The Art of Leaving Blank
Angler on a Wintry Lake is one of the most famous paintings by Ma Yuan, an ancient Chinese artist. Ma Yuan employs slender and modulated lines with a suggestion of tensile strength to depict an angler who is fishing alone on a wintery lake.
Ma Yuan is miserly about the use of ink. In his painting, less than one-tenth of the fragile and yellow-tinged fragile piece of Chinese art paper has content, which is merely a brief sketch of the angler and his boat. The rest of the paper is left blank. It is said that this painting is inspired by the poem, “江雪,” which translates to “River Snow,” whose lines state, “In a lone boat, an old man, in rain hat and straw raincoat/Fishing alone, in the cold river snow.” With that being said, people believe that the poem and artwork connect in the sense that the blank space is used to emphasize his loneliness. In a cold winter, a miserable angler with a small boat was the only life on this earth. More so, Ma Yuan does not even bother to show the audience the angler’s face; but rather, it is his hat that is at the golden section of this painting, which grabs more attention than this angler does. It is hard to not feel sympathetic about to faceless fisherman, whose existence does not seem to make a huge difference to this world.
However, the curve of the angler’s fishing line interests me. His fishing line concaves up, which violates the law of gravity, unless an external force was exerted makes it into this unnatural shape. Where is this force from?
It is this minute vibration of his fishing line that brings motion to this painting. The angler stretches out his neck to have closer look at this vibration, and his sudden motion disturbs the inertia of the boat, making it lean toward his side. The ripples from his boat resonate with the vibration of his fishing line. At this moment he is no longer alone. The life of the curious creature that gets tempted by food and bites his hook magically intersects with the life of the angler, on a depressing and snowless winter. The world is in dead silence, but the weak vibration brings a sound. Now, the angler is not alone.
Aside from the waves from his boat, the surface of the water is perfectly still. Because ancient Chinese painters believe in Daoism- which values attaining the limit of empty space while also retaining extreme stillness — Ma Yuan chooses to use this practice by leaving blank space to depict stillness. However, the vibration makes me wonder about the limitless possibilities that are hidden under the surface of the lake. It is generally known that in Chinese paintings, the blank space is called “the white,” while the ink is called “the black.” I am absorbed by the white, wondering what it represents. It could be the lake, the sky, the mist, the cloud, or the state of mind. On a paper of unimpressive size, without brilliant colors, complex layers, or thick textures, the blank, or the white, frames all possibilities. I imagine the angler on a tiny boat floating on a boundless lake, as the cold wind of winter dye both the lake and the sky white. He must feel small in front of nature, on a boundless lake covered by white mist.
However, under the seemingly quiet surface of the lake, life is flowing. The blank is not empty, but full and infinite. The absence of brushes and ink leaves space for chance to come in. The blank space entices me in, lets out human beings’ monstrous imagination. In the natural world, the color white is the combination of various colors; in this painting, the concept of “white” is analogously inclusive, embracing every kind of interpretation.
When an artist gratuitously gives the audience abundant details, the audience could find it hard to pay attention to all of them at once. However, when the details are condensed in one corner of a piece of artwork, the audience will treasure every stroke of ink on the paper. I wonder why the angler is not even wearing his straw hat and cloak on a freezing winter day? He is small compared to nature, but he must feel secure, and thus he does not need to protect himself from nature. One could say that he might even love the winter. Though he is in solitude, does it mean he is depressed or lonely or unhappy? Looking closely, I find that the curvature of the angler’s back resembles that of the waves on the lake. Doesn’t it imply that the lake actually reflects his mind? While the blankness transcends the space, and the stillness transcends the time, the angler’s mind goes beyond the mundane interpretation of human emotions. At this moment, humanity and nature finally unite.
I leave the angler after I feel the resonance in the motion of this painting because my presence will disturb his transcendence in solitude. He is part of the blank. The angler is neither alone nor lonely. He is free from restraints, and he uses the void around him to get me absorbed, lost, and found myself again. He is neither alone nor lonely.
Art is born in these impossible intersection points of contradictory concepts, where motion and stillness, blank and fullness, solitude and resonance, all come together.
