Page 355 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

"Wild and Heterodox" school this expressive- Zhou Chen, Tang Yin, and Qiu Ying there was nothing within the highest reaches of
ness could become a total personal license to past or present Chinese painting that he could
crazy or drunken expressionism (cat. 304). The dichotomy between wen ren and profes- not equal or surpass. Because of his huge suc-
4. Compositions tended to be dramatic, with sionals lies basically in attitudes assumed after cess and the variety of his patronage, the range
tensions produced by asymmetry (cat. 291, 292) the mid-sixteenth century. Close connections of his subject matter was immense. Imitators
or by powerful contrasts of ink tone (cat. 290, between the two groups were common in the debased his excellence by overusing and
304), producing a "push and pull" of the parts fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Indeed, coarsening his blue-green-gold landscape style.
of the composition. The asymmetry can be it is most likely that the few literati painters But some of his paintings, if not the most
attributed to the influence of the Ma-Xia school active in that time were largely unaware of the characteristic ones, rival in clarity, subtlety, and
of late Southern Song, the emphatic contrast of gulf between them and their colleagues pro- elegant brush manner those of the literati fol-
monochrome ink tones with bare silk was a posed by later critics and scholars. The most lowers of Wen Zhengming.
creation of these middle Ming masters. famous painters of the day, professional and
5. Compositions were unitary, usually literati, formed a reasonably close artistic fam-
requiring to be read as a whole. Like a gestalt ily in Suzhou in the early sixteenth century. Lamaist Painting
ink blot, the typical court-professional scroll Later acclaimed as the Four Great Masters of We still know little about the relationship of
reads better from a distance. Close viewing can Wu, they were the wen ren Shen Zhou and his professional Buddhist icon painters to the pro-
reveal exciting brush movement and material, disciple Wen Zhengming, and the professionals duction of the numerous Lamaist thangkas,
but the extrinsic aesthetic meaning of the pic- Tang Yin and Qiu Ying, whose varied brush paintings representing deities and disciples of
ture is to be grasped from afar —again in con- disciplines were available for the patrons of all that form of Esoteric Buddhism. Many of these
trast to the majority of wen ren works, which four masters. scrolls look quintessentially Chinese (cat. 308),
were intended to be read up close, as if they Zhou Chen (cat. 295, 296) must have been despite their being painted on cotton, as is done
were books, literary works of visual art. pleased, if a little envious, at the success and in Tibet, instead of on silk as is done in China.
6. There was considerable experimentation recognition achieved by his two pupils Tang Yin We do know that Chinese professional painters
with ink techniques to create unusual pictorial and Qiu Ying. He had been the ideal teacher for were employed on wall paintings in Tibetan
effects (cat. 303). The daring use of the "bone- the two disciples, his complete command of late monasteries. Gilt bronze images in Tibetan
less" ink wash method to render flora and fauna Northern Song and early Southern Song land- style with Lamaist iconography, bearing Yongle
without outline went hand in hand with experi- scape techniques giving him a solid and rational (1403-1425) and Xuande (1426-1435) reign-
ments in reserve painting, in which the raw silk foundation to transmit. He had used it well, marks, are particularly well known, and it seems
ground became a silhouette against a back- with some innovations in scale and in subtlety reasonable to assume that the Chinese icon
ground of ink wash. Both of these techniques of middle ink tones; he had also achieved a fig- painters were as skillful as their sculptor col-
were used sparingly by Southern Song masters ure style brilliantly suited to depict lower-class leagues in the production of works under
such as Li Di and Luo-Chuang, but in the two types, for whom numerous models existed in Lamaist patronage, whether in Tibet or in
Ming works cited above the scale of the tech- the Hell scenes painted by the Southern Song China. There were numerous Lamaist temples
nique is daunting. professionals at Ningbo. Zhou's paucity of social in the Beijing area, and these required the full
7. All, or at least most, of these traits tended connections, compared to those available to his panoply of altar furniture, banners and paint-
to produce paintings that can be described, not young pupils, may have diminished his chance ings for celebratory occasions.
pejoratively, as decorative. They make immedi- for lasting fame, but his achievements were For Chinese participation in Lamaist painting
ate and lasting impressions on the beholder. solid and are now increasingly respected. during the Ming dynasty, the clearest and most
Their virtues, including subtlety, are not to be Tang Yin (1470-1523) was forced into pro- convincing evidence is the almost universal
found in fine nuances. By contrast, even the fessionalism by misfortune. He was still in his adoption, even by Tibetan icon painters, of the
earliest works of Wen Zhengming (1470-1559; early twenties when most of his immediate traditional blue-green-gold landscape manner
cat. 316, 317), leading literatus of his time, family, including his wife, died in the space of a for the background in paintings of arhats and of
reveal just such nuance and miniaturization, year. His subsequent hard-earned recognition as bodhisattvas depicted in a natural setting. This
wen ren tendencies which were fully displayed a brilliant scholar was aborted by accusations, ancient manner was hallowed by its origins in
by his mid-sixteenth-century followers. probably false, of cheating before the highest- the great Sui (581-618) and Tang (618-907)
8. Finally, only among the professionals —and level examination at Beijing. Disgraced and dynasties and, being itself redolent of antiquity,
even there only rarely —does one find explicit unemployed, he avoided penury by his pictorial made a suitable backdrop for venerable figures,
and believable representation of social subjects talents, becoming an acknowledged master of much as gnarled old trees (cat. 308, 309) pro-
or classes. As represented by the wen ren, fish- landscape and figural painting, especially of vided such figures with both shade and an allu-
ermen, peasants, or gardeners (cat. 315) are "court lady" subjects. At the same time he sion to age and wisdom. Pratapaditya Pal has
staffage, a few schematic brush strokes signify- became known as a master of stews and wine written, aptly, that the blue-green-gold manner
ing but not representing persons. On the other shops. Perhaps this unwelcome notoriety was developed, in the Lamaist context, into a vision-
hand, Zhang Lu painted a real fisherman labor- exaggerated by later writers who could not ary landscape (cat. 309), quite different from
ing with the weight of his net, Huang Ji's figure resist moralizing on the fall from grace of a the more expansive and rhythmical use of the
(cat. 289) is a believable "tough," and above all potential scholar-official. manner in archaic and archaizing works by rec-
Zhou Chen's Unfortunates (cat. 296) are a Qiu Ying (d. 1552) was simply a child prod- ognized Chinese practitioners. In this repre-
moving record of actual hunger and misery. igy of lowly origins, acquiring an admiring sentation of Cudapanthaka the tightly packed
audience of buyers and patrons by his early mixture of rocks, hills, and trees in blue-green-
teens. Judging by reputation and by the incon- gold seems almost a personal and idiosyncratic
trovertible evidence of his remaining paintings, vision, very effective in conveying the intensity

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