Page 174 - China, 5000 years : innovation and transformation in the arts
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civilization is generally regarded as one of the classic members of the educated elite using a deliberately
civilizations of world history, so too are Chinese plain, even awkward manner intended to signify
their status as noble-minded amateurs. They claimed
painting and calligraphy classic types among the
to paint only for self-expression, "as a lodging for
world's art forms. [their] feelings" (Ni Zan), never at the behest of a
This exhibition features the works of thirty-seven patron or for the marketplace. Wang Meng's
painters and calligraphers, ranging from the middle Dwelling in the Qingbian Mountains (cat. 189) reveals
only to the closest inspection the dwelling of a
of the Northern Song dynasty in the mid-eleventh recluse, to which the craggy, bristling mountain
century through the middle of the late Qing —seems to deny all access an emblem of the literati
dynasty in the eighteenth century. These ideal of literally forsaking and spiritually
outstanding works, selected from museums transcending the mundane world. Ni Zan's Six
throughout mainland China, compose in microcosm Gentlemen (cat. 188) uses six trees, upright and
unbending, to allude to the austere integrity of the
a history of the development of painting and
literati. Though the first painting teems with
calligraphy during this period. For instance, Wang
writhing forms and the second is almost minimalist,
Shen's Misty Riper and Layered Hills (cat. 184), the both of them slight pictorial description and
emphasize instead the quality of the brush stroke,
Southern Song Snowy Landscape (cat. 186), and Zhao which was held to express the character of the
DuKui's In the Spirit of Poems by Fu (cat. 185), taken painter.
together, succincdy epitomize the rapid
developments in landscape painting during the
Northern and Southern Song dynasties.
Misty Rii>er and Layered Hills invokes a vast From the mid-Ming period prosperous southeastern
panorama in the depiction of a single scene. Snout)*
Landscape uses instead the classic allusive technique cities such as Suzhou and Songjiang in Jiangsu
of the renowned Southern Song landscape artist Ma tended to attract literati painters. These urban literati
Yuan (act. late I2th-early 13th c), suggesting the transferred their love of nature and the bucolic life
immensity of the mountains by showing only their
peaks and not their bases. The buildings have been to their gardens and studios, which became favorite
drawn not as architectural renderings but freehand,
without benefit of straightedge, and the dominant artistic subjects. Wen Zhengming's Studio of True
Appreciation (cat. 197) depicted the study of Hua Xia
mood is one of quiet and solitude in a setting of
(b. ca. 1498), the most famous collector of his day.
Magreat beauty. Very few of Yuan 's paintings have Shen Zhou, in Eastern Villa (cat. 196), abjured his
survived to the present, but this anonymous scroll usual broad brush strokes in favor of a meticulously
conveys some sense of them. The Qianlong emperor
of the Qing dynasty sought to express the essence detailed picture of the garden residence of his
of Zhao Kui's small painting of a bamboo grove
Wuliteratus friend Kuan (1435— 1504). Likewise, Qiu
(cat. 185) in the following couplet:
Ying's Playing the Flute by Pine and Stream (cat. 195)
The tranquil lotus and verdant creek reject the
expresses the literati pastoral ideal. From the mid-
summer's heat,
Ming onward, the literati ideal dominated Chinese
And in the depths of the bamboo grove fans are
culture and society, and the less rigorously austere
unfurled in the little pavilion.
examples of literati painting found acceptance at
This emperor's couplet alludes consciously to a
court and among the mercantile class as well as
verse by the renowned Tang dynasty poet Du Fu:
among the scholar-official elite.
The depths of the bamboo grove urge the
From the outset Qing painting displayed a rich
visitor to stay diversity. Wang Shimin (1592— 1680), Wang Jian
(1598—1677), Wang Hui (1632—1717), and Wang
And enjoy the coolness of the tranquil lotus. Yuanqi (1642— 1715), collectively known as the "Four
Wangs" of Chinese art history, primarily carried on
Hence the title of the painting. To paraphrase the the literati landscape traditions of the early Song
great Song poet Su Dongpo: In the words of the
poem we find the painting; in the lines of the —and Yuan dynasties. Artistic archaism paintings
painting we find the poem. This masterpiece of —alluding to the styles of earlier masters became
Chinese "poetic painting" is also the only known
work by Zhao Kui. fashionable at court and among the upper classes
generally. The literati style, revolutionary during the
During the Yuan dynasty paintings as pictures of Ming, became the new orthodoxy of Qing
things and paintings as cosmic metaphors began to painting, exemplified by the "Four Wangs"
—be displaced by literati paintings executed by (especially the first three) and their epigones.
Contemporaneously, Bada Shanren, Shitao,
Hongren, and Kuncan, collectively known as the
"Four Monks" of art history, expressed their inner
turmoil at the fall of the Ming and triumph of the
non-Han Qing dynasty in powerfully individualistic
works. Take, for instance, Ducks and Lotuses (cat. 210)
CALLIGRAPHY AND PAINTING — THE ESSENCE OF A CIVILIZATION 172
