Page 187 - China, 5000 years : innovation and transformation in the arts
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connoisseurs, and to us, they seem to foreshadow Fig. 3. Xu Wei (1521-1593). Flowers and Other Plants
the truly revolutionary moves of the later Ming
(grapevines). Ming dynasty (1368-1644).
—without quite realizing them occupying art- Handscroll, ink on paper; 30 x 1,053.5 an.
Nanjing Museum.
historical positions, that is, somewhat like Courbet
which he depicts in assertive strokes of ink
and Manet. If so, Dong Qichang (cat. 200) was to
monochrome. An extreme example of his
be the Chinese Cezanne. Such comparisons are
perhaps idle and easily discredited; they are meant semicontrolled, gestural manner can be seen in a
only as loose indicators of how large patterns of section representing grapevines in his great
change in artistic styles, first slower and then more
handscroll in the Nanjing Museum (fig. 3). Another
radical, might be seen as repeating themselves.
kind of nonconformist brushwork, in which the
LATE MING PAINTING: RADICAL MOVES ink is applied so wet that individual strokes cannot
be distinguished within puddled areas and the
The self-expressive concept of painting, by which image is blurred as if by atmosphere, is displayed in
the qualities of the work reflect the artist's his large hanging scroll Peonies, Banana Plant, and
Rock (cat. 198). By accepting a role outside normal
personality and cultivation, was well established in
Chinese literati painting theory of the Song period social demands, Xu Wei freed himself to violate
and was taken to be ideally exemplified, as we saw, established literati disciplines of brushwork and
in the work of such late Yuan masters as Ni Zan form. At the same time, however, he creates here a
and Wang Meng. A corollary of this idea, popular in moving evocation of what one might see in the
corner of one's garden on a foggy morning. In all
China as in the West (the "van Gogh's ear" notion), their moves to the very edge of abstraction,
was that eccentricity or even aberration in the Chinese artists never renounced representation
painter produced corresponding oddities in the completely, presumably because doing so deprives
picture. Audiences for artists identified as "mad," the artist of the power to create visually arresting
then, expected some evidence of "madness" in the effects through tensions between image and
paintings, and the artists responded. Those such as
abstraction.
Wu Wei (cat. 193), who cultivated eccentricities of
The centuries after the Song dynasty had produced
behavior and matched them with wild brushwork
in their paintings, should be distinguished from few distinguished figure painters, but that long-
neglected subject category rose again to
those who suffered real, disabling bouts of mental prominence in the late Ming, especially in the work
disorder. Two of the latter are represented in this
exhibition: Xu Wei and Bada Shanren. of Chen Hongshou (1598-1652). Like Xu Wei, he
Xu Wei (1521—1593) is another artist, like Ni Zan, lived in the region of Shaoxing in Zhejiang. and
whose paintings can scarcely be discussed apart also like Xu he was an educated man and frustrated
would-be official who failed the examinations
from his life. After failing in successive attempts at
repeatedly, settling finally and reluctantly into the
an official career, he made his living as a role of professional painter. Both his level of
cultivation and his bitterness can be read in his
playwright, calligrapher, and painter, exhibiting paintings. I he nonconformity of his works,
however, is not manifested in bold, gestural brush
brilliance in all three pursuits. His emotional
strokes; Chen paints mostly in the old manner ot
disorder sometimes took violent forms: he
fastidious fine-line drawing with washes of color.
mutilated himself while in prison, and in a drunken
fit beat his second wife to death, narrowly escaping
Xuexecution for this. Wei's favorite subjects as a
painter have no implications of violence, however;
he painted plants, including fruits and flowers.
CHINESE PAINTING: INNOVATION AFTER "PROGRESS" ENDS 185
