Present occasion and history

Radical interpretation – history and the creative individual

In this large painting Dong Qichang has re-imagined a landscape as a field of brush marks. The overlapping tree branches in the centre of the painting are a pattern of inter-related forces that can only notionally be taken as a depiction of nature. The brushwork is trance-like, a condensation of dense references to other remembered images. And yet it is held together lightly, with a conscious amateurism that amplifies the effect of directness and mature joy. Dong Qichang achieved works of this kind by seeing the whole process of painting as a form of calligraphy, and taking the view that calligraphy itself was as much a personal expressive form as a formal, performative one. That is, calligraphy was only in part about obeying received conventions– say, in the manner of a classical dance – but was also the trace of a moment in a particular consciousness.
			DONG Qichang 董其昌 (1555-1636) Landscape Hanging scroll, ink and colour on silk 119.5 x 51 cm Private collection