Page 465 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

basis of self-cultivation and [a proper mode of]
response to external things; through this, we
will surely attain understanding.

I have composed this record of my night vigil in
the [Hongzhi] era, [renzi] year [1492], fifteenth
day of the seventh month.
[Shen Zhou of Changzhou.]

Contrary to CahilPs following comments, it seems
that Shen is relating this meditation specifically
to the nature of artistic creation. Ten times he
mentions components of the arts dear to the heart
of a literatus: sounds, colors, drum, bell, patterns,
and beauty. Although characteristically rambling
and vague, Shen's thoughts are discernible and his
theme is refreshingly simple. The artistic process
may occur in parts, or stages, but its successful
realization —in the Confucian sense of "self-reali-
zation," since wen ren art is the expression of the
character of the man — requires an intuitive
achievement of wholeness.
Joining his Western peers in this intuition of
the supremacy of intuition, the Chinese master
also finds the night a sympathetic occasion for
receiving these glimpses of real "reality." Between
sleep and waking, in "outer tranquillity and inner
stability," intuitions arise. In all this there are
Buddhist overtones as well, less explicit than the
Confucian ones, but implicit in the idea of con-
templation as emptying oneself of a preoccupation
with the things of this world.
The picture is not mentioned in this long colo-
phon, unless "composed the record" includes the
making of the image as well as the writing. It
seems to be a kind of visual aide-memoire, echo-
ing the rather unfocused, informal, and rambling
nature of the inscription. A firmly and rapidly
brushed mixture of dabs, strokes, and washes
builds a convincing landscape setting for the not-
so-convincing architectural elements, especially
the stone slab bridge. Along a diagonal running
from mid-left to lower right the picture divides
between a dynamic and darkly brushed lower
foreground and a paler, calmer middle and far
distance. One thing seems certain from both text
and image. Wine's creative assistance played no
part in the making of Night Vigil, in contrast to
other similarly informal and casual works by the
artist, notably the Landscape for Liu Jue, also in
the National Palace Museum, Taipei. The intui-
tions of night-long vigils can be comparable to
those called forth by alcoholic exaltation, a con-
stant theme in the history of later Chinese paint-
ing. Here the Chinese artist finds equivalents in
the Western tradition.
In Night Vigil, inscription and picture combine
to permit insights into the "literary man's" paint-
ing tradition. It is so particularly and deeply
embedded in that tradition that it can enter a
larger world of art only with difficulty. S.E.L.

464 CIRCA 1492