Hawk 1946

Xu Beihong made this beautiful ‘Hawk’ with ink, using a brush, sometime before 1953. It's all about the dance of the brush, the way he lets the ink bloom and bleed. You can see he’s not trying to control every detail, but letting the process itself be part of the picture. Look at the hawk’s feathers, how the ink varies from dark to light, creating texture and depth with simple, spontaneous strokes. The physicality of the medium is really on display. It's cool how the blurred edges and varied tones of gray and black ink give this bird this airy weightlessness. Also check out how the branch the hawk is perching on is a little rough around the edges, but those marks really bring the whole thing together and makes the bird seem even more lifelike. Beihong reminds me a bit of Franz Kline, in the sense of mark-making and their confidence with ink, although of course working in totally different traditions.