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

It is time, shi, that propels literature from antiquity to modern times. The criterion of beauty and ugliness follows time, not people’s eyes . … Those who adhere to ancient language and pretend to be ancient are like those who wear summer clothes in a severe winter.¹ (Chou Chih-p’ing, trans.)

Yuan Hongdao

Even though it has been repeatedly challenged, a malingering construct maintains that, in substance and style, the painting of China is forever timeless and unchanging, an art reliant on the imitation or copying of the ancients, and thereby forever reiterative. Indeed, one of the ways that this construct lives on is in the insistent application of the terms “to imitate” and “to copy” when discussing paintings that creatively riff on the styles and contributions of earlier artists.² Close scrutiny of the art, theory, and criticism, especially of the seventeenth-century brush arts, challenges this notion. 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, I expand upon the line of reasoning from my previous publications in which I identified the paradigmatic value of the original and different, qi 奇, to focus on the concomitant value of the contemporary and new, shi 時, and show how this, too, impacted the period’s expanded canon of painting. Although I briefly addressed the concept of shi previously,³ it merits further discussion. Just as zhuo 拙/awkward and guyi 古意/archaization (literally, “ancient’s ideas”), are part of the lexicon of Yuan art theory, and with sometimes overlapping aesthetic values, so too are qi (different and original) and shi (new, contemporary, timely) part of the art theory lexicon of the late Ming. Like the earlier values just mentioned, although the concepts of shi and qi intersect, the terms are not synonymous.

Even though scholars today are less likely to accept the notion of an absolute canon,⁴ art historical texts on China’s painting have generally promoted this notion. And, even as the field is moving on to consider other factors pertinent to painting such as regionality, print culture, social mobility, and function,⁵ the ease of teaching a set canon (even as it may be denied in the same breath) in the classroom or exhibition hall entrenches the notion of a canon perniciously in the literature and label copy.

And, although Ming and Qing critics debated its content, many scholars have equated the Chinese painting canon with a prescribed definition of the art of the educated and political elite, heretofore “literati,” generally accepting that this was also Dong Qichang’s (1555–1636) canon. Writing on behalf of the field, Wai-kam Ho and Dawn Ho Delbanco have stated, “There is no doubt that Dong was solely responsible for the ensuing hegemony of literati aesthetics.”⁶ While recognizing Dong’s extraordinary cultural eminence and critical leadership — and Ho and Delbanco’s excellent scholarship — it is nonetheless essential to make clear that there appears to be a rupture between what Dong Qichang valued, and what scholars of our own day have accepted to be his views. Although some have investigated this rupture previously,⁷ this essay anchors it to the concept of the contemporary to take it a bit further. I would argue that our predispositions regarding the content of the (literati) canon have affected how we have interpreted seventeenth-century art to the detriment of our perception of this seventeenth-century material. Even as the seventeenth century witnessed a burgeoning of theorists and critics that resulted in a diversity of viewpoints and canons, because an often mis-characterized Dong Qichang (and his group) dominates the period, analyzing his thought (and that of his group) and what has been accepted as Dong’s canon enables a deeper understanding and appreciation of this art.

While we have long known that something was different about seventeenth-century painting, it is still necessary to argue that the (literati) canon was far more diverse than our current definition allows. Following a narrow read of the Northern and Southern Schools of painting theory, standard expectations for painting of the educated and political elite include unprepossessing landscape compositions in the tradition of Dong Yuan (active 930s–960s) and Juran (active c. 960–965) featuring low-lying mountain ranges and alum-lump rocks, hemp fiber strokes and dotting; the almost exclusive use of monochrome ink — though occasional thin washes of pale color are acceptable; all applied to a surface support that would most typically be paper, not the more luxurious and technically demanding silk. These expectations are not exactly wrong, but they also are wholly accurate, either.

Standard explanations of the late Ming canon ostensibly follow those outlined in the Northern and Southern Schools theory of art practice, a theory which is attributed to Dong Qichang even as scholars recognize that the actual authorship may belong to others of his group, or even group think.⁸ This theory metaphorically parallels the Northern and Southern Schools of Buddhist meditation, in which the Northern school leads to enlightenment slowly through long study and practice — i.e., the path of professional artists; and the Southern school leads to a more intuitive and spontaneous enlightenment, i.e., the path of the scholar elites whose innate talents with the calligraphy brush lead intuitively to expressions in visual form. As Julia Orell has noted, “This [Northern and Southern Schools] narrative would prove highly influential for subsequent generations of painters, connoisseurs, and historians and it still lingers beneath art historical accounts of Chinese painting today.”⁹ The problem with this theory as it is often explained is that a) both the Northern and Southern Schools provide paths to enlightenment, which is generally accepted to be a good thing — and a concept that Dong and his peers would have been well aware of; and b) the theory as explained in art histories is typically filtered through an overly conservative Qing lens, a lens that narrowly redefined Dong’s ideas and ignored the broader theory and actual practice of the late Ming.¹⁰

On the one hand, the qualities that have distinguished paintings of the seventeenth century have earned them the name “eccentric” or “individualistic,” and now also original or originalistic, terms that explicitly identify anomaly — if not in some instances also irreverence within the Chinese context. Many of these artists have been admired yet dismissed because they painted in non-strictly “literati” modes. On the other hand, what has been accepted as the more “conservative” art of Dong Qichang and his followers has been discussed simply as “literati art” and sometimes as examples of Dong’s “Great Synthesis,” where great synthesis, dacheng 大成, refers to a blending of earlier styles — with an eye blind to the diversity of modes and approaches that he, in fact, synthesized.

In both cases, we have neglected to consider the artworks in light of a significant body of seventeenth-century aesthetic theory and criticism. As a result, we have been unable to conceive of a comprehensive way in which to integrate the diverse modes of painting into a meaningful and inclusionary history. However, if we accept — as I have argued elsewhere — that a discourse of originality was culturally pervasive in China’s long seventeenth century,¹¹ then new insights may be garnered. By “long seventeenth century,” I mean that period from about 1570 to about 1720 or so, in other words, the last decades of the Ming (1368–1644) and first decades of the Qing (1644–1911) dynasties. What interests me here is the exploration of some of the implications of this discourse within the history of painting, with an emphasis on concomitant critical interests in the new and contemporary, shi.

That a shift in aesthetic tastes occurred at the beginning of the seventeenth century has been previously argued.¹² What is essential to emphasize here, however, is the identification of the accompanying critical ideals for the contemporary and new, and the explication of how these ideals were manifested in works of painting of the educated and political elite. Equally essential is the recognition that these ideals were part and parcel of Dong Qichang’s “Great Synthesis,” and in the period’s resultant expanded canon.¹³

Our colleagues in literary studies already have more thoroughly explored how values changed and the canon expanded in late Ming literary theory and practice. Yoshikawa Kojiro and others have written about the dominant mid-Ming critics who promoted a narrow and restrictive classical canon for poets, and discussed how this canon was replaced when the early seventeenth-century Gong’an school (Gong’an pai 公安派) of literary theorists reacted against mid-Ming strictures to advance different models and new ideals in works of their day.¹⁴ In part because most seventeenth-century artists were highly educated, with many also participating in literary societies, movements in the visual art world paralleled those in the literary realm. Recognizing that no simple one-to-one correspondence exists between the textual and visual arts, the theorists of both nevertheless shared the same set of new critical values and developed their theory and canon(s) in synch with each other.

Previous Interpretations

To more easily understand the links between the visual and textual arts, it would be helpful to summarize briefly the historical context in which they thrived. Whereas many art historians have asserted a fin-de-siècle argument that Ming bureaucratic decay began in the late sixteenth century, and is a cause of the stylistic oddities of seventeenth-century painting, my work has offered a counter-argument demonstrating that the bulk of this claim is supported by historical fallacies.¹⁵ Supporting this analysis in the field of history, James Parsons’ research reveals a slight recovery in political stability during the Wanli era (1572–1619) over the previous less stable ones of the mid-Ming — an inversion of standard interpretations in both cases.¹⁶ Late Ming political and economic stability is also emphasized by Robert Hegel.¹⁷ It cannot be persuasively argued, therefore, that the changes that occurred in seventeenth-century painting rested solely on the termination of the ineffective Ming government.

Others have argued that the atypical formal elements evident in paintings by seventeenth-century Chinese artists were the result of influence from the European printwork imported by proselytizing Jesuit missionaries in China,¹⁸ an argument that has been widely, though unevenly, accepted. The improbability of this so-called influence during the late Ming has been a topic of some discussion.¹⁹ Likewise, since some of the major artists working in highly idiosyncratic modes in the early Qing have been shown to be Qing sympathizers, not Ming loyalists,²⁰ neither can it be conclusively argued that the new art of the later half of the seventeenth century was created solely or even primarily in protest of the new Manchurian occupational government.

Socioeconomic Context

Late Ming socioeconomic structures flexed with shifts in social and cultural values that affected the production and consumption of the visual arts. Many have shown how even as the Ming bureaucracy was shambling toward its 1644 terminus, the economy was growing stronger from at least the early sixteenth century and continuing through the bulk of the seventeenth century. The most significant change in the socioeconomic structure, Chang Chun-shu and Shelley Hsüeh-lun Chang have argued, was to the concept of money and wealth.²¹ Traditional Confucian morality held money to be a vulgar necessity, but by the long seventeenth century, the concept of money had a positive value, and was openly discussed and flaunted by scholars, merchants, and, as Craig Clunas has argued, art lovers of almost every class.²² Individuals at each end of the social hierarchy participated in the activities of their hierarchical opposites: mercantile families on the bottom rung increasingly became educated at the same time as scholar-official families at the top rung broadened their involvement in commercial activities. Strong inter-regional trade, migration, and travel accompanied regional specialization. Wages increased as non-agricultural labor became more specialized. The specialized economy affected and was affected by vogues in fashion, food, entertaining, as well as lavish religious festivals.²³ The late Ming witnessed a mania for building grandiose private gardens — which were accessible to a viewing public consisting not only of the owner and his selected guests, but also of “those of the respectable classes who could afford to tip the doorkeeper.”²⁴ Garden building was accompanied by written (and publishable) commentaries by owners and friends, which could be read by an even larger public.²⁵ Each of these factors “underscore[s] the period's remarkable economic growth and social change”²⁶ wherein cultural ideals were communicated to increasingly wider segments and socioeconomic brackets of society. The increasingly literate society demanded faster mass book production. One of the offshoots of this movement was the augmented demand for easily understandable vernacular literature and plays, the supply of which was encouraged by the leading philosophers and literary theorists such as Li Zhi and Yuan Hongdao who argued for sympathetic changes to the literary canon. In part, this resulted in increases in numbers of published books and publishing houses.²⁷ The environment that cultivated new developments in literature likewise spawned non-conformist innovations in the visual arts of the long seventeenth century.

The Intellectual Context

Led by Yuan Hongdao (1568–1610) and his brothers, the Gong’an school writers and poets became the preeminent group of literary theorists in the early seventeenth century. The group takes its name from the brothers’ natal city, Gong’an in Hubei province, and although it included intellectuals from different areas of China, it was known to be particularly active in Beijing.²⁸ Among these intellectuals, whose ostensible focus was poetry and prose, were the leading writers of art theory and criticism, some of whom were also artists. These included Dong Qichang, Mi Wanzhong (c. 1570–c. 1628), and Xie Zhaozhe (1567–1624), all of whom wrote admiringly of and/or collected paintings by emerging artists working in the new and idiosyncratic styles, such as Wu Bin (c. 1543–c. 1626), Cui Zizheng (d. 1644), and Ding Yunpeng (active c. 1584–1638). Even though the Gong’an group’s focus may have been on poetry and prose, the group’s thinking and attitudes toward creative production, regardless of the medium, was shared.

Even though the original group met primarily in the early 1600s, Gong’an ideals pervaded the culture throughout the remainder of the seventeenth century. Scholars such as Patrick Hanan, Chang Chun-shu, and Shelley Hsüeh-lun Chang have discussed the Gong’an school’s importance to writers and literary critics throughout this period.²⁹ Accepting their research, I extend the argument here to maintain that Gong’an intellectual thought was foundational to theorists and critics of late Ming visual arts.³⁰ Though much of the critical commentary quoted in this essay is by the leading critics of literature and aesthetics, Yuan Hongdao and Dong Qichang of the late Ming, the discussion is easily applied to include later seventeenth-century artists and visual arts theorists,³¹ as will be made apparent by many of the statements to follow.

In pre-twentieth-century Chinese society, the constitutional makeup of literature was not a mere cultural byproduct, but an elemental warp thread in societal development. In order to achieve social success and uphold the Confucian values of filial piety, a man (whose family had enough money to support him) had to succeed in the civil service examinations that would ensure him official position, wealth, and social prestige. In passing the examinations, the candidate would rise from commoner to elite status. In order to pass the tests, the candidate had to prove his familiarity with the Chinese classical texts and specific forms of writing. Examination questions were developed by the most powerful scholar-officials and naturally followed their understanding of important literary forms and ideals.

The political and social position of the scholar-official in charge of the civil service examinations virtually enabled him to control the literary movement and consequent body politic. During the later sixteenth century, this person was Wang Shizhen (1526–1590), who also was a writer, calligrapher, and art collector. Wang is recognized as the cultural taste-setter for the mid-Ming sixteenth century, and was a supporter of the archaist (or Old Phraseology Movement, guwenci 古文詞; discussed below). After Wang’s death in 1590, one of his replacements in the next round of examinations in 1592 was Jiao Hong,³² member of the influential Gong’an literary group and occasional art critic. It is easy to see, therefore, how shifts in theoretical ideals could be manifested in the scholar-official realm at the highest levels and throughout the literate state.

The Gong’an movement was not limited to the highest social stratum, however, but spread to all classes. At the same time as the ideals of the iconoclastic philosopher Li Zhi and the Gong’an literary critics were being disseminated through the intellectual elite, these ideals were also being transmitted to the general public through public lectures and performances of vernacular drama. As Chang and Chang have pointed out, there was a “great downward penetration of cultural activities to the lower levels of society” during the late sixteenth century. The lower classes were extremely interested in cultural events, and many of the educators to the masses were members of that class.³³ Additionally, three closely related developments that took place during the late Ming included “the blossoming of private and semi-private academies as educational institutions, the great expansion of printing, and the rise in literacy among the common people.”³⁴ Consequently, it is easy to see how Gong’an ideals could pervade late Ming China as a whole. It is only fair to deduce, then, that the subset of art critics and artists who might not be participating members of the originary Gong’an circle would nonetheless member among this much larger group.

What aesthetic ideals did these individuals share? The Gong’an members valued the contemporary and the new, and recognized the periodicity of style. In valuing the new, the Gong’an critics promoted spontaneous self-expression, asserting that great literature must express the author’s own feelings and emotions naturally and spontaneously. These concepts supplanted the prevailing ideals of the previous sixteenth-century archaist critics who had argued for the strict imitation of a narrow selection of classical models.³⁵

The Gong’an theorists appreciated difference. While acknowledging the importance of studying the old masters,³⁶ they nevertheless stressed individuality.³⁷ Further, whereas archaist critics had found writers such as the renowned Bai Juyi (772–846) and Su Shi (1037–1101) too heterodox, bizarre, and iconoclastic, seventeenth-century theorists instead found their non-normative expression appealing.³⁸ Finally, perhaps as an extension of the different in the literary realm, the Gong’an critics appreciated the popular and vernacular. They expanded the definition of literary art to include folk songs and the songs of women and children.³⁹ All of these Gong’an literary ideals for the contemporary, the new, and the different — and the popular — are expressed in seventeenth-century visual arts and theory.

Anyone interested in ideals of the new and different, qi 奇, and by extension, odd or weird, could be considered socially antagonistic, as the concept of the odd is itself a challenge to the norm.⁴⁰ Yet, in the seventeenth-century context, the concept seems largely to have held positive value.⁴¹ The ideas of the Gong’an critics flushed fresh air through close quarters, and the socioeconomic changes that occurred during the late Ming enhanced the spread of a discourse of originality made manifest in aesthetic expressions of the contemporary and the different.

Contemporary, Shi

Seventeenth-century critics asserted that newness resulted from responses to current or contemporary situations. At the same time, they understood that difference requires a consciousness of the past in order to be meaningful. The new and the different existed in tension and balance with the established canon, and even as they signify change, imply a consciousness of a continuum. For this reason, the concept of shi 時, literally “time,” but in context translatable as “timely,” “contemporaneity,” or “contemporary,” as well as “fashion” and “fashionable,” was a value of the Gong’an school theorists. On this issue, Yuan Hongdao has written (in this translation adapted from Chou Chih-p’ing):

If something is not contemporary, shi, then it is not outstanding. If it does not exhaust the new (xin) and transform [style] to the extreme, then it is not contemporary.⁴²

不時則不雋。不窮新而極變則不時。⁴³

The focus on the new and different here indicates that shi must mean something like “contemporary.” Yuan’s statement is clear on the paramount importance of contemporaneity, which he defines in terms of the boldly new and transformative.

Elsewhere Yuan Hongdao stipulates that works of literary arts must be the products of their own times. As he wrote:

It is time, shi, that propels literature from antiquity to modern times. The criterion of beauty and ugliness follows time, not people’s eyes . … Whether one embanks it, destroys it, or tries to flow through it requires change. Those who adhere to ancient language and pretend to be ancient are like those who wear summer clothes in a severe winter.⁴⁴

文之不能不古而今也，時使之也。妍媸之質，不逐目而逐時。⋯⋯ 為能隄其隤而通其所必變。夫古有古之時，今有今之時，襲古人語言之跡，而冒以為古。是處嚴冬而襲夏之葛者也。⁴⁵

Yuan Hongdao is conscious that critical values are established afresh in each period. While railing against imitation, he observes that, as tastes and values change, what might be considered beautiful or ugly in one period may be taken as the opposite in another. Though Yuan Hongdao does occasionally critique the visual arts, in this and the previous quotation he writes specifically about literature. Nevertheless, his comments are equally applicable to the visual art in general and painting and calligraphy specifically.

One of the greatest artist-theorists active during the later seventeenth century is Shitao (1642–1707), who reiterates Gong’an critical values. In this inscription Shitao comments on the importance of breaking with the past to enable new artistic expression:

This way [of working] is insightful and penetrating. [You] only have to liberate the brush and straightaway sweep [it across the scroll to paint] a thousand peaks and myriad ravines. Freely regarding [it in] one look, gaze at it as if [it were] startling lightning and threatening clouds piling up. [Is this the kind of thing only] Jing [Hao] or Guan [Dong] could do? Dong [Yuan] or Ju[ran]? Ni [Zan] or Huang [Gongwang]? Shen [Zhou] or Zhao [Mengfu]? Who can put a name on it? [Yet,] I have seen [even] famous artists repeatedly following certain masters or certain schools. They do not realize that calligraphy and painting are natural endowments; each person must be responsible for expressing his own concerns. [Yet imitation is so prevalent that] where should I begin talking about it?⁴⁶

此道見地透脫。只須放筆直掃千巖萬壑。縱目一覽，望之若驚電奔雲屯屯自起。荊關耶，董巨耶，倪黃耶，沈趙耶？誰與安名？余嘗見諸名家動輒倣某家法某派。書與畫天生自有一人職掌一人之事。從何處說起？⁴⁷

Shitao’s frustration with imitative methods is palpable. In this passage, Shitao bewails his contemporaries’ constant and unthinking reiterations of the modes of the earlier greats. In exhorting artists to approach their work boldly and cut themselves free of the burden to the past, he calls implicitly for the new in the creation of a work of art. Why, he asks (in the parlance of our own day), should creativity be limited to just a few dead men? Just as Yuan Hongdao earlier had called for contemporary expression in literature, Shitao here implores painters to voice their own concerns, and by extension, the concerns of their own times.

Consciousness of the artists’ contemporary position is also expressed by artist Zhang Feng (active c. 1645–74). As he once asked, “Why should not modern men change the styles of the Old Masters?”⁴⁸ The fearlessness of his challenge is one of the salient, unifying qualities of seventeenth-century painting and aesthetic criticism.

The New and Different

An artist cannot be of his or her own time without making something new to the period and different from the past. Yuan Hongdao writes on the importance of the new and different for literature in this passage (adapted from Chou Chih-p’ing):

What makes literary forms new and original is that they are without set regulations and styles. One need only express what others cannot express. When sentences, characters and compositions [flow] one after another from one’s own bosom, this is genuine newness and originality.⁴⁹

文章新奇無定格式。只要發人所不能發。句法字法調法一一從自己胸中流出，此真新奇也。⁵⁰

In this passage, Yuan stresses newness and difference through self-expression. By rejecting the formal dictates of the previous era, Yuan asserts that authors will invent expressions relevant to their own time.

Turning to the visual arts, Gong’an theorist Dong Qichang writes on the importance of the new in painting by the great fourteenth-century scholar-artist Ni Zan (1301–74). Dong begins his statement with what appears to be a commonplace of the period (in this translation by Osvald Sirén):

‘Those who study the old masters and do not introduce some changes are as if closed in by a fence. If one imitates the models too closely one is often still further removed from them.’ The last two phrases are said in praise of Ni Zan who, although he learned from the old masters, kept quite independent and created a style of his own.⁵¹

Like his contemporaries in literary criticism, Dong Qichang admires the great artists of the past, and believes that his contemporaries in the art world should learn from them but reject the mindless imitation of their styles. And like the Gong’an theorists who wrote on literature, Dong calls for innovations and self-expression in painting. If a Ni Zan could do it to the traditions of his predecessors, why could not a Dong Qichang do the same to his?

As Dong Qichang indicates, Ni Zan’s innovations were startling. Enthusiasts familiar with Ni Zan’s work generally recognize that he created new compositions by playing with those of the previous era. Paintings of the thirteenth century, such as Xia Gui’s (active 1190–1230) Sailboat in Rain (Figure 1), characteristically feature lush compositions emphasizing fore and backgrounds, with implicit middlegrounds. In Autumn Village over Fishing Lodge (Figure 2), Ni Zan transforms these compositions by pulling the fore- and backgrounds far apart, and replacing the earlier soft atmospheric qualities with arid and seemingly brittle yet moist brushwork. Dong Qichang wants his contemporary readers to apply the freeing lessons learned from the approaches of such great painters as Ni Zan in creating their own art works.

Fig. 1. Xia Gui (active about 1195–1230), Sailboat in Rainstorm, c. 1189–94, round fan mounted as an album leaf, ink and color on silk, 23.9 × 25.1 cm, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Chinese and Japanese Special Fund, 12.891.

Fig. 2. Ni Zan (1301–1374), Autumn Clearing over a Fishing Lodge, 1355, hanging scroll, ink on paper, 96 × 46.9 cm, Shanghai Museum.

In commenting on the importance of difference, Dong Qichang states that it is difference and extreme difference that make fourth-century master Wang Xizhi’s (303–61) calligraphy outstanding. Dong writes:

[Even though it] turns left and sidles right, still Youjun’s [Wang Xizhi’s] calligraphy powerfully demonstrates marks that seem different, and yet [his work] actually [became] the standard.

轉左側右，乃右軍字勢所謂跡似奇而反正者。 ⁵²

Dong recognizes that when great artists do something outside of the established norms, their work will seem different or even odd — in other words, “original.” Yet, as this very quality is nonetheless aesthetically interesting, their work will become the standard that others will then try to match.

Somewhat later in the seventeenth century, Gong Xian (d. 1689) championed difference over conventionality in his paintings and criticism. Gong’s landscape featuring trees with pink wash within circlet-shaped leaves (Figure 3) is a fine example of his oeuvre. Gong wrote (in this translation adapted from James Cahill):

If on occasion you paint a grove of trees that is quite commonplace, with no touch of the unusual, what is the point? At such a time, it’s best to put down the brush and exert your energies for a while to figure out [how to make] a change. You must think [until an image] of a land emerges in your mind with hills and valleys, and [only then] continue [painting] to completion. Otherwise, you might as well abandon this paper as there’s no hope for it.⁵³

偶寫樹一林，甚平平無奇，奈何？此時便當擱筆，竭力揣摩一番。必思一出人頭地邱壑，然后續成。不然，便廢此紙亦可。⁵⁴

Here Gong Xian cautions against redundant expressions of the familiar, and urges artists to challenge the limits of established expression to create an original work of art. These aesthetic ideals for the contemporary, new, and different that are so explicitly stated in the critical texts are unmistakably asserted in visual form.

Fig. 3. Gong Xian (1619–89), River Scene with Boats, 1671 album leaf, ink and watercolor on paper; silk mount, 9 5/8 × 17 3/4 in. (24.4 × 45.1 cm). The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri. Purchase: William Rockhill Nelson Trust, 60-36/2. Image courtesy Nelson-Atkins Media Services. The artist’s inscription reads: “Some guests who came here from Changshan and Yushan tell me of the strange marvels of the landscape there. Taking up my brush, I record them here.”

Expanded Painting Canon

This culture that so strongly nurtured ideals of contemporaneity, newness, and difference also freed artists to explore and develop original techniques and compositions. As the new and different is most obviously revealed in contrast to the established methods of the past, seventeenth-century artists often improvised on techniques or compositions of the earlier important artists, and found ways to challenge the established representational norms. It is not that these artists merely continued past modes, as close inspection reveals their neoteric contributions. Nor, I think, is it an archaizing impulse, for as frequently as seventeenth-century critics praise the great artists of the past or state the importance of studying their works and methods, or reference past modes in their new works, aesthetic criticism of this period is remarkably free of discussions of fugu 復古, “returning to the old masters,” and guyi 古意, “archaization,”⁵⁵ ideas that had dominated earlier literati painting discourse. Similarly, almost completely missing from visual aesthetic criticism is a call for apparent formal articulations of zhuo 拙, “awkwardness,” an aesthetic value that called for primitive-seeming representation, as presumed of China’s earliest artists. Art historians have long been aware of the importance of these critical terms emphasizing an archaizing aesthetic, but it would be well to locate them especially in the Yuan Dynasty (1279–1368) when educated artists looked to (notions of) styles of artists in (perceived happier or more politically successful) earlier periods controlled by ethnic Han as a veiled expression of their own social trauma while coping with the Mongolian conquest. Although since the Yuan many of the stylistic elements associated with the concerns of fugu, guyi, and zhuo were carried forth in literati-style painting in the seventeenth century, the values associated with those styles were subsumed by other, more current ideals.

Just as the Gong’an theorists redefined the categories of literature and expanded that canon, so did seventeenth-century visual arts theorists redefine what was desirable in the arts and expand the (literati) canon(s) of painting. It is increasingly apparent that more than one canon was operative during the seventeenth century. As Craig Clunas has reminded us, while a number of important masters are included on all the various canonical lists, the “overlap is poorer than we might expect.”⁵⁶ Likewise, Wai-kam Ho and Dawn Ho Delbanco discussed late Ming political factionalism and its effects on Chan Buddhism and literary and artistic production, observing, “The close juxtaposing of antithetical ideas made for great confusion: opposing schools in all disciplines were competing for supremacy, and late Ming intellectuals, faced with a bombardment of conflicting ideas, were often hard-pressed to make choices.”⁵⁷ And when made, each choice did not make everyone equally happy. On the topic of contemporaneous paintings in the Wu school style, Li Rihua (1565–1635) emphatically stated (in this translation by Wai-kam Ho):

Of late, paintings have become ridiculous. I feel like vomiting whenever I unroll a scroll by a contemporary painter.⁵⁸

日來繪法荒繆,展時流之蹟。今人憒憒。思嘔。⁵⁹

Still, just as Timothy Brook has shown how one man’s woeful nostalgia for a lost privileged status is often concurrent with another’s happier recognition of a more favorable current situation,⁶⁰ it is well to remember that aesthetic values — no less than societal values — may result from weighing relative personal advantage and risk. These values determine canon, and what is at issue here is the canon of the cultural elite according to Dong Qichang. Just as some literary scholars have analyzed that the Gong’an theory for the vernacular was meant to frustrate the social mobility of the nouveau cultivé, it is reasonable to assert that the inclusion of the so-called academic/professional (or perhaps, the “popular” or “vernacular”) modes of painting within the production of the educated and political elite was meant to stymie those who thought mere acquisition and display of literati-style arts could assure a privileged social status.⁶¹

Sixteenth-Century Trends in Painting

To understand what seventeenth-century critics accepted as contemporary, new, and different, it is helpful to briefly review important sixteenth-century trends. The operative canon of mid-Ming painting is decidedly complex,⁶² but some generalizations nevertheless may be made. Two major stylistic lineages are evident in this period, that of the Wu School which was closely aligned to earlier educated and politically elite artists, and that of the professional artists which nurtured earlier professional and court styles. The hanging scroll Staff-bearing Wanderer (Figure 4), by the landed elite artist Shen Zhou (1427–1509) features the requisite literati-style blunt brushwork; a restrained monochromatic landscape of soft, low mountain ranges — not peaks; a descriptive spatial system developed to emphasize two-dimensionality; and forms and compositional arrangement reliant upon earlier literati masters. In contrast, professional (and commoner) artist Lu Wenying’s (active late fifteenth–early sixteenth centuries) River Village in a Rainstorm (Figure 5) features bold, angular brushwork; and a dramatic, bravura composition highlighting atmospheric effects, naturalistic representation, and a convincing spatial recession, all characteristic of the professional-style lineage. Granted that the best of each of these stylistic lineages contributed greatly to the larger tradition of Chinese painting, seventeenth-century critics nonetheless contended that mid-Ming painters did not challenge the modes of the great painters of the past, but preferred instead to cultivate them further.

Fig. 4. Shen Zhou (1427–1509), Staff-bearing Wanderer, hanging scroll, ink on paper, 159.1 × 72.2 cm, National Palace Museum, Taiwan.

Fig. 5. Lu Wenying (c. 1480–c. 1507), River Village in a Rainstorm, hanging scroll, ink and slight color on silk, 170.5 × 103.4 cm. Courtesy of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Creative Commons, Free Reuse.

The manifestation of the ideals of the contemporary, new, and different in seventeenth-century painting

How are the ideals of the contemporary, new, and different manifested in seventeenth-century painting? Simply put, artists of this time expressed the contemporary, new, and different in ways not done before. These seventeenth-century values could inhere within the brushwork, the representation of forms, and in compositional organization. In other words, all formal elements and methods were impartiality open to exploration and comment. A few salient examples are provided here.

In thinking of the new in brushwork, Gong Xian’s idiosyncratic techniques spring immediately to mind. Many have commented on Gong’s velvety soft compositions, as in Mountains and Mist Filled Valleys (Figure 6). The obvious brushwork that had been intrinsic to literati painting, as evident in Retreat at Juqu by fourteenth-century literati artist Wang Meng (c. 1309–85) (Figure 7), is replaced by a brush-and-ink technique that refutes the requisite brushiness of strokes in preference for an effect similar to rubbed charcoal. Often eerily strange, the plush, calm precision of Gong Xian’s landscapes belies his bold challenge to conventional techniques.

Fig. 6. Gong Xian, (1619–89), Mountains and Mist-Filled Valleys, 1671, album leaf, ink and watercolor on paper; silk mount, 9 5/8 × 17 3/4 in. (24.4 × 45.1 cm). The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri. Purchase: William Rockhill Nelson Trust, 60-36/4. Image courtesy Nelson-Atkins Media Services. The artist’s inscription reads: “Imitating Nangong's [Mi Fu, 1051–1107] [painting] on silk.”

Fig. 7. Wang Meng (c. 1309–85), Forest Chamber Grotto at Juqu, 1375, hanging scroll, ink and color on paper, 68.7 cm x 42.5 cm, National Palace Museum, Taiwan. Open Access.

Color has been a major signifier of stylistic lineage and class status. Particularly monochrome landscapes, but also landscapes with subtle hues, had been the prescribed territory of painters among the educated and political elite, whereas landscapes in bold mineral color have been understood to locate the exclusive realm of the professionals — even as upon occasion important mid-Ming painters ignored this custom.⁶³ In the seventeenth century, other bold painters including Dong Qichang challenged this standard by applying strong color to such works as his Landscape after Zhang Sengyou from Views of Yan and Wu, dated to 1596 (Figure 8). This work references sixth-century artist Zhang Sengyou (active c. 500–50), whose luxuriantly colored work is represented by the anonymous Ming dynasty hanging scroll, Snow Mountains and Red Trees, painted in the tradition of Zhang Sengyou (Figure 9).

Fig. 8. Dong Qichang (1555–1636), Clearing after Snow on the West Mountains, in the manner of Zhang Sengyou (fl. early sixth century), Leaf 5 from Views of Yan and Wu, 1596, album leaf, ink and color on silk, 26.1 × 24.8 cm, Shanghai Museum.

Fig. 9. Anonymous, Ming Dynasty, tradition of Zhang Sengyou (active c. 500–50), Snowy Mountains and Red Trees, hanging scroll, ink and color on silk, National Palace Museum, Taiwan. Open Access.

While landscape and figures remained the mainstay of represented form, artists subverted expectations for formal representation to create surprising effects. In On the Way to Shanyin, Dong Qichang’s friend Wu Bin (c. 1543–c. 1626) establishes the normal and then contrasts it with the unexpected. In the detail provided (Figure 10), Wu depicts a mountain in accordance with normal representational methods: here, the form comes to a peak at the top, and rests weightily on a wide supportive base. Elsewhere in the same scroll, however, he confounds expectations completely by planting a peak in the middle of a mountain range and upside down (Figure 11).

Fig. 10. Wu Bin (c. 1543–c. 1626), On the Way to Shanyin, 1608, detail, handscroll, ink and color on paper, Shanghai Museum. Photograph by the author with permission from the museum.

Fig. 11. Wu Bin (c. 1543–c. 1626), On the Way to Shanyin, 1608, detail, handscroll, ink and color on paper, Shanghai Museum. Photograph by the author with permission from the museum.

Compositions, too, were explored in new ways. Bold compositions featuring a centrally placed mountain massif were a once accepted compositional type that was reintroduced during the seventeenth century after almost six hundred years’ absence. Among the many representational distortions evident in Wu Bin’s 1000 Peaks and Myriad Ravines of 1617 (Figure 12) is the mountain itself. Whereas one assumes mountains to exemplify greatness, stability, permanence, weight, and solidity as in Fan Kuan’s (c. 950–after 1026) archetypal Travelers among Mountains and Streams (Figure 13), Wu Bin surprises the viewer by creating an almost weightless form. In piercing the face he questions notions of the immutability of mountains — and of those who accept the mountain as metaphor for their own greatness. Although elements are presented with the traditional literati-lineage brushwork and type-forms, in reintroducing a once popular compositional type — and responding to Gong’an values of the popular and vernacular, Wu Bin deliberately mixes the sacred and the profane as it were, of the traditions of the educated elite and long-distant professional/court painters.

Fig. 12. Wu Bin (c. 1543–c. 1626), 1000 Peaks and Myriad Ravines, 1617, hanging scroll, ink on silk, 47 1/2 × 15 3/4 in. (120.65 × 40.00 cm). Newfields — Indianapolis Museum of Art. Open Access.

Fig. 13. Fan Kuan (c. 950–after 1026), Travelers among Mountains and Streams, c. 1024, hanging scroll, ink and color on silk, 206.3 × 103.3 cm, National Palace Museum, Taiwan. Open Access.

Purposeful spatial awkwardness was a well-established literati technique employed rhetorically to signify an artist’s personal integrity. For example, in Autumn Colors in the Qiao and Hua Mountains of 1296 (Figure 14), Zhao Mengfu (1254–1322) intentionally produces sudden shifts in scale, as with the “normal”-sized foreground trees that grow next to miniaturized fishermen. Nevertheless, the entire composition is organized within a single, continuous though (aesthetically correct for the period) zhuo/awkward spatial system of fore-, middle-, and backgrounds.

Fig. 14. Zhao Mengfu (1254–1322), Autumn Colors in the Qiao and Hua Mountains, 1296, handscroll, ink and color on paper, 24.8 × 93.2 cm, National Palace Museum, Taiwan. Open Access.

In contrast, seventeenth-century artists built on these techniques to develop other, sometimes more subtle but dramatic spatial techniques. They often painted harmonious compositions that superficially appear to have single spatial systems, but which in fact have double sets. This is manifested in Wu Bin’s Mount Tiantai of 1607.⁶⁴ In the right section (Figure 15), Wu Bin subtly shifts the picture plane forward so that the natural rock bridge seems to hover closer to the viewer. Granted, the right section occupies a ground closer to the viewer (foreground) than that on the left (middle- and backgrounds), but the placement of these spatial systems in the spatial plane is different. (This quality is most apparent when viewing the work in person; it is admittedly more difficult to see in reproduction.) The representation of multiple spatial systems is accomplished technically in part by reserving expanses of silk from ink. This suggests a hovering mist, but also flattens part of the space and pushes the picture plane in this section much closer to the viewer for a hologrammatic effect. This bit of legerdemain is enhanced by the rocky projections that sometimes read as convex, sometimes concave forms.⁶⁵

Fig. 15. Wu Bin (c. 1543–c. 1626), Mount Tiantai, handscroll fragment, ink and color on silk, 29.1 × 40.5 cm, 1607, Collection of the Honolulu Museum of Art. Purchase, 1970 (3678.1a).

The qualities just outlined are not unique to these few paintings, but are elements commonly explored by seventeenth-century artists. Since many of the painters were also the same commentators who promoted the contemporary, new, and different in aesthetic theory and criticism, there can be no doubt that these features are purposeful statements of period values.

Contemporary Art and the “Great Synthesis”

But how do the qualities that proclaim newness, difference, and contemporaneity relate to Dong Qichang’s well-known advocacy of a “Great Synthesis” of the Old Masters, especially since Dong paradoxically argued in word and image for both, seemingly antithetical approaches? The explanation lies once again in Dong’s — and his followers’ — acceptance and application of Gong’an values to the visual arts. Just as Yuan Hongdao et alia had opened the restrictive sixteenth-century literary canon by championing authors outside that era’s narrow range — and outside the realm of what the masses were then studying — Dong Qichang and others expanded the canon of painting beyond what had been commonly accepted as the norm of elite representation.

In synthesizing the contributions of past artists, Dong Qichang and artists of like mind made the old “new” again, for many of the artists he admired fall decidedly outside the normally accepted group of literati-style artists, and were thus new and different within this tradition of painting. Moreover, as Dong articulates below, by combining all these diverse styles together, the truly talented and insightful artists would be propelled into creating their own innovations. Dong’s statement is illustrated by his own The Lotus Society at West Lake (Figure 16). This painting uses the format, compositional elements, and techniques learned from court and professional artists such as thirteenth-century Xia Gui (Figure 1). As Dong says (in this translation adapted from that of Wen Fong):

In painting the level-distance view, follow Zhao Danian (Zhao Lingrang, d. after 1100); in painting layers of mountains and layers of peaks, follow Jiang Guandao (Jiang Shen, b. c. 1090–1138). For texture strokes, use Dong Yuan’s hemp-fiber stroke, as well as the dotting strokes of his Xiao and Xiang Rivers. For trees, use the methods of the two artists Beiyuan [Dong Yuan] and Zi’ang [Zhao Mengfu]. For rocks, use those found in the great General Li [Sixun]’s (651–716) Waiting for the Ferry at the Autumn River and those in Guo Zhongshu’s (b. c. 910–77) snow scenes. Li Cheng’s (919–67) painting methods included both an ink-wash style in small scrolls and a strongly colored blue-and-green style. Both should be followed. Having gathered [all these styles] into a Great Synthesis, [the master] will come out with innovations of his own. From repeatedly unrolling scrolls over the past four or five years, [it is clear that even] the two gentlemen Wen [Zhengming, (1470–1559)] and Shen [Zhou] could not walk alone, as I [now understand] Wu [school painting].⁶⁶

畫平遠師趙大年；重山疊嶂師江貫道。皴法用董源麻皮皴及《瀟湘圖》點子皴。樹用北苑子昂二家法。石用大李將軍《秋江得渡圖》及郭忠恕雪景。李成畫法有小幅水墨及著色青綠。俱宜宗之。集其大成自出。機軸再四五年文沈二君不能獨步，吾吳矣。⁶⁷

Here, Dong urges painters to study and apply the formal, technical contributions to painting made by important artists who worked in two separate, sometimes opposing lineages: the restrained, somewhat abstract, and stoic literati mode and the more naturalistic and often bolder, more opulent methods associated with the court and professional artists. Significantly, Dong does not exclusively privilege the elite literati-style mode over the more popular styles, but instead recognizes that each tradition offers worthwhile contributions to the creative and original painter. In sum, he argues that the contemporary artist will bring about changes in the greater tradition of art, because, like the Gong’an writers, they understand the past.⁶⁸

Fig. 16. Dong Qichang (1555–1636), The Lotus Society at West Lake, Leaf 3 from Views of Yan and Wu, 1596, album leaf, ink and color on silk, 26.1 × 24.8 cm, Shanghai Museum.

Just as the literary theorists urged writers to study diverse models outside of a narrowly constructed classical canon, Dong Qichang and his followers applied this Gong’an ideal to the visual arts and expanded the canon of elite-style painting. While initially it may be surprising to learn that Dong Qichang — who scholarship has most typically represented as a literati artist-theorist of the most conservative kind — admired and willingly blended contradictory stylistic traditions, and exhorted others to do the same, understanding his intellectual context changes our expectations of him and his group. Although it seems we have heretofore misunderstood the aims of this artist-critic, the most dynamic of the seventeenth-century artists understood and participated in Dong’s call. In accordance with period ideals of the contemporary, new, and different, they produced artworks in their own idiosyncratic ways. In blending myriad stylistic lineages and creating new forms, these artists at once challenged the status quo and expanded the canon to create a contemporary art. As a consequence, expectations for the canon of the intellectual elite and for those who followed their lead — for the bulk of the seventeenth century at least — are revised.

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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.

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.”