Fong ChinesePaintingHistory 2003

Why Chinese Painting Is History
Author(s): Wen C. Fong

Source: The Art Bulletin , Jun., 2003, Vol. 85, No. 2 (Jun., 2003), pp. 258-280
Published by: CAA
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Why Chinese Painting Is History
Wen C. Fong
In her article 'Japanese Art History 2001: The State and that transcends history, that is not subject to the con-
Stakes of Research," Professor Mimi Hall Yiengpruksawan straints of time and space, so that, strictly speaking, there
examined the current state of Japanese art scholarship and can be no history of art.... On the other hand it is at-
noted that "up through the 1990s, many senior scholars were tached to an optimistic form of nineteenth-century posi-
caught in a time warp of nineteenth-century notions about tivism, to a belief... [that] history had to give the sem-
style and aesthetic value on the one hand and art as the blance of a chain of cause and effect.... The history of
expression of spirit or nation on the other."' Clearly, by the style has been the attempt to establish a narrative or causal
early twenty-first century, any such suspected link between art chain within the assumed autonomy of art.5
and nation would be anathema to the postmodern art
scholar. Yiengpruksawan's call for reexamining the concep- The "crisis" in the discipline that Zerner described appears to
tualization ofJapanese art history, significantly, is part of the consist of simply the polarities of our field-the dialectic
general rethinking of art history in this country. This process between aesthetics and history, form and content, past and
of reexamination-related to the "deconstruction" of the present-that have animated the modern critical study of art.
humanities as a whole-has raised fundamental questions
More to the point is Oleg Grabar's "On the Universality of
about the nature and place of the study of East Asianthe
art History
in of Art," which appeared in the same issue of the
the postmodern world. Art Journal. A leading specialist of Islamic art, Grabar pointed
Yiengpruksawan wrote that the creation of a modern out,Jap-
"What is required of the historian [now] is to discover
the national or ethnic culturally discrete meanings of a cer-
anese art history "amounted to the fixing of one template,
the post-Enlightenment European order of things, atoptain an-
[different] kind of visual language."
other, the Japanese conventions of knowledge that hadContemporary
ex- views of history and art history have taught
us to
isted for generations on the Chinese model.'"2 According to reject the authority of earlier discourses-their termi-
nologies,
one way of looking at East Asian art, before traditional Japa-concepts, and assumptions-especially those con-
nese art history can be understood, its foundationnectedin thewith nineteenth-century positivism, which states that
ancient Chinese model must first be examined.3 scientific principles must be the a priori basis for definitive,
correct, and true interpretations. It was the early nineteenth-
The "Crisis" in Art History century philosopher Georg Wilhelm Hegel (1770-183 1) who
first inspired the belief that art offered the means through
What is required of the historian [now] is to discover the national which the human spirit could be expressed in historically
or ethnic culturally discrete meanings of a certain [different] specific ways. Using the word Wissenschaft, "science," as the
kind of visual language, rather than to integrate those meaningsbasis for philosophical system building, Hegel was governed
within an allegedly universal system because such a system is often by the historicism he stressed as essential to the life of the
seen as being culturally restricted, if not, in fact, a tool of cultural
spirit. Following his lead, many cultural and art historians of
imperialism. The history of art required by new countries in old
the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries assumed that all
worlds is not one that relates them to the West but one that
artistic styles and forms reflected all other aspects of the
proclaims their differences.-Oleg Grabar, "On the Universality
of the History of Art"4
culture in which they developed or were produced, and that
stylistic change was a manifestation of change in the Zeitgeist,
or spirit of the age.6
The rethinking of art history in this country began officially
In structuralist semiotics, a method based on the primacy
with the winter 1982 issue of the ArtJournal, dedicated to the
theme of "The Crisis in the Discipline." In the "Editor's of linguistics, proponents of scientific art history have, like
Hegel, found a way to analyze a work of art as both a signi-
Statement," Henri Zerner pointed to two major concerns of
modern art history. The first is "the need to rethink fying
the structure and an immanent process, one that is in a
continually
object of art history.. . [because] the specific definition of changing relationship to other domains of cul-
art with which it has been associated since the Renaissance ture. This has, in turn, led to the poststructuralist demythol-
ogizing
becomes less and less workable.... At stake are not only the of such notions as the originality of a work of art, the
new fields of study-the artifacts of early humanity, authority
pre- of the individual artist or author, and the centrality
Columbian art or whatever 'exotic' cultural phenomena- of painting as an art form. While postmodern theorists have
critiqued modern art history as a "coy science,"' social art
but also our understanding of Western art." The other con-
historians, asking, "Is art history?" have argued for a shift in
cern is a "profound contradiction" embodied by traditional
art history: focus from histories of styles to "pieces of history," or micro-
histories.8
On the one hand it holds on to an idealist theory of art At issue here is the nature of historical analysis, which, as a
according to which art is an absolute autonomous value form of hermeneutics, is the art of interpretation and criti-

76.34.84.22 on Sat, 13 Apr 2024 19:03:38 +00:00
WHY CHINESE PAINTING IS HISTORY 259
cism rather than an objective science. Because understanding were still alike in form and had not yet been differentiated.-
art history involves interaction between perspectives from the Zhang Yanyuan (mid-9th century), "On the Origins of Painting"'16
past and of the present, the process is dialectical and circular.
To date a painting, for example, we must first analyze it in theThere is a critical difference between the Chinese and the
context of a period style, which, in turn, is defined by anWestern approaches to painting. Ever since Aristotle charac-
analysis of paintings. Moreover, understanding is also embed-terized dramatic poetry as mimesis, or the imitation of na-
ded in the cultural tradition of which the historian is a part.9 ture, Western aesthetic theory has considered art more from
In the study of Chinese painting, where a remarkably coher-the point of view of the spectator, the viewer, than from th
ent account of art history has existed since at least the ninthof the artist.17 Aristotle's identification of drama with imita-
century-when Zhang Yanyuan composed his influential tion rather than with the presentation of action posits a
dichotomy between the artist who represents and that which
multivolume Record of Famous Paintings of Successive Dynasties
(Lidai minghua ji), completed in 84710-postmodern decon-is represented, between the physical presence of the artist
struction has focused on deemphasizing the autonomy of and his absence, which is implied in any concept of imitation.
Chinese painting as a comprehensive entity. As Richard Vi- For the Chinese, both the ideographic script and pictorial
nograd has observed, "To see Chinese painting as plural, representation functioned as graphic signs (tuzai) that ex-
multiple, or polyvisual ... need not imply a total atomization pressed meaning. As the ancient legends quoted above by
of painting or the uselessness of any categorization."" Be-Zhang Yanyuan attest, both script and image are considered
cause of the often frustrating problems of connoisseurship in transmissions of heavenly patterns and therefore undifferen-
Chinese painting-the determination of the authorship andtiated art forms. Because the signifying practice of an image
the date of a work-younger art historians today are, in as a sign originates in the body and mind of the image maker,
Jerome Silbergeld's words, "entirely skeptical about the con- the Chinese perceived both calligraphy and painting as hav-
noisseurship mission, put off by the shortcomings of theing at once a representational and presentational function.
process, and interested in contextual interpretation practi-
According to the fifth-century scholar Yan Yanzhi (384-456),
cally to the exclusion of all else." They have become "relativ- there were three kinds of signs: the magical hexagrams of the
ists, deconstructionists, less concerned with .., .analysis than Yijing (The Book of Changes), which represented nature's prin-
with... changing ways in which such works have been pro-ciples (tuli); the written ideographs, which represented con-
duced and perceived through the ages."12 But asJames Cahill cepts (tushi); and pictorial representation, which depicted
has pointed out, to discredit "the great project of construct- nature's forms (tuxing).18 Rather than color or light, the key
ing a coherent style-history for early Chinese painting ... be-to Chinese painting lies in its calligraphic line, which bears
fore it has been accomplished" would be like "abandon [ing] the presence, or physical "trace" (ji), of its maker.
the practice of architecture before we had built our city."'13 In recent years, Western art criticism has displayed a deep-
Silbergeld has also observed that "[we] humanists, trying to ening understanding of the importance of the artist's action
understand complex historical puzzles, agree that the histor- in drawing and painting, which, in turn, has contributed to a
ical data have to be correct before they become usable. Youbetter appreciation of Chinese painting. In his book Drawing
cannot use a painting historically if you don't know when it Acts: Studies in Graphic Expression and Representation, David
was made." Rosand, for example, observed that "drawing something is a
In titling this paper "Chinese Painting Is History," Icomplex
am action: it involves subject and object, perception
saying that early Chinese paintings-such as the Admonitions and representation, eye and mind, and, most obviously ...
hand and body."19 Rosand places great store in Pliny's ac-
scroll attributed to Gu Kaizhi (ca. 344-ca. 406, Fig. 1), or The
Riverbank, attributed to Dong Yuan (active ca. 937-76)count
14as of a professional contest between two leading ancient
historical objects, must be adequately dated and described.
Greek painters, Apelles and Protogenes. When Apelles called
Style and connoisseurship as modes of knowledge must on be
Protogenes in the latter's absence, he drew a line of great
delicacy as a mark of his own presence. When Protogenes
defended not only as vital and rewarding challenges but also
as the only means to understand a different visual language.
returned, he made a line along the first that was even finer.
In citing Western analogies with Chinese painting history, I Apelles added a third line, leaving no room for further
But
refinement. Protogenes admitted defeat, thus confirming
am aware that I may be accused of being either ethnocentric
or, worse, following the Orientalist approach of applyingApelles'
the stature as the master of the line.20 This story brings
(Western) evolutionary model to the study of Chinese paint-
to mind the Chinese tale of the two legendary calligraphers
ing.'" Nevertheless, I cling-as does Oleg Grabar-to a "uni-
Wang Xizhi (303-361) and his son Wang Xianzhi (344-388).
versal approach to the history of art" that says that the The
trueelder Wang is said to have inscribed some calligraphy on
value of Chinese painting lies in its own special visuala lan-
wall before going to the capital. His son, competing with his
guage and its unique form of expressivity. father, had the writing erased and replaced it with his own.
Back from the capital, the elder Wang looked again at the
wall. "Surely, I was in a drunken stupor when I wrote this," he
Traditional Chinese Genealogical Art Historiography
sighed. His son felt deeply ashamed.21
Rosand noted that "[Apelles'] line is the mark of the
When the Sages of Antiquity and the First Kings accepted Heav-
artist..,. it is both work and signature..,. as an index, a pure
en's command and received the [divine] tablets they thereby
came to hold the magic power in the Tortoise Characters andtrace,
the it is without representational responsibility."22 He used
the drawing of Leonardo da Vinci to exemplify his point:
proffered treasure of the Dragon Chart .... Then Creation could
"Seeing and making are simultaneous acts.... The object
no longer hide its secrets. .... At that time writing and painting

76.34.84.22 on Sat, 13 Apr 2024 19:03:38 +00:00
260 ART BULLETIN JUNE 2003 VOLUME LXXXV NUMBER 2
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1 Attributed to Gu Kaizhi (ca. 344-ca. 406)
being rendered, of verbal descriptions

the form of the coming
single brushstroke.27 Theint
sev-
comes to exist as aenth-century
body calligrapher and theorist Sun Guoting (638-
confronting th
existing in a space 703),
thata follower is
of Wang Xizhi, for example, described
implicitly acal-
c
hers. The act of drawing, then,
ligraphy as the miraculous apprehension is an
of nature:
self-projection."23 Disagreeing with E. H
of Leonardo's study I have
of seen the wonder of a drop
water of dew glistening
and airfrom as a
[the artist's] theoretical propositions,
dangling needle, a shower of rock hailing down in a raging
that "this drawing thunder,
is no a flock of geese gliding [in'diagram,
mere the sky], frantic beasts
stampeding
tration of a text." He in terror, a phoenix
argued dancing, a startled
that Leona snake
slithering away inand
ied his ideas about water fright.... And though [calligraphy
air, beyon is]
varied as nature itself.24
the very act of drawing itself and seemingly beyond the powers of
Brushw
raphy is thought man, to when the hand is moved by the
express theheart's desire,
artis inge-
structure. In Diagramnuity
of and artistry
theareBattle united. For the movement
Array of the o
Lady Wei (272-349),brush theis never arbitrary;
teacher it is always purposeful.28
of Wan
calligrapher "must always let his ideas pr
then can he create calligraphy."25
In Wang Xizhi's Ritual to Pray for Good Harvest (Fig. 2),In
indi-
Yanyuan describedvidual
Gu characters, set against the flatpainting
Kaizhi's material ground of the
idea that preceded paper
[his]surface, are expressed as fully
brush, anarticulated
ideaorganic t
the use of the brush ended."26 forms in the round, moving independently in space. The
flicking and turning brushwork, in wrapping its thickening
Traditional Chinese calligraphy criticism offers a rich store

76.34.84.22 on Sat, 13 Apr 2024 19:03:38 +00:00
I ?f 9R.,
Now"
K?
NIP'
. . , ... . ,. -t
'~" . . . . .
? ikO
:. ~ . : 4". Yd
dO
r 40 4,1
'~
, " - . . ". . .
r 1> S -, " . , ".' " :-
2 Wa
tracin
Princ
(phot
and t
trans
dime
3 Wang Xizhi, Ritual to Pray for Good Harvest, ink rubbing from
only
Model Calligraphy from the Yuqing Studio, 1614
the s
basic
the p
the
material "trace" of Wang Xizhi was first preserved through f
that
tracing copies (by tracing the outlines of his brushstrokes
The
precisely, first with fine lines, then filling them with ink, Fig. t
expr
2) of his calligraphy and subsequently through the reproduc-
repre
tion and dissemination of hundreds of ink rubbings made
a gre
from stone or wood engravings (Fig. 3). Through shenhui, or
even
"spiritual response," the original act was re-created. This
Wang
practice of copying helps to explain the remarkable continu-
bers
ity of Chinese art and culture, in which the artistic process of
harv
replication parallels the anthropological concept of geneal-
oran
ogy. Just as one's mortal body both replaces and transforms
work
that of one's ancestors, the life and authority of artistic tra-
whic
dition, through endless replication, can remain forever an-
perso
cient and forever new. The styles of the canonical masters, as
well
transmitted through tracing copies and replicas, may thus be
meet
considered a kind of DNA imprint from which all subsequent
lucra
idioms emerge. Later painters, considered heirs to the Great
tiona
Tradition, who learned from ancient styles, regarded them-

76.34.84.22 on Sat, 13 Apr 2024 19:03:38 +00:00
selves as reincarnations of the early masters. By achieving nature.34 It is said that Gu, in order to attract the attention of
shensi-the "spiritual likeness" of one of the early masters-aa young lady he admired, painted her in such a lifelike
later master brings that artist back to life. manner that he was able to awaken her feelings for him by
In the third and fourth centuries, spurred by the new pricking the heart of the painted image with a needle.35 This
passion for collecting during the Six Dynasties period (220-
story attests to the co-option of the popular belief in witch-
589), scholars began to develop critical theories by which tocraft by elite culture and demonstrates that in early Chinese
evaluate works of art and explain art's evolution and history.
painting mimetic realism, or "form-likeness," was considered
The traditional writing of Chinese art history was based functionally "real"-that is, magically, or supernaturally,
mainly on the concept of genealogy-what Zhang Yanyuan alive. One might add, however, that the word "supernatural"
here also presupposes an understanding of the "natural"
called "the transmission of teaching and schools [shizhi chuan-
shou]."31 Accordingly, calligraphic history was understood to (that is, "form-likeness").
have begun with Zhong You (151-230) in the early third This concept of magic realism is given a theoretical basis in
century. He was followed, in turn, by Wang Xizhi and his son an article by Kiyohiko Munakata, "Concepts of Lei and Kan-lei
Wang Xianzhi in the fourth, their descendant Zhiyong in the [Ganlei] in Early Chinese Art Theory." Munakata suggests
that the artist, in "sympathetic response [gan]" to the essen-
sixth, and in the early seventh century by the three great early
Tang mastersYu Shinan (558-638), Ouyang Xun (557-641),
tial nature of various "kinds" of objects and things (lei), cap-
and Chu Suiliang (596-658), each of whom had mastered
tures not only the outward appearance but also the inner qi
the style of Wang Xizhi. (energy or breath) of the prototype.6 The principle of ganlei,
The genealogical transmission-with its genetic mutabil-
which was based on ancient magical practices as reflected in
ity-of the art of figural representation, from the fourth
the hexagrams of The Book of Changes (Yijing), thus embodied
through the eighth century, was described by Zhang the "symbolic correlation system" that defined the harmoni-
Yanyuan: ous interaction of the Chinese cosmic order, in what Joseph
Needham has described as an "ordered harmony of wills
From early times, writers on painting have considered the without an ordainer."37
works of Gu [Kaizhi, Fig. 1] to be by nature incomparable, In the late fifth century, Xie He (active ca. 479-502)
so that critics do not dare to raise the question of this or formulated the Six Principles of painting.38 The first princi-
that.... Lu Tanwei [active ca. 465-72] learned from Gu ple, which he defined as "breath-resonance, life-motion
Kaizhi, and Tanwei's sons Sui, Hong, and Su all learned [qiyun shengdong]" and which includes "breath energy," "ro-
from their father.... Zhang Sengyou's [active ca. 500- bust breath," "spirited breath," and "life breath," alludes to
550] sons Shanguo and Rutong both learned from their both the representational and the presentational qualities in
father.... Wu Daoxuan [Daozi, active ca. 710-60] a painting: "When the 'breath' of the painter resonates with
learned from Zhang Sengyou.... Thorough studentsthe 'breath' of the painted subject, life-motion is engendered
should first carefully analyze the finest masterpieces of of art."93 The second principle, "bone method,
in the work
both North and South, and famous works alike of ancient
use of brush [gufa yongbi] ," refers to the importance of brush-
and modern times, and only after [such study] can work.they
Xie's third principle, "response to object, depiction of
discuss painting.32 form-likeness [yingwu xiangxing]," defines representation. In
these three principles, Xie reiterates Gu Kaizhi's precept of
Finally, in landscape painting, the tenth-century masters
"capturing spirit through form-likeness" by privileging spirit
Jing Hao (active ca. 870-930), Li Cheng (919-967),
overand
mimetic imitation. To quote Zhang Yanyuan: "If a
Dong Yuan were followed in the Northern Song (960-1127) painter seeks only 'breath-resonance' in painting, 'form-like-
by Fan Kuan (ca. 960-ca. 1030) and Guo Xi (ca. 1010-ca. ness' will naturally be present in his work."40 Xie's fourth
1090), whose leadership was, in turn, supplantedprinciple, in the "following in kind, application of color [suilei fu-
Southern Song (1127-1279) by Li Tang (ca. 1070s-ca. cai]," is concerned with the skillful use of pigments, while the
l150s), Ma Yuan (active ca. 1190-after 1225), and Xia Gui fifth, "plotting and planning, positioning and placing [sing-
(active ca. 1200-ca. 1230). ying weizhi]," refers to composition. Finally, the sixth prin-
Excellence in painting was traditionally defined by a hier- ciple, which is of special significance for ancient Chinese
archy of three ranked classes: shen (spiritual or magical), miao painting, is "transmitting and transferring in making copies
(marvelous), and neng (competent)-with yi (untrammeled) [chuanyi moxie]," or replication.
added to describe unusual spontaneity and naturalness.33 In ancient China the cosmos was perceived very differently
Although the word shen holds little meaning today, it was from the way it was in the modern West. Unlike Western
crucial to the ancient Chinese concept of representation. Europeans and Americans, who see the world as directed by
According to the precepts of Gu Kaizhi, believed to be the either monotheistic divine Providence or scientific progress,
founding father of figure painting in the classical tradition, a the Chinese viewed their universe as not having an ultimate
painter must "capture spirit [shen] through form [xing] [yi- cause or a will external to itself but, rather, characterized by
xing xieshen]," meaning that through mimetic representa- spontaneous creation and bian, or transformation. Because
tion-"form-likeness [xingsi] ," or conformity to what the eye all human endeavor was thought to be an expression of Dao,
sees-an image achieves a heightened "spiritual [or magical] the Way of the universe, the pattern of history was perceived
likeness [shensi]." Gu's understanding of realism in painting not as a teleological progression toward a preordained goal
reflects the prehistoric principle of magic realism, by which but as an enduring effort to master change by understanding
the painted image is perceived as the prototype of a form in the nature of Dao. During the Six Dynasties period, in the late

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fourth and early fifth centuries, a period of artistic flowering, Wu's work the divine has borrowed his hand, so pro-
scholars became interested in "innovative transformation foundly does his work fathom Creation itself.45
[xinbian]." The scholar Xiao Zixian (489-537) wrote that
"without innovative newness and transformation, one cannot Because Zhang equated "completeness" with having ex-
become a master of his generation." The literary historian hausted all possibilities, he dismissed modern (jin, or
Liu Xie (ca. 465-522), on the other hand, argued that it was "present," that is, ninth-century) paintings categorically as
not innovation per se but the renewal or revival of ancient "confused and messy, altogether purposeless. Such are the
principles and the understanding of Dao that led to creative works of common artisans."46
change and transformation. To understand transformation It is important to note that Zhang Yanyuan, in describing
(tongbian), the artist must balance the "substance [zhi]" Wu Daozi's creative genius, repeatedly used the phrase "in
against the "ornamentation [wen]" of artistic creativity.41 By Wu's work the divine has borrowed his hand"-instead of, say,
this logic, the great masters, as vanguards of history, effected "the divine has guided his hand"47 -a formulation that ac-
change not through technical inventions but by resurrecting cords well with the Chinese belief that creation and transfor-
ancient truths. mation (bian) are expressed through the agency of human
genius, rather than directed by an external will-whatJoseph
Here, I believe, early Chinese theorists perceived a contra-
diction similar to that described by Henri Zerner in WesternNeedham calls an "ordered harmony of wills without an
art history-namely, that "the history of style has been the ordainer."48 The theories that followed Zhang's are similarly
attempt to establish a narrative or causal chain within richthe in verbal descriptions of artistic creativity and agency.49
assumed autonomy of art."42 A case in point is the Southern While in earlier periods, from the Six Dynasties through the
Liang calligraphic historian YuJianwu (502-556), who found Song (the fourth-late thirteenth century), human genius was
Wang Xizhi's fourth-century work more skillful (gongfu) the but agency that brought creativity into a universe lacking a
less natural (tianran) than that of the early third-century monotheistic Creator, in the post-Song era (the fourteenth
century onward) it was individuality or selfhood that was
calligrapher Zhong You.43 Such a judgment described a his-
considered to be the agent of change.
tory of calligraphy that evolved from archaic simplicity (when
it was more "natural") to modern sophistication (when itBecause traditional critical discourse privileged spirit and
became more "skillful"). Because both calligraphy and paint-
brushwork over form-likeness, Chinese art historiography has
ing reached a peak in their development in the early Tang consistently
in valued calligraphic expressiveness over mimesis.
It is significant that both Zhang Huaiguan (early eighth
the late seventh century, the calligrapher Sun Guoting found
it necessary to defend "modernity" (fin, or "present") century)
as and Zhang Yanyuan (ninth century) characterize
follows: the development of figure painting-from Gu Kaizhi (fourth
century) to Zhang Sengyou (early sixth century) and to Wu
From substance [zhi] to ornament [wen, calligraphy] went Daozi (eighth century)-in terms of brush techniques, com-
through three stages of transformation [bian]. The paring it to the evolution of calligraphy, from Zhong You's
changes were sudden, like wild geese flying. It is importantarchaic writing in the second century to the increasingly
that what is ancient not be out of date, and what is modern sophisticated, thickening-and-thinning movements of Lady
not become decadent. It is said that ornament and sub- Wei and Wang Xizhi in the fourth, and to the "wild cursive
stance in equal measure are the mark of a gentleman. style"
Why of Zhang Xu in the eighth.50 Of foreign and regional
should anyone give up elegant sculpted palaces for rustic influences, especially those pertaining to the development of
cave dwellings, or exchange [modern] jade chariots of representation during this period, there is little
mimetic
state for [ancient] wheelbarrows?44 mention in the canonical texts. The "painting sage" Wu Daozi
was thus admired not for his mastery of mimetic realism as a
Similarly, Zhang Yanyuan, in the ninth century, saw result
a three-
of Buddhist and foreign influences but for the dynamic
stage evolution in painting from the late Han through the
expressiveness of his calligraphic brushwork.
late Tang: from the "simple" (fourth to fifth century) And because it is based on lineage, traditional Chinese art
to the
"detailed" (sixth to early seventh century) and thencehistory
to the is a history of famous named artists only. Traditional
"complete" (eighth century): connoisseurs authenticated those paintings identified with
known artists and relegated unattributed works to the cate-
goryand
In the paintings of Early Antiquity forms were simple, of the "anonymous," rendering them in effect invisible
in the history of art. Most of the early masters-Wang Xizhi,
expression, while restrained, was yet elegant and refined,
as exemplified by the works of Gu [Kaizhi] and LuGu[Tan-
Kaizhi, Wu Daozi, Jing Hao, Dong Yuan, to name but a
wei], among others. Paintings of Middle Antiquity wereknown to us only through copies of their works or
few-are
fine and detailed, exquisitely finished, and exceedingly
copies of copies. Works have also been attributed to them on
beautiful, as in the works of [the northern painters]theZhan
basis of paintings by later followers working in the trans-
[Ziqian, late sixth-early seventh century] and Zheng mitted "images" of the earlier masters. The official catalogue
[Fashi, late sixth-early seventh century]. Paintings of
of the
the National Palace Museum, Taipei, lists 284 pre-Song
Recent Period [eighth century] are brilliantly executed
and Song hanging scrolls, of which 103 are labeled "anony-
and aim at [representational] completeness .... When we As an inventory of the museum's encyclopedic col-
mous.'"51
look at the work of Wu Daozi, we can say that all [Xieof the classical canon, the catalogue cites, in chrono-
lection
logical
He's] Six Principles have been attained to perfection, and order, the works passed down through the centuries
the myriad phenomena [of nature] are fully expressed.underInthe names of famous landscape masters: in the cate-

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!"T~T""-'l'i~L::T p;T~ i~C~-~T1I:C~-2 :
[1:7 ;i1 7"
L'~7t,
5 Guo Xi (ca. 1010-ca. 1090), Early Spring

National Palace Museum
The Limits of Mimetic Representation
Anyone who judges painting by form-likeness shows the insight o

a child.-Su Shi (1037-1101)53
Although Chinese artists developed neither an anatomic

approach to figural representation nor a concept of space as
linear
4 Fan Kuan (ca. 960-ca. 1030), Travelers amid Streams and perspective, they nevertheless incorporated in the
Mountains, ca. 1000. Taipei, National Palace Museumwork representational skills that had evolved from the Wes
ern Han through the end of the Song (second century B.C.E
thirteenth century C.E.). During the great flowering of visua
arts in the Six Dynasties through the middle Tang, innovatio
gory of large hanging scrolls, two Jing Haos, and three Guan
originality were valued above sameness. Gu Kaizhi's abil-
Tongs (active ca. 907-23), two Dong Yuans, seven Jurans
ity to transform figural representation by magic realism wa
praised
(active ca. 960-95), four Li Chengs, five Fan Kuans, by the Grand Guardian Xie An (320-385) as: "Pain
thirteen
Guo Xis, six Li Tangs, thirteen Ma Yuans, six Xia ing that
Guis, andhas
so never been seen before!"54 And Wu Daozi'
depictions
on. Of the thirty-six hanging scrolls listed under the names of
ofHell were so terrifyingly real that "people [afte
seeing
Jing Hao through Guo Xi, only two-Fan Kuan's them] ceased wrongdoings, cultivating a moral li
Travelers
and following
amid Streams and Mountains (Fig. 4) and Guo Xi's Early Spring vegetarian diets, causing fish and meat market
(Fig. 5)-have been accepted by modern art historians as
to plummet."55
At the 2001 international colloquy on the British Museum
original masterpieces. Having lost their own true identities,
the remaining thirty-four, though masterworks in famous
their handscroll
own Admonitions of the Instructress to the Cou
Ladies,
right that can be dated stylistically from the twelfth attributed to Gu Kaizhi (Fig. 1), jointly organized by
through
the British Museum and the Percival David Foundation of
the fourteenth century, are left to languish in anonymity.52

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Chinese Art, more than a dozen papers examined the many

vexing problems surrounding the work: its relation to the
fourth-century painter Gu Kaizhi, the date of its creation, the
literary and seal evidence relating to the scroll, and the
"cultural biographies" of the scroll from the Song period
onward.56 The concept of the "biography" of an object owes
much, in its materialist approach, to the discipline of anthro-
pology. Rather than asking "when," "where," and "by whom"
the object was made, it is concerned with the processes of
"reception," or telling the story of how an object was viewed
in a later sociohistorical context. The reception aesthetic, its
focus shifted from the object itself at the point of its creation
to the eye of the beholder at a later time, is relativist and
post-historical.57
An examination of Gu Kaizhi's role in the history of Chi-
nese painting, as well as the actual date of the Admonitions
scroll, must begin with the history of Chinese representa-
tional art.58 The hairline brush idiom of the court ladies in
the scroll may be compared, for example, with the archaic

representation of the female deity on a third-century B.C.E.
silk banner from Changsha, Hunan Province (Fig. 6), in
which the figure is rendered as a simple linear schema of
three additive parts: the face shown in profile; the upper
body seen from the side, with the outstretched arm covered
in a voluminous sleeve; and the lower body draped in a
flowing gown that spreads out like the flattened base of a
piece of stemware. This archaic "stemware" schema is fol-
lowed, with modifications, in the Admonitions in a process that
Gombrich has termed "schema and correction."59 The court
lady (Fig. 1), shown in three-quarter view with billowing

6 Silk banner, Changsha, Hunan Province, 3rd century B.C.E.
drapery and flying scarves, is made (or "corrected") to (photo:
match Photo archive, Department of Art and Archaeology,
Princeton
a new representational reality, one that is volumetric and University)
three dimensional.
Gu Kaizhi's hairline brush drawing was best described, in

the ninth century, by Zhang Yanyuan: "correspondence between the form of motion in nature and
the motion of [the artist's] own hand in drawing."63 Gu's
Tight and sinewy, smooth and continuous, it circles and
"matching," of course, was more than simple mimesis. As
then disappears [into the painted image]. Its manner
Zhangis Yanyuan pointed out, Gu's drawing always arose from
untrammeled and easy, like a wafting breeze or "an idea."
quick
lightning. There was always an idea that preceded Gombrich's
the "making before matching" is useful for recon-
brush, an idea that remained even as the use of the brush
structing the history of mimetic representation in early Chi-
ended. This is why Gu's paintings are full of a spiritual
nese art, without which early Chinese paintings can be nei-
breath [shenqi] .60 ther dated nor described. Although the simple mimetic bias
of the formulation appears too reductive for explaining the
Similarly, Zhang Huaiguan had written, in the early eighth
creative act, Gombrich's statement that "what requires expla-
century, "Because Master Gu imagined his painting in suchnation
a is not the absence of mimesis but its invention" is
fine and subtle way, the depths of his spiritual [ling] expres-
worth pondering.64 Between the fifth and the early seventh
sion are unfathomable. Though he left his traces in centuries,
brush while internally divided between the Northern and
and ink, his spirit flies high above the cloudy firmament,
Southern dynasties, China as an entity was both multiethnic
which must be sought beyond the painting."61 and open to foreign trade and cultural contact-via the Silk
Route in the north and the sea route in the south-with
Because Chinese painting is the art of the brush (yongbi,
"the use of the brush")-or, more precisely, drawing India,
withSouth
a Asia, and the distant West. With the influence of
brush-it has, as Norman Bryson has pointed out, "alwaysIndian and Central Asian Buddhist sculpture and the intro-
selected forms that permit a maximum of integrity and visi- to painting of the technique of chiaroscuro, Chinese
duction
bility to the constitutive strokes of the brush."62 The magic
visualof
arts underwent a radical change, when figural repre-
Gu Kaizhi's hairline brush drawing, which works from the following the image of the Buddha, evolved from
sentation,
archaic "stemware" schema, lies in the artist's mastery an
ofarchaic
(in frontal style, in the Northern Wei (386-534, Fig.
Gombrich's terms) "making before matching." For Gu, 7),
whoto a volumetric, round form in the Northern Qi (550-77)
worked with only a single brush line, the secret of mimetic
and Sui (Fig. 8), and to a three-dimensionally rendered
representation was the discovery of what David Rosandfigure
calls aduring the early Tang (Fig. 9). By the early seventh

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9 Bodhisattva, 8th century.

7 Buddha, Cave 6, Yungang Caves, 8 Amitabha, ca. 587 (Sui dynasty).
Shanxi Province, early 6th century Toronto, Royal Ontario Museum Washington, D.C., the Freer Gallery
of Art
(Northern Wei dynasty) (photo: Photo
archive, Department of Art and
Archaeology, Princeton University)
century, both sculpted and painted images had been united ever, on closer inspection can be complex, as there were
in architectural settings in Buddhist temples to represent analogous regional processes with different influences and
scenes of the Pure Land Paradise. One example in cave 321 sources at work.
at Dunhuang (Fig. 10), a painted ceiling as vivid as any by Nevertheless, it seems clear that the Admonitions scroll (Fig.
Tiepolo, depicts heavenly beings, in foreshortened perspec- 1) reflects the southern court artist Zhang Sengyou's realistic
tive, peering down from a celestial balcony. "concave-and-convex" style of the early sixth century.69 Its
The history of foreign influences in Chinese art-ne- hairline drawing technique, while remaining faithful to Gu's
glected by the traditional Chinese narrative-may be recov- "tight and sinewy, smooth and continuous" linearity of the
ered by focusing on regional archaeological discoveries. It fourth century, shows a thorough understanding of volume
was Jin Weinuo who, in an article published in 1984, first and three dimensionality characteristic of figural representa-
compared the wall paintings from the tomb of Lou Rui dated tions of the sixth century.70 The quality of the brush line in
570 in Taiyuan, Shanxi Province, with the volumetric forms the scroll is utterly different from anything produced after
of Northern Qi and Sui dynasty Buddhist sculpture (Fig. 8). the Tang period. Its taut, representationally masterly, yet
He related their style to that of Cao Zhongda (mid-sixth natural and unforced manner makes it anything but "calli-
century), a well-known artist from the Central Asian kingdom graphic"-which, by definition, is centered and indepen-
of Sogdiana and a leading Northern Qi court painter65 whose dently shaped, a force or momentum (shi) in and of itself.
style was described as resembling "draperies as if emerging When Zhao Mengfu (1254-1322) made a systematic study of
from water," and also that of Yang Zihua (also mid-sixth ancient styles in the late thirteenth century, he used the
century), another well-known Northern Qi court artist.66 The seal-script iron-wire brush technique (Fig. 12) to evoke Gu's
recent find of the sarcophagus ofYu Hong (d. 592, Fig. 11), hairline delineation, now described picturesquely as an "ar-
a Sogdian chieftain who served as an official at the Sui court chaic, gossamerlike brush line [gaogu yousi miao].'71 Com-
(581-618) in Taiyuan, Shanxi Province, now gives further pared with the archaizing iron-wire brush idiom of Chen
visual evidence of the Central Asian corporeal style that had Hongshou (1598-1652, Fig. 13) in the late Ming period, the
influenced the Northern Qi and Sui figural representations archaic figures of the Admonitions scroll appear natural and
in the second half of the sixth century (Fig. 8).67 In studying real, because, unlike those of the late Ming painter's, they
interregional and cross-cultural developments in East Asian remain engaged in the task of "making before matching" a
art, the principal concerns are the processes of reception. new sixth-century representational reality that is volumetric.
The comparison of similar stylistic structures, such as the Lou As noted earlier, it was Zhang Yanyuan who described
Rui wall paintings in North China and Zhang Sengyou's Chinese painting history as developing in three stages, from
"concave-and-convex painting [aotu hua]" style in South "simple" to "detailed" to "complete." Zhang's interpretation
of the history of art as progressive was in marked contrast to
China (as described in traditional historiography),68 how-

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10 Celestial Beings, Cave 321, Dunhuang, Kansu Province, early 7th century (photo: Lo Dunhuang Archive, Department of Art and
Archaeology, Princeton University)
the retrospective view of the late Northern Song calligrapher end of art history, was to return to the early masters to seek
and essayist Su Shi (1037-1101), the leading proponent of renewal through the revival of ancient idioms in order to
the scholar-official aesthetic (shidafu hua lun). Su perceived create new modes of expression. Su and his followers were
the state of completion described by Zhang as the end of this more interested in the discursive language of persuasion in
progressive development because it represented the exhaus- painting than in its purely representational and descriptive
tion of artistic invention: role. After the Mongol conquest of the Southern Song in
1279, mimetic representation in Chinese painting came
The learning of superior men and the skills of a hundredabruptly to an end. From that moment on, literati painters,
craftsmen, having originated in [antiquity] and developedturning back to art history, used a calligraphic idiom of
during the Han and Tang periods, had reached a state ancient
of styles to "write ideas [xieyi]" and to express the artist's
completion. By the time poetry had produced a Du Fu inner feelings. This shift from mimetic representation to
[712-770], prose writing a Han Yu [768-824], calligraphy
self-expression changed forever the function and meaning of
a Yan Zhenqing [709-785], and [figure] painting a Wu later Chinese painting.
Daozi, all possibilities for change in the arts had been A similar epistemic change from the representation of
exhausted.72
resemblance to that of "signification" in European culture on
the eve of the modern age has been described by the French
Su Shi's statement bears a striking resemblance to twentieth-
intellectual Michel Foucault:
century Western discourses on "the end of art history," as
explored specifically in the writings of Hans Belting and
Arthur Danto.73 For Su, the solution to what he perceived as The coherence that existed, throughout the [European
the consummation of all possible styles, and therefore theClassical age, between the theory of representation and

76.34.84.22 on Sat, 13 Apr 2024 19:03:38 +00:00
12 Zhao Mengfu (1254-1322), The Mind Landscape of Xie

Youyu, ca. 1275. Princeton, Art Museum, Princeton University,
Edward L. Elliott Family Collection, Museum purchase, Fowler
11 Drawing of bas-relief carving on Yu Hong's sarcophagus, McCormick, Class of 1921, fund (photo: Bruce M. White)
Taiyuan, Shanxi Province, 592 (from Wu Hung, Cultural and
Artistic Interaction between Han and Tang, 17, pl. 3)
Song, the southern literati artist Zhao Mengfu instigated what

would prove to be a permanent change in painting style,
the theories of language, of the natural orders.., from from mimetic to art historical representation.77 In his land-
the nineteenth century onward, changes entirely; the the- scape painting Zhao studied classical brush idioms, translat-
ory of representation disappears as the universal founda- ing them into abstract calligraphic brush patterns. He began
tion of all possible orders.... a profound historicity pen- by archaizing the linear idiom of Gu Kaizhi (Fig. 12) and
etrates into the heart of things.... above all, language went on experimenting with both Dong Yuan's hemp-fiber
loses its privileged position and becomes, in its turn, a brush idiom and the Li Cheng-Guo Xi idiom of devil-face
historical form coherent with the density of its own and crab-claw brush patterns (Fig. 14). In the works of Zhao's
past... [and] things become increasingly reflexive, seek- followers, classical brush idioms provided a natural field for a
visual semiotics. Ni Zan (1306-1374), for example, mixed
ing the principle of their intelligibility only in their own
development, and abandoning the space of representation.74 different idioms of both calligraphy and painting of the
South and the North-regular versus clerical script, round
In citing Gombrich, Danto, and Foucault, what strikes us as versus square, contour versus hatching, ideal versus real-to
the crucial point, with profound implications, is the "end" of achieve new harmonies through contrasting modes of expres-
mimetic representation in art history both East and West.75 sion.78
What comes after the "end," whether it be the seemingly Craig Clunas has studied the way in which post-Song literati
limitless experimentation that we see in Western art or the artists (in particular, the mid-Ming painter Wen Zhengming,
continuing exploration of cyclical change and historical re- 1470-1559) "worked in what in our eyes are so many differ-
vival that we see in post-Song Chinese art, makes the history ent 'styles' [of ancient masters]-these may perhaps be taken
of art a totally different structure. To quote Danto, "There is as material and visual traces of a 'fractal,' contextual person-
no longer any reason to think of art as having a progressive hood."79 Zhao Mengfu's art fits well with Clunas's idea of the
history; there simply is not the possibility of a development literati painter's " 'fractal,' contextual personhood," as seen
sequence with the concept of expression as there is with the through his "material and visual traces." Conceived by the
concept of mimetic representation."76 The issue now lies in anthropologist Alfred Gell, the idea of a fractal personhood
historicizing subjectivity in post-Song Chinese painting.was designed "to overcome the typically 'Western' opposi-
After the Mongol conquest and the fall of the Southern tions between individual (ego) and society, parts and wholes,

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..........? . . : ". ? " . .
. . .
I ~ ~ ~ ? I""?,"
: m.
PR
13 Chen Hongshou (1598-1652), A ?~~~ ~~~~~~ /"-:.. ,,. . . ..

Morning Drink, from Sixteen Views of
Living in Seclusion, 1651. Taipei,
? .
F-~
.- ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ m " .-::.ii:'.'::'.. .:. -

? ,. f.. - : .
14 Zhao Mengfu, Twin Pines and Level

Distance, ca. 1300. New York, The v"' "':
Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of the
Dillon Fund, 1973
singular and plural."

conversely, an Gell asserts,
aggregate of persons, such as a lineage or "Th
the key trope fortribe,making
is "one person" in consequence of plurality
being one gene-
plural": alogy: the original ancestor is now instantiated, not as one
body but as the many bodies into which his one body has
Any individual person is "multiple" in the sense of being transformed itself.80
the precipitate of a multitude of genealogical relation-
ships, each of which is instantiated in his/her person; and In contrasting Western and Chinese notions of selfhood and

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15 Zhao Mengfu, Elegant Rocks and Sparse Trees, ca. 1310. Beijing, Palace Museum
individuality, Clunas calls attention to recent writings on classical styles that he used and through which his own sty
comparative Western and Eastern philosophies, in particular, was transformed.
the respective values of causal and analogical-or correla- Zhao's mastery of the classical styles is illustrated in his
tive-thinking, problems that have a direct bearing on Chi- transformation of early brush idioms into a new, unified
nese artistic creativity.8' Clunas's work, which begins with the calligraphic structure. The calligrapher Sun Guoting, writing
idea of the "social life of things," drawing attention to histor- in the seventh century, declared that a calligrapher "must
ical contexts in which things function as though they were study both large and small seal-script, the spreading-eight
active agents in their own right, has made significant headway style, draft cursive, and flying-white, and learn to juxtapose
toward a new social history of Chinese art.82 and harmonize different styles."85 Seven centuries later, in a
Zhao Mengfu's updating, in the early Yuan, of the classical colophon to Elegant Rocks and Sparse Trees (Fig. 15), dating to
canon of both calligraphy and painting can also be studied in about 1310, Zhao explained how he structured his brushwork
the context of the political and social confrontation between by combining different calligraphic idioms:
the Mongols and the southern Han Chinese. In his recent
book A Cultural History of Civil Examinations in Late Imperial [I paint] rocks as in flying-white, and trees as in seal-
China, Benjamin Elman examines the orthodox Dao Learn- script;
ing (Daoxue) in the Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties When painting bamboo, I use the spreading-eight
from the perspective of "the struggle between [Han] insiders [later clerical] method.
and [non-Han] outsiders in 'China' to unite the empire."83 Only when one masters this secret
Led by the Neo-Confucian philosopher Zhu Xi (1130-1200), Will he understand that calligraphy and painting have
Southern Song scholars devised an orthodox lineage of Dao always been one.
(Daotong), in which they anointed themselves the direct heirs
of the legendary sage kings Fuxi, Yao, and Shun; the Zhou In transforming classical landscape styles into abstract brush
kings Wen and Wu; and Confucius and his disciples.84 After idioms and by manipulating their thickening-and-thinning
the Mongol conquest, the Yuan court in 1313 adopted the calligraphic markings-round and square, centered and
Dao Learning, with its orthodox lineage of sage kings, as the oblique, internal and external-to create a fused, illusionis-
official examination curriculum. Zhao's canon of classical tic, pictorial surface, Zhao mastered both nature and history.
painters paralleled the lineage of the Confucian sage kings Elegant Rocks and Sparse Trees establishes not only
His painting
and, in the context of the cultural confrontation between a new the
correspondence with forms of nature but also an
Mongols and the Chinese, served the all-importantall-embracing purpose grid of art historical association that imposes a
of establishing Han cultural autonomy under Mongolcentral rule. authority
In over all forms of metarepresentation.
the process, Zhao refashioned himself into the new cultural Unlike modern Western painters, who turned after the
heir, one whose authority was instantiated by the variety nineteenth
of century to ceaseless new experimentation, post-

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Song Chinese literati painters adhered to the ancient (some The modem task of developing a coherent stylistic history of
call it atavistic) belief in renewal through the calligraphic Chinese painting has had a difficult legacy, since the very meth-
abstraction of ancient styles. Parallel to the epistemic shift odological basis of formal (or stylistic) analysis in the Western
from mimetic to art historical representation in Chinese tradition has been tainted by the art historical essentialism and
painting was the development in philosophy, after the Song, scientific determinism with which formal analysis was, unfortu-
from the Neo-Confucian School of Principle (lixue) to the nately, once associated.9' Loehr's teacher Ludwig Bachhofer, in
School of the Mind (xinxue).86 The former, which stated that A Short History of Chinese Art (1946), had applied (his teacher)
"the investigation of things leads to the extension of knowl- Heinrich Wolfflin's Grundbegriffe historical cycle of archaic, clas
edge," sought to unearth the objective metaphysical princi- sic, baroque (or linear, plastic, and pictorial) stages to the study
ples underlying the physical universe, while the latter, hold- of Chinese sculpture and painting.92 In his review of the book
ing that "the universe is the mind, and the mind the Benjamin RowlandJr. criticized Bachhofer's historicism: "Ther
universe," focused on discovering the expressive potential of is first of all an a priori framework to which works of art in
the individual, by bringing to fruition what already exists evolutionary progression are made to fit.... Style [for Bach-
within the self. This belief in the primacy of self-realization hofer] is a kind of sinister autonomous force which in all ages
reached its apex in the late Ming, toward the end of the and in all climes inexorably induces artists to produce works o
sixteenth century. Echoing the late Ming antirevivalist Yuan art in a certain preordained fashion."93
Hongdao (1568-1610), the early Qing individualist master David Summers has shown that it was Gombrich who,
Shitao (1641-1707) declared, "I am what I am and shall "under the immediate pressure of the cataclysmic threat of
always remain myself.... The beards and eyebrows of thethe rise of Nazism" in Europe, first launched a major attack
ancient masters cannot grow on my face; their lungs andon an approach to art history that was based on historical
bowels cannot live in my stomach.... How can I follow any
determinism.94 "The Romantic belief that style expresses the
ancient style without transforming it?"87 'worldview' of a civilization," writes Summers,
encouraged a conception of the history of art as the his-

Toward a History of Chinese Landscape Painting
tory of some metaphorical "seeing," a history, that is, of
"formal" vision.... Gombrich has argued repeatedly that
Chinese civilization did not lodge its history in buildings ....
[The] real past.. . is a past of the mind; its imperishable elements the sort of "spirit of peoples" thinking that has justified
are moments of human experience. The only truly enduring em- racism and genocide in our time is a brand of essential-
bodiments of the eternal human moments are the literary ones.- ism... that seems to make the ends of history visible, thus
Frederick W. Mote, "A Millennium of Chinese Urban History"88 to justify the liquidation of groups seen not to have a place
in the scheme of history.95
Today's art historian may wish to add to Frederick Mote's
literary monuments of China's cultural past a list of master- While criticizing the idea of identifying form with expres-
works of ancient Chinese painting. To do so, we must refine sion-that "it is form in art that expresses"-as a "physio-
gnomic fallacy," Gombrich nevertheless emphasized that "art
our analysis of the form relationships in the visual structures
of the paintings of the different periods, which provides an has a history.... The rendering of nature cannot be achieved
indispensable guide for dating undocumented paintings. by any untutored individual, however gifted, without the
The modern study of "periodization" in Chinese painting
support of a tradition."96 Before a painting can represent
began with Max Loehr's paper "Phases and Content in Chi-
nature or express meaning, before it can reflect a specific
nese Painting," presented at the 1970 "International Sympo-social or material context, it must be apprehended first as a
sium on Chinese Painting" at the National Palace Museum, visual structure of forms, techniques, and conventions that
Taipei. Loehr proposed that Chinese painting history be have their own development and history. Most art historians
divided into three phases: the first, "representational art," today,
of although they no longer see "style" as a totalizing
the Han through the Southern Song (206 B.C.E.-ca. 1300 entity, nonetheless practice stylistic analysis because they con-
C.E.), when style served as "a tool like an instrumentsider to

the technical conditions of production important for
recover or capture reality"; the second, "supra-representa-
understanding a work of art. As Meyer Schapiro wrote in his
tional art," which developed during the Yuan (1279-1368),
highly regarded essay on style, "To the historian of art, style
is anfor
when "the objective representation of Song was discarded essential object of investigation .... [He] uses style as a
subjective expression"; and the third, "historically oriented
criterion of the date and place of origin of works, and as a
[or art historical] art" of the Ming and the Qing means
(1368-of tracing relationships between schools of art."97
1911), when "styles of the past began to function as subjectAs defined by Schapiro, "the description of a style refers to
matter and to be explored as if they were the primary real-
three aspects of art: form elements or motifs, form relation-
ity."89 In the ensuing discussion, I questioned Loehr's use
ships,ofand qualities (including an all-over quality that we may
the word "style" for both "form and content" and suggested
call the 'expression')."98 According to this conception of
that the double use of the word prevented him from success-
style, traditional Chinese connoisseurs used brush techniques
fully describing, in a systematic way, the evolutionand of form
the elements or motifs-for example, Gu Kaizhi's gos-
formal aspects of style through history. When I asked whether
samerlike
it was possible to articulate the change of styles, Loehr
of brush and
re- master
an early line-to describe
judged the style,
the quality, or "body [ti],,""
or "breath-reso-
sponded that yes, it was possible, but that he "[had] nanceno[qiyun]," of the work to determine the authenticity of
stylistic descriptions."'9o its attribution to an individual artist. What they failed to con-

76.34.84.22 on Sat, 13 Apr 2024 19:03:38 +00:00
16 Wall painting, Helingol, Inner Mongolia, 2nd century (photo: Photo archive, Department of Art and Archaeology, Princeton
University)
ceptualize is the morphological change in the visual structure of lines and vertically in an open field in the picture surface. An
a painting-the way form relationships changed materially in an important compositional discovery for positioning figures in
artist's search for new solutions to new visual problems-which space was the use of diagonal lines-taken from the slopin
can be defined as period style. Because Chinese painters, from shoulders of a triangular motif of a gabled roof or a moun-
the second to the fourteenth century, gradually mastered mi- tain-to form parallelograms that could suggest recession in
metic representation in painting, the use of period style in space. In a wall painting in a tomb in Helingol, Inner Mon
golia (Fig. 16), dating from the second century C.E. (Eastern
analyzing structural changes in forms and composition provides
the only means for establishing the date of a painting. Han period, 25-220 C.E.), for example, a series of courtyard
In his article "The 'Visual Arts' and the Problem of Art- scenes created by parallelograms presents a bird's-eye view o
Historical Description," Summers, citing the Western tradi- enclosed spaces filled with rows of figures and buildings
tion of "optical naturalism"-that is, the conception of Parallelograms
paint- also form the edges of a floor mat and the
ing as a representation of the visual world-proposed that
sides of a building to position the figures in space.
there is, instead, a "planar structure [that] in fact absolutely
As with the diagonal lines of the gabled-roof motif of the
establishes and qualifies images and is a major condition of wall painting, overlapping triangular mountain mo-
Helingol
making visible their meaning." ?? Chinese painting, which tifs are
is used to form parallelograms to suggest spatial reces-
based on graphic conventions, builds from a planar,sion rather
in landscape representation. Over the years, I have used
than an optical, structure. Early pictorial representation, three
us-diagrams to show how, between the eighth and the
ing graphic symbols, reads both horizontally along register fourteenth century, the visual structure of Chinese landscap

76.34.84.22 on Sat, 13 Apr 2024 19:03:38 +00:00
painting changed as painters mastered the representation of

space.101 Phase one (eighth-early eleventh century, Fig. 17)
shows overlapping triangular mountain motifs suggesting di-
agonal recession, with each sequence of receding mountains
suspended visually in space; the composition unfolds verti-
cally in the two-dimensional picture plane in three separate,
superimposed stages, with foreground, middle distance, and
far distances each tilting at a different angle. In phase two
(late eleventh-early thirteenth century, Fig. 18), overlapping
triangular mountain forms are stacked up in a continuous 0~2
sequence on the vertical picture plane, thereby achieving the

illusion of continuous recession; the mountain forms are still
presented frontally and additively in parallel planes, with
unconnected forms dissolving artfully into mists at their base,
creating the impression of a visually unified space. Finally, in
phase three (late thirteenth-fourteenth century, Fig. 19), the
forms are perceived as connected masses, the technique of
17 Diagrams of Hawks and Ducks, a painting on a lute
fused brushwork suggesting forms seen through atmosphere. plectrum guard, 8th century, showing additive mountains
In contrast to the Cartesian system of perspective in West- receding in three separate stages. Shoso-in Treasury, Nara
ern painting, which employs a fixed, single point of view,
Chinese landscape painting presupposes a moving focus or a
parallel viewpoint, also known as parallel perspective. Persis-
tent uncertainties in the connoisseurship of early Chinese we should expect to see a rabbit."'03 At the same time, b
paintings have resulted from the difficulty experienced by the Chinese and Western sinologists trained primarily in Ch
modern viewer in perceiving spatial recession created by a language and culture can learn from the Western traditi
planar structure rather than by an optical, or "scopic," point visual analysis. Rather than viewing a scene from a monoc
of view.'02 Such "difficulty of intercultural translation," ac- vantage point, capturing it within the picture frame
cording to two scholars of comparative Eastern and Western window in a wall, a classical Chinese painter position
philosophies, David Hall and Roger Ames, "can be illustrated places (Xie He's fifth principle, jingying weizhi, "plottin
by recourse to Ludwig Wittgenstein's figure of the Duck- planning, positioning and placing") forms of nature o
Rabbit. The Chinese have drawn a duck in instances where picture surface additively, in an expanded field of v
18 Diagrams of Li-sheng, Dream

Journey through the Xiao and Xiang
Rivers, early 12th century, showing
overlapping mountain motifs receding
in a continuous space. Tokyo National
Museum
19 Diagrams of Zhao Mengfu, Autumn

Colors on the Que and Hua Mountains,
1296, showing landscape elements
arranged along a continuously
receding ground plane. Taipei,

76.34.84.22 on Sat, 13 Apr 2024 19:03:38 +00:00
that the way traditional Chinese painters visually conceive

landscape painting may imply, again in Bryson's words, a
different kind of "politics of vision . .. in an expanded [vi-
sual] field."x05
t-.,, :- .. .. . .. . . . . .
In his 1968 essay "Other Criteria," the art historian Leo
Steinberg described how the Western old masters conceived
of the picture plane with Cartesian linear perspective: "Such
pictures soliloquize about the capacities of the surface and
the nature of illusion."106 Even in Abstract Expressionism, he
continued, "the conception of the picture as representing a
world, some sort of worldspace which reads on the picture
plane in correspondence with the erect human posture [has
k , , 0 .: ? " remained operative]." Beginning with Robert Rauschen-
berg's work in the late 1950s (Fig. 20), however, Steinberg
sees "a radically new orientation, in which the painted surface
is no longer the analogue of a visual experience of nature but
w A
of operational processes." He describes the new style as "the

flatbed picture plane [which] lends itself to any content that
does not evoke a prior optical event." The term "flatbed" is
borrowed from the flatbed printing press, "a horizontal bed
i41
on which a horizontal printing press rests." In other words,
the painter no longer creates illusion and depth on the flat
surface of the canvas but uses the material surface as a bed on
which to deposit man-made and natural forms. "I intend to
regard the tilt of the picture plane from vertical to horizon-
7 ..7 , ,
tal," Steinberg continues, "as expressive of the most radical
shift in the subject matter of art, the shift from nature to
culture."107
I would suggest that a similar change-from an illusionistic
pictorial surface back to the flat picture surface-occurred in
Chinese literati painting, albeit by way of a very different
w._?4tv - visual structure. While Steinberg's notion of the "flatbed"
picture plane, developed in regard to Rauschenberg's Bed,
moves away from the issues of painting per se, his point about
the "radical shift.., from nature to culture" has to do, once
again, with the "end" of mimetic representation, that is, "the
conception of the picture as representing a world." After
mimetic representation was mastered in Chinese landscape
painting, in about 1300, early Yuan literati painters turned to
art historical representations by exploring the materiality of
the flat picture surface. In Wang Xizhi Watching Geese (Fig. 21),
dating from about 1295, Qian Xuan (ca. 1235-ca. 1307)
paints by "writing" flat, archaizing triangular mountain motifs
and tree foliage and then covering them with mineral colors.
Where Xia Gui created an illusionistic landscape just half a
century earlier (Fig. 22), Qian inscribed his own physical
presence onto the flat paper surface with traces of his brush
and ink. John Hay noted,
20 Robert Rauschenberg (b. 1925), Bed, combine painting,

The outcome..,
1955. New York, The Museum of Modern Art (photo: is a tangible medium, or substrate, which
Photo
runs through the entire work, including the inscription.
archive, Department of Art and Archaeology, Princeton
University) This substrate is, quite concretely, the surface on which
Ch'ien Hsuan [Qian Xuan] paints his forms, writes his
poem, and in which he leaves his voids. His medium is the
which, owing to its dynamic moving focus, transcends the paper, and its surface is consistently and uninterruptedly
physical boundaries of the picture frame and transforms the present.108
landscape into a symbolic form as an image of the mind. As
a mode of representation or seeing, classical Chinese land- Qian's return to the flat picture surface, on which he
scape follows, in Norman Bryson's terms, "the logic of the validates the simultaneous practice of calligraphy, painting,
Glance" rather than the "logic of the Gaze."104 This suggests and poetry as a single art form, is expressive of (in Leo

76.34.84.22 on Sat, 13 Apr 2024 19:03:38 +00:00
Lip.
.4p,
ION fj
__ jj
~ ~4:2: ~ j4
__ __ _ _ __-__ _
21 Qian Xuan (ca. 1235-ca. 1307), Wang
il-i
22 Xia Gui (active ca. 1200-ca. 1240),

Streams and Mountains Pure and Remote,
ca. 1200. Taipei, National Palace
Museum
r? A .,
47'
~t-\'.
23 Wen Zhengming (1470-1559), Heavy Snow on the Mountain Passes, 1528-32. Taipei, National Palace Muse

76.34.84.22 on Sat, 13 Apr 2024 19:03:38 +00:00
Steinberg's words
ture." Treating his
with a painted bord
surface materially
phon, Qian reifies
painting as preemin
work, which is con
?~ ~ ~~ ~P~ ? m? ?."':- '. literati artist, after
memory of Wang
his beloved geese as
Continuing our ana
landscape painting b
that Wen Zhengmin
(Fig. 23) dated 1528-
surface by rearran
mountain motifs in
notunlike those of
gol (Fig. 16). By rep
(Figs. 17, 18) with a
spatial organization
work (Fig. 22) int
brush pattern, We
A4w
forms, which impa
and troubling psych
travelers in Wen's
world of fantastic
clad and relentlessly
- 4.\' to what he descri
'- ?
"dehierarchical conj
to "a persistent ten
and his followers] t
sition aside and atta
"[these] paintings
that certainly has a
By the early seven
calligrapher and p
that to avoid imitati
painting should be
wrote, "If one con
then painting is no
if one considers the
tains and waters can
as mountains and
achieved communi
transformation. In
dating from abou
forms are rendered
ters with sweeping
architectonic forms; the volumetric, three-dimensional
masses moving back and forth on the flat paper surface are
held together in a serpentine movement-which the painter
calls his "breath-momentum [qishi]"-as if they were in a
purely calligraphic composition.
Finally, in Man in the Mountain (Fig. 25), dating to the late
1690s, we find the early Qing painter Shitao making an
intuitive leap backward to recapture the ancient belief in the
mystic union of calligraphy and painting and brush and ink
through what he called "One-stroke" painting (yihua). Instead
24 Dong Qichang (1555-1636), In
of seeking to create by valorizing classical the
styles such as those Sh
ca. 1635. Taipei, National Palace
in the works of the seventeenth-century Museu
orthodox school

76.34.84.22 on Sat, 13 Apr 2024 19:03:38 +00:00
-wit
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1.1-1-1.1 Y.
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X7. 'IN
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25 Shitao (1642-1702), Man in the

Mountain, detail, album leaf, late
'y
1690s. New York, C. C. Wang Family

Collection
painters, Shitao, the individualist master, reinvented thethatpre-Shitao's inspirational communion with creative Oneness
historic "primordial line.""113 "One stroke is the basis offound
all expression in landscape painting just before the clas-
things," he wrote, "and the root of a myriad of phenom- sical idea of cosmology finally came to an end, in the wake of
ena.... When the brush is united with the ink, cosmic atmo- "evidential scholarship [kaozheng xue]" and the influence of
sphere is created.... From One comes a myriad of things, Western scientific learning in the eighteenth century, a topic
and from a myriad of things I return to One."114 Here, the that has been ably studied by Elman.116 From the nineteenth
visual structure of Shitao's landscape is distinctly calligraphic century onward, landscape paintings in China, in both tradi-
rather than pictorial (Fig. 2), with its thickening-and-thin- tional and Western styles, fell under the sway of Western
ning brushstrokes animating the flat material ground of the scientific realism."7
paper surface. In the composition, the man who sits looking In conclusion, I return briefly to the appearance of crisis in
out of his mountain studio seems to recall Zhang Yanyuan's the field of art history today. If we ask what the study of
words, quoted above, "When the Sages of Antiquity... [held] Chinese orJapanese painting can contribute to the postmod-
the magic power... Creation could no longer hide its se- ern discipline of art history, the answer must lie, on the one
crets .... At that time writing and painting were still alike in hand, in the historical descriptions of different national vi-
form and had not yet been differentiated.""'5 It is significant sual languages and their special meanings and, on the other

76.34.84.22 on Sat, 13 Apr 2024 19:03:38 +00:00
hand, in the theoretical issues as a tool for dealing withmatch

thethe West's general image of Japanese art." And he pointed out that
with the annexation of Taiwan in 1895 and of Korea in 1910 and the
expanded field of intercultural artistic activities. The histories
beginning of the Ministry of Education-sponsored Bunt en exhibi
of the arts of Asia, which are often neglected in their1907,coun- "As Japonisme ended [around 1910], there was a major shift i
policy, from [that oriented] towards the West to... one [that] led
tries of origin, remain a relatively understudied field. Modern
'[Pan-]Asian co-prosperity' within Japan and Japanese-occupied te
Chinese artists, for example, who struggle with a traditional
during the Fascism of the 1930s and onward." According to Sat
Chinese art historiography that is shaped by a cyclicalJapan's
world- defeat in World War II in 1945 ... a history of modern Jap
was created on a model which reflected Japan's post-war internationa
view based on the rise and fall of dynastic histories, seem to
and focused on the Ministry of Education-related arts [programs]
have difficulty in finding meaning and inspiration in teredtradi- Westernization.... Yet, there was also a strong [tendency] in
to criticize this Westernization as [a] 'breakdown' of Japanese trad
tional art forms. In other words, the traditional representa-
While confessing that he has not yet found an effective way of r
tional system does not appear to fit modern Chinese dis- art history to Asian (Chinese and Korean) art history,
Japanese Sa
course, which sees Western history as a universal model.
cluded by speaking of a "weather map" of "a larger region, one th
beyond nationial boundaries." See Sato Doshin, "History of Art: The
Having lost the use of the traditional narrative, how is the
ments for Historicization," in Taiwan 2002 International Conference on th
modern Chinese artist to express himself?. of Painting in East Asia (Taiwan: National Taiwan University, 2002),
4. Oleg Grabar, "On the Universality of the History of Art," Art Jou
But the story of Chinese art is not over. Our perspective of
no. 4 (winter 1982): 282.
viewing Asian art in the modern discipline of art history
5. Henri Zerner, "Editor's Statement: The Crisis in the Discipline," Art
derives from the commitment to a comparative studyJournal
of the 42, no. 4 (winter 1982): 279.
6. See Francis Haskell, Historty and Its Image: Art and the Interpretation of the
world's different cultures. With the new perspective of the
Past (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), 232-35.
twenty-first century, the wealth of classical Chinese art and
7. See Donald Preziosi, Rethinking Art History: Meditation on a Coy Science
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989).
history becomes a deep and profound cultural resource to be
8. Svetlana Alpers, "Is Art History?" Daedulus 106, no. 3 (summer 1977):
explored and, if possible, reintegrated into modern life
1-13.and
creativity. 9. See Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method (London: Sheed and Ward,
1975); and Joan Hart, "Reinterpreting Wolfflin: Neo-Kantianism and Herme-
neutics," Art Journal 42, no. 4 (winter 1982): 292-300.
10. Zhang Yanyuan; and Acker, 61-382.
Emeritus Professor at Princeton University, Wen C. Fong taught 11. Richard Vinograd, "The Ends of Chinese Painting," in Taiwan 2002
International Conference (as in n. 3), 424.
Chinese art history there from 1954 to 1999. Concurrently, he also 12. See Jerome Silbergeld, "Commentary on James Cahill's 'Chinese Art
served for nearly thirty years as a consultant to the Metropolitan and Authenticity,' " American Academy of Arts and Sciences Bulletin 55, no. 1 (fall
2001): 31-35.
Museum of Art, retiring in 2000 as its first and longtime consulta- 13. See James Cahill, "Discussant Paper on Methodology," in Taiwan 2002
tive chairman of the Department of Asian Art [Department of Art International Conference (as in n. 3), 399.
14. For the Admonitions scroll, attributed to Gu Kaizhi, see Wen C. Fong,
and Archaeology, Princeton University, Princeton, N.J. 08540].
"The Admonitions Scroll and Chinese Art History," in Gu Kaizhi and the
"Admonitions" Scroll, ed. Shane McCausland (London: British Museum Press
and Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art, in press); and James Cahill,
transcription of remarks at the 2001 international colloquy on the Admonitions
Frequently Cited Sources scroll, in "Symposia, Conferences and Colloquies... the Last Word?" Orien-
tations 32, no. 8 (Oct. 2001): 118. For The Riverbank, attributed to Dong Yuan,
see Wen C. Fong, "Riverbank, from Connoisseurship to Art History," in Issues
Acker, William R. B., Some T'ang and Pre-Tang Texts on Chinese Painting of Authenticity in Chinese Painting, ed. Judith G. Smith and Wen C. Fong (New
(Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1954). York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1999), 259-91; and idem, "A Reply to
Zhang Yanyuan, Lidai minghua ji (Record of famous paintings of successive James Cahill's Queries about the Authenticity of Riverbank," Orientations 31,
dynasties) (completed 847), in Huashi zongshu, ed. Yu Anlan (Shanghai: no. 3 (Mar. 2000): 114-28.
Renmin meishu chuban she, 1963), vol. 1. 15. See Jonathan Hay, "Toward a Disjunctive Diachronics of Chinese Art
History," in Desedimenting Time, special issue of Res 40 (autumn 2001): 104,
nn. 17, 21.
16. Zhang Yanyuan, "On the Origins of Painting," in Zhang, juan 1, 1; and
Acker, 62-64.
Notes 17. As Friedrich Nietzsche pointed out, Immanuel Kant, the father of
modern Western aesthetics, "like all philosophers, instead of envisaging the
aesthetic problem from the point of view of the artist [the creator], consid-
I am most grateful to Professor David Rosand of Columbia University, Pro-
fessors Benjamin A. Elman, Hal Foster, Jerome Silbergeld, and Emeritus ered art and the beautiful purely from that of the spectator [the viewer]."
Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J.
Professor Frederick W. Mote of Princeton University, and Dr. Maxwell Hearn
of the Metropolitan Museum of Art for reading my manuscript and giving Hollingdale
me (New York: Vintage Books, 1969), 103-4.
stimulating criticisms and comments. I owe a special debt of thanks to 18. See Zhang Yanyuan (as in n. 16), juan 1, 1; and Acker, 65-66.
19. David Rosand, Drawing Acts: Studies in Graphic Expression and Representa-
Professor H. Perry Chapman, editor-in-chief of The Art Bulletin, for respond-
tion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 13.
ing warmly to my offer to publish the paper in the Bulletin. Her careful
reading of the text and suggestions for changes were exceptionally helpful. I20. Ibid., 6-7.
must also express my deep appreciation to Emily Walter, Judith Smith, Dora21. Sun Guoting, Shupu (Treatise on calligraphy) (678), in Peiwenzhai shu-
Ching, and Dr. Cary Liu for their invaluable assistance in the preparationhuaof pu (Collected works on calligraphy and painting in the Peiwen studio),
ed. Wang Yuanqi et al. (Beijing, 1708), juan 5, 24a-b; and Chang Ch'ung-ho
this manuscript. Finally, I wish to thank the Department of Art and Archae-
ology at Princeton for financial support for editorial help and for makingand Hans Frankel, trans., Two Chinese Treatises on Calligraphy (New Haven: Yale
possible the color reproductions in this publication. University Press, 1995), 3.
Unless otherwise indicated, translations are mine. 22. Rosand (as in n. 19), 7.
1. Mimi Hall Yiengpruksawan, 'Japanese Art History 2001: The State and23. Ibid., 105.
Stakes of Research," Art Bulletin 83 (2001): 111. 24. Ibid., 98-99.
2. Ibid., 111-12. 25. See Richard M. Barnhart, "Wei Fu-jen's Pi Chen T'u and the Early Texts
3. At the "Taiwan 2002 International Conference on the History of Painting on Calligraphy," Archives of the Chinese Art Society of America 18 (1964): 21.
in East Asia," held at the National Taiwan University in Taipei, Sato Doshin, 26. Zhang Yanyuan, juan 2, 22; and Acker, 12. For the complete text, see
a leading scholar in modern Japanese painting history, echoed Yiengpruk-below at n. 60.
sawan in his own call for reexamining "the conceptualization ofJapanese art 27. See Wen C. Fong, "Chinese Calligraphy: Theory and History," in The
and its supporting structures of canon and historicism." Doshin began by Embodied Image: Chinese Calligraphy from the fohn B. Elliott Collection, by Robert E.
observing that "the concepts of 'art,' 'art history,' and 'the study of art history'Harrist Jr. and Wen C. Fong (Princeton: Art Museum, Princeton University,
in modern Japan all came from the West." He noted that "[Japanese] arts 1999), 31-37.
policies of the Meiji period [1868-1912] ... developed around a fundamen- 28. Sun Guoting (as in n. 21); and Fong (as in n. 27), 35.
tal core of response to [Western] Japonisme . . . [when] manufacturers had to 29. For discussion of semiotics of nonmimetic elements in image-signs, see

76.34.84.22 on Sat, 13 Apr 2024 19:03:38 +00:00
Meyer Schapiro, "On Some Problems in the Semiotics of Visual Art: Field and 54. Liu Yiqing (404-444), ed., New Account of the Tales of the World (Shishuo
Vehicle in Image-Signs," Semiotica 3 (1969): 223-42. xinyu), quoted in Zhang Yanyuan (as in n. 35), juan 5, 67.
30. Craig Clunas, "Commodity and Context: The Work of Wen Zhengming 55. Li Fang (925-996) et al., eds., Taibing guangfi (Records of the Taibing
in the Late-Ming Art Market," in Taiwan 2002 International Conference (as in n. era), juan 212.
3), 239. 56. See comments by Maxwell Hearn, "The Evolving Significance of Gu
31. Zhang Yanyuan, "Discussing the Schools and Their Transmission in the Kaizhi and the Admonitions of the Court Instructress," in McCausland (as in n.
Period of Northern and Southern Dynasties (317-589)," in Zhang Yanyuan, 14).
juan 2, 19-21; and Acker, 160-76. 57. See Craig Clunas's "Discussant's Remarks" on "cultural biographies," in
32. For the translation, see Acker, 160, 162, 163, 166, 176. ibid.
33. See Shimada Shujiro, "Ippin gafu ni tsuite," Biitsu kenkyu, no. 161 58. See Fong (as in n. 14).
(1950): 264-90; for an English translation of Shimada's article, see James 59. For Gombrich's description of "making before matching [reality]"
Cahill, "Concerning the I-p'in Style of Painting," pts. 1-3, Oriental Art 7, no. 2 through a process of "schema and correction," see E. H. Gombrich, Art and
(summer 1961): 66-74; 8, no. 3 (autumn 1962): 130-37; 10, no. 1 (spring Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation (Washington, D.C.:
1964): 19-26. Pantheon Books, 1960), 116ff.
34. See David Freedberg, The Power of the Image (Chicago: University of 60. Zhang Yanyuan, juan 2, 21-22; and Acker, 12.
Chicago Press, 1991), 272-74. 61. Zhang Huaiguan, quoted in Zhang Yanyuan, juan 5, 69.
35. Zhang Yanyuan, "Biography of Gu Kaizhi," in Zhang Yanyuan, juan 5, 62. Norman Bryson, Vision and Painting: The Logic of the Gaze (New Haven:
68; see also Freedberg (as in n. 34), 264. Yale University Press, 1983), 89.
36. Kiyohiko Munakata, "Concepts of Lei and Kan-lei in Early Chinese Art 63. Rosand (as in n. 19), 97.
Theory," in Theories of the Arts in China, ed. Susan Bush and Christian Murck 64. E. H. Gombrich, A Preference for the Primitive: Episodes in the History of
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), 105-31. Western Taste and Art (New York: Phaidon Press, 2002), 280; and see the review
37. Joseph Needham with Wang Ling, History of Scientific Thought, vol. 2 of by Clifford Geertz, "The Last Humanist," New York Review of Books, Sept. 25,
Science and Civilization in China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002, 6-10.
65. See Acker, 165.
1956), 28; Needham (281-83) discusses the Han philosopher Dong Zhong-
shu's (ca. 179-ca. 104 B.C.E.) correlative universe. 66. Jin Weinuo, "Caojiayang yu Yang Zihua fengge" (The 'Cao' school and
38. Wen C. Fong, "On Hsieh Ho's 'Liu Fa,'" Oriental Art 9, no. 4 (winter the style of Yang Zihua), Meishu yanjiu, no. 1 (1984): 37-51; also idem,
1963): 3-6. "Artistic Achievements of Buddhist Sculpture from the Longxingsi in Qing-
39. Wen C. Fong, "Ch'i-yun-sheng-tung: Vitality, Harmonious Manner and zhou-on the Qingzhou Style and the Northern Qi 'Cao' School," in Between
Aliveness," Oriental Art 12, no. 3 (autumn 1966): 89-92. Han and Tang: Religious Art and Archaeology in a Transformative Period, ed. Wu
40. See Zhang Yanyuan, juan 1, 15; and Acker, 149. Hung (Beijing: Cultural Relics Publishing House, 2000), 377-96.
41. For Xiao Zixian's quote, see Guo Shaoyu, Zhongguo wenxue piping shi 67. Published in Wu Hung, ed., Proceedings of the International Conference on
(History of Chinese literary criticism) (Shanghai: Zhonghua shuju, 1961), 84. Cultural and Artistic Interaction between Han and Tang (Beijing: Center for the
Study of Chinese Archaeology, Peking University, 2000), 1-24.
Liu Xie wrote, "The color blue is prepared from indigo, and the color red
comes from madder. Although blue and red seem to be brighter than their 68. Wen C. Fong, "Ao-t'u hua or 'Receding-and-Protruding Painting' at
Tun-huang," in Proceedings of the International Conference on Sinology: Section on
sources, they are incapable of further change.... If one wishes to refine upon
Art History (Taipei: Academic Sinica, 1981), 78-79.
the blue and to purify the red, one must return to the indigo and the madder
69. See Fong (as in n. 14).
and begin there; in the same way, to correct pretentiousness and cure
70. The closest comparison to the volumetric male figures in the Admoni-
superficiality, a writer must return to the classics and begin there. Only when
a writer is able to strike a balance between substance [zhi] and the ornament tions scroll is found on the back wall of Ning Mao's shrine, dated 529, in the
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
[wen], and to make the right choice between a graceful and vulgar expression,
71. See Shane McCausland, "'Like the Gossamer Thread of a Spring Silk-
is he a man with whom we may discuss the problem of 'understanding
worm': Gu Kaizhi in the Yuan (1271-1368) Renaissance," in McCausland (as
transformation' [tongbian]," in Vincent Yu-chung Shih, trans., The Literary in n. 14).
Mind and the Carving of Dragons by Liu Hsieh [Liu Xie] (New York: Columbia
72. Su Shi; see the discussion of this passage in Peter Bol, This Culture of
University Press, 1959), 167.
42. See above at n. 5.
Ours: Intellectual Transitions in T'ang and Sung China (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1992), 295-99.
43. See Zhang Yanyuan, comp., Fashu yaolun (Important writings on callig-
73. See Hans Belting, The End of the History of Art? trans. Christopher Wood
raphy), in Yishu zongbian, vol. 1 (Taibei: Shijie shuju, 1967), juan 2, 28.
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 46-48; and Arthur Danto, "The
44. Sun Guoting (as in n. 21).
End of Art?" in The Death of Art, ed. Berel Lang (New York: Haven, 1984), 24.
45. Zhang Yanyuan, "On the Six Principles of Painting," in Zhang Yanyuan,
74. Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences
juan 1, 15; and Acker, 149, 151.
(New York: Vintage Books, 1973), xxiii. Foucault adds (292): "There is one
46. Zhang Yanyuan (as in n. 45), juan 1, 15; and Acker, 149.
major difference, however, between languages and living beings. The latter
47. In Lidai minghuaji, Zhang Yanyuan repeats the formulation "the divine
have no true history except by means of a certain relation between their
borrows his hand [shenrenjiashou]" two more times in describing Wu Daozi's
functions and the conditions of their existence.... Thus, to enable this
art. In juan 2, 22 (translated in Acker, 179), he writes, "The divine borrows
history to emerge clearly, and to be described in discourse, there had to
and nature creates [shenjia tianzao]"; later in the same paragraph be (Acker,
... an analysis of the environment and conditions that act on the living
181), he repeats: "In harmony with the workings of Creation, [the divine]
being."
borrows Master Wu's brush [he zaohua zhigong, jia Wushen zhibi]." 75. The major difference between East and West is the lack of a scientific
48. See n. 37 above.
revolution in China. What Foucault has to say about historicity, however, can
49. Thus, Zhang Huai (active early 12th century) wrote about monumental be of great interest to students of post-Song history and art history.
landscape painting as follows: "[Landscape] painting distinguishes the 'black'76. Danto (as in n. 73), 24.
of heaven from the 'yellow' of the earth, and discloses the yin and yang of Shane McCausland, "Zhao Mengfu (1254-1322) and the Revolu-
77. See
creation .... Since man is the most sentient of all beings, he alone is suited
tionfor
of Elite Culture in Mongol China," Ph.D. diss., Princeton University,
painting .... If a painter can grasp the principles of nature and by following
1999.
the nature of things discern their wonderful subtleties, his mind will come 78. to
See Fong et al. (as in n. 52), p. 124.
meet and his spirit will become one [with the things] ." Zhang Huai, "Houxu" 79. Clunas (as in n. 30), 251.
(Epilogue), in Shanshui Chunquan ji (Collection of Chunquan's essays 80.on
Alfred Gell, Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory (Oxford: Claren-
landscape painting), by Han Zhuo, in Zhongguo hualun leibian (Compilation
don of
Press, 1998), 140.
texts on Chinese painting), ed. YuJiahua (Hong Kong: Zhonghua, 1973),81. vol.
See David L. Hall and Roger T. Ames, Anticipating China: Thinking
2, 680. through the Narratives of Chinese and Western Culture (Albany: State University of
50. See Zhang Yanyuan, juan 2, 22; and Acker, 178-79. See also New
Zhang
York Press, 1995); and idem, Self Truth, and Transcendence in Chinese and
Huaiguan, quoted in Zhang Yanyuan (as in n. 35), juan 5, 69; Diagram Western of the Culture (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998).
Battle Array of the Brush (Bizhen tu), attributed to Lady Wei, is actually a work of esp., Craig Clunas, Superfluous Things: Material Culture and Social
82. See,
the 7th century; see Barnhart (as in n. 25), 21. Status in Early Modern China (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991).
51. See Gugong shuhua lu (The National Palace Museum catalogue of 83. Benjamin A. Elman, A Cultural History of Civil Examinations in Late
calligraphy and painting) (1956; 2d ed., Taipei: National Palace Museum,Imperial China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 621.
1965), vol. 3, juan 5, 1-146. 84. See Wen C. Fong, "The Orthodox Lineage of Tao," in Possessing the Past:
52. See Wen Fong et al., Images of the Mind: Selections from the Edward L. Elliott Treasures from the National Palace Museum, Taipei, by Fong and James C. Y. Watt
Family and John B. Elliott Collection of Chinese Calligraphy and Painting at the Art (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1996), 257-59.
Museum, Princeton University (Princeton: Art Museum, Princeton University, 85. Sun Guoting, quoted in Fong (as in n. 27), 36.
1984), 27-45, 60-68. 86. The distinction between the School of Principle and the School of the
53. For another translation, see Susan Bush, The Chinese Literati on Painting: Mind was not formally established until after the Southern Song period,
Su Shi (1037-1101) to Tung Ch'i-ch'ang (1555-1636), Harvard-Yenching Insti-probably not until the Ming, especially in the early 16th century. The modern
tute Studies, 27 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971), 26. scholar Lao Siguang, after defining three strains of thought in Neo-Confu-

76.34.84.22 on Sat, 13 Apr 2024 19:03:38 +00:00
cianism-the ontological, the metaphysical, and the subjective-sees the 100. David Summers, "The 'Visual Arts' and the Problem of Art-Historical
entire Neo-Confucian movement as one that basically returned to the ancient Description," Art Journal 42 (winter 1982): 303.
Confucian moral philosophy of xinxing, or "mind-nature," based on a subjec- 101. See Fong et al. (as in n. 52), 21-22.
tive view of life. See Lao Siguang, Xinbian Zhongguo zhexue shi (A new history 102. See Robert Harrist Jr., "Connoisseurship: Seeing Is Believing," in
of Chinese philosophy) (Taipei: Sanmin shuju, 1983), vol. 3a, 44-90. Smith and Fong (as in n. 14), 293-309.
87. Shitao, "Huayu lu, "ed. YuJianhua (Beijing: Renmin meishu, 1962), 23. 103. See Hall and Ames (as in n. 81), xvi.
88. Frederick W. Mote, "A Millennium of Chinese Urban History: Form, 104. Bryson (as in n. 62), 87-131.
Time, and Space Concepts in Soochow," in Four Views of China, ed. Robert A. 105. For "the discovery of a politics of vision," see Norman Bryson, "Gaze in
Kapp, Rice University Studies 59, no. 4 (fall 1973): 51. an Expanded Field," in Vision and Visuality, ed. Hal Foster, Dia Art Foundation
89. Max Loehr, "Phases and Content in Chinese Painting," in Proceedings of Discussions in Contemporary Culture, no. 2 (New York: New Press, 1988), 107.
the International Symposium on Chinese Painting (Taipei: National Palace Mu- 106. Leo Steinberg, "Other Criteria," in Other Criteria: Confrontations with
seum, 1970), 285-97. See also idem, "Some Fundamental Issues in the History Twentieth-Century Art (London: Oxford University Press, 1972), 74.
of Chinese Painting," Journal of Asian Studies 23, no. 2 (Feb. 1964): 186-92. 107. Ibid., 84, 90.
90. See International Symposium of Chinese Painting (as in n. 89), 303-4. In 108. John Hay, "Poetic Space: Chien Hsuan and the Association of Painting
subsequent years, I was involved in lengthy discussions with James Cahill on and Poetry," in Words and Images: Chinese Poetry, Calligraphy, and Painting, ed.
the need for defining period styles in early Chinese painting history. As a Alfreda Murck and Wen C. Fong (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art,
pupil of his, Cahill developed Loehr's idea of an "art-historical art" in studying 1991), 188-89.
Ming and Qing paintings. See Wen C. Fong, review of The Compelling Image: 109. Jonathan Hay, "Wen Zhengming, Stone Lake, and the Aesthetics of
Nature and Style in Seventeenth-Century Chinese Painting by Cahill, Art Bulletin 68 Disjunction," in Taiwan 2002 International Conference (as in n. 3), 286.
(1986): esp. 507-8. 110. See Fong and Watt (as in n. 84), 393-94.
91. See Hay (as in n. 15), 103, where Hay writes, "Today, modernism as a 111. John Hay, "Subject, Nature, and Representation in Early Seventeenth-
progress-based frame of thinking and formalism as an art-historical method Century China," in Proceedings of the Tung Ch'i-ch'ang International Symposium,
jointly inspire ambivalence in many scholars in my field, and stimulate fewer ed. Wai-ching Ho (Kansas City, Mo.: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1991), vol.
new scholarly inquiries into the Chinese past than they used to." 4, 13.
92. See Ludwig Bachhofer, A Short History of Chinese Art (New York: Pan- 112. Dong Qichang, Huayan (The eye of painting), in Yishu zongbian, 1st
theon Books, 1946). ser., 12 (reprint, Taipei: Shijie shuqu, 1967), 25.
93. Benjamin Rowland Jr., review of A Short History of Chinese Art by Ludwig 113. The term is Ju-hsi Chou's, "In Quest of the Primordial Line: The
Bachhofer, Art Bulletin 29 (1949): 139-41. Genesis and Content of Tao-chi's Hua-yu lu," Ph.D. diss., Princeton University,
94. David Summers, " 'Form,' Nineteenth-Century Metaphysics, and the 1969.
Problem of Art Historical Description," in The Art of Art History: A Critical 114. Shitao (as in n. 87), 39.
Anthology, ed. Donald Preziosi (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 140. 115. See above at n. 16.
95. Ibid., 136-37. 116. Benjamin A. Elman, From Philosophy to Philology: Intellectual and
96. E. H. Gombrich, The Sense of Order: A Study in the Psychology of Decorative Social Aspects of Change in Late Imperial China, 2d rev. ed., UCLA Asian
Art (London: Phaidon Press, 1979), 210. Pacific Monograph Series (Los Angeles: University of California Press,
97. Meyer Schapiro, "Style" (1953), in Preziosi (as in n. 94), 143. 2001).
98. Ibid., 145. 117. See Wen C. Fong, Between Two Cultures: Late-Nineteenth- and Twentieth-
99. See John Hay, "The Human Body as a Microcosmic Source of Macro- Century Chinese Paintings from the Robert H. Ellsworth Collection in the Metropolitan
cosmic Values in Calligraphy," in Bush and Murck (as in n. 36), 74-102. Museum of Art (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2001).

76.34.84.22 on Sat, 13 Apr 2024 19:03:38 +00:00

Fong ChinesePaintingHistory 2003

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Why Chinese Painting Is History

Author(s): Wen C. Fong

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3177344

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The Limits of Mimetic Representation

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Although Chinese artists developed neither an anatomic

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Chinese Art, more than a dozen papers examined the many

the scroll may be compared, for example, with the archaic

lady (Fig. 1), shown in three-quarter view with billowing

Gu Kaizhi's hairline brush drawing was best described, in

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9 Bodhisattva, 8th century.

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12 Zhao Mengfu (1254-1322), The Mind Landscape of Xie

Song, the southern literati artist Zhao Mengfu instigated what

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singular and plural."

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encouraged a conception of the history of art as the his-

C.E.), when style served as "a tool like an instrumentsider to

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painting changed as painters mastered the representation of

sequence on the vertical picture plane, thereby achieving the

18 Diagrams of Li-sheng, Dream

19 Diagrams of Zhao Mengfu, Autumn

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that the way traditional Chinese painters visually conceive

of operational processes." He describes the new style as "the

20 Robert Rauschenberg (b. 1925), Bed, combine painting,

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21 Qian Xuan (ca. 1235-ca. 1307), Wang

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