Page 251 - The Arts of China, By Michael Sullivan Good Book

took his injunction to restore the past, ju ku, too literally, and in
the work of many of the hundreds of painters who now appear on
the scene, the free, unfettered art of the leading Ming literati froze
into a new academicism in which an obsession with style, and the
repetition of hackneyed themes, too often took the place of a di-
rect response to nature. But even if many of the amateur painters
played the same tunes over and over again, they played them beau-
tifully, and the enjoyment we derive from this kind of painting
comes not from any sudden revelation or strength of feeling but
from subtle nuances in the touch of the brush such as we savour in
listening to an all-too-familiar piano sonata interpreted by differ-
ent hands.
But to give the impression that all Ch'ing painting is conven-
tional would be utterly misleading. For the story of the seven-
teenth century—of the decay and death of the Ming, the Manchu
invasion, the civil war and the decades of uncertainty that fol-
lowed it, and the return to stability under K'ang-hsi—can all be
read in the painting of the period, which for this reason is one of
the most fascinating, and intensely studied, in the history of
Chinese art. The Ming loyalists, called /-win (literally, "people left
over"), suffered acutely, for their code forbade their taking or
holding office under a new dynasty, most of all an alien one. Some
committed suicide, some became destitute, some turned wan-
derer, monk, recluse, or eccentric, while some even lived to be-
come loyal and contented servants of that remarkable Manchu
ruler K'ang-hsi.
Thus, the l-min responded to the crisis in a number ofways, and
there can be no greater contrast than that between, say, the two 280 KungHsicn (1610-16*9), A
masters Hung-jen and Kung Hsien. The Anhui monk Hung-jen Thousand Praia mi Myriad Ravintt.
Hanging scroll. Ink on paper. Ch'ing
(16 1 0-1664) faced his predicament by transcending it, expressing Dynasty.

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