Painting the Dao

12 freedom. In both cases qi pointed to something that transcended the con- ventional and the formulaic. Closely related is the term guai ( 怪 ), which carries meanings such as strange, grotesque, uncanny or even monstrous. While qi often implies a marvellous singularity, guai suggests an aesthetic that verges on the unset- tling or the absurd. It is frequently used in reference to rocks (as in guaishi , 怪石 , ‘strange stones’), and reflects a taste for forms that disrupt symmetry, regularity and normative beauty. Yet even guai , in the Chinese tradition, was not excluded from serious connoisseurship. Quite the opposite: it was recognised as an important aesthetic category, especially in Daoist, Buddhist and literati contexts, where the grotesque could signify natural spontaneity, spiritual independence or even cosmic resonance. The importance of eccentricity in Chinese art was both philosophical and social. Daoist thought prized naturalness ( ziran ) and non-action ( wuwei ), encouraging artists to abandon artificial polish in favour of spontaneity and freedom. Chan Buddhism valued sudden insight and unorthodox expres- sion, often embracing the broken, the awkward or the wildly expressive as signs of inner awakening. In both traditions the irregular was perceived to be more truthful than the refined. In literati culture this became a mark of personality and authenticity. Artists cultivated eccentricity not to provoke but to distinguish. They chose subjects such as twisted trees, weathered stones and awkward compositions because these forms resisted conformity and suggested a world beyond appearances. Few artists expressed this more vividly than Wu Bin (act. 1590–1626), the late-Ming painter of Ten Views of Lingbi Rocks . His monumental hand- scroll presents ten strange stones, each isolated in space, their jagged forms rendered with obsessive detail. These are not landscapes in miniature, but eccentric personalities, portraits of qi and guai . Wu Bin’s scroll was not a marginal curiosity; it belonged to a world of cultivated taste where grotes- querie was admired. This obsession with the strange extended beyond painting into narra- tive. In one story, ‘The Ethereal Rock’ by Pu Songling (1640–1715), the Qing-dynasty master of the strange tale, a collector is offered a beautiful and unusual rock – dark, misty, shaped like a miniature cloud-wreathed mountain. The price? Several years of his life. He accepts immediately. The tale is fantastical, but its sentiment is grounded in truth: the literati desire for the rare and wonderful could override even mortality. To possess the truly strange was to brush up against the sublime. Water, Pine and Stone Retreat Collection Ten Views of Lingbi Rocks (detail) Wu Bin, c.1610