06 Jun The great image has no form

Jullien, F. (2009) The great image has no form, or on the nonobject through painting. Chicago: University of Chicago Press

I have read this book multiple times, it is dense and complex and on rereading it echoes thoughts I’ve had around this project that I am unable to articulate. The essay The Sketch talks about the power of the unfinished work. The imagery of the work remaining “in flight” while it is still a sketch, and being in that moment a thing of itself, is part of the tension that is explored in the project between representation and something more.

Jullien circles around comparisons and contrasts between European and Chinese thought, their relationships to, and processes of, representing and considering landscape. The various references to ink and brush echo the making processes of this project and parallel questions of representation and process I address. The great image has no form… describes Chinese brush painting as a depiction not of the seen but as an attempt to evoke experiences that cannot otherwise be expressed. From my understanding of a landscape as a representation, as a layering of memories, or even as a place to work within, this text expands the concept of landscape painting to be something beyond a mere pictorial representation, to be something else in and of itself.