not shown explicitly as being upright. Which means: this is also a powerful painting, since it does represent the essential only indirectly. We have to understand first that conditions are harsh, then we have to ask the question for the s-shape, and then we also see, with our inner eye, respectively can interpret this bamboo, which to our surprise has appeared in an s-shape first, as being upright. This bamboo is changing before our very eyes, given that we think (and raise a question). This bamboo is also a teacher. And it is asking as now: how do you know that theory number one gives the right answer, because there could be theory number two?

Right: Theory number two) This bamboo is not a bamboo but the picture of a bamboo. It does appear like a briefly appearing vision rather than a real bamboo before our eyes; indicating that, although the bamboo generally does grow upright, the world is not always as it is expected to be by man. Or it only seems to be, but only on the surface (with this vision speaking of reality and not of the surface). Or: the vision can be different from reality per se. We, as humans, can think the world differently, but it is easier imagined than actually done, since we – perhaps – cannot change the bamboo per se (can we?). And at the same time: there might be, in reality, bamboo trees denying what they are expected to do. Perhaps this bamboo is a denier, a gentleman-denier. Perhaps it only appears as such, or perhaps it is though as one, envisioned as one. Only in theory, but with this theory having found a visual expression, one which has appeared as a brief vision, but has now endured for many centuries.

Okay, also this bamboo has sort of acted as a teacher. So we, as pupils, have now to ask back: but what if it is theory number three?

Theory number three) This painting was done by one of the Chinese painters that did not accept the rules, the conventions as to how Chinese painting has to be done, what Chinese painting is, and more specific: as to what is expected to be done in the frame of the genre of bamboo painting. The painting might represent subversiveness, in Chinese culture, or perhaps only in bamboo painting. It might represent the rebellious side of artists and the rebellious side of people, in view of dull conventions, or harsh political weather. If the mainstream says: a bamboo is to be represented as growing upright, and that this growing upright shows, let’s say, a morally upright Confucian man, the rebellious painter might say: no, my bamboo shows the upright man, rebelling against the Confucian culture, against a corrupt elite, against, in a word, false uprightness. In a world which is has turned upside down, the s-shaped bamboo is the upright bamboo. And we are reminded of theory number one: under harsh conditions, here: social and political conditions, s-haped means: someone has been confronted with particularly harsh weather, in terms of harsh social conditions, but has not broken, not even under such conditions. Also under such conditions upright living had been possible – to some degree. Perhaps a life of inner exile, one that had to adapt. But it did unfold – in an s-shape – which means that this painting is postulating, perhaps, that this is more realistic, if we think of gentleman-culture, to think of moral uprightnress in times of unjust rule and tyranny – as being s-shaped.

Below again my photograph of an urban bamboo. Growing from a cliff, as one might say. And perhaps, one day, I will see this bamboo growing in an s-shape. But perhaps not, since times are not (yet completely) upside down, which means that this bamboo, perhaps, is asking the question of what the conditions might be, of being able to grow upright. By growing from above. Into the void space, and appearing in, or disappearing into visions of bamboo paintings that are nothing but dreams and fantasies of a curious observer from the West.

Selected Literature:
[the best I found on bamboo painting is] Karl-Heinz Pohl, Symbolik und Ästhetik der chinesischen Bambusmalerei, in: Zeitschrift für Qigong Yangsheng 2007, pp. 32-47 [PDF]

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