Page 359 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

tion, reached its splendid zenith in the man of clan, rulers of the Yamaguchi area in Western his activities to Suzhou. The Japanese who
the fifteenth century, before the triumph of Japan, he shifted his emphasis from religious to turned their eyes and thoughts to China in the
the wen ren painters of Suzhou. artistic activities, identifying himself as a fifteenth century took up and celebrated the
painter-monk. Having already traveled farther artistic achievements of Southern Song. Not
than Shen Zhou ever had, he left Japan for until the eighteenth century did they begin to
Shen Zhou and Sesshu China in 1468, as part of an Ouchi trade mis- investigate wen ren style.
Shen Zhou's life span (1427-1509) almost sion. For nearly two years he traveled eastern And yet when we compare mature works by
exactly matches that of the Japanese master China from south to north, meeting leading each master —say, Shen Zhou's Five Landscapes
Sesshu Toyo (1420-1506). Each in his own painters and government officials as well as (cat. 315) and Sesshu's Ama no Hashidate (cat.
country was the acknowledged great master of Chan priests, and being honored by all. During 232) —despite differences owing to individual
the century. Both possessed innate strength of his stay at Jingde Si, a Chan temple near nature and national origin, they share a breadth
character, expressed in their pictures; but their Ningbo in Zhejiang Province, he was given the of vision and character, a strength in brush and
lives and works are quite different and reveal seat of honor in the meditation hall; that he organization, and above all a freshness of out-
much about the possibilities open to the inscribed this on paintings done after his look, a very real expression of a personal style
painters of East Asia in the fifteenth century. return to Japan reveals a proud nature that de- achieved through long practice and grown
In vast China Shen Zhou confined his travels lighted in (and perhaps needed) public ratifica- accustomed as breathing. Shen Zhou painted no
to the "eye area" around Suzhou and Lake Tai, tion, in sharp contrast to Shen Zhou's practiced such figural masterwork as Sesshu's Daruma
famous for its scenery and its remarkable diffidence. From 1476 until his death he and Eka, 1496, but figure painting was not a
weathered rocks beloved by the Chinese literati. traveled almost incessantly, between northeast- Ming gentleman-scholar's genre. One is left to
His albums and scrolls depicted only this area, ern Kyushu (where he had settled on his return imagine what Shen Zhou might have painted, if
with a few early exceptions such as Lofty Mt. from (China), the Ouchi domain in western Shen Zhou had painted figures, through the
Lu. In the album format Shen was most innova- Honshu, where he again opened a studio, and powerful image of Zhong Kui by the traditional-
tive, producing for the first time in Chinese central Honshu. His travels not only spread his ist painter Dai Jin (cat. 288).
painting sequential album leaves showing the fame but also revealed to him the extraordinary Two portraits, one of Shen (cat. 310), the
styles of different masters, or markedly dif- variety of the Japanese landscape. Yet, save for other of Sesshu, both either pedestrian works
ferent views of a single site such as the Twelve the remarkable exception of Ama no Hashidate by professional figure painters or good copies of
Views of Tiger Hill (Cleveland Museum of Art). (cat. 232), and a lost picture of a Japanese water- such works, are of some interest here. Neither
His 1494 album Drawings from Life (cat. 314) fall, his landscapes were basically of Chinese rises much above the conventional image
was the first instance of what became a standard subjects and were tightly linked stylistically to required by the culture in which the artist lived.
use of the format —the depiction of numerous the monochrome ink techniques and manners Shen is in the costume of a scholar, Sesshu in
animals, birds, vegetables, flowers, etc. The imported from China and Korea just before and priest's robes; both wear hats of stiffened gauze,
album is an innovative use of "boneless" (mo after 1400. Unlike Shen, he had several pupils the prerogative of the learned classes. The two
gu) wash technique on an innovative subject and many followers who emulated him closely, works are enough alike in costume to point up
sequence, despite the modest caveat in Shen's if not slavishly, and his influence on later the differences between the faces. Shen, with
inscription: Japanese ink painting was extensive and his white beard, crow's-feet (he was then
profound. eighty), and benign expression is an epitome of
I did this album capriciously, following the Whereas Shen's departures from landscape
shapes of things, laying them out on paper subject matter were few and usually not of his social role —the recluse-scholar. The indi-
vidualism and strength visible in his works are
only to suit my mood of leisurely, well-fed major importance, Sesshu was master of land-
living. If you search for me through my scape, figure painting, and, on screens espe- not apparent in the portrait. Sesshu, on the
other hand, is stubble-bearded, his face
seems
paintings, you will find that I am somewhere cially, of bird, flower, and decorative painting. creased rather than merely wrinkled, and the
outside them. Further, he was master of a late thirteenth-
(Translation from Cahill, 1978, 95.) slightly lumpy conformation of the cheekbones,
early fourteenth-century Chinese achievement, jaws, and neck suggests a manual laborer, even
"Leisurely, well-fed living," circumscribed later largely abandoned in its country of region, a peasant. The implication of rough strength
travel, filial piety toward his mother —Shen was the "splashed ink" (C: po mo; J: hatsuboku) matches the brusque, staccato effects of his
indeed a "recluse-scholar," revealing the inner landscape. The Japanese master's varied reper- work.
strength of his character through the uncom- tory would have somewhat discomfited the wen Both portraits are "conventional," but the
promising boldness of his later landscapes. ren constituency, and his decorative screens monk's image derives from a Zen tradition
Sesshu was a "priest-painter." A Zen monk of they would certainly have considered artisan's whereby a master gave his portrait to a student
middling provincial warrior-class origins, in his work, unworthy of attention. It should be in token of the transmission of spiritual enlight-
twenties he entered Shokoku-ji, one of the remembered that Sesshu was reported to have enment and priestly authority. To the "reflec-
major Zen temples of Kyoto. His monastic painted a wall painting (screen?) for a govern- tion of reality" required in such portraits (juzo),
duties were to screen and receive visitors to the ment building in Beijing; this, if true, suggests Japanese Zen monk-painters added a sometimes
abbot, but another of the Shokoku-ji monks at that in China his contacts with Chinese painters brutal realism, bordering on caricature. Ses-
this time was the great Shubun (cat. 228), the and his study of Chinese painting extended shu's portrait, following in this tradition, may
most important ink painter of the first half of mostly to the court painters and to their highly suggest the physical presence of a singular man.
the fifteenth century. It is entirely likely that professional and decorative techniques. It is Shen's does not: the artist remains as unre-
Sesshu studied painting with Shubun, whom he doubtful that he saw much, if any, wen ren vealed here as he claims to be in the inscription
named, later, as his artistic mentor. By leaving painting, especially since Shen was the only on Drawings from Life (cat. 314). Contemplat-
the temple to enter the service of the Ouchi major practitioner at that time and he confined ing the blandness of Shen's portrait, we must
358 CIRCA 1492