Page 181 - The Arts of China, By Michael Sullivan Good Book

reaching its climax in the Northern Sung period, the seeds of a
very different notion of the purposes of painting were taking root
in the minds of a small circle of intellectuals of whom the leaders
were the great poet Su Tung-p'o (1036-1 101), his teacher in bam-
boo painting Wen T'ung (died 1079), Mi Fu (or Mi Fei, 105 1-
1 105), and the scholar and calligraphcr Huang T'ing-chicn (1045-
1107). Su Tung-p'o put forward the revolutionary idea that the
purpose of painting was not representation but expression. To
them, the aim of a landscape painter was not to evoke in the
viewer the same kind of feelings as he would have if he were ac-
tually wandering in the mountains himself, but to reveal to his
friends something of his own mind and feelings. They spoke of
merely "borrowing" the forms of rocks, trees, or bamboo in
which, for the moment, to find "lodging" for their thoughts and
feelings. Of a panorama of the Hsiao and Hsiang rivers such as
that attributed to Tung Yuan they might say, not "From this you
can tell what the scenery of Hsiao and Hsiang is like," but "From
this, you can tell what kind of a man Tung Yuan was." Their
brushwork was as personal and as revealing of character as was
their handwriting.
So it was that in their painting, the passion of a Fan K'uan for the
hills and streams gave way to a more urbane, detached attitude; for
they avoided becoming too deeply involved either in nature or in
material things. Above all, they were gentlemen, poets, and
scholars first, and painters only second; and, lest they be taken for
professionals, they often claimed that they were only playing with
ink and that a certain roughness or awkwardness was a mark of
unaffected sincerity. By choice, they painted in ink on paper, de-
liberately avoiding the seduction of colour and silk. It is not sur-
prising that of all the streams of Chinese pictorial art, the painting
of the high officials (shih-ta-fu hua) and of the literati (wen-jen hua)
is hardest to appreciate. The lines that the Sung scholar Ou-yang
Hsiu wrote of the poetry of his friend Mci Yao-ch'cn would apply
equally well to the paintings ofSu Tung-p'o, Wen T'ung, orMiFu: , 92 Attributed to suTunn-po (1036-
1101). Barf Trtc, lUmboo anJ R<i(ki
Hindscroll InJc on piper.

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