Undercurrent
Text / Petr Nedoma
Art critic, Curator, Director of Gallery Rudolfinum, Prague

Nothing is probably more remote from the European way of rendering pictures than classic Chinese ink paintings. Formal differences arising from the completely different focus, demands, and intellectual tradition on which they are founded and which imbibe them are a source of interest for the European viewer, and kindle a desire to delve more deeply into a world disappearing in a mist of uncertainty and originating in the Far East. This is just as true today as it was in the past. This is because very few Europeans have studied at a Chinese academy. On the other hand, the Chinese themselves continue to stress the uniqueness of their painting, which they claim is virtually inaccessible to anyone except native Chinese. In a sense they are right. Chinese painting, and ink painting in particular, is not essentially a technique, but more of a cultural phenomenon, a method of existence, a form of dialogue between the individual and society and its spiritual, cultural and historical tradition. It is something that, in principle, can be practised only from the inside. This can best be understood, inversely, in the work of Chinese artists trying to adopt Western methods of depiction and drawing on 20th-century European painting. For Europeans, the repeated tackling of issues such as Giorgio de Chirico’s magical realism somewhere in the province of Sichuan in the 1980s is acceptable only as a study exercise to understand, for example, a particular way of constructing space, the expressive distortion of architecture and magical emptiness. Otherwise, this is work entirely outside time and space that cannot introduce or resolve anything. Following one's own path, individual expression, and the principle of originality-these are prime values for Europeans. By contrast, the Chinese, due to their customary emphasis on respect for the old masters, move forward only with their backs to the future, facing instead an old hailed tradition which must be precisely emulated if the student is to become a master. Having a model and steadily absorbing it – even becoming immersed in it – through meticulous imitation and the study of every detail is the path to mastery, which may be afforded to artists in old age. For Europeans, this appears to be an easy way to get rid of the often troublesome need to be original in all circumstances, which can be an almost impossible obstacle to overcome on the path to self-fulfilment. All they have to do is become, to all intents and purposes, a Chinaman.Jiri Straka is one of the few who succeeded in this respect. After his detailed study of sinology, which at Prague University encompasses much more than learning language – in particular courses on the historical, societal and spiritual coordinates of the Chinese being – he became a pupil of the Beijing Central Academy, where he studied classic Chinese ink painting. He spent many years in China, and still lives there, although he naturally stays in Prague for part of the year. In a sense, excepting perhaps his blue eyes, blond hair and beard, he is Chinese. Yet at the same time he is a European who has, quite obviously, absorbed much of the essence of the historical tradition of European existence, on which he builds, from which he draws, and which permanently stands alongside his Chinese identity. This is no discord between sense and sensibility, but the contention of two equal inner beings. Discord between the Chinese Buddhist and the European sceptic, with the ability of sharper vision and yet ironic detachment.One of the essential features of classic Chinese painting is the more or less real, but not realistic, depiction of the world view. Chinese painting is an intellectual concept with incredibly coherent, broadly conceived rules which apply to and encompass many more components than any branch of European efforts in this field. Painting technique plays a major role and is the key to important layers of meanings. This aspect of painting became increasingly codified and petrified over time, and at least since the late Ming Dynasty has been based on the combinatorics of traditional models. Chinese painting studies primarily entail the study of the works of others, literature on painting, and the rules which are the key to meaning and substance. Imitation, the study of a model, does not mean a trip into nature to reconstruct what is seen. It was this juncture that Ji?í Straka chose as the crossroads where he would start to follow a different path. Before he reached this signpost, he had advanced in exactly the same way as his Chinese comrades who were following an academic career and training. However, as a trained artist he used his skills and knowledge in another way, according to another code. He went into the countryside and painted what he saw before him exactly according to traditional – but European – rules. And yet he captured reality in a really Chinese way. The Chinese have always greatly appreciated, even wondered, that someone could exist who was not Chinese but, in their eyes, was still a praiseworthy painter of the traditional style who was able to work with a soft brush. What puzzled them, however, was the choice of themes. They constantly thought and speculated about who the model was, who had painted this way in the past, whose work Ji?í Straka was continuing. The relatively trivial source of reality did not even occur to them because in their way of thinking this is not associated with painting. Needing a break from the reality of urban (and Chinese) life, Ji?í Straka visited the southern provinces, where, from a European perspective, he traditionally, almost classically, painted simple plant motifs outdoors. The backdrop, however, was the need for Buddhist motivated meditation, not the bourgeois hedonism of the Impressionists seeking out "motifs" in suburban groves. The technical means of achieving this was classic Chinese ink painting a la prima on paper. From there it was just a small step to his first large series, with a porcine heart theme, followed by other themes literally in keeping with the French name for still-life: nature morte. Thus, before a surprised Chinese audience, because until then his pictures had only been exhibited in China, thematically literal paraphrases of predominantly Dutch still-lifes, mainly from the 17th century, have appeared. A dead capon, a fly on a peony, a dead dog, a pig’s heart, a dead mosquito in a glass of water and so on. Just as still-lifes were often a means for the Dutch painter to exhibit his painting skill at representing and perfectly capturing the material quality of the surface, where fur, glass, slices of pink flowers or wet oysters were recognized milestones, for the Chinese painter, albeit of European origin, there is pleasure in producing brilliant creations on the theme of the weight of a wet brush with varying ink density on an extensive surface (of unprecedented proportions) of moistened paper, accompanied by stained vermeil slightly smudged with shades of grey. Ji?í Straka himself sometimes speaks of the inner dark discord between the two different salient characteristics of his personality that he is not particularly successful in keeping apart. A kind of undercurrent constantly forces up to the surface topics that are deeply European and historically anchored, yet inseparably linked via the bravura technique, which is inherently Chinese, and which is so Chinese that the Chinese themselves are beginning to investigate not only how to grasp them, but also how to imitate them.

Finding a Direction in Paradox
- Reflection of Jiri Straka’s Chinese Paintings
Text / Hang Chunxiao
Art critic, Curator, Fine Arts Institute of Chinese National Academy of Arts Associate Professor

Jiri Straka speaks Chinese very well, though his Chinese is filled with a strong “foreign flavour”. We can feel the same in his ink paintings which have very “Chinese” language details, but his means of expression and objectives are in fact very “non-Chinese”. This might seem like a big paradox – on one hand it is “Chinese”, on the other hand it is “non-Chinese”. However, this is the real essence of the ink paintings made by the Czech painter Jiri Straka. My first visual impression of Jiri’s paintings was that they are a far cry from conceptualized Chinese painting - especially those with “onsite elements”. He does not use the language of esthetics of the Chinese ink as the center of focus, but uses the course of ink painting as the clue, and transforms his creation into a kind of ritual site performance. A person who understands at least a bit of Chinese painting will know that the focus in the Chinese painting esthetics established after the Yuan dynasty, was in the brush technique. It emphasized the self-containment of calligraphy which falls into the scope of aesthetic judgment according to the language of painting itself. However, the onsite ink paintings of Jiri totally derivate from the standard form of aesthetic judgment and differ from the Chinese paintings that we are normally used to. If we look at the differences from the inherent thread, we will find out that the ink paintings of Jiri permeate some methods of conceptual art. For instance, during the “Heart” exhibition shown in the 798 Art District in Beijing in 2007, Jiri placed an animal heart next to his painting paper in the gallery and gradually painted the whole heart onsite. It is impossible to interpret such a piece of art by applying usual practice of reading Chinese painting, because it is not anymore a realization of ink painting but? more of a non-language aesthetic experiment. Maybe somebody would like to interpret the object of Jiri’s painting – “Heart”, and think that it is the concept of “heart” in Chinese tradition and Buddhism. Maybe Jiri would agree with this statement and thus accept to be a sinicized European. Yet, what attracts me on his work is not the simple description of Chinese culture, but it is his usage of Chinese artistic elements in acknowledgement of concept. When we go into the exhibition hall where Jiri drew the “heart”, we will find out that his work includes three different semantic layers of heart – one is a natural object, the real organ of heart; one is the result of the painting, the image of heart in Chinese ink; and one is the linkage of movements between them, which is formed by the process of discovery and realization of the heart. The merge of the three destroys the depicted object, depicted result and depicted action It creates a kind of sensual mutualism space and forces the audience to make an adjustment to their viewing habits. Likewise, when we encounter with such work, we cannot judge according to our existing experience, but we passively change the way of observing an object, and rediscover the existence of organ, result of the painting and the visual connection between the behaviour movements. This new visual restructuring changed the space-time model of ink painting. It gave us a brand new experience of creating modern art by means of ink.The pure “performative”and “onsite” features are indeed not the only reason of my interest in Jiri’s work. Because we can undoubtedly interpret this type of conceptual presentation of onsite painting – from the linguistic point of view in a philosophical way, but it is really not a product of the logic of Chinese painting itself. In particular, ink drawing is even more just a material vehicle – different from the medium of oil painting or video. I have to say that what really interested me is Jiri’s understanding of Chinese ink manifested during this process and the role this understanding has during his “onsite” conceptual expression. Chinese ink painting, which described by means of words would be “using thin colours as model”, emphasizes the visual emotions of “delicacy and dynamism”, “dryness and moistness”. It is not only a form of experience of sensual organs, it is even more the experience of mental state and personality. To understand it, it is necessary to look into the mysterious background of its tradition. This is also the most important reason why it is not easy for Chinese painting to get response in the Western eyes. Therefore when I saw the works of Jiri, I was amazed by how deep a Westerner understands Chinese ink. Because the ink paintings of Jiri shows one kind of quality – it is transparent but thick, delicate but energic, clean but rich of content. Just as the “Boat” created by him in 1998 in the 798 Art District. If his sensual implication of the site performance was not taken into account and only the result of painting was considered, the layers of brush strokes, the lightness created by the effect of delicate ink and the thickness created by lenitive language could form a self-contained experience on aesthetic judgment. And that is the utmost quality of Chinese painting. In fact, when we face similar expressions of Chinese painting, sometimes it seems that the characters are very indistinct because it does not easily express the perceptual experience – directly and precisely. However, we can compare it to oil painting. Then, we can instinctively feel the visual effect of layers of ink. In contrast to the material and visual recurrence of oil painting, ink can even more express the dimension of time lapse. It also does not confront the visual feeling of space-time, but it is a kind of subjective experience in process. Therefore, although? Jiri also used the spacial expression of oil painting to paint the “Boat”, its visual perception seems to become subjective due to the time spent on the painting process and has more of a “non-scientific”angle of view. And this “non-scientific” angle of view just breaks the meaning direction of Western painting “painting of real sceneries” and makes the “concept art” of Jiri’s onsite performance different from simply placing an oil painting in various exhibition halls. There is more of a subjective self-examination when watching. It includes a ritual of “rediscovering”. This ritual also tells us that the typical Western method of observation is not based on “science” and “uniqueness” but this world can be also observed in other points of view. Maybe this is the biggest value of the onsite ink painting of Jiri, because it is the only way how he can differ from all the similar Western onsite performances. It even more relevantly delivers the new experience inspired by the Chinese and Western visual philosophy. From the other point of view, it is thanks to the diligence of Jiri that this ink painting is of such material quality. While using modern art, he freed himself from the simple materiality and formality. It is an important and integral element of his presentation structure. Even more interesting is the fact that Jiri has gradually developed his own painting style with paradox formed by “the temperament of ink language”and “concept of his work presentation”. This is used to solve the estrangement between the Western painting model and ink language. It is very obvious that when Jiri paints an object onsite , he needs to borrow the experience of shape and space of Western painting, but this actually clashes with the ink language. Because the ink language comes from subjective experience and the shape and space of Western painting comes from objective experience, the two are very difficult to unite. In the history of the 20th century, during “the Western influence spreading to the East”, a lot of Chinese painters tried to solve this by means of “lines following the shape technique” but the result is not what they expected. It was too crude, it was just a simple combination of visual experience of China and the West but difficult to be in harmony. Similar problem appears in some of Jiri’s animal paintings. What attracts people are the new types of solutions which appear in his other works. For example, in a piece of work entitled “Sexism” he displays a scene of hanging men’s and women’s underwear. When painting the women’s underwear, Jiri did not stick to the natural shape of texture, but he used a kind of detailed formula of repeating lines. Thus, the natural sense of clothing was transformed into two-dimensional surface combined in the formula Because of the visual two-dimensional surface, the work is no longer be limited to nature, instead it becomes language experience that can be "written". In fact, this is an important method of how the ancient Chinese resolved the relation of "nature and painting". This way shapes and styles of rocks, trees, flowers and birds were developed in Chinese painting,.i.e. the formula. I do not know whether Jiri realizes this consciously, but it is certain that through his vision in the East-West conflict he tries to find some free ways or paths of expression. Perhaps because of such efforts, he would unconsciously apply the above solution in his works, and use it widely.?? Therefore, Jiri brings to us a different ink painting experience. On one hand it is the quality of language in the Chinese tradition, on the other hand it is the Western style expression of shape space and concept. The combination, which seems to be a paradox, provides us with another possibility of merging ink into modern style, or we can say it is space which is worthy of our attention and reflection.?24–12–2010 in the apartment in Wangjing.

Universal way of Traditional Chinese Ink Painting
Text / Shu Yang
Art critic, Curator

Before the introduction of the Western painting in the 20th century, ink painting was the mainstream of traditional Chinese painting and formed a complete value system of literati painting. With its systematic education in the 20th century, the Western painting has gradually established itself as a mainstream in parallel with the Chinese ink painting. The dual pattern continues though there are two different voices of nationalization and Westernization in the painting concept as well as the solution of “integration of the Chinese and Western painting”proposed by Lin Fengmian. Although with the rise of Chinese contemporary art since the 1980s the two types of painting have learned from each other in artistic techniques, they are still inside two completely different evaluation systems. The incompatibility in evaluation systems results in the fact that the contemporary practice of Chinese ink painting or its modernization cannot be fully explored. The ink painting practice by the artist Jiri Straka may be able to provide us with a new blueprint for the modernization of Chinese ink painting.?Jiri Straka, a Czech artist living in Beijing, mainly focuses on ink painting. He had a strong interest in China since he was a pupil in the nine-year primary school of the Czech Republic. At that time even the Chinese characters printed on the Chinese food packaging were intriguing to him. Jiri started his four-year study of print painting in an art school in Prague in 1984. During that period, he developed a strong interest in traditional Chinese ink painting through the catalogues of Chinese ink painters such as Huang Binhong, Qi Baishi and Li Keran published in the Czech Republic in the 1960s and by observing the ancient Chinese paintings.?Oldrich Kral, a well-known sinologist in the Czech Republic, had a great influence on Jiri in his understanding of Chinese culture. Oldrich Kral, once the chief of the Chinese Department in the? Charles University and a professor of ancient Chinese literature, translated Liu Zu Tanjing (a famous book on Chinese Zen) into Czech. He was also one of the initiators of the establishment of the Asian Branch of the Czech National Gallery. Influenced by Oldrich Kral, Jiri was later enrolled into the Institute of East Asian Studies in the Charles University in Prague to study sinology. In that period, he wrote articles on the Seven Sages of Bamboo Grove in the Northern and Southern Dynasties and thoughts on landscape paintings proposed by Zong Bing, Wang Wei and others. Through his reading, he also became interested in ancient Chinese metaphysics and Buddhism.Jiri enrolled in the Beijing’s Central Academy of Fine Arts and studied traditional Chinese ink painting for two years in the mid-1990s in order to achieve his painting ideals, and also due to his interest in China. He had been an ancient Chinese painting restoration expert and endulged in oriental art research in the Czech National Gallery from 2001 to 2005. His restoration work ranges from the ancient paintings in Ming and Qing Dynasty to the works of modern painters such as Lin Fengmian and Qi Baishi and shows his expertise in traditional Chinese ink painting. His familiarity with the strokes of traditional Chinese ink painting enables him to make innovative breakthroughs in the value system of traditional Chinese ink painting.? Jiri’s ink works of increasing maturity draws upon the way of traditional ink painting. He does not adopt the mainstream impressionistic style of domestic ink painting. He often kneels down on paper to paint in front of the real landscapes, flowers and plants. The paper size is usually large and he often dries the painting with a hair dryer while painting.This painting method has its root deep in the Western painting tradition. His works show both the features of Chinese ink painting and the sense of space and vividness in traditional Western paintings. The “Heart”series created after 2006 mark the establishment of his personal painting style. Jiri enlarges a pig heart in his painting on rice paper to 2-3 meters wide to match the concept of the“heart”in Buddhism and traditional Chinese culture. In Chinese culture, the“heart”means soul and it also bears perception capabilities. The match he shows in the painting is quite unexpected but also full of wisdom and humor, with a strong visual impact. Jiri later enlarges made-ready-for-cooking chickens and sheep, dead mosquitoes, dead birds run over by a car on the road, etc. to the size of several meters, making these daily occuring deaths very shocking. Even many of frequently seen things in our life, such as flies, goldfish, feathers of birds, ice-cream sticks, clothes hung to dry, homeless dogs and hotpot are amplified by Jiri to an alarming size as an important theme of his paintings. These paintings may prove his belief in Buddhism and the idea of equality of all living beings in the world. It’s impossible to depict the world in which we live without possessing extraordinary sensitivity to ink painting and details of life and without thinking about the meaning of life.Jiri’s onsite ink painting is his further development to the Chinese ink painting. In ancient China, the literati often held meetings to learn the art of painting and calligraphy from each other. Due to the sensitivity of the ink on white paper, sometimes the brush-using speed is crucial to ink control, thus the painting process, either success or failure, is featured with performance. However, Yirui’s onsite ink painting is not a show but an integral part of his live painting and an essential step in his creation. Therefore, he just turns the necessary process itself of his onsite creation into a piece of artwork instead of showing off skills. It’s quite a viewing experience to watch Jiri standing on large-sized paper and waving the brush until his whole secret of painting is shown. Through Jiri’s works, we find that ink painting is no longer a game sticking to the medium of ink and brush but an art that can cross different art genres and the limit of different regional cultures and thus radiates vitality. From Jiri’s ink painting-related painting practice, we can feel there are lots of possibilities regarding the ink painting creativity in the future.Jiri’s first onsite ink painting works are the “Heart” exhibited in the exhibition “Painting Rebellion” curated by myself in the “Inter Art Center” in Beijing 798 Art District in 2007. Jiri painted onsite in the exhibition site an enlarged pig heart, giving audience an experience of concrete life with a heart of an animal. In the exhibition “Painting Rebellion 2” held in Beijing in 2008, Jiri painted onsite the “Ship”, enabling people to associate the function of the ship with the concept of “transition”in Buddhism. “Transition”is the process of reaching the goal of perfection. One can “transit oneself” through one’s own practice, or can “help other people to transit” through the dissemination of Buddhism or granting them practical help. Jiri presented to the audience painting process, just like he shared with the audience the “self-transit”and “transit others” in the painting. In the activity of “Wanshousi Site”organised by me in the Wanshousi Buddhist Meeting of Changchun during the same year, Jiri painted onsite the “Flower”In Buddhist stories, the Buddha “picks up a flower and smiles” and this marks the origin of Zen. Besides its religious significance, the “Flower”also has a strong secular meaning. In different cultures, “flower” is an indispensable and universal symbol of life. No matter how complicated the cultural interpretation of the “flower” is, it won’t cause much difficulties in interpretation of Jiri’s onsite painting process. This is because the process of his onsite painting of the huge lily is very simple and clear enough to make us overlook the concept interpretation and make us focus on the specific process of the creation of a piece of artwork. Jiri and his lily emancipates us from many troubles of the mundane world and put us into a silent “contemplation”of art in a rite-ridden meeting. At the opening ceremony of “Chinese Images ? City Banner: Xi’an Qujiang International Contemporary Art Festival ” held in Xi’an in August 2009, Jiri again created some ink paintings with plant foliage and feathers as materials. His onsite ink paintings focussing on Zen turn the indispensable process of creation into a scene of ceremony. Jiri presented the audience artwork of an artist and also wonders of creation when he drove brush and ink onsite.?Jiri’s painting reflects the integration of perception and action, just like his attire and faith. He wears traditional Chinese costumes all year round and looks more traditional Chinese than the Chinese people themselves, and therefore he is often watched as a special kind of lanscape in China. Every time when I see Jiri dressed in the traditional Chinese, I compare him with Giuseppe Castiglione, the court painter in the Qing Dynasty. Giuseppe Castiglione, an Italian missionary, came to China in 1715. He was summoned by the Qing emperor Kangxi. Although Emperor Kangxi did not favour his faith, he still appreciated his painting skills and employed him as a court painter. He lived in China for fifty years until his death in 1766 and lived through three eras of Emperor Kangxi, Yongzheng and Qianlong. Castiglione integrated the European way of realistic painting into traditional Chinese painting and changed the original way of traditional Chinese ink painting. After many years study of traditional Chinese ink painting, Jiri also gradually leans to the Western style of realistic painting. Giuseppe Castiglione and Jiri are both Europeans. They both use traditional Chinese painting tools and apply the European way of painting in creation of traditional Chinese painting, though their lifetimes are over two hundred years apart from each other. As a matter of fact, local Chinese painters have also been working on linking traditional Chinese ink painting with the Western way of realistic painting for almost one hundred years - with Jiang Zhaohe’s “Homeless People”as the most outstanding example. From Jiri’s works, we seem to perceive the process of Chinese ink painting evolution, starting from Castiglione and Jiang Zhaohe up to now. Just like Jiang Zhaohe who was concerned with the reality and the livelihood of people of his period, Jiri also infuses his experience and concern of life in his ink paintings and distances himself of the vulgarized Chinese ink painting.Because Jiri uses materials of traditional Chinese ink painting, his work is worth of discussion within the framework of development of Chinese culture. I would say that the ink painting by Jiri is the most convincing example I have ever seen in showing the modernization of Chinese ink painting. Li Xiaoshan published an article of “My Thoughts on Contemporary Chinese Painting”in 1985 when he studied Chinese painting in the Nanjing Arts Academy as a graduate, claiming that Chinese painting has come to a dead end and can only exist as preserved painting. His remarks aroused hot discussions on the survival of Chinese ink painting among the Chinese art circle. Therefore I named that year “the first year of contemporary Chinese ink painting”. Now when more than two decades passed,Chinese ink painting has changed a lot, but there are few exemplary works of contemporary ink painting. Jiri’s creation method gives us a revelation - if setting aside the national obsession with ink painting and regarding it more simply as a kind of art tools and material, we may be able to develop more innovative ink painting works. It can be said that Jiri’s practice of ink painting has indicated a new dimension of development of traditional Chinese ink painting.? If Giuseppe Castiglione’s arrival to China two hundred years ago can be regarded as a pre-history of cultural globalization, then we can say that Jiri provides us with an unusual period of contemporary globalization today. Hundred years of modern Chinese history is filled with rising of Western learning in China. China’s modernization has been taking place at the expense of gradually losing its own tradition without development of a new culture with universal values as seen from the perspective of culture. Contemporary ink paintings made by Jiri seem to imply that the culture globalization is not necessarily unidirectional. We can review and reform the traditional Chinese culture, thus creating a new culture with universal values. It could be an effective way. It shows the unusual cultural significance of Jiri’s ink paintings. If Jiri’s art possesses values of impact on culture, then the resulting double and even multiglobalization will make the world more diversified and bring new creative power to the world culture in the future. It is also an inevitable way how to acquire universal values for non-industrial cultures, such as traditional Chinese culture. Revised in Nanping of Chongqing on December20, 2010