continuations of ch'an ink painting into ming-ch'ing and the prevalence of type images
TRANSCRIPT
-
Continuations of Ch'an Ink Painting into Ming-Ch'ing and the Prevalence of Type ImagesAuthor(s): James CahillSource: Archives of Asian Art, Vol. 50 (1997/1998), pp. 17-41Published by: University of Hawai'i Press for the Asia SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20111272 .Accessed: 16/06/2014 08:47
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].
.
University of Hawai'i Press and Asia Society are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extendaccess to Archives of Asian Art.
http://www.jstor.org
This content downloaded from 195.34.79.192 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 08:47:38 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=uhphttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=asiasochttp://www.jstor.org/stable/20111272?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
-
Continuations of Ch'an Ink Painting Into Ming-Ch'ing and the Prevalence of Type Images
James Cahill
University of California, Berkeley
It is generally accepted that Ch'an Buddhist painting? and I bypass here the vexing question of how to define it,
simply adopting for now the definitions stated or implicit, for instance, in the Fontein-Hickman catalogue Zen
Painting and Calligraphy, or in the writings of Helmut
Brinker1?that Ch'an Buddhist painting reached the peak of its development in the late Sung and Yuan, when it also
received the most notice, mostly negative, from literati crit
ics. It is also generally accepted that it was scarcely practiced in later centuries, so that the painting of the so-called Four
Monk-Artists of the Ming-Ch'ing transition is best
regarded as a separate phenomenon, related only problem
atically to their status as Ch'an Buddhist monks.2
Seeing Ch'an painting as reaching its high period in the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries seems justified, but
seeing it as more or less ending with the fall of Yuan and
the beginning of Ming may not be. The argument of this
paper, as the title suggests, is two-pronged. First, that Ch'an
painting as done by Sung-Yuan monk-artists such as Mu
ch'i continued to be practiced in Ch'an monasteries in
later centuries, but has not been preserved and has gone
largely unnoticed by critics and writers; its motifs and styles nevertheless "surfaced" from time to time in works by prominent literati artists, and reappear in the paintings of some
seventeenth-century masters, notably Pa-ta Shan-jen.
Second, that these motifs and styles tended to survive into the later centuries not so much as vital components of a
still-evolving tradition, but as what might be called type
images, by analogy with the established term type forms. By type images I mean simple images painted in ink mono
chrome that could be learned and executed?in many or even most cases one
might say "performed"?by artists of
divers schools and kinds, professional and amateur, even by those whose repertories did not ordinarily include the sub
jects in question. The introduction to Jan Fontein and Money Hickman's
1970 exhibition catalogue Zen Painting and Calligraphy, in a
section titled "The End of Ch'an Art in China," contains
these words: "With the triumph of landscape painting of
the Yuan period, Ch'an art gradually receded into the
background. . .
.Tung Ch'i-ch'ang's references to Ch'an,
and the artistic activity of the 'mad' painter Hsii Wei..., are
isolated instances of the survival of Ch'an elements in art."3 This is an accepted version of the matter, and not entirely wrong; it only needs qualifying and amplifying. Chinese lit
erary sources?at least, the well-known biographical com
pilations regarding Ming masters, such as Ming-hua lu, Wu
sheng-shih shih, and Tyu-hui pao-chien hs?-tsuan?would
appear to confirm what Fontein and Hickman write. Of
forty-odd painters recorded in these books who were
Buddhist monks, all but a few specialized in landscape, and
when their styles are specified they are typically those of revered "Southern school" masters such asTungY?an or the Four Great Masters of Yuan painting, especially NiTsan.A
few of them did ink bamboo and plum; two grape painters who followed Jih-kuan, the famous Y?an-period specialist
in that subject, are exceptions. If these compilations were our only sources, we would conclude that Ch'an painting afterYiian was absorbed into literati painting. Possibly, how
ever, some Ch'an monk-artists of these later periods still did the kinds of painting practiced by Mu-ch'i and other Sung
Yiian Ch'an masters, but went unnoted by the critics, who recorded only those who did the "respectable" kinds of
painting, those associated with the literati-amateur artists. This latter possibility I believe to be the truth of the matter.
A few isolated cases of Ming artists who were not Ch'an monks but who tried their hands at Ch'an-style figure painting are interesting but inconsequential, except insofar as they testify to the survival of examples from the Sung
Yiian period, or to a contemporary practice based on these, that the artists could take as models. Pictures of this kind by
Wang Wen (1497?1576) and Chang Hung (1577?1652 or
later) representing, respectively, the Ch'an figures Han-shan and Pu-tai, can serve as examples;4 they may have been
painted for Ch'an temples, or for Ch'an believers.The same
is true of the Ch'an figures that were painted sometimes by Che-school masters.5 A search for extant works by recorded Ch'an painters of the Ming period will not take us far, since, if we eliminate the landscapes with no special Ch'an
character, surviving examples are very few.6 Our pursuit of
post-Yuan Ch'an painting must be conducted on other
ground.
17
This content downloaded from 195.34.79.192 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 08:47:38 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
-
Fig. i. FangWei-i (1585-1668), White-Robed Kuan-yin. Dated to 1655.
Hanging scroll, ink on paper; 56.5 x 26.6 cm. Palace Museum, Beijing. From: Ku-kungpo-wu-yiian ts'ang Ming Ch'ing hui-hua (Beijing: Palace
Museum, 1994), no. 64.
Fig. 2. Chueh-chiYung-chung (early 14th c), White-Robed Kuan-yin.
Hanging scroll, ink on paper; 78.9 x 31.7 cm. Inscription by Chung
feng Ming-pen (1263-1323). Cleveland Museum of Art.
18
This content downloaded from 195.34.79.192 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 08:47:38 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
-
Fig. 3. KuanTao-sheng (1262-1319), Kuan-yin with a Fish Basket. Dated
to 1302. Hanging scroll, ink on paper; 96.4 x 32.9 cm. Osaka Municipal Art Museum (formerly Abe collection). From Toda Teisuke, Kawakami
Kei, and EbineToshio, eds., Ry?kai, Indara (Liang Kai andYin-t'o-lo), Suiboku bijutsu taikei, vol. 4 (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1975), pi. 90.
In the exhibition of Ming-Ch'ing paintings shown
briefly at the Palace Museum in Beijing in December
1994,7 one of the surprises was a picture of Kuan-yin by the woman artist FangWei-i (1585?1668), done in 1655 when
she was seventy-one years old (Fig. 1). She was the aunt of
Fang I-chih (1611-1671), and a distinguished poet and
painter herself, favoring Buddhist subjects, especially the
White-Robed Kuan-yin. Li Shih s good catalogue entry for
this painting follows standard accounts from Fang Wei-i s
own time in naming as her stylistic sources the early figure masters Wu Tao-tzu and Li Kung-lin, especially the latters
pai-miao style. Those familiar with Ch'an paintings pre served in Japan, however, will be immediately struck by a
much closer similarity to portrayals of the same subject by the little-known early Yuan monk-artist Chiieh-chi Yung
chung, at least two of which survive, both inscribed by the
great Ch'an master Chung-feng Ming-pen (1263?1323), whose disciple the artist was.8 One is in a Tokyo private col
lection;9 the other (Fig. 2) in the Cleveland Museum of Art.
The painting by Fang Wei-i is so close to these in so many
respects as to raise forcibly the question of the relationship between them.
The wrong way to answer that question would be to
argue that a mid-seventeenth-century woman artist work
ing in Anhui somehow knew and imitated the work of an
early fourteenth-century Ch'an monk working in
Chekiang?an artist, moreover, who goes unrecorded in
Chinese sources. But that is the kind of absurdity we find
ourselves forced into so long as we remain bound to the
Chinese tradition of associating styles with "name" artists
and seeing artistic personalities in pictures in which this old
established practice is more or less inapplicable. It makes
better sense to recognize that certain pictorial configura tions came to be established as what I want to call type
images, available to anyone who chose to learn them, espe
cially amateur painters within whose technical capacities
they could comfortably fit. They were used as well, how
ever, by highly proficient professional masters when it was
to their purpose to produce images quickly and, as they often did, in multiples. Using type images was not a matter
of simple replication; as with type forms for trees and rocks
and other components of landscape, more or less of the
matic and compositional and iconographical variation
could be introduced, brushwork could of course differ a bit, and so forth; the image can nonetheless be properly said to
conform to an established type.10 It has been suggested thatYung-chungs drawing in line
of even breadth is derived from woodblock pictures, and it
could be argued that Fang Wei-i simply saw the same
printed pictures and imitated them. But too many similar
correspondences exist that cannot be so explained, making that explanation untenable.
It seems probable that such simple votive images of
Kuan-yin and other religious figures were painted in mul
tiples as a devotional act, to be given to believers by the
monk-artist, perhaps in return for temple offerings, or to
her friends by the woman-artist. A case is recorded for the
early Ch'ing period in which a woman artist, the wife of a
Grand Secretary, "painted five thousand Kuan-yin pictures
19
This content downloaded from 195.34.79.192 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 08:47:38 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
-
to give her mother-in-law to wish her long life."11 This
would accord also with the practice of more recent Ch'an or Zen masters who executed ens? circles in this way, or of
the Reverend K?j? Sakamoto of the Kiyoshi K?jin Seich?ji near Takurazuka, whom I knew very well in the 1950s?
1960s, who devoted a period of each day to executing and
inscribing bold calligraphic images of the triple flaming
jewel, symbol of his Three Treasures branch of Shingon Buddhism, for distribution to the faithful at his temple. These, of course, represent a further extreme of formaliza
tion, perhaps outside the properly pictorial.
Staying within the circle of Chung-feng Ming-pen, we
can introduce another painting of Kuan-yin inscribed by him, as well as by the artist, Kuan Tao-sheng, and by her
husband, Chao Meng-fu (Fig. 3). (Interesting issues that the
painting raises, such as the relationship of Kuan and Chao to Ch'an Buddhism and to Ming-pen, cannot be pursued
here for reasons of space.)12 Painted in 1302, the picture is more or less contemporary with the one by Ch?eh-chi
Yung-chung. But it is very different in style: jagged, discon
nected brushstrokes, fluctuating in thickness, with strong tonal contrasts and black accents; a rather heavy-jowled,
full-lipped face with bulbous nose. Kuan Tao-sheng claims in her inscription to be "copying" (lin) a work by the great
eighth-century figure master Wu Tao-tzu, but once more, the stylistic affiliations with certain Y?an-period paintings are much closer.
Some years ago, I dismissed this painting as "Copy of a
work in the Yin-t'o-lo manner, with interpolated signa ture."13 But I was probably committing the same error
against which I am now arguing: insisting on attaching names to styles, instead of recognizing that whereas some
styles were indeed individual and personal, others appear to
have enjoyed more or less common currency in their time.
The figure style associated with the mysterious Yin-t'o-lo
belongs, I think, to the latter type: although it is true that
female figures in paintings by Yin-t'o-lo himself exhibit this
manner,14 so do those in works by other artists?for example, a small hanging scroll representing "Kuan-yin with a Fish
Basket," once more bearing an inscription by Chung-feng
Ming-pen, now kept, surprisingly, in the Palace Museum,
Beijing (Fig. 4). The signature has not been identified; it is
probably that of another monk-amateur of the period. It
would appear that this manner of figure painting was cur
rent in Ming-pen's region, period, and circle, available for use by a monk-amateur or a lay believer such as Kuan Tao
sheng. In any case, a number of hands can be distinguished among the many extant figure paintings in the Yin-t'o-lo
manner, and perhaps Yin-t'o-lo should be thought of more
as a designation of style or type than as an artistic personal
ity. What part the actual monk who used the name Yin-t'o
lo played in the creation or popularization of it is a separate
question, and perhaps ultimately unanswerable.15
Similarly, one can recognize another type image, which
likewise allowed a considerable latitude for compositional
20
Jk??t
Fig. 4. Unidentified artist, Yuan period, Kuan-yin with a Fish Basket.
Hanging scroll, ink on paper. Inscription by Chung-feng Ming-pen
(1263-1323). Palace Museum, Beijing.
and other variation, in the small pictures of misty clumps of
bamboo growing beside rocks, to which the name of still
another artist unrecorded in Chinese sources, T'an Chih
jui, is conventionally attached in Japan.16 They were proba
bly produced by small-name artists working about the same
time, the early Yuan, in the Chekiang region. These small
pictures are "Ch'an paintings" by adoption, so to speak, inscribed by Ch'an monks and appreciated and used in Zen contexts in Japan, contexts probably unrelated to their orig inal circumstances of creation. Bamboo paintings ascribed to Kuan Tao-sheng mostly have more in common with the
This content downloaded from 195.34.79.192 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 08:47:38 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
-
*' ;:
v:-?*a;-^vs?''1i
Fig. 5. Hs? Wei (i 521-1593), Kuan-yin with a Fish Basket. Hanging scroll, ink on paper; 116 x 62 cm. Shanghai Museum. From Chung-kuo li-tai shu-hua t'u-mu, vol. 3 (Beijing: Wen-wu Press, 1990), no. 1-1120.
"T'an Chih-jui" type than with the kinds of ink bamboo
practiced by male literati artists of her time, including her
husband Chao Meng-fu.17 Perhaps here, too, she should be
regarded as participating in a regional development?she may well have had an important role in the formation of it, or at least in raising it from the status of a small local specialty.
Returning to Kuan-yin pictures: what would appear to
be a later echo of the Yin-t'o-lo type, somewhat softened but with most of its characteristic features preserved?dis connected, strongly fluctuating brushstrokes in pale ink, black accents?can be seen in a work by the sixteenth-cen
tury master Hsii Wei (Fig. 5). Although Hsii Wei might have had direct access to Y?an-period examples, it is equally
likely that he, too, is participating in a local (Chekiang) small tradition, a continuation of this figure manner into
the Ming, carried on as well by numerous others whose
paintings, since they were not by name artists like Hsii Wei, have not been preserved. I will return later to this issue of selective preservation.
Other figure types associated with Ch'an in Sung-Yuan
painting include the seated white-robed Kuan-yin, report
edly originated by Li Kung-lin, which by the thirteenth
fourteenth century had slipped into the status of a type
image, easily and endlessly repeatable.18 And among non
Ch'an subjects, certain conventional pictures of the demon
queller Chung K'uei, which were commonly executed by artists who were not otherwise practicing figure masters. It is just the currency of type images that facilitated this kind of production in areas outside the painter's training and cus
tomary practice.19
Among plant subjects for which type images were cur
rent, we can pass quickly over such obvious ones as sprays of bamboo and S-shaped blossoming plum branches in ink,
along with ink orchids, only pausing to point out that even
pieces now unique and treasurable started out as items in a
multiple, copious, and no doubt rather repetitious produc tion. In the case of the famous small ink painting of an
orchid plant by the Sung-Yuan loyalist artist Cheng Ssu
hsiao, its membership in such an extended series is betrayed by the dating seal (woodblock?) that the artist has stamped on it, with the cyclical year and the characters for "made this one scroll" imprinted and the spaces for the month and
day left blank to be filled in with a brush, to save the time
and trouble of dating individually each of the numerous
pictures produced that year.20 Such a practice does not
accord well, to say the least, with traditional accounts of
sketchy hsieh-i pictures coming into being in response to
sudden, spontaneous, one-time bursts of inspiration. A less common subject is long-stemmed vegetables, which, as
Alfreda Murck has recently shown in a study of the politi cal uses of such paintings, derives in part from two poems on the subject by Tu Fu.21 She reproduces three examples, two of them anonymous and a third signed by an obscure
early Ming painter. These too obviously belong to the cat
egory of type images; it would be difficult (and pointless) to
distinguish individual hands among them. One could con
tinue into many other subjects for which type images can
be identified.
From these relatively uncontroversial cases we can move
to one which, while stretching the boundaries of my definition only slightly, is likely to arouse more resistance:
21
This content downloaded from 195.34.79.192 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 08:47:38 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
-
Fig. 6. LiTsai (act. ca. 1425-1470), Hills in Clouds. Section of a short
handscroll, ink on paper; 28.2 x 116.2 cm. From Huai-an Ming-mu ch'u
t'u shu-hua (Huai-an and Beijing: Wen-wu Press, 1988).
type images in landscape. I dealt with these in an unpub lished article, offering as examples minimal and functional
farewell paintings,22 and also hills-in-clouds pictures in the
Mi manner. Of the latter, three can be found among the
group of paintings done in the late fifteenth century for a
certain Cheng Chiin; they were unearthed from the tomb
of a merchant-collector who had acquired them from him, the now-famous Huai-an tomb. Kathlyn Liscomb has pub lished a long, detailed, and generally excellent article on the
Huai-an tomb paintings,23 at the end of which she not so
much refutes as simply rejects my own still-unpublished ideas about them; she argues against them at greater length in a more recent article.24
The long-delayed publication of my piece will allow
those interested to read us both on the subject, look at the
pictures, and form their own conclusions. In any case, what
I pointed out about these paintings seemed to me all but
self-evident: the three hills-in-clouds paintings by Ho
Ch'eng, Li Tsai (Fig. 6), and Hsieh Huan (Fig. 7) look so
much alike that they can best be seen, not as spontaneous outbursts of self-expression, but as quick performances of a
conventional type, a kind of painting with political impli cations and uses that many artists of the time must have pro duced frequently, in addition to the individualized, one-of
a-kind works in which they invested larger measures of
time and creative energy. Once more, to the predictable
objection that the paintings are not absolutely identical, I
would respond: to be sure; the formula can be varied, the
components of the scene rearranged, trees of one type
replaced by another, the tien done larger or smaller. But the
differences are not of the kind that bespeak distinct personal
styles, or one-time urges toward the expression of individ
ual temperament and feeling. All three artists indeed had
distinctive styles, which they displayed in other works done on other occasions. But it would be surprising if anyone could identify them in these paintings.
Quickly produced, conventional paintings of this kind were not, in general, judged worthy of preservation by
22
Fig. 7. Hsieh Huan (act. 1426-143 6), Hills in Clouds. Section of a short
handscroll, ink on paper; 28.2 x 134.4 cm- From Huai-an Ming-mu (see
Fig. 6).
id$A.*.??
Fig. 8. Anon., Sung period (old attribution to Ch'ien Kuang-fu), Fish.
Album leaf, ink and colors on silk. Cheng Chi collection.
Fig. 9. Pa-ta Shan-jen (1626-1705), Fish. Section of the handscroll Fish
and Ducks, dated to 1689. Shanghai Museum. From Pa-ta Shan-jen hua
chi (Nanchang: People's Press, 1985), pi. 29.
This content downloaded from 195.34.79.192 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 08:47:38 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
-
ti *t^?
?f M:fv - '
J ?i ?c B $
?
jr^^^^^^^^^fr^i-vV^ . ' .:'.W'''
Fig. io.Ts'ai Chien (J: Saikan; act. 1652-1657), Bodhidharma Crossing the
Yangtze on a Reed. Sh?t? Museum, Tokyo (formerly Hashimoto collec
tion). From Hashimoto Korekushion (see n. 27), fig. 2.
Chinese collectors of the time and later; they survive only
by fortuitous circumstances such as burial in a tomb or
transport to Japan. We can assume that if all the pictures of
this cloudy-hills type from the second half of the fifteenth
century alone had survived, we could easily make up an
exhibition of a hundred of them, each by a different mas
ter, famous or forgotten. We can assume also that the out
come would be one of the most monotonous exhibitions
of Ming painting ever, and that we would walk through it
saying: Oh, another one; humph, another one; sigh, another one. Just as I once walked through an exhibition of ink
plum-branch paintings at the Palace Museum in
Beijing?quickly organized to replace another that had
been cancelled?pausing longer only before those by the
relatively few artists who managed to play individual and
interesting variations on the conventions: Hsii Wei, Ch'en
Hung-shou, Hung-jen, Shih-t'ao, Mei Ch'ing, a few others.
But that, as I mean to argue later, is exactly the point: it is
the ability and determination of these painters to not sim
ply replicate the formula, to use it only as a point of depar ture for adventurous and aesthetically rewarding explo rations, that is one of the principal criteria for setting them
off as major masters.
Before returning to the main argument for continuations
of Ch'an painting into Ming-Ch'ing, I want to pause and
propose an art-historical pattern within which the series of
individual cases I will present can be understood. Both the
argument and the elaborate metaphor I will use can be
loosely illustrated with two paintings of fish, widely sepa rated in period (Figs. 8, 9).
Let us suppose, leaving aside for the moment considera
tions of proof, that Ch'an painting by monk-amateurs con
tinues as an underground current, or subsurface river,
through the Ming period, practiced in monasteries in vari ous regions and cities, more or less unnoticed by those who
write the books and those who determine what is to be
preserved. As a consequence, it is not preserved. My term
"underground" implies a metaphorical surface, somewhat
permeable but mostly opaque, separating the visible part of
Chinese painting?what critics recognized and valued, what collectors chose to preserve?from the
more or less
invisible, what was not considered worthy of special notice
and preservation, and is now mostly unrecoverable. What is
below the surface?and of course late-period Ch'an paint
ing makes up only a small part of it, a subcurrent within a
much larger flow?is vastly greater in quantity than what is
above. A given image type "breaks the surface," so to speak, when some respected name artist decides to employ it and
his work is passed down to us. We in our time can see only these scattered protrusions, and we tend to construct our
arguments and our histories as though they made up a
whole, continuous terrain, writing about how this master
imitates that master, this painting underlies that painting. We
catch occasional glimpses of the submerged parts through fortunate chance survivals of types for which the likelihood
of transmission was small, and our art-historical accounts
are richer and truer to the degree that we include in them
these survivors, and make some attempt to reconstruct the
larger currents in which they originally belonged. The
chance survivals often occur in Japan. Our impression that
Ch'an painting dwindled away after Yuan quite possibly owes less to diminished production in China than to a sharp decline or even stoppage in the export of these paintings to
Japan, which alone would have allowed their survival in any number. That suggestion belongs, admittedly, in the realm
of hypothesis. But, as an instructive exercise, think of a sin
gle region and period, Chekiang in the late Sung and early Yuan, and contrast the account we can construct using
examples preserved in both China and Japan with another
23
This content downloaded from 195.34.79.192 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 08:47:38 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
-
based only on those preserved in China. And then extend
that pattern to other regions and periods. What if, in addition to occasional projections above the
surface, there were to be another window into the invisible
lower regions (my metaphor becomes murkier and
murkier), another opportune survival, like that for Sung Y?an Chekiang, of a substantial body of works out of our
hypothetical practice of Ch'an painting by monk-artists of
later periods? There is in fact another such window: the paintings done
by Chinese monks of the Huang-po (J: ?baku) sect of
Ch'an?none of them recorded, so far as I know, in Chinese
biographical compilations of artists. Some of these monks came to Japan from the coastal region of Fukien (speci
fically, from Mt. Huang-po in Fuchou Prefecture) in the
seventeenth century and continued there the practice of
amateurish ink-monochrome painting very much as they had done it, we can assume, in China?there is no reason to
suppose that their move to Japan affected significantly their
styles or choices of subjects.25 So the body of ink-mono
chrome paintings by Chinese monks of the Huang-po Ch'an sect surviving in Japan, whether actually done in
China or in Japan, can be taken to represent one geograph ical region and chronological period of practice, the Fukien
coast in the seventeenth century. If we had similar windows
through which to look down below the surface for the
Suchou region of Kiangsu in the late fifteenth-early six
teenth century, or the Shaohsing region of Chekiang in the
mid- and later sixteenth century, we could view, presum
ably, the bodies of practice upon which such name artists as
Shen Chou and Hsii Wei must have drawn for paintings
using Ch'an styles and subjects, some of which will be con
sidered below. But in fact only Shen Chou's and Hsii Wei's
paintings are to be seen, "breaking the surface," because
these were famous artists whose works were preserved. And
another such window, through which we could view the
practice of this kind of painting in Ch'an monasteries in the area of Nanchang in Kiangsi in the late Ming and early
Ch'ing, would permit us, I believe, to understand the start
ing point for the development of Pa-ta Shan-jen's painting.
Specialist figure masters working in the Fukien region, such as Ch'en Hsien and Wu Pin, made paintings for the
Huang-po sect,26 just as Yen Hui and other professional masters had painted for Buddhist temples in the Sung and
Yuan, and some Che-school masters had done earlier in the
Ming. Specialists in portraiture portrayed the ?baku patri archs and priests. But what concerns us here is the corpus of extant ink paintings by monk-amateurs of the ?baku
sect, of which there may be several hundred surviving in
Japan.27 Among them are pictures of familiar Ch'an figure
subjects, such as Bodhidharma Crossing the Yangtze on a Reed
by Ts'ai-chien (J: Saikan; act. 1650s) (Fig. 10) or the monk
Pu-tai by I-jan (J: Itsunen; 1601-1668) (Fig. 11); these are
based ultimately on Sung-Yuan models. Chi-fei (J: Sokuhi; 1616? 1671) did a painting of grasses and rock (Fig. 12) using
24
^):
* lit 'i * y *
?H ? * Ti
Fig. il. I-jan (J: Itsunen; 1601-1668), Pu-tai. Hanging scroll,ink and
light colors on silk; 86.5 x 36.4 cm. Inscription by Yin-yuan ( J: Ingen;
1592-1673). From Huang-po Ch'an shu-hua chan (see n. 27), no. 1.
a type image probably originated by the Yuan monk Po
Tzu-t'ing (1284?after 1353); a surviving work by the Yuan
artist proves to be closely similar (Fig. 13). Again, we cannot
simply impute the striking resemblance to the later artist
having seen the earlier painting. Less conventional ?baku pictures include another by
Chi-fei, dated to 1666, representing a pine tree with crane
and deer and presumably intended for presentation on
someone's birthday (Fig. 14), and one by Mu-an (J: Mokuan; 1611-1684), dated to 1682, representing lotus and
the moon (Fig. 13). These seem less dependent on type
images, more improvised and eccentric. If they remind us of
Pa-ta Shan-jen, they should: they are the same kind of paint
ings, done by monk-artists who were his contemporaries,
This content downloaded from 195.34.79.192 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 08:47:38 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
-
I f S *
^9 " ? I? lb M ' ?
?
Fig. 12. Chi-fei (J: Sokuhi; 1616-1671), Grasses and Rock. Hanging
scroll, ink on paper; 129.5 x 3?-2 cm- From Huang-po Ch'an (see n. 27), no. 7.
working under similar circumstances, drawing on roughly the same large tradition or current, exhibiting the playful ness and unworldliness expected of religious men. But nei
ther Chi-fei nor Mu-an, nor any other of the Huang-po amateur artists whose works are preserved,
was a good
enough painter to win recognition in China as a major master, one whose works merited preservation. There
were
doubtless dozens or even hundreds of other monk-artists in
this period, working in regions where Ch'an Buddhism was
still strong, doing paintings of this kind?we might call
them failed Pa-ta Shan-jens?all long forgotten, as Chi-fei
and Mu-an would be if they had not gone to Japan. (Some of the others might well, of course, have been excellent and
original artists, who nevertheless went unnoticed for the
Fig. 13. PoTzu-t'ing (1284-after 1353), Grasses and Rock. Hanging
scroll, ink on paper; 32 x 53.2 cm. KozoYabumoto, Amagasaki.
reasons suggested earlier.) Painting odd and eccentric pic tures was not what made Pa-ta Shan-jen famous?any artist
who chose to could do that. Pa-ta became famous by paint
ing odd and eccentric pictures that were also powerful and
disturbing, aesthetically satisfying, and multileveled in their
meaning.
The other circumstance in which the continuations of
Ch'an painting "break the surface," as suggested earlier, is
when they are done by big-name artists, who are likely also to be painters of enough power and originality to bring new life to them. Shen Chou was one of these; although his
real strengths and innovations were in landscape, many Ch'an-derived images appear in his work. A striking exam
ple is his album leaf representing grape vines (Fig. 16), which
resembles closely a work by the thirteenth-century special ist Tzu-wen Jih-kuan (Fig. 17). Between Jih-kuan s picture and Shen Chou's, it must be acknowledged, much of the
vividness and naturalism of the image has been lost. For
instance, Shen follows without quite understanding Jih-kuan s
device of leaving patches in reserve to represent lighter leaves superimposed on the darker. Once more, the point is
not that Shen Chou saw this particular picture, but that
both follow a type image, one that Jih-kuan was probably instrumental in establishing. Although not many pictures of
grape vines genuinely from his hand survive, we can assume
that he painted them by the hundreds or thousands.28
Shen Chou frequented Ch'an monasteries throughout his life, lodging in them, often for days at a time, when he
traveled to Hangchou and other places, and painting pic tures as gifts for the monks; on trips into Suchou he usually
stayed at the Tung-Ch'an Ssu (East Ch'an Temple) or at the
Hsi-Ch'an Ssu (West Ch'an Temple) where his close friend
the monk Ming-kung lived.29 He thus had ample opportu
25
This content downloaded from 195.34.79.192 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 08:47:38 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
-
Fig. 14. Chi-fei (J: Sokuhi; 1616-1671), Pine Tree with Crane and Deer.
Dated to 1666. Hanging scroll, ink on paper; 93.3 x 42 cm. Fukush?ji,
Kita-Kyushu. From ?baku bunka (see n. 27), no. 31.
nities to see Ch'an paintings that were kept in these tem
ples, some of them no doubt of Sung-Yiian date, as well as
to observe, I believe, the continuing practice of such paint
ing by some of the monks he met.
Shen Chou also knew, and composed a colophon for, a
handscroll attributed to Mu-ch'i that was owned by his
friend Wu K'uan, a work now in the Palace Museum,
Beijing (Fig. 18). He begins his colophon:
Although I began by painting landscape, I enjoy from time to time doing flowers and fruits, grasses and insects. For this reason I have gathered
together a great many of the creations of earlier artists [to use as models,
that is?or, dare one say, type images?]?even these fragments of paper and surviving ink I can never equal. [Further on he writes of Mu-ch'i:]
He doesn't use any color, and splashes the ink [as if] randomly on the
paper; and yet [the images] are amazingly lifelike. When we look back at
the styles of Huang Ch'iian and Ch'ien Hs?an, they really don't come
up to this.
26
Fig. 15. Mu-an (J: Mokuan; 1611-1684), Lotus and Moon. Dated to
1682. Hanging scroll, ink on silk; 32.6 x 38.5 cm. Kimiko and John Powers collection.
The Beijing scroll is one of two such "Mu-ch'i" scrolls
extant; the other is in the National Palace Museum, Taipei
(Fig. 19). Both appear to be copies, probably dating from the
fourteenth or early fifteenth century. (The Taipei scroll
bears the well-known ssu-yin half-seal, an inventory seal
which, if genuine, would indicate that the work predates the period 1373-84.) The likelihood that they are based on
Mu-ch'i originals is strengthened by loose correspondences of some of the images in them with older and finer paint
ings ascribed to Mu-ch'i in Japanese collections, which are
themselves believed to be fragments cut from handscrolls
(Figs. 20, 21). The scroll that Wu K'uan owned and Shen
Chou knew may, of course, have been an original Mu-ch'i
work, from which Shen s colophon was later transferred to
the copy; but it is more likely that Shen Chou accepted the extant scroll as from Mu-ch'i's hand, perhaps even finding it easier to admire and imitate than a Mu-ch'i original would
have been.30 In the best Ch'an paintings from Sung and
Yuan the brush drawing repudiates the disciplines of what
would be considered "good brushwork" by literati criteria
?necessarily, given the Ch'an masters' expressive aims?so
that traditional Chinese connoisseurs still have difficulty in
accepting and admiring the national-treasure-level exam
ples preserved in Japan. In his paintings based on Mu-ch'i
(e.g., Fig. 24), Shen Chou can be seen as either "taming" the
brushwork from a Mu-ch'i original, or (more likely) as fol
lowing imagery already tamed through copying. The difference, and what I mean by taming, can be illus
trated also by another pairing, the hibiscus (or rose mallow)
picture ascribed to Mu-ch'i in Daitokuji, Kyoto (Fig. 22) and one included in the Taipei copy scroll (Fig. 23). The
Daitokuji painting exhibits varieties of brushwork that can
be called scratchy, puddly, and so forth?undisciplined, "bad" brushwork in literati terms. In the copy every stroke
This content downloaded from 195.34.79.192 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 08:47:38 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
-
ntrnur Fig. 16. Shen Chou (1427-1509), Grapevine. Leaf
from 16-leaf album Drawings from Life. Dated to
1494. Ink and light colors on paper; 34.7 x 55.4 cm.
National Palace Museum,Taipei.
?*di?v *
& *....
',wss
Fig. 17. Tzu-wen Jih-kuan (d. 1295), Grapevine.
Hanging scroll, ink on paper; 31.3 x 83.1 cm. Private
collection, Berkeley.
Fig. 18. After Mu-ch'i (d. after 1279), Drawings from Life: Birds, Fish, and Fruits. Section of a handscroll, ink on paper; 47.3 x
814.1 cm. Palace Museum, Beijing. 27
This content downloaded from 195.34.79.192 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 08:47:38 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
-
?im
&
i
Fig. 19. After Mu-ch'i (d. after 1279), Drawings from Life: Birds, Vegetables, and Flowers. Dated to 1265. Section of a handscroll, ink on paper; 44.5 x
1017.1 cm. National Palace Museum,Taipei.
"W
SsyrV "
->^$:
Fig. 20. Attrib. Mu-ch'i (d. after 1279), Persimmons. Fragment of a hand
scroll (?), ink on paper; 35.1 x 29.0 cm. Ry?k?inTemple, Daitokuji,
Kyoto. From Toda Teisuke, Kawakami Kei, and EbineToshio, eds.,
Mokkei, Gyokkan (Mu-ch'i andY?-chien), Suiboku bijutsu taikei, vol. 4
(Tokyo: Kodansha, 1973), no. 67.
Fig. 21. After Mu-ch'i (d. after 1279), Persimmons. Detail from Taipei handscroll (see Fig. ig).
28
This content downloaded from 195.34.79.192 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 08:47:38 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
-
:^;:.-t .; ** ,
Fig. 22. Attrib. Mu-ch'i (d. after 1279), Rose Mallow. Fragment of a
handscroll (?), ink on paper; 34.5 x 36.7 cm. Daitokuji, Kyoto. From
Tokyo National Museum, So Gen no kaiga (Sung and Yuan Painting)
(Kyoto: Benrid?, 1962), pi. 75.
Fig. 23. After Mu-ch'i (d. after 1279), Hibiscus. Detail from Taipei hand
scroll (see Fig. ici).
-?
-
Fig. 25. Ch'en Shun (1483-1544), Peony. From the handscroll Studies from Life. Dated to
1538. National Palace Museum,Taipei.
i
4L
>
i
Fig. 27. Hsin-y?eh (J: Shin'etsu; 1639-1696). Peonies.
Hanging scroll, ink on paper; 107.7 x 29-5 cm. From
Huang-po Ch'an (see n. 27), no. 22.
Fig. 26. Hs? Wei (1521-1593), Peony. Detail from the handscroll Flowers,
Fruits, and Other Plants, ink on paper; 30 x 1053.5 cm- Nanjing Museum.
30
This content downloaded from 195.34.79.192 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 08:47:38 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
-
Fig. 28. Attrib. Mu-ch'i (d. after 1279), Turnip.
Fragment of a handscroll (?), ink on paper; 37.4 x
64.9 cm. Imperial Collection, Tokyo. From Toda
Teisuke et al., eds., Mokkei, Gyokkan (see Fig. 20), no. 69.
Fig. 29. After Mu-ch'i (d. after 1279), Turnips. Detail from
Taipei handscroll (see Fig. 19).
Fig. 30. Shen Chou (1427-1509), Turnips. Dated to 1489.
Hanging scroll, ink on paper; 56.7 x 30 cm. National
Palace Museum,Taipei.
31
This content downloaded from 195.34.79.192 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 08:47:38 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
-
fit SV3
Fig. 31. Pa-ta Shan-jen (1626?1705), Vegetables and Other Plants. Section of a handscroll, ink on silk; 22 x 186 cm. Palace Museum, Beijing. From I-yuan
to-ying 19 (1983), pp. 76-77.
Fig. 32. Pa-ta Shan-jen (1626-1705), Vegetables. Dated to 1684. Album leaf, ink on paper. Palace
Museum, Beijing.
or turnip) attributed to Mu-ch'i in the Japanese Imperial Collection (Fig. 28) and a corresponding section of the
Taipei copy-scroll (Fig. 2q), Shen Chou's depiction of the
subject, done in 1489 (Fig. 30), is in some respects closer to
the Sung work. The rough brushwork is suited to its sub
ject, which carries meanings of simplicity and freshness.
A notable recipient of all this, and the artist whose rela
tionship with Sung-Yuan Ch'an painting was the problem that inspired this paper, is of course Pa-ta Shan-jen, who
was also a monk of the Ts'ao-tung Ch'an sect from 1648 until about 1680. His earliest works, from the 1660s and
early 1670s, mostly take the form of handscrolls and albums
made up, like the Mu-ch'i copy scrolls, of isolated images of
flowers and fruits and vegetables (Fig. 31).32 Pa-ta's earliest
works already exhibit a striking originality; but when he
begins to integrate these images into more complex and
absorbing compositions, and eventually to subject both the
objects themselves and the space they occupy to radical dis
tortions (Fig. 32), he separates himself even more from his
many contemporaries who simply reproduced the images with insignificant variations, or who never mastered the
artistic power he displays, and whose works have accord
32
ingly disappeared?the ones referred to earlier as "failed Pa
ta Shan-jens." Another standout from the larger, more
repetitive practice was, of course, Shih-t'ao, who draws on
the Ch'an painting tradition in some of his paintings.33 But
I do not mean to address here the question of Ch'an
imagery in Shih-t'ao s works.
Certain compositional devices that Pa-ta Shan-jen
employs, such as the one of pushing the objects in his paint
ings partly outside the frame and then connecting them
with bold strokes that divide the picture space geometri
cally, have no precedents, so far as I know, except in Sung Y?an Ch'an painting. A leaf from Pa-ta s 1659 album with
the signature "Ch'uan-ch'i" (Fig. 33) can be compared, for
this device, with a well-known work by Jih-kuan dated to
1291 (Fig. 34). But aside from individual motifs and ele ments of style, a larger and deeper affinity is in Pa-ta s prac
tice, basic to his painting, of using images of birds, fish, and
other everyday things and creatures to convey cryptic but
somehow profound meanings by seeming to attribute
human-like feelings to them. Where else but in Ch'an
painting is there any precedent for this? Here, too, striking
correspondences can be observed between Pa-ta's paint
This content downloaded from 195.34.79.192 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 08:47:38 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
-
Fig. 33. Pa-ta Shan-jen (1626-1705), Peonies (?). Dated to 1659. Leaf from 15-leaf album Sketches from Life, ink on paper; 24.5 x 31.5 cm. National Palace Museum,
Taipei.
Fig. 35. Pa-ta Shan-jen (1626-1705), Mynah Bird on Branch. Album leaf.
From: Pa-ta shan-jen hua-chi (see Fig. a), pi. 16.
Fig. 36. Attrib. Mu-ch'i (d. after 1279), Mynah Bird
on Trunk of Pine. Detail from a hanging scroll, ink
on paper; 78.5 x 39 cm. Formerly Setsu collection,
Tokyo, From So Gen no kaiga (see Fig. 34), pi. 73.
Fig. 34. Tzu-wen Jih-kuan (d. 1295), Grapevines. Dated to
1291. Hanging scroll, ink on paper; 154 x 42 cm. Formerly
Inouye collection. From So Gen no kaiga (Kyoto: Benrid?,
1962), pi. 90.
33
This content downloaded from 195.34.79.192 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 08:47:38 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
-
mn
&* ; 1?^ ?*>
Fig. 37. After Mu-ch'i (d. after 1279), Pomegranates. Detail from Taipei handscroll (see Fig. i?).
H
i'.
* i ? -s + ?
* i# * t * ? 4* * * ? ? * .4. ? 7 J * 4
d??-:
Fig. 38. Shen Chou (1427-1509), Pomegranates. Section of a handscroll. National Palace
Museum, Taipei.
Fig. 39. Ch'en Shun (1483-1544), Pomegranates. Dated to 1544. From
album of plant subjects. Shanghai Museum. From Chung-kuo mei-shu
ch'uan-chi, painting vol. 7 (Shanghai: People's Art Publishing Co., 1989),
pi. 97.
ings, such as his several portrayals of mynah birds on
branches (Fig. 35), and Sung-Y?an paintings preserved in
Japan?in this case, the well-known picture attributed to
Mu-ch'i (Fig. 36), a typically enigmatic image of a mynah on a tree trunk, preening its feathers but appearing, in a
more subjective reading, to look suspiciously over its shoul
der. These correspondences?even to the device of leaving
ragged patches of white reserve in the plumage of the birds'
wings?raise once more the question: how could Pa-ta
have known a painting that had been in Japan for centuries?
The answer, once more, is that he couldn't have. Like Shen
Chou and others, he is drawing on the heritage we have
been tracing, having learned it, we can assume, partly from
34
old paintings to which he had access, some of them pre served in monasteries he visited or lived in, and partly from a contemporary practice of this kind of painting by monk amateurs. We cannot trace this particular motif through the
intervening period, but some others we can, and I will con
clude by considering two of these.
In the Taipei Mu-ch'i copy scroll is a pomegranate branch with two fruits, one of which has burst open to
expose its seeds (Fig. 37). Shen Chou does a further flattened
version in an album leaf,34 and again, even more simplified, in a section of a handscroll (Fig. 38). These read only as
rather uninspired replications of the motif, not as interest
ing plays on it. Ch'en Shun, once more, in a leaf from a 1544 album (Fig. 3g), appears to be following Shen Chou, but uses
a wetter, slightly freer manner of brushwork that gives the
image a more vivid presence. Hs? Wei does the motif in a
relatively straightforward way in some of his handscrolls of
fruits and vegetables, but in his great scroll in the Nanjing Museum depicts it with that dazzling reconciliation of cal
ligraphic freedom and trenchant description in which he is
unsurpassed (Fig. 40). We can see it performed somewhat
later, ineptly and inexpressively, by an ?baku monk-artist,
Po-yen (J: Hakugan; 1634-1673),35 about the same time
that Pa-ta Shan-jen used it for a strikingly original compo sition, another leaf from his 1659 "Ch'uan-ch'i" album (Fig.
41). In works from Pa-ta s fully mature and great period of
the 1690s (Fig. 42), the pictures seem to have broken all ties to their type-image origins, which become more or less
irrelevant except when we are pursuing serial relationships of images, as I am doing here.
The Taipei Mu-ch'i copy scroll includes also a passage
portraying two mynah birds on a hillock (Fig. 43), in which
the birds retain something of what must have been, in Mu
ch'i's original, the slightly malevolent look of the mynah in
the picture preserved in Japan (Fig. 36), or of mynahs
This content downloaded from 195.34.79.192 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 08:47:38 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
-
Fig. 40. Hs? Wei (i521-1593). Pomegranate. Detail from the handscroll
Flowers, Fruits, and Other Plants (see Fig. 26). Nanjing Museum.
Fig. 41. Pa-ta Shan-jen (1626-1705), Pomegranates. Dated to 1659. Leaf
from the album Sketches from Life (see Fig. 33). National Palace
Museum, Taipei.
Fig. 43. After Mu-ch'i (d. after 1279), Two Mynah Birds on Hillock. Detail frc
Taipei handscroll (see Fig. ig).
Fig. 42. Pa-ta Shan-jen (1626-1705), Pomegranates. Leaf
from 8-leaf album. From Pa-ta shan-jen hua-ts'e (Beijing,
1961).
35
This content downloaded from 195.34.79.192 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 08:47:38 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
-
'* #. ; - il. -
j, .. .
-/. fc-?;t."--iij
* * ? ? ? s ?' *
".t?*
-i*
Fig. 44. Shen Chou (1427-1509), Two Mynah Birds on Hillock. Section
of a handscroll (MH 91). National Palace Museum,Taipei.
Fig. 46. Pa-ta Shan-jen (1626-1705), Two Mynah Birds. Detail
from one of a pair of hanging scrolls, ink on satin; 204.5 x 54 cm. Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City (formerly
Contag collection).
*?*&
*
Fig. 45. Pa-ta Shan-jen (1626-1705), Mynah Birds and Lotus. Handscroll, ink on satin; 27 x 205 cm. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
(formerly John Crawford collection). From I-yuan to-ying 19 (1983), p. 15.
36
This content downloaded from 195.34.79.192 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 08:47:38 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
-
V
Fig. 47. Pa-ta Shan-jen (1626-1705), Two Mynah Birds. Dated to 1694. Album leaf, ink on paper; 24.4 x 23 cm. Shanghai Museum.
depicted by Pa-ta. Even that much of darker meaning is lost
in the album leaf by Shen Chou (Fig. 44), whose birds seem
simpler-minded, less self-aware. Shen Chou keeps the basic
pattern of the pairing, with one bird in strict profile and the
other turning its head back; the latter bird seems off bal
ance, but not, like some of Pa-ta s, in a way that reads as
deliberate effect.
Pa-ta, in a handscroll from the early 1690s (Fig. 45), also
keeps the basic pattern of the pairing, even more closely than does Shen Chou. But in addition to catching more of
the slightly sinister overtones of Mu-ch'i's birds, Pa-ta
introduces quirky devices of his own that transform the
motif, once more, into an item of his own private imagery. The disapproving gaze or glare of the birds is now directed
at a seemingly innocuous lotus plant; the bird looking back
ward is now decidedly and deliberately off balance; and a
smaller bird perches incongruously on the back of the other.
No pairing could better illustrate the distinction I would
like to see made between simply adopting the inherited
image as a convenience for producing a painting quickly, and using it as a jumping-off point for truly creative ventures.
How much further Pa-ta jumped in his transformations
of motifs of this kind we all know; his pictures of paired
mynah birds could alone make up a small exhibition, and a
thoroughly engrossing one (Figs. 46, 47). And we could sim
ilarly show how he transformed other motifs and type
images that he appears to have inherited from the Ch'an
ink-painting tradition, beginning with Sung-Yuan exam
pies and ending with his brilliant manipulations of them:
melons, cranes, geese, fish, lotuses, others. I do not mean to
claim that the Ch'an tradition was Pa-ta's sole source, but it was a major one, and the one that is currently the most
overlooked. (Richard Barnhart discusses this briefly but well
in his Introduction to the Master of the Lotus Garden cata
logue, giving Shen Chou his proper role in the transmis
sion.)36 Recognizing and acknowledging Pa-ta's heritage from Ch'an painting, and the ways he used it, will at least rescue us from the type of na?ve account in which such
paintings came into being because Pa-ta lived near a hill
where mynah birds congregated in pairs, and he went out
every day to observe them, and felt a powerful urge to cap ture their images and behavior with his brush?and so
forth. Pa-ta must indeed have studied the habits of mynah birds, and he certainly was adept at catching their charac
teristic poses and movements; but all that, I believe, came
later, belonging to another, Gombrichian phase in which
the inherited schemata were altered to adapt them to the
artist's observations of nature as well as to his expressive purpose and state of mind.37 And it is these transformations, and the succession of brilliant works based on them, that in
the end matter most. We only demean the truly creative
masters when we fail to distinguish their best achievements
from the more or less routine performances of type images
by artists of less originality and attainment?or by the mas
ters themselves under certain circumstances.
37
This content downloaded from 195.34.79.192 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 08:47:38 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
-
Chinese Characters
Ch'an #
Ch'en Cheng-hung I*it*
Ch'en Hsien I* Jt
Ch'en Hung-shou *i*J&
Ch'en Shun I**
Ch'ienHs?an??
Ch'ing-cho Cheng-ch'eng vlH&itS'
Ch'ing-pai lei-cWao >^"#!S#
Ch'uan-ch'i#*
Chang Hung i?. *
Chao Meng-fu ?j??
Cheng Ch?n #^
Cheng Ssu-hsiao Jfp S ?
Chi-fei *P#
Chung K'uei ?? f?
Chung-feng Ming-pen 17 # ^ ^
Ch?eh-chi Yung-chung & l&* t
ens? IB 40
Fang I-chih if *X %
Fang Wei-i ^" $Mli
Hakugan: see Po-yen
Han-shan ^ ^
Hikk?en * # SI
HoCh'eng*f?
Hsi-Ch'anSsu ?#*
38
HsiangY?an-pien ^Rtg/F
Hsiao-an $k>?t
Hsieh Huan #?f
hsieh-i % M
Hsin-y?eh
-
Ni Tsan f?if
Obaku: see Huang-po
Pa-ta Shan-jen A^ Jj A
pai-miao ?i IS
PoTzu-t'ingtt^?
Po-yen ?? Jl
Pu-tai ^ ft
Saikan: see Ts'ai-chien
Seng-hui it 4&
Shen Chou >*$
S/?en C/zow nien-p'u }&$ %-tit
Shih-t'ao & j#
Shinetsu: see Hsin-yiieh
Sokuhi: see Chi-fei
ssu-yin ?l t?
T'an Chih-jui \%.Ai^%
T'u-huipao-chien hs?-tsuan H Htf *^$
T'ien Hsiu $l %
Ts'ai-chien ?# ffi
Ts'ao-tung # ^
Tsung-le rfc :S
Tu Fu #- itt
Tung Ch'i-ch'ang HAS
Tung Yuan ? ?S
Tung-Ch'an Ssu ^#^r
Tzu-wen Jih-kuan -? *8. Q |ft
Wang Wen i W
Wu K'uan & t
WuPin*#i
WuTao-tzu^it-?"
Wu-sheng-shih shih Mr^i^k.
Yen Hui ?ff
Yin-t'o-lo S P? H
Yin-y?an fit it
Yuan it
Notes
i. Jan Fontein and Money L. Hickman, Zen Painting and Calligraphy
(Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1970). Helmut Brinker, Zen in the Art of
Painting, trans. George Campbell (London and New York, 1987). Helmut
Brinker and Hiroshi Kanazawa, Zen: Masters of Meditation in Images and
Writings, Artibus Asiae Supp. 40 (Z?rich, 1988). 2. This question is the subject of a forthcoming Ph.D. dissertation by
Pei-hua Lee for University of California, Berkeley, titled "The Four Early
Qing Monk Painters: Their Affiliation with Chan Buddhism." The four
monk-artists of the early Ch'ing are, of course, K'un-ts'an, Chu Ta or Pa
ta Shan-jen, Hung-jen, and Shih-t'ao.
3. Fontein and Hickman, Zen Painting and Calligraphy, p. xxxvi.
4. Both in the National Palace Museum,Taipei (MV 412 and 676); for
the Chang Hung painting, see Ku-kung shu-hua chi 24, or Pageant of Chinese Painting 689. The Wang Wen painting has not, to my knowledge, been published.
5. See, for instance, Marsha Weidner, ed., Latter Days of the Law: Images
of Chinese Buddhism 830-1850 (Lawrence: Spencer Museum of Art, Univ.
of Kansas, 1994), pp. 389-96, "Ch'an Personalities."
6. The Hikk?en collective album of Sung-Yuan-Ming paintings in
the Tokyo National Museum contains a small painting of grapes attrib
uted to the early Ming master Hsiao-an, who followed Jih-kuan in this
specialty. 7. Ku-kung po-wu-yuan ts'ang Ming Ch'ing hui-hua (Beijing: Palace
Museum, 1994).The painting of Kuan-yin by Fang Wei-i is no. 64; for
notes by Li Shih on the painting, see p. 156. 8. A detailed study of the artist and of the Cleveland Museum paint
ing, by Wai-kam Ho, is in Eight Dynasties of Chinese Painting (Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1980), no. 97, pp. 122-23. For a third Kuan
yin painting ascribed to him in the Fujita Bijutsukan, Osaka, see Brinker
and Kanazawa, Zen, no. 3.
9. See James Cahill, ed., So Gen ga: i2th-i^th Century Chinese Painting as Collected and Appreciated infapan (Berkeley: Univ. of California, Univ.
Art Museum, 1982), no. 3. Collection of the late S?shir?Yabumoto,Tokyo. 10. In writing about type images, I certainly do not mean to give sub
stance to the ill-informed arguments made by some scholars of art who
are not specialists in Chinese painting, including some of the best
?Ernest Gombrich, Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial
Representation, 2nd ed. (New York: Pantheon, 1961), pp. 148-50; Arthur
Danto, "Ming and Qing Paintings," in Embodied Meanings (New York:
39
This content downloaded from 195.34.79.192 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 08:47:38 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
-
Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1994), pp. 34?35?in which Chinese painting is
characterized as a "performance art" and distinguished in this regard from Western painting. We specialists feel a strong urge to tell them that
they are wrong, and they mostly are; but with regard to a substantial por tion of Chinese painting, their perception has an element of truth. Our
position will be stronger when we have granted and come to terms with
that truth.
11. Hs? Ko, ed., Ch'ing-pai lei-chao (Ch'ing Dynasty Miscellanea),
quoted in Daphne Lang Rosenzweig, "Court Painters of the K'ang-hsi Period" (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1973), p. 32.
12. See Morris Rossabi, "Kuan Tao-sheng: Woman Artist in Yuan
China," Bulletin of Sung-Y?an Studies, vol. 21 (1989), pp. 67-84, esp. pp.
78-80. A woodblock-printed version of a text titled "Short Life of the
Bodhisattva Kuan-shih-yin" (Kuan-shih-yin p'u-sa chuan-lueh) in the cal
ligraphy of Kuan Tao-sheng, dated to 1306, survived into the early 19th
century. See Glen Dudbridge, The Legend of Miao-shan (London: Ithaca
Press, 1978), pp. 39-43. Dudbridge (p. 43) describes "Lady Kuan's pious exercise" as "the earliest datable example of the Miao-shan [Kuan-yin]
legend in its standard popular form."
13. James Cahill, An Index of Early Chinese Painters and Paintings
(Berkeley: Univ. of California Pr., 1980), p. 294.
14. See, for example, the female figure in Yin-t'o-lo's The Second
Coming of the Fifth Patriarch in Cleveland Museum of Art, Eight Dynasties, no. 98; or another in a painting of the same subject in the Ry?k?in
Temple, in Toda Teisuke, Kawakami Kei, and Ebine Toshio, eds., Ry?kai, Indara (Liang K'ai, Yin-t}o-lo), Suiboku bijutsu taikei, vol. 4 (Tokyo:
Kodansha, 1975), pi. 21.
15. ForYin-t'o-lo, see Jan Fontein's short essay in Herbert Franke,
ed., Sung Biographies: Painters (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1976), pp.
154-57. See also Howard Rogers's essay in Kaikodofournal (Spring 1996),
pp. 16, 179-80. 16. An example inscribed by Ch'ing-cho Cheng-ch'eng (1274?
1339) is in Fontein and Hickman, Zen Painting and Calligraphy, no. 27.
17. Kuan Tao-sheng's short handscroll Bamboo Groves in Mist and
Rain, dated to 1308, in the National Palace Museum,Taipei, is the most
reliable example from her hand; see Marsha Weidner et al., Views from the
fade Terrace: Chinese Women Artists 1300?1912 (Indianapolis and New York:
Indianapolis Museum of Art and Rizzoli, 1988), fig. a, pp. 20-21. This is
an original and substantial work, and I certainly do not mean to include
it in my category of type images. 18. For a good and datable example, see the anonymous work in the
Metropolitan Museum of Art inscribed byTsung-le (1318-1392), in Wen
Fong, Beyond Representation: Chinese Painting and Calligraphy 8th?14th
Century (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1992), pi. 80.
19. For examples, see Mary Fong, "A Probable Second 'Chung K'uei' by Emperor Shun-chih of the Ch'ing Dynasty," Oriental Art, vol.
23, no. 4 (Winter 1977), pp. 423-37. The paintings reproduced in her
figs. 1 and 2 are "type images" of Chung K'uei in my sense; the resem
blance between them does not, then, necessarily indicate that they were
painted by the same artist, as she takes them to be.
20. James Cahill, Hills Beyond a River: Chinese Painting of the Yuan
Dynasty (1279-1368) (Tokyo and New York: Weatherhill, 1976), fig. 1.
21. Alfreda Murck, "Paintings of Stem Lettuce, Cabbage, and Weeds:
Allusions to Tu Fus Garden," Archives of Asian Art, vol. 48 (1995),pp. 32-47.
22. For two of these, see James Cahill, The Painters Practice: How Artists
Lived and Worked in Traditional China (New York: Columbia Univ. Pr.,
1994), figs. 1.10, 1.11. The article, "Hsieh-i in the Che School? Some
Thoughts on the Huai-anTomb Paintings," is in press. The main argu ment is summarized in Painters Practice, pp. 16-17.
23. Kathlyn Liscomb, "A Collection of Paintings and Calligraphy Discovered in the Inner Coffin of Wang Zhen (d. 1495 ce.)? Archives of Asian Art, vol. 47 (1994), pp. 6-34.
24. Kathlyn Liscomb, "Social Status and Art Collecting: The
Collections of Shen Zhou and Wang Zhen," Art Bulletin, vol. 78, no. 1
(March 1996), pp. 111-36.
25. Minoru Nishigami, in his brief paper "?baku kaiga no
40
genry??Min-matsu Shin-sho kaiga to no kankei" ("The Origin of
?baku Paintings?The Relationship between ?baku Paintings and
Chinese Paintings of the Ming and Qing Dynasties"), in Kyoto National
Museum, The Ueno Memorial Foundation for the Study of Buddhist
Art, Report no. 24 (1994), pp. 1-3, offers the view that certain of the
Chinese ?baku monks learned from traditional Japanese painting after
they came to Japan. But this view would have to be backed up with
examples to be persuasive; it may be based only on Nishigami's percep tion that these paintings do not fit easily into any conventional under
standing of seventeenth-century Chinese painting. I see no elements in
the paintings under consideration here that require any intervention of
Japanese style. 26. On Ch'en Hsien and his work for the ?baku sect, see Aschwin
Lippe,"Ch'en Hsien, Painter of Lohans,"y4r5 Orientalis, vol. 5 (1963), pp.
255?58. Lippe states that Ch'en was himself a Buddhist monk, since he
sometimes appends to his signature Fo ti-tzu, "disciple of the Buddha."
But lay artists working for Buddhist temples?Wu Pin, for instance
?sometimes sign this way, and it does not necessarily indicate that they had entered the Buddhist order. A huge Parinirvana painting by Wu Pin,
presumably done with studio assistants, is kept in an ?baku temple in
Nagasaki.
27. So far as I know, there is no collection of reproductions that
attempts to include all or even most of them. I have used three publica tions principally as sources: Hayashi Sekk?, ed., ?baku bunka (?baku
Culture) (Uji: Mampukuji, 1972); Huang-po Ch'an shu-hua chan (An Exhibition of Huang-po Ch'an/?baku Zen Calligraphy and Painting), cata
logue of an exhibition held at the University of Hong Kong, November
1989, drawn from the collections of three Kyoto dealers, Mizutani
Ishinosuke, Nakanishi Bunzo, and Yamazoe Sanju; and Hashimoto
Korekushion Ch?goku no kaiga, Raihaku gajin (Hashimoto Collection of Chinese Paintings, Artists Who Came tofapan) (Tokyo: Sh?t? Art Museum,
1986). A great many more examples must be in public and private col
lections. English-language discussions of ?baku painting include:
Stephen Addiss, "Obaku: The Art of Chinese Huang-po Monks in
Japan," Oriental Art, vol. 24, no. 4 (Winter 1978-79), pp. 420-32; Stephen Addiss and K. S. Wong, ?baku: Zen Painting and Calligraphy, exh. cat.
(Lawrence: Univ. of Kansas, 1978); and Joan Stanley-Baker, "Inkplay s by ?baku Monks," in Hie Transmission of Chinese Idealist Painting to fapan
(Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan, Center for Japanese Studies, 1992), pp.
29-35 28. These numbers may seem extravagant, but are not?Tomioka
Tessai (1836-1924), for instance, is estimated to have painted about
20,000 works, large and small, during his long career. The nature of East
Asian painting materials and styles, and a tolerance for simple and
sketchy work, permit such copious production. For other works by or
ascribed to Jih-kuan, see Howard Rogers in Kaikodo fournal (Autumn
1996), pp. 10, 198-202.
29. See Ch'en Cheng-hung, Shen Chou nien-p'u (Shanghai, 1993). References to Shen's staying in Buddhist temples, especially Ch'an, and
painting for the monks are on pp. 37,95,96,100,105,112,129,141,142,
148, 166, 185, 192, 210, 215, 222, 223, 229, 230, 239, 244, 249, 254, 265,
and 267.
30. On these two scrolls, seeT'ien Hsiu,"Nan Sung Mu-ch'i 'hsieh
sheng shu-kuo t'u-chuan'" ("Handscroll of Vegetables and Fruits
Drawn from Life by Mu-ch'i of Southern Sung"), Wen-wu, 1964, no. 3,
pp. 36-37.The author rejects, rightly, the theory that the two belonged
originally to a single scroll, but accepts both scrolls as genuine works of
Mu-ch'i, on the highly unfirm basis that they were judged genuine by such connoisseurs as Wu K'uan and HsiangY?an-pien in the Ming.
31. In the course of preparing this paper, I asked both my research
assistant Andrea Goldman and my student Pei-hua Lee to scan the writ
ings of Hs? Wei for references to his visits to Ch'an monasteries, associ
ations with Ch'an monks, and paintings of Ch'an subjects, including
Kuan-yin. Both turned up numerous references, and I am grateful to
them for thus confirming my assumption. Their findings are too ample,
however, to be even summarized here.
This content downloaded from 195.34.79.192 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 08:47:38 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
-
32. For an account of these early works from his "Buddhist" period, see Wang Fang-yu's essay in Wang Fang-yu and Richard Barnhart, Master
of the Lotus Garden: The Life and Art of Bada Shanren (1626?1705) (New Haven: Yale Univ. Art Gallery and Yale Univ. Pr., 1991), pp. 48-50.
33. For paintings by Shih-t'ao that follow the Ch'an tradition as
defined here, see his Lotus Roots and Lichee Fruits, dated to 1705, collec
tion of C. C.Wang, in James Cahill, Three Alternative Histories of Chinese
Painting (Lawrence: Univ. of Kansas, Spencer Museum of Art, 1988), fig.
81; and the handscroll "in the manner of Hs? Wei," former LiuTso-chou
collection, now in the Hong Kong Museum of Art, published in I-yiian
to-ying 32 (Shanghai, 1986), pp. 14-15.
34. Leaf 3 in the 16-leaf album titled The Essence of Things (MA 10), National Palace Museum, Taipei.
35. For the painting by Po-yen of pomegranates, see ?baku bunka, no.
106.
36. Wang and Barnhart, Master of the Lotus Garden, p. 16.
37. I allude here, of course, to Ernest Gombrich's famous formulation
in Art and Illusion, esp. chap. 5,"Formula and Experience."
41
This content downloaded from 195.34.79.192 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 08:47:38 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
Article Contentsp. 17p. 18p. 19p. 20p. 21p. 22p. 23p. 24p. 25p. 26p. 27p. 28p. 29p. 30p. 31p. 32p. 33p. 34p. 35p. 36p. 37p. 38p. 39p. 40p. 41
Issue Table of ContentsArchives of Asian Art, Vol. 50 (1997/1998), pp. 1-118Front MatterDong Qichang and Western Learning: A Hypothesis in Honor of James Cahill [pp. 7-16]Continuations of Ch'an Ink Painting into Ming-Ch'ing and the Prevalence of Type Images [pp. 17-41]Facing the Unseen: On the Interior Adornment of Eizon's Iconic Body [pp. 42-61]Floral Motifs and Mortality: Restoring Numinous Meaning to a Momoyama Building [pp. 62-92]On Viewing SC [pp. 93-98]Art of Asia Acquired by North American Museums, 1996 [pp. 99-111]Back Matter