Exploring Bodily Engagement: An Analysis of Chinese Literati Painting and Installation Art

The article examines the contribution of the embodied involvement in two different art traditions, Chinese literati painting and contemporary installation art. Although the two works are distinct in various cultural, temporal, and medium contexts, they both have a centre of attention on the body as a medium of art. The article then resorts to the Taoist aesthetics and Merleau-Ponty phenomenology of embodiment and implements a qualitative comparative analysis to research the ways of how bodily engagement can perform differently in different situations. The critical analysis takes four interpretive areas, which are the locus of embodiment (artist vs. viewer) and the figuring of space versus positive space. Immersion, modality, time perception. The literati painters Ni Zan and Shen Zhou are the subjects of case studies, and their masterpieces portray a meditative unity with nature. Other artists, such as installation artists Yayoi Kusama and Ai Weiwei, among others, are also found in these studies, but the audience defines their interactive environments through participation. Results indicate that, by comparison of the literati painting, the role of the body is internalised to achieve the spiritual immersion in the practice, but installation art externalises it with the interaction of the dynamic viewer. Despite their distinctions, the role of the body in aesthetical perception is made clear in both. The juxtaposition of the two traditions presents trans-cultural perspectives of art embodiment. It refocuses the concept of literati painting in the modern discourse and shows that bodily involvement (reflection or engagement) is a major theme within the human art experience.