Page 9 - The Ian and Susan Wilson Collection Schilar's Objects, Christie's, March 2016

SCHOLAR’S OBJECTS, SCHOLAR’S TASTE:
THE IAN AND SUSAN WILSON COLLECTION AND SCHOLARLY REFINEMENT
The terms “Chinese scholar’s studio” and “Chinese scholar’s
objects” occur repeatedly in discussions about later Chinese
art. But what do those terms mean and why are the concepts
important? The superb works in the Ian and Susan Wilson
Collection ofer an excellent opportunity to explore those
phenomena and to address those questions.
For scholar’s objects, the late Ming expression of the literati style taste) entitled Zhangwu Zhi 長物志 and written by Wen Zhenheng
is regarded as the classic interpretation because it was at that
time that a distinct literati taste crystallized—an elevated taste
that became the standard to which succeeding generations
aspired. Most of the so-called scholar’s objects that we see today
refect that style, whether produced in Ming times or during the
succeeding Qing dynasty (1644–1911).
During many periods in Chinese history, canons of taste were set
by the imperial court. In the Song dynasty, court and literati taste
coincided, both favoring monochrome ink paintings by Dong
Yuan 董源 (c. AD 934 – c. 962), Ju Ran 巨然 (f. 10th century), Fan
Kuan 范寬 (c. AD 960 – c. 1030), and Guo Xi 郭熙 (c. 1020 – c.
1090), for example, and such subtly-hued, monochrome-glazed
ceramics as Ding 定窯, Ru 汝窯, and Guan 官窯 ware. Although
the literati preference for elegant works of understated simplicity
persisted through the end of the dynastic era—i.e., through the
end of the Qing dynasty in 1911—by the Ming dynasty, court taste
had come to prefer boldly stated works in bright colors so that
cinnabar lacquers, multicolored cloisonné enamels, blue-and-
white porcelains, and brilliantly hued enameled wares became the
hallmarks of court taste in the Ming and Qing periods. Elevated
taste thus was bipolar from the Ming period onward: the court
taste for the bold, colorful, dramatic, and overpowering, standing
in marked contrast to the literati taste for the quiet, monochrome,
restrained, and understated. In that context, the elite, learned
literati became the de facto arbiters of non-court taste.
The literati, or wenren 文人, were talented men who embraced
learning as the highest good and who subscribed, at least in
principle, to a strict code of Confucian virtue. They were well-
versed in history, literature, philosophy, and the arts, and most
were accomplished in the three sister arts of poetry, calligraphy,
and painting, which are often termed the sanjue 三絕, or “three
perfections”. In short, they excelled in the arts of the brush. Literati
taste, often termed “scholars’ taste”, is well understood from the
scholars’ extensive writings and from the works they created,
collected, used, and appreciated. Their taste is well recorded in a
1637 treatise on garden architecture and interior design (in literati
文震亨 (1585–1645); the book’s title is often translated into English
as Superfuous Things.
Literati painting, or wenren hua 文人畫, which was done by scholar-
amateur artists, has been considered the highest expression of the
Chinese painter’s art since it came to the fore in the Yuan dynasty
(1279-1368). During the later dynastic era, from the Yuan through
the Qing, the literati earned their livelihood through government
service, writing, or teaching, but they turned to painting and
calligraphy for relaxation and personal enjoyment. Such artists
were expressionists, in the sense that they recognized the
expressive value of the formal elements—line, texture, brushwork,
and color, among others—and prized them for their own sake.
Their goal was to capture the idea, or essence, of the subject rather
than its mere outward appearance; in their paintings the subject
matter, usually a real or imagined landscape, became a vehicle for
the expression of the artist’s ideas, feelings, and personality.
Perhaps wenya文雅, which means “literary elegance” and
which refers to the sparse elegance of the scholar’s studio, best
characterizes the literati aesthetic, whether in the works of
painting and calligraphy that they created, in the furniture and
objects with which they surrounded themselves in their studios,
and in the paintings and antiquities that they collected. The term
wenya aptly describes furniture, rocks, scholar’s objects, and other
appurtenances for the studio, readily setting them apart in taste
and style from the ostentation of the court and the vulgarity of
the merchant class. Elegance has been an integral component
of elevated taste since Song times, even if the exact name and
defnition of “elegance” have changed and evolved over the
centuries.
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