In the process of elevating various arts to a single "art," one of the most important myths associated with art arose: the myth of the absolute nature of the artist's act. In its crudest form, this myth treated art as a form of expression of human consciousness—a consciousness dedicated to understanding itself. (The evaluation criteria derived from this version are easy to grasp: some forms of expression are more complete, advanced, extensive, and richer than others.) Later versions discovered a more complex and tragic relationship between art and consciousness. It did not acknowledge art as mere expression, but rather linked it to the demand or capacity for self-estrangement. Art was no longer understood as consciousness expressing itself and thereby implicitly affirming itself. It is no longer consciousness itself, but an antidote to consciousness—an antidote evolved from consciousness itself. (Reaching this version's evaluation standard has proven to be far more difficult.) This new myth, born from a post-psychological concept of consciousness, sets up many paradoxes in artistic activity. These paradoxes, as described by great religious mystics, are closely related to the attainment of an absolute state of being. Just as the activities of mystics inevitably lead to a via negativa, to a theology of hidden God, to a desire to delve into the unknown realms beyond the reach of knowledge, to obtain a silence beyond language, art inevitably leads to anti-art, to the pursuit of silence, the cancellation of the subject ("object," "image"), and the replacement of deliberate action by chance.

In the early linear models describing the relationship between art and consciousness, a struggle can be seen between the completeness of the creatively driven "spirit" and the dissipating "materiality" of daily life (a "materiality" that repeatedly obstructs the path to true sublimation). The new version—in which art participates in a dialectical dialogue with consciousness—presents a sharper, more frustrating conflict. The "spirit" sought to be embodied in art clashes with the "material" nature of art itself. Art is exposed as having no basis, and the authenticity (and historicity) of the artist's tools (especially language) appears to be a trap. The artist's actions, because their practice is confined to a world equipped with secondhand knowledge and made particularly chaotic by the betrayal of language, are cursed with the infamous label of "indirect." Art becomes the artist's mortal enemy because it hinders his realization of his long-cherished ideal—a transcendence.

Thus, art begins to be seen as something that needs to be subverted. A new element thus enters the artwork as an individual and becomes its fundamental component: this is the (implied or overt) appeal for self-cancellation—ultimately evolving into a appeal for the cancellation of art itself.

II. The scene shifts to an empty room.

Rimbaud travels to Abyssinia, hoping to profit from the slave trade. Wittgenstein, after a period as a rural primary school teacher, chooses a mundane job—a hospital nurse. Duchamp turns to chess. These are representative ways of abandoning a profession. In making this choice, each of them declared that their past achievements in poetry, philosophy, or art were insignificant and unimportant.

However, choosing eternal silence did not negate their work. On the contrary, it, in a counterforce, endowed the abandoned endeavor with extraordinary power and authority—the rejection of the work became a new source of affirmation of its validity, a testament to its unquestionable seriousness. This seriousness does not lie in regarding art (or philosophy expressed in artistic form like Wittgenstein's) as something eternally serious, an "endpoint," or an eternal vessel for lofty ambitions. The truly serious attitude is to treat art as a "means" to acquire something that may only be obtained by abandoning art. To judge it more impatiently, art is a false means or (to borrow the terminology of the Dadaist artist Jacques Vacheron Constantin) a foolish act.

Art, though no longer a confession, became an unprecedented catharsis and ascetic practice. Through art, the artist becomes pure—purifying not only himself but ultimately his art. The artist (if not art itself) continues the pursuit of "perfection." However, previously, the perfection he sought controlled his art and was realized within it; for the artist today, the highest perfection is reaching a point where the goal of excellence no longer matters emotionally or ethically. What brings him greater satisfaction is not finding a voice in art, but remaining silent. This silence, as an endpoint, advocates an ultimate emotion, the complete opposite of another, which tells us how a conscious artist uses silence seriously in a traditional sense (vividly described by Valéry and Rilke): in this sense, silence is the realm of deep contemplation, the nascent stage of intellectual maturity, the tempering endured to ultimately gain the right to speak.

As long as the artist maintains a serious attitude, he will continuously attempt to sever the dialogue between himself and the audience. Silence is the extreme manifestation of unwillingness to communicate or indecisiveness regarding communication with the audience. This indecisiveness is a primary theme in modern art's tireless pursuit of novelty and/or profundity. Silence is the artist's final act of transcending the mundane: through silence, he releases himself from his enslavement to the world, which appears to him as a patron, client, consumer, opponent, arbitrator, and destroyer of his work.

Nevertheless, one can still fully perceive a highly socialized stance in this act of "betraying" society. What ultimately liberates the artist from the demands of his profession stems from his observation of his peers and the psychological suggestion gained from comparing them to himself. Only after the artist has proven his genius and convincingly exercised it can he make such an exemplary decision. Once he judges himself superior to his peers according to his own accepted standards, his arrogance has only one outlet. To become a victim of silence, in a deeper sense, means to be superior to everyone else. The implication is that artists, compared to ordinary people, possess greater wisdom for thinking, stronger nerves, and higher standards of judgment. (The artist's ability to relentlessly pursue his art until it is exhausted is undeniable. As the French poet René Char wrote, "In a forest of doubts, even the birds have no heart to sing.")

III. The exemplary behavior of modern artists in choosing silence rarely reaches its extreme—complete silence. More typically, they continue to speak, but in a way that the audience cannot hear. The most valuable art of our time is perceived by the audience as art that tends towards silence (or is incomprehensible, imperceptible, and inaudible), art that destroys the artist's talent and extinguishes their professional responsibility—and therefore, art that infringes upon them.

The long-standing modern art habit of offending, angering, and frustrating the audience can be seen as a degree of participation in and substitution for the concept of silence, which has risen to become a major criterion for judging the seriousness of art in contemporary aesthetics.

But this is also a contradictory form of participation. This is paradoxical not only because artists continuously create works, but also because the alienation between the work and the audience is never lasting. As time passes and newer, more challenging works emerge, the artist's transgression becomes appealing, even legitimizing. Goethe criticized Kleist for writing plays for "invisible theaters," but these invisible theaters eventually become "tangible." Ugliness, disharmony, and meaninglessness are transformed into "beauty." The history of art is a series of successful transgressions.

The specific goal of modern art—not satisfying the audience—conversely illustrates that even the presence of a single audience member is unsatisfying for the artist—here referring to the audience in the modern sense, a group of voyeuristic onlookers. Nietzsche, in The Birth of Tragedy, realized that the Greeks did not understand the audience of spectators as we know them—a group ignored by the actors. At least since then, much contemporary art seems driven by a desire to urgently exclude the audience from art. This endeavor often manifests as an attempt to eliminate even "art" itself. (Perhaps due to a preference for "life"?)

If the power of art lies in negation, then in the capricious war with the audience, the artist's final trump card can only be a gradual approach to silence. The gap between artist and audience in terms of feeling or concept, and the distance created by a lack of dialogue or a breakdown in dialogue, can all lay the foundation for an ascetic artistic proposition. Beckett said, "I dream of an art that does not succumb to insurmountable paleness, and revels in the farce of giving and receiving." However, the elimination of even the minimum exchange of communication or gifts—like the clever and rigorous principles of asceticism—whatever its intention, invariably results in enhancing (not diminishing) the capacity for pleasure.

The intentional or unintentional intrusions that modern artists inflict on the audience have neither successfully excluded the audience nor successfully transformed them into something else, into a group engaged in the same activity. They cannot do this. As long as art is understood and revered as an "absolute" activity, it is necessarily alienated from the masses, elitist. The elite presuppose the existence of the masses. If the highest form of art defines itself by goals essentially belonging to the clergy, then it presupposes and confirms the existence of a group of people: relatively passive, insufficiently enlightened, voyeuristic outsiders, periodically summoned to watch, listen, read, and rehearse—and then dismissed.

In this situation, the artist can at best modify the different terminology used when facing the audience and themselves. To discuss the concept of silence in art is to discuss the various possible choices within this inherently immutable context.

IV. How is silence truly manifested in art?

Silence exists as a deterministic force—in classic cases of artists committing suicide to demonstrate their deviation from the mainstream (such as Kleist and Lautréamont), and also in the aforementioned pattern of artists abandoning their profession.

Silence also exists as a form of punishment—both a form of self-punishment, exemplified by artists who went mad (such as Hölderlin and Altau), whose examples illustrate that mental instability may be the price paid for transgressing the established boundaries of consciousness; and of course, a form of punishment (including censorship of artworks, physical destruction, and fines, exile, and imprisonment of artists), imposed by "society" on artists who are intellectually unconventional or deliberately subvert public sensibilities.

But silence does not exist as an experience for the viewer in a true sense. It may mean that the viewer feels no stimulation or is unable to respond. But this is impossible; it cannot even be produced through planned inducement. Only those viewers with impaired minds, or those who misinterpret their own reactions (bound and misled by so-called "appropriate" responses), feel no stimulation and are unable to respond. Otherwise, as long as the viewer is defined as an emotional being in a particular "situation," they cannot remain unresponsive.

Similarly, silence cannot exist in the true sense as an inherent attribute of a work of art—even Duchamp's readymades or Cage's 4'33", in which artists no longer conform to any established artistic conventions, but simply swagger about placing objects in art galleries or performing them on concert stages. There is no neutral appearance, discourse, theme, or form. Something is only neutral when it relates to something else, such as a goal or an expectation. As an attribute of the artwork itself, silence can only exist in a false or unreal way. (In other words: if a work exists, then silence is merely one of its elements.) One cannot find natural or realized silence in art, but only see various movements toward the ever-receding horizon of silence—a movement that, by definition, is never complete. The result is an art whose characteristics are dismissed by many as taciturn, melancholic, taciturn, and indifferent. However, the context in which these negative qualities depend is often the discernible objective intention of the artist. Nurturing metaphorical silence with habitually somber themes (as in many Pop Art works), or constructing “minimalist” forms that seem devoid of emotional resonance, is itself a vibrant and often exhilarating choice.

Finally, even without injecting this objective artist intent into the artwork, an irrefutable truth remains regarding perception: at every moment of perception, all experience possesses affirmation. As Cage insists, “There is no such thing as silence. There is always something making a sound.” (He describes how, even in a completely silent room, one can still hear two sounds: the beating of one’s own heart and the circulation of blood in one’s head.) Similarly, there is no such thing as empty space. As long as the eyes are looking, there will always be something. Gazing at “empty” things is also seeing, seeing something—even if it is a ghost one desires. To understand “reality,” one must maintain a keen judgment of “emptiness,” which is distinct from “reality”; conversely, to understand “emptiness,” one must understand other realms of the real world. (In Alice's Adventures in the Looking-Glass, Alice accidentally discovers a shop...)

As a renowned artist said, "Some things come from within, not just outward beauty and refinement."

The inner world often requires exploration.

On cultivating cultural depth.

Despite the materialistic nature of this society, we still need strong willpower, aspiration, and inner vitality.

A person with profound inner qualities deserves respect. Outward appearance is merely a stepping stone for others to recognize you.

How to express one's inner depth and spirituality in artistic creation and performance?

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On expressing artistic spirituality.

Whether in literature, music, performance, painting, or sculpture, artists generally possess inner wisdom and spirituality.

Expressing through art, with a strong visual impact.

Spirituality can be outward or inward. It can be both expansive and restrained, both tense and relaxed.

Regarding the emergence of spirituality, we need to return to a childlike mindset, to embrace and experience the world.

When we return to our true nature, our hearts naturally become pure. Viewing the world with a pure heart, the world is beautiful.

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Van Gogh was a great artist. Although he lived in poverty, he tirelessly pursued his art, creating masterpieces, each one brilliant and vivid. His paintings are widely known and celebrated.

True artists possess pure hearts, free-flowing thoughts, and boundless artistic imagination.

When Chopin played the piano, he felt as if a thousand armies were surging towards him; this was the artistic imagination that music brought to him.

Beethoven was deaf from a young age, yet he played the piano with extraordinary willpower and composed the powerful Symphony No. 5, "Fate."

The spirituality of art lies in the manifestation of inner talent, not in outward beauty.

When your inner world is rich, your artistic expression is full of tension; when your emotions are profound, your words or music are full of artistic vitality. Outward appearances can be subtly embellished.

As long as you dedicate yourself to everything you do and diligently practice your artistic skills, one day your artistic soul will blossom. You will reap rich artistic inspiration, inner meaning, tension, and expressiveness, and your artistic life will ultimately achieve fulfillment.

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END.

About the Author

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Liu Mingfang, a graduate of the Chinese Department of Hunan Normal University, is a post-80s female lyricist, music teacher, self-media personality, female online writer, senior columnist for the literature channel of Banduo Chinese Network, member of the China Poetry Association, and member of the Changsha Writers Association. She specializes in writing in-depth prose, poetry, and essays. She has published numerous poems and essays in self-media platforms such as Bingjie Poetry Journal, Selected Poems of Powerful Chinese Poets, Daotian Literature, Junzhichun Literature, Eight O'Clock Briefs, and Jingting. Her literary works have won numerous awards and are deeply loved by a wide readership.

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The bed represents not only a private space but also a refuge for seclusion and self-alienation. Artists have captured the interdependent relationship between people and the bed—especially the emotions and feelings it is psychologically intertwined with. They have moved beyond the traditional depiction of the bed as a place of sleep and dreams to a more experimental and conceptual portrayal, shaping the bed as an object of desire, a subject of psychoanalysis, or a stage for expressing ideology. Indeed, from the sweetness of love in Toulouse-Lautrec's "In Bed" to Frida Kahlo's sanctuary for rest and recuperation; from Manet's bold declaration of resistance against male chauvinism in "Olympia" to the Lennons' "peace in bed" performance art; from the persistent psychological anxiety shown in Van Gogh's "Bedroom" series to the passion and violence at the heart of Bourgeois's "Red House," and then to Emin's postmodern spectacle of eliminating personal privacy... artworks are full of metaphors and allusions to the multiple meanings of the bed.

Mencius said, "Substance is beauty."

Art is a skill; ancient artists were essentially technicians (master craftsmen). Modern and future art should also place great emphasis on technique. However, their technique is not merely a service to life (like crafts) but an expression of life, revealing emotions, personality, and character.

Yuan Dynasty, Ni Zan, Purple Ganoderma Mountain Studio

The realm of life is vast, encompassing economics, politics, society, religion, science, and philosophy. All of this can be reflected in art. However, art is not merely a mirror reflecting the world; it is also an independent, self-sufficient creation of form. Through the harmony of rhythm, cadence, form, and color, it establishes its own sentient and manifest microcosm; this universe is complete and self-sufficient, and everything within it is necessary, therefore it is beautiful.

Art can stand worthyly alongside morality and philosophy. Its roots, however, are deeply planted in the technological stage and socio-political consciousness of its time. It must possess the earthy essence, the very flesh and blood of its era, even as its head reaches into the lofty, luminous sky of the spirit, pointing to the true meaning of life and the mysteries of the universe.

Yuan Ni Zan, Rongxi Zhai

The vastness of the realm of art is as vast as life itself; its profundity is as profound as life itself—how rich and fulfilling! Mencius said, "Fullness is beauty." This should be viewed thus.

Yet, it must also transcend the mundane, standing apart from all phenomena, forging a world with its unique form, pure and immaculate, free from all worldly impurities—how ethereal this is!

Ethereal and full are the two elements of the artistic spirit; let's first discuss emptiness!

Ethereal: The birth of the artistic soul occurs in a moment of self-forgetfulness, what aesthetics calls "still contemplation." The starting point of still contemplation lies in emptying oneself of all worldly concerns, a mind free of hindrance, and temporary detachment from worldly affairs. At this moment, a spark of awareness arises, and all things are quietly observed. They appear as if reflected in a mirror, bright and clear, each in its proper place, revealing its own full, inner, and free life—what is meant by "all things find their own satisfaction in stillness." These self-satisfied and free lives radiate brilliance in silence.

Su Dongpo wrote: "Stillness understands all movement; emptiness embraces all realms."

Wang Xizhi said: "Walking along the Shanyin Road is like traveling in a mirror."

A clear and enlightened mind encompasses all realms, and these realms permeate human life, imbuing it with human spirit. Therefore, Zhou Ji said: "In the beginning of learning poetry, seek emptiness; emptiness allows the spirit to flow freely." This flow of spirit is when objects reveal their soulful life; it is when beauty is born.

Yuan Dynasty painter Ni Zan's "Maple Leaves Falling on the Wu River"

Therefore, the cultivation of aesthetic appreciation lies in the ability to create emptiness, to establish distance from objects, so that one is neither attached nor stagnant. Objects are thus isolated and insulated, forming their own realm: stage curtains, the frames of paintings, the stone pedestals of statues, the steps and railings of buildings, the rhythm and rhyme of poetry, the view of mountains and rivers from a window, the illuminated streets under the cover of night, the serene scenes under the bright moon—all these are beautiful scenes born under conditions of distance and separation.

Li Fangshu's poem "Yu Meiren" includes the lines: "A gentle breeze like a fan, rain like a curtain, sometimes I see the flowers on the bank and the grass on the islet growing thicker."

Li Shangyin's poem: "Painted eaves adorned with willows, green as a city, a curtain of wind and rain, passing Qingming."

Wind and rain are also favorable conditions for creating separation; a misty, hazy scene is a poetic realm, a painterly image.

The curtains of Chinese painting studios are an important factor in creating a profound and tranquil poetic realm, hence their frequent mention in poems. Han Chiguo's lines: "Swallows gradually return, spring is quiet, curtains hang low at dawn."

Kuang Zhouyi commented, "The scene is utterly still, yet there is a person within, as if separated by Penglai Mountain. Thinking and pondering, one sees depth through stillness." Dong Qichang once said, "Painting by candlelight is like viewing the moon through a curtain, or flowers across water!" They understood the importance of "separation" in aesthetics. However, this "separation" still relies on external material conditions; more important is the "emptiness" within the heart.

Yuan Ni Zan's "Jiangting Mountain Scenery" Sikong Tu's Poetry Categories describes the artistic soul as "springtime flowing into an empty pool, a divine mirror reflecting the spirit," and the artistic personality as "silent fallen flowers, a person as serene as a chrysanthemum," "a spirit that emerges from antiquity, serene beyond measure." Artistic attainment should be "not profound when encountered, but increasingly rare when approached," "encountered from heaven, a cool and elusive sound."

Spiritual detachment is the fundamental condition for the ethereal quality of art.

Ouyang Xiu put it best: "Desolate and detached, this is a difficult concept to paint; the painter may grasp it, but the viewer may not understand." Therefore, things that are slow and swift, or those with shallow meaning, are easily seen, while those that are leisurely, serene, and profound are difficult to express.

A desolate and detached state, a leisurely and serene state, is the spirit and character of an artistic personality. This spirit and character allow one to "find far-reaching insights beyond worldly affairs," and artistic charm arises spontaneously. The "pure-hearted person" that Tao Yuanming loved refers to this state. His poem "Drinking Wine" further expresses this aspect of the poet's spiritual state: "I built my hut in the midst of human habitation, yet there is no noise of carriages and horses.

You ask me how this can be? My heart is far away, and the place naturally becomes secluded.

I pick chrysanthemums by the eastern fence, and leisurely gaze at the Southern Mountain.

The mountain air is beautiful at sunset, and the birds fly back together.

Therein lies true meaning, but I have forgotten the words to express it."

Tao Yuanming loved wine. The Jin dynasty scholar Wang Yun said, "Wine makes everyone feel ancient and distant." "Distance" refers to the internal distancing of the mind.

However, only Tao Yuanming, with his "heart far away, the place naturally becomes secluded," could leisurely gaze at the Southern Mountain and experience the meaning of "Therein lies true meaning, but I have forgotten the words to express it." It is evident that the emptiness in the realm of art is not true emptiness, but rather the "fulfillment" gained from it, approaching "true meaning" through "a distant heart."

As the Jin dynasty scholar Wang Hui aptly stated, "Wine leads one to a sublime realm," implying that wine, which makes everyone want to distance themselves, can actually lead one to a sublime realm. What is this sublime realm? It is none other than the vastness, profundity, and fullness of life itself. Hence, let's discuss "fulfillment"!

Yuan dynasty painter Ni Zan's "Bamboo Painting" exemplifies this. Nietzsche said that the world of art is constituted by two spirits:

One is "dream," the realm of dreams being countless images (such as sculpture); the other is "intoxication," the realm of intoxication being boundless passion (such as music).

This passion allows us to experience the deepest contradictions and vast, complex conflicts in life; "tragedy" is the concrete manifestation of this magnificent and profound life. Therefore, Western art highly values ​​tragedy. Tragedy is the art of a fulfilling life. Western art loves works with grand scale and rich content. Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Goethe, and even in modern times, Hugo, Balzac, Stendhal, Tolstoy, and others, all reveal a tragic yet rich universe.

Goethe's life encompassed various stages of human existence, making it incredibly fulfilling. Du Fu's poetry is most profound, powerful, and deeply moving, also due to the richness of his life experience and the abundance of his emotions.

Ni Zan's "Autumn Pavilion and Fine Trees" painting. Zhou Ji, after discussing the ethereal quality of ci poetry, advocated: "Seek reality; reality fills the mind with energy. When energy is abundant, one can imbue the work with profound emotion, even from the depths of the mind. Though the descriptions may be plain and the depictions simple, a myriad of feelings converge, leaving the reader without a central focus. The reader feels as if they are peering into a deep pool at fish, experiencing the sensations of carp and bream, startled by lightning in the middle of the night, disoriented, like a child laughing and crying with its mother, or a villager experiencing intense joy and anger." These words truly describe the profound impact of a richly meaningful creation.

Huang Ziju (Huang Gongwang, a great painter of the Yuan Dynasty) spent his days sitting amidst desolate mountains, jagged rocks, and dense thickets, his expression unpredictable, his intentions unknown. He also frequently went to the confluence of the Mao River and the sea to observe the turbulent currents and crashing waves, unconcerned by sudden storms or the monstrous cries of water monsters.

His immersion in nature resulted in paintings that were "deeply varied and profound, vying with the wonders of creation." Zong Bing of the Six Dynasties period once commented on painting: "All interests are integrated into one's divine thoughts"—is this not a reflection of the painter's rich inner world?

Ni Zan's "Secluded Valley and Cold Pines" Chinese landscape painting tends towards simplicity, yet within this simplicity lies an infinite realm. Ni Zan's single tree and rock cannot surpass the grandeur of a thousand cliffs and ravines. Yun Nantian best described the rich and profound life contained in the paintings of the Yuan Dynasty: The elegant brushstrokes of the Yuan painters are like swallows dancing among flying blossoms, impossible to imitate; like a beautiful woman's gentle glance, radiating light, leaving the viewer astonished and bewildered, unable to comprehend its essence.

The Yuan dynasty painters' secluded pavilions and elegant trees possess a spiritual quality beyond mere artistry. Because their style is like a celestial swan soaring in the sky, their brushstrokes flow like mournful strings and urgent pipes, a symphony of sound and emotion, something that cannot be replicated in the joyous celebrations of the earth.

Mourning strings and urgent pipes, a symphony of sound and emotion—what a rich and vibrant symphony this is! It is truly incredible that it can be felt in a single tree, a single rock, a single mountain, or a single stream by the Yuan painters. The high level of skill of the Yuan dynasty painters and the depth of understanding of Nantian (Nantian) both demonstrate the highest achievement of Chinese art! Yet, behind the serene realm of the Yuan painters lies a profound and boundless cosmic sentiment. Nantian said, "A group must seek unity, seeking unity must lead to mutual cries, and these cries must occur amidst desolate skies and ancient trees—this is the meaning in painting." These cries, occurring amidst desolate skies and ancient trees—what a poignant, transcendent, profound, and passionate sentiment of life and the universe this is! Is this not the deepest and most tragic expression of the Chinese artistic soul?