Art: Paintings by the Foot

Because he is bored with his own, he calls himself by many names: “The Old Man of the Apricot Orchard,” “Hut on Chieh Shan Mountain,” “The Man Long Separated from the Studio of Eight Ink Stones.” But in China last week any of those names, signed with slender strokes upon a painting, were immediately recognizable as belonging to Ch’ih Pai-shih, China’s most popular living artist.

Ch’ih Pai-shih is not the name he started with, either. Many years ago, he was plain Ch’ih Huang, a carpenter’s apprentice from Hunan. After work one day he collected some shrimps, crabs, crickets, and tiny bugs, and put them all into a glass box. “I observed these creatures with my eye,” says he, “and put them into my heart.” One by one, he painted their “portraits”; and one by one, to his great surprise, he sold what he had painted.

What Ricksha Boys Know. So Ch’ih Huang, the carpenter, became Ch’ih Pai-shih, the artist, to paint for the rest of his days—lotus blossoms, palm leaves, banana trees, but mostly crickets, chicks, shrimps and crabs. “Only the rich have known landscapes,” says he. “But every ricksha boy knows a shrimp or a crab.”

Ch’ih is now 88, with a wispy grey beard, a high thin voice, and a rambling house in Peiping. There he works behind peeling walls that surround a series of tiny gardens, through which ducks and relatives waddle and wander happily all day long. Ch’ih Pai-shih has 30 relatives living with him, and supports 20 more in Hunan. His household includes ten children of his own, the youngest of whom he hopefully calls “The End.”

To help support this household, he must work with lightning speed, painting with swift, sure brush strokes on pieces of thin bamboo paper. The slightest error in wetting or pressing upon the brush would mean an ugly smear and having to start all over again. But Ch’ih Pai-shih never has to start over again, and he can turn out four or five of his delicate paintings a day. These he sells only on order, and only by the square foot (his price: $1 to $2 a sq. ft.).

Keys & a Stone. Ch’ih Pai-shih has many fears. One is that people might stop ordering his paintings, and that he will be forced into the streets to peddle them himself. Another is that someone will rob him, and that he must keep all his paints and possessions always locked up, carrying the keys around with him on a rope about his waist. With such worries, and 50 relatives, and a whole year — and thousands of square feet — of orders to fill, there was little peace last week for Ch’ih Pai-shih. Once in a while he likes to drive out into the country to a quiet place where there is an eight-foot stone on which are carved the words: “The grave of Ch’ih Pai-shih.”