In the hustle and bustle of the city we rarely raise our heads to observe the sky. When we glance through Observation, Sky we seem to receive a kind of unanticipated inspiration, reminding us once again to renew our investigation into the city around us.
Ralph Fasanella previously depicted the rules of life as revealed in urban exteriors. The first lesson he taught us is that the windows in his paintings which invariably attract our attention are the stages for individual or social activity, each window is the trace of lived experience. The walls he has turned into murals, the words he has inscribed on the streets, and the people reflected in glass form the second lesson, telling us that the city has already exhausted all of its intrinsic space. The home is the third lesson. Never harboring the fruits of labor and never allowing for gratuitous material nor leisure time, it amounts to nothing more than a living space. Expressing his resistance to these rules of urban living, Fasanella wrote one phrase on the wall of an apartment complex: “Lest We Forget.”
It is precisely in Fasanella’s resistance to the urban as a space robbing people of emotion and history that Xu Jiang perceives artistic genius. In the cityscape, there is nothing more awesome in its rigidity and latent destructive capacity than power lines. Artists generally agree that such things should never find their way into paintings. Xu Jiang, when observing the heavens, recommences an investigation of these cold, lifeless things. From their horizontal couplings and vertical divisions he generates poetry. One can say that as Observation, Sky is an observation of the limits of heaven, looking at power lines cut up the sky thus also generates profound artistic meaning:

The farthest point of observation is the sky, observation is thus man and heaven mutually observing. Returning to the root we find the heart of man and the vault of the sky observing each other.
The distance of observation is not without limit. Conversely, this is delineation, a kind of delineation of limits.

These words bring to mind Cezanne’s “organized spirit” and Kant’s warning against imposing rules on nature. This is also the philosophical milieu from which Mondrian emerged to investigate the order of the universe. From the Golden Mean he saw that the highest realm of art was structural cohesion and the beauty of logical brevity. From his own mind he fabricated his own fictitious code of sensation. Xu Jiang grabs hold tightly when inspiration beckons, taking those things apprehended in the moment of observation and rendering them with a heaven-shaking certitude. Thus is artistic sensibility produced. It comes from straight, unbreakable lines which span the borders of heaven. It comes from the inevitable proportionality between two lines. It comes from the effect of lines extended to the structural metonymy of each formative element in a composition. It comes from the unity of the line’s conceptual integrity. Handling this kind of line is a creative act of pure spirituality, requiring not design but Kunstwollen (the will to sculpt), the disegno of Vasari. Thus, artistic sensibility is not merely a kind of fascination, it is not simply flowers in water or the moon reflected in a mirror, rather it is clarity, exactitude, and concision. This is the axis which slashes through Xu Jiang’s heart. The moment strategy is decided, a breath of purity is exhaled, reaching a realm of limpidity uncontaminated by earthly dregs, directly indicating the limit of observation, which is to say: Plato’s theoretical Republic.

Nevertheless, the distance of observation is not only limited in the limitless, it also hints at the concept Der Teil und des Ganze. In the Sutra of Pu Xian, Su Da’s observation of the city obtains a kind of direct experience. Xu Jiang observes:

There are a million skyscrapers in the city, all palatial in their beauty, as wide as the heavens. These buildings do not cancel each other out. In their mutual harmonization they protect each other’s independence, and enact a kind of wonderful blending together into organized form. Su Da sees that he himself is not only within the city, but also within each and every skyscraper. Every element contains the whole and is also contained within the whole.

What Xu Jiang’s works seek to portray is precisely this kind of world where discursive speech is doomed to lose its acintya (unexpectedness). No wonder 2000 years ago Laozi said, “He who knows cannot convey and he who conveys does not know.”

Much Like the Difficulty in Separating Hydrogen and Oxygen from Molecules of Water, We Cannot from within Definitively Isolate This Side and That

Delineating from observation implies expectation, explanation, as well as trial and error. Or, rather, as St. Thomas Aquinas succinctly put it: there is nothing in the intellect which does not first exist in emotion.
Shao Yong once said, “Taking things to observe things, that is nature. Taking myself to observe things, that is feeling. Nature is just and thus is clear. Feeling is partial and thus is shrouded.” He went on, “I am emotion, emotion is defect, and defect is confusion. Things are natural, nature is divine, and the divine is unclouded.” Neo-Confucianism often emphasized the lofty position of Reason at the expense of emotion.
Some 250 years after St. Thomas Aquinas, C. Bovillus (1470-1533), in his book De Intellectu, revised Aquinas’ conclusion writing, “In the realm of the senses there is nothing that does not first find existence in the intellect. And in the intellect there is nothing which does not first find existence in emotion.” The first is suitable for angels, the second for mankind.
A mystic such as Plutarch would certainly agree with the following sentiment:

Dead is the man of yesterday, for he is passed into the man of today; and the man of today is dying as he passes into the men of tomorrow. Nobody remains one person, nor is one person; but we become many persons.
 
From any point of significance, the root of human nature is that Man uses his reason to separate things into their constituent parts and Man uses his emotion to bring them back together. Evolutionary theory has told us our lives stretch back unbroken 3.8 billion years to pre-cellular life forms. Thus the eyes which we use to observe cannot be completely separated from knowledge of our observational history. Gunther Wachtershauser once proposed a most interesting hypothesis, that the origin of the primitive eye was closely related to the advent of sunlight as a source of sustenance. Eyes helped organisms search for sunlight and helped organisms avoid damage from sunlight’s harmful rays. The emergence of eyes therefore was a long-term environmental adaptation.
Adapting to sunlight as a potential source of food, eyes thus became imbricated with environmental knowledge, similar to Kant’s spatial and temporal knowledge possessed of a high level of common theoretical understanding. This knowledge made short-term investigation possible, allowing organisms the possibility of either being seduced into or to reject outright. It also allowed organisms the possibility of making preparations against environmental change. Thus the emergence of a high level of common theoretical understanding (i.e. the emergence of sensory organs) predates investigation (i.e. the function of sensory organs). Not only does it makes investigation possible, but inserts it beneficially into the behavioral toolkit of organisms. As such it is an adaptation which has itself been shaped by the law of trial and error. Theory (scientific or otherwise) is an attempt, an invention. It is not the natural result of a great number of investigations nor is it the knowledge crystallized from a great amount of material.
Obviously the early emergence of oculatory organs was a momentous accomplishment. This invention retains many of its original characteristics but has also undergone considerable evolution. We are exactly like animals, except that we have forgotten that sunlight is sustenance. Perhaps only in observing the sunflower can we recollect a scrap of that knowledge. Thus does theory advise us that we have only to open wide our eyes and let the material granted by God or by our senses flow inward and be completely digested by the cerebrum in order to obtain knowledge.
Christopher Isherwood’s most famous work I Am a Camera expresses this point of view. But when he chose this subject he forgot an important lesson, that a camera must have its own a priori intrinsic organizational structure. He forgot that there exists a primitive camera and there exists a camera which has evolved to astound humanity. He forgot that in feeble light a shoddy camera cannot capture its object while an excellent camera produces images which perfectly symbolize our demands. A good camera well-adapted to the environment is also well-adapted to the demands we make on it. That is to say, well-adapted to our situation, implicit in the camera is the evolution of our own valuations. But there are many things a camera cannot do. For example, a camera cannot improve itself, it cannot pose new questions, nor can it propose future solutions.
Our eyes are miracles which cannot be profitably compared to cameras or mirrors, because observation can never be completely extricated from knowledge.

Quietly Opening Up to Elemental Artistic Experience

A scholar of old once noted, “Observation can indeed find its return path.” For the artist, this means a return to poetry, much like for the western artist it means returning to music. In China all art returns to poetry. For these poets, the highest expression of art was to observe reeds and autumn water, that is to say, to observe the exterior and apprehend the inner essence.

Catkins drift and sway in the distance, white dew like frost:
The one people call Beauty, is there in the water.

Catkins, these are just reeds. For several thousand years now this poem has, uncounted times, recalled to mind imagination and observation. The Song of Climbing Youzhou Tower, dating back to the Tang Dynasty, and the wonderful landscapes of the Song and Yuan Dynasties all subconsciously partake of this observational élan. In his poem Observing Reeds he writes, “The deepest recess of the heart, we have once before reached this place.” This is the ancient music cascading slowly down into the shifting images accumulating in the swaying reeds.
The observation implied in Observing Reeds is not the bright eyes of the stars or the moon quietly peering down upon the roofed dwellings of men, rather it is the repeated viewing of scene accumulating scene, wind propelling wind. The painter loses no time in changing the vector of his pen, projecting the heavens and earth into the field of his vision:

What can unite you with the world? Countless reeds in the moonlight. (Lu You)

Moonlight dancing enticingly on the snow-white reed flowers, that is the light of the painter’s spirit, the poet’s soul, and also the divine magic of the ink on paper. “This kind of ancient ink painting, takes the landscape and moves it further away. The shore of the lake becomes a distant view.” (Xu Jiang) Thus, the further away it moves, the more the colors of the ink manifest the heart: the lower the horizon, the smaller the object, the more striking the color of the ink. Move it further away, the color almost floats, move it still further away, the ink almost disappears. Push it to the very end and the ink illuminates all sides. The ink manifests artistic sensibility, releasing purity and nobility into the air.

The wind rises and reed flowers fall like snowflakes, leaving behind bare stems one after another,
First light of misty dawn, I mistake them for plum blossoms.

Heaven and earth like a dream, countless withered stems, in the main this is the iconology delineated in Observing Reeds, the lingering desolation of autumn dew and catkin reeds. An ancient scholar once observed, “The desolation of winter is the most difficult to capture in form.” It elevates to untold heights the heart of heaven and earth. Li Shangyin upon leaving his home and observing a multitude of reeds felt precisely this kind of exhilaration:

Tops of the catkins, it is the height of summer, at the post station I want to brush the dirt from my clothes.
Last year I was a wanderer in the South, now I am a different man.
Now is the time for great endeavors, but my precious darling pines over the lake.
A clear sound at midnight from the ruined city, but I cannot depart.

A wild, piercing emotion and you’re off, this is the soul observation. This is elemental understanding leaving the brush and flying forth. It is also an unnamable melancholy and cold, plaintive feeling deep within. It is like overhearing some nameless ancient music: though the tune is without sadness, yet the heart is chilled. This is because:

Reed flowers in the wild, the sound of slumbering autumn. (Wu Rong)

To observe is to delineate, a division yielding many meanings. Observing Reeds anneals these meanings together then disperses them. In the placid appearance of a painting, there is much happening: now rising, now uniting, now turning, now sundering, reduplicating the literary vision that lies at the heart of the myriad springs and from which springs life itself. Following the movement of the brush, the rabbit leaps up, the magpie flies low, autumn sounds startle the lone duck from his roost as roseate clouds descend. Here is yet another allusion symbolizing the reed catkins: Zhuge Liang upon seeing such hospitality from the inhabitants of Dongwu sighed saying, “Who has ever seen such marvelous reeds and such fine people.”

Works of Art Are the Most Obvious Result of This Manner of “Seeing”

From any point of view, all of humanity’s creations are works of art, only artistic works have more requirements. Jean-Paul Sartre once said, “It is one thing to apprehend directly an image as an image, and another thing to shape ideas regarding the nature of images in general.” I believe the artist’s task is to use his works to make us more aware of the world. Artists must unceasingly struggle with observation, as in a great competition between mortals and deities. They dream about climbing on the shoulders of giants to steal the mysteries of the heaven, because turning observation into a work of art is the most heart-rending of tasks:

Look, yet I cannot see,
It disappears from right in front of me
Before I can figure out what it is,
It changes.

Quietly Opening Up to Elemental Artistic Experience

Xu Jiang once said, “Observation is not simply looking into the distance, it is also to be observed from afar.” This explains how in his series of observational works the viewer of the painted images is simultaneously observed by the images. That is to say, the original viewer, placed outside an imaginary space, is then also being viewed. From any point of view the viewer becomes a work of art. This is basically the viewer produced by the viewer viewing the work. This is the identity taken on by the sunflower in the course of observation. In Xu Jiang’s work, the sunflower personifies this particularly ancient artistic sensibility:

The space between earth and the heavens, one must have learning to be a man.
Describing with clarity and grace the things of this world, who would not respect you?
September heat is widely known, March is certainly Spring’s month.
The wind of autumn is cold, rely on yourself to leave the dusty world behind. (Liang Dong)

This uniquely lofty breadth of mind has been praised without end by poets throughout the centuries. The sunflower swaying in the wind and rain looks far into the distance for a sympathetic friend. Dai Sulun’s poem has relevance here:

Today you see the petals fall, tomorrow you see them open.
Flowers bloom and face the sun, flowers fall the stems are almost dead.
You are not a common flower, and time is limited.

In the same vein as Dai Sulun, Yuan Haowen is a poet who also venerates the sunflower. In a preface to the Poem of Seven Phrases he wrote of the unparalleled exhilaration in his heart:

One autumn in Luoyang there were sunflowers, they were planted south of the nunnery. The following June they blossomed. The abbot overflowed with praise for them exclaiming how happy they made people. These sunflowers indeed could be them.

This poet who held most dear the thought “action can embrace all things and come to the aid of everything under the sky while quietude alone can achieve nobility and oppose the vulgarities of the world,” in the mutual embrace of the sun and flower, he wandered between past and present, and became the friend the sunflower had so patiently looked for:

The Great Earth is wordless. Observation elicits from it a silent narrative of itself. And from this narrative: all. (Xu Jiang)

Thus, in this duplicitous, fame-hungry world, where lies trump truth in the pursuit of gain, and where the true spirit of academic study is on the wane, this kind of excellence, this kind of man, antiqua homo virtute et fide, who, relying on his own will, forges ahead towards profundity stands alone in his “lonely gaze towards the far distance”:

Frost and a light breeze soon it will be August, every kind of flower falls to the ground.
Dead flowers, no one willing to look, there is only you to incline your head towards the sun. (Liu Fen)

Ever since the Song Dynasty, the sunflower, as an artistic subject, has moved painters to take up the brush. Zhao Chang painted their delightful posture. Yuan Yi once inscribed the following passage on the yellow flowers of a painting, “Golden cups, spring overflowing.” Conversely, the sunflower as thematic material entered into Western painting rather late. In the ancient Greek myth of Clytie turning into a sunflower, for example, the sunflower symbolizes the eternal will. Under Van Gogh’s pen, they evinced a rarefied air which in no way makes the viewer ponder over the painter’s particular melancholy. In his lifetime Van Gogh’s great hopes met with repeated annihilation, yet his paintings never resort to misfortune to move the viewer. Thus his sunflowers, even though they are the common variety, Heianthus annuus, his style of rendering them is possessed of unparalleled genius. Tang Dynatsy poet Li Sheyong once wrote: “Do not let any common people view these flowers, newly opened, golden hues in their prime. Ride the autumn wind up to heaven, and present them as garlands to the maiden in the palace of the sun.” Almost as if it had been written for Van Gogh himself.
Xu Jiang inscribed the following passage beneath his sunflowers, using a particularly Chinese method of paying his respect to Van Gogh: “The sunflowers chopped down, I want to speak but am confused; my heart is full of inspiration, there is only I to know it.” Perhaps in his admiration of Van Gogh’s sunflowers he has found his true identity; in the midst of their mutual observation, becoming their true friend. Just as in his own poem on Observing Sunflowers he writes:

Observation produces a traveler. The sundered observation, however, causes him to stay within.

Invariably Becoming the Proof of What You Look at and How

“What you look at” and “how you look” inform each other, rely on each other, and together form the heart of “sundered observation.” That is to say, the images which we see in Xu Jiang’s work are only form and superfice, the results of direct perception; while “observation” itself is their spirit, the substance which they express. Because “of the visual and the auditory, the eye is the primary portal, the multitude of images, their substance bequeathed to the gods, and thus do we know their nature; between the visual and the auditory, the ear is the second portal, sound becomes speech, contained in the mouth, it nourishes the soul.” Furthermore:

Segnius irritant animos demissa per aurem,
Quam quae sunt oculis subiecta fidelibus.

(Perceived through the reliable eye,
More moving than what is heard by the ear.)

Because of this reliance on the eye to carry out detailed analyses of the act of observation, Western civilization since antiquity has failed to achieve the subtlety of Chinese civilization. If we look back at the Er Ya, China’s earliest dictionary, we find fifteen characters each expressing detailed variations of “to look.” Even counting the Shuo Wen Jie Zi, another early dictionary, not even half the vocabulary for “to look” is captured. There are nearly fifty characters for “to look,” expressing every vantage point and every subtle aspect of the many variations on observation. It is not difficult to surmise that for the patient reader it conveys a deep and lasting impression. If we say there is a force that has impelled Xu Jiang over the last dozen years in his movement from space to the easel, from concept to the canvas in retracing the history of art, then certainly it is that of ancient Chinese civilization, that deep fount of inspiration, which has trumped Western philosophy in its impact on him. After all, the Bible teaches:

Be wary of those who would use sophistry and deception to do you harm.

Xu Jiang has basically employed this multivalent vocabulary of “how one looks” to develop his rich methodology whereby he occupies various positions to observe the same material. The result is the formation of indexical images, a kind of polyoptic visual field. There is one major pillar which supports this visual field: the horizon. Here the horizon alters the landscape and the landscape alters the horizon. Just as Mr. Gao Shiming has written,

“In Xu Jiang’s works, the strategic choice of the aerial view gives increasing importance to the horizon as a structural element in the painting. What Xu Jiang paints are those things which have disappeared or are about to disappear, thus his vigorous, slanting brush strokes succeed in instantiating this “sudden appearance.” This sudden appearance is not the re-birth of nature. Here the landscape refracts humanity’s historical urban space, capturing the passage of the affairs of man and desolation of the fields after harvest. This is how history can be both “life” and “destiny.” Disappearance and appearance, the two directions united in the line of the horizon, both are inextricable from the way we observe, imbricated in the world and in history, giving rise to one another and mutually evolving.”

Xu Jiang’s works are oriented toward history. We see that he never ceases to use words to deepen the meaning of his works and thereby transcend the limitations inherent in the image. In so doing he re-emphasizes the traditional importance of painting and poetry. In the realm of contemporary art very few have the courage to marry these two together.
When dedicating observation to the re-constitution of observation itself, is the situation also thus? Once the course is set, at the center appears an unfillable emptiness, that is to say, an “other”:

This otherness, this
“Not-being-us” is all
There is to look at
In the mirror, though no one can say
How it came to be this way.

If we conclude that meaning is formed only by observation, then it cannot simultaneously provide a position for the viewer who stands outside “observation.” What is needed is sōzein ta phainónmena (salvation of phenomena), or, rather, complete identity with experience. This kind of contradiction in creation produces a new relationship between viewer and image. In order to elaborate this new relationship, we point ourselves down the unending return path. Perhaps “sundered observation” includes not only Occam’s Razor, but another kind of metaphorical iconology as well: “observation” as an arrow. A chapter from the Treatise on Art and Literature quotes The Duke of Tai’s Art of War as saying, “The divinity of the arrow is called observation.” Thus, a chapter in the Daoist Classic of Bao Bu Zi says: “The arrow’s observation, that is the star of Zhang.” The Zhang star is located in the eighteenth constellation, the Zhu Que star is located in the seventh constellation, thus the Book of Heaven in the Classic of History states: “Zhang and Su, in the kitchen treating guests to a cup.” Sima Lu states, “Su, that is a kind of food,” while the Er Ya dictionary has, “Zhang and Su, the bird’s neck.” Guo Pu says, “Su, that is where birds eat.” Zhang Shoujie said, “The sixth star is Zhang and six, that is Su, and so the master of the celestial kitchen bestows upon the guest a cup.” As you can see, no matter what object our mind’s arrow seeks out, that is the direction in which divinity gallops. Xu Jiang’s observations, like those of Plato before him, provide the “Eye” inside a sumptuous spiritual feast.