Contemporaneity in Seventeenth-Century Chinese Painting, Theory, and Criticism

Abstract

Chinese painting has often been considered timeless and unchanging, an art reliant on the copying of the ancients, and thereby forever reiterative. Closer inspection of the art, theory, and criticism, especially of the seventeenth century, however, challenges these notions. When time and again we see artists referring to the works of earlier acclaimed painters but yet transforming them — or even subverting them — we must ask what values are being promoted. In this essay, it is argued that a shift occurred in painting criticism and practice from the sixteenth century to the seventeenth, that seventeenth-century critical values emphasized the contemporary, new, and different, and that this resulted in an expanded canon of painting.

Keywords:

• Gong’an
• Yuan Hongdao
• Dong Qichang
• Ming painting
• seventeenth-century China

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Yuan Hongdao, “Xuetao ge ji xu,” in Yuan Zhonglang quanji, “Wenchao” (Taibei: Shijie shuju, 1964), pp. 6–7. Translated and cited by Chou Chih-p’ing, Yuan Hung-tao and the Kung-an School (1988), p. 37.

2 Aspects of the problematic nature of the terms “copy” and “imitation” in China’s painting history are discussed in Burnett, Dimensions of Originality, “Some Problems of Expectation or Speculations on Why Originality Can’t Be a ‘Traditional Chinese’ Value (When It Is),” pp. 3–39, and esp. pp. 17–35; “The Importance of a Word: A Discussion of Critical Terms,” pp. 81–100, esp. p. 98; and “The End of Originality as the Seventeenth Century Knew It,” pp. 291–324.

3 Burnett, Dimensions of Originality, pp. 94–95.

4 Leading the charge for a new reconsideration of the painting canon for the mid-Ming dynasty is Craig Clunas in such texts as Superfluous Things: Material Culture and Social Status in Early Modern China, and Pictures and Visuality in Early Modern China. Even though these texts are now already decades old, they are still having a transformative effect on the field.

5 Some leading examples include (in alphabetical order): Bentley, The Figurative Works of Chen Hongshou (1599–1652): Authentic Voices/expanding Markets; idem, ed., Picturing Commerce in and from the East Asian Maritime Circuits, 1550-1800; Burnett, “A New Look at a New Look: Painting and Theory of Seventeenth-Century China”; James, ed. Shadows of Mt. Huang: Chinese Painting and Printing of the Anhui School, Berkeley; idem, The Compelling Image: Nature and Style in Seventeenth-Century Chinese Painting; Craig Clunas and his numerous influential publications including Art in China; idem, Chinese Export Watercolours; idem, Chinese Painting and Its Audiences; idem, Fruitful Sites: Garden Culture in Ming Dynasty China; idem, Pictures and Visuality in Early Modern China; idem, Screen of Kings: Royal Art and Power in Ming China; Superfluous Things: Material Culture and Social Status in Early Modern China; Fu, Framing Famous Mountains: Grand Tour and Mingshan Paintings in Sixteenth-Century China; Li, Knight, Vinograd, Bartholomew, and Chan, Power and Glory: Court Arts of China's Ming Dynasty; Kindall, Geo-narratives of a Filial Son: The Paintings and Travel Diaries of Huang Xiangjian (1609–1673); Ling Lizhong, ed. Masterpieces of Chinese Painting, 700–1900; Liscomb, Learning from Mount Hua: A Chinese Physician's Illustrated Travel Record and Painting Theory; Little and Yu, eds., Chinese Paintings from Japanese Collections; Murck, Poetry and Painting in Song China: The Subtle Art of Dissent; Park, Art by the Book Painting Manuals and the Leisure Life in Late Ming China; Powers, A Companion to Chinese Art; Stuart and Rawski, Worshiping the Ancestors: Chinese Commemorative Portraits; Sturman and Tai, The Artful Recluse: Painting, Poetry, and Politics in Seventeenth-Century China; Vinograd, Boundaries of the Self: Chinese Portraits, 1600–1900.

6 Wai-kam Ho and Dawn Ho Delbanco, The Century of Tung Ch’i-ch’ang, 1555–1636, p. 18.

7 Aspects of this rupture have been investigated in Wai-kam Ho and Judith G. Smith, eds., The Century of Tung Chʻi-chʻang 1555–1636; and Burnett, “A New Look at a New Look: Painting and Theory of Seventeenth-Century China.”

8 The Northern and Southern Schools of painting theory attributed to Dong Qichang, and as Susan Bush explains, also others is laid out in Susan Bush, The Chinese Literati on Painting; Su Shih (1037–1101) to Tung Chʻi-chʻang (1555–1636), pp. 158–72. Therein, Bush also cites several scholars who were already challenging a narrow interpretation of this theory when she wrote her book. (Bush’s classic text was reissued in 1985 and 2012.) Aspects of this theory as Dong applied in his own paintings are explored in Burnett, “A New Look at a New Look: Painting and Theory of Seventeenth-Century China.”

9 Orell, “Itinerary and Painting Lineage: Ten Thousand Miles along the Yangzi River in Seventeenth-Century China,” in The Itineraries of Art: Topographies of Artistic Mobility in Europe and Asia, eds. Karin Gludovatz, Juliane Noth, and Joachim Rees. p. 162.

10 Burnett, Dimensions of Originality, especially “The End of Originality as the Seventeenth Century Knew It,” pp. 291–324; idem, “A New Look at a New Look: Painting and Theory of Seventeenth-Century China.”

11 See especially Burnett, Dimensions of Originality.

12 Ho and Delbanco, for example, explained that by the late Ming, Dong Qichang and his friends Mo Shilong (1537–87) and Li Rihua (1565–1635) preferred literati works in the traditions of the Yuan masters over the paintings in the Song academic mode that Wang Shizhen (1526–90) and his influential group had preferred during the mid-sixteenth century (Ho and Delbanco, “Tung Ch’i-ch’ang’s Transcendence of History and Art,” p. 17).

13 For more on Dong Qichang’s theories, see Burnett, “A New Look at a New Look: Painting and Theory of Seventeenth-Century China.”

14 A helpful history of this material is provided in Yoshikawa Kojiro, Five Hundred Years of Chinese Poetry, 1150–1650, Timothy Wixted, trans., pp. 137–89.

15 Burnett, “Decadence (or Not) in the Ming Dynasty,” pp. 3–4; and idem, “Decadence Disrupted: Arguing Against a Decadence Model in Late Ming Painting History,” pp. 41–57.

16 Parsons, Chinese Government in Ming Times: Seven Studies, pp. 177–81.

17 Hegel, Reading Illustrated Fiction in Late Imperial China, p. 291, citing the research of T. H. Tsien included in Needham’s Science and Civilization in China.

18 This argument has been championed most forcibly by James Cahill in The Compelling Image: Nature and Style in Seventeenth-Century Chinese Painting, beginning with p. 15. That this argument lives on in the field was made apparent during a Question–Answer session following this author’s recent talk, “Mediated Meaning of a Magnificent Rock: Using Wu Bin’s Words to Understand His Painting, Ten Views of the Scholar's Rocks: Ongoing Explorations of a Cultural Tradition,” Paragon Book Gallery, Beijing, and Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing. Live online presentation, February 3, 2023.

19 See Clunas, Art in China, esp. pp. 128–30; and idem, Pictures and Visuality in Early Modern China, , pp. 172–82; and Burnett, especially Dimensions of Originality; and idem, “Decadence Disrupted.”

20 Shitao is a prime, if not surprising, example of this group. See Chou, “In Defense of Qing Orthodoxy,” in The Jade Studio: Masterpieces of Ming and Qing Painting and Calligraphy from the Wong Nan-p'ing Collection, p. 35.

21 Chang Chun-shu and Shelley Hsüeh-lun Chang, Crisis and Transformation in Seventeenth-Century China: Society, Culture, and Modernity in Li Yü’s World, p. 151. The topic is also central to the argument made in Clunas, Superfluous Things: Material Culture and Social Status in Early Modern China.

22 Clunas, Superfluous Things, and idem, Fruitful Sites: Garden Culture in Ming Dynasty China.

23 Chang and Chang, Crisis and Transformation in Seventeenth-Century China, pp. 129–62.

24 Clunas, Fruitful Sites, in passim; with regard to public access, p. 94.

25 Smith, Gardens in Ch’i Piao-chia’s Social World: Wealth and Values in Late-Ming Kiangnan, p. 57; Clunas, Fruitful Sites.

26 Chang and Chang, Crisis and Transformation in Seventeenth-Century China, p. 149.

27 Chang and Chang, Crisis and Transformation in Seventeenth-Century China, p. 161.

28 Chou, Yuan Hung-tao and the Kung-an School, p. 27.

29 The importance of Gong’an theory in seventeenth-century intellectual history has been established in various studies including Chang and Chang, Crisis and Transformation in Seventeenth-Century China; Hanan, The Invention of Li Yu.

30 See esp. Burnett, Dimensions of Originality and the other texts noted above in the acknowledgements.

31 James Cahill first linked the ideals of Yuan Hongdao to Shitao in The Compelling Image, p. 215. I have further explored the significance of this point in my publications.

32 Jiao Hong was appointed as co-examiner (tong kao guan) of the metropolitan examinations in 1592. Edward Ch’ien, Chiao Hung and the Restructuring of Neo-Confucianism in the Late Ming, p. 49.

33 Chang and Chang, Crisis and Transformation in Seventeenth-Century China, p. 165.

34 Chang and Chang, Crisis and Transformation in Seventeenth-Century China, p. 164.

35 Chaves, Expressions of Self in Chinese Literature, p. 143; Yoshikawa Kojiro, Five Hundred Years of Chinese Poetry, 1150–1650, p. 137. The Old Phraseology Movement was dominated by two groups of poets, the Former and Latter Seven Masters. The Former Seven Masters who led the movement included: Li Dongyang (1447–1516), Li Mengyang (1473–1529), He Jingming (1483–1521), Xu Zhenqing (1479–1511), Kang Hai (1475–1540), Bian Gong (1476–1532), Wang Jiusi (1468–1551), and Wang Tingxiang (1474–1544) (Yoshikawa Kojiro, Five Hundred Years of Chinese Poetry, 1150–1650, p. 149). The Latter Seven Masters were led by Li Panlong (1514–70) who had been one of leading members of the archaists with Li Mengyang. Other members included: Wang Shizhen, Xie Zhen, He Jingming, Xu Zhongxing (1517–78), Zong Chen (1525–60), Liang Youyu (c. 1520–56), and Wu Guolun (1529–93). Notably, the OPM exclusively promoted the Qin and Han writers for prose, and the high Tang poets for poetry. Yoshikawa Kojiro, Five Hundred Years of Chinese Poetry, 1150–1650, pp. 141, 148.

36 Chaves, “The Expression of Self in the Kung-an School,” p. 146.

37 Liu, Chinese Theories of Literature, p. 80.

38 Yoshikawa Kojiro, Five Hundred Years of Chinese Poetry, 1150–1650, p. 181. Su Shi, for example, enjoyed telling ghost stories. See Zeitlin, History of the Strange: Pu Songling and the Chinese Classical Tale, p. 44.

39 Chang and Chang, Crisis and Transformation in Seventeenth-Century China, p. 163; Liu, Chinese Theories of Literature, pp. 800–81.

40 The seventeenth-century dictionary, Zheng zi tong, defines qi primarily as different, with anomalous/yi 異 and strange/guai 怪as helpful synonyms. Qi’s secondary meaning falls into the category of odd, and from that, weird (see Zheng zi tong, volume zhou ji xia, p. 20b). Overall, dictionary entries and period use of the term are almost always positive. For further discussion of period dictionary definitions of this term, see Burnett, Dimensions of Originality, pp. 84–87.

41 As in n. 33.

42 Translation adapted from Chou, Yuan Hung-tao and the Kung-an School, p. 42.

43 Yuan Hongdao, Shiwen xu in Yuan Zhonglang quanji, “Wenchao” (Taibei: Shijie shuju, 1964), p. 10.

44 My translation is based on that by Chou, Yuan Hung-tao and the Kung-an School, p. 37.

45 Yuan Hongdao, “Xuetao ge ji xu,” in Yuan Zhonglang quanji, “Wenchao,” pp. 6–7.

46 I have adapted James Cahill’s translation: “In this way [of painting] the vision must be penetrating and original. … I have often seen well-known painters who are all the time imitating this master or following that school. They do not realize that calligraphy and painting are natural endowments; each person must be responsible for expressing the concerns of his own generation . … ” (Cahill, Compelling Image, p. 215).

47 Shitao, Dadizi tihua shiba, juan 1, p. 28, included in Meishu congshu (Taibei: Yiwen yinshuguan, 1963–75), vol. 15 (ji san, ji shi).

48 Osvald Sirén translates this passage in A History of Later Chinese Painting (New York: Hacker Art Books, 1978, vol. 2, p. 129), and informs us that Zhang Feng inscribed this statement on his A Wanderer in Autumn Woods (1651). Unfortunately, he did not provide a corroborating citation.

49 My translation is based on that of Chou, Yuan Hung-tao and the Kung-an School, p. 48.

50 Yuan Hongdao, ‘Da Li Yuanshan,’ 答李元善 in Yuan Zhonglang quanji, “Chidu,” p. 57.

51 Translated by Sirén, The Chinese on the Art of Painting, p. 148, with an unspecified and unverifiable reference to either Dong Qichang’s Hua yan, Hua Chan shi sui bi, or Hua zhi.

52 Dong Qichang, “Lun yong bi,” in Huachan shi suibi, juan 1, p. 3a.

53 Translation adapted from Cahill, Compelling Image, pp. 172–73.

54 Gong Xian’s inscription is recorded in Zhou Erxue, Yique bian (preface dated to 1728), pp. 10b–12b (Shanghai, 1985, p. 40).

55 A possible exception is a fugu literary movement led by Ai Nanying and supported by Zhou Lianggong. See Kim, The Life of a Patron: Zhou Lianggong (1612–1672) and the Painters of Seventeenth-Century China, pp. 87–88.

56 Clunas, Pictures and Visuality, pp. 145–46.

57 Wai-kam Ho and Dawn Ho Delbanco, “Tung Ch’i-ch’ang’s Transcendence of History and Art,” p. 17.

58 Wai-kam Ho, ed., The Century of Tung Ch’i-ch’ang, 1555–1636, Kansas City, MI: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1991, I:18, with a reference to Li Rihua, Tianzhi tang ji, j. 39, p. 11, in Mingdai yishujia ji huikan xuji, late Ming edition, facsim. repr. 1971 (Taibei: Guoli zhongyang tushuguan), p. 3395.

59 Li Rihua 李日華, Tianzhi tang ji 恬致堂集, j. 39, p. 11a, in Mingdai yishujia ji huikan xuji, late Ming edition, facsim. repr. 1971, p. 3395.

60 Brook, Confusions of Pleasure: Commerce and Culture in Ming China, in passim.

61 This impulse to explain yet retain ownership of elite culture within a wider social context is similarly evident in other works of the period. One such work is Wen Zhenheng’s (1585–1645) Zhao wu zhi jiao zhu. For a fuller discussion of Wen’s text, see Clunas, Superfluous Things.

62 The issue of the sixteenth-century canon is far more complex than what is outlined here and deserves separate study. Craig Clunas has done much to explain it, as in n. 2. For other cases, Wai-kam Ho and Dawn Ho Delbanco indicated that the great sixteenth-century cultural luminary, the scholar-official, and taste-setting critic/collector Wang Shizhen, his follower in the late Ming, Hu Yinglin (1551–1602), and the more independent-minded scholar of the mid-Ming, Li Kaixian (1502–68) would be informative examples. For example, by 1568, Wang Shizhen had critiqued the Wu-school painters, arguing that they were usurping the Song modes’ place in history (Ho and Delbanco, “Tung Ch’i-ch’ang’s Transcendence of History and Art,” p. 17). Lee Hwa-chou writes of Li Kaixian that “Both in literature and in art, Li advocates originality, individuality, and truthfulness. He denounces blind imitation of famous masters of arts . … ” Lee observes that in Li’s critiques of contemporary sixteenth-century artists in his Hua pin (in his Xianju ji), Li Kaixian generally “esteems those who show spontaneity and individuality in their paintings, and rebukes those who exhibit only ostentation and artificiality” (Lee Hua-chou entry on Li Kaixian in L. Carrington Goodrich and Fang Chaoying, eds., Dictionary of Ming Biography 1368–1644, p. 836). Li Kaixian, therefore, may be seen to prefigure seventeenth-century ideals. Likewise, Kathryn Liscomb has also discussed the complexity of the Ming canon in Kathlyn Liscomb, “Shen Zhou’s Collection of Early Ming Paintings and the Origins of the Wu School’s Eclectic Revivalism,” pp. 215–54; and idem, “A Collection of Painting and Calligraphy Discovered in the Inner Coffin of Wang Zhen (d. 1495 C.E.),” pp. 6–34. It would be well to remember that intellectual development is never strictly linear.

63 Craig Clunas has demonstrated that even Shen Zhou was willing to discard this purported norm. Clunas, Pictures and Visuality, p. 134.

64 The inclusion of at least two different special systems is evident in other of Wu Bin’s paintings, including the undated hanging scroll, Landscape, Asian Art Museum, San Francisco.

65 Wu Bin’s Mt. Tiantai handscroll is more fully discussed in Katharine Persis Burnett, “The Landscapes of Wu Bin (c. 1543–c. 1626) and a Seventeenth-Century Discourse of Originality,” Ph.D. diss, University of Michigan, 1995, pp. 184–89.

66 I have adapted Wen Fong’s translation in The Century of Tung Ch’i-ch’ang, 1555–1636, p. 52.

67 Dong Qichang, Hua yan, p. 18, included in Meishu congshu, chu ji di san ji.

68 For an extended discussion of Dong Qichang-affiliated theories of the Great Synthesis and the Northern and Southern Schools, see Burnett, “A New Look at a New Look: Painting and Theory of Seventeenth-Century China.”

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Katharine Burnett

Katharine Burnett is Professor and Chair, Department of Art and Art History, and Founder and Director, Global Tea Institute for the Study of Tea Culture and Science at the University of California, Davis. Her publications include Dimensions of Originality: Essays on Seventeenth-Century Chinese Art Theory and Criticism (Chinese University Press, 2013); Shaping Chinese Art History: Pang Yuanji and His Painting Collection (Cambria Press, 2020), which was listed among Book Authority’s “16 Best New Art History Books to Read in 2021,” https://bookauthority.org/books/new-art-history-books; and 《原创的维度：十七世纪中国艺术理论与批评》, (Chinese translation of Dimensions of Originality: Essays on Seventeenth-Century Chinese Art Theory and Criticism), Dr. Naibin Jiang, trans. Beijing Foreign Studies University, Academy of Comparative Civilization and Intercultural Communication and Da Xiang Publish House, forthcoming 2023. She also served as Guest Editor and contributor to the Special Issue: “Decadence (or Not) in the Ming Dynasty,” Ming Studies 71 (May 2015). Her essay, “Weirder than Weird: ‘Weird-Figure’ Paintings of Seventeenth-Century China,” is forthcoming in Artibus Asiae.