Art Reboot

114 loved by the reader, become friends. This is a wonder: a living sympathy between the quick and the dead, or the no-longer dead. Seals are usually small, for ease of use and storage, though there are large examples. Some give the artist’s names – assumed artistic names, sobriquets, studio names – which identify the artist or the place where the work was inscribed. Others give short texts: an aphorism or a poetic excerpt. Artists accumulate seals. I have nearly one hundred upon which I can draw, waiting subtexts or parallel threads of thought or feeling to be matched with a painting both formally and by linked idea. One of mine – ‘All day long, only white clouds come to my gate’ – succinctly evokes the life of a hermit, aware of missing human touch but at peace with nature. The gate, and its little squeak as it swings open, suggests a garden, beyond the Gates of Wonder. Commonly made of relatively soft materials such as soap- stone or wood, seals are carved with iron or steel tools known for centuries as the ‘iron brush’. The characters must be carved in reverse to print correctly, of course, an act demanding an additional level of skill. The invariably bright red or vermilion colours selected for seals (although others infrequently occur) are the only oil-based pigments used in the tradition. In Chinese painting these bright red accents give additional compositional rhythm to whatever they accompany (painting, calligraphy, rub- bings). We see an analogue in the printing of western books, where titles used often to be printed in that colour. No colour works as well with black as red, and the two on a pale ground allow an extraordinary range of visual input. Artists, as well as subsequent collectors or colophonists, dot images with seals,