Chair: Jerome Silbergeld, University of Washington

The eleventh century was a formative period for two of the central elements in the culture of later imperial China: Neo-Confucianism and the literati ideal in art. Traditionally the last reign of the Northern Song has been seen as a radical deflection from these long-term trends. Although intensely interested in painting, calligraphy, music, ritual, and other arts, Huizong promoted neither Neo-Confucianism nor literati independence. Although sometimes presented romantically as artist-emperor, he usually is blamed for the loss of North China, and his reign scrutinized for what went wrong.

This panel seeks to reopen the question of Huizong and his place in Chinese history. Hartman studies the proscription of the Yuanyou partisans, showing how it was the outcome of processes begun by earlier Song "reform" movements. Ebrey treats Huizong’s relationships with Daoist masters as a key to understanding his pro-Daoist policies and projects, proposing comprehensible bases for the emperor’s "delusional" actions. Egan argues that aesthetic values promoted at Huizong’s Painting Academy derive from recent literati innovations, a debt obscured by literati polarized texts on art. Bickford treats imperial flower-and-bird painting from the vantage of auspicious-image making, finding functional bases for choices in subject matter, style, and word/image relationships.

Because these papers take different, sometimes conflicting, views on major issues, they should provoke the field to reconsider our understanding of Northern Song culture and its relation to politics. The discussant, Paul Smith, will initiate this conversation.

Charles Hartman, State University of New York, Albany

This paper explores the history and mechanics of the political inquisitions conducted during the reign of Sung Hui-tsung. The best known of these was the erection in 1102 of the "Stele Register of the Yüan-yu Party," which listed 309 men purged from their official positions. Although the stele were order destroyed in 1106, the proscription of listed officials was not removed until 1126.

My research reveals that the erection of the stele was actually the culmination of a long series of political and cultural events. Determination of those to be included in the register was based on a review of archived materials undertaken by an ad hoc "Agency for the Classification of Bureaucratic Documentation," created in 1095. Agency officials classified these writings into degrees of "orthodox" (cheng) or "oblique" (hsieh) status; these categories are mentioned in the preface to the 1102 stele.

A second major finding is that the Northern Sung politicization of this cheng vs. hsieh rhetoric was itself an innovation of the Yüan-yu party and its progenitors, Fan Chung-yen and Ou-yang Hsiu. Furthermore, the Yijan-yu government (1086–1093) had earlier used similar, although less pervasive, tactics against the remnants of the Wang An-shih party. Thus, the history of the Hui-tsung era proscriptions is not, as it is usually portrayed, a history of political good vs. evil, but rather the inexorable development of factionalizing forces set in motion by the earlier "reform" movements of the 1040s.

Patricia Ebrey, University of Washington

From early in his reign, Huizong treated a series of Daoist masters with great respect and generosity. He saw them as individuals with special powers and techniques, able to effect cures, interpret dreams, communicate with the dead, perform efficacious rituals to bring rain or lower flood waters, and strengthen the country. He heaped honors on them, built temples for them, listened to their lectures, and adopted their proposals. He sometimes lost confidence in a particular master, but soon found another who impressed him.

This paper will trace Huizong’s evolving relationship with Daoist masters, drawing on both Daoist and secular sources. His faith in these masters led to his adoption of many pro-Daoist policies, such as the creation of Daoist schools and collection and publication of Daoist texts. Many of Huizong’s pro-Daoist actions have been treated in traditional historiography as deluded extravaganzas, ultimately of great harm to the dynasty. These include accepting the news that he was the incarnation of a deity, attempting to merge the Buddhist establishment into the Daoist, and building a grand garden that embodied Daoist principles. This paper will try to make these actions more comprehensible by showing how they derive from Huizong’s belief in the existence of individuals with extraordinary techniques and powers and his confidence that he had found such masters.

Ronald C. Egan, University of California, Santa Barbara

This paper examines an aspect of the aesthetic values promoted at Emperor Huizong’s Painting Academy and argues that they largely derive from literati innovations in the theory and practice of painting that took place during the decades immediately preceding Huizong’s reign. This is a connection that has not been fully appreciated in previous scholarship. It takes on special interest when set in the context of the repressive politics of Huizong’s reign: the emperor’s chief minister, Cai Jing, instituted the systematic denunciation, banishment (or posthumous demotion), and even proscription of the writings of the very poets whose recent contributions to thinking about art were being affirmed and further explored in the Painting Academy.

The title of the paper derives from Huizong’s enthusiasm over poems by Chen Yuyi on ink paintings of plum blossoms. Chen’s poems are steeped in ideas about non-representational art that had been developed by Su Shi. The paper proposes a similar origin of the values that underlay the celebrated "painting examinations" instituted at the Academy. Analysis of passages in the catalog of the imperial painting collection, Xuanhe huapu, reveals further shared ideas between the groups that had become political rivals.

Consideration is given, finally, to the reasons that the Academy’s indebtedness to literati thought became obscured. It is suggested that a main (and ironic) cause was the aggressiveness with which the literati had denounced and distanced themselves from the professional or Court painters when first developing their alternative approach to the art.

Maggie Bickford, Brown University

The well-rehearsed "Problem(s) of Huizong" as painter and patron arise from apparent internal contradictions in the visual and textual record. In this paper I address the evidence by treating some works of art as practical objects of a peculiar kind: auspicious images. This function-based approach resolves some evidential contradictions, sets more useful conditions for authenticity, and imposes severe qualifications upon claims of "realism" and "naturalism" as fundamental characteristics of the art of Huizong and his Academy.

I examine two related groups of Huizong-inscribed works—paintings of auspicious occurrences and paintings that embody good wishes. Each of these Huizong attributions was made by a different hand and each employs a different visual strategy. All exhibit emphatic clarity of presentation. The goal of maximizing auspicious efficacy through heightened visual plausibility is not pursued by means of minute, circumstantial description but, rather, is approached through significant stylization that produces images of "compelling visual authority." These images are purposefully impersonal: the identity of the executant (by name or through hand) is effaced and traces of process are suppressed, in compliance both with the necessary objectivity of the efficacious image, and with the use of artist as pictorial agent, the authenticity of the work residing in Huizong’s inscription.