Contemplating the Ancients: Aesthetic and Social Issues in Early Chinese Portraiture

371 Pages·1990·11.22 MB·English

by  Audrey Spiro

Preferred Citation: Spiro, Audrey. Contemplating the Ancients: Aesthetic and Social Issues
in Early Chinese Portraiture. Berkeley: University of California Press, c1990 1990.
http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft138nb10m/
Contemplating the Ancients
Aesthetic and Social Issues in Early Chinese Portraiture
Audrey Spiro
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
Berkeley · Los Angeles · Oxford
© 1990 The Regents of the University of California
For MES and JPS,
with gratitude
Preferred Citation: Spiro, Audrey. Contemplating the Ancients: Aesthetic and Social Issues
in Early Chinese Portraiture. Berkeley: University of California Press, c1990 1990.
http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft138nb10m/
For MES and JPS,
with gratitude
Preface
This book is about portraits that were not intended to be physical likenesses
of their subjects and about why they look the way they do. It began when,
reading several studies of recent archaeological finds in China, I wondered
why someone in the fourth century would want to be buried with portraits of
men who had lived a century earlier. I had not expected that answering this
question would be so time-consuming, so intricate—and so intellectually
rewarding. Although I do not know who first created the composition of the
Seven Worthies of the Bamboo Grove and Rong Qiqi, studying these works
of art from the other side, that of the patrons, has increased my appreciation
of the artist's genius. As is proper for a rhetorical work, that creation has
instructed, moved, and delighted me. I continue to be in awe of the artist's
ability to translate ideas into an enduring work of visual art, precisely as Lu
Ji, in his great third-century Rhyme-prose on Literature, had insisted for
another art form. "The function of style is, to be sure, to serve as a prop for
your ideas," he noted (in Achilles Fang's translation).
I first encountered Lu Ji's essay years ago in a seminar on early Chinese
painting and aesthetics directed by Martin Powers, who introduced me to the
important critical and aesthetic ideas of the Period of Disunion. Analyzing
these ideas under his guidance, I came to understand that theories of the
arts could not be divorced from practice, and that neither could be divorced
from the social values of those who wrote about, created, or commissioned
works of art. My greatest debt, therefore, is to my former teacher, Martin
Powers. His unflagging encouragement and counsel when I, naive and blithe,
first leaped into uncharted waters—and much later, when I was less naive
and even less blithe—were the buoys that kept me afloat. Above all, he
taught me the true meaning of style, for which I am most grateful.
― xiv ―
Ellen Johnston Laing's fine studies of the Seven Worthies theme in Chinese
art were the initial stimuli for my interest in their earliest known portraits.
My own examination of the theme gazes up to contemplate the ancients and
is offered as the parallel to her demonstrations of the patterns it bequeathed
to the future.
I have incurred many other debts in the course of this research and regret
that I can here acknowledge only a few. That which I owe to Richard B.
Mather is evident throughout this book. I have learned much both from his
published works and from his private communications. In addition, I should
like to thank him for the pleasure I continue to derive from his wonderful
translations, so copiously quoted in this work. May all his youtiao be crisp.
I am indebted also to Chi-yun Chen for his early guidance through the vast
historical literature of the period. James F. Cahill first enabled me, long ago,
to study good photographs of the Seven Worthies murals and to formulate
some of the issues. His continued interest in my research has been much
appreciated. Joanna-Woods Marsden thoughtfully recommended appropriate
studies in the field of Renaissance portraiture; Sheldon Nodelman gave
generously of his time for lively and stimulating discussions of the genre of
portraiture.
Research in China in 1984–1985 was made possible by the award of a
Dickson Fellowship from the Department of Art, Design, and Art History at
the University of California, Los Angeles. I was able to complete that
research only with the help and encouragement of many friends and
colleagues in China who patiently answered questions, opened doors, and
offered important advice. I will always remember their generosity, and I
cherish the friendships that transcend time and borders. Juanjuan wang
xishi. I am grateful also to the authorities at the Nanjing Museum for their
kind permission to photograph relevant artworks.
I owe much, personally and intellectually, to Thomas A. Metzger, Madlyn
Millner Kahr, Sarah Handler, and Willis Barnstone. Suzanne Cahill suffered
through many inchoate monologues and rough drafts of the manuscript. For
her unwavering support, informed understanding, and criticism, I thank her.
Harumi Ziegler's keen editorial assistance was invaluable and saved me from
many an error. David Ziegler and his staff at the UCLA Slide Library offered
important help in preparing some of the photographs that could be
reproduced only from previously published sources. The poor quality of
many of these publications was a challenge to Ron Reimers,the staff
photographer, who labored to produce the best quality possible.
― xv ―
It is a pleasure to acknowledge the assistance of Jeanne Sugiyama, Amy
Klatzkin, and Gladys Castor of the University of California Press. For their
warm encouragement, eagle eyes, and high standards, I am especially
grateful.
Finally, I wish to thank James Cahill, Nicholas Cahill, Amy Powers, and
Martin Powers for their generosity in permitting me to reproduce many of
their photographs of tomb reliefs. K. H. J. Gardiner kindly granted
permission to reproduce the portrait of Dong Shou illustrated in his Early
History of Korea, as did the Réunion des Musées Nationaux for Rigaud's
portrait of Louis XIV.
For the sake of uniformity, the romanization of Chinese characters
throughout the text conforms to the Hanyu pinyin system of phonetic
transcription. Bibliographic citations, of course, appear in their original
forms.
― 1 ―
1—
Introduction
In things there is nothing more manifest than having results, and in
argument there is nothing more decisive than having evidence.
Wang Chong (A.D. 27–ca. 100)
"I'm afraid we're pretty much the same thing, over and over," remarks a
bald, chinless, hook-nosed gentleman of his ancestral portraits. Indeed, only
the variegated clothing hints at generational, but not genetic, differences
among the framed figures of Gahan Wilson's New Yorker cartoon (fig. 1).
Confounding Mendel's Law, identical bald, chinless, hook-nosed faces stare
down from the walls at their still-ambulatory replica.
The witty cartoon challenges the common view that a portrait is merely a
record of one never-to-be-replicated being, the document, like a passport
photo, warts and all, of a unique individual. It is a pictorial translation of a
grander statement by Gertrude Stein:
People really do not change from one generation to another, as far
back as we know history people are about the same as they were,
they have had the
― 2 ―
1.
Drawing by Gahan Wilson;
© 1985 The New Yorker Magazine, Inc.
same needs, the same desires, the same virtues and the same
qualities, the same defects, indeed nothing changes from one
generation to another except the way of seeing and being seen
. . . . The creator in the arts is like all the rest of the people living,
he is sensitive to the changes in the way of living and his art is
inevitably influenced by the way each generation is living.[1]
Alike we may all be; yet the commonplace view cannot be denied. For the
portrait, by any definition, is always particularistic, your ancestors or mine.
One function of portraiture, then, must be to document that particularity.
However, its other functions—aesthetic and social—affect, and may even
subvert, the depiction of that unique phenomenon. It is that very tension
engendered by the necessity to serve multiple, often conflicting, functions
that invests the study of portraiture with enduring interest.[2]
― 3 ―
Recent archaeological finds in China offer an opportunity to investigate some
of these tensions anew. If modern portraits, both literary and pictorial, are
prime examples of Stein's insistence on the changing ways of seeing, so, I
suggest, are these portraits of a different time and place. At the same time,
they prompt a reexamination of old issues within the field of Chinese art
history or of preconceptions firmly held—often most firmly when visual
evidence was lacking. Drawing on new pictorial evidence, this study will
consider the problem of early Chinese portraiture, its nature and functions.
The discovery of a brick tomb with portrait reliefs datable to the late fourth
or early fifth century of this era was reported in 1960.[3] Accidentally
unearthed near the Xishan Bridge outside present-day Nanjing, in Jiangsu
province, the tomb contained relief-murals of eight figures, each named by
inscription (figs. 2 and 3). Seven of the figures depicted are historical
personages, famous in Chinese history and literature as the Seven Worthies
of the Bamboo Grove (Zhulin qixian ). The eighth figure, one Rong Qiqi, is
not historical but legendary, a famous figure in Chinese literature.
The reliefs, heralded as a unique find in both construction method and
subject matter, were widely discussed—as the only examples of Jin–Liu-
Song (A.D. 317–420, 420–479) portraiture, as compositions that differed
dramatically in form and style from Han dynasty tomb art, and as authentic
examples of the styles of various Jin-Song painters.[4] They ceased to be
unique, however, when the finds from an imperial tomb excavated in 1965 in
Danyang county, Jiangsu province, suggested that another portrait-mural of
the Seven Worthies may have existed.[5] Although pictorial evidence had
long since disappeared, its identification and location on the long walls of the
main chamber were determined by the presence of a brick engraved in
intaglio with the characters Xi xia xing, a reference to one of the Seven
Worthies, Xi Kang.
The assumption of a second, similar, mural grew firmer when two more royal
tombs excavated in 1968 in the Danyang area yielded pictorial evidence of
the Seven Worthies as well as inscribed bricks naming the same personages
(figs. 4–6).[6] Despite their poor and fragmented condition, it is clear that
these Danyang depictions of the Seven Worthies and Rong Qiqi follow the
basic composition of the Nanjing mural, although we shall observe minor
differences that are significant for this study. By consensus, all three of the
imperial Danyang tombs are datable to the late fifth century—that is, to the
Southern Qi dynasty (A.D. 479–502).
― 4 ―
2.
The Seven Worthies of the Bamboo Grove and Rong Qiqi.
Rubbing of a brick relief from the south wall, tomb at Xishanqiao, Nanjing,
Jiangsu province. Late fourth–early fifth century A.D. Nanjing Museum.
With the discovery of three sets of portraits of the same personages
spanning a period of some fifty to one hundred years (and the probable
existence of a fourth at the time of entombment), we may conclude that we
confront no idiosyncratic choice of tomb décor. Rather, we possess a set of
portraits that testifies to a convention or fashion during that period known as
Nanbeichao in a specific region of China.[7] In that sense, the set of three
mural-portraits is unique and offers a fresh opportunity to examine, within
narrow but detailed limits, a traditional category of art history, that of
portraiture.
― 5 ―
Although a much-studied art form in the West, portraiture has received
comparatively scant attention in traditional Chinese art history, and Western
scholars of Chinese art have rarely shown enthusiastic interest in the
genre.[8] Few studies devoted exclusively to the subject have appeared in
this century. In 1912 Berthold Laufer published a study of portraits of
Confucius. William Cohn produced a slim volume devoted to portrait painters
of East Asia in 1922, and S. Elisséev examined portraiture of the Far East in
1932.[9] Thereafter the pattern of once a decade dissolved. Only in 1960
did Max Loehr turn his attention to the subject of early portraiture, thereby
barely anticipating the publication of the first Seven Worthies mural.[10]
Loehr's paper thus truly stands as the seminal study for work that followed,
most notably Ellen Johnston Laing's "Neo-Taoism and
― 6 ―
3.
The Seven Worthies of the Bamboo Grove and Rong Qiqi.
Rubbing of a brick relief from the north wall, tomb at Xishanqiao,
Nanjing, Jiangsu province. Late fourth–early fifth century A.D.
Nanjing Museum.
'The Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove' in Chinese Painting." More recently
Hou Ching-lang published a study of portrait painting of the early Western
Han period.[11]
Compared with the body of scholarly literature on Western portraiture—even
for any one period, say, Roman or Renaissance portraiture—these are scant
gleanings. Yet extant historical documents attest to Chinese portraiture for
the early periods, and extant pictorial documents affirm that the art of
portraiture existed at least as early as the Han dynasty (206 B.C. –A.D.
220). An inquiry into the nature of that portraiture for one period, the Six
Dynasties, and one
― 7 ―
place, the region of modern Jiangsu, seems therefore to be both in order and
unlikely to exhaust the topic.
When, however, we turn for guidance to the literature of Western art for
definitions and models we may experience bewilderment. For little consensus
exists as to precisely what "portraiture" as an art form may be. Consulting
the Encyclopedia of World Art, for example, we find that, in the broadest
sense, portraiture is "the representation of an individual, living or dead, real
or imagined, in drawing, painting, or sculpture, by a rendering of his physical
or moral traits, or both." The key word, apparently, is "individual."[12]
The Encyclopedia further tells us that portraits offer a "veritable anthology of
the ways of conceiving of man"; that the different
― 8 ―
4.
The Seven Worthies of the Bamboo Grove and Rong Qiqi.
Rubbing of a brick relief from the west wall, tomb at Wujiacun, Danyang cou
nty,
Jiangsu province. Late fifth century A.D.
Nanjing Museum. (From Yao and Gu, Liuchao yishu. )
portrait styles of, for example, Van Eyck and Titian may have been
determined as much by different moral attitudes as by different artistic
personalities. Moreover,
conventions of costume and gesture may loom as large as—or
larger than—physiognomical fidelity. The attributes or signs used in
a portrait must always be considered in their historical and social
context, since [their] significance can vary with different epochs
and cultural traditions. The new and more complex classifications of
portraiture that are needed must be based as much on the varying
functions of portraiture as on the changing fashions in iconography
and style.
― 9 ―
Are there, then, no limitations, other than that the work of art must depict,
in some way, an individual? An exhaustive search of the scholarly literature
for definitions of portraiture itself poses a topic for research. Yet a few
selected comments may offer further guidance.
J. D. Breckenridge, for example, grapples with the problem of definition in
his study of ancient portraiture and confesses that avoiding the issue may be
the better part of valor.[13] Reviewing the literature, he examines the
essential requirements for a "true portrait" set forth by Bernhard Schweitzer:
1) It must represent a definite person, either living or of the past,
with his distinctive human traits. 2) The person must be
represented in such a manner that under no circumstances can his
identity be confused with that of someone else. 3) As a work of art,
a portrait must render the personality, i.e., the inner individuality,
of the person represented in his outer form.[14]
Recognizing the pitfalls of these criteria, Breckenridge suggests that, at least
for studies of ancient portraiture, Richard Delbrück's definition may be more
viable: a portrait is "the representation, intending to be like, of a definite
individual."[15]
"Intending to be like" thus joins "individual" as a key word or phrase.
However, "the criterion of the 'true' portrait . . . is in no sense merely literal
accuracy or fidelity to optical appearances; on the contrary, the creation of a
successful portrait . . . will call for some manipulation of visual appearances
on the part of the artist."[16] Fidelity? Manipulation? One is reminded of
Lysippus's remark that a good portrait depicts men not as they are but as
they should be.
What then of "likeness" or resemblance—those presumably chief criteria for
judging a contemporary "portrait"? E. H. Gombrich considers their meaning
in a series of papers, the most notable being "The Mask and the Face."[17]
Perceptions of resemblance vary, he reminds us in that paper. As he
remarks in "Action and Expression in Western Art," the problem for the
traditional arts is that they lack "most of the resources on which human
beings and animals rely [for recognition] in their contacts and interactions.
The most essential of these, of course, is movement."[18] The maker of the
portrait must therefore find pictorial substitutes—schemata—for these
resources if the observer is to recognize the individual portrayed. What
Gombrich calls the correct portrait "is not a faithful record of a visual
experience but the faithful construction of a relational model."[19]
The portrait, then, is a construction intended to be like an individual—in
short, an illusion, that very illusion rejected by Plotinus
― 10 ―