My book
would not be complete without Michael Sullivan's wonderful passage
on the `dialectical process' as it relates to art, but Chinese
painting, in particular. I think it admirably states the continuing
plight of the artist today.
" Ever since the `yang-yin' dualism was first set down in the third
century B.C., the Chinese have been fascinated by the dialectical
process. The conflict between the claims of the present and those of
the past is but one of many dialectics at work in the mind of the
educated man: between the Confucian in him and the Taoist; between
orthodoxy and individualism; between the past as inspiration and the
past as burden; between the demands of society and the demands of
self; between stability and change; between objective study and
inner illumination. For the artist especially, there were the
tensions between art as representation and art as expression;
between craftsmanship and spontaneity; between the universal and the
particular statement; between nature as seen by the old masters and
nature as seen by the artist himself. In the psyche of each
individual painter these opposing ideals, impulses, loyalties were
constantly struggling against each other, keeping his mind and
imagination alive. It was not a matter of absolute choice,
"for surrender in one direction would lead to a deadening of the
artist's spirit, in the other to anarchy." (252)
Michael Sullivan
Symbols of Eternity
Definition of `dialectic':
"1a: discussion and reasoning by dialogue as a method of
intellectual investigation; specif: the Socratic techniques of
exposing false beliefs and eliciting truth b: the Platonic
investigation of the eternal ideas 4a : the Hegelian process of
change in which a concept or its realization passes over into and is
preserved and fulfilled by its opposite 5a : any systematic
reasoning, exposition, or argument that juxtaposes opposed or
contradictory ideas and usu. seeks to resolve their conflict" (253)
Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary
252. Michael Sullivan, Symbols of Eternity, (Stanford, Cal.,
Stanford University Press, 1979), p.p. 144, 145
253. A Merriam - Webster, ed. H. B. Woolf, Webster's New Collegiate
