Culture in FIVE colors

In the western painting classes, one of the first things to learn about would be the primary colors, the secondary colors and the tertiary colors, unless it is a sketching class. In the oriental painting class however, the first few lessons might be focused on the use of brush and ink, you would learn about the properties of your painting tools, a good teacher would also talk about the philosophies of the oriental art, and finally, you will be shown how to express these ink lines using colors instead. It almost feels that colors are negligible.

It is true that the oriental brush art can be called the “水墨”, the “water-ink” art, but it also has a name, “丹青”, which literally means “red-blue” art. In here, the words “red” and “blue” are expressed in a more poetic way, they are essentially “red-blue” nonetheless. So the use of colors is definitely a key aspect of the oriental art expression, and today let us take a look at five main colors.

When talking about colors, you may have the mental image of sunlight passing through a prism, the different wavelengths appear as rainbow colors. This is the scientific way of seeing the world, the Western way. The science went on to determine the properties of colors more in detail, coordinating all colors according to their brightness, saturation and hue, therefore all colors can be arranged, all of them have a place in the wheel. In the East, especially in the art world, the “scientific facts” are always secondary to our cognitive system, instead it is our subjective view of the world that comes first. In the painting specifically, it is even encouraged. The guiding philosophy of applying colors is to use them as a more detailed means of expression, in order to transmit our minds. The only categorization of color would be the primary and all the other colors.

The primary colors are similar in their use as the western ones, they are seen as the original colors, colors that could not be made. The difference is that there are five of them: black, white, red, turquoise, and yellow. These colors are chosen from the five elements in the traditional mythology.

There are also five virtues assigned to each of these elements, wood means benevolence (“仁”), fire means propriety (“理”), earth means fidelity (“信”), metal means righteousness (“义”), and water means wisdom (“智”). And various empirical periods in the oriental history takes a virtue as their guiding value system, especially before and around the Han Dynasty (202BC-220), so you may see a dominant color from a specific period of time in the oriental history. Since the Sui Dynasty (581-619) a color system was also established for the outfits of governmental officials, the pure colors only appeared in the higher up officials, the lower the rank, the less pure the color in the general sense. Some the five colors can only be used by the royal families only, or be awarded to the outstanding officials.

But in general, the Tang Dynasty colors were similar to its vibrant culture, beautiful variations of red, green, purple, and blue could all be seen, demonstrating its overall prosperity.

It was after the Ming Dynasty that the more colorful civilian outfit became more popular, this perhaps also has to do with the advancements of the dyeing technology. The civilians for a very long time were referred to as the “cloth outfits”, so their outfits mostly appeared brown. People who were from different social status wore their assigned colors normally, but let us keep all these color varieties for the topic of another time!

Among the five primary colors however, in the oriental painting, black and white stand out as the two dominant colors, if they can be considered as such. This comes down to black in fact, as the white is normally the paper or left blank. The black here is not one pure dark color, there are many degrees and shades of the ink. Nevertheless, it is still the black and white eventually that rule them all, why is that?

The oriental painting is more of a philosophy than a painting, it takes root in the Taoist ideology – men and nature are in harmony, and in this world Yin and Yang coexist, the world turns and the cycle of life never ends. Black becomes white, white turns to black, exist and not exist becomes the same in the end. In a piece of painting, it all boils down to an atmosphere, a life energy, with it the painting is alive. The painting resonates with us on an emotional level, so extremely put, in reality the symmetry, perspective or color matter no more.

Enjoy such cultural discussions? Have comments? I look forward to hearing from you!

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