O. A. ARIN

Doctor of Historical Sciences Independent Researcher (New York)

Wang Liushi, Chinese art Keywords:, poetry

"To comprehend, understand and create something, you just need to learn, think and do," is a phrase that belongs to our heroine. Her name is Valentina Battler, an artist and poet. Many of her paintings are signed with the Chinese name Wang Liushi - "Queen of the Weeping Willow and Poems" (her artistic pseudonym for Chinese paintings). For the first time, art connoisseurs could hear this name back in 2000 after an exhibition at the Central House of Artists in Moscow. And the first article about it appeared earlier, in 1999, in the magazine " Asia and Africa Today "(1999, N 10).

After this first publication, articles began to appear in specialized journals in connection with Wang Liushi's exhibitions, which were held not only in Moscow,but also in Oxford, Shanghai, Paris, and New York1. In particular, in China (it was August 2004), her exhibition was widely covered by the People's Daily, Zhongguo Qinnyanbao, and Xinhua news agency. At the same time, a 15-minute documentary about Wang Liushi's work was shown on central television. After the exhibitions in New York, it was talked about in the USA and in England. The famous English critic Grant Pook has published ^two extensive articles about her work2.

Here is what V. Battler herself writes about how the passion for Chinese painting came into her life: "I received a very good musical education and was a good pianist. While living in Canada for a while, I gave piano lessons. Coincidentally or not, all my students were Chinese (Chinese children have this feature - they want to learn). I saw Chinese scrolls on the walls of one of them's house and physically felt my body vibrate as I passed them. Every time I rushed to this house to see, no, not to see, but to feel a strange attraction. It's absolutely like love...

My audacity was immeasurable - I bought brushes, paints, ink, paper in their random combination and ..... I started without even knowing how to "manage" these mysterious things. I could not imagine that even the Chinese themselves write hieroglyphs for years before "striking" something that resembles an image-picture. " ³

"THING-IN-ITSELF" AND "THING-IN-OUT"

The uniqueness of V. Battler as an artist lies not only in the fact that she mastered various trends in Chinese painting and created her own Chinese handwriting.⁴ And not only in the fact that I went further, mastering not only Chinese stories and unusual technical forms. Almost every one of her paintings is accompanied by poems that deepen the understanding of paintings and at the same time can have an independent meaning.

V. Battler writes journalistic articles on the topic of art and anti-art. On this occasion, I once had to express myself as follows: "The art of Valentina Battler is not just a magnificent painting and wise poems. It is a striking weapon against modern anti-art in the form of conceptualism, formalism and other dehumanized "isms""⁵. These articles, along with paintings and poems, are most fully represented in her latest albums-books in Russian ⁶ and English ⁷ languages (before that there were three more albums ⁸).

This time, the author draws readers ' attention to poems, most of which are inextricably linked with specific paintings. Poems and sayings to paintings are a tradition of Chinese painting, in the genre of which V. Battler works. The artist appeals not only to the feelings of the viewer, but, explaining the essence of what is depicted in poems, makes him an active interpreter of what he sees. She calls it " checking the moral clock."

Without going into the analysis of paintings from the point of view of the technique of Chinese painting and without analyzing poems in the literary sense, I want to focus on what can be seen and what I see in the paintings and poems of V. Battler.

To do this, let's look at several pictures.

The painting "Bamboo", for example. If the viewer does not know the symbolic meaning of this plant, he simply enjoys the elegance of its image. If the viewer is familiar with Chinese culture, then the bamboo depicted in the picture should evoke an association with courage and perseverance, friendship and inflexibility. The strokes themselves are so energetic and rapid that they leave a translucent flight trail, a certain presence of power. Life is breathed into this symbol by verses, by comparing the plant with its symbolic meaning:

  
  
 Look at how swift  
  the 
 stem is,  
  how clear it 
 gracefully decorated  
  leaves, 
 how graceful the girlish figure is. 
  
 

Here and about a clear male mind, and about the ringing modesty of courage, beauty and harmony. How many virtues does the artist-poet see in this inflexible symbol of courage, a symbol of male honor, friendship!

  
  
 You sit down by the overgrown pond,  
 Listen to the   
   
 intoxicated wine.  
 Admiring nature's creation. 
  
 

This is a hymn to trust and friendship, the main essence of what a Person is. And all that's drawn is bamboo. The picture and verse merge together, embodying the harmony of form and content.

An unsophisticated viewer standing in front of a Chinese painting sees only the form. Again, to understand its content, you need to know the plot symbols. For a European, a chrysanthemum is just a beautiful flower, for a Chinese, it is not just a flower, but a flower that embodies wisdom, longevity and well-being. The lotus is a symbol of pure and gentle beauty, the beauty of a woman. To understand the meaning of these symbols, poems come to the rescue again.

The fact is that every picture, like any phenomenon, in Hegel's language, manifests itself as a "thing-in-itself", hiding its essence as a "thing-in-itself". To recognize wholeness, it is not enough to see only the external manifestation. Only thanks to the mind is the comprehension of the meaning, knowledge of the depth and essence of the phenomenon. (According to Hegel, when the subject is dissolved in the object, then cognition of this object or thing takes place.)

It is precisely the verses to paintings that are the "thing-in-itself", i.e., the essence of the picture, but taken out of its womb by the comprehension of reason and turned into a "thing-in-itself". The author leads the viewer to understanding, helping to combine the essence and manifestation into a single known integrity. This is the "reconciliation of the moral clock". As a result, the thing is known in its full harmony, which allows the viewer to include both feelings and reason. There is an enrichment of the viewer on a psychological level, causing an aesthetic sense of beauty.

The following couplet is prefixed to the painting "Chrysanthemum"::

  
  
 Bowing like a chaste   
    
 Calm, stately  
  chrysanthemum. 
  
 

Let me remind you that the chrysanthemum symbolizes wisdom. In this couplet - a whole layer of human relations in society. Greatness requires no fuss, no shouting. It is modest (a sign of strength) and chaste (a sign of integrity). The Eastern idea of beauty and wisdom fundamentally contradicts the modern bourgeois understanding of these symbols, when everything is for show. And the artistic execution reinforces the idea,

emphasizing the beauty of the outline of this modesty. Integrity is expressed in artistic performance in strict accordance with the Chinese canons by combining Yin (soft flower) and Yang (hard and confident framing).

The painting" Swan Lake", technically executed in a special technique invented by the author, at one time intrigued Chinese artists in Shanghai ⁹. The verses to this painting are a classic illustration of the dialectical law of unity and the struggle of opposites. Moreover, the artist, unlike some philosophers, understands that Good and Evil, although "two enemies", but they are one, "like two friends", i.e. they cannot exist without each other!

In this picture, Good and Evil collided as an internal contradiction between the swan and the external environment. And despite the philosophical unity of opposites, the complementarity of "enemy" and "friend", black and white, swan and evil fate (strokes in the form of a bird in the upper right corner), the technical softness of the swan's plumage and the rigidity of the "enemy" stroke, the conclusion of the artist-poet:

  
  
 But   
  faces are   
 their essence is different. 
  
 

This is the ethical conclusion of the artist V. Battler, her moral essence.

The painting "Bamboo and Bird" is accompanied by two lines:

  
  
 Bamboo, a funny bird   
  and a ray of light are more   
  
  . 
  
 

The author commented on these verses as follows:: "This is my life credo, what I value in life: bamboo - friendship, loyalty, inflexibility; funny bird-humor, the ability to rise above the hustle and bustle; ray of light - life itself."

I also had an association, although similar to this series, but somewhat different. For me, bamboo is the world of plants, a bird is the world of birds and animals, a ray of light is the inorganic world. Thus, there was a unity of three worlds that make up the harmony of being in human perception. And, of course, aesthetic pleasure from the artistic side of the image, its technical execution.

Carefully read the haiku - the Japanese three-line prefixed to the picture "Geisha", try to understand the associations embedded in a few words. For the author, it is probably natural: the Japanese plot is Japanese and verse.

  
  
 Snail shell put on,  
 shape of the soul took.  
 Early autumn. 
  
 

Japanese haiku is difficult to appreciate for a person of another culture, because they contain many nuances, associations, allusions, connotations generated by the original Japanese culture. But in this case, oddly enough, the picture itself explains the meaning of the poems. When you look at a woman bent over, like a snail, tightly wrapped in a kimono, like a shell, you see how the soul of this woman is bound by this shell-kimono. The "Japanese soul form" is a culture. And the moral of the picture is Early autumn (translated into English, the author gave its meaning: Youthful autumn - Young autumn). The scope of these two words is amazing: a young geisha who has already learned everything at an early age, but humbly and gracefully meets the sunset of her young soul without tears or external manifestation. And the viewer's heart sinks.

I would like to note that this poem in English allowed V. Battler to take a place in the top three English-speaking poets of the United States.

The painting "Lotus Calligraphy" conveys an amazing feeling of a single rhythm of the image and verse. If the picture is intended to express the artist's credo , it is accompanied by an aphorism, if the picture has a Japanese plot-haiku or another style of Oriental versification, and here...

  
  
 Calligraphy signs,  
 Swaying, lotus composed.  
 And he wrote a long-legged poem  
 beautiful handwriting.  
 With a slight twist,  
  transformed  
 into love, beauty  
  and purity.  
 A   
    
 spilled  
  . 
  
 

Please note that painting, as in a mirror, is reflected in poetry. Each line corresponds to the curves of the lotus lines.

And so you can perceive every picture with Chinese themes and symbols, they are inextricably fused with poems.

EUROPEAN STORIES - CHINESE TECHNOLOGY

Paintings with European themes are understood somewhat differently. As I briefly mentioned above, the verses that accompany them can also have an independent meaning. These paintings, like everything created by V. Battler, are written according to Chinese canons, enriched with Chinese symbols. But the European viewer pays attention to the plot itself, not noticing the technique, method. Although it is this technique that makes the paintings unique ¹⁰. In Chinese painting, and this is the language of expression, not images, nothing can be corrected, you need to BE.

In the verses to the paintings with Chinese themes, V. Battler explains the essence of the paintings, poetically deciphering the symbolism. In them, she acts as a guide, often distancing herself from her own interpretations. In poems with European themes, she becomes a part of her own poems. She is not afraid to show either her admiration for the plot of the picture ("Dream Dance", "Flamenco"), or her judgments ("Paganini") and even condemnations ("Pink and Blue Paris").

A new phenomenon is a series of paintings united by the title "Over the Past" (Dedicated to S. Rachmaninoff). This series is preceded by an important introduction by the author, in which she expressed the essence of the Russian composer's music and her interpretation of this music in painting (recall that the author herself is a musician by education and profession). Poems are completely self-contained as poetry, but here the artist also wants to show their connection with music, which gives a sense of three-dimensional action involving all kinds of sensory perception, when painting, poetry and music merge in unity. This is a rare phenomenon in art, as noted in articles by an English art historian, as well as in the magazine ARTnews¹¹.

The series consists of 15 paintings. In their execution, they resemble some fantastic frescoes, and associatively-the hell of Dante's" Divine Comedy". By the way, the verses themselves, written in the spirit of the truncated form of the English sonnet, resemble Dante's circles in content. I want to note that the last lines of each verse are the essence, conclusion, and ethical meaning of the picture.

  
  
 In the double ring, Night and Day are at war  
  ,  
  Where there is more light, the shadow decreases  
  . 
 So that the thread of life does not turn into dust  
    
 ,Do not let the Villain stay in your soul  
  . 
 And in this unity there is no leisure  
  ,  
  And the stronger the love,  
   the brighter the light. 
 Siblings-fear  
   and blindness  
  are always welcome where the darkness  
   is thick. 
  
 

Summing up, I want to note that in his paintings with Chinese themes, V. Battler reflects life, penetrating Eastern philosophy and not imposing his will. In her paintings with European themes, she reflects life, emotionally saturating it with moral questions, manifesting herself and offering to share her idea of life. And in the series "Over the Past", she actively participates in the struggle of Good with Evil. And this is done in dynamics, through stories and poems. First, a statement of the phenomenon of" confrontation " between Good and Evil. Then there are the various manifestations of Evil in hell and the seemingly constant confusion of Good before it. Each couplet - a hint, a wise conclusion, arming the Good-sounds like an aphorism.

Valentina Battler is often asked: "Why Chinese equipment? Isn't it possible to express all this in a European way?" Her answer: "It's very simple, just like if you were studying physics or chemistry. This is a subject that I love and have made it a profession. ... There are no lies, stupidity and formalism... The subject itself is inexhaustible... Chinese painting is an artistic language that combines unique writing, poetic rhythm, musical breathing and phrase, and the harmony of Eastern philosophy. Elegance, truth, artistic sense-this is something that is close to me..."

"The desire for purity and light" was one of the reasons for V. Battler's appeal to the Chinese style of painting. She writes about other reasons in detail in her articles and books.

* * *

In conclusion, I would like to say that the" mainstream " in contemporary art practice, in my opinion, is in agony, but does not give up because of its mass character. Primitivism or just abstraction has already become a tool for the degradation of an entire artistic generation, whether in Europe, in America, or even in the East, where the avant-garde, as a rule, is the most popular form of art.

the code word, like a bait, like a pass to the feast of money, penetrates the blood and eats away at the brain and soul, making templates out of people.

During periods of social degradation, which is also reflected in the degradation of art, it is inevitable that genuine artists, creators of beauty and truth, appear here and there, especially in the countries of the Far East. Everyone has their own handwriting, their own vision of the world, but this handwriting is meaningful and purposeful.

The more meaningless, the more distorted the life reflected in contemporary art, the stronger and more piercing the opposition of beauty, harmony, and thought must be. Valentina Battler's creative work fully meets this requirement.

¹ For the exhibition in New York (September 07-12, 2011), see: Forbes Victor Bennett. Chinese Painting with Russian Soul. The Delicate Power of Valentina Battler//Fine Art Magazine, Fall 2011, p. 12 - 13.

² http://prod-images.exhibit-e.com/www_valentinabattler_ com/ Form_and_Fancy.pdf; http://prod-images.exhibit-e.com/www_valen-tinabattler _com/Transcending_ Reality__Re_imaging_the_Canon.pdf

³ Ibid.

⁴ See: http://www.artinfo.com/gallery-guide/291771/314303/ event/797603 and in the Grant Pooke articles.

⁵ See: Arin O. Creativity of Valentina Battler, or a ray of light in the dark kingdom - http://www.olegarin.com/olegarin/Tvorcestvo_ ValentinyBettler _ili_luc_sveta_v_temnom_carstve.html

^{Battler Valentine} 6 (Wang Liushi). Music of Silence, Moscow, 2011.

^{Battler Valentina.} 7 Art of Ink Painting. New York, 2012.

^{Wang Liushi} 8 (Valentina Battler). This is My Soul, Moscow, CTC-Capital-8, 2000; Van Lushi (Valentina Battler). Rhymes and images. М, 2003: Wang Liushi (Valentina Battler). Symphony of Ink. London, Paris, Moscow, 2006.

⁹ One version of this painting was taken to the Wu Changshuo Museum in Shanghai.

¹⁰ The Chinese technique cannot be repeated. You can copy the plot, but you can't repeat the essence of the brushstroke. A rough comparison: you can repeat Pushkin's poems endlessly, but you can't copy Smoktunovsky reading Pushkin. Any copy here is a parody. You need to be Smoktunovsky - genetics, education, life experience-to express Pushkin in this way.

¹¹ http://www.ereleases.com/pic/Art% 20of%20Ink%20Painting_ Cover.pdf

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