The handle http://hdl.handle.net/1887/44098 holds various files of this Leiden University dissertation
Author: Wenxin Wang
Title: A social history of painting inscriptions in Ming China (1368-1644) Issue Date: 2016-10-26
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Chapter 1 Painting Inscriptions in the Pre-Ming Era
This chapter studies the relevance of inscriptions to concepts, history and social practice. Inscriptions and inscribing in the Ming era did not arise out of a vacuum. Their prehistory defines their importance as much as events and experiences situated it in China after 1368. I will first discuss those Chinese words, and in particular Ming usages, that refer and relate to inscription and the act of inscribing. Contextualizing these words reveals several foundations on which “painting inscription” and “inscribing a painting” were conceived and practiced prior to and during the Ming dynasty. On the basis of this terminological discussion, this chapter will then examine the emergence of inscriptions. I will show that the different voices that have emerged in relation to this issue originate from different understandings of what exactly a painting inscription is. The third part of this chapter investigates the historical development of inscriptions. Based on both textual evidence and the earliest material evidence, this discussion also explores the social identities of inscribers and the types of texts that could be associated with or written on paintings before the Ming era.
Terminology
It is helpful to start with a terminological analysis of words used to designate the act of inscribing on a painting, not least because this is absent in the majority of previous studies. In both ancient and modern Chinese, the word that denotes both the action of inscribing a text on a certain surface using a brush and the text that is being inscribed is ti 題 . Ti originally meant
“forehead.”1 Later, it also came to mean “indicative cartouche,”
1 Xu Shen, Shuowen jiezi 說 文 解 字 , facsimile reprint of 1809 edition (Beijing:
Zhonghua shuju, 1978), 181.
“forehead of a book” (literarily, “chapter title”), and “inscription.”2 Ti can be joined with other verbs and nouns to form new words and phrases. In the following, I provide a number of exemplar words that ti constitutes when joined with nouns, followed by their actual usage in Ming writings. My selection is certainly not exhaustive. The words listed aim to contextualize the main subject of this dissertation – tihua – in the linguistic landscape of the Ming period. Depending on the basis of the compounded nouns, these words can be divided into two major groups. One group is nouns denoting what is to be inscribed. Tishi 題 詩 is commonly used in Ming writings. The word means “to inscribe a poem” or “an inscribed poem.” Its usage is exemplified by an anthropomorphic fable that narrates: “At that time, Consort Ban fell into disfavor, and was detained in Long-faith Palace. She once inscribed a poem and sent it to Yu. 時班婕妤失寵 , 廢處長信宮 . 嘗題詩寄羽.”3 Ti can be combined with kuan 款 to form tikuan 題 款 , which refers to “an inscription, especially signature, written on an artifact.” A Ming painting catalogue Corel Net (Shanhu wang 珊 瑚 網 ) records a painting by Wen Zhengming 文 徵 明 (1470- 1559) with a short note that the painting is “coloured on silk, with an inscription in regular script 著色 , 絹上楷書題款 .”4 Tizan 題 讚 means “to inscribe words to eulogize,” or “a eulogy inscribed on an artifact (normally a portrait).” A Ming poem title illustrates its use: “To present to monk Han, after his rhyme of the eulogy he composed for my tiny portrait 寄 酬 憨 法 師 為 予 小 像 題 讚 因
2 The evolution of the semantics of ti can be learnt from some of the oldest dictionaries in China. In addition to the one mentioned in the above note by Xu Shen 許慎 (ca. 58-147 BCE), one may look into Approaching the Correct (Er ya 爾雅 ) and Explanations of Names (Shi ming 釋名 ), both of which were written the Han period (206 BCE-220 CE). See Guo Pu 郭璞 (276-324) and Xing Bing 郉昺 (392- 1010), Erya zhushu 爾雅註疏 (Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe, 1999 reprint), 76;
Liu Xi 劉熙 (fl. 2nd cent.) and Bi Yuan 畢沅 (1730-1797), Shiming shuzheng 釋名疏 証, juan 6 (Guangzhou: Guangya shuju, 1894), 6a.
3 Chen Bangjun 陳邦俊 (fl. 1596-1615), Guang xie shi 廣諧史 , juan 5, 1615 printed edition, 10a.
4 Wang Keyu, Shanhu wang 珊瑚網 , Minghua tiba 名畫題跋 , juan 15, Shiyuan congshu 適 園 叢 書 edition, eighth compilation, comp. Zhang Junheng 張 均 衡 (1872-1927), printed in 1916, 12b.
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次 前 韻 .” Another applicable noun is ci 詞 . Tici 題 詞 means
“to inscribe a text; an inscription.” A narrative in a short story illustrates the use of this word: “[He] notices the painting being well executed hence purchases it. In haste, he forgets to examine the inscription, and to check the signature. 看見畫得精致 , 收了 他的. 忙忙裏也未看著題詞 , 也不查看款字 .”6 Tizi 題字 is another word that means “to inscribe words; words being inscribed.” An entry in a private gazetteer records a local site by saying “Duke Zhu inscribed words for them [two stones], and carved [his inscription on] the stones. What a magnificent scene! 朱文公為之 題字刻石, 偉然觀也 .”7
The second group of nouns compounded with ti are those denoting the surface to be inscribed. Tihua falls into this group, denoting “to inscribe on a painting.” There are a great number of examples of its use; one is a Ming poem title “Inscribe on an orchid painting for Shi Shengshi who is about to return to Fragrant Valley 題畫蘭送石生師歸香谷 .”8 Tiye 題葉 is often linked to a female subject who “inscribes on a leaf.” For example, a Ming drama entitled “Three Lives and a Jade Hairpin” (Sansheng zhuan yuzan ji 三生傳玉簪記 ) by Ma Shouzhen 馬守真 (1548-1604) has its heroine lament: “Pity me to have inscribed a leaf then, pity me to have inscribed a leaf then. I keep my chastity for a hundred years. 念當時題葉 , 念當時題葉 , 百年為節 .”9 The act ti can also be executed on a wall. The word tibi 題壁 means “to inscribe on a wall.” A Ming epitaph has a line that reads: “He showed talent in singing early at seven years old. Occasionally he inscribed on walls with ease and verve, which always surprised his audience.
5 Cao Xuequan 曹 學 佺 (1574-1646), Shi Cang shigao 石 倉 詩 稿 , juan 27, 1754 printed edition, 11b.
6 Ling Menchu 淩濛初 (1580-1644) comp., Pai’an Jingqi 拍案驚奇 , juan 27 tiba 15, Shangyou tang 尚友堂 edition printed in 1628, 22b.
7 Cai Xianchen 蔡獻臣 (1562-ca.1641), Qingbai tang gao 清白堂稿 , juan 17, edition printed between 1627-1644, 1b.
8 Ge Yilong 葛一龍 (1567-1640), Ge Zhenfu shiji 葛震甫詩集 , juan xinyuanzhai 新 緣齋, edition printed between 1627-1644, 16a.
9 Hu Wenhuan 胡文焕(fl. late 16th cent.) comp., Qunyin leixuan 群音類選 , juan 18, Hu shi Wenhui tang 胡氏文會堂 edition printed between 1573-1620, 9a.
七歲即善為聲. 偶題壁 , 淋漓驚座 .”10
Ti as a verb has a synonym xie 寫 , lit. “to write” or “to describe.” By substituting ti in the words of the first group with xie, an important difference between the two verbs is revealed. Xie in xieshi 寫 詩 and xiezi 寫 字 emphasize that something is being written, hence it is a more general term. By contrast, ti in tishi and tizi asks for attention to be paid to the action and its context, hence it is more specific. Thus, ti highlights the circumstantial context of the writing action and imbues the action with social meaning: an inscribed text is, more often than not, supposed to be dedicated to someone, or a certain place, or a certain occasion.
This semantic rule also applies to the second category. The phrase tihua in this category indicates that the action of ti on a painting medium is for or about something beyond the painting. On the other hand, xiehua 寫畫 generally means to paint a painting. From the above examples, it is also noticeable that ti always enjoys the presence of an audience or a targeted reader in the mind of the inscriber. These words and examples provide us with a conceptual picture that help us understand what was being implied when Ming people used the phrase tihua, without it being stated explicitly. A safe conclusion is that tihua indicates a social direction for audiences, recipients, or any other potential reader.
Tihua was the most frequently used phrase in the Ming period to signify the idea “to inscribe a painting” or “of being inscribed on a painting.” But there were multiple options available to express the meaning of “a text on a painting,”. In fact, Chinese literature never comes up with a fixed term for painting inscription. An array of expressions is available, ranging from kuan 款 , kuanti 款題 , kuanzhi 款識 , luokuan 落款 , to ti 題 , tiba 題跋, tikuan 題款 , tixie 題寫 , tiyong 題詠 and pinti 品題 . Each of these terms has subtly unique emphasis in terms of purpose, content, physical place, or the actual process.11 The different
10 Hu Zhi 胡直 (1517-1585), Henglu jingshe canggao 衡盧精舍藏稿 , juan 26, SKQS edition, 2b.
11 For an elaboration on ba and tiba, see Clarissa von Spee, Wu Hufan, 23; De-nin Deanna Lee, “Colophons, Reception, and Chinese Painting,” 85-86.
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emphasis also has to do with the fact that the various formats of Chinese painting determine the various forms of texts to be inscribed. Kuan is a frequently used word for the noun “painting inscription.” The oracle proof, not discovered until 1899, supports that kuan originally denoted “to burn firewood as a sacrifice to heaven.” As oracle script was replaced by bronzeware script, a symbolic radical was added to the glyph of kuan and its meaning changed to “words that had been carved or casted on sacrificial vessels (i.e. bronzewares).” Hence, in relation to painting inscriptions, kuan primarily refers to the artist’s signature and other additional information, such as date, place of birth, and the dedicatee, just like the words carved or cast on a bronzeware are used to state the commissioner of the utensil.
In this dissertation, I do not differentiate between ti and kuan, and the other phrases derived from the two words. Instead, I use the very general English translation “painting inscription”
to refer to my research subject: that is, various genres of texts being written on, for, or about paintings. It must be noted that the translation is not precise. The verb “inscribe” in English usage refers, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, “to write, mark, or delineate (words, a name, characters, etc.) in or on something.”12 While in Chinese, ti only refers to writing something with a brush. Nonetheless, “inscribe” and “inscription”
are the most suitable and the least misleading words available in English and therefore are widely used by art historians on Chinese art history.
The Emergence of Painting Inscriptions
Exactly when the earliest painting inscription came into being is contended. Inquiries into this question began in the mid- seventeenth century. Shen Hao 沈 顥 (1589-ca.1661), a late Ming critic, was the first person to discuss this issue. In his writing
12 The entry “Inscribe,” Oxford English Dictionary, accessed March 4, 2016, http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/96648?redirectedFrom=inscribing#eid.
on art entitled Elktail Whisk for Painting (Hua zhu 畫 塵 ), Shen Hao argues: “Before the Yuan Dynasty, inscriptions were rarely seen. They hide in painted rock crevices, because painters were afraid that any imperfect calligraphy might harm the painting composition. Later on, as people improved themselves both in calligraphy and painting, the attachment of word to image becomes a wonderful sight.”13 Shen Hao’s view presumably resulted from his own observations of old paintings bearing dates earlier than the Yuan period (the credibility of attribution is beyond the scope of my discussion here). Some decades later, Wang Gai 王 概 (fl. 1677-1705) proposed a similar idea in The Mustard Seed Garden Painting Manual (Jiezi yuan huazhuan 芥子園 畫傳), the most popular and widest spread painting model book since the early Qing period.
The subsequent theoretical and critical writings of art consistently set the beginning point of painting inscription to earlier periods. Fang Xun 方 薰 (1736-1799) accredited Su Shi 蘇 軾 (1037-1101) and Mi Fu 米芾 (1051-1107) with being initiators of the practice of inscribing on paintings.14 Qian Du 錢杜 (1764-1845) arrived at a similar assumption. “Inscriptions on paintings were written only in small characters in the Tang period, hidden in tree roots and rock fissures. Those who were unskilled in calligraphy only inscribed on the back of the painting.” Qian asserts that “[t]
he date information was not recorded until the Song period. It is usually just in fine regular script, and never written into two columns.”15 Qian Du goes on to give all the credit to Su Shi. But Shen Deqian 沈德潛 (1673-1769), one of the most important high Qing literary critics and, a century later, Chen Jin 陳僅 (1787-1868), both firmly asserted that Du Fu was the true initiator.16 Chen Jin
13 Shen Hao, Hua zhu 畫塵 , in MSCS 1. 6, 36.
14 Fang Xun, Shanjingju hualun 山靜居畫論 , juan II, Zhibuzu zhai congshu 知不 足齋叢書 edition, comp. Bao Tingbo 鮑廷博 (1728-1814), printed between 1786- 1814, 14a.
15 Qian Du, Songhu huayi 松 壺 畫 憶 , in MSCS 3. 4, 78. English translation adapted from Max Loehr, “Chinese Paintings with Song Dated Inscriptions,”
219.
16 Shen Deqian, Shuoshi zuiyu 說詩晬語 , collat. and annot. Huo Songlin
(Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1979), 245.
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asserts: “Poems inscribed on painting began with Old Du (Du Fu), and everybody reads these works (of his).”17 All the above proposals were made on the basis of empirical observation and were essentially confined by an individual’s limited accessibility to pre-Yuan paintings. Yet, both Su Shi and Du Fu are known for their literary deeds. Regardless of who the “true” initiator was, the existence of a quest for the initiator of the great masters of literature in the Ming and Qing eras should be noted.
The emergence of painting inscriptions is an issue that has also caught the attention of modern scholars. A wide spectrum of opinions have been voiced, on which my tracing of the emergence is largely based. The earliest evidence of a painting bearing an inscription is an early twelfth-century work. In other words, inscriptions came into being no later than this time. But any attempt to reconstruct the situation in the earlier period meets with a severe lack of material evidence and ambiguous textual evidence. It is also problematic to retroactively search for prototypes of painting inscriptions in the Tang and pre-Tang eras.
The history of painting inscriptions is not lineal development from a starting point to an endpoint, and what occurred prior to the twelfth century was not an orderly process. There is even no consensus about what a painting inscription is. Should we consider any form of image-and-text combination an inscription?
Or should we only consider texts written on a two-dimensional image, and should its content relate to the content of the image?
Any effort to trace the origin of inscription depends largely on the answers to these questions.
Text and visuality were combined quite early on in ancient China. Inscriptions carved on bronzewares of the Zhou dynasty (1046 BCE-256 BCE) are one type of this combination realized on three-dimensional objects. Tibang 題榜 or bangti, lit., “honour-roll inscription,” is another type of combination on two-dimensional
17 Chen Jin, Zhulin Dawen 竹林答問 , in Qing shihua xubian 清詩話選編 , Vol. 2, 2245-46. Quoted from Jonathan Chaves, “‘Meaning beyond the Painting’: The Chinese Painter as Poet,” in Words and Images: Chinese Poetry, Calligraphy, and Painting, ed. Alfreda Murck and Wen C. Fong (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art), 435-36.
surfaces. Tibang is often accredited as being the embryo of painting inscription.18 This form of art prevailed in the Han dynasty. The vast majority of extant tibang are stone carvings, in the form of a phrase or a short sentence identifying a great figure or illustrating a depiction based on Confucian texts. Tibang was highly didactic. It was normally used to decorate spaces aimed at moralizing or civilizing the owner or beholder, such as ancestral shrines, tombs or the imperial palace.19 One may draw a vague link between painting inscription and tibang insofar as the latter would have regulated the beholder’s experiences in terms of appreciating words and images simultaneously. But it should be noted that tibang’s function and way of representation is significantly different from painting inscriptions.
The Han period also saw another way of bonding text with painting; that is, creating literature for paintings. These Han literary writings were part of the zan genre. Zan, 讚 or 贊 in Chinese, is a type of short verse featuring a four-syllable metric.
This literary genre was developed to praise or satirize people and things. This notion of satire, however, raises problems with regard to current English translations of zan, including “eulogy,”
“panegyric,” and “encomium.” Stephen Owen’s translation –
“adjunct verse” – is derived from the fact that zan usually follows another text as a supplementary illustration.20 To some extent, none of the translations match the original term precisely. In the following discussion, I adopt “eulogy” as a tentative solution.
18 For opinions in this regard, see Charles Hartman, “Poetry and Painting,” 469- 70.
19 Two existing examples are Wu Liang Shrine (78-151 CE in modern Shandong Province), a magnificent Eastern Han funerary shrine. For a detailed list of the Wuliang inscriptions and iconographical studies of them, see Wu Hung, The Wu Liang Shrine: The Ideology of Early Chinese Pictorial Art (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989), appendix I, 233-327. Another example is the Helingeer Tombs (ca. 160-170 CE) in modern Inner Mongolia, see Ge Shanlin, Helin ge’er hanmu bihua 和林格爾漢墓壁畫 (Hohhot: Neimenggu renmin chubanshe, 1978).
20 Literary writings of zan are seldom translated into English. But English translations of Wenxin diaolong 文 心 雕 龍 – an early critic book of Chinese literature – have rendered several translations of this term. “Eulogy” and
“encomium” are relatively popular. “Panegyric” is used by Siu-kit Wong in The Book of Literary Design, and “Adjunct verse” appears in Stephen Owen’s Readings in Chinese Literary Thought.
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Han eulogies were made for human beings and objects, and those specifically for paintings were dubbed huazan 畫讚 , or “painting eulogy.” “Eulogy of the Portrait of Dongfang Shuo” (Dongfang shuo huazan 東 方 朔 畫 讚 ) is an example in which the author, Xiahou Zhan 夏侯湛 (243-291 CE), following an encounter with a portrait of Dongfang Shuo 東方朔 (154 BC-93 BCE) in a memorial shrine, expounded his praise of the outstanding wisdom and learning of this historical figure. The content of painting eulogies is closely connected with the pictures, but the two arts do not share the same surface. Despite this spatial separation, painting eulogies are valued for their length. Compared with the phrases and short sentences of tibang, the longer texts of huazan granted much more space for the detailed description of an image, which resulted in more sophisticated interactions. This is perhaps the reason why a number of studies credit painting eulogy as the origin of painting inscription.21 It is also worthwhile to note that because most paintings in this period were figurative, , painting eulogy has established a strong connection with portraits since this early phase. This connection was still exerting its influence in the Ming era. I will return to painting eulogy for portraiture in Chapter 5.
In the fourth century, silk became a new painting medium.
Silk paintings of this period began to incorporate literary texts longer than eulogies. Nymph of the Luo River (Luoshen fu tu 洛 神 賦 圖 ) illustrates this trend. This scroll painting is painted after a fu 賦 , or “rhapsody,” “prose poetry,” written by Cao Zhi’s 曹 植 (192-232).22 The painter is said to be the great master Gu Kaizhi 顧 愷 之 (ca. 344-405), but his original has long been lost.23 Extensive examination of several extant copies of this
21 For opinions in this regard, see Liu Jicai, “Du Fu bushi tihuashi de shouchuang zhe – Jian lun tihuashi de chansheng yu fazhan” 杜甫不是題畫詩 的首創者—— 兼論題畫詩的產生與發展 , Liaoning daxue xuebao 遼寧大學學報 , No. 2 (1982): 67-71; Shen Shuhua, Zhongguohua tikuan yishu 中 國 畫 題 款 藝 術 (Shanghai: Xuelin chubanshe, 2009), 2-3.
22 For an English translation of the full text, see Burton Watson trans., Chinese Rhyme-Prose: Poems in the Fu Form from the Han and Six Dynasties Periods (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971), 55-62.
23 For an analysis of the copies of Nymph of the Luo River, see Pao-chen Chen,
painting has led scholars to speculate that the earliest mode in the late sixth century would have divided the image into several scenes and collocated with corresponding texts.24 The same composition can be found in Admonitions of the Instructress to the Court Ladies (Nüshi zhen tu 女史箴图 ), an extant handscroll also attributed to Gu Kaizhi, which is generally recognized as a work produced between the fifth and the seventh century. This scroll is also painted after a third century text of the same name. Since didacticism was the main purpose of picture-making at that time,25 it is not surprising that the texts on these silk paintings carry a strong hint of admonition. Together with the images of virtuous women, these texts were intended to discipline the audience.
The period of the Six Dynasties is marked in literary history as being an era in which shi 詩 , or “poetry,” was taking shape.
This new literary genre featured pentasyllabic lines and metrical regulation. The poetry of this period appears to have originated in eulogy; indeed, in the early phase, writings in this poetic style were often given the title of a eulogy. “Eulogy of Shang Chang and Qin Qing” (Shang Chang Qin Qing zan 尚 長 禽 慶 讚 ) by Tao Qian 陶潛 (365-427) is one example that already adopted five-character lines. This eulogy-poem is for a portrait of two recluses, named Shang Chang and Qin Qing. Jiang Yan’s 江 淹 (444-505) “Eulogy of Cloudy Mountain” (Yunshan zan 雲山讚 ) is another example. This series of eulogies is dedicated to a set of murals depicting Taoist fairy mountains. Despite being named eulogies, they are essentially five-syllable poems. These examples demonstrate a transition from painting eulogy to tihua shi, or
“poems on paintings,” and this transition should be viewed
“Chuanshi ‘Luoshen fu’ gushihua de biaoxian leixing yu fengge xipu” 傳世《洛 神賦》故事畫的表現類型與風格系譜, Gugong xueshu jikan 故宮學術季刊 , Vol.
23, No. 1 (Autumn 2003): 175-223. See also Pao-chen Chen, “Times and Space in Chinese Narrative Paintings of the Han and the Six Dynasties,” in Times and Space in Chinese Culture, eds. Chun-chieh Huang and Erik Zürcher (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 239-85.
24 Pao-chen Chen, “Chuanshi ‘Luoshen fu’,” 182-84.
25 Craig Clunas, Art in China (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 30.
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from a broader context. One the one hand, the eulogy genre was in decline; the new verse genre of wuyan shi 五言詩 , or “five syllable poetry,” was gaining momentum as a form of short and delicate verse imbued with literary skill and intelligence. On the other hand, poetry deeply rooted in the growing consciousness of landscape as an aesthetic subject and the emerging landscape painting, as Jiang Yan’s writing shows.
Aoki Masaru credited painting eulogy as the subgenre that had prepared the real foundation for poems on paintings.26 But some researchers believe that it was only when poetry began to embrace painting as its subject, like Yu Xin’s 庾 信 (513-581)
“Poems for Painted Folding-screens” (Yong huapingfeng shi 詠 畫 屏 風 詩 ), that the true origin of poems on paintings emerged.27
“Poems about objects” are named yongwu shi 詠 物 詩 , and those specifically about paintings are called yonghua shi 詠畫詩 . However, to Shimada Shūjirō, both painting eulogy and poems on objects during this phase were still different from painting inscription, because their “internal connection [with painting]
was weak.”28 If we put aside the obsession with the origin issue, Charles Hartman’s view on the new shift of the underlying pattern of creating texts for pictures is intriguing. He argues that, in this period, the literature associated with paintings began to spring from its role of mediating the image and the existing texts from which the image derived. The literature no longer assumed the reader’s reception of the didactic message to be univocal;
instead, it turned to recording the writer’s personal experience of
26 Lau Dimchauk, Chen Fongching, Ho Chewah eds., Jiangyan ji zhuzi suoyin 江 淹集逐字索引, Vol. 11 (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Chinese University Press, 2001), 118. For studies on Jiang Yan’s life and his literary writings, see Yu Shaochu,
“Jiangyan nianpu” 江 淹 年 譜 , in Zhongguo guji yanjiu 中 國 古 籍 研 究 , Vol. 1 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1996), 405-41. Takahashi Kazumi , “Kōen no bungaku” 江淹の文學 , Yoshikawa hakashi taikyū kinen Chūku bungaku ronshū 吉川博士退休紀念中國文學論集 (Tokyo: Chikuma shobō, 1968), 253-70.
27 Aoki Masaru, “Daiga bungaku no hatten,” 7.
28 Shen Shuhua, Zhongguohua tikuan yishu, 6-7; Huang Yi-kuan, Wan Ming zhi sheng Qing nüxing tihuashi yanjiu – yi yuedu shequn ji qi ziwo chengxian weizhu 晚明 至盛清女性題畫詩研究── 以閱讀社群及自我呈現為主 (Taipei: huamulan, 2009), 16-18.
viewing the painting.29
This transition was completed in the Tang dynasty.
Unfortunately, we face a paucity of extant Tang paintings. A heyday of murals and painted screens, the Tang period prompted Michael Sullivan to speculate that writing on walls and on screens was perhaps more common than on scrolls.30 A popular celebratory gathering among Tang graduands of civil service examinations is worthwhile to be mentioned. Oliver Moore has shown that the purpose of this kind of gathering, in some records called timing hui 題 名 會 , or “name signing parties”, was to inscribe the names of successful graduands at a popular public site, so as to publicize their achievements.31 Some Tang literati revisited and carefully updated their inscriptions as a kind of biographical records of themselves. It is tempting to speculate that these name-inscribing practices facilitated the conceptualization of inscribing as an activity meant for audience, and the conceptualization might have affected the practice of inscribing on paintings at that time.
Unfortunately, it remains unknown about the physical form of associating texts with paintings in the Tang era. Tang writings on art are in very limited amounts, and their focus is largely on artists rather than artworks. One may resort to later renditions of Tang paintings to discover retrospective ideas about how texts might have been combined with paintings, and how a combined entity was supposed to have been appreciated during this period.
Ten Inscriptions and Pictures of a Cottage (Caotang shizhi tu 草堂十志 圖) seems a promising example. The original, said to be painted by a revered Tang hermit Lu Hong 盧鴻 (fl. 7th to 8th cent.), is long lost, but three Song copies survive. These copies follow a scheme reminiscent of Nymph of the Luo River: images alternate with long texts from right to left. Yet, it is impossible to say whether any of
29 Shimada Shūjirō, “Shi sho ga sanzetsu,” in Chūgoku kaigashi kenkyū 中国絵画 史研究 (Tō̄kyō: Tōkyō Chūō Kōron Bijutsu Shuppan, 1993), 229.
30 Charles Hartman, “Poetry and Painting,” 474-75.
31 Michael Sullivan, The Birth of Landscape Painting in China: The Sui and T’ang Dynasties (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), 106.
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these copies faithfully corresponds to the lost original.
The importance of the Tang period in the subsequent centuries lies in an unprecedented output of literature about paintings – mostly poems. The titles of these poems explicitly acknowledge their linkage with paintings, such as ti… (Inscribe on a painting entitled…), guan 觀 … (watch a painting entitle…), and …tu 圖 (A picture entitled…). Neither these titles, nor their contents offer a clear statement about their spatial relationship to the pictures. For example, a poem title like “Ti huabai 題畫柏 ” can be interpreted as either “Inscribe on a cypress painting” or as
“Inscribe for a cypress painting.” We do not know whether poems such as these were executed directly onto paintings or on separate sheets of paper. Also we cannot know whether Emperor Wenzong of Tang dynasty (r. 827-840) inscribed a poem on a newly painted bamboo screen or merely composed a poem about it.33 It is true that some of these Tang poems associated with painting are quite long, like Li Bai’s 李 白 (701-762) “Contemplating Yuan Danqiu’s screen that has Mountain Wu painted” (Guang Yuan Danqiu Wushan pingfeng 觀元丹丘巫山屏風 ), and so are less likely to have been written on a screen or a scroll painting. There are also few examples, such as a poem by Du Fu entitled “Viewing the painted and inscribed wall by Junior Guardian Xue Ji” (Guan xueshaobao shuhua bi 觀 薛 稷 少 保 書 畫 壁 ), that unmistakably bear witness to a simultaneously painted and inscribed surface. Moreover, the exchange of paintings and poems became popular between geographically separated Tang literati.34 It is not surprising that some of these poems were added to the painting surface. A safe conclusion would be: the practice of
32 Oliver Moore, Rituals of Recruitment in Tang China: Readings an Annual Programme in the Collected Statements by Wang Dingbao (870-940) (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 263-69.
33 For discussions of the authenticity and attributions of the extant copies, see Hsu Fu- kuan, Zhongguo yishu jingshen 中國藝術精神 (Taichung: Sili donghai daxue, 1966), 485-514, 522-25; Wu Gangyi, “Lu Hong ji qi huaji wei’e yuanliu kaojian” 盧鴻及其畫 蹟偽訛源流考鑒 (MA thesis, Taiwan Normal University, 1998). Current studies differ widely in opinions on the attributions and dates of these copies. Hsu even doubts if Lu Hong had ever had such a painting work of his cottage.
34 Zhu Jingxuan 朱景玄 (fl. 841-851), Tangchao minghua lu 唐朝名畫錄 , SKQS edition, 15a.
inscribing on paintings began to emerge in this period, as a sporadic but growing trend.
What is more relevant is that we can understand Tang literature from a reverse perspective. Our obsession with the spatial relationship between the literature and the paintings to a large extent conceals a well-developed tradition of preserving texts for paintings. This tradition began at the days of Xiahou Zhan and Jiang Yan, and was still active in the Ming era. If we browse the great Ming painter Wen Zhengming’s individual anthology Grand Fields (Futian ji 甫田集 ), compiled and printed in Wen’s time, along with four others printed posthumously, before the end of the Ming, we immediately find that a considerable proportion of the texts in these anthologies are for inscriptions.
These texts by Wen Zhengming enjoyed reproductions throughout time. For example, in 1936, publishers compiled the inscriptions into a single volume entitled Inscriptions of The Editorial Assistant Wen (Wen daizhao tiba 文待詔題跋 ). In dealing with these texts, it is crucial that we do not set any rules or boundaries when reconstructing how the people who created, prompted, and circulated these texts viewed them. In chapters 3 and 4 of this dissertation, I will deal specifically with anthologies compiled exclusively from culled inscriptions. It is certain that inscriptions of this kind were such a part of the Ming histories of art, books, and the cultural elite, that it would be mistaken to exclude them for being failed inscriptions.
Inscribers and Social Practices
The Tang’s heritage also rests in the spreading interest in painting inscriptions into a wider social group. By the early seventh century, efforts to combine texts and pictures were predominantly made by the upper class of the society who possessed the requisite literacy and skills: the royal court, the aristocratic leaders, and the high elite. A narrow group of people, they sought moral education and aesthetic pleasure from the
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association of text and picture. However, the Tang literary materials sketch a picture suggesting that, during the seventh to the ninth centuries, the wenshi 文 士 or “educated men” were the most active group of people that associated writings with paintings. Although many of them hailed from aristocratic or high-official clans, some were of plebeian background or descendants of long declined official families.
Du Fu was born into a minor scholar-official family. For centuries, this great poet was credited with being the true initiator of making poems on paintings.35 This accreditation certainly has to do with Du Fu’s unparalleled status in poetry history. It is also because he produced the highest number of poems about or on paintings – twenty poems under eighteen titles – of all the Tang poets. That said, if we are to talk of an ideal poet-painter, the laureateship must go to another Tang poet Wang Wei. Although Wang Wei only left two poems related to painting, he was highly venerated among the Northern Song literati.36 This ideal image of Wang Wei was consolidated among the Ming people. They regarded him as a true cultural icon, cultivated, free-handed, reclusive and talented both at painting and poetry, drawing only to nourish his own spirit. To some extent, Du Fu and Wang Wei overshadow other Tang poets’ achievements. In fact, Bai Juyi composed at least nine poems about paintings, Fang Gan 方 幹 (809-888) eight, Liu Shang 劉 商 (fl. 738-779) six, and Li Bai six poems. And there are further seventy or more poets who made literary productions for paintings.37 These poems are notably occasional, created for banquets, for house visits or for during or before a farewell. They were presented on these particular occasions to heighten the atmosphere or to repay the host’s hospitality. They reveal in great detail about the circumstances of the production of painting inscriptions. For instance, hosted
35 Asami Yōji 浅見洋二 , “Kyori to sōzō - chūgoku niokeru shi to media” 距離と 想像― 中国における詩とメディア、メディアとしての詩 ―, in Sō dai shakai no nettowāku 宋代社会のネットワーク (Tokyo: Kyūko shoin, 1998), 294-301.
36 Shen Deqian, Shuoshi zuiyu, 245.
37 Wen Fong, “The Problem of forgeries in Chinese Painting,” Artibus Asiae, Vol.
XXV, 2/3 (1962): 104.
at a party and showed a painted screen, the poet Gao Shi 高 適 (ca. 706-765) wrote: “The host unveils the painted panel screen to entertain his guests; [the screen] tells all about steeds coming from the West Region. 主 人 娛 賓 畫 障 開 , 只 言 騏 驥 西 極 來 .”38 Famous for poetry with a military theme, Gao Shi applied his familiarity with imported steeds, often used as army horses, to this poem composition. The fancy screen might have truly impressed him; meanwhile, his poem was a sincere compliment to the host on such a social occasion.
The inscribers were confronted with a drastic transition in Chinese society in the ninth and tenth centuries. During this period, the society shifted from one dominated by pedigree to one dominated by education and knowledge.39 The Song regime greatly improved and institutionalized the Civil Service Examination system on the basis of Tang heritage. The examination system theoretically promised every common man an equal chance to climb up the social ladder and serve the government, provided he could succeed in the examinations. The successful examination candidates and aspirants quickly formed their own community and a literati culture blossomed. The local elite began to be closely bound to the central government due to their engagement in state affairs.40 The literati also intruded into realms that they had previously not been a significant part of. With regard to the art of painting, they described painting the same elegant as poetry, and presented the formulation of
38 For Liu Shang, see Takenami Haruka, “Chū tō no ryū shō nitsuite – Shijin, ki seki gaka, dōshi toshite no shōgai” 中 唐 の 劉 商 に つ い て ― 詩 人・ 樹 石 画 家・道士としての生涯, Ko bunka kenkyū 古文化研究 , No. 4 (2005): 1-29. The statistics of Bai Juyi’s poem is based on Bai Juyi ji 白 居 易 集 , comp. Gu Xueji (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1979). Bai Juyi also has five zan poems for paintings and a screen. The statistics of Fang Gan, Liu Shang and Li Bai are based on Chen Bangyan comp., Yuding lidai tihuashi lei, SKQS edition.
39 Gao Shi, “Watching A Painted Horse at Supernumerary Bi’s Mansion with Mr. Xianyu in Luoyang” (Tong xianyu luoyang yu biyuanwai zhai guan huama ge 同 鮮于洛陽於畢員外宅觀畫馬歌). Gaoshi ji jiaozhu 高適集校註 , collat. and annot.
Sun Qinshan (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1984), 252-53.
40 For the transition into a community of educated elite in Tang and Song societies, see Peter K. Bol, “This Culture of Ours”: Intellectual Transition in T’ang and Sung China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992), especially the introduction and chapter 1.
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“amateur literati painting” (shiren hua 士 人 畫 ), which required a painter to be both cultivated and erudite.41 Consequently, painting was elevated to a higher status (though still lower than literature and calligraphy) and thus a literatus could participate in this activity without the embarrassment that the Tang official Yan Liben 閻立本 (ca. 600-673) had suffered in his day. A number of literary topoi, such as “Dongting qiuyue 洞 庭 秋 月 ” (autumn moon over Dongting Lake) and “Xiaoxiang woyou 潇 湘 臥 遊 ” (sightseeing Xiao and Xiang rivers on bed), found their way into twelfth century painting.42
Su Shi and his coterie played a vital part in the Song literati’s engagements in painting. It was Su Shi who first projected an aura onto Wang Wei, the aura of an ancient model of amateur poet-painter who produced poetic paintings and picturesque poems. A famous poem by Su Shi articulates this idea:
When one savours Wang Wei’s poems, there are paintings in them;
When one looks at Wang Wei’s pictures, there are poems.
味摩詰之詩, 詩中有畫 .
觀摩詰之畫, 畫中有詩 .
Su Shi’s admiration for Wang Wei had a profound influence on future generations. Su Shi was also revered as an initiator of exploring the relationship between painting and poetry. In another poem written for a bamboo painting, he expresses a well- known idea that the two arts share the same principle: “There is one basic rule in poetry and painting, natural genius and freshness. 詩 畫 本 一 律 , 天 工 與 清 新 .”43 Ignoring the problems
41 Mark Halperin, Out of the Cloister, Literati Perspectives on Buddhism in Sung China, 960-1279 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Centre, 2006), 5-6.
42 For the comparison of painting and poetry in the Song literati writings and the view in the West, see Susan Bush, The Chinese Literati on Painting: Su Shih (1037-1101) to Tung Ch'i-ch'ang (1555-1636) (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971), 22-28.
43 English translation adapted from Susan Bush, The Chinese Literati on Painting, 25.
in this assertion, Su Shi successfully attracted attention from his fellow literate to win a space in painting, a domain that had previously and overwhelmingly been dominated by professional painters.
Su Shi and his friends left over four hundred poems on or about paintings, in contrast to the twenty by Du Fu. These poems constituted the most significant corpus in the field of painting inscriptions before the Ming period, not only in terms of quantity, but also in terms of some of the important thoughts on the relationship between painting and poetry embedded in these poems. But none of them can be found from extant Northern Song paintings. The scarcity of Song paintings is certainly a reason. It is perhaps in part a result of the practice at that time that inscriptions were written separately and mounted to the beginning or the end of painting scrolls.44
The brilliant achievements of Song literati more or less obscure another group of artists from the view of historians; that is, court painters. Court artists, unlike the literati in control of the discursive power, left a dearth of writings and records relating to their attitude towards painting inscription. As royal servants, they usually did not leave any autographs on their works. Even the extremely unobtrusive signature that Fan Kuan 范寬 (ca. 960- ca. 1032) left on Travelers among Mountains and Streams (Xishan xinglu 谿山行旅 , fig. 1-1) is a rare case. The literacy level of these professional painters might also put them at a disadvantage in terms of producing an inscription longer than a signature.
However, the limitations of court painters were exactly where the literati painters found their advantages: knowledge, cultivation, spontaneity and freedom of self-expression. Understanding this boom in inscriptions as an efficient strategy for differentiating people helps us to understand a similar boom in the Ming period.
However, in the Ming period, the target to be distinguished from educated men became merchants. I will elaborate this point in the following chapters.
44 English translation quoted from ibid., 26.
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On the other hand, the Song court was not completely absent from the practice of inscribing on paintings. It is worth noting that the earliest surviving paintings bearing inscriptions were from the court of Emperor Huizong 徽 宗 (r. 1100-1126). Birds in the Branches of a Wax-plum (Lamei shanqin tu 臘梅山禽圖 ) is evidence of the court’s efforts in this area. This is a collaborative work, with a picture probably done by a court painter, and a poem inscribed personally by the emperor.45 His inscription can also be found on A Golden Pheasant Resting on Hibiscus Branch (Furong jinji tu 芙 蓉 錦 雞 圖, fig. 1-2).46 This square-shaped inscription executed in the emperor’s hallmark-like calligraphy conspicuously appears at the lower right part of the painting surface. It is questionable whether the poem was in anticipation of or as a means to save the
45 Fujita Shinya, “Nansō gain no Shi sho ga: sanzetsu no shiten kara” 南宋画院 の詩書画：三絶の視点から, Jinbun ronsō: Mie daigaku jinbungakubu bunka gakka kenkyū kiyō 人文論叢：三重大学人文学部文化学科研究紀要 , No. 20 (2003), 164.
46 For the study on Zhao Ji’s art and his role in painting activities, see Maggie Bickford, “Emperor Huizong and the Aesthetic of Agency,” Archives of Asian Art, No. 53 (2002/2003): 71-104.
Fig. 1-1 Detail of Fan Kuan’s hidden signature (in the foliage, upper right of the image) on Travelers among Mountains and
Streams, undated, ink and colour on silk, hanging scroll, 206.6 cm× 103.3 cm, The Palace Museum, Taipei.
composition.47 This interest in inscribing t e x t s o n c o u r t paintings persisted in the next several decades. Emperor Ningzong’s consort, known as Yang Meizi 楊 妹 子 (1162-1232), left more than one dozen inscriptions o n p a i n t i n g s b y c o u r t p a i n t e r s .4 8 These inscriptions can be understood a s p l a n n e d c o l l a b o r a t i o n b e t w e e n t h e painters and their r o y a l p a t r o n .
Compared with t h e c o m p o s i t i o n of inscription and p a i n t i n g c r e a t e d by future generations, those by Emperor Huizong and Empress Yang are rather awkward. The two arts in their works illustrate an incompatible tension as one art competes with the other for space and attention. Other twelfth-century inscribers experienced a similar problem.49 Nevertheless, it is undeniable that the
47 English translation quoted from Charles Hartman, “Poetry and Painting,”
482.
48 Hsu Fu-kuan argues that Huizong’s inscription might be an expedient measure to balance the visuality. See Hsu Fu-kuan, Zhongguo yishu jingshen, 480.
49 A detailed list of the painting inscriptions by Yang Meizi, see Hu Ying,
“Tan wenzi yu tuxiang jiehe jincheng zhong gongting yishu de zuoyong – yi Nansong Ningzong huanghou Yang Meizi de tihuashi wei li” 談文字與圖像結合
進程中宮廷藝術的作用──以南宋寧宗皇后楊妹子的題畫詩為例, Nanjing yishu
xueyuan xuebao 南京藝術學院學報 , Vol. 1 (2009): 66. For the artistic activities of
Fig. 1-2 A Golden Pheasant Resting on Hibiscus
Branch bearing an inscribed poem by Emperor
Huizong, undated, ink and colour on silk,
hanging scroll, 65.5 × 176.5 cm, The Palace
Museum, Beijing.
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Song ruling house had a notable impact on the appearance of Chinese paintings with their delicate and strikingly placed inscriptions. Given the extremely limited access to these imperial paintings, we should not be too optimistic about gauging their influence on contemporaneous artists who did not serve for the court. Nonetheless, it seems to be the case that since the early Song period, inscribers had formed a diverse group.
After the collapse of the Southern Song, the Yuan ruling house took much of the Song imperial collection. Some members of the royal family became active art collectors and patrons. But there are few records that evidence the same level of interest in inscribing paintings. The Imperial Elder Sister Grand Princess Sengge Ragi (1283-1331) is an exception, who leaves us with a precious record. The precess once hosted a grand and elegant gathering in 1323, at which she displayed a number of precious artworks from her collection and invited the gathered attendants to add their colophons.50 The Ming court did not achieve much more impressive fruits as well. It is true that Emperor Xuanzong 宣 宗 (Zhu Zhanji 朱 瞻 基 , whose reign was named Xuande 宣 德 , lasted from 1426 to 1435) was known for his enthusiasm for painting, and he personally executed a number of paintings and signed them. But in light of what was happening to inscriptions outside the court, he were much less active in conceiving and making use of inscriptions.
Few of the inscriptions produced during the Song dynasty were made by the same hand as the pictures. Mi Youren’s 米 友 仁 (1072-1151) Cloudy Mountains (Yunshan tu 雲 山 圖 , fig. 1-3), painted in 1130, is a rare exception. The end of the scroll carries a quatrain written by the painter. Thus, Mi Youren is the earliest known poet-painter in Chinese history. Mi is also notable for being a nexus of the two groups of inscribers: he served the
the Empress, see Lee Hui-shu, “The Domain of Empress Yang (1162-1233): Art, Gender and Politics at the Southern Song Court,” (PhD diss., Yale University, 1994).
50 For the tension between the two arts, see Zhang Hongxing, “Re-reading Inscriptions in Chinese Scroll Painting: The Eleventh to the Fourteenth Centuries,” Art History, Vol. 28, No. 5 (November 2005): 613-14.
Emperor Gaozong 高 宗 (r. 1127-1162) with his artistic skills, but was also an official-scholar. This is not unlike the great Ming master Wen Zhengming, some four centuries later, who is remembered as a literati painter while also briefly served in the court at Beijing. Furthermore, the Ming era saw a notable trend of educated men employing inscriptions for commercial activities.
Their complicated exploitation of inscriptions in the commercial domain will be an important thread in this dissertation.
Content
What should be inscribed on or for a painting? The Han principle was to use inscriptions to guide the reader towards a desired comprehension already predefined by existing texts. But this principle was no longer important among Tang writers. The Tang people instead employed literary writings to record their personal reactions to a painting. The Qing scholar Shen Deqian summarized the Tang master poet Du Fu’s way as follows:
His method consists entirely of developing ideas without
Fig. 1-3 Detail of Mi Youren’s signature on Cloudy Mountains, ink and
colour on paper, handscroll, 43.7 × 192.6 cm, The Cleveland Museum of Art,
Cleveland.
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sticking to the surface of the painting. For example, in [his poems inscribed for] paintings of horses and of hawks, he inevitably ends up talking about real horses and hawks [as]
he develops discussions of ideas. Later writers have been able to use this [approach] as a model. In addition, in [his poems inscribed for] paintings of landscape, if there are place names that can be verified, he will inevitably describe the feelings of lamenting [for the past] while climbing and observing the view of these places. In [his poems inscribed for] paintings of human figures, if there are actual events which one can grab hold of, he will inevitably develop ideas on understanding men and discussing their times.51
Du Fu’s success rested in his language skills, but also in the skill of artistically transiting back and forth between the painted reality and the actual reality. This iconic “formula” became a legacy for later poets who wanted to verbally tackle subjects with pictorial representations. But this a legacy also put Northern Song literati ahead of the question about what was left for them to do.52 In fact, this pressure resulted in Su Shi and his friends embarking on a new path to compose their inscriptions. They did not keep reminding the reader of a real world outside the painting space;
rather, they “wrote about the art as art.”53 Abandoning the reference to the reality, they transformed inscriptions into an ideal vehicle for expressing their feelings and emotions. Sometimes, self-expression dominated an inscription to such an extent that the link with the painting content became tenuous. The Song people also began to introduce another new kind of content to inscriptions. They used inscriptions to express artistic thoughts
51 For the Mongol princess Senge Ragi and her art collection, see Shen C. Y. Fu,
“Princess Sennge Ragi: Collector of Painting and Calligraphy,” translated and adapted by Marsha Weidner, in Flowering in the Shadows: Women in the History of Chinese and Japanese Painting, ed. Marsha Weidner (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1990), 55-80.
52 Shen Deqian, Shuoshi zuiyu, 245. English translation adapted from Jonathan Chaves, “‘Meaning beyond the Painting’,” 437.
53 For Su Shi’s reaction, see Ronald C. Egan, Word, Image, and Deed in the Life of Su Shi (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994), 301-304.
and opinions. The poem of Su Shi cited earlier, for example, was created for a floral painting, in which the poet proclaims “one basic rule in poetry and painting.” These pioneering explorations by Song people set the stage for Yuan and Ming inscribers to interact with the picture in a textual way.
The Song period also provides us with the fourth aspect of inscription contents, aside from the description of the image, self-expression, and artistic thoughts; that is, the aspect of social factors. Since the twelfth century, inscriptions rooted in social life showed an increasing depth. Mi Youren’s inscription on Cloudy Mountains is a good example in this regard. In the second couplet of the poem that he inscribed, the social incentive for its creation is stated: “To make known that the gentleman who have come to this place, I leave this brush play at your house. 要識先生曾到此 , 故留筆戲在君家.” Peter C. Sturman believes that xiansheng 先生 here refers to Mi Youren’s host, for whom he painted the work.54 We may also interpret it as a reference to Mi himself, proclaiming:
“I have arrived here with my inscription,” which seems to have been intended as an authentication of his painting. In either case, repaying the host’s hospitality may well be the reason behind the work. Song inscriptions were disseminated among an inscriber’s personal connections, and gained public acknowledgement if they were distributed beyond these networks. On example is the notorious Crow Terrace Poetry Case (Wutai shi’an 烏 台 詩 案 ) in 1079, which saw Su Shi charged with criticizing governmental policy and the throne in his writings. Among the material listed by the prosecution was notably a painting inscription that Su Shi had written for his close friend Wang Shen 王詵 (1037 - ca.1093).55
The social facet of inscriptions is embedded in the transmission history of paintings that carry inscriptions, and also in the transmission history of textual collections that
54 Ronald C. Egan, “Poems on Paintings: Su Shih and Huang T’ing-chien,”
Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 43, No. 2 (1983): 419. For the Northern Song literati’s strategy, see also Jonathan Chaves, “‘Meaning beyond the Painting,’” 431-58.
55 Peter C. Sturman, “Mi Youren and the Inherited Literati Tradition:
Dimensions of Ink-play,” (PhD diss., Yale University, 1989), 163.
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embody inscriptions. Mi Youren’s poem on Cloudy Mountains is illustrative in this regard. To the best of my knowledge, Mi’s poem did not find a way into textual anthologies until the late fifteenth century in a Ming painting catalogue, which culled inscriptions from paintings for connoisseurship.56 But the poem in the Ming catalogue is an extended version of the original one written on Cloudy Mountains (fig.1-3). Moreover, this extended poem is preceded by a long prose record, which is claimed to have been issued by the painter Mi Youren as well.57 Since the painting is widely recognized as an authentic Mi Youren and the poem his autograph, the Ming catalogue almost certainly relied on a fake. Intriguingly, this suspicious poem inscription was reproduced twice in subsequent Ming catalogues.58 The parallel poems demonstrate how an inscription might derive variants due to repeated transcription from memory or from the text, or due to intentional fraudulence. I will show in chapters 3 and 4 of this dissertation that in the Ming period, social and economic aspects were the major driving forces behind the production and circulation of texts on or about paintings.
The collapse of the Southern Song and the takeover by the Mongols did not sever the thread of inscribing on paintings. With landscape painting flourishing, painting inscriptions kindled even more passion in the circle of the cultural elite. The Yuan dynasty was a period when the literati painting became “increasingly abstract and conventionalized, a vehicle to express ideas rather than to record visual experience.”59 By painting landscapes as
56 For the Crow Terrace Poetry Case, see Charles Hartman, “Poetry and Politics in 1079: The Crow Terrace Poetry Case of Su Shih,” Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews (CLEAR), No. 12 (1990): 15-44.
57 The same poem also appears in Songshi shiyi 宋詩拾遺 , a book attributed a late Yuan literatus named Chen Shilong 陳世隆 . But there are scholarly doubts on whether this book a Qing pseudo book. See Wang Yuan, “Chen Shilong
‘Songshi shiyi’ bianwei” 陳世隆《宋詩拾遺》辨偽 , Wenxue yichan 文學遺產 , No.
2 (2014): 102-108.
58 Zhu Cunli 朱 存 理 (1444-1513), Shanhu munan 珊 瑚 木 難 , juan 3, Shiyuan congshu 適園叢書 1914 printed edition, 24b-25a.
59 Zhao Qimei 趙琦美 (1563-1624), Zhaoshi tiewang shanhu 鐵網珊瑚 , juan 11, SKQS edition, 45a-46a; Zhang Chou 張丑 (1577-1643), Qinghe shuhua fang 清河書 畫舫, juan 10-A, SKQS edition, 19a-20a.
they were the same as they had been in the past, the unemployed Yuan literati painters managed to reconstruct a space where they could find a sense of belonging. The Yuan period contributed to the practice of inscribing on painting with prose. Prose inscriptions often served to bring a wide range of social matters into the painting space. These social matters included giving dedications, recording the genesis of a painting, commenting on the picture and any previous inscriptions that the picture bore, commemorating an event that the inscriber and the painter had attended. Compared with poem inscriptions, prose inscriptions were often more functional and socially orientated. We see a considerably production of inscriptions from circles centred around or involving Yuan artists, such as Zhao Mengfu 趙 孟 頫 (1254-1322), his peer painter Gao Kegong 高克恭 (1248-1310), and the poet Yu Ji 虞 集 (1272-1348). This socially functional aspect intensified notably in the Ming period. It became very common for an inscription to feature a poem and prose simultaneously, which enabled the inscriber to adequately exploit the different effects of the two genres in social interaction.
As inscriptions grew longer, more space was needed on the painting surface. The demand for space launched a trend in the handscroll format that saw the inscribed texts moved towards the boundary of the painting surface and further onto additional colophon paper.60 This move began no later than the Yuan period and resulted in a “hybrid” handscroll format consisting of multiple sheets of paper.61 The significance of this change to a more flexible Chinese format lies in that it enables a painting to be done either simultaneously or separately in time and space. A handscroll, for example, may become relatively stable as long as all intended sections have been collected and mounted into a whole, but it still leaves open the possibility to add or remove things afterwards. This detachability greatly facilitated the production and utilization of inscribed paintings
60 Michael Sullivan, The Three Perfections, 46.
61 Zhang Hongxing, “Re-reading Inscriptions in Chinese Scroll Painting,” 620- 21.
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on social occasions, when each attendant might contribute a sheet to be finally mounted with the others. Thus, the final work is a collaborative effort.
On the other hand, the Song mode of integrating word-and- image was not abandoned entirely. The Yuan painting masters explored the possibility of a new, organic unity between picture and text. Qian Xuan 錢 選 (ca.1235-ca. 1300) and his friend Zhao Mengfu were two leading figures that connected the Southern Song tradition with later Yuan followers.62 They created a series of integrated works that endowed complex meanings to the visual and verbal symbols, thus greatly enriching the practice.
Yet, this active, sometimes even radical practice of binding word and image together was limited to some small groups of social elite. These groups marked the frontiers of a practice that differed from the common and average activity.
Concluding Remarks
This chapter has traced painting inscriptions in the pre-Ming era in order to provide a foundation for the discussions of the Ming period in the next four chapters. This chapter has first of all dealt with the terminology in the Ming writings that referred to the act of writing something on a painting. It has shown that aside from a number of options, tihua was the most frequently used phrase in the Ming period to signify the idea “to inscribe a painting” or “of being inscribed on a painting.”. In Ming usage, tihua often indicated a social direction for audiences, recipients, or any other potential reader. In other words, the practice and result of inscribing a painting was social and situational.
The remaining sections of this chapter have dealt with the emergence and development of inscriptions. I have argued that this development was deeply imbedded in the political and social transitions of Chinese society throughout time. Inscriptions are by no means purely artistic products, since their meanings and
62 Ibid., 621.
functions are inextricable from social contexts. The dual material form of inscriptions, i.e. on paintings and in anthologies, had existed since an early age, and it has caused a chaotic situation in defining what an inscription is. The inscribers were of multiple interacting and competing groups. The most well-known group is the literati, which defined itself through the institutionalization of the civil service examinations in the late Tang period before gaining much more self-awareness in the Song and Yuan eras.
Although a less visible group was the royalty, emperors and empresses in the Song period nevertheless played some part in promoting the combination of text and image. However, within a larger arena of cultural engagement, their role was negligible.
In terms of the inscription contents and purposes, this chapter has shown that inscriptions underwent a general shift from being didactic to being personal. The Tang, Song, and Yuan writers used inscriptions to describe a painting, to express themselves, to voice their thoughts, or to position themselves at the social occasion when they wrote an inscription.
