Re: A Tang Dynasty Uninhibited Woman Torrent
Taichi Reilly
Liu Yong (1720-1805), a native of Zhucheng in Shandong province, had the style name Chongru and the sobriquet Shi'an (Stone Hut). Known to have been a man of exemplary character, Liu was a highly accomplished calligrapher. His tendency to liberally load his brush with ink and write bold, vigorous characters earned him the moniker "the Minister of Thick Ink."
This scroll was donated by Mr. Yuan Hsiao-chun. Written in running script, it is dated to the twelfth lunar month of the jia-zi year, a mere seven days before Liu passed away. There is a certain reservedness to the energy of the writing on this scroll. Its characters are full-figured, with structures reminiscent of strong steel wrapped in soft cotton. This is a representative work of the style Liu Yong developed in his autumn years.
Shitao (1642-1708), whose surname was Zhu and whose given name was Ruoji, was a descendent of the Ming dynasty royal family. Following the collapse of the Ming dynasty, he was ordained as Buddhist monk. Other sobriquets he used included Dadizi, Qingxiang Laoren (Old Man from Qingxiang) and Kugua Heshang (Bitter Melon Monk). A broadly skilled painter, he was adept at portraying landscapes, flowers, fruit, and bamboo. Shitao threw down the fetters of traditions passed down by his artistic predecessors, wielding his brush with abandonment, and lusciously applying ink with uninhibited variability. In a treatise on painting, he declared, "Naturally, I do things my way." He took nature as his teacher and created a totally unique style.
This album was donated by Mr. Lin Tsung-i. Painted in a manner that is anything but plebian, it bears an old inscription affirming that these are authentic products of Shitao's paintbrush. The album contains nine leaves in total, of which the first, fourth, and seventh are on display here.
Guan Lianchang (1809-1870), whose style name was Junqing, was a native of Nanhai in Guangdong province. A renowned painter of works intended for export who lived during the middle years of the Qing dynasty, Guan was known abroad by the name Tingqua. Guan's fame came from his watercolors, which were widely sought after by museums in the United States and England.
This album, which contains a total of twelve leaves, was donated by Ms. Chuang Su-o. Guan painted the highly detailed, brightly colored scenes in gouache on paper made from the pith of Tetrapanax papyrifer stems (formerly called rice paper in Europe), employing western techniques of painting shadows and perspective. The twelve scenes depict major rites of passage in many Chinese people's lives in Guan's day. Six of the leaves have been selected for this exhibition.
Tang Peihua (1830-1900), a native of Wu County (present day Suzhou) who resided in Shanghai, was a skilled painter of human portraits, including beautiful maidens. He painted in the school of the renowned painter of beautiful women, Fei Danxu.
This fan, which depicts the legend behind the Qixi Festival, was donated by Mr. Lin Cheng-tao. According to this legend, which originated during the Han and Wei dynasties, Zhi N was a daughter of the Heavenly Emperor, whose job was to weave textiles. The Heavenly Emperor could not bear to see her toiling alone, so he betrothed her to a cowherd, Niu Lang, who hailed from the western side of the Milky Way. However, Zhi N grew weary of her work after her wedding. This infuriated the Heavenly Emperor, who ordered her to return to the eastern side of the Milky Way. Forever after, Zhi N and the Cowherd would only be able to reunite once a year, on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month.
Wu Ping (1920-2019), whose style name was Kanbai, was a native of Yuyao in Zhejiang province. He possessed equal talent in the arts of calligraphy, painting, and seal carving, and formerly served as director of the Department of Painting and Calligraphy at the National Palace Museum.
This work was donated by Wu Ping himself. Wu used freehand brushwork to paint these four panels depicting seasonal flowers and plants, including peony, bamboo, lotus flower, chrysanthemum, banana, plum blossom, and narcissus. Stylistically, the work shows refreshing unconventionality. In a major departure from traditional techniques of flower and plant painting, Wu used vigorous lines with an almost metallic character, filling these panels with vibrant traces of his own personality.
The painting depicts a procession of twenty-one travelers on the move and consists of three sections. It begins at the right, where a thick-bearded man in official attire sits in a sedan chair carried by two demonic servants; he is followed by two more, one shouldering a long sword and the other carrying what is probably a large cushion on his back. Lingering below the official is a squat demon, rendered in solid black ink, that looks typologically distinct from all other attendants. The middle section shows an elegantly dressed woman seated in a sedan chair carried by two maids and followed by three more. While the maid holding a cat in her arms shares with the seated lady similar facial features, hairstyle, and flowing floor-length gown, the other four are dressed with exotic flair, and their grotesquely protruding jaws and animalistic upturned noses identify them as nonhuman. The third section presents a group of nine demonic attendants carrying household goods, including a rolled-up rug, a gourd jar of extraordinary size, and several wrapped parcels, as well as six captive imps and a ghostly creature with multiple tails.
As to clothing, the two sedan-chair carriers and the turbaned attendant each wear a knee-length garment known as a beizi 背子 or 褙子, with narrow sleeves, a straight collar leading to a bordered open front, and high side slits, that was popular among women across social strata in the Song dynasty (fig. 3).29 Underneath it, they wear a breast cover known as a moxiong 抹胸, tied at the waist in the back and behind the neck.30 A typical example of this combination is the attire of the house maids carved on the walls of a Song tomb in Luxian, Sichuan (fig. 10).31 Even the extended right sleeve of the turbaned attendant has a Song prototype in the Luxian stone relief (fig. 11).
Besides the holdings of the monastery, the White Pagoda is known to have housed ten thousand (wan 萬) representations of deities.84 Although these two structures no longer exist, the decoration of contemporary temples in Tibet and the Dunhuang caves, which conventionally consists of monumental multi-panel murals and statues, may help envision the lavish decoration of the monastery and the White Pagoda. The west wall of the Pargarbu Grotto at Tsada, Ali region, in western Tibet, for instance, was densely painted with deities in varying sizes and ensembles during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The mural on its south wall features four wrathful deities flanking the entrance gate (fig. 31), three standing in pratyālīḍha, and at least one clearly depicted in solid color fields with negative outlines, although its facial features are partially damaged and the originally dark pigments on its body have faded to bluish gray (fig. 32). Even more impressive is the nearly life-size image of a wrathful deity standing in pratyālīḍha to the right of the cave entrance on the east wall of Mogao Cave 465 in Dunhuang, completed before 1309 (figs. 33, 34). These murals attest to the prominence of the wrathful deities in the Tibetan Buddhist pantheon and their widespread representation across mediums. The newly constructed Zunsheng-si Monastery and White Pagoda in Hangzhou would have featured decorative programs similar to contemporaneous Tibetan-style temples. Visitors such as Gong Kai could easily have observed the wrathful deities in their iconic forms and postures.
I would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers of my initial manuscript with the utmost sincerity. Their intelligent questions and suggestions led to significant improvements in the essay. My deep gratitude also goes to Professor Richard M. Barnhart for his close reading and advice and to Profs. Bai Qianshen and Xie Jisheng for their generous help with the illustrations.
Shi-yee Liu, PhD (Yale University, 2003), is Assistant Research Curator of Chinese Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, specializing in painting and calligraphy in traditional mediums. She authored the exhibition catalogue on Lin Yutang and his family collection and curated the multimedia exhibition Show and Tell: Stories in Chinese Painting. She has published a wide range of articles in English and Chinese that take interdisciplinary, and at times cross-cultural, approaches to attain a holistic understanding of the artworks. She has been systematically publishing the documentations of Chinese paintings and calligraphies in the Met collection on its website. E-mail: shiye...@metmuseum.org
Naturally, this charming love story between flowers and women reaches one of its highest peeks in Chinese culture, where it has been widely celebrated over millennia by a prosperous artistic tradition.
On the twelfth day of the second month of each lunar year, as soon as nature awakens, a Spring Festival is held in honour of百花深 (Bǎihuā shēn), the White Goddess of Flowers, to celebrate fertility. As in other cultures, Chinese people too associate flowers with women and beauty very frequently, although the symbology related to flowers is much richer and varied, as evidenced by traditional and tribal art and poetry production.
Up until the Qing Dynasty (1636-1912 A.D.), the peony wasrenowned as the official national flower of China, as per appointment byEmpress Dowager Cixi in 1903. As a matter of fact, Chinese passion for thisflower sprang around 1,400 years ago. During the Tang Dynasty (around 600 A.D.)peonies started to be employed to decorate the imperial gardens and soon beganto spread everywhere else in China. An imperial emblem of opulence and beauty, peonieswere featured in paintings and textiles, as well as used in poetical allegoriesto celebrate the prosperity of the nation. Among the most valuable, the redones represent wealth, while white peonies symbolize the beauty andcheerfulness of Chinese young girl.
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