Turner, the Void Erased

One

There is no telling what has been painted.

The middle of the surface is bright.
A yellow light.

From that light a spiral spreads outward.

Dark gray and brown turn around it.
The brush passed drawing circles.

Below there is something black.

It will be a ship.

A line like a mast stands at a slant.
Something like smoke lies sideways.

But it is not certain.

There is no telling where the ship's outline ends and the water begins.

There is no boundary.

Water and air and ship are mixed into one mass.

Come close.

The paint is thin.

There are many rubbed places.
It looks rubbed with a hand or a cloth rather than a brush.

There are scraped places too.
The color beneath is showing.

It is not a surface only laid on.
It is a surface laid on and taken away.

The bright places are bright because paint was lifted off.
White was not put on.

It was made bright by subtraction.

Different from the earlier chapters.

Bada Shanren emptied by not setting the brush down.
Williams emptied by filling with the same thing.

Here it was painted and then removed.

It was emptied by erasing.

Two

Joseph Mallord William Turner was born in 1775 in London.

He was a barber's son.

The house was not well off.

He had a gift for drawing young.
It is said his father hung the boy's drawings in the shop and sold them.

At fourteen he entered the Royal Academy.

Very early.

He was recognized while still young.

He began with watercolor.
He drew buildings and landscapes accurately.

He travelled a great deal.

He walked England, crossed the Alps, went to Italy many times.
He painted Venice for a long time.

He liked places with water.

Sea and river and lake.

As he aged the painting changed.

Form steadily lessened.

When young he painted a ship like a ship.
Later one had to search for where the ship was.

Light increased and objects decreased.

There was argument in his own time.

There were people who said it was too vague, that it was unfinished.

He kept going in that direction.

Once he painted a steamboat in a snowstorm.

The story goes that he had himself lashed to a mast and watched the storm.

There is no verifying it.

Only that, looking at the surface, it looks like a storm seen from inside rather than from outside.

Late in life he painted a train as well.

A train running over a bridge on a rainy day.

He did not refuse what was newly made.

He died in 1851.

He left most of his work to the nation.

What he left was a great deal.

Oils and watercolors and sketches numbered in the tens of thousands.

Many of them were in an unfinished state.

He did not throw them away.

The boundary between finished and unfinished was vague for him.

A person who makes boundaries vague leaves the boundary of his own work vague as well.

Three

Here is the argument of this chapter.

The damp of England dissolves form.

In Part One we saw O'Keeffe.

In dry air the outline stood like a knife.
The far was also sharp.

Here it is the exact opposite.

When there is much water in the air, light strikes that water and scatters.

Then the boundary of a distant thing loosens.
The color thins too.

The air of an island country is so.

Surrounded by sea, the moisture does not dry.

There is much mist and rain and overcast.

To an eye that has looked long in that land, an outline is vague to begin with.

He did not see that vagueness as a defect.

He pushed it further.

He painted it vaguer than it was.

Here is the heart of this chapter.

What fūdo gave him he exaggerated.

To say that fūdo begets form does not mean the painter takes dictation.

He receives and then pushes.

If the land shows things slightly vague, the painter makes them very vague.

The condition sets the direction and the painter sets the distance.

Three things follow.

First, the void is bright.

Bada Shanren's void is white paper.
And it is quiet.

Williams's void is yellow-brown.
It is quiet.

Turner's void is light.

Bright and loud.

The empty place becomes the strongest place.

Usually a void withdraws.
Here the void comes forward.

Second, the void moves.

Because of the spiral.

The brush passed drawing circles, so the eye turns as well.

A void that holds still and a void that turns are different things.

A void that holds still is waiting.
A void that turns is an event.

Third, the void has a center.

This is the most particular.

The two earlier voids had no center.

Paper is the same everywhere and yellow-brown ground is the same everywhere.

Turner's void has a center.

There is one place where the light is brightest and everything spreads from that place.

So this void is empty and it is something.

The light is at that place.

The empty place has become the fullest place.

Four

Stand before Byun Shi-Ji's surface.

First look at what is alike.

Both looked at the sea a long time.

Turner lived in an island country.
Byun Shi-Ji lived on an island.

Both are places surrounded by water.

Both are painters of a humid land.

And both made what cannot be seen into a void.

Turner's void is light.
Byun Shi-Ji's void is wind.

Light is not seen and wind is not seen.

We do not see light; we see what light has touched.
We do not see wind; we see what wind has shaken.

Both let it be there without painting it.

Now look at the difference.

The largest difference is the distance to the sea.

Turner's sea swallows the surface.

The water is close.
Very close.

We might be in the water.

Byun Shi-Ji's sea is far.

It is near the horizon.
Thin, at the top of the surface.

Why so different.

The place of standing differs.

Turner looked from on board a ship.
Or from standing very near the water.

Byun Shi-Ji looked from a hill.

The sea seen from inside the sea and the sea that is looked at are different things.

Then the nature of the void changes as well.

Turner's void surrounds me.

Front and back and above and below are all of it.
There is nowhere to get out.

Byun Shi-Ji's void is in front of me.

It is over there.
I am standing here.

A void that surrounds is frightening.
A void in front is lonely.

Fear and loneliness are different feelings.

Fear is a matter of now and loneliness is an old matter.

So Turner's surface looks like a moment and Byun Shi-Ji's looks like a long time.

There is a second difference.

The boats differ.

Turner painted a steamboat.

It gives off smoke and cuts the water and goes forward.
It is a moving ship.

Byun Shi-Ji painted a small boat.

Even the sail is hard to see.
It is a floating boat.

Turner's ship fights the storm.

Byun Shi-Ji's boat does not fight.

Nor is there any telling whether it is leaving or returning.

In the Prologue we saw the stone walls of Jeju.

Walls that do not block but let through.

Turner's ship is on the side of blocking and Byun Shi-Ji's boat on the side of letting through.

There is a third difference.

People are hard to see on Turner's surface.

The light eats them.

There are people on Byun Shi-Ji's surface.

However strong the wind, the person remains.

A person erased and a person remaining.

On one side nature swallows the person and on the other nature makes the person endure.

There is no ranking here.

Painting what is swallowed is truth and painting what endures is truth.

Five

The light is in the middle.

The surroundings turn.
Where the ship is I cannot quite tell.

Step back and it is the same.

On the surface of a distant island there is a hill.

The sea is over there and the old man is here.
A small boat floats near the horizon.

Step back and it is seen better.

One stays vague when you step back and the other grows clear.

What about coming close.

Come close to Turner's surface and the paint is visible.
The rubbed places and the scraped places.

Come close to Byun Shi-Ji's surface and the line is visible.
The trembling places and the broken places.

On one side the trace of erasing remains and on the other the trace of drawing remains.

Both surfaces painted what cannot be seen.

One painted it by erasing and one by leaving.