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Western engraving of tattooed warrior from Marquesas Islands 1813 Engraving Marquesas Islands ---- Tattooing of the body was an important visual aspect in a lot of Oceanic cultures, often used to communicate things like a history of the lineage, or a personal identity, as seen in the illustration of the practice here, or in the photograph in fig. 20.13. These features then were especially important in some of the Polynesian societies in which the social structure was very hierarchical, as a way to visually separate segments of society, being a very permanent kind of personal adornment, always there to reflect the status of the wearer. So the extensiveness of the tattoos on the body, or the use of particular patterns and so on, were often reserved for people of a certain rank, or a certain clan, which the patterns could then serve to identify. Other times, certain patterns were also thought able to install a kind of spiritual shield. In fact, here in the western world, the modern day practice of tattooing stems from European exposure to it in Polynesia, as sailors here became interested in the practice, and spread a subculture from that point. And in considering the western fascination with these tattoos, we are given a chance to revisit certain circumstances of collectorship, at these early points of contact. When explorers encountered these cultures, in addition to being eager to convert the indigenous people, change them to a western way of life, and later colonize the territories, people were also very interested in collecting artifacts, which they thought of as embodying a kind of exoticism. Of course, to their mind, this was an exoticism thought of as savage and barbaric, and inferior to western civilization. narration :mong the so-called artifacts that these explorers were eager to collect were sometimes actual body parts of people. Fig. 20.14, for example, is an image of mummified heads of Maori warriors, who were decapitated, and whose heads, after European contact, came to command a price among western collectors, who saw them as a kind of exotic curiosity. Many of these heads were in this way hauled off, eventually making their way into museums all over the western world. They have since become quite a controversy, over the last couple of decades, because the Maori would like to get them back. The ensuing cultural and ethical debates have stemmed from a gap between the perception of western cultural ministers and indigenous views, in which the heads have sometimes been claimed as cultural artifacts in the collections of institutions, while the indigenous view is that these are people and ancestors, whose remains continue to carry spiritual energy. While the issue has been a contentious one, raising uncomfortable questions, attempts to answer them have begun to cast valuable new light on previously neglected native voices.

tattooed warrior from Marquesas Islands

Later art of India and south east asia

Much of the earlier art of this region follows the development of indigenous religions, which set the foundations for belief systems like Buddhism and Hinduism. But in the later time that we will cover here - one that roughly corresponds to the Renaissance and Baroque eras, in Europe - we will look at a different kind of cultural kingdom that was in place, the last empire here before the British took colonial control of the land in the 19th century. This expansive ruling kingdom, covering nearly all of what is today the nation of India, was called the Mughal Empire.

Flowers and Birds 15th Century Screen, ink and color on paper muromachi period japan --- We can see some of this wide-ranging exploration in the art of this time in the output of the artist whose work is shown in the image here, in which Sesshu seems intent on demonstrating a facility with an array of strategies for ink application, and virtuosity with the brush. Thus, while there is a very fine line handling of elements like the outlines of the tree, and its branches, along with the steady and fastidious rendering too of animals, there is also heavy use of a more diluted wash, in places like the reeds of the background, or in the water. Beyond this, there are then dark and heavily saturated texture strokes laid down in the underside of the tree, or especially in rocks. In an image like this too, we don't only see Chinese influence at play - in noting that Muromachi painters were often keen to combine different styles, they did not only limit this synthesis to the new styles being brought over. Often, and naturally, they would then begin to introduce to them some aesthetic qualities that we can think of as being from a more indigenous Japanese painting tradition. In particular, while ink landscape painting did emerge in China, we will find the Japanese painters progressively implementing the style in a way that is more decorative. This bent is foreshadowed in Sesshu's painting here, in which the forms of the composition have come to be distributed over the painting surface in a more arbitrary kind of way - the tree and its branches, for example, are treated almost as though simply visual elements or shapes, that the artist has arranged for a more decorative effect, as if attempting to create a rhythmic sort of visual surface pattern. These are traits that we can think of as being more distinctly Japanese, in terms of their aesthetic orientations, drawing from an earlier interest in more decorative compositions, and in fact, the kind of object that the painting is featured on here, a screen, was one that was installed as a decorative object in the household. It is in this way a fitting medium through which to engage a more ornamental take on the new ink painting styles arriving at this time, and despite the early Japanese ink painters' keenness for learning from Chinese models, this trajectory of mingling traditions that we see taking shape here, applying a local sensibility to the imported styles, will become more pronounced, as this kind of art continues to evolve in Japan.

b&w big white branch left

Asmat bisji early to mid 20th century painted wood Asmat West Papua, Indonesia ---- We will begin on the largest island of the Melanesian group, called New Guinea. In the modern day, the island is split in half, the western end being a part of the nation of Indonesia, and the eastern end, Papua New Guinea. Along the southern coast of the western side live a people called the Asmat, who traditionally survived as a hunting and gathering society, living around the island's swamps and forests. Because the available resources in such an environment were finite, survival was competitive, and there was an understanding among the Asmat that, in order to fight for it, tribes needed also to contend for a kind of power, which came in the form of what they saw as a spiritual energy. This dynamic led to a fair amount of warfare as well, and especially the aspect of headhunting, in which the head of a foe was collected. Many of these actions were related to an interest in maintaining a community's power - for example, if a member of a particular tribe had been killed, some measure of the power of the clan was thought to have been robbed, so that such a killing needed to be reciprocated, in order to maintain parity. Because of its centrality in the viability of the community, therefore, headhunting practices were common among the Asmat tribes, and were still in practice even up until around the middle of the 20th century, which was when Europeans established a firmer administrative and missionary presence there, through which they eventually brought a halt to the practice. Many of the objects made by the Asmat, such as the ones seen in the image here, were related to these practices: when the tribe was preparing to embark on one of these expeditions, they would create and erect poles like these, called bisj (or ancestor) poles, which were built as a kind of tribute to their fallen, as well as, often, an announcement of the intention to redress the deaths. The poles would be ceremonially set up in advance of such missions. The trees that provide the raw material for these poles are ubiquitous within the Asmats' natural environment, and are thought to be a harbor for spirits. Such trees would also be used to construct things like canoe, to ferry the dead, so these poles often share some visual traits with those boats, and are thought also to serve a similar function, in which a spirit of one who was killed, and now lingering, could be called into the poles to witness the restoring of balance, and could in this way be at peace enough to cross into the underworld. The open areas of lattice work at the apexes of the poles were originally the bases of the trees, part of their supporting system of roots. Figures adorning the poles represent those who have been killed in an untimely way, and there is also included an array of symbolism to help propagate the belief that this will be a successful raid. These forms include phallic symbols, espousing a kind of continued potency and vigor, throughout the excursion to come. And often included too are motifs of certain animals, such as birds or bats known, especially to eat fruit. The basis of the analogy is that, in the Asmat belief system, the human body was thought to be the equivalent to the all-important trees surrounding the community, and in fact the chopping down of the tree is viewed as foretelling of the falling of the warrior to come. In this symbolism, the feet of a man are said to be human equivalents of a tree's roots, the arms correspond to branches, and the head, therefore, is represented by the fruit. So the inclusion here of animals that feed on fruit, is a kind of reference to the goal of the mission. The poles would be raised near to the men's house of the community - the building where the men would meet for ceremonial purposes, or important administrative and decision-making purposes - and then after a successful raid, they would be discarded into the swamps, where the spirits housed could be freed to continue imbuing the surrounding environment.

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Kiva Mural Late 15th - Early 16th Century Ancestral Puebloan Southwestern United States --- In addition to such large-scale civilizations in South and Central America, the northern continent at this time was also home to widespread and diverse cultures. In what is today the southwestern United States, for example, lived the Ancestral Puebloans, and a site built by this community can be seen in fig. 19.7, now a national park in Colorado. These structures nestled into the cliff face made up an Ancestral Puebloan settlement, and in addition living spaces, round chambers dotting the village, called kivas, can also be prominently seen. Such spaces would not have been originally open to the air as seen here, but covered over, and entered via a ladder. It was in these rooms that the community's spiritual ceremonies were carried out. We can see that the walls in these cases are bare, but originally, kivas were often painted with murals, an example of which we can see in our main image. As we may expect, given the ritual function of these chambers, the images that adorned them often focused on depictions of spiritual identities, and especially deities related to the promotion of bountifulness, as the indigenous tribes of North America similarly relied on the plentitude of the land, for subsistence. In this image, for example, the main figure is a representation of what was called a lightning man, personifying a phenomenon that announces and precedes the coming of rain, which then establishes potency of the land. In keeping with these themes, there are also images of animals like fishes and birds, often shown dropping water or seeds to the earth, to set the foundation for abundant crop growth. Other motifs emanating from the animals too - like lightning bolts, or rainbows - are environmental indicators of the imminent delivery of life-sustaining waters.

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Spring Dawn in the Han Palace Early to mid 16th century handscroll, ink and color on silk Ming dynasty China --- The work seen in the image here is quite different from what we've been examining. And that is because, while literati artists proclaimed a distaste for the art of the court and professionals, having been removed from the establishment and the academies, these kinds of arts continued to be made, and were often notably different in form and character, from the intentionally rough hewn styles of the literati. The painting shown here, for example, comes out of the commercial art culture of the Ming dynasty, established after the Mongolian Yuan had been driven from power. In it, we can note right away the very different taste, in terms of style, when compared to the literati mode being developed elsewhere. What we find in court and professional painting at the time tends to be a very refined, highly polished, and meticulous kind of art, featuring careful detail and decorative aspects. This painting exhibits such a technical emphasis and fine line execution, as well as a much heavier use of color, in contrast to the literati's austere monochrome leanings. In this case, the work concerns itself with sumptuousness in both style and subject, illustrating a historical palace scene, as a decadent, opulent fantasia of aristocratic life painted for a wealthy patron, and in sharp contrast once more to the literati focus on the wild and stimulating potential found in nature scenes painted for themselves, or a close and personal band of like-minded cohorts

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The Emperor Jahangir Receiving Prince Parvz 1610-1615 Watercolor and gold on paper Mughal Empire India ---- Another Mughal miniature painting, seen in the image here, is one which also presents itself as documenting a moment of historical importance in the emperor's life. In our chronology of the art of the Mughal dynasty, this work now relates to Akbar's son Jahangir, and it will be Jahangir's son, Shah Jahan, who will later have the Taj Mahal constructed. The painting here captures the emperor in audience with one of his princes, and in it, we can see on the one hand some continuation of the earlier surface-centric compositional approach coming from the time of Persian painting. There are patches of wall or floor, and the emperor's clothes that remain mostly large areas of abstract ornament, and we can see that the boundaries of architecture too have still been laid out in a schematic way, part of the tradition of rendering space flatly and geometrically. At the same time though, we also continue to find the emerging interest in some aspects of naturalism, in the Mughal take on manuscript miniature painting. So despite the persistent patches of patterning, and the diagrammatic outlining of structures, there is still greater spatial concern here when compared with earlier Islamic painting, in the form of the people inhabiting the room, for instance, who overlap each other to define dimension. These kinds of concerns can be seen elsewhere, as well: beyond the simple shape of the back wall there is the inclusion of a mountain cluster stretching back to a horizon, even making use of a kind of atmospheric perspective, in the far distant background. This of course is a technique derived from outside of the Persian tradition, stemming instead from something like the kinds of landscape painting that had gained in popularity in Europe, at around this time. A greater naturalism can also now be discovered in places such as the likenesses of the people. There is here a careful consideration of the emperor's distinct appearance, for example, and even the individual characters and personalities of those in audience, a specificity of feature that was also not a part of older Persian painting. This also seems to have drawn from contact with European styles, as accurate renderings of portraiture may have been regarded by the emperors as a style well suited for confirming the real nature of the proceedings and events depicted, by lending them an air of candidness.

gold frame with people in line giving stuff to Emperor Jahangir ... pink house right corner

Daitoku-ji Garden c. 1500 Muromachi period Kyoto, Japan --- influence on lanscape painting and zen.... garden design influenced... zen garden ... zen cultures / by zen temples... remade landscape scene with rock and gravel ,,, kept stillness / monochromatic .... meditative action to make art, zen pract n garden.... action of racking escape intellctual mind

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Hatsuboku landscape 1495 Muromachi period Hanging scroll, ink on paper Japan --- On the other hand, Sesshu was also known for some very different styles of painting, such as can be seen in the image here, of a painting that is made up almost entirely out of ink washes, without much distinct form at all, in vastly simplified and spontaneous compositions. The term hatsuboku in the title here means "splashed ink," describing a technique in which the ink painter begins by simply pitching ink upon the paper haphazardly, allowing forms to manifest on their own. It can be regarded in this way as the most extreme culmination of the increasingly abstracted approaches to ink as seen during the Southern Song, and is a style that had precedent among the paintings of the Chan monks in China during that era. In that context, this painting technique can be related to components of Zen which - like the koans discussed previously - value intuition, over conscious planning and logic, promoting a direct and unfettered experience of reality, more than intellectual understanding. In Zen culture the act of painting came to be seen as a meditative exercise in itself, in which the painter could focus upon the naturalness of unmitigated action.

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Travelers among mountains and streams early 11th century hanging scroll, ink, color on silk Northern Song dynasty China ---- Beginning in the northern half of the Song dynasty, for example, we find a style of landscape painting that is commonly referred to as monumental landscape, and it's not hard to see why: these landscapes tended to be extremely imposing, composed in a way that is meant to be awe-striking, communicating a certain grandeur of nature. Earlier in Chinese history, there was the emergence of ideas like Daoism, which had as its philosophical basis the importance of a kind of naturalness, and an effort to reconnect with the natural realm, where there is a greater purity to be found in which one can more fully cultivate oneself, in contrast to the more base qualities of manmade cities. This painter, Fan Kuan, was in fact a Daoist recluse, who spent much time in the mountains, and this kind of image for which he is known seems to reflect that tradition - the idea of escaping into nature, leaving behind the chaos of modern society. There was the sense that a painting like this could be used to conceptually serve this purpose. As we've mentioned, education in the Song came to be heavily emphasized, and was often very rigorous in its nature. Thus, for scholars or officials toiling away in the city, a work like this might serve to transport them, away from that sort of confinement, and into a purer domain. That domain is made all encompassing in works like this: although the painting is called Travelers among Mountains and Streams, it's easy to wonder where these travelers are, exactly, until we look closely at the small detail toward the bottom of the composition, in which we can finally find on a mountain path a minute rendering of a caravan, tucked almost invisibly away, at the foot of the mountain. Even here in the little foreground and middle ground of the painting, the figures are already no match for their surroundings, and this is especially true when compared to what makes up the bulk of the composition, which is the impassable wall of a mountainous monolith. So there is a kind of majesty of the natural realm being stressed here, which is all enveloping, so that with just a small leap of imagination, the viewer himself or herself might also be vicariously a traveler at the scene, in which they are likewise dwarfed. The effect was an important one in the Chinese art of the time, and sometimes inscriptions on the paintings themselves appreciate them as environments that could be imaginatively walked in. In these paintings too we begin to see a greater experimentation with brush technique to generate specific textures, using the brush to mimic the essence of the form being painted - in the particular qualities of rough stone, craggy brush, and so on. There comes to be in play a wide assortment of brush techniques, seen here in a linear outlining of trees, a dry, scrubby brush being used for rock surfaces, or diluted washes to create misty recesses. Images like these may also reflect another philosophy of thinkers in the Song, who came to believe that the concept of moral order was apparent and visible in the natural world. Thus, nature was seen as being a perfect embodiment of absolute moral character. In the art of the time then, lofty peaks frequently center the compositions, seen as a metaphorical exemplar for a kind of moral height, and to these peaks were then attached symbols of human character, such as trees that were seen as resolute and noble, withstanding the elements and continuing to grow, without relinquishing their hold on the moral center. So although these painters did spend time observing nature, landscape paintings like these were not meant to depict an exact scene of a particular place, instead they attempted to reflect a sort of essence of nature. In the end, the images are meant to be expressive - they are exaggerated for effect, and there is a kind of emotional content, a sublimity in the face of nature. The features included in these settings are typically dramatic: trees are craggy, gnarled and twisting, cliffs are sheer and soaring. They are visceral renditions of nature, having this in common with something like the Romantic painting movement in the west, though of course that comes from a much later time, and its own specific social and philosophical impetuses.

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Enjoyment of Summer Scenery, from 10 conveniences an ten pleasures of country life 1771 Album leaf Edo period Japan ----- Like the painting culture of the Momoyama period, though, in the Edo period styles other than the decorative also flourished. We have seen how much of the earlier ink painting in Japan developed from sources like Song dynasty landscape, coming from China. And eventually, painters in Japan also started looking toward Chinese ink painting traditions that had come a bit later. Through these explorations, there emerged in the Edo period a style of Japanese ink painting called bunjinga, which means literati. Thus, this take on ink painting was one that attempted to draw from that particular era of Chinese painting, espousing a freer, more poetic, and more expressive philosophy. So while Muromachi ink painters tended to take cues often from Southern Song art, bunjinga painters looked to the experiments of later dynasties like the Yuan and Ming, learning from painters like Dong Qichang, and his theories. Nevertheless, like the original ink painting styles that came over from China, bunjinga painting will also be subject to adaptation, after its arrival to Japan. There has again been a period of lag, a separation of some centuries, from the original literati culture of China, and besides this, the style here was used in a different way, for different purposes, filtered through and thus resonant of different social conditions. In the work shown in the image here, for example, we can identify what is something of a more lighthearted quality, which may be explained by the era in which it was made, a time of new unified stability after centuries of violent factionalism, whereas the Yuan dynasty of the original literati in China was a time in which a prosperous native dynasty had recently been overthrown by outside invaders. In fact, the new economic prosperity generated in the Edo period was one of the main engines driving the continued making of literati art in Japan, as there came to be a demand among newly affluent patrons for a kind of art that might lend an air of prestige. Thus, another notable difference here is that the Japanese literati were professional painters, driven by the circumstances of this new wealth.

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Pine Wood late 16th century screen, ink on paper Momoyama period Japan ---- There were other styles of painting, however, that were prominent in the Momoyama, in addition to the highly decorative. Even in Kano Eitoku's body of work, we noted that that celebrated painter of castle interiors also continued to work in a monochrome ink approach and the evolution of that tradition can be seen too in the work of the artist shown here, who was a contemporary and artistic rival to Eitoku. In fact, Hasegawa Tohaku himself originally studied with the Kano School, but later, he came to favor an attempt instead to return to the more muted or contemplative possibilities of ink painting, put off by what he regarded as an overemphasis on wealth and ostentation. The resulting manner of painting that he championed can be seen in the example here, in which Hasegawa can be seen building once again on a Southern Song, spontaneous mode of ink application, being especially influenced by Chan monk painters who came before, or predecessors like Sesshu Toyo, early masters of an intuitive understanding of painting's potential. Thus, compared to some of the work of an artist like Kano Eitoku, Hasegawa's screen paintings here have been rendered in a very abbreviated way, through isolated patches of pine trees painted in loose modulations of dilution and saturation, and set amid an expanse of emptiness, the negative space seeming even to bleed over the trees, as if they are emerging and disappearing. But even though this is quite far from the decorative bent in some Momoyama art, it still demonstrates one predilection that appears over many different styles of Momoyama art, which is to entirely concentrate on highlighting individual forms and motifs, for the entirety of a composition. Pine trees, for example, had long been a popular subject in the history of ink painting - Song dynasty landscapes were often populated by them, as we said, usually as metaphors for noble human qualities. In that original usage, however, these items were typically part of a greater setting. We can see here, though, that such a larger context has largely been removed, focusing on an isolated study of the forms themselves. So although Hasegawa is continuing to draw from the lineage of Chinese landscape, he nevertheless has picked up on the trend of exploring the aesthetic possibilities of individual forms, which we've seen appearing in Japanese ink painting, especially in the use of landscape elements as progressively decorative units.

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Plum tree by Water c. 1566 Screen, ink and color on paper Momoyama period Daitoku-ji, Kyoto Japan ---- Meanwhile, over the course of the Momoyama, the distinct reinterpretation of the Chinese ink painting tradition in Japan continues to forge new ground, and much of the resulting innovations will be found adorning these castle walls, as part of the program to generate a stately domesticity of the court. One artist at this time who continued in these adaptations is represented by the screen paintings seen here, and his name may be partly familiar, descending as he did from the Kano School of painting introduced in the preceding Muromachi time. We noted for example in work by Kano Motonobu - Eitoku's grandfather - the ways in which he began to inject into the new kind of painting from China some earlier Japanese tendencies, especially in the way he took to arranging his forms in a manner that felt less concerned with depicting a comprehensive scene, or a full view of a landscape setting, and more preoccupied instead with the decorative effects that the composition could generate, and we'll see that Kano Eitoku very much continued in the family's artistic explorations of this nature. These particular screen panels by Kano Eitoku are at Daitoku-ji, the same Zen monastery that houses the dry landscape seen earlier. Perhaps because of this setting, Eitoku's screens here are still a bit austere, painted in mostly simple monochrome, but as we will see, his work also embellished castle interiors of the time, and other wealthy domestic settings, and in those kinds of contexts, we'll find that his paintings grow much more ornamental, colorful, and sumptuous. At this temple, however, Eitoku continues in a mode that remains pretty reliant on the handling of and virtuosity with brush to make its impact, in a rougher, stripped-down composition which is appropriate for its environment. At the same time though, we do still see in Eitoku's painting the Kano tendency for using the elements of the landscape as orchestrated forms, which the artist employs to create a measured rhythm: the tree here becomes an angular silhouette, its trunk and branches zigzagging across the space to establish a balanced visual cadence that is accentuated again by motifs like little repeating bursts of vegetation to dot the surface in an orderly decoration. These were strategies we saw put to use earlier by Eitoku's grandfather, even before that through the work of ink painters like Sesshu Toyo, who sometimes also distributed his forms in a meandering spread across his surfaces. So as Japanese ink painting continues to evolve, especially here in Kano style painting, we'll see this move being developed further, until the compositions become dancing tableaus, of winding shapes and lines.

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Flowers 1859 album leaf, ink and color on paper qing dynasty China --- Over the course of Qing rule, contact between the empire and western powers increased, as a result of growing trade. Another consequence of this was that a thriving commercial culture began to emerge also in places like Shanghai, which became a bustling port city. The city began a boom as a new urban metropolis built mercantile culture, to the point where these merchants also began to be the chief patrons of art in this area, a dynamic not dissimilar to what we saw in places like the Netherlands, for example, over the course of the Renaissance. Accordingly, here too the styles of art began a shift, in order to reflect the tastes of these new patrons, and this change is especially evident in the work of a group of painters called the Shanghai School, of which the painter of the work shown here was a member. These artists were following in the tradition of literati painting, but they began to adopt such styles in a way that appealed more to this new merchant community. In this painting, for example, and in another example of Shanghai School art, seen in fig. 17.18, we can see that the painters continued to work in traditional Chinese media of ink and colors on paper or silk, but wealthy merchant tastes did not adhere as directly to the reputation of a refined or scholarly air, in the original literati sense - they seemed also to have been interested, we might say, in flashier subjects and styles, one which could connote a bit more decadence, as well. We can see in these examples, therefore, how strikingly different such paintings are from much of what we've seen so far. Thus, while a calligraphic brush and ink mode has its roots in the by now long literati tradition, the Shanghai School adaptations of these methods are exploding with vibrant color. The subject matter, too, is different - not the lofty and remote landscape, but instead a kind of joyful, compact sort of theme. So while the aim of literati work was personal refinement and poetic exchange, here that aesthetic heritage has been embellished, made brighter, jollier, and more decorative, a reflection again of changing tastes, and the changing in society of who had the power to be taste-maker. In this case, it was the newfound wealth of a mercantile middle class, members of which were perhaps eager to associate themselves with this prestigious cultural lineage, but in a way that was also more decadent and celebratory. Thus the culture around the art changed at this time as well, in that the painters of the Shanghai School were now fully professional painters, replete with price lists, for styles and subjects they could be hired to produce. That's a culture of art that's well appropriate to a commercial class in society, but one very far indeed from the original literati insistence of a pure and amateur path.

only one pink flower on left

Meetinghouse 1842-1845 Maori New Zealand ----- The last meeting house that we will consider from this module, comes from further south, and was made by the indigenous people of the New Zealand islands. Like many of these structures that we've looked at in Oceania, this one is also preoccupied with the primacy of ancestry, as a site where the Maori community could bond with its source. The design of these houses also conceives of them as being the bodies of ancestors, whose spirits are thought to be embodied in the structures, so that, when inside, community members are literally within, and under the guidance of, their ancestors, in a very visible, spatial and tangible way. In this analogy, the main central beam of the ceiling is established as the ancestor's spine, from which rafters extend, serving as ribs. In the front façades of these houses too (as seen for example in fig. 20.11), a carved mask form at the apex point of the roof represents the ancestor's head, and from here barge boards reach out as arms, sometimes even ending in fingers. In this way, again, the interior is conceived of as being literally in the belly of the ancestor, situating the visitor as close to the ancestor as possible. In these interior spaces are then additional relief sculptures of the ancients, interspersed with patterned panels between them, decorations which are also painted on the rafters overhead. It is a highly ornamented setting, which helps to heighten the senses within the space - once there, community members are given the strong visual impression that they are in a sort of special and esoteric realm, enhancing the feeling of being on rarified, spiritual ground. Another prominent aspect of the surface decorations on the ancestor figures depicted both inside and outside of the house is an array of incised, spiraling forms, thought to represent tattoos.

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Fish and Rocks c 1619 Handscroll, ink on paper Qing dynasty China --- There were, however, other artists in the Qing who were working outside of these folds of orthodoxy, and in fact some who took the old ideas that brushwork, and landscape, could express an emotional state, to new and wild heights. And in this particular period, this kind of art was often fueled by a very strong emotional response, coming chiefly out of a sense of loyalism to the fallen Ming dynasty after its vanquish, from adherents to the defeated Ming, and sometimes even family members of that dynasty, when it fell. These loyalist artists are often seen then as expressing their anger, or sadness, or other such fierce emotions, in light of and in opposition to the Qing conquest. This new unconventionalism can be seen in the work here, by Bada Shanren, a Buddhist name adopted by the painter. When the Qing took control, loyalists like Bada Shanren often retreated to Buddhist monasteries, rather than deal with the new invading dynasty now in place. Here, we can identify some of the novel and extreme tendencies that appeared in the work of these artists, who are so fiercely and adamantly defiant in their work that they are often referred to as the individualist painters of the Qing. So rather than employing traditional literati means, which had by now become widely accepted even in the courts, there is a renewed dedication to, for example, spatial incoherence, in compositions which are heavily fragmented, as well as an even bolder roughness and simplification to the forms. Much of this painting, for example, is largely left as negative space, in which the elements of the composition float, with no clear signposts through which the viewer might even identify from what point of view the painting is arranged, whether above water, or below. This is not to suggest, however, that Bada Shanren was not a capable and accomplished artist, simply that again, like the original literati movement, the artist's work eschews a preoccupation with reproducing nature, in favor of revealing a nonconformist spirit.

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Reading in a bamboo studio 1446 Hanging scroll, ink and color on paper Muromachi period Japan --- Josetsu was kind of the start, therefore, of a prominent important line of earlier Japanese ink painters, and the image seen here is of a landscape painting by his pupil, who was also a Zen priest, and one of these Japanese artists now familiar with the Southern Song landscape style as reflected in works by Chinese painters like Xia Gui. Some of the original culture surrounding this kind of art can be seen too in the themes of the work, as reflected by the kind of title that we see here - drawing from the prominent idea of a scholar retreating into nature, an image of personal refinement that had long been important in these artistic philosophies. Also from the root source of this style, we can see in this landscape a kind of asymmetry in the composition as well, used to open up a lyrical or introspective sense of emptiness, or space, along with the delicate renderings of atmospheric washes or softer edges used in Chinese paintings of this kind as well. In the detail seen in fig. 18.5, we see also a main, central cluster of gnarled trees defined in thick outline, in a kind of Southern Song simplification of form. At the same time, however, there is also something subtly vertical and monumental, in the orientation of Shûbun's landscape scene, as if he is in a way combining tendencies seen in both the Northern and Southern Song dynasties - he applies softer washes, reduced forms, and an opening up of space, but more soaring kinds of compositions at the same time. So although these two kinds of landscape painting emerged in different times and social conditions back in China, there has been a kind of lag in time, in the arrival of these styles in Japan, with the result that many of the early Japanese ink painters are learning them all at once. So we will often find these artists using different ink painting styles simultaneously, during the Muromachi development of this trajectory, as the artists work to master all the new styles arriving.

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