Brushes and Life

Peng Wei


 
In the internet age, how many people are still enamored of brushes? I don’t know, but when Wish asked me, “What object has the closest relationship to your life?” I replied, without hesitating, “Brushes!”

Am I in love with brushes? No. I rely on them to pass the time and support myself, which makes me a little different from other people.

In primary school, a parent of one of my classmates saw me painting with a brush and told my father, “Your daughter is so good! With her skill, she won’t have to worry about making a living!” As a result, my father hoped that his daughter would inherit his art. The brush would later become the tool with which I made a living.

When I was about three years old, I used my father’s brush to doodle. This brush became my livelihood. Every little kid is this way; when Mozart was four years old, he heard an opera, and said earnestly to his father, “I can do that! I can do that!”

All children want to learn from adults and be adults by watching what adults do and listening to what adults say. When I saw my father using a brush to paint a portrait of my neighbor in the courtyard, I thought that I could do that, but apart from the random blotches of ink all over my hands, body, and the table, all I had painted was a series of ink marks that look like flies.

After all, I am neither Mozart nor Ma Liang. It took me more than twenty years to find a good brush and learn how to masterfully direct and move it.

For me, brushes are ordinary. I even do not remember how I got my first brush. When I was a child, we had jar after jar of brushes at home. My father taught me to paint, chose an appropriate brush, and so I painted with it. I have used all kinds of brushes, made of wolf hair, goat hair, wolf and goat hair, hog bristles, chicken feathers, and baby hair. When I got to university I discovered that a good brush is really hard to find.

Every time I go to a painting supply store, I dip a brush in water to test it on the counter. I always try a few, and buy a bunch of them. When I get home I try them with ink. In the end, only one or two brushes are smooth and easy to use. What can I do? The market for brushes is shrinking, and there are fewer and fewer teachers, so naturally the painting quality gets worse by the year. Therefore, inferior brushes became a common excuse for bad or strange paintings among my classmates; they were bad workmen quarreling with their tools. Some of my friends lamented the decline in the quality of brushes, and took a lot of trouble to find good bristles. They found “wolf hair” (actually weasel hair) and goat hair, then had a trusted craftsman make a few brushes and carve their names on the handles. I was so jealous! I was really excited to borrow them and try them out. As expected, the results were fantastic and my skill was greatly improved, which made me very happy.

Today, brushes had already been driven out of daily writing and modern life. Apart from painting, I use my computer daily; I very seldom use a brush to write letters. It is strange that, because I was raised to use a brush, when I use a fountain or ballpoint pen my handwriting is hard to read. Only characters written with a brush calm me and give me confidence. Even today I can write skillful and delicate characters with a brush.

This makes me secretly proud of myself. No one writes with a brush anymore, but I can use the oldest and most traditional of writing materials to communicate with people, which reflects my upbringing. When I think about it, it makes me happy. The fewer the number of people who can write with a brush, the happier I get and the more I want to write someone a letter with a brush. But I fear that there will not be anyone to read that letter. Think about it. I cover the page in graceful words written with a brush, then paint a few designs. If, in the end, we are not destined to fall in love, we could become good friends. At least, seeing the letter will make him think of you and respect you.

In the last thirty years or so, I do not know how many brushes I have used. But I almost never throw out old brushes. I stick them in their jar, and leave them there as the jar fills up. I think that, if I cannot be buried in the ground, I would certainly choose to be buried in brushes. It would be so cool to be buried with the brushes I had used over the course of my lifetime. Cremation is certainly not interesting to me, as it produces too much ash, but at least I should be allowed I to take the brush that I used and treasured most with me.

I am being a little bit fetishistic. Do I really love brushes that much?

No, I do not. I love with the moment that a good brush paints a good line. That moment is indescribable, exciting, and contented. So, I do not care about the external appearance of a brush. In fact, the simpler the brush, the more I like it. I most like bare bamboo, without paint or carvings. When I take a brush in my hand, it feels simple and intimate. When I use it for a long time, the handle of the brush becomes slightly shiny with sweat. This reflects both the objectification of man and the body temperature of objects. In contrast, I do not really like brushes made out of high-end materials like red sandalwood, mahogany, and ivory. They are magnificent, but impractical and heavy. They are difficult to use and they are purely for show.

But is a brush just a tool to me?

I now have four jars full of brushes. When I look at them, I am usually happy and satisfied. However, when I go to the painting supply store, I cannot help but buy a bunch more. For me, buying brushes is like buying clothes or shoes; I can never get enough. There are even more brushes in the jars at home, but I still think that I do not have enough. However, like with clothes or shoes, you can have a closet full of them, but there are just a few things that you wear most and like best. It is truly difficult to find a good brush, sensible and obedient, that melds with my hand and calls to my heart. When I had just arrived in Beijing, I bought a large goat hair brush. I have used it for ten years. I use it no matter what I paint and it has become almost as important as one of my fingers. But recently it has not been as easy to use. I can only look at it on the table, and so the life of this brush has ended.

This object and I had gotten along for a long time, and it gave me a sense of ownership. If someone were to tell me that these brushes were indeed used by Wang Xizhi or Qi Baishi, I would burn incense before them daily.

Whenever a good brush that I had often used is no longer serviceable, it slowly starts losing bristles and becomes bald. I feel sorry for it. I feel really sad, like I am watching the decline and death of an old friend. Its die has been cast.
This happens to all implements; their spirits weaken with use.

Wan Qingli, a professor at the University of Hong Kong, told me a story from this time working at the Beijing Fine Art Academy in the 1980s. At the time, conditions were poor. There were no dormitories, so he slept on a desk in the office. One day the elderly artist Cui Zifan came to visit. When he saw that Wan had been sleeping on the desk, he exclaimed, “Wan, do you know where you are sleeping? Qi Baishi used to paint at that table!”

In the Beijing Fine Art Academy exhibition hall, they have replicated Qi Baishi’s studio, and I do not know which desk on which Wan slept. Wan later went to the United States and became a famous art history professor and traditional Chinese painter, although not necessarily because he had absorbed the magic of Qi Baishi’s desk. However, Qi’s influence might have had something to do with his later artistic achievements.

Loving an object is like loving a person. It is a good game only when everyone is happy. When there is life, there are objects, and when life ends, objects end. Objects and people both have ages and fates, so they are often companions in life. The legendary Qin Dynasty general Meng Tian made brushes, seven generations of Wang Xizhi’s descendants painted with wisdom and courage, and the story of the outstanding writer Ma Liang all speak of the fates of people and objects. Chinese people used brushes for thousands of years, until they were pushed out of history. Chopsticks are still being used, but because Chinese food has become popular abroad, there is not yet a legend about chopsticks.

I believe in the legend of the brush. This thousand-year legend has become more mysterious because of the decline of the brush and the countless traditional Chinese paintings collected by museums. It is the secret code and representative object of Chinese culture; whether it is used or abandoned, the brush will always be a symbol of Eastern culture.