Sesshū, the Speed of Wet Paper

One

A long vertical sheet.

Ink only.
No color.

One line divides the middle of the surface from top to bottom.

Thick and black.
A line drawn very fast.

There is no telling what it is.

The edge of a rock, the crack of a cliff — it is not clear.
It could be both.

A line drawn in haste does not declare its identity.

Around that line forms are attached.

Something like rock, something like tree.
Something like a roof as well.

Below there is a small figure.

Very small.
The size of a fingernail.

He is walking.

Above it is empty.

Mist.
Or paper.

There is no telling them apart.

Look at the gradations of ink.

Dense ink and thin ink lie against each other.
Between them it has bled.

The bled place does not look like a mistake.
Rather, form came into being there.

The speed at which the brush passed differs everywhere.

Some places are fast and some places stopped.
Where it stopped the ink pooled.

The pooled place becomes weight.

Compare with the surface in the last chapter.

The brush of Sehando was dry.
The grain of the paper was visible.

Here the brush is wet.
The paper eats the ink.

One is on top of the paper and the other goes into it.

Two

Sesshū was born in 1420 in western Japan.

He entered a temple young.
He became a monk.

He went to Kyoto.
He stayed at a large temple there.

The story goes that he learned painting from a monk-painter of the day.

There are few certain records.
There are many stories.

In his young years his name was not large.

Kyoto was the center of painting.
At the center he was one among many.

In 1467 he went to Ming China.
He went attached to an embassy.

He was around forty-seven.

Remember this year.

In the same year a great disturbance broke out in Kyoto.
A civil war that lasted more than ten years.

Kyoto burned.
Temples and houses and paintings burned together.

In the year he boarded a ship and left, his city began to fall.

In China he stayed about two years.

They say he went looking for a master.
And that he did not find one.

Instead he saw mountains and rivers.

He confirmed with his own eyes how the landscape he had seen in books actually looked.

When he returned Kyoto was still a battlefield.

He did not go back to Kyoto.
He stayed in the western provinces.

He kept a studio near Yamaguchi.

He left the center.

His painting came out there.

He painted until past seventy.

Late in life he made a broken-ink landscape and gave it to a pupil.
He attached his own writing above the picture.

Also late in life he painted an actual place.

A place where a long sandbar reaches into the sea.
Pines stand in a row.

He went, looked, and painted.

Three

Here is the argument of this chapter.

Japan is humid.

In the Prologue we saw Watsuji's division.
Monsoon, desert, meadow.

Japan is monsoon.

There is much rain and there is water in the air.

This condition acts directly on paper.

When paper takes in moisture, ink bleeds.

Hold the brush there and the ink keeps spreading.
Stop and it clots.

So the brush has to pass quickly.

Here a method appears.

A method that does not try to stop the bleeding but uses it.

Ink is set down as if thrown.
It is left to bleed.

The bled shape becomes form.

It is called haboku.
It means broken ink.

This is not the abandonment of control.
It is the transfer of control.

The paper takes over part of what the brush was doing.

Recall what Watsuji said about the person of the monsoon.

Nature gives and takes away, so one accepts rather than opposes.

Haboku is exactly that attitude.

It does not stop the paper from doing its work.

Three things follow.

First, speed sets form.

A line drawn slowly tells you what it is.
If it is rock it looks like rock; if it is tree it looks like tree.

A line drawn fast does not tell.

Only the thickness remains. The identity does not.

Then the viewer fills it in.

We cannot settle what that line in the middle of the surface is.
We look at it unsettled.

A fast line leaves the meaning open.

Second, the void becomes matter.

In the last chapter the void of Sehando was paper.
It was a place where there was nothing.

Sesshū's void is different.

It is mist.

In a humid land mist is a daily matter.
In the morning the mountain is gone and by midday it is back.

So the white area is not an empty area.
It is an area where something is.

There is a thick white thing.

Something should be stated at this point.

Sesshū is a painter who could be placed in Part Three, the void.
His void is that important.

This book placed him in the part on line.

Because his void came out of the speed of the brush.

The area left by a brush that passed quickly became mist.
The void was not there first; speed made the void.

He was placed on the side of the cause.

Third, painting an actual place does not make a map.

He painted an actual place.

He went and looked and painted, so it should be close to fact.

And that surface is not a map.

It looks as though seen from high above and also as though seen from the side.
The viewpoint is not one.

Why.

In a land of frequent mist the whole is not seen at once.

Now this much is visible, and a little later that much.

Several viewings must be joined to make one place.

So his actual place is several times laid over one another.

The actual place of a humid land is made that way to begin with.

Four

Stand before Byun Shi-Ji's surface.

In this encounter the conditions are alike.

Both lands are monsoon.

There is much rain in Japan and much rain on Jeju.
Both are surrounded by sea.

And both men used a black line.

Sesshū drew with ink and Byun Shi-Ji drew with black paint.

The material differs, but that it is black is the same.

And yet the nature of the line is reversed.

Sesshū's line bleeds.
Byun Shi-Ji's line dries.

In the same humid land, why the reverse.

Because of the wind.

The moisture of Japan settles.
There are many basins and the mountains hold it in.

Settled moisture makes things bleed.

The moisture of Jeju does not settle.
It is carried on the wind and passes.

Passing moisture makes things dry.

It is humid because the sea is beside it, and it dries because the wind is strong.

This contradiction is the condition of Jeju.

It is a land that dries while wet.

So Byun Shi-Ji's surface is not wet.
It is a painting of a humid land, and it is a dry painting.

The color of dried grass is the result.

The grass grew in rain.
And it dried in wind.

It is the color of what was wet and then dried.

Different from the color of a desert dry from the beginning.

Here it parts from O'Keeffe's dryness, seen in the last part.

One stayed dry. The other was wet and then dried.

There is a second likeness.

Both learned outside and came back inside.

Sesshū went to China, saw the landscape, and returned.
Byun Shi-Ji learned painting in Japan and returned.

Chusa, in the last chapter, learned outside and stayed outside.

The three men form a triangle.

What does one do with what was learned outside.

Chusa kept it.
Sesshū and Byun Shi-Ji poured it into their own land.

The form of the one who kept it crosses time; the form of those who poured it takes root in a place.

There is a third likeness.

Both left the center.

Sesshū did not return to Kyoto and stayed in the west.
War was the reason.

Byun Shi-Ji left Seoul and went to Jeju.

At the center one is measured against others.
At the edge one faces the land.

When the measuring stops, something becomes visible.

Now look at the difference.

The size of the figure differs.

On Sesshū's surface the person is very small.
The mountain is large and the person is small.

The person is inside the landscape.

On Byun Shi-Ji's surface the person is large.
He is at the center of the surface.

The landscape withdraws and the person remains.

What does this difference mean.

The person in a landscape painting belongs to that landscape.
He is part of nature.

Byun Shi-Ji's old man does not belong to the landscape.
He is enduring it.

One who belongs and one who endures hold themselves differently.

One who belongs walks.
One who endures stands.

Sesshū's figure is in the middle of passing and Byun Shi-Ji's old man is in the middle of staying.

And there is one more.

Sesshū was a monk.

In his painting there is a place that looks at the world from slightly apart.
Sorrow does not stay long.

Byun Shi-Ji was not a monk.

On his surface the mourning remains.

In the same monsoon land, one let go and the other held on.

Five

The paper is wet.

Set the brush down and the ink bleeds.
So the brush cannot rest there long.

Pass once and wait for the next.

While waiting, the paper works.

On the surface of a distant island the wind passes.
That too is a thing one has to wait for.

After it passes, a mark remains.

Neither man did all of it himself.

One left it to what was wet and the other to what was dry.

The bleeding is still spreading.