Page 192 - China, 5000 years : innovation and transformation in the arts

loyalist stance altogether, met the Kangxi emperor
on one of his southern tours, and traveled to the
capital in Beijing, probably as the guest ot a
Manchu official. During his active years he lived for
periods of time in each of the major centers of
—painting Anhui Province, Nanjing, and
—Yangzhou and absorbed and utilized, always on
his own terms, the local styles. In the end, he
became independent of all of them, and an artist of
unparalleled versatility. It was Shitao who, as noted
earlier in a contrast with Dong Qichang, conceived
the extraordinary project of relinquishing all
established styles and making a fresh start, as if he
could return to a state prior to the formulation of
conventions. "Before the old masters established
methods," he wrote, "I wonder what methods they
followed." To raise the question was to challenge
directly the Orthodox masters' insistence on "right
method"; what Shitao advocated was a "method
that is no method." The rhetoric of the claim,
needless to say, could not be matched in his actual
artistic practice. The attempt, however, while it
ultimately led (along with ravages of age and illness,
commercialization, and overproduction) to a
marked decline in much of the work of his last
years, produced some strange and wonderful
pictures. It also, together with the drastic failure of Gao Cen's large hanging scroll Hie Temple on
creative energy within the Orthodox school of
landscape around the same time, left a curious and
not entirely healthy legacy for the artists who
followed in the eighteenth century, confronting
them with still another "end of the history of art."
The most interesting ot them turned away from
landscape altogether to pursue other subjects, and
landscape would not recover its central importance
until the twentieth century.
Two of Shitao's finest landscapes are in the
exhibition. Neither is dated. Pure Sounds of Hills and
Streams (cat. 208) is probably from his years in
Nanjing, 1680— 1687, when he was affected by the
—styles of the local artists notably Gong Xian
(cf. cat. 209). The heavy application of dotting over
the surface, which seems to vibrate apart from the
solid masses and to convey a psychological rather
than a physical state, is a feature also of Gong's late their painting for income), responded to a diversity
period, the 1680s. At the right of Shitao's picture, a
path ascends a ravine to disappear in fog; at the left,
in a similarly constricted space, a waterfall seen at
the top emerges below to flow under a roofed
bridge in which two men relax, listening to the
sounds and enjoying the cool. Clear Autumn in
Huaiyang (cat. 211), judging from its style, must be
much later; Jonathan Hay dates it to 1705 and
associates it with a flooding that Yangzhou suffered
then. 10 In brushwork it stops well short of the more
extreme essays toward "stylelessness" seen in other
works of Shitao's last years; in its handling of the
flat recession along the river, it would appear to
betray some acquaintance with Western pictorial
CHINESE PAINTING: INNOVATION AFTER "PROGRESS" ENDS
techniques, which were easily accessible by this
time to any artist who chose to draw on them
and many were doing so, in diverse ways. Huaiyang
is an old name for the city ofYangzhou, where
Shitao lived as a professional artist in his late years.
Gong Xian and seven other artists active in
Nanjing in the early Qing period are designated in
Chinese writings as the "Eight Masters ofJinling"
(an old name for the city). Two of the others are
Zou Zhe (1636—ca. 1708) and Gao Cen (active
Aca. 1645— 1689.) distinct school style runs through
the output of the Nanjing masters and is well
exemplified by Zou Zhe's twelve-leaf Album of
Landscapes (cat. 2 12). The style includes a preference
—for angular divisions of the picture area strong
—diagonals, V-shaped compositions and a fondness
for rich textures in both earth surfaces and
vegetation. This textural richness responds to,
among other factors, the richly forested terrain
around Nanjing, just as the linear, geometricized
style of the Anhui masters responds to the fractured
rock masses of Huangshan. Dark, mysterious groves
of trees often dominate Nanjing-school landscapes,
and can even, as in two of Zou Zhe's album leaves,
serve as the sole subject ot the picture. By contrast,
—Jinshan (cat. 214) avoids the local manner or any
—established manner, in fact to give a close visual
report of a famous sight, using all the techniques
for convincing representation that an artist of his
time and place could muster, including some
adopted from Western pictures. Jinshan ("Gold
Mountain") is an island in theYangzi River near
the neighboring city ot Zhenjiang; topped by a
Buddhist temple and pagoda that were visible from
atar, the island was a familiar landmark for travelers.
EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY PAINTING: THE
YANGZHOU "ECCENTRICS"
By the early decades of the eighteenth century the
older centers of painting had been replaced in
importance by the city ofYangzhou. Artists and
litterateurs were attracted by the generous
patronage of salt merchants and other wealthy men
who settled there. Painters with different styles and
specialties, polished professionals and self-styled
amateurs (who mostly depended, nonetheless, on
of tastes and demands.
Two depictions of real places by Yangzhou masters
exemplify this diversity. One, in handscroll form
(cat. 213), depicts the Zhan Yuan ("Garden tor
Gazing"), probably the garden of that name on the
Qin-Huai Canal in Nanjing, which still can be seen
today, although much altered and restored. The
artist is Yuan Jiang, who was active from the 1690s
until about 1746. Such a work was ordinarily
commissioned by the owner of the garden, who