Interpreting / Transmitting
SoArt Gallery, M50, Shanghai
June 7, August 31, 2025
“Wittgenstein,at the beginning of “Philosophical Investigations”, writes: “The philosophicalremarks in this book are, as it were, a number of sketches of landscape whichwere made in the course of long and involved journeyings.” The same pictorialquality of thought can be found in Walter Benjamin, for example.
The sameWalter Benjamin offers perspectives on translation that go beyond the realm ofliterary or philosophical translation alone. Translation, writes Benjamin, doesnot aim to establish a relationship of resemblance between the original workand the translated one, but rather to “express the most intimate relationshipthat can exist between different languages”. At the same time, translationacquires its own autonomous mode of existence: translation is certainlydependent on the original, without which it would not exist, but the originaldepends just as much on the translation insofar as the latter ensures itssurvival through transmission. In a certain way, a work calls out for itstranslation; it desires it.
(…) Somehow,I have the feeling that a double, reciprocal call resonates into me:
- Deeplyingrained into my sensitivity, the French pictorial tradition is calling me totranslate its way of looking at the world into the codes and media of Chinesepainting.
- Chinese painting is asking me to translateits language into French, i.e., to further its tradition, to give it a new lifeby using other “words”, other topics, other perspectives, other shapes andcolors sometimes – and yet it is still Chinese painting: the rhythm of theChinese brush and the nuances captured in the inkwell provide me with both theskeleton and the inner spirit of the artworks that emerge.
I should add that my frequentation of the Chinese classics - a frequentation of 35 years now - has deeply helped me to enter the spirit of Chinese painting. I do say” “the spirit” – and the spirit requires from us to go beyond the letter. For instance, sometimes Chinese friends marvel at my “freedom” in painting, giving as an example the fact that, the way they see it, I do not pay attention to “the three basic principles (sanyuanfa).” I disagree with this appreciation. I think that the exchange between Heaven, Earth and Man is at the heart of my creation. I also think that entering the worldview expressed by the three principles does not require from the painter to keep in an artwork a fixed proportion of space for Heaven, another for Earth, and a third one for Man… Sometimes, by focusing on just one of the “principles”, you speak better of the union of the three. The energy that comes from the cosmic circulation is often hidden; it is not revealed by the fact of exhibiting a little corner of each of its components. Sometimes, “to hide” is “to reveal.” Chinese classics teach you to disregard the letter and to enter the spirit. This is what a good “translator” needs to do.
(…) I could also say, that, through the passage of time, effort and experience, the “nature” of Chinese painting and the ‘nature” of French painting have merged in my heart. Both have been translated into the other. Do they mean that they are unrecognizable? On the contrary: both have become even more themselves through the operation of translation.
Every creation calls for being “translated’ one day. Translation is transformation, and transformation ensures the perpetuity of the essence; translation ensures posterity. We need to be translated by the Other - and we need to be translated into something else – if we desire to keep alive and to bear fruit. Transformation is creation, and creation is perpetual influx of life. Creation struggles against entropy, against death, translating past insights and realities into new expressions of life. Ultimately, life is translation, and translation is life.”
B. Vermander
