Page 481 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

tal, floating in a small skiff; and the Immortal Qin
Gao, who toured the world's oceans on the back of
a giant magic carp.
The bracketing and tiling of the buildings are
meticulously rendered, but the wealth of detail is
controlled and dominated by the overall design of
large units disposed within the circular frame.
S.E.L.

335

TABLE SCREEN
by Wang Yang (?)

Hongzhi reign (1488-1505)
Chinese
carved cinnabar lacquer fti hongj
5
height 44.7 (i7 /s)
reference: Tokyo 1977
Tokyo National Museum

the most famous subjects of the gentleman- immortality. Around the rim of the underside
scholar (wen ren) tradition — the drinking-cum- auspicious dragons and phoenixes alternate with
poetry party at the Lan Ting (Orchid Pavilion). four cartouches, two containing pairs of scholars
In April of A.D. 353 Wang Xizhi (303 7-361 ?), the greeting each other and two showing a single
patriarch of Chinese calligraphy, received forty- scholar with an attendant or acolyte.
one friends and relations at the Orchid Pavilion, On the obverse of the dish we see the Orchid
situated in Zhejiang Province near Shaoxing, a Pavilion with the guests gathering, beneath a sky
city famous for its wine. When the wine had been full of clouds and cranes, the birds preeminently
drunk and the poems composed, Wang Xizhi com- associated with scholars and immortality. Guests
piled them into a handscroll and supplied a pref- watch, talk, or take refreshments in various rooms
ace, the Lan Ting Xu, which became the most of the three main wings of the pavilion. Two par-
famous of all Chinese calligraphies. ties are arriving, one on horseback on the terrace,
This essay on life and history, produced in a accompanied by domesticated deer (also associated
state of physical and spiritual intoxication, was with immortality), the other by boat. Around the
recognized by all as a work of inspired calligraphy, rim flows a conventionalized sea of "fish scale"
and its subsequent history of theft and loss, true waves, out of which rise the triple-peaked Islands
or untrue, became a prime legend for the scholarly of the Immortals. These are repeated four times,
class. For the wen ren, the Lan Ting Preface sur- evenly spaced, alternating with four figures of
passes in significance any comparable text in the Immortals or wonder-workers. Clockwise from
whole history of China. The dish itself confirms the top these appear to be: the explorer Zhang
the importance of this text by offering a fifty- Qian (cat. 342, 343) in his log-boat from which
six-character excerpt from the essay in a large hangs a double-gourd; a figure astride a dragon
square at the center of the underside, framed by who may be the legendary emperor Fu Xi;
arabesques of the lingzhi fungus, symbolic of another male figure, presumably a Daoist Immor-

480 CIRCA 1492