In Chinese classical art, the symbols are everywhere
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Kenneth Baker, Chronicle Art Critic
Monday, October 9, 2006
"Hidden Meanings: Symbolism in Chinese Art" opened Saturday at the Asian Art
Museum, announcing in grand style a new museum publication that any visitor with
the slightest interest in the classical Chinese arts will want to own.
Therese Tse Bartholomew, the Asian's curator of Himalayan art and Chinese
decorative arts, organized the show, pulling from the museum's collection
140-odd objects never shown publicly before.
She also produced the accompanying book, "Hidden Meanings in Chinese Art," a
densely illustrated lexicon that opens the communicative dimension of the
Chinese arts as few sources have before.
Most of the artifacts wear their "hidden meanings" openly, for the viewer who
knows how to read them. Encipherment often takes the form of decoration, which
has its own charms, even when illegible.
Some objects, made as gifts, function as symbols through and through.
Consider a tiny Qing Dynasty nephrite sculpture of two carp, which may have
served as a marriage gift.
To Western eyes, it may recall several versions of Constantin Brancusi's
modernist classic "The Kiss" -- the two fish pressed together vertically, their
tails and whiskers entwined.
In Chinese tradition, fish, carp especially, because they are believed to swim
in pairs, symbolize marital companionship, fecundity and happiness in one's
element. Only speakers of Chinese will recognize a linguistic pun embedded in
this piece: the distinct Chinese characters for "fish" and "abundance" being
both pronounced "yu."
Such knowledge, even when we gain it by reading label copy, complicates our view
of the object in question.
In fact, Bartholomew's whole project reawakens questions of connoisseurship: New
understanding of the meanings things carry reignites interest in deciding how
well a given artifact fulfills its purpose.
Most of the things on view fall into the category of decorative arts, not only
because they had mainly ornamental or ceremonial uses, but because they marry
substance and what we see as decoration with keen energy.
Many objects of modest scale make big impressions for their liveliness of
fabrication and design. A small circular porcelain plate from the reign of the
Jiajing Emperor (1522-1566) bears a complex pattern in blue that looks almost
abstract at a glance but bursts with symbolic meaning.
A medallion containing the character for longevity surmounts a tangle of figures
composed of other longevity symbols: cranes, peaches and a mountain from which
springs the "fungus of immortality." They coalesce into a pattern that evokes
the sea -- a "sea of blessings."
The exhibition organizes objects into eight thematic categories that set limits
on what seems at first like an unmanageable variety of examples. The categories
reflect the anachronism of some cryptic signifiers and the relative timelessness
of others: blessings, weddings, sons, passing exams, official rank, wealth,
longevity and "peace and as you wish."
The imperial bureaucracy of ancient China differed in many important ways from
that of the turbulent modern and post-modern state. The old system of achieving
rank and financial security by scholarly examination long ago gave way to new
social rites and complexities. But some of the objects on view embody or bear
symbols once believed auspicious to someone anticipating or enjoying the upward
mobility that achievement of rank promised.
A striking example is an 18th century "Meiping" vase. Using a blue-on-white
decoration that reverses figure and ground, reprising a 15th century style, it
evokes a dragon -- a symbol of the emperor, thus of elevated status -- and
perhaps also mountains and sea.
Moving through "Hidden Meanings," I thought of William T. Wiley's recent work on
view (through Saturday) at the John Berggruen Gallery. Wiley builds words, puns
and loaded homonyms into his paintings but he can only strut the impossibility
of unifying them. To achieve the unity of meaning and object we see in the high
points of "Hidden Meanings" perhaps requires the support of an entire culture
and tradition. Can any modern artist in the West claim to have it?
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Hidden Meanings: Symbolism in Chinese Art: Ceramics, textiles, paintings and
ornaments. Through Dec. 31. Asian Art Museum, 200 Larkin St., San Francisco.
(415) 581-3500, www.asianart.org.