Organizer and Chair: David W. Pankenier, Lehigh University
Illusion of Space: Representations of Cosmology in Chinese Daoist Sculpture of
the Sixth Century
Yang Liu, SOAS, University of London
What happened to Daoist sculpture during the chaotic period from the collapse of Northern Wei to the unification under the Sui Dynasty (534-581) is a complex problem never before explored. This paper discusses nine examples gathered from museums in China and western countries, all hitherto unpublished or never fully studied before, to add a footnote to the aspect of Daoist representations of cosmology and the heavenly hierarchy.
A new imagery determining the characteristics of the contemporary Daoist stele is the greater emphasis on the sense of space: the decor of a stele is designed in several registers one above another, with elaborately sculptured niches containing deities. The apparent aim of this design is to express the conception of a multiple divine realm consisting of a series of superimposed heavens, each corresponding to a certain divinity. This iconography creates, on a two-dimensional plane, the illusion of space.
A detailed analysis provides the answer to the derivation of such new imagery. The ever-growing attention of believers to heaven, springing from the desire for happiness lacking in secular life within a turbulent world, and the ever-growing influence of Daoist cosmology concerning the organization of the universe and its hierarchy, provided the ideological basis for popular representation of the cosmological aspect of Daoist sculpture. Traditional Chinese ideas of universal structure and its representation in the arts, and the decorative organization of the Buddhist stelae and cave temples of the period, together provided its artistic basis.
Gu Kaizhi's Treatises on Painting and Wang Bi's Discourse on
"Substance/Function" (Ti/Yong)
Edmond Chang, University of California, San Diego
The treatises on painting of the Jin artist, Gu Kaizhi (344-405 A.D.), offer those interested in the aesthetic developments of the Six Dynasties much critical insight into the complex and inevitable relationship between Xuen Xue and the growing aesthetic awareness that marked a radical departure from the perception of art dominant in the Han. In this respect, the "Hua lun," "Wei-Jin Sheng-liu Hua-zan," and "Hua Yun-tai-shan Ji," should not be treated merely as manuals on technique and style, but as articulations of an aestheticism whose theoretical underpinnings are deeply rooted in the thinking of, namely, Wang Bi. It is his dialectic treatment of the problem of Ben/Mo (Essence/Substance) that provided the essential paradigm for the discourse on Shen/Xing (Spirit/Form) so critical to the period's aesthetic discourse. What makes Wang Bi's impact on Gu even more interesting, however, is its mediation through the syncretic thinking of Hui-yuan, the influential Buddhist leader of Mount Lu. The traces of this mediation enlighten us not only to the nature of the Daoist-Buddhist dialogue prevalent at the time, but also establish the significant, albeit mediating, role of Buddhism in shaping Six Dynasties aesthetics. Given this philosophical approach to Gu's treatises, an attempt to also relate them to his "Goddess of River Luo" and "Admonitions to Courtesans" scrolls can more precisely demarcate the "gap" between early aesthetics and art, as well as provide for some meaningful exchanges between theory and practice, that is to say, across the disciplines of Chinese philosophy and art history.
The Reception and Use of Antique Paintings in the Early Yuan Dynasty
Ankeney Weitz, Denison University
During the last quarter of the thirteenth century the number of antique paintings circulating in the private art market increased dramatically, due primarily to social flux accompanying the dynastic transition. This paper studies the social and political dimensions of the early Yuan reception of these antique paintings, and asks the following questions: (1) Why did individual collectors acquire certain paintings? (2) What interpretive structures underlay their readings of paintings as recorded in inscriptions and colophons? (3) How were antique paintings used in early Yuan society? (4) How did "aesthetic taste" function in late thirteenth-century China?
Through several case studies and a statistical analysis of a collector's catalogue, I find that early Yuan collectors favored figural subjects, animal and plant studies, and site-specific landscapes because these subjects easily lent themselves to allegorical interpretation. Far from enjoying their paintings with a disinterested passion for art, many individual collectors deliberately sought to acquire objects that held symbolic meaning within the context of their lives. By affixing interpretive texts to their collected paintings, individual collectors manufactured a calculated image of their social, moral, and political status. At painting viewing parties and other informal social occasions, collectors disseminated this self-wrought image to their friends and colleagues. Thus, taste was not disinterested, but entirely self-interested, and the collecting of paintings was a process of self-creation and conscious social positioning.
Appropriating the Moon: A Carved Rock Crystal and the Qianlong Emperor
Adriana Proser, Philadelphia Museum of Art
Chinese artists have merged the imagery of the moon and the myths associated with it for over two thousand years. An example of Qing dynasty, Qianlong period workmanship known as the "Moon Crystal," originally in the collection of the Qianlong emperor, eloquently combines layers of meaning through an overlap of material, craftsmanship, poetry, and calligraphy. The 18th-century artist Zhao Bingchong incised the poem Yuefu ("Moon Poem") by the poet Xie Zhuang (421-466) into the surface of this ingeniously carved piece of rock crystal. The work is a testimony to the Qianlong emperor's appropriation of the domain of his imperial Chinese predecessors through his cultivated interests in art and philosophy. References to a Daoist notion of immortality and the tradition of imperial artistic practice and patronage-both through the subject matter and material of the "Moon Crystal"-draw the viewer's attention to the relation of servant to master and conquered to conqueror during the reign of the Qianlong emperor.