The tradition of the literati in Chinese design: the poetics of memories

Tretyakova Mariya Sergeevna ORCID: 0000-0001-7385-6609 PhD in Art History Associate Professor; Department of Graphic Design; Ural State University of Architecture and Art Karl Liebknecht str., 23, Sverdlovsk region, Yekaterinburg, 620075, Russia mashanadya@gmail.com Other publications by this author

Kazakova Natal'ya Yur'evna ORCID: 0000-0003-0006-1412 Doctor of Art History Professor; Department of 'System Design'; A.N. Kosygin Russian State University 1 Malaya Kaluzhskaya str., Moscow, 119071, Russia Kazakova-nu@rguk.ru Other publications by this author

In modern architecture and environmental design, the theme of the "spirit of place" (Genius Loci), or "existential space", has long been popular, which, under the influence of phenomenology, was actively developed in the 1970s and 1980s by the Norwegian architect Christian Norberg-Schultz (1926-2000). This also includes the idea of the "atmosphere" of Peter Zumthor's place (b. 1943), as well as partly the idea of the "basho place" by the Japanese architect Kengo Kuma (b.1954), which he developed in conjunction with the idea of the "basho" by the Japanese philosopher Nishida Kitaro (1870-1945). The relevance of the idea of "place" in design is probably due to the fact that it is aimed at preserving regional identity. At the same time, it assumes a careful attitude not only to the history of the region, but also to the existing landscape, is associated with the economic feasibility of using local rather than imported resources, etc.

The idea of a "place" turned out to be close to the Chinese designers, but they acquired their own specifics. According to Lai Dalin, the idea of "place" in the work of Chinese architects who continued the traditions of the "literati" of Wenren in the twentieth century generally coincides with the phenomenological interpretation of place by K. Norberg-Schultz as "a set of properties of materials, shapes, textures, colors" ^{[1, p. 97]}, but through the prism of these and others Chinese designers have taken a fresh look at the Chinese tradition.

The aim is to analyze the influence of the Wenren tradition of "literati" on Chinese design and identify some of the most characteristic features of China's modern design culture. We believe that her specific feature is the poetics of memories. In addition, although there was criticism of the "literati" in China itself, in order to understand the specifics of Chinese design, it is interesting to see the aesthetics of the modest elegance of the "I" that they developed.

There is a large number of studies by various authors related to the "Wenren culture" in one way or another. Since the ideals of "wenren" had a strong influence not only on China, but also on Korea and Japan, Japanese and Korean authors write about them. Lai Delin writes in detail about those who studied the architecture of Wenren in China ^{[1, p. 95]}. As Professor S. Roddy notes, "due to the lack of an accurate or at least generally accepted definition of literary culture [in the English-speaking world] So far, no attempts have been made to authoritatively study its general history or general contours" ^[2], although he cites a number of studies not only in English, but also in Chinese and Japanese related to the "Wenren culture". In Russian, the "general contours of the Wenren culture" of the Ming epoch (1368-1644) was outlined by the Russian sinologist V. V. Malyavin. He not only analyzed the Wenren culture, but also provided translations of the main texts.

1. The traditional aesthetics of Wenren: the humble grace of the self

Japanese author Okakura Kakuzo, in his famous book The Way of Tea, wrote about the connection between Zen Buddhism and Taoism, pointing out that "the main contribution of the Taoists to the life of the peoples of Asia fell on the sphere of aesthetics," since Taoism is "the art of being at peace" ^{[3, p. 53]}. And although the Taoist "art of being at peace" cannot be reduced to aesthetics, both ideas were embodied in the life of Chinese "literati" as we will see later.

In different eras in China, there were many concepts for the ideal person. In the late Middle Ages (Ming Dynasty, 1368-1644), "when the 'inkwell aristocracy' finally eclipsed the 'sword aristocracy'" ^{[4, p. 107]}, the ideal of the so-called "wenren" became widespread, that is, "literati" or "intellectuals" (V. V. Malyavin translates as "man culture", and in English-language sources the translation "literati", that is, "literati", is most often found).

The very Chinese meaning of the term "wenren" was heterogeneous and varied from era to era. As the Japanese authors note, initially the word "wenren" referred to people of high moral qualities. Over time, with the introduction of the Keju state examination system that's how they began to call those who successfully passed this exam, that is, scientists. Then "wenren" began to be called not only those who studied science, but also those who were fond of poetry and painting ^{[5, pp. 15-16]}. Eventually, the word "wenren" came to mean those who, having the position of an official, engaged in painting or poetry for their own pleasure, at their leisure, not professionally.

As the architectural historian Lai Dalin explains, "an amateur is someone who performs an action, conducts research not for material gain or to solve professional problems, but out of pure interest" ^{[1, p. 99]}. Therefore, "amateurism" in relation to wenren should be understood in the opposite way to its direct meaning – as true immersion, involvement in art or the design process.

Wenren's main hobbies were considered to be playing the Qing, chess, calligraphy and painting [Chinese: 琴棋书画 qín qí shū huà], that is, the so-called "four arts" [Chinese: 四艺 sìyì] ^{[6, p. 206] [7, p. 146]}, as well as poetry related to them and the lyrical essays of "Xiaoping" [kit. 小品 xiǎopǐn] ^[2]. In the mature period of the development of literary culture, that is, at the end of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) and during the Qing period (1644-1912), the list of Wenren's hobbies expanded, and in addition to the "four arts" and poetry, it began to include collecting any kind of rare or valuable objects, both natural and artificial, as well as gardening, architecture, etc. ^[2]. As V. V. Malyavin writes: "In the Minsk era, the interest of the educated upper classes of society in things, in their importance for "elegant" everyday life, acquired an unprecedented scale" ^{[4, p. 126]}.

For various reasons, the "Wenren" led a secluded lifestyle. As V. V. Malyavin notes, the Wenren tradition was characterized in principle by the "preaching" of the deep solitude of an "ideal person", "a gesture of detachment, rejection, and withdrawal" ^{[4, p. 113]}. V. V. Malyavin aptly described such a life of hermits who are engaged in their favorite business, self-development, and devote themselves to art with the words "asceticism of joy", that is, asceticism that brings joy ^{[4, p. 130]}.

At the same time, living in solitude in a "spontaneous striving beyond all that is present and given" was inevitably associated with sleep ^{[4, p. 117]}. As V. V. Malyavin notes, life in China is, in principle, "traditionally likened to a dream, because in a dream we experience life as a continuous stream of visions" ^{[4, p. 147]}. We are talking about sleep as a "wandering of the spirit," during which "metamorphoses of being" are experienced, and in this sense, sleep is similar to reality, inextricably linked with it. In the late Latin era, the theme of sleep in art became more explicit – "dream landscapes" became widespread in painting ^{[8, p. 124]}. Xiang Shuchen, a researcher from York University, also writes about the literary genre of autobiographies in the form of "memories in a dream" in late China ^{[9, p. 206]}. She believes that Chinese medieval literature is basically imbued with a sense of nostalgia.

Living in solitude, the "revelation of eternal absence" also "turned life into poetry." "Tradition dictated that a "man of culture" should not only be able to compose poetry, but also live poetically, possess an unmistakable sense of beauty, and radiate artistic sophistication himself" ^{[4, pp. 119-120]}.

The union of leisure (or, in V. V. Malyavin's translation, "idleness") [the whale. 闲xián] with the hermit's lifestyle, Wenren contributed to the formation of a distinctive aesthetic. According to Chinese authors (and also V. V. Malyavin), an important aesthetic criterion of wenren was the "grace" of the "I" [kit. 雅 yǎ; often also translated as "elegance"], which was contrasted with "philistine" [kit. 俗 sú] mass taste ^{[7, p. 146] [10, p. 268]}. It is significant that the Wenren were also called "elegant men" or "aesthetes" [kit. 雅士 yǎshì], and their meetings are called "elegant meetings" [kit. 雅集 yǎjí]. Chinese authors often use the words "educated sophistication" or "grace" (a term originally associated with poetry) in relation to works of art by Wenren. However, as V. V. Malyavin notes, in the end, "we do not find rigid codes of elegance in China" ^{[10, p. 270]}.

According to Lai Dalin's article, there are three main features of wenren aesthetics in architecture: 1) "a sense of everyday life and modest elegance" (when elegance is achieved not through color and carving, but through careful selection of materials, "experiencing reality", 2) "simplicity and practicality", and 3) "perception of the environment as a whole" (when, for example, technique is used "of the borrowed form " Jie Jing [kit. jiè jǐng], and the landscape outside the window becomes part of the interior space) ^{[1, p. 95]}. Here it is worth remembering that traditional Chinese "house as a garden".

Malyavin V. V. writes: "The classical Garden of China is, first of all, the garden of a learned man." An important role in his formation "was played by the idea of "solitary rest", hermitage, understood not as a way of life, but rather as a state of mind" ^{[4, p. 399]}. The gardens of the "literati" were characterized by an unassuming beauty, although they did not have any "only true" model ^{[4, p. 401]}. At the same time, the main principle of the garden was "the communication (tun) of architecture and landscape, interior and exterior" ^{[4, p. 425]}. Thus, the building was usually surrounded by galleries and verandas, which "softened the transition from the interior to the open space" ^{[4, p. 428]}, the windows opened "a picturesque view or even a whole series of views, presenting a kind of "living picture"" ^{[4, p. 442]}, etc. Of course, in this case we are talking about about the openness of the house to the inner miniature world of the garden, and not to the outside, since the Chinese house surrounded by walls did not even "protect a person from the world" so much as "buried" him in it ^{[4, p. 394]}. An example of the Chinese "house as a garden" can be seen in Figure 1.

Describing the metamorphoses of the garden, V. V. Malyavin writes: "Since the late Latin period, the world of the garden, like the world of landscape painting, has indeed been called the "space of imagination" (I Ching). [the whale. 意境 yìjìng]" ^{[4, p. 448]}. The modern philosopher Yuk Hui translates this term into the words "the environment of the senses" ^{[11, p. 191]}. Not every work of art, be it a garden or a painting, has an "I ching" – this is what they say only about works of high skill, inside which there is a feeling of "harmonizing thoughts with the [depicted] scene", immersion in the world of the painting, feeling like a part of it ^{[12, pp. 344-345] [1, p. 96]}. It can be said that the feeling of "I ching" is also one of the traditional criteria for evaluating works of art and design objects.

The Chinese garden, as well as Chinese floristry, and the art of creating miniature landscapes of "pen jing", or "gardens on a tray" [kit. 盆景 pénjǐng], is closely related to painting. For a better understanding of the aesthetics of Wenren, let's turn to "pen Jing with trees in the style of Wenren" [kit. wénrén shù pénjǐng] and the painting "Wenren-hua" [kit. [wénrénhuà] (Figure 2).

The direction of Chinese painting by Wenren-hua ("paintings of writers") is the painting of "laymen", "amateurs". As a rule, it is monochrome and represents the "painting of the idea" of "se-i" [kit. It does not involve careful "artisanal" copying, which makes it possible for speculation, but at the same time it is demanding to grasp the image and character of the movement. In addition, it is a synthesis of poetry, calligraphy and painting (as V. V. Malyavin rightly points out, in Chinese culture everything correlates with everything and is consonant with everything). The famous Chinese "writer" Dong Qichang (1555-1636) wrote: "... an artist should not seek external similarity, but penetration into the "spirit" of things", he should "cultivate sophisticated "incompetence" (zhuo) [kit. 拙 zhuō] and achieve “low-keyness" (tribute) [the whale. 淡 dàn] his paintings" ^{[4, p. 247]}. Malyavin V. V. also calls such "inconspicuousness" a "touching archaic "fading"" and "sublime expressionlessness" ^{[4, pp. 234-235]}.

Miniature trees "in the style of Wenren" are thin and tall, with a small number of branches, often several trees at once. They are "calm", "noble" and "sublime", "harmoniously interact with each other", that is, they express the moral principles of wenren. They have the "grace" of "I", the "inability" of "zho", expressed in some "wildness" and "imperfection", the "inconspicuousness" of "tribute", etc. ^[13].

The tradition of the "pure gifts" of Qinggong, which flourished during the Yuan (1271-1368) and Ming (1368-1644) dynasties, is also associated with the Wenren culture. In the Qin era (1644-1912), paintings depicting "pure gifts" became widespread ^{[14, p. 17]} (Figure 3). "Pure gifts" are compositions with flowers in vases, fruits, miniature pen jing trees, and antiques. Such compositions were staged on the occasion of holidays and, above all, the Chinese New Year, the so–called suizhao-qinggong, that is, "pure gifts of the first day of the Chinese New Year." The "pure gifts" are characterized by well–wishes encoded in the names of plants, fruits and objects - "hidden meanings" 寓意 yùyì, or "hidden happy omens" 吉祥寓意 jíxiáng yùyì ^[15] (hidden well-wishes could also be contained in paintings and composed of people, animals, objects). The formulations were taken from ancient texts and poems, and folk beliefs were also influenced.

In Figure 3, the image of "pure gifts" encodes the New Year's wish 春元 ch chūnyuán rúyì, "All the best at the beginning of spring." There are "three friends of winter" in the vase: pine, plum and bamboo, associated with the passing of winter and the arrival of spring [Hidden meanings, p. 12], and in the foreground are persimmon fruits, lily roots and lingzhi mushrooms, which encode the common Chinese benevolence of "Fulfillment of desires in all matters!" rúyì). "Persimmon" 柿shì sounds the same as "deeds" 事shì, lingzhi mushrooms outwardly resemble a curved rod called "ruyi" 如意rúyì (lit. according to the hieroglyphs "according to the plans"), and the Chinese name of the lily bulb contains the sign "hundred", in connection with which it began to be used to denote the number "ten thousand", that is, "everything, everything". There are many other symbols here: daffodils, "longevity stones", firecrackers, etc.

So, the tradition of the "literati" of Wenren is associated with solitude and "amateurism," that is, with various "elegant" hobbies. At the aesthetic level, it is, first of all, the "modest grace" of the "I", that is, elegant, but at the same time rude and simple, unassuming beauty. In addition, it is the "poetic" aesthetics of educated people who knew a large number of traditional texts and poems. In the later era, the theme of dreams and memories intensified in Wenren's work, which, apparently, became a continuation of the traditional Chinese culture's attention to the "metamorphoses of being" and the desire for the "journey of the spirit."

2. Modern aesthetics of Wenren in Architecture and Design: the Poetics of Memories

According to the famous Chinese architect Wang Shu (born 1963), in traditional China, the role of architects and designers was played by pundits, the "literati" of Wenren, who, in fact, were philosophers who set the "general principle". This principle was later embodied by the workers in a specific architectural structure ^{[16, p. 22]}. Following the Chinese tradition, Wang Shu himself positions himself more as a wenren than as an architect. He says of himself that "being above all a wenren," he is an "amateur architect." It is significant that his studio is called Amateur Architects, meaning "amateur architects."

As Lai Dalin notes, the one who rediscovered the architecture of Wenren in the twentieth century was the architect, specialist in the field of landscape art Tong Jun (童寯, 1900-1983) ^{[1, p. 95]}. It is precisely the ideas laid down by Tong Jun that Wang Shu develops to a certain extent ^{[17, p. 18]}. However, Tong Jun did not set himself the task of looking at the Wenren tradition through the prism of modernist architecture, other designers took up this task: Liu Dunzhen (1897-1968), Guo Daiheng (1936-2022), Zhang Jinqiu (born 1936) and Han Baode (1934-2014) ^{[1, p. 95]}.

In 1941, the classic book "Space, Time and Architecture" by Z. Gideon (1988-1968) was published, where he wrote about the connection between space and time. According to Lai Dalin, as early as the 1950s, this book had a great influence on Chinese designers. Thus, the concept of "fluid space" appeared in architecture, which allowed for a new look at traditional Chinese gardens ^{[1, p. 95]}.

Wang Shu writes: "Gardening by Chinese scientists [Wenren] is a special architectural activity," it differs from today's buildings and urban structures in that "a garden is a living being." "Those who design the garden and those who live in it develop with the garden, flourishing and decaying with it, like natural things" ^{[17, p. 19]}. In this, he sees the difference between "building buildings" [Chinese: jiànzhù] and "creating gardens" [Chinese: yíngzào]. He also points out that he does not like the word "design", because today it is for the most part the same as "utopia" ^{[17, p. 57]}, design is not the design of something like a living thing, but only the production of illusions.

In his architecture, Wang Shu strives to connect the house and the garden, following the tradition of Wenren and relying, among other things, on traditional Chinese painting. He writes about his project, the Ningbo Museum (2008) (Figure 4): "We designed this building in the form of a mountain." "There was once a rich tradition of landscape painting in this area, so the return to nature also touches on the history of art. We also designed the building as a village: the cracked volume at the top of the building mixes the impression of a mountain and a village." The walls of this building represent a physical memory: "tiles were used on the exterior and interior walls, and materials were recycled from demolished villages" ^{[17, p. 75]}.

His other project is the Xiangshan Campus of the Chinese Academy of Arts (2013) (Figure 4), more precisely, 水岸π居 shuǐ’ann shānjū (lit. "Dwelling in seclusion on the shore"), is notable for the bridge on the roofs, which creates the feeling of wandering among the "tiled mountains" (the name of this structure used in English–language articles is "Wa Shan Guesthouse", that is, "tiled mountains". There is a similar motif in Wang Shu's 2006 installation, called "The Tiled Garden" (Chinese: 瓦园 wǎ yuán) (Figure 5). There is a kind of pier on it, which stands in the "sea of tiles". As Wang Shu notes, when he conceived the "Tiled Garden", he thought about the feeling of water in Dong Yuan's painting "The Bank of a Mountain Stream" (10th century) ^{[17, p. 66]}. The water depicted in this painting really evokes the image of tiles.

It is also worth noting the poetic vision in Wang Shu's work. Thus, Wang Shu himself, following the tradition of Wenren, compared his method of rethinking tradition with a literary work, namely with the cycle of novels "In search of lost time" by the French writer Marcel Proust (1871-1922), which is a series of memories in the "stream of consciousness", allowing to regain the lost (note that in the Chinese translation of the title "In search of lost time" is the word 追忆 zhuīyyyy " " " "to remember").

If we recall the textbook image from this work, "the universe in a cup of tea," it will be clear that the "traditional" architecture of Wang Shu is a series of images flowing into each other–metamorphoses, a series of memories of tradition: "... as in the Japanese game, which consists in putting a porcelain cup filled with water small crumpled pieces of paper are lowered, which, as soon as they are immersed in the water, straighten out, take shape, color, separate, become flowers, houses, dense and recognizable characters, and now all the flowers of our garden and Mr. Swan's park, Vivona's water lilies, the inhabitants of the town and their small houses, the church and the whole Combray with its surroundings, everything that has shape and density –all this, the city and the gardens, floated out of my cup of tea."

Reinterpretation of tradition as "memories" or "nostalgia" is found in many Chinese designers, for example, Neri & Hu and Andre Fu. One of the main themes of the work of Lyndon Neri and Rossana Hu, the founders of the architectural studio Neri & Hu with headquarters in Shanghai, is the theme of memory. They call it "reflective nostalgia", which combines the past and the future (Figure 6) ^{[18, p. 15]}. In addition, they often turn to the topic of "travel", wandering.

In the book dedicated to the Neri & Hu projects, in one of the chapters, the epigraph is also a quote from M. Proust's novel "In Search of Lost Time": "The only true journey, the only source of youth, is not a journey to new landscapes, but the possession of other eyes, seeing the universe through the eyes of another person, hundreds of other people, seeing hundreds of universes that each of them sees, which each of them is." In this chapter, L. Nary and R. Hu write about literary gardens and the technique of "borrowed landscape", pointing out that traditionally this technique blurred the boundaries between natural and artificial. At the same time, in their projects they strive to combine the traditional Chinese technique of "borrowed landscape" with Western "peeping" ^{[18, p. 111]}, resulting in something like "wandering peeping" (Figure 6). They cite several examples, including a flight of stairs in one of the Hong Kong offices ("The Curious Staircase of Encounters" / "Curio Staircase of Encounters", 2015), which has light openings in the walls.

Let's turn to Andre Fu, a designer originally from Hong Kong, who was educated at the University of Cambridge. Although Andre Fu has a very "Western" approach, it is noteworthy that he perceives the styles of the past as "nostalgia" ^{[19, p. 99]}, and associates space with a story or a journey: "I am always happy to compare the creation of an interior with a story in which each new turn of events brings a surprise and fuels curiosity," "each of my projects is an intimate journey through space."

When designing for Hong Kong, Andre Fu often turns to Art Deco. In a comment on one of these projects, he writes: "... I felt it was very important to express the essence of Hong Kong," while "I came up with a surprisingly romantic "Love mood" classic drama about Hong Kong by Wong Karwai," "I admire the soulful idleness that he brings to his films" ^{[19, p. 25]}. Speaking of this, he uses the French word "flaneur", that is, someone who just walks around the city, enjoying watching urban life. Art Deco is indeed a style whose essence lies in broadcasting the myth of a beautiful life, in elegant luxury, and here, apparently, we again encounter how European, as in M. Proust's texts, resonates with traditional Chinese (Figure 7).

It should be noted that the Taiwanese designer Tony Chi has a very similar style of design, who, while designing for Hong Kong and Shenzhen, also turns to Art Deco. It is significant that the Chinese magazine AD dubbed Tony Chi the "new gentleman" and mentioned the feeling of nostalgia in his projects ^[20]. Using the example of Andre Fu and Tony Chi, we see how there is a departure from the tradition of writers towards European dandyism.

Among the interior designers who literally refer to the heritage of the Wenren culture, we can mention the Beijing-based company Zizzao, led by designer Song Tao (宋涛) (Figure 8). We find the same aesthetics as in his projects in the design of the expositions of the famous Beijing master of flower arrangements Xu Wenzhi. In Figure 8, you can see his composition of furniture, stone and pine for his own studio in Shenzhen. Both examples are spaces created according to the principle of "garden houses", where objects are organized like a relief, while simplicity and grace are felt in everything.

Another of those who are developing the aesthetics of Wenren today is photographer Sun Jun. He himself is called the "poet of photography", and his photographs, in which he draws on the tradition of pictorialism developed in China (the direction when photography approaches painting), are called the "new Wenren–hua", i.e. "new paintings by writers."

After Sun Jun gave a lecture on photography in 2016, and they started asking him only about the technical side of the matter, he published the book "Don't Talk about photography, talk about the Wind and the moon" (that is, about poetry). He commented on it as follows: "It seems that this book has nothing to do with photography, but in fact the whole book is about photography, because photography is the embodiment of human life" ^[22].

Indeed, there are no instructions in the book on how to photograph, there is not even background information about the author. It is based on the principle of a diary – it contains dates, poems and photographs that record a series of memories (Figure 9). Just as Wang Shu, influenced by the Wenren culture, seeks to rethink the very profession of a designer, so Sun Jun is changing the format of a book about photography. In Figure 9, on the left, you can see photographs processed in the style of antique paintings, on the right – photographs from the above-mentioned diary book. There is a feeling that when photographing, the author is trying to capture some important details.: what was on the table when he wrote, what kind of ink was, etc., but at the same time he acts not as a documentary filmmaker, but as a poet and artist. These photos are a vivid example of the poetry of memories.

So, we see that, influenced to a large extent by the culture of the "literati" of Wenren, many Chinese designers turned to the poetics of memories and even nostalgia, interpreting space as a series of transforming images where the present is intertwined with the past, and the natural with what is made by human hands. The concept of a "house-garden" is certainly felt today, when the interior space is likened to a relief, and the relief is thought of as a dwelling. In addition, even today, attempts continue to inherit the aesthetics of Wenren, based on the graceful and unassuming beauty of the self. The tradition of "writers" in modern China is being rethought and developed by a wide variety of designers and artists: architects, designers, photographers, directors, etc.