THE DISPLACED ARTIST SEES THINGS FOR US: ZHANG HONGTU AND THE ART OF CONVERGENCE

Jerome Silbergeld

The back of the Peng-bird measures I don't know how many thousand li across, and when he rises up and flies off, his wings are like clouds all over the sky. When the Peng rises ninety thousand li, he must have the wind under him. Only then can he mount on the back of the wind, shoulder the blue sky, and nothing can hinder or block him.

— Zhuangzi

We live in an age of geographical compression, when technology has conspicuously made the world "smaller" and brought all its parts into much closer communication. No one needs to be told this; it is articulated by media and events throughout our daily lives. But what does it mean? What is its impact? Technologically induced compression is by no means new, but only within the past few generations has the pace of compression increased to the point of making it readily visible within some fraction of a human lifespan. In earlier times, it was the visionary or the transcendent being alone who could attain the overarching perspective, or "grand view" (da guan [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) as the Chinese called it, to adduce the changing nature of things and convey its meaning to those being changed. Metaphorically, to attain this view one had first to become displaced, transported from the normal to the extraordinary, to be like Zhuangzi's ascendant Peng-bird or to climb the Great Mountain. No better description of the human visionary exists than what Mencius wrote of the Master:

Confucius ascended the Eastern Hill, and Lu appeared to him small. He ascended the Great Mountain, and all beneath the heavens appeared to him small. So he who has contemplated the sea, finds it difficult to think anything of other waters, and he who has wandered in the gate of the sage, finds it difficult to think anything of the words of others.

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The lesser artist only has to draw well what the eye can see, to transfer things from one medium to another. The "real" artist must be transcendent, one who transmits his insight into something visible so that others can learn from this transcendent vision. His artistic impulse, which he must trust fearlessly, is the mighty wind that will bear him aloft. If displacement is the price of insight, then the life