Ch. 25: Chinese and Korean Art after 1279
Wu Guanzhong PINE SPIRIT 25-16
1984. Ink and color on paper, 2'3⅝" x 5'3½" (0.70 x 1.61 m). Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas, Lawrence. Gift of the E. Rhodes and Leonard B. Carpenter Foundation (1991.0003). One artist who emerged during the 1980s as a leader in Chinese painting was Wu Guanzhong (1919-2010). Combining his French artistic training with his Chinese background, Wu Guanzhong developed a semiabstract style to depict scenes from the Chinese landscape. He made preliminary sketches on site. Then, back in his studio, he developed these sketches into free interpretations based on his feeling and vision. An example of his work, PINE SPIRIT, depicts a scene in the Huang (Yellow) Mountains (FIG. 25-16). The technique, with its sweeping gestures of paint, is clearly linked to Abstract Expressionism, an influential Western movement of the post-World War II years (Chapter 32); yet the painting also claims a place in the long tradition of Chinese landscape as exemplified by such masters as Shitao. Like all aspects of Chinese society, Chinese art has felt the strong impact of Western influence, and the question remains whether Chinese artists will absorb Western ideas without losing their traditional identity. Interestingly, landscape remains an important subject, as it has been for more than a thousand years, and calligraphy continues to play a vital role. Using the techniques and methods of the West, some of China's artists have joined an international avant-garde (see, for example, Wenda Gu in Chapter 33, Figure 33-54), while other painters still seek communion with nature through their ink brushstrokes as a means to come to terms with human life and the world.
Kim Hongdo ROOF TILING 25-21
From Album of Genre Paintings. Korea. Joseon dynasty,18th century. Ink and light colors on paper, 10⅝ x 8⅞" (27 x 22.7 cm). National Museum of Korea, Seoul, Republic of Korea. Treasure No. 527. Other artists expanded the growing interest in Korean themes to different sorts of subject matter. Kim Hongdo (1745-1806) painted genre scenes that showcased the everyday lives and occupations not of the nobility, but of commoners. His painting of ROOF TILING (FIG. 25-21)—one of a series of 25 album leaves portraying genre scenes—shows a team of six laborers engaged in various aspects of their roofing job. At lower right a carpenter smooths a propped-up board with his plane, while two colleagues perch on the roof itself, one about to hoist up a bundle of materials and the other catching a tile that has been heaved to him from below. The seventh man, leaning on his staff at upper right to survey the work, is presumably the roofers' supervisor. The circular figural composition animates the compressed foreground tableau and organizes the viewer's examination of the carefully detailed workers, whose depiction is energized by active poses and expressive faces. Kim creates a strong sense of narrative; we seem to have come unexpectedly into the middle of an unfolding story.
continuation of 25-22
Given that the artist was Korean, that he learned the Chinese classics in his youth, that he studied art in Paris, and that he then worked in New York, it is possible that his painting embodies all of the above. It illustrates the dilemma faced by many modern artists seeking to find a distinctive, personal style: whether to paint in an updated version of a traditional style, in a wholly international style, in an international style with a distinctive local twist, or in an eclectic, hybrid style that incorporates both native and naturalized elements from diverse artistic traditions.
Whanki Kim UNIVERSE 5-IV-71 #200 25-22
Korea. 1971. Oil on cotton, 8'4" x 8'4" (254 x 254 cm). Whanki Museum, Seoul, Republic of Korea. Despite these privations, some modern influences did reach Korea indirectly via China and Japan, and beginning in the 1920s and 1930s a few Korean artists experimented with contemporary Western styles, typically painting in the manner of Cézanne or Gauguin, but sometimes trying abstract, nonrepresentational styles. Among these, Whanki Kim (1913-1974) was influenced by Constructivism and geometric abstraction and would become one of twentieth-century Korea's influential painters. Like many Korean artists after the Korean War, Kim wanted to examine Western Modernism at its source. He visited Paris in 1956 and then, from 1964 to 1974, lived and worked in New York, where he produced his best-known works. His painting UNIVERSE 5-IV-71 #200 presents a large pair of circular, radiating patterns composed of small dots and squares in tones of blue, black, and gray (FIG. 25-22). While appearing wholly Western in style, medium, concept, and even the adoption of the date of the work's creation as part of its title, this work also seems related to East Asia's venerable tradition of monochrome ink painting, while suggesting a transcendence that seems Daoist or Buddhist in feeling.
An Gyeon DREAM JOURNEY TO THE PEACH BLOSSOM LAND 25-19
Korea. Joseon dynasty, 1447. Handscroll with ink and light colors on silk, 15¼ x 41¾" (38.7 x 106.1 cm). Central Library, Tenri University, Tenri (near Nara), Japan. Korean secular painting came into its own during the Joseon dynasty. Continuing Goryeo traditions, early Joseon examples employ Chinese styles and formats, their range of subjects expanding from botanical motifs to include landscapes, figures, and a variety of animals. Painted in 1447 by An Gyeon (b. 1418), DREAM JOURNEY TO THE PEACH BLOSSOM LAND (FIG. 25-19) is the earliest extant and dated Joseon secular painting. It illustrates a fanciful tale by China's revered nature poet Tao Qian (365-427) about chancing upon a utopia secluded from the world for centuries while meandering among the peach blossoms of spring. As with their Goryeo forebears, the monumental mountains and vast, panoramic vistas of such fifteenth-century Korean paintings echo Northern Song painting styles. Chinese paintings of the Southern Song (1127-1279) and Ming (1368-1644) periods also influenced Korean painting of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, though these styles never completely supplanted the imprint of the Northern Song masters.
HORIZONTAL WINE BOTTLE WITH DECORATION OF A BIRD CARRYING A NEWLY CAUGHT FISH 25-17
Korea. Joseon dynasty, 16th century. Buncheong ware: light gray stoneware with decoration painted in iron-brown slip on a white slip ground, 61⁄10 x 9½" (15.5 x 24.1 cm). Museum of Oriental Ceramics, Osaka, Japan. Gift of the Sumitomo Group (20773). Descended from Goryeo celadons, Joseon-dynasty stonewares, known as buncheong wares, enjoyed widespread usage throughout the peninsula. Their decorative effect relies on the use of white slip that makes the humble stoneware resemble more expensive white porcelain. In fifteenth-century examples, the slip is often seen inlaid into repeating design elements stamped into the clay body. Sixteenth-century buncheong wares are characteristically embellished with wonderfully fluid, calligraphic brushwork painted in iron-brown slip on a white slip ground. Most painted buncheong wares have stylized floral décor, but rare pieces, such as a charming WINE BOTTLE (FIG. 25-17), feature pictorial decoration. In fresh, lively brushstrokes, a bird with outstretched wings grasps a fish that it has just caught in its talons; waves roll below, while two giant lotus blossoms frame the scene. Japanese armies repeatedly invaded the Korean peninsula between 1592 and 1597, destroying many of the buncheong kilns and essentially bringing ceramic production to a halt. Tradition holds that the Japanese took many buncheong potters home with them to produce buncheong-style wares, which were greatly admired by connoisseurs of the tea ceremony. In fact, the spontaneity of Korean buncheong pottery has inspired Japanese ceramics to this day.
Jeong Seon PANORAMIC VIEW OF THE DIAMOND MOUNTAINS (GEUMGANG-SAN) 25-20
Korea. Joseon dynasty, 1734. Hanging scroll with ink and colors on paper, 40⅝ x 37" (130.1 x 94 cm). Lee'um, Samsung Museum, Seoul, Republic of Korea. In the eighteenth century, a truly Korean style emerged, inspired by the silhak ("practical learning") movement, which emphasized the study of things Korean in addition to the Chinese classics. The impact of the movement is exemplified by the painter Jeong Seon (1676-1759), who chose well-known Korean vistas as the subjects of his paintings, rather than the Chinese themes favored by earlier artists. Among Jeong Seon's paintings are numerous representations of the Diamond Mountains (Geumgang-san), a celebrated range of craggy peaks along Korea's east coast. One hanging scroll painted in 1734 (FIG. 25-20) aptly captures the Diamond Mountains' needlelike peaks. The subject is Korean, and so is the energetic spirit and the intensely personal style, with its crystalline mountains, distant clouds of delicate ink wash, and individualistic brushwork.
BROAD-SHOULDERED JAR WITH DECORATION OF A FRUITING GRAPEVINE 25-18
Korea. Joseon dynasty, 17th century. Porcelain with decoration painted in underglaze iron-brown slip, height 22⅕" (53.8 cm). Ewha Women's University Museum, Seoul, Republic of Korea. Korean potters produced porcelains with designs painted in underglaze cobalt blue as early as the fifteenth century, inspired by Chinese porcelains of the early Ming period (SEE FIG. 25-4). The Korean court dispatched artists from the royal painting academy to the porcelain kilns—located some 30 miles southeast of Seoul—to train porcelain painters. As a result, from the fifteenth century onward, the painting on the best Korean porcelains closely approximated that on paper and silk, unlike in China, where ceramic decoration followed a path of its own with little reference to painting traditions. In another unique development, Korean porcelains from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries often feature designs painted in underglaze iron-brown rather than the cobalt blue customary in Ming porcelain. Also uniquely Korean are porcelain jars with bulging shoulders, slender bases, and short, vertical necks, which appeared by the seventeenth century and came to be the most characteristic ceramic shapes in the later Joseon period. One example, a seventeenth-century jar painted in underglaze iron-brown (Figure 25-18), depicts a fruiting grape branch around its shoulder. In typical Korean fashion, the painting spreads over a surface unconstrained by borders, resulting in a balanced but asymmetrical design that incorporates the Korean taste for unornamented spaces.
Yun Shouping AMARANTH 25-13
Leaf from an album of flowers, bamboo, fruits, and vegetables. Qing dynasty, 1633-1690. Album of 10 leaves; ink and color on paper; each leaf 10 x 13" (25.3 x 33.5 cm). Collection of Phoenix Art Museum, Arizona. Gift of Marilyn and Roy Papp (2006.164). The leaf is inscribed by the artist: "Autumn garden abounds in beauty, playfully painted by Ouxiangguan (Yun Shouping)." (Translation by Momoko Soma Welch). Literati painting had been established as the dominant tradition; it now became orthodox. Scholars followed Dong Qichang's recommendation, basing their approach on the study of past masters—especially Song and Yuan artists—and imitating antique styles as a way of expressing their own learning, technique, and taste. The Qing emperors of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were painters themselves. They collected literati painting, and their taste was shaped mainly by artists such as Wang Hui (SEE FIG. 25-1). Thus literati painting, long associated with reclusive scholars, ultimately became an academic style practiced at court. Imbued with values associated with scholarship and virtue, these paintings constituted the highest art form of the Qing court. The emperors also valued a style of bird-and-flower painting developed by Yun Shouping (1633-1690) that, like the orthodox style of landscape painting, was embraced by literati painters, many of them court officials themselves. Most often seen in albums or fans, the style recalled aspects of Song- and Yuan-dynasty bird-and-flower painting, and artists cited their ancient models as a way to enrich both the meaning and the beauty of these small-format works. In a leaf from an album of flowers, bamboo, fruits, and vegetables that employs a variety of brush techniques (FIG. 25-13), Yun Shouping painted flowers representing the autumn season.
Shen Zhou POET ON A MOUNTAINTOP 25-9
Leaf from an album of landscapes; painting mounted as part of a handscroll. Ming dynasty, c. 1500. Ink and color on paper, 15¼ x 23¾" (40 x 60.2 cm). The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri. Purchase: William Rockhill Nelson Trust (46-51/2). In the south, particularly in the district of Suzhou, literati painting, associated with the educated men who served the court as government officials, remained the dominant artistic trend. One of the major literati painters from the Ming period is Shen Zhou (1427-1509), who had no desire to enter government service and spent most of his life in Suzhou. He studied the Yuan painters avidly and tried to recapture their spirit in such works as Poet on a Mountaintop (see "Poet on a Mountaintop"). Although the style of the painting recalls the freedom and simplicity of Ni Zan (SEE Figure 25-3), the motif of a poet surveying the landscape from a mountain plateau is Shen's creation.
TWO FLASKS 25-4
Ming dynasty, 1403-1424 (reign of Yongle emperor). Porcelain with decoration painted in underglaze cobalt blue, height approx. 17 1/2" (44.6 cm). Percival David Foundation Collection of Chinese Art, British Museum, London. Dragons have featured prominently in Chinese folklore from earliest times—Neolithic examples have been found painted on pottery and carved in jade. In Bronze Age China, dragons came to be associated with powerful and sudden manifestations of nature, such as wind, thunder, and lightning. At the same time, they became associated with superior beings such as virtuous rulers and sages. With the emergence of China's first firmly established empire during the Han dynasty, the dragon was appropriated as an imperial symbol, and it remained so throughout Chinese history. Dragon sightings were duly recorded and considered auspicious. Yet even the Son of Heaven could not monopolize the dragon. During the Tang and Song dynasties the practice arose of painting pictures of dragons to pray for rain, and for Chan (Zen) Buddhists, the dragon was a symbol of sudden enlightenment. Ming China became famous the world over for its exquisite ceramics, especially porcelain. The imperial kilns in Jingdezhen, in Jiangxi Province, became the most renowned center for porcelain not only in China, but in all the world. During the reigns of the Yongle (1403-1424) and Xuande (1426-1435) emperors, major trade and diplomatic missions traveled to the Middle East, and Ming porcelain made its way to Turkey and Iran, where its refined decoration and flawless glazing was admired.
Qiu Ying SECTION OF SPRING DAWN IN THE HAN PALACE 25-7A
Ming dynasty, 1500-1550. Handscroll with ink and color on silk, 1' x 1813⁄16" (0.3 x 5.7 m). National Palace Museum, Taibei, Taiwan, Republic of China. A preeminent professional painter in the Ming period was Qiu Ying (1494-1552), who lived in Suzhou, a prosperous southern city. He inspired generations of imitators with exceptional works such as a long handscroll known as SPRING DAWN IN THE HAN PALACE (FIG. 25-7). The painting is based on Tang-dynasty depictions of women in the court of the Han dynasty (206 BCE-220 CE). While in the service of a well-known collector, Qiu Ying had the opportunity to study many Tang paintings, whose artists usually concentrated on figures set on blank backgrounds. Qiu's graceful and elegant figures—although modeled after those in Tang works—are situated within a carefully described setting of palace buildings. They engage in courtly pastimes, such as chess, music, calligraphy, and painting. With its antique subject matter, refined technique, brilliant color, and controlled composition, Spring Dawn in the Han Palace brought professional painting to another level (see a detail from this scroll in "Closer Look").
Dong Qichang THE QINGBIAN MOUNTAINS 25-12
Ming dynasty, 1617. Hanging scroll with ink on paper, 21'8" x 7'4 ¾" (6.72 x 2.25 m). Cleveland Museum of Art. Leonard C. Hanna, Jr., Fund. Dong's theories take visual form in his painting of THE QINGBIAN MOUNTAINS (FIG. 25-12). As documented in his own inscription, he based this painting on a work by the tenth-century artist Dong Yuan. Dong Qichang's style, however, is quite different from the styles of the masters he admired. Although there is some indication of foreground, middle ground, and distant mountains, the space is ambiguous, as if all the elements were compressed to the surface of the picture. With this flattening of space, the trees, rocks, and mountains become more readily legible as semiabstract forms made of brushstrokes. Six trees arranged diagonally at the lower right define the extreme foreground and announce themes that the rest of the painting repeats, varies, and develops. The left-most of these foreground trees, with its outstretched branches and full foliage, is echoed first in the shape of another tree just across the river and again in a tree farther up and to the left. The tallest tree of the foreground grouping anticipates the high peak that towers in the distance almost directly above it, while the forms of the smaller foreground trees, especially the one with the darkest leaves, are repeated in many variations across the painting. At the same time, the ordinary-looking boulder in the foreground is transformed in the conglomeration of rocks, ridges, hills, and mountains above. This double reading—both abstract and representational, on the surface and into space—parallels the work's dual nature as a painting of a landscape and an interpretation of a traditional landscape painting.
ARMCHAIR 25-10
Ming dynasty, 16th-17th century. Huanghuali wood (hardwood), 39⅜ x 27¼ x 20" (100 x 69.2 x 50.8 cm). The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri. Purchase: William Rockhill Nelson Trust (46-78/1). The taste of the literati also influenced the design of furniture, architecture, and especially gardens. Characteristic of Chinese furniture during the Ming period, the ARMCHAIR in FIGURE 25-10 is constructed without the use of glue or nails. Instead, pieces fit together based on the principle of the mortise-and-tenon joint, in which a projecting element (tenon) on one piece fits snugly into a cavity (mortise) on another. Each piece of the chair is carved—not bent or twisted—and the joints are crafted with great precision. The patterns of the wood grain provide subtle interest, unconcealed by painting or other embellishment. The style, like that of Chinese architecture, is simple, clear, symmetrical, and balanced. The effect is formal and dignified but natural and simple—virtues central to the traditional Chinese view of proper human conduct as well.
Yin Hong HUNDREDS OF BIRDS ADMIRING THE PEACOCKS 25-5
Ming dynasty, late 15th-early 16th century. Hanging scroll with ink and color on silk, 7'10½" x 6'5" (2.4 x 1.96 m). The Cleveland Museum of Art. Purchase from the J.H. Wade Fund (1974.31). A typical example of Ming court taste is HUNDREDS OF BIRDS ADMIRING THE PEACOCKS (FIG. 25-5), a large painting on silk by Yin Hong, an artist active during the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. A pupil of well-known courtiers, Yin probably served in the court at Beijing. This painting is an example of the birds-and-flowers genre, which had been popular with artists of the Song academy. Here the subject takes on symbolic meaning, with the homage of the birds to the peacocks representing the homage of court officials to the imperial state. Although the style is faithful to Song academic models, the large format and intense attention to detail are traits of the Ming.
Dai Jin RETURNING HOME LATE FROM A SPRING OUTING 25-6
Ming dynasty. Hanging scroll with ink on silk, 5'6" x 2'8¾" (1.68 x 0.83 m). National Palace Museum, Taibei, Taiwan, Republic of China. A related, yet bolder and less constrained, landscape style was also popular during this period. It is sometimes called the Zhe style since its roots were in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, where the Southern Song court had been located. An example is RETURNING HOME LATE FROM A SPRING OUTING (FIG. 25-6), unsigned but attributed to Dai Jin (1388-1462). Zhe-style works such as this will become sources for Korean and Japanese artists such as An Gyeon (SEE FIG. 25-19) and Sesshu (SEE FIG. 26-3).
THE FORBIDDEN CITY 25-8
Now the Palace Museum, Beijing. Mostly Ming dynasty. View from the southwest. Centuries of warfare and destruction have left very few early Chinese architectural monuments intact. The most important remaining example of traditional architecture is THE FORBIDDEN CITY, the imperial palace compound in Beijing, whose principal buildings were constructed during the Ming dynasty (FIG. 25-8). The basic plan of Beijing was the work of the Mongols, who laid out their capital city according to traditional Chinese principles. City planning had begun early in China—in the seventh century, in the case of Chang'an (present-day Xi'an), the capital of the Sui and Tang emperors. The walled city of Chang'an was organized on a rectangular grid with evenly spaced streets that ran north-south and east-west. At the northern end stood a walled imperial complex.
Shitao REMINISCENCES OF QINHUAI RIVER 25-15
One of eight leaves from an album. Qing dynasty, c. 1695-1700. Ink and color on paper, 10 x 8" (25.5 x 20.2 cm). Cleveland Museum of Art. Another individualist was Shitao (1642-1707), Zhu Da's distant imperial cousin, who was descended from the first Ming emperor and, like Zhu Da, took refuge in Buddhist temples when the dynasty fell. In his later life he brought his painting to the brink of abstraction in such works as REMINISCENCES OF QINHUAI RIVER (FIG. 25-15), the final leaf of a landscape album. In this painting, a monk stands in a boat, looking up at the mountains that seem to be reaching downward toward him, lined by inverted trees. The inscription filling the negative space above the mountains explains that the painting was made for one of Shitao's friends who had sent him paper for a requested painting. In these nostalgic paintings the artist refers to a happier time in the 1680s when the two friends had searched for plum blossoms along the Qinhuai River. Throughout his life Shitao identified himself with the fallen Ming, filled with longing for the secure world that had turned to chaos with the Manchu conquest.
Zhu Da (Bada Shanren) QUINCE (MUGUA) 25-14
Qing dynasty, 1690. Album leaf mounted as a hanging scroll; ink and colors on paper, 7⅞ x 5¾" (20 x 14.6 cm). Princeton University Art Museum. The first few decades of Qing rule had been both traumatic and dangerous for those who were loyal—or worse, related—to the Ming. Some committed suicide, while others sought refuge in monasteries or wandered the countryside. Among them were several painters—now known as the individualists—who expressed their anger, defiance, frustration, and melancholy in their art. They took Dong Qichang's idea of painting as an expression of the artist's personal feelings very seriously and cultivated highly original styles. Among the most accomplished was Zhu Da, whose painting of quince we have already encountered in the Introduction.
Wang Hui A THOUSAND PEAKS AND MYRIAD RAVINES 25-1
Qing dynasty, 1693. Hanging scroll with ink on paper, 8'2½" x 3'4½" (2.54 x 1.03 m). National Palace Museum, Taibei, Taiwan, Republic of China. Mountains, rivers, waterfalls, trees, rocks, temples, pavilions, houses, bridges, boats, wandering scholars, fishers—all are included in A THOUSAND PEAKS AND MYRIAD RAVINES (FIG. 25-1), painted by Wang Hui (1632-1717). These are common motifs and subjects in the landscape tradition of Chinese ink painting, already many centuries old when this large work was painted in 1693. At the top of the hanging scroll, the artist himself has written: Moss and weeds cover the rocks and mist hovers over the water. The sound of dripping water is heard in front of the temple gate. Through a thousand peaks and myriad ravines the spring flows, And brings the flying flowers into the sacred caves. In the fourth month of the year 1693, in an inn in the capital, I painted this based on a Tang-dynasty poem in the manner of [the painters] Dong [Yuan] and Ju[ran]. (Translation by Chu-tsing Li) The inscription refers to the artist's inspiration—for the subject, found in the lines of a Tang-dynasty poem, and for the style, found in the work of tenth-century painters Dong Yuan and Juran. Wang Hui's art embodies the ideals of the scholar in imperial China.
GARDEN OF THE CESSATION OF OFFICIAL LIFE (ALSO KNOWN AS THE HUMBLE ADMINISTRATOR'S GARDEN) 25-11
Suzhou, Jiangsu. Ming dynasty, early 16th century. Early in the sixteenth century, an official in Beijing, frustrated after serving in the capital for many years without promotion, returned home. Taking an ancient poem, "The Song of Leisurely Living," for his model, he began to build a garden. He called his retreat the Garden of the Cessation of Official Life to indicate that he had exchanged his career as a bureaucrat for a life of leisure. By leisure, he meant that he could now dedicate himself to calligraphy, poetry, and painting, the three arts most valued by scholars in China. The art of landscape gardening also flourished during the Ming dynasty, as many literati surrounded their homes with gardens. The most famous gardens were created in the southern cities of the Yangzi Delta, especially in Suzhou, including the largest surviving garden of the era—the GARDEN OF THE CESSATION OF OFFICIAL LIFE (FIG. 25-11). Although modified and reconstructed many times since the sixteenth century, it still reflects many of the basic ideas of the original Ming owner. About one third of the garden is devoted to water through artificially created brooks and ponds. The landscape is dotted with pavilions, kiosks, libraries, studios, and corridors—many with poetic names, such as Rain Listening Pavilion and Bridge of the Small Flying Rainbow.
continuation of 25-4
The shapes of two porcelain flasks used for decanting wine in the Chinese imperial household (FIG. 25-4) were probably inspired by Islamic glass vessels brought back to China with traders returning from these missions. The underglaze cobalt blue decoration shows the variety of ornamental motifs and representational systems that were used by the painters of Ming porcelain: The body of one dragon is rendered with fine descriptive detail against a background of delicate plant motifs, whereas the other dragon is a bold white silhouette reserved from the densely painted waves of its ocean habitat. Porcelaneous stoneware, fired at lower temperatures, was known in China by the seventh century, but true porcelain was perfected during the Song dynasty. To create blue-and-white porcelain such as the flasks in FIGURE 25-4, blue pigment was made from cobalt oxide, finely ground and mixed with water. The decoration was painted directly onto the unfired porcelain vessel, then a layer of clear glaze was applied over it. (In this technique, known as underglaze painting, the pattern is painted beneath the glaze.) After firing, the piece emerged from the kiln with a clear blue design set sharply against a snowy white background.
Ni Zan THE RONGXI STUDIO 25-3
Yuan dynasty, 1372. Hanging scroll with ink on paper, height 29⅜" (74.6 cm). National Palace Museum, Taibei, Taiwan, Republic of China. The idea that a painting is not an attempt to capture the visual appearance of nature or to satisfy others but is executed freely for the artist's own amusement is at the heart of the literati aesthetic. Ni Zan once wrote this comment on a painting: "What I call painting does not exceed the joy of careless sketching with a brush. I do not seek formal likeness but do it simply for my own amusement. Recently I was rambling about and came to a town. The people asked for my pictures, but wanted them exactly according to their own desires and to represent a specific occasion. [When I could not satisfy them,] they went away insulting, scolding, and cursing in every possible way. What a shame! But how can one scold a eunuch for not growing a beard?" (translated in Bush and Shih, p. 266). Of the considerable number of Yuan painters who took up Zhao's ideas, several became models for later generations. One was Ni Zan (1301-1374), whose most famous surviving painting is THE RONGXI STUDIO (FIG. 25-3). Done entirely in ink, the painting depicts the lake region in Ni's home district. Mountains, rocks, trees, and a pavilion are sketched with a minimum of detail using a dry brush technique—a technique in which the brush is not fully loaded with ink but rather is about to run out, so that white paper "breathes" through the ragged strokes. The result is a painting with a light touch and a sense of simplicity and purity. Literati styles were believed to reflect an individual painter's personality, and Ni's spare, dry style became associated with a noble spirit. Many later painters adopted or paid homage to it.
Zhao Mengfu SHEEP AND GOAT 25-2
Yuan dynasty, c. 1300. Handscroll with ink on paper, 9⅞ x 19" (25.2 x 48.4 cm). Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. Zhao Mengfu (1254-1322) was a descendant of the imperial line of Song. Unlike many scholars of his time, he eventually chose to serve the Yuan government and was made a high official. A distinguished painter, calligrapher, and poet, Zhao was especially known for his carefully rendered paintings of horses, but he also practiced traditional landscape painting. One of his best known works is a sensitively composed and beautifully balanced painting of two farm animals, SHEEP AND GOAT (FIG. 25-2), which he claimed to have drawn from life. This may be too simplistic an assessment, because the two animals are portrayed in clearly different styles. The goat, on the right, is carefully described and lifelike in appearance, but the sheep, on the left, is more abstracted, almost flattened. The markings on its body create a sense of pattern rather than the appearance of natural irregularities. Some have seen pride in the sheep's posture and submission in the pose of the goat—although with head down, the goat could also be prepared to attack. Some have proposed that Zhao was expressing either acceptance of or resistance to the rule of the foreign Yuan dynasty, or since the same Chinese word is used for these two animals, perhaps he implies that the Mongols and the Chinese are not as different as they seem. Zhao Mengfu became a prime practitioner of literati painting with his unassuming brushwork, sparing use of color (many literati paintings, like FIG. 25-2 give up color altogether), and use of traditional painting to convey personal meaning. The literati did not paint for public display but for each other, and Zhao's Sheep and Goat was actually created at the request of a fr
