Page 466 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

3*4
impossibility
Granting, then, the
of exactly
Shen Zhou objects by depending on the inspiration from replicating the things of nature, the artist had
my own agreeable, leisurely, and well-fed exist-
1427-1509 ence. Those who seek me in my paintings will no compelling need to limit the sources of his
DRAWINGS FROM LIFE: PLANTS, find me apart from the painting. Inscribed by inspiration to nature and could draw on earlier
ANIMALS, and INSECTS Shen Zhou during the year [1494] of the Hong- paintings as well. The duck, for example, is very
zhi reign-era. close in style and appearance to one painted by
dated to 1494 Shen Zhou first stated what has become a Chen Lin, a protege of Zhao Mengfu (1254-1322).
Chinese Like Chen and Zhao before him, Shen Zhou gives
album of 16 leaves, ink on paper truism of painting: subject matter is no more than us in the leaves of this album a series of ink-plays,
5
3
each leaf 34.7 x 55.4 (i} /s x 2i A) the starting point for what the artist wishes to performances in ink using a variety of techniques,
inscription with signature of the artist communicate. Quite ordinary plants and creatures including the "boneless" (mo gu) mode. It is pre-
as well as their more exotic or rarefied relatives
National Palace Museum, Taipei cisely because the subjects are so commonplace, so
can provide the raw material on which the artist's well known to all his audience, that viewer atten-
imagination works. The natural forms of those tion is focused rather on the means of representa-
Accompanying the album is an inscription by the subjects were not distorted for expressive pur- tion than on the creative process itself. It is this
painter that clarifies the artistic process as well as poses and are still easily recognizable —the last that reveals the genius of Shen Zhou, for, as
the specific intent of Shen Zhou in this case: painted shapes do correspond with the three- he himself noted here, the paintings tell us on a
dimensional forms of the subjects—but verisimil-
With wriggly things as well as those that grow, itude was not the main point of any of these superficial level only that he was conversant with
I can still manipulate my brush and plumb the paintings. The limits in that direction were the basic forms of cats, donkeys, frogs, crabs,
wellsprings of the universe; shrimp, clams, birds, butterflies, flowers, fruit,
On a sunny day by a small window I sit in spelled out by Shen Zhou in another inscription and vegetables. It is in the penetrating insight,
for a similar series of paintings in that
written
a solitary place, technical freedom, and humor with which Shen
Spring breezes fill my face and my heart same year: "All flowers, leaves, berries, melons, Zhou treated these subjects that something of his
flying birds, and walking animals were brought
grows subtle. personality and the seemingly charmed circum-
forth within limits established by the operation of stances of his existence is revealed. H.R.
Playing with the brush I did this album, creat- nature, and cannot be imitated through human
ing shapes in accord with the forms of the effort."
TOWARD CATHAY 465