to the history of China’s culture, to the dif-ferent philosophical currents thatemerged, and to technological achieve-ments, inventions, and discoveries—among them, for example, the gloriousinvention of paper. In these five thousand
years, there were conflictsbetween Confucianism,Legalism, Taoism, andBuddhism, and great peri-ods of cultural renaissance,such as that of the Twelfth-century A.D. ConfucianRenaissance under theSung Dynasty. This enor-mous history, which wouldrequire many years ofstudy to begin to compre-hend, could be at leastappreciated though theexhibit “Splendors ofImperial China: Treasuresfrom the National PalaceMuseum, Taipei,” whichcompleted a year-long U.S.tour in April at the Nation-al Gallery of Art in Wash-ington, D.C., after appear-ing in New York, Chicago,and San Francisco.
Two-thirds of thenearly 450 rare objects inthe exhibition, many clas-sified as national treasures,have never before beenshown in the U.S. On onlythree previous occasionshave masterpieces fromthe National Palace Muse-um travelled to the West:to London in 1935-1936,to the United States in1961-1962, and again in1991-1992, where theywere included in theNational Gallery’s famous“Circa 1492” exhibitioncommemorating the dis-
Chinese culture has been in continu-ous, uninterrupted existence for
more than five thousand years, making itunique: the oldest civilization in theworld. In these five thousand years, therise and fall of dynasties was closely linked
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Treasures from China Relate Five-Thousand Year History
EX H IBIT S
Fan K’uan (c.980-1050), “Travelling Amid Streams andMountains.”
Wang Meng, “Forest Chamber Grotto atChü-ch’ü” (after 1365).
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covery of the Americas.Organized chronologically, the
objects in the show presented the greatartistic traditions of Chinese civilizationover millennia, from the Neolithic periodthrough the Eighteenth century A.D.Beginning with a room dedicated to theNeolithic and Bronze Ages, the exhibi-tion progressed into the later dynasties,the T’ang (A.D. 618-907), Sung (960-1279), Yüan (1272-1368), Ming (1368-1644), and Ch’ing (1644-1911). This orga-nization, which allowed the viewer tocompare the advances (or, in some cases,declines) not only of the levels of techno-logical achievement (e.g., in the produc-tion of porcelain and the development ofthe glazes, or in the pictorial techniquesused to represent space), but also of worldoutlook, depending upon which philo-sophical current was favored by the rul-ing imperial strata. Such a change leapsout, for example, when comparing paint-ings from the Imperial Painting Acade-my created under the Sung Dynasty,with ones produced during the subse-quent Yüan, after the Mongols invadedand occupied China, and the ConfucianRenaissance was destroyed by the expan-sion of Taoist influence.
Click here for Full Issue of Fidelio Volume 6, Number 2, Summer 1997
Government Promotion of the ArtsDuring the Sung Dynasty, painting wasorganized under the auspices of a cen-tralized Imperial Painting Academy,and painters were recruited by the newgovernment from all parts of theEmpire to serve the needs of the imperi-al court. Over time, the traditions repre-sented by this group of artists becamewhat is known today as the Sung acade-mic manner, “the culmination of cen-turies of achievement in mastering anaturalistic, closely descriptive and con-vincing portrayal of the physical world,”in the words of Maxwell K. Hearn,author of the catalogue The Splendors ofImperial China.
Under the Emperor Hui-tsung(1101-1125), himself an accomplishedpainter and calligrapher, the arts weredeveloped to the point where theybecame the example for all succeedingacademies. Aside from landscape paint-ing, Hui-tsung’s academicians special-ized in religious figures, historical nar-ratives, genre painting, flowers, birds,and animals, all keenly observed andmeticulously rendered.
Many of the paintings from this peri-od remind a Western viewer of draw-ings and watercolors on the same sub-jects by later, great Western masters,such as Albrecht Dürer and Leonardoda Vinci. One of the most beautifulexamples is the hanging scroll “WinterPlay” [SEE front cover, this issue], attrib-uted to Su Han-ch’en (c.1130-60’s), apreeminent painter of children at the
Southern Sung court. This painting ispart of a set of hanging scrolls that prob-ably showed children in each of the fourseasons. The portrayal of a young girland her slightly younger playmate, is astrong indication that children of bothsexes were prized in the imperial world.The children are depicted at play, bat-tling a “pretend-dragon” kitten, using,as their weapon, a banner adorned witha peacock feather.
The Imperial Painting Academy wasclosed during the reign of the first Yüanemperor, Khubilai Khan (1215-1294),the grandson of Genghis Khan. Pictorialrepresentation became introspective,and realistic representation as a productof the observation of nature practicallydisappeared. The sense of aerial (atmos-pheric) perspective achieved by the Sungpainters, where the “white” spaces arenot empty, but full of space, was lost.Compare, for example, such examples ofSung artistry as “Travelling AmidStreams and Mountains” of Fan K’uan(c.980-1050), with the Yüan artist WangMeng’s (c.1308-1385) “Forest ChamberGrotto at Chü-ch’ü,” where the painter“abandons all suggestion of spatial reces-sion, and confronts the viewer with adensely textured wall of rock and water. . . creating a vision of an enclosed andsequestered environment that lies out-side of the real world.”
East and West Unified
A substantial portion of the treasures ofthe National Museum derive from the
imperial collections of the Ch’ingDynasty (1644-1911).
It was during the Ch’ing Dynasty,established when the Manchus over-threw the Ming in 1644, that the Jesuitmissionaries, whose first arrival inChina had been Matteo Ricci in 1581,fully established themselves at the impe-rial court. The relations between theJesuits and the first emperors of theCh’ing Dynasty were such, that Jesuitsshared responsibility for the educationof the prince, along with his classicalConfucian tutors. This prince wouldlater become the famous emperor K’angHsi, under whom the collaborationbetween East and West achieved itshighest level, a collaboration organized,on its European side, by the great Ger-man philosopher, Gottfried Leibniz.The science of Europe’s Golden Renais-sance, coupled with China’s tradition ofthe Twelfth-century Confucian Renais-sance of the philosopher Chu Hsi,engendered an era of extraordinary sci-entific and technological advance.Under K’ang Hsi, official art workshopswere reestablished in the capital and inregional centers. The Imperial KilnComplex in Ching-te-chuen was rebuilt,and became a renewed center of porce-lain production.
One of the exhibit’s finest examplesof East-West collaboration, is the silkhandscroll “One Hundred Horses,” fin-ished in 1728, which gave birth to a newstyle by merging the best pictorial tech-niques of Europe and China. It waspainted by Giuseppe Castiglione, aJesuit missionary, who arrived in Chinaat the age of twenty-seven. After severalyears of work at a glazing workshop,Castiglione took the Chinese name ofLang Shih-ning. Upon seeing “OneHundred Horses” for the first time, theEmperor Ch’ien-lung named Cas-tiglione principal court painter. Boththis handscroll, and another one by Cas-tiglione entitled “Assembled Blessings,”are made in the traditional technique ofChinese painting in ink and mineral col-ors on silk, and the themes are also tra-ditionally Chinese, but both have athree-dimensional quality accomplishedby the subtle use of the Western tech-nique of chiaroscuro, and Renaissance-developed perspective.Lang Shih-ning (Giuseppe Castiglione), “One Hundred Horses” (detail) (1728).
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Minimum and Maximum in BrushworkAlmost all the pieces in paper or silk,and also some of the bronzes, wereaccompanied by calligraphic poems, acrucial aspect of Chinese painting to beunderstood by the West. Confucianteachings considered writing to be themoral act of a man who fulfilled hisresponsibilities to society as a whole—past, present, and future—as it wasembodied in the person of the emperor,in his own family, or in a specific clan.Writing was also a prerequisite for theindividual to be considered one of theliterati (wen-ren), since, among otherthings, the need to memorize the com-position of thousands of calligraphiccharacters and their meanings, requiredmany years of study. Lifelong dedicationand practice were necessary to be able towrite skillfully.
Each calligraphic character is a com-position in itself, sometimes requiring asmany as twenty-four brushstrokes.Aside from being part of the group ofcharacters, each is an individual entitywith intrinsic value. Chinese calligraphyhas passed through many stages in itsdevelopment to the present.
Five masterpieces of calligraphy andpainting on silk and paper from theT’ang (618-907) and Sung (960-1279)Dynasties were displayed, including“Poems Written at Huang-chou on theCold Food Festival,” a handscroll by the
most famous poet and callig-rapher, Su Shih (1037-1101),and “Bamboo,” by WenT’ung (1018-1079), an earlyexample of a subject that con-tinues to be a Chinese fa-vorite. The identity of theartistic idea in these two works, one“painting,” the other “calligraphy,” isevident. Many beautiful examples of cal-ligraphy from later periods were exhib-ited, including ones by Shen Chou,patriarch of the literati in Soochow dur-ing the Ming Dynasty.
Shen Chou’s sixteen ink and colorworks on paper, entitled“Drawings from Life”(1494), are a group of cal-ligraphic paintings,where the essential char-acteristics and forms ofthe subject are represent-ed with a minimum ofbrushstrokes, but withtotal freedom. When theNational Gallery exhibit-ed some of these draw-ings in the “Circa 1492”show in 1992, the publicwas able to comparethem with drawings andwatercolors from theItalian Renaissance. Thistime, an exhibition ofworks on paper entitled“Six Artists, Six Cen-turies,” was also on dis-
play at the museum, so it was againpossible to compare watercolors byDürer with these extraordinary Chi-nese paintings.
Concerning a civilization, five thou-sand years of continuous existence speakfor themselves. “Splendors of ImperialChina,” and the catalogue volumesissued to commemorate it, should gener-ate a true sense of admiration andrespect for a culture and civilization lit-tle known in the West, but from whichthere is a great deal to be learned.
—Ana María Mendoza
Two catalogue volumes have been pub-lished to commemorate the exhibit. Thefull catalogue, “Possessing the Past: Trea-sures from the National Palace Museum,Taipei,” by Wen C. Fong and James C.Y.Wyatt, is 648 pages long, and is priced at$85. “Splendors of Imperial China: Trea-sures from the National Palace Museum,Taipei,” by Maxwell K. Hearn, is a beau-tiful, shorter (144 page) report of the exhib-it, priced at $35. Both volumes are pub-lished by The Metropolitan Museum ofArt, N.Y. and the National Palace Muse-um, Taipei, and may be available in locallibraries.
Shen Chou, one of sixteen drawings from “Drawings fromLife” (detail) (1494).
Left: Su Shih, “Poems Written at Huang-chou on theCold Food Festival” (detail) (1082). Below: WenT’ung, “Bamboo” (detail) (c.1070).
