Page 185 - China, 5000 years : innovation and transformation in the arts

all, only briefly, but whose stylistic innovations
heavily influenced its later masters. His typical
works, large landscape hanging scrolls on silk, are
still relatively traditional in subject and
composition, but are made up of massive, strongly
contoured earth forms. The brush drawing is less
constrained than before by its bounding and
texturing function, more expressive of nervous
energy in the artist's hand. This stylistic move is not whomold pattern. In the eyes of the audiences for
only another assertion of the rising status of
painters, including professionals, but also an
incursion into the territory of the scholar-
—amateurs who would, however, have been quick
to point out that Dai Jin's brushwork-oriented
paintings were still very different from theirs, less
subtle, as befitting the work of a professional.
An untypical, very fine work by Dai Jin is the small
picture on paper now titled, somewhat
misleadingly, Landscape in the Manner of Yan Wengui
(cat. 192). The association with this tenth- to
eleventh-century landscapist comes from the
inscription written on it by Dong Qichang
(1555-1636), leading spokesman for the literati
position, who was, we can imagine, shown the
work and invited to inscribe it by some collector.
Dong, to whom Dai Jin's typical work must have
seemed heavy-handed and overcharged, could
scarcely praise a painting without identifying in it
the kind of style-conscious allusions to old masters
that he and other literati artists practiced
themselves; he felt obliged to find such allusions,
however forcedly, in Dai's work. The words of
heavily qualified, even evasive praise that Dong
wrote on it reveal the uneasy relationship between
artists occupying different socioeconomic positions
in Ming China: "Among the professional painters
of our dynasty, Dai Jin is considered a great master.
This picture follows Yan Wengui's style, and is pure
and empty, not at all like [Dai's] everyday work in
—character it is highly unusual." Although the shape
of the highest peak and a few other features may
relate distantly to Yan Wengui, Dai's painting is not
style-conscious at all, but is a sensitive, painterly
evocation of a misty scene centered on the
thatched retirement house of the man for whom it
was done, identified in Dai's own inscription as
"Old Teacher Yongyan."
The "school" or movement that Dai Jin is credited
with founding was later named, after his birthplace
in Zhejiang Province, the Zhe school. Among the
artists who succeeded him in what is now called
the Zhe school and who served in the Imperial
Academy was Wu Wei (1459— 1508). His career
marks a further stage in the social elevation of the
artist. He was much in demand as a drinking
companion for men of high position and was a
familiar of the emperor himself, who excused His
aberrant behavior because of his artistic brilliance.
CHINESE PAINTING INNOVATION AFTER "PROGRESS" ENDS
Wu Wei exemplifies a new type of artist, the urban
eccentric, to whose personality the quick and
spontaneous manner of execution seen in his
paintings was taken to be a stylistic counterpart. His
subjects and compositions are in themselves
relatively conservative: Fishermen on a Snowy River
(cat. 193), for instance, with a landmass on one side
and a receding river on the other, follows a very
Wu Wei worked, fishermen represented an ideal of
escape from the pressures and spiritual
contamination of city and court.
By the end of the fifteenth century the great city
of Suzhou, which had been a gathering place for
artists and poets in the late Yuan period but had
declined under persecution by the first Ming
emperor, was recovering its cultural preeminence,
which it would retain for about a century. Besides
being the principal locus for the revival of literati
painting, it offered the most attractive patronage to
professional artists, who could benefit also from the
great collections of old paintings to be seen there.
Among these professionals, three stand out: Zhou
Chen (ca. 1455—after 1536) and two who learned
—from him QiuYing (ca. 1495— 1552) and Tang Yin
(1470-1523). Zhou and Qiu are represented in this
exhibition by excellent paintings that display the
conservative side of their output; judged by these,
they might seem to substantiate, once more, the
idea that little had changed since the Song dynasty.
The subject of Zhou Chen's Peach Blossom Spring
(cat. 194), which he painted in 1533, was a favorite
among Suzhou and other big-city audiences, since
it was another image of escape from the "dusty
world." In the famous account by Tao Qian
(365—427), a fisherman discovers a hidden elysium
(the origin of the Shangri-la story) where refugees
from an oppressive ruler had lived tor centuries
without aging. The fisherman returns to his town,
and a search party is sent to find this blessed place;
needless to say, they never do. The compartment-
alized composition of Zhou's painting follows this
narrative in its structure: passage from the
foreground, the outside world, to the elysium is
through a cave; beyond, in the sequestered space,
the fisherman is seen being greeted by the village
elders. The picture is executed in brushwork that
conceals the hand of the artist, answering the
continuing fondness of the Suzhou patrons for
—Song-styic painting preference tor the styles of
the Yuan literati masters had yet to become the
dominant critical taste.
QiuYing's Playing the Flute by Pine and Stream
(cat. 195) is another successful evocation of Song
style and another image of reclusion.The man
playing .1 flute in .1 boat is not .1 working fisherman,
Wuas portrayed, lor instance, in Wei's painting
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