Extract from: Beyond the Stage of Time, Volume I Realised Realms. The Master of the Water, Pine and Stone Retreat

12 13 self as to what art means at all levels; how it works, why we do it, its role in culture and in civilisation. Th ere is endless opportunity to explore these things philosophi- cally as well as practically, in ways that are every bit as important to the resulting art- work itself. And there are more practical aspects too; planning and re fi ning painting in progress, or creating a vision for the next one. G Th e distinction you make between art and cra ft is an interesting one, which you refer to several times in your recent book about understanding art. Can you expand on that a bit? Isn’t pretty much everything art, de fi ned in the book as ‘any creative response to experience’? M I have no problem at all with a theoretical distinction between cra ft and art. Th ere are real and important di ff erences in the creative experience of both, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. My point in the book was that there is a very fl exible and indistinct borderline between them, and it is not one that can be de fi ned for others. Whether something is art or not is a subjective, individual judgement depending on many factors beyond its products; for many people, that judgement might even change from day to day. Th e overall process has a deep and profound impact on peo- ple’s perception and understanding of art, another theme that recurs throughout the book. It is o ft en the case that what is most meaningful and profound is not easily nailed down by de fi nition. Th e process of art that is most profound is, quite literally, beyond mere description. It’s an old artistic cliché that if one could explain in words what one was doing, there would be no need to write a symphony or paint a picture. You might well ask why novelists write, in that case, if words aren’t enough to explain profound ideas. But I’d say that even in the greatest literature, the real impact comes from be- yond the words. It’s about the tapestry they create when woven together, in the same way that a symphony is vastly more than mere notes and pauses. G You seem hesitant about de fi ning the di ff erence between art and cra ft . Do you see any real distinctions between them? M Well, I’m trying to avoid identifying cra ft at the level of a product as the term still carries a lingering whi ff of dismissal. But one might sum it up by saying that the cra ft sman expects satisfaction, while the artist expects a more ecstatic result, some- thing profound. Th e cra ft sman produces, the artist explores. But then a di ffi culty arises when a found object, such as a bottle rack or a urinal, can become serious art simply by being selected and presented as such. I think a useful illustration of the point might be found in a Chippendale chair of a particular design. It would be sensible to see the original, with its preparatory design work and functional consider- ation, as more of an art form than those that were mass-produced to exactly the same design therea ft er. Someone making a precise copy today might sensibly be described as a cra ft sman rather than an artist. But then of course you come up against the proposition that if a modern cra ft sman did so to fool a knowledgeable buyer, then as much as we might decry his motive, we can still recognise a degree of creative input. Th e theory I propose in the book focuses judgements about art more on the process as a whole than only on the product, so it makes de fi nition at the level of the product unreliable. G Understood. We’ll leave that to individual judgment, and move on. Can you tell me a bit more about how you acquired the necessary skills involved to put these ideas into practice? You mentioned C. C. Wang’s role, but how much input and in fl uence did you receive from other artists? M I should just clarify that I didn’t start entirely bere ft of artistic ability. Skills in this context include not just the production of art but understanding what meaningful art is in the fi rst place; how it works, what e ff ects it has on the artist and the audience. As I mentioned, I’ve been immersed in the art world all my life, thanks to the family art business and my own deep interest in the subject. By the time I started painting, I’d already spent nearly two decades collecting and studying art. As I became more interested in Chinese painting, I spent many years studying hundreds of great works by both living and long-dead artists. Th ere is a Chinese concept around learning any- thing creative, which is along the lines of, ‘Reading ten thousand books, and walking ten thousand miles, then beginning to create’. It’s a kind of ancient precursor to the ‘ 10 , 000 hours of practice’ idea about acquiring expertise, recently popularised by Malcolm Gladwell. You’ll remember that in the book, I make the case that Chinese art is centuries more mature and advanced than western art; so it’s no real surprise that ideas like these pre-date the West by centuries too. So, long before you need the technical skills you are re fi ning the visionary and conceptual skills. But more speci fi cally, I also learned from all the artists I worked with, of course. As a dealer and agent, you’re dealing very closely with the works of the artist; you can’t write catalogues, gather an archive, collect their works and exhibit them without learning a lot from them. But some of them were more proactive as teachers, more generous with time and advice than others. G Can you name some of the people who had a particular in fl uence on you? What drew you to them, and them to you? M Yes, of course. I still clearly recall the sequence as I slowly added artists during the period from just before 1970 into the early 1990 s. I worked with many artists in the early years who were in fl uences without necessarily being teachers. One of the earliest was Lui Shoukwan ( 1919 – 1975 ), probably the most important and in fl uential of all Hong Kong artists. His later works were aimed at a Buddhist dis- tillation of understanding; he was aiming at the essentialisation of the subject, mostly landscape and lotus, with the result that in Western terms it became more and more abstract, and his con fi dence in doing so was impressive. In some ways, his works resemble those of Franz Kline and other abstract expres- sionists; not so much because he was in fl uenced by western artists (although he was aware of them, of course) but because he had arrived at a similar point from his own tradition. Th at gave his works great authentic power for me. I was introduced to Lui Shoukwan’s works through a friend of his in the UK, who just strolled into my gallery one day and was impressed by the potential of the lui shoukwan Lotus , 1970 Water, Pine and Stone Retreat Collection, 21 . 1 . 1639