2011.18: Post-Marijuana (Dama zhi hou), Written in Shadow Script

Identification and Creation

Object Number

2011.18

People

Fung Ming Chip (Feng Mingqiu) 馮明秋, Chinese (born 1951)

Title

Post-Marijuana (Dama zhi hou), Written in Shadow Script

Classification

Calligraphy

Work Type

album leaf

Date

2009

Places

Creation Place: East Asia, China, Hong Kong

Culture

Chinese

Persistent Link

https://hvrd.art/o/336550

Physical Descriptions

Medium

Album leaf; ink on paper; with three seals of the artist; written in Shadow Script

Dimensions

Calligraphy proper: H. 45.6 x W. 64.9 cm (17 15/16 x 25 9/16 in.)
Mounting: H. 50 x W. 70.1 cm (19 11/16 x 27 5/8 in.)

Inscriptions and Marks

• seal: This calligraphic work is not signed, but it includes three seals of the artist, which identify it as a work of Fung Ming Chip. The three seals, which the artist himself carved, and their locations can be described as follows:
  
  Top: Square, red, relief seal reading Ming Chip (Ming Qiu) 明秋 (Artist’s given name)
  Center: Square, red, relief seal reading Xie Xin Qu Yi 寫心取義 (“Meaning from the heart”)
  Bottom: Square, red, relief seal reading Si Bu Guan 四不館 (Note that the seal reading Si Bu Guan refers to the artist’s studio: the “Studio of the Four No’s”)
• inscription: The inscribed text reads as follows:
  
  大麻之後
  
  麻後的幸福
  掙扎扭動
  張向空虛空間
  交錯狂亂
  上下舞成一片
  走著走著
  越出價值意義之外
  踏破禁錮時光的囚籠
  邁向夜的盡頭
  命的盡頭
  一踏足
  一轉身
  又自覺地沉淪到底
  靈魂超脫
  得成正果
  
  
  The text can be translated as follows:
  
  Post-Marijuana
  
  The happiness that follows marijuana
  The twisting and turning
  Stretching into empty space
  Craziness and chaos intermingling
  Mixing good and evil
  
  Moving on and on
  Beyond the sense of value
  Breaking the shackles of the prisoner’s age of time
  Striding towards the edge of the night
  The furthest edge of life
  
  Treading, spinning
  Consciously sinking to the bottom
  Detached from the soul
  To become a saint
  

Provenance

Recorded Ownership History

Fung Ming Chip, Hong Kong (2009-2010), sold; to Susan L. Beningson, New York, 2010, gift; to Harvard Art Museums, 2011.

Footnotes:
This work was created by Fung Ming Chip in Hong Kong in 2009.

Acquisition and Rights

Credit Line

Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Gift of Susan L. Beningson and Steve Arons in memory of Renée Beningson

Accession Year

2011

Object Number

2011.18

Division

Asian and Mediterranean Art

Contact

am_asianmediterranean@harvard.edu

Permissions

The Harvard Art Museums encourage the use of images found on this website for personal, noncommercial use, including educational and scholarly purposes. To request a higher resolution file of this image, please submit an online request.

Descriptions

Description

This large, horizontally oriented, rectangular album leaf is as much a play with splashed ink as it is a work of calligraphy. It features three large splashes of very black ink, one at the top center, one in the lower right corner, and one in the lower left corner that extends three-quarters of the way up the side of the leaf; a final, small splash appears in the upper left corner. Tiny splashes of ink and broad but faint brush strokes intersect the large splashes, linking them together and visually texturing the interstitial spaces. The calligrapher, Fung Ming Chip (b. 1951; standard Mandarin transcription: Feng Mingqiu), visually enlivened the paper in this manner as a background for the seventy-eight character text of “Post-Marijuana”, which he inscribed in "xingshu", or cursive script, in a manner that he characterizes as Shadow Script, a term he uses to describe characters written with dark watery ink on a black ground. The text is a challenge to read because the characters are very faint, they are widely dispersed, and they often overlap. The artist used pale, watery ink to write the text; the characters in the areas of paper left white are so pale that they are virtually invisible on first inspection, just as those in the ink-splashed areas are so pale that they virtually disappear into the dark splashes.This calligraphic work is not dated; however, the artist stated to Robert D. Mowry that he created it in 2009. This calligraphic work is not signed, but it includes three seals of the artist, which appear in a vertical column down the center of the composition and which identify it as a work of Fung Ming Chip. The three seals, which the artist himself carved, and their locations can be described as follows:

Top: Square, red, relief seal reading "Ming Chip" (Ming Qiu) (Artist’s given name)
Center: Square, red, relief seal reading "Xie Xin Qu Yi" (“Meaning from the heart”)
Bottom: Square, red, relief seal reading "Si Bu Guan" (Note that the seal reading Si Bu Guan refers to the artist’s studio: the “Studio of the Four No’s”)

The inscribed text can be translated as follows:

Post-Marijuana

The happiness that follows marijuana
The twisting and turning
Stretching into empty space
Craziness and chaos intermingling
Mixing good and evil

Moving on and on
Beyond the sense of value
Breaking the shackles of the prisoner’s age of time
Striding towards the edge of the night
The furthest edge of life

Treading, spinning
Consciously sinking to the bottom
Detached from the soul
To become a saint

Verification Level