Water Matters
July 2008
Banner photo: R.Maro/version-foto.de
Su Dongtian--The Unity of Life and Art
Su Dongtian meets with SGI President Ikeda in Hong Kong, February 1998
[Photos ©Seikyo Shimbun]
The herald of spring--the plum blossom is indeed a wonderful flower. It blooms in winter, before all the other flowers. The red plum blossom shines boldly against the snow, braving the cold. This spark of color, like a tiny snippet cut from the scarlet clouds of sunrise, sets off a glorious blaze of spring flowers of all colors of the rainbow.
Winter always turns to spring. The plum blossom is a messenger, bringing proof of the unchanging rhythms of the universe. The white plum blossom, which flowers even earlier than the red, is a true flower of snow, gleaming like a sliver of silver starlight. When moonlight falls on white plum blossoms, white on white, only the fragrance of the flowers guides us to the tree, a symbol of life's rebirth.
The Chinese often talk about the "unity of poetry and painting." When I met Professor Su Dongtian from China's Shenzhen University, I felt I had encountered a person whose life epitomized the complete "unity of the artist and his work."
Professor Su's mentor, the painter Pan Tianshou (1898-1971), was attacked as a reactionary by the Gang of Four during the Cultural Revolution (1966-76). The persecution he underwent led to his death. He was one of the four great painters of contemporary China, and he should have been treated as one of his homeland's great treasures. Professor Su was his last direct disciple.
"My mentor was one of the first to be attacked," said Professor Su. "The persecution then extended to me, his disciple. I retired to my wife's family's home for 15 years, taking no part in revolutionary activities. I concentrated on my studies and on painting all those years.
"Why? Because, before he died, my mentor said to me: 'China's long history and tradition will not be completely destroyed and erased by the Cultural Revolution. You must study painting and history. When the destruction of the Cultural Revolution has come to an end, people like you will be needed. Great talents mature slowly, they say. The time when you can exercise your true potential will come, without fail. That is why now, when you can do nothing else, you must study--for your country, for the people, and for yourself.'"
What a fine mentor Pan Tianshou was! Professor Su says that his mentor's voice directed him at every crucial turning point in his life. When he graduated from high school, he took the entrance exams for an art college, but somehow the test and sample painting he submitted never arrived at the school. At a loss about what to do, he entered the history department of Hangzhou University. But Mr. Pan encouraged the disappointed young man. "Studying history is better than going to art school," he told his pupil. "If you want to become a great painter, you must read many, many books and travel a long, long path. You can learn Chinese painting without attending an art school. I learned it on my own, and you can too."
The young Su Dongtian followed his mentor's advice. While studying history at the university, he received instruction in Chinese painting under Pan Tianshou during his spare time. Then, in 1966, the year of his graduation, the Cultural Revolution began, marking the start of a long, cold winter.
Painting of a plum tree by Su Dongtian
Ten years passed. His mentor's tragic death in the midst of the turmoil was seared forever in his memory.
Another five years passed. Finally, in 1981, Su Dongtian received his master's degree from the Chinese Academy of Art with honors. His master's thesis was on the work of Pan Tianshou. The mentor is the root; the disciple, the flower. The triumph of the disciple is the triumph of the mentor. At last, spring had come for both disciple and mentor.
An artist is his work--or so the saying goes. Following his mentor's instructions, Su Dongtian read many, many books and traveled a long, long road, striving to improve and develop himself. Today, his broad learning encompasses Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism as well as philosophy and history of East and West, ancient and modern.
His groundbreaking commentary on the ancient Chinese work The Classic of Poetry, published in 1988, is the fruition of 30 years of research. Over the long years of suffering, his hair had grown gray, but he was filled with a deep sense of serenity and contentment. He expressed his joy in the highly acclaimed painting Ode to the Plum. Beneath large and venerable plum trees blooming in white and red, he wrote a single couplet:
The sword edge is born of vigorous sharpening,
The scent of plum blossoms is born of the bitter winter cold.
Those two lines are a perfect distillation of Su Dongtian's life. At the same time, they illuminate the path that all of us should tread.
Today, the heart of humanity is desolate and empty, like a barren winter field. Professor Su laments, "People today care only for money and pleasure, they rush madly after their own selfish interests, and spiritual values are in drastic decline. We must do something to save humanity from this spiritual void." Professor Su hopes for a flowering of a new humanistic art that will bring spring back to the hearts of humanity.
I asked him what painting means to him, and he replied, "I paint landscapes in the literati style. If I were to describe my work in a single sentence, I would say that my goal is to express my inner vision in the form of art. My main topic is 'the Way.' I don't simply paint forms; I am trying to express a lofty ideal, a spirit."
This "master painter of plum blossoms" now enjoys a fine reputation. The gallery in which the "Exhibition of Paintings by Su Dongtian" was held at Soka University, in June 1995, was filled with the sighs and exclamations of those who were intoxicated by the heady beauty of his work. When looking at one of Professor Su's paintings, one feels as if one has wandered into a grove of plum trees. One seems to fuse with the flowers themselves. Such is the profound communion Professor Su's work evokes.
A plum tree stands in the snow. In the midst of a dead winter field, a single flower of spring opens, and at that moment a whole universe awakens. From deep within the snow-covered earth, the warmth of life stirs and rises through the roots, the trunk, warming the branches, until it reaches the blossom at the very tip. When that single flower blooms, the entire Earth has bloomed. The eternal life of the cosmos has made its appearance in five fragile petals. Then, when a person sees that flower and sighs, something is exchanged, something is shared: I am life, you are life. Blooming at the tip of a branch of the great tree of life, I am the flower, the flower is me.
An exhibition of Su Dongtian's paintings at the SGI-Hong Kong Culture Centre, June 2006
When we encounter beauty, we return to our essence. We return to the root of life. We return to our true humanity.
Professor Su has deep understanding of Buddhist philosophy. The Lotus Sutra teaches the true entity of all phenomena--that is, all things and events are an expression of a shared life or reality. Art may well be the practice of learning to see the true entity of all phenomena. The noted Southern Sung dynasty poet Lu You (1125-1210) wrote:
The white plums bloom with the breeze at dawn,
They blanket the mountains in all directions, like snow.
Oh, if I could change into those countless numbers of blossoms
And that plum tree change into countless numbers of me.
Su Dongtian is one who looks forward to a day when this desolate world will be filled with billions of human beings flowering like plum blossoms, and is committed to leading the way as one such fragrant flower in the field of art.
