Page 145 - The Arts of China, By Michael Sullivan Good Book

from foreign lands, and flowers, which he painted with great re-
alism. His son (?) I-seng was honoured by T'ai-tsung with a ducal
title. "His paintings," says another ninth-century work, the
T'ang-ch'ao ming-hua lu (Record of Famous Painters of the T'ang Dy-
nasty) of Chu Ching-hsiian, "whether votive images, human fig-
ures, or flowers and birds, were always foreign-looking and not
like Chinese things"; while Chang Yen-yuan said of his brush-
work that it was "tight and strong like bending iron or coiling
wire." A Yuan critic wrote of him that "he used deep colours
which he piled up in raised layers on the silk." His work is of
course long since lost, but it seems that his "relief style" of flower
painting was not a subtle use of shading to give an effect of solid
volume, as is often supposed on the basis of descriptions in early
texts, but a much cruder technique wherein the pigment was piled
up in a heavy impasto till the flowers actually did stand out from
the wall. Traces of this technique survive in the much-damaged
wall paintings in the caves at Mai-chi-shan.
While some T'ang painters were no doubt seduced by such devices WU TAO-TZU
into thoroughly un-Chincse experiments, Wu Tao-tzu, the great-
est of them all, seems from contemporary accounts to have
worked in a purely Chinese style, which in its grandeur ofconcep-
tion and fiery energy of execution makes him one with Michelan-
gelo. Born about 700, he is said before he died to have painted
three hundred frescoes (using the term in the loose sense; they
were painted not on wet but on dry plaster) in the temples of Loy-
ang and Ch'ang-an. None of his pictures has survived; indeed, by
the eleventh century the poet Su Tung-p'o could say that he had
seen but two genuine ones, his friend Mi Fu three or four. But we
can obtain a vivid idea of the vigour, solidity, and realism of his
work from descriptions written by those who had seen it—more
vivid, certainly, than is provided by the thirdhand copies, odd
rubbings, and sketches on which our estimates are generally
based. The twelfth-century writer Tung Yu said of him: "Wu Tao-
tzu s figures remind me of sculpture. One can sec them sideways
and all round. His linework consists of minute curves like rolled
copper wire" (another writer says this was more characteristic of
his early work: it suggests the influence of Yii-ch'ih l-scng);
"however thickly his red or white paint is laid on, the structure of
the forms and modelling of the flesh are never obscured." Earlier,
Tung Yu had remarked that "when he paints a face, the cheek-
bones project, the nose is fleshy, the eyes hollow, the cheeks dim-
pled. But these effects arc not got by heavy ink-shading. The
shape of the features seems to have come spontaneously, yet in-
evitably." All spoke of the whirlwind energy of his brush, so re-
markable that crowds would gather to watch him as he worked.
Perhaps his technique is reflected in the head of the Indian sage Vi-
malakirti painted by an unknown eighth-century artist on the wall 155 The sage Vimalakirti. Detail of a
wall painting in Cave 103 (P 137 M),
of Cave 103 (to right) at Tunhuang. His influence on later figure
Tunhuang. T'ang Dynasty, eighth
painting was enormous. century.
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