How Wang Fo Was Saved
In “How Wang-Fo Was Saved,” Marguerite Yourcenar recounts the tale of a Chinese painter who was incarcerated and later saved. The experience of Wang-Fo in prison transformed him greatly that he realized that his fixation with painting beautiful things was an escape from reality and truth. Ultimately he did perceive beauty in simplicity by letting go of his ego. This thesis explores the concept of reality from the perspective of both the old painter and the Emperor.
Wang Fo’s paintings ushered both Ling and the Emperor into the world of beauty. They understood and appreciated Wang’s art. The Emperor used to live a life in the world of Wang Fo’s paintings and imagined the world as painted by Wang. The Kingdom of Han at the center, to be like the flat palm of my hand crossed by fatal lines of the Five Rivers” (Yourcenar 4). However, the Emperor seems is unable to separate art from real life. For example, he mistakes the world in Wang’s paintings as the real world. He becomes outraged on finding out that the real world is not as beautiful as he sees in the paintings. The real life disappointed the Emperor because it was not as appealing as Wang-fo’s painting depicted. Consequently, he condemns Wang-fo for being a liar, an old imposter (Yourcenar 5). Sitting at the top of the pyramid of artistic world, Wang-Fo saw the real life more beautifully than other people.
Wang Fo loves the image of objects rather than the object themselves. His attitude towards wealth and worldly possession reflects typical teaching of Daoism. Wang Fo the painter gives life and form to his art and paintings. He does not care about wealth or silver. Yourcenar writes “no object seemed to him worth buying, except brushes, pots of lacquer and China ink, and rolls of silk and rice paper” (p.3). Wang Fo showed more interest in the tavern where craftsmen and peasants drink and fight than the court because it is the hideout place for the secrets of beauty. While Wang Fo is saddened by Ling’s death, he admired the stain that Ling’s blood left on the green stone floor (p.5).
Art brings destruction and suffering as demonstrated by Ling’s transcendence. Ling, whose wife is gorgeous and his family wealthier meets the old painter in a tavern and gets fascinated by his art. He gets transformed and detached from reality. Ling’s transformation results from both the magic impact of his master and his truthful service to him. Ling’s transcendence shows that Wang-fo vision of the world is fake. Ling sold all his possession to purchase paint for his master. After emptying his house, Ling closed “the door of his past behind him” and begun to wander with Wang-fo. He is unaffected by the comfortable life he led before by becoming a beggar. He enters the art world and loses attachment and interest in worldly concerns. Ling loves his wife’s portrait more than her living that he ignored the poor woman in real life. She killed herself due to a lack of her husband’s attention.
Furthermore, the transformed Ling is indifference to death. Ling used to fear death, thunder, and insects but the obsession with art has made him indifferent. When the wife passed on, Ling right away started to “mix the colors and the task needed much concentration that he forget to shed tears” (p.6). Ling seems carried away by his master’s obsession with color that forgets the passing away of his wife. Ling believed joining his master in mixing color mattered more than mourning his wife. Additionally, Ling believes painting a beautiful artwork can be the best way to keep the memory of his wife alive forever. Wang Fo paints Ling’s dead wife because he loves “the green hue that suffuses the face of the death” (6). This quote shows that both Ling and his master hold similar perception about life and death.
The Emperor hates art and paintings because they contradict reality. During his childhood, the Emperor lived an isolated life enveloped by the paintings of Wang-Fo. He came to discover, at age 16 that the real world contradicted with Wang-Fo’s paintings that he gets disappointed with reality. The contradiction arises due to the fact that the Emperor has not discovered Daoism. Daoism is found in things that both beautiful and ugly. Ugly and beauty are binary opposites that can change into each other.
Wang-Fo’s vision of life and death reveals the unity of opposites. The Emperor orders Wang-fo to complete the unfinished painting in the palace gallery before he is killed. He looks at the unfinished sketch and starts painting that he forgets the imminent threat of death awaiting him. He forgets himself and the world. As he layers colors to the boat landscape, the waves starts to soar in the throne room. Soon, the dead Ling appears on a baroque and Wang-Fo enters and the two sails off leaving the court amazed.
How Wang-Fo Was Saved demonstrates the impossibility of art to fully represent reality. Yourcenar’s art criticism point to the impossibility of fully depicting human body or nature in art. Art fails in its goal to represent experience and reality. Wang Fo’s art is a deception in which reality is removed. His paintings alternative images of what is real. The ordinary people who came to Wang-fo were blind to the beauty of his paintings that had a touch of color. Many came for practical solutions to their problems rather than to find inner meanings (Zhu 1279). Farmers begged him create a watchdog while lords asked for paintings of their best warriors. Wang Fo noticed that the soldiers who came to arrest him violated artistic beauty since their sleeves “did not match the color of their coats” (p.6). To Wang, the soldiers lacked a sense of beauty. Blind to the world of art, these people could not get absorbed into his world. In conclusion, Wang-Fo’s vision of reality is less apparent. Art deceives by distorting reality.
Works Cited
Yourcenar, Marguerite. How Wang-Fo Was Saved. In Oriental Tales.
Zhu, Jing. Art and Daoism in How Wang Fo Was Saved. Theory and Practice in Language studies, 6.6(2016); 1279-1283