Visualizing Dao

Bloomberg reviews an exhibition of Chinese art at the Grand Palaise in Paris, focusing on Daoism, with what seems to be particular attention to its religious manifestations.  I recommend going to the museum's exhibition site.  Video and text are in French.  Even if you are not a French reader/listener there is much to see and learn there.  Some beautiful images.... Here's a brief English description....  and here is the NYT's review, which includes this thought:

At one point, the exhibition book itself raises a broader, fundamental question. Can there be such a thing as Taoist art? In her general introduction, Ms. Delacour cites the opening lines of the second-century B.C. encyclopedia of Taoism compiled under the direction of the prince of Huainan: “Tao!/ It covers the sky and carries the earth/ It spreads over the Four Directions and opens to the Eight Extremities/ It encompasses Heaven and Earth, and brings about creatures out of the formless.” This, the French sinologist observes, precludes any representation of Tao (or Dao in Pinyin spelling).

Of course we cannot represent the fullness and completeness of Dao.  But we can apprehend something of it in the smallest of things.  The unity and complexity of Dao inhere in each thing within Dao.  That's the gist of passage 63 of the Daodejing:

If you're nothing doing what you do, you act without acting and savor without savoring,

you render the small vast and the few many, use Integrity to repay hatred, see the complexity in simplicity, find the vast in the minute.

The complex affairs of all beneath heaven are there in simplicity, and the vast affairs of all beneath heaven are there in the minute.  That's why a sage never bothers with vastness and so becomes utterly vast.

Easy promises breed little trust, and too much simplicity breeds too much complexity.  That's why a sage inhabits the complexity of things and so avoids all complexity.

So, yes, the exhibit can visualize Dao, as well as anything can visualize Dao.  But we must always remember that however it is visualized, our perception of it is partial and obscured....

Here's a painting of Laozi (he's the guy in the cart...):

Comments

[Clare]

Sam,

Fantastic link. One that will take lots of (pleasant) time to explore.

I can't comment on the tao connection, but the exhibition looks exquisite. I loved the "Making Of" video. The white gloves, the opening of the crates, the unrolling of the scrolls...I can't imagine how exciting it must be to put on an exhibition like this one.

Scrolls are, in some ways, such a practical art form. I suppose they are more fragile when it comes to longevity, but at the same time, that fragility might be somewhat made up for by the likelihood of less damage during shipping and handling. I have toyed with the idea of incorporating that concept into my own work, for at least, a series of pieces.

BTW, I highly recommend the Juan Munoz show of Chinese figures soon to (or already?) open at The Clark. I walked up to the Ando addition when I was in W'town and saw them on the deck and by peering through the glass. They are so gorgeous.