Page 184 - China, 5000 years : innovation and transformation in the arts
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of materials with multilayered meaning would currents were powerfully redirected by great
become another option and ideal for artists of
original masters.
later periods.
Imperial Academy artists made paintings, mostly
Ni Zan's younger contemporary Wang Meng was
under orders or on commission, for a diversity of
the grandson of Zhao Mengfu and grew up with a
familiarity with old painting that informs his own — —uses auspicious, decorative, seasonal besides
works. Rejecting the reclusiveness of Ni Zan and
doing pictures that carried political meanings for
others, he followed the family tradition of official
service, holding a minor post in the 1340s and presentation and hanging on special occasions such
another after the founding of the Ming dynasty, as the appointment and retirement of court
eventually becoming implicated in a supposed
Aofficials. competence in portraiture was normally
treasonous plot and dying in prison. His landscapes,
densely packed and tactilely rich, can be read as required of these versatile artists, even when their
emblematic of engagement and thus as representing
primary specialty was flowers-and-birds or some
a stance opposed to that of Ni Zan. The highly
activated forms that make up Wang Meng's best other subject. Shang Xi, best known for what in
pictures create powerful tensions, even turbulence, the West are called history pictures, is credited with
which undermine the original implications of
stability and coherence carried by the Song a huge painting (over 2 x 3.5 m.), which may have
monumental landscapes on which they are distantly been mounted originally on a screen, representing
based. Such a calculated, expressionist distortion of
an established type, intended to subvert its normal Emperor Xuanzong and members of his court
associations, seems, again, a very modern stratagem. setting off on a hunt (cat. 190). The emperor, seen
Finest among Wang Meng's surviving paintings at the top, is the largest figure, as longstanding
is his 1366 Dwelling in the Qingbian Mountains convention dictated; the principal figures among
(cat. 189), which, according to research by Richard
Vinograd, was probably painted for the artist's the mounted party in the foreground are given
cousin Zhao Lin and represents the Zhao family portrait-like faces and must represent particular
retreat at that place. s Depictions ot secluded villas Wepeople. can assume that their inclusion in the
were a specialty ofYuan literati artists, who picture, and their positions within it, reflected their
ordinarily portrayed them as securely sequestered ranks in the court. The creatures crowded into the
from the outside world. Wang subverts this type —upper right deer, rabbits, ducks and other birds
too, by confounding the viewer's attempt to read stand for the intended quarry, but play only
his picture as made up of coherent geological forms
and spaces, and by instilling a powerful restlessness subsidiary roles in this grand display piece.
through nervous, constantly shifting brushwork and
an unnaturalistic play of light and shadow. The Another group portrait by a court master, this one
insecurity was real: the two principal contenders for in handscroll form and more modest in size, is Tlie
Literary Gathering in the Apricot Garden, an event that
the succession to Mongol rule were battling nearby
at just this time; one of them, Zhu Yuanzhang, took place in 1437 and was depicted by Xie Huan
would become, two years later, the first emperor of
the Ming dynasty. (act. 1426— 1452) (cat. 191). Xie had a long and
successful career in the Academy, attaining great
EARLY AND MIDDLE MING PAINTING:
DIVERGENT DIRECTIONS favor with the emperor, with whom he is said to
In the early Ming dynasty painters were called to have played chess every day. His status, and the
place in society that a painter might attain by his
court and assigned projects, as they had been in the time, is indicated by his including himself in the
Song. By the Xuande reign (1426— 1435) of the —picture at the beginning of the scroll, to be sure,
emperor Xuanzong, a conscious attempt was
underway to revive the Southern Song Painting farthest out from the garden that is its climactic
Academy, employing court artists who basically scene, but still there. The central figures are the
continued the Song styles. Literati, or scholar- Three Yangs, members of the Grand Secretariat and
amateur, artists of the early Ming continued late the emperor's most trusted advisers. They have
Yuan literati styles in a similarly conservative way; invited high-ranking friends for a day of
the first century or so of the Ming might thus seem banqueting and drinking, appreciating antiquities,
doing calligraphy, and composing poems. Here, too,
to support the idea of a stagnation in later Chinese the sizes, poses, and positioning of the figures
painting. But the lull was not to last beyond the
establish a clear hierarchy among them. Another,
middle and later fifteenth century, when both
shorter version of the picture is in the Metropolitan
Museum ot Art; it may be that the composition was
loosely replicated by lesser Academy masters for
presentation to participants in the event.
Both these paintings were executed in the Song-
derived, traditional manner of the early Ming
Academy; neither artist allowed his personal style,
or "handwriting," to intrude. The first significant
break with that practice was accomplished by Dai
Jin (1388— 1462), who served in the Academy, if at
CHINESE PAINTING: INNOVATION AFTER "PROGRESS" ENDS
