The Mysticism of Guo Fengyi, Emma Kunz, Hilma af Klint, and Agnes Martin
Guo Fengyi, Bagua Diagram of the Sun Seen from a Distance, 1989. Color ink on paper, 59 x 41 inches. Courtesy of Long March Space.
Guo Fengyi: To See from a Distance, on view through May 10, 2020, presents a body of masterful drawings by Chinese artist Guo Fengyi, whose unique artistic language developed through a mystical internal visioning process that she derived from ancient Chinese cosmology and wellness practices such as qigong and meditation. Guo’s intricate diagrammatic drawings beautifully express ancient Chinese divination practices, Daoist concepts, and classic Chinese mythology. Guo’s adventure into the cosmos through drawing is a project shared by other mystically-minded women artists who, like Guo, have been harshly judged and relegated into near obscurity.
Over the past forty-two years, The Drawing Center has been dedicated to centering such artists who have been largely unheard in modern cultural institutions. The 2005 exhibition 3x Abstraction: New Methods of Drawing by Emma Kunz, Hilma af Klint, and Agnes Martin, for example, brought together three women artists whose imaginative and spiritualistic approaches to abstraction were severely under-recognized. Like Guo, these three artists believed in abstraction as a way to achieve higher consciousness and self-knowledge in order to reveal sacred workings of the universe. Self-sequestered into relative seclusion, all four artists were utterly devoted to drawing. Such profound dedication resulted in truly mesmerizing drawings in which every line, mark, and color corresponds and holds sacred meaning.
Guo used a methodology most similar to af Klint; both artists developed an artistic language from internal visioning processes. Guo drew from visions she had while practicing qigong, an ancient Chinese wellness and healing technique that combines coordinated movements, breathing, and meditation. While af Klint received formal artistic training, Guo did not begin to draw until her late forties after debilitating arthritis forced her into early retirement from a job at a chemical fertilizer factory, and her drawing practice began as a dedicated search for healing. “I began drawing on May 21, 1989. Before that I was frequently ill, and my health wasn’t optimal.,” Guo explained, “I heard that even those who cannot write can prescribe medicine, which to me sounds quite magical, so I decided to try drawings – that’s how I began. What I drew was mostly about treating illness: How to treat leukemia? How to treat toothache? How to treat depression? I then drew accordingly.”[i] In ancient Chinese cosmology the human body “is a replica of the macrocosm,”[ii] and Guo’s line of questioning with the body quickly developed into a mystical search for knowledge of the universe.
Guo began her drawing sessions with a word or phrase such as “Japan” or “the human body,” and would ensue an intuition-driven drawing session in which her conscious self was not in control. Under this special condition of consciousness, which was trance-like and similar to the indigenous Chinese concept of “wu” or being “possessed by spirits,” Guo would seek knowledge on the chosen theme. “I draw because I do not know,” she said, “I draw to know.” The intuitive way in which Guo produced art set her apart from her contemporaries, who largely made art from observation. “I’m different from you guys,” Guo asserted, “You people paint after you understood, and yet, I understand only after I paint.”[iii]
Like women mystic artists of previous generations, and so unlike male modernist titans such as Wassily Kandinsky and Piet Mondrian, Guo’s spiritual creativity remains lesser known. The Drawing Center is proud to share Guo Fengyi’s drawings with our audience so that we all may know the beauty, divinity, and profound creativity of her life’s work.