literati painting early xxth

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A New Life for Literati Painting in the Early Twentieth Century: Eastern Art and Modernity, a Transcultural Narrative? Author(s): Aida-Yuen Wong Source: Artibus Asiae, Vol. 60, No. 2 (2000), pp. 297-326 Published by: Artibus Asiae Publishers Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3249921 Accessed: 21/01/2010 09:39 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=artibus. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Artibus Asiae Publishers is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Artibus Asiae. http://www.jstor.org

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Page 1: Literati Painting Early XXth

A New Life for Literati Painting in the Early Twentieth Century: Eastern Art andModernity, a Transcultural Narrative?Author(s): Aida-Yuen WongSource: Artibus Asiae, Vol. 60, No. 2 (2000), pp. 297-326Published by: Artibus Asiae PublishersStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3249921Accessed: 21/01/2010 09:39

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available athttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unlessyou have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and youmay use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.

Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained athttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=artibus.

Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printedpage of such transmission.

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].

Artibus Asiae Publishers is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Artibus Asiae.

http://www.jstor.org

Page 2: Literati Painting Early XXth

AIDA-YUEN WONG

A NEW LIFE FOR LITERATI PAINTING

IN THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY: EASTERN ART AND

MODERNITY, A TRANSCULTURAL NARRATIVE ?

Alandmark in modern Japanese art history was the lecture, "True Theories of Art," delivered by Ernest F. Fenollosa (I852-1908) in i882.2 Fenollosa was addressing a group of art elite at the

Ryuchikai, an art organization that had been founded in Tokyo three years earlier.3 Dismayed by what he perceived as the indiscriminate adoption of Western ways by early Meiji artists and educators at the expense of tradition, the American scholar urged his Japanese audience "to return to their nature and its old racial traditions, and then take, if there are any, the good points of Western painting."4 In the same lecture, Fenollosa inveighed against literati painting, which he dismissed as fruitless rehash-

ing of old models, utterly devoid of formal harmony. He ridiculed Ikeno Taiga (1723-76) and Yosa Buson (1716-83), two of the best-known exponents of literati painting in Japanese history, compar-

ing the former's depiction ofSakyamuni to a rickshaw driver in tatters and the latter's human figures to escaped lunatics from a mental asylum.5

Literati painting had flourished inJapan for two centuries since the spread ofConfucian education in the seventeenth century and it was cherished by collectors and aesthetes well into the Meiji period

(I868-I912). But after Fenollosa's lecture the popularity of literati painting plummeted.6 This situa- tion was reflected in the Second Naikoku Kaiga Kyoshinkai of I884, an exhibition devoted to the cel- ebration ofJapanese national essence. Based on classifications used by the exhibition officials, the num-

I This essay is a modified chapter from my dissertation, "Inventing Eastern Art in Japan and China, ca. I890s to ca.

I930s" (Columbia University, 1999). Research was funded by the Japan Foundation and the C.V. Starr Fellowship. To

these institutions, the various art collections cited here, the editors and anonymous readers at Artibus Asiae, the author

would like to express her gratitude. 2 Ernest F. Fenollosa, "Bijutsu shinsetsu" (True theories of art), published in Aoki Shigeru and Sakai Tadayasu, eds.,

Nihon kindai shiso talkei: bijzutsu 17 (Modern Japanese thought series: art), (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1989), 35-65.

3 For a brief description of the activities of the Ryuchikai, see Ellen Conant, ed., Nihonga: Transcending the Past: Japan-

ese-Style Painting, I868-i968 (New York and Tokyo: Weatherhill, 1995), 78-79. 4 The English translation of this passage from the original published version of Fenollosa's speech is taken from Taro

Kotakane, "Ernest Francisco Fenollosa: His Activities and Influence on Modern Japanese Art," Bulletin of Eastern Art

I6 (April I94I), 22.

5 Fenollosa, "Bijutsu shinsetsu," 59; in Epochs of Chinese andJapanese Art: An Outline History of East Asiatic Design (Lon- don: William Heinemann, 1912). Fenollosa also denigrates literati painters and their methods: "Therefore, in several

re-copyings, all the stiff, hard, fine drawing of the originals would vanish, and nothing be left but an extravagant exag- geration of their woolliest features... Figures had become dolls; round-shouldered, backboneless, and with empty idiotic

faces, where proportion, grand spacing, and intricate line feeling were no longer even sought for. It is like the fall from

Wagnerian opera to 'ragtime'." See vol. 2, I46-47.

6 See Takumi Hideo et al., Meiji Taisho no bijutsu (Art of the Meiji and Taisho periods) (Tokyo: Yubikaku, 1983), 115-I7.

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ber of literati painters represented dropped thirty percent from I322 at the same event two years before

to 937-7

For the ensuing three decades literati painting was pushed to the periphery ofJapanese art. Unlike

Western-style and Japanese-style painting, literati painting was not taught in the academies such as

the Tokyo School of Fine Arts and the Japanese Art Institute. In those days, this also meant literati

painting was slighted in government-sponsored art exhibitions like the Bunten, inaugurated in I907 under the auspices of the Ministry of Education. It is therefore not surprising that Tomioka Tessai

(1836-I924), the most renowned literati painter of his generation, declined to submit his works to these

exhibitions.8 Literati painting continued to be supported however by private, non-academic estab-

lishments, among them the Nihon Nanga Kyokai (established 1896), the Nihon Nanga Kai (estab-

lished 1897), and the Nihon Nanshuga Kai (established I906). With the arrival of the Taisho period (1912-26) literati painting experienced a sudden revival. Even

artists of Western-style and Japanese-style painting such as Hirafuku Hyakusui (1877-1933), Kosugi Hoan (1881-1964), Morita Tsunetomo (1881-1933), and Kondo Koichiro (1884-1962) started to pro- duce works with a pronounced literati flavor.9 They painted with the conventional water-based pig- ments (figs. I, 2) and explored the formal possibilities ofunpainted surface and highly schematic forms.

To infuse these works with novel effects, they also experimented with theplein air approach, impres- sionistic brushwork (fig. 3), and other modern idioms.

Several factors helped to bring about this revival. One was the reaction against the exaggerated,

overly adorned paintings produced by Western-style orJapanese-style artists with the aim of attract-

ing juror's attention at public art exhibitions. Literati painting, with its subdued pigments, greater use of black ink and blank spaces, was suddenly seen by some critics as more thoughtful and artisti-

cally sincere.IO Another factor in the revival of literati painting was the massive influx of art works from

China. These included a large number of literati paintings that most Japanese had never seen, works

that not only fueled interest in Chinese literati painting, but also fostered interest in Japan's native

literati tradition.ii

A third factor contributing to the revival of literati painting, which is the subject of this essay, was

the growing appreciation of literati painting as the quintessential Toyo bijutsu (Eastern art). From the

7 Hosono Masanobu, "Yushin no sekai - nihon bunjinga (nanga) no nagare," (The joyous world - currents of nanga, literati painting) in Kindai no nanga - yushin no sekai: Hyakusui, Hoan, Tsunetomo, Kozichzro (Modern nanga - the joyous world: Hyakusui, Hoan, Tsunetomo, Koichiro), exhibition catalogue (Tokyo: Yamatane Museum, 1993), 325.

8 Tessai once remarked: "I have primarily pursued Confucian studies since my youth and have specialized in painting since the Meiji Restoration. However, never did I intended [sic] to achieve fame through painting. Therefore I have

distinguished myself from professional artists by not submitting my painting to a [juried] public exhibit." Quoted in Conant, ed., Nihonga: Transcending the Past: Japanese-Style Painting, 1868-1i68, 325.

9 For a comprehensive bibliography of these artists' works and their connection to neo-nanga see Kindai no nanga: yushin no sekai; see alsoJames Cahill, "Nihonga Painters in the Nanga Tradition," Oriental Art 42, no. 2 (Summer 1996), 2-12.

IO See Taki Seiichi, "A Survey of Japanese Painting during the Meiji and Taisho Eras," The Year Book of Japanese Art

(1927), 156.

11 See Omura Seigai, "Hyokeikan no nanshuga" (Exhibition of paintings of the Nanga School at Hyokeikan), Shoga no

kenkyu I (May 1917), I8.

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mid-IgIos to the I930s, Japanese proponents of literati painting frequently discussed this art form in

terms of its unique attention to brush-and-ink method, poetic evocation, and subjective expression. More importantly, they contrasted these features with the realistic qualities of what they perceived as

typical Western painting. One idea frequently associated with literati painting was kiin (Chinese:

qiyun), a term that originated in the fifth-century Chinese classic Guhua pinlu (Old record of the

classification of painters). Despite its long history, this term had never acquired a clear definition. But

because it has traditionally been used in China to suggest qualities unattainable through formal like- ness or technical mastery, it was conveniently reconfigured as the antithesis of Western realism and

identified specifically as a literati trait.

Japanese ideas about literati painting also found their way to China and influenced the Chinese

conception of this genre. Chen Hengke's (1876-I923) Zhongguo wenrenhua zhi yanjiu (Studies of Chi-

nese literati painting), published in I922,,2 includes "Wenrenhua zhi fuxing" (The revival of literati

painting), an essay by theJapanese scholar Omura Seigai (I868-1927). Omura promoted the idea that literati painting was an Eastern art by disassociating it from the tendencies towards surface beauty and

objective likeness, tendencies he characterized as decidedly Western. Chen's own contribution to this

volume, "Wenrenhua zhi jiazhi" (The value of literati painting), was a modified version of an earlier

essay and some of his arguments were very similar to Omura's. Among the characteristics Chen ascribed

to literati painting were subjective expression and qiyun. A number of recent studies have explored Chen's theory,13 but none has considered it in relation to the revival of literati painting inJapan. One

goal of this essay is to highlight the assumptions underlying the Japanese discourse of literati paint- ing and their implications for Chen Hengke's work.

Another goal of this essay is to relate the discourse of literati painting to the larger question of

modernity. Since the early twentieth century scholars of East Asian history have been grappling with the definition of modernity. Their premise often revolves around temporal and geographical binaries:

past and present, old and new, East and West, country and city, and so on. For a long time, it has been assumed that modernity resides in the more progressive mode of existence - which often refers to the

new, the urban, and especially, the Western-oriented. However, recent studies have questioned this

assumption, demonstrating that many cultural practices that one usually identifies as non-Western

and traditional are recent constructs that reinforce values of modernity.I4 As we shall see, literati paint-

ing, which was construed as an Eastern and traditional genre, acquired a modern identity in the early twentieth century.

I2 Chen Hengke, Zhongguo wenrenhua zhiyanjiu (Studies of Chinese literati painting), reprint (Tianjin: Tianjin Guji Shu-

dian, I992).

I3 See for example Gong Chanxing, "Chen Shizeng de wenrenhua sixiang" (The literati thinking of Chen Shizeng), Meishu shilun 4 (I986), 58-67; and Yuan Lin, "Chen Shizeng he jindai zhongguohua de zhuanxing" (Chen Shizeng and the transformations of modern Chinese painting), Meishu shilun 4 (1993), 20-25.

14 See Stephen Vlastos, Mirror of Modernity: Invented Traditions of Modern Japan (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London:

University of California Press, I998). This volume is inspired by the idea of "invented traditions," which has become

a catch-phrase since the publication of EricJ. Hobsbawm and Terence 0. Ranger, ed., Invented Traditions (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983). Although to me, to say that traditions are entirely invented is suspi-

cious, it is undeniable that the idea of "invented traditions" has stimulated interest in the early twentieth century when indeed many of what we understand today as old cultural habits and practices crystallized.

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Page 5: Literati Painting Early XXth

I.

MODERN UNDERSTANDINGS OF LITERATI PAINTING IN JAPAN

The history of literati painting inJapan is relatively short. Its beginning can be traced to the adoption of Confucianism as an official ideology by the Tokugawa bakufu (shogunate) in the seventeenth cen-

tury. Ogyu Sorai (I666-I728),the leading Confucian scholar of the time, promoted the literati arts

as means to cultivate the self and to regulate emotions. Kanshi (Chinese-style poetry), along with the

sencha (Chinese steeped tea) ceremony, and Chinese-style painting emerged as fashionable practices. The term wenrenhua (literati painting), pronounced as bunjinga in Japanese, was first used by Kuwa-

yama Gyokushu (I746-99) to describe the type of Chinese-style paintings practiced in Japan under

this cultural climate.

However, the Japanese understanding of bunjinga is different from the Chinese understanding of

wenrenhua. In China wenren (bunjin) referred specifically to scholar officials, a distinct social class made

up of the gentry and the educated, many of whom were civil servants. But inJapan, bunjin could mean

anyone with a taste for Chinese culture, and artists embracing the bunjin mode included "Confucian

scholars, professional painters, soldiers, physicians, monks, bankers, brewers, and merchants, an

admixture inconceivable in China."15 Therefore, paintings by the Japanese bunjin had a much broader

audience and cultural implications than those produced by the Chinese wenren. I6

To avoid confusion, many historians preferred to use the alternative name nanga (Southern Paint-

ing) forJapanese literati painting. Derived from nanzonghua (Southern School Painting), a designation coined by Dong Qichang (I555-i636) of the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), nanga was used interchange-

ably with bunjinga in Japan. According to Dong, the Southern School began with the Tang-dynasty poet-painter Wang Wei (70I-6I), who used graded washes and not decorative colors in his landscapes. Those who followed Wang's style, instead of the colored landscape tradition of the Northern School

associated with Li Sixun (653-7I8), such as Dong Yuan (active Ioth century), Juran (active Ioth cen-

tury), Mi Fu (Io05I-Io07), and the Four Great Masters of the Yuan dynasty (I279-I368) belonged, he

claimed, to the Southern School.17 Because Dong also pronounced Wang Wei the father of literati paint-

ing, Chinese artists and theorists in subsequent centuries tended to confuse the term "Southern School

Painting" (nanzonghua) with "literati painting" (wenrenhua). When Dong's theory spread to Japan, the matter was further clouded by local interpretations of

literati painting. Historians trying to explain the relationship between the Chinese nanzonghua and

I5 Joan Stanley-Baker, The Transmission of Chinese Idealist Painting to Japan: Notes on the Early Phase (1661-I79), Michi-

gan Papers in Japanese Studies, no. 21 (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan, I992), xvi.

16 For a study of the audience and the social circles of Japanese bunjin artists, see Yoko Woodson, "Traveling Bunjin Painters and Their Patrons: Economic Life Style and Art of Rai Sanyo and Tanomura Chikuden (Patrons, Patronage, Literati Painters: Japan)," (Ph.D. dissertation, Berkeley, University of California, I983).

I7 For more on Dong Qichang's theory of the Northern and Southern School, see James Cahill, "Tung Ch'i-ch'ang's 'Southern and Northern Schools,' in the History and Theory of Painting: A Reconsideration," in Peter Gregory, ed.,

Sudden and Gradual: Approaches to Enlightenment in Chinese Thought (Honolulu: University of Honolulu, I987), 427-43;

and Wai-kam Ho, ed., The Century of Tung Ch'i-ch'ang 1^5-i636, 2vols. (Seattle and London: The University of Wash-

ington Press, 1992).

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the Japanese nanga concluded that they differed so markedly in the choice of subjects and styles that

they should best be understood as separate traditions.18 The protracted closed-door policy of the Toku-

gawa shogunate between I639 and I854, which restricted trade with China except through Nagasaki, had severely limited the number of Chinese paintings accessible to Japanese artists. To say that nanga

developed in complete independence from Chinese literati painting is an exaggeration, but not likely a very great one. When Ikeno Taiga wanted to find out how to paint Mount Fuji in the style of Dong Yuan and Juran, he had to ask the Korean court painter Kim Yusong (born I725).I9

Yet, many early-twentieth-century theorists in Japan argued that nanga had always been part of

the Chinese literati tradition. Komuro Suiun (I874-I945) of the Nihon Nanga-in insisted that nanga had a one-thousand-two-hundred-year-long history going back to the time of Wang Wei.20 Komuro

was clearly adhering to Dong Qichang's paradigm, which placed the genesis of the Southern School

in the Tang dynasty (6I8-907). Granted that nanga artists had long regarded their tradition as par-

tially Chinese, it does not mean the history of nanga can be traced back any further than to the seven-

teenth century, certainly not to the Tang dynasty. What then, was the basis for such ahistorical claims ?

A possible source of Komuro's view is Tanaka Toyozo's (1881-1948) "Nanga shinron" (A new the-

ory of nanga), a series of articles published in Kokka in the early I9Ios that became one of the most

definitive texts on nanga. 2ITanaka supported Dong Qichang's thesis that Chinese painting could be divided into a Southern and a Northern strain, and that the division was based uon the Chan Bud-

dhist notions of Sudden and Gradual Enlightenment. However, he rejected Dong's claim that Wang Wei and Li Sixun, whom Dong identified as the fountainheads of the Southern and the Northern

Schools respectively, necessarily painted in different styles. What separated these two Schools were

the artists' personality and mental disposition. Tanaka claimed that Wang Wei and other artists of

the Southern School were inclined towards self expression and Li Sixun and other artists of the North-

ern School were more concerned with rational solutions and objective reality. Nanga, which had been

understood in Japan since the time of Kuwayama Gyokushu as an expressive and spontaneous mode

of painting,2S entered into Tanaka's theory as another manifestation of the Southern School.

This emphasis on the expressive and the spontaneous was reflective more of the Japanese experi-

ence than of the Chinese. Although Chinese literati painters of the Song dynasty (960-1279) produced

freewheeling images called moxi (ink-plays), as literati painting developed in the Yuan and Ming

dynasties, the spontaneity was displaced by the preoccupation with brush method and formal order.

Self-expression was not considered the central component of the Southern School in the Chinese tra-

dition.23

18 See Yonezawa Yoshiho and Yoshizawa Chu,Japanese Painting in the Literati Style, translated and adapted by Betty

Iverson Monroe (New York and Tokyo: Weatherhill/Heibonsha, 1974), I39-55.

19 For Korean influences on nanga see Burglind Jungmann, "Confusing Traditions: Elements of the Korean An Kyon

School in Early Japanese Nanga Landscape Painting," Artibus Asiae 55, no. 3/4 (I995), 303-I7.

20 Komuro Suiun, "Nanga hassho sen nihyaku nen" (The birth of nanga one thousand two hundred years), Bi no kuni 4,

no. 9 (September 1928), 26-28.

21 Tanaka Toyozo, "Nanga shinron" (A new theory of nanga), Kokka nos. 262-81 (1912-13).

22 See Stanley-Baker, Transmission, chapter 2.

23 Ibid., chapter I.

30I

Page 7: Literati Painting Early XXth

In "A New Theory ofNanga," Tanaka also named the first ofXie He's (active circa 500-535?) liufa

(Six Laws), qiyun shengdong, as the primary principle of nanga. He interpreted qiyun shengdong as "feel-

ing," an interpretation that had no Chinese precedents, and was probably derived from Kuwayama

Gyokushu.24 Xie He's Six Laws appeared in Guhua pinlu, an ancient guidebook for connoisseurs and

artists. In this text Xie ranked twenty-seven painters and placed them into six classes, and the Six Laws

were the criteria upon which he based his assessment. Various English translations of the Six Laws

have been offered; the following is William Acker's classic version from 1954:

First, Spirit Resonance which means vitality: second, Bone Method which is (a way of) using the brush:

third, Correspondence to the Object which means the depicting of forms:

fourth, Suitability to Type which has to do with the laying on of colours:

fifth, Division and Planning, i.e. placing and arrangement: sixth, Transmission by Copying, that is to say the copying of models.25

Important to note here is that qiyun or "spirit resonance" is the first term mentioned, and the only one

that neither refers to the technical nor to the formal aspects of picture making. Through the ages, the

Chinese have accorded prime significance to this concept in the judgment of painting, particularly when technique and draftsmanship seem wanting. On this point, an oft-cited passage from Zhang

Yanyuan's (circa 8Is-after 875) Lidai minghua ji (Record of famous paintings through the ages, pref- ace 847) is particularly instructive:

Ancient paintings can leave behind verisimilitude and esteem bone-breath, and seek images out-

side of verisimilitude. This idea is difficult to convey to the vulgar folk. Paintings today manage to achieve verisimilitude but their spirit resonance is unvitalized. If paintings are conceived with

spirit resonance in mind, verisimilitude [naturally] emerges therein... If the spirit resonance is

inadequate, verisimilitude has no substance, brush is weak, and colors are not applied purposively, this is not what one will call marvelous .. .Painters today are good at coarse recreations of physical fea-

tures, achieving a likeness ofform and neglecting spirit resonance; their paintings have colors but no brush

method (my italics). How can these be called paintings ?26

Here, Zhang denounced the kinds of painting that merely reproduce superficial resemblance with col-

orful forms. For him, painting should convey more profound effects - effects he called spirit resonance.

24 Kuwayama Gyokushu wrote: "As for Southern painting, it is the brushplay by imperial relatives, scholar officials, and

gentlemen of elevated refinement done during their pure leisure. Thus, such painting...seeks warmth and moisture, onjun, in the forms, and the utmost in emotional resonance, sei'in. " Quoted in Sakazaki Shizuka, ed., Nihon gadan taikan (Collection of Japanese treatises on painting) (Tokyo: Meijiro Shoin, I927), I02, and translated by Stanley-Baker in

Transmission, I34-35.

25 William Reynolds Beal Acker, Some T'ang and Pre-T'ang Texts on Chinese Painting (Leiden: E.J. Brill, I954), 4. 26 Cited in ZhouJiyin, Zhongguo hualun jiyao (Excerpts from key passages of Chinese painting theory) (Jiangsu: Jiangsu

Meishu Chubanshe, I985), 2IO. All translations in this essay are mine unless indicated otherwise.

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He did not, however, explain explicitly what spirit resonance means and how it can be achieved, except for suggesting a connection with brush method. Zhang was not the first person to question the value

of resemblance or verisimilitude. It had been an important issue in Tang art criticism. One may recall

the episode of the famous general Guo Ziyi (697-781) asking his daughter to compare the portraits of

her husband made by Han Gan (active 8th century) and Zhou Fang (active 8th century). The general wanted to know which of the two she felt was more accomplished in capturing the likeness of her hus-

band. She replied: "Both are accomplished in capturing likeness, but [Zhou's] is superior. The reason

probably is that [Han's portrait] only captures the husk of [my husband] Zhao's features, whereas

[Zhou's] also conveys his personality and humor."27 Although Madame Zhao did not use the term

"spirit resonance" to describe the nature of that extra-formal quality that makes a painting superior, she clearly stressed the importance of seeing beyond external appearance.

Chinese critics of painting did not think of verisimilitude and spirit resonance as antithetical or

mutually exclusive. After all, Zhang held that "if paintings are conceived with spirit resonance in mind, verisimilitude [naturally] emerges therein." Likewise, although Madame Zhao felt that Han Gan's

portrait fell short of representing her husband's personality, it was still "accomplished in capturing likeness." In the Northern Song dynasty Huang Xiufu (active late Ioth-early IIth century) argued that verisimilitude and spirit resonance were equally important.28

Spirit resonance and verisimilitude assumed a more strictly antithetical relationship only in the

early twentieth century, and most visibly in discussions concerning nanga or bunjinga. Taki Seiichi

(I873-I945), the foremost art historian at Tokyo Imperial University in the late Meiji and Taisho peri-

ods, wrote:

Now then it may be asked what really is the fundamental significance of the Bunjin-gwa [nanga] ?

It lies indeed in "Chi-yin" [sic], i.e. 'resonance of spirit,' identified with the Hsin-yin as expounded

by a Sung critic. Hsin-yin means the seal of the soul. So we can say that the Bunjingwa lays stress

upon the personal spirit of the artist, that is, upon his subjectivity. It is indeed therefore a kind of lyrical

poetry. It isfounded on the artist's own personality and on the artisticprinciples of Subjectivism and Expres- sionism (my italics). Therefore if the revival of the Bunjingwa was genuine, this school of painting was bound to run counter to the Objectivism upheld and adopted by Japanese painting since the

days of Gaho and Hogai.29

Whereas the Chinese construed spirit resonance as a quality to be striven for in any kind of painting, Taki characterized it here as something unique to literati painting. This characterization is related to

Tanaka Toyozo's postulation that the primary principle of literati painting is spirit resonance. Also

echoing Tanaka's view, Taki maintained that literati painting was synonymous with the expression

27 Ibid., I92.

28 In Yizhou minghua lu, Huang writes: "Of the Six Laws, verisimilitude and spirit resonance are the most important. If

spirit resonance is there but verisimilitude is absent, then character is greater than refinement; if verisimilitude is there

but spirit resonance is absent, then the painting is beautiful but lacking in substance." See ibid., 212.

29 Taki, "A Survey of Japanese Painting during the Meiji and Taisho Eras," I57.

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of the artist's inner self, what he called "Subjectivism." Self-expression akin to the lyric outpouring of

feelings was believed to lie at the heart of poetry. GivenJapanese bunjinga's traditional links with spon-

taneity and expressiveness, to characterize bunjinga as a "kind of lyric poetry" made theoretical sense.

However, the "Subjectivism" Taki identified with nanga was not simply a reference to the visual

realization of poetic principles, but explicitly a foil to the pictorial tradition of Gaho and Hogai. Hashimoto Gaho (1835-I908) and Kano Hogai (1828-88) were heros oflate-Meiji ink-painting. Heed-

ing Fenollosa's advice in the "True Theories of Art," they attempted to revive Japanese tradition while

"taking the good points of Western painting. " Representative of Hogai's work from that period is Mer-

ciful Mother Kannon of 1884 (fig. 4), which depicts a Buddhist subject rendered with the traditional

brush-and-ink but westernized with greater suggestion of volume and space. Kannon seems to be

floating in real space, and the wisps of cloud surrounding her approximate natural phenomena. This

type of painting was what Taki understood as "Objectivism." He assumed that if the paintings by Gaho and Hogai praised by Fenollosa, represented Objectivism, then nanga condemned by Fenollosa must

represent Subjectivism. In other words, the dichotomy of Objectivism and Subjectivism structured into Taki's perception was instrumentally shaped by the memory ofnanga's plight in the days of Fenol- losa.

Spirit resonance came to be identified as a key feature that distinguished nanga from the realist mode influenced by Western painting, and many Japanese critics concluded that spirit resonance was a decidedly "Eastern" trait. An article from a 1922 issue of Toyo (The Oriental Review), "Toyoga to kiin" (Eastern Painting and Spirit Resonance), was premised upon this assertion.3 To emphasize the

"Easternness" of spirit resonance, the author Tokason began by citing at length two interpretations of

spirit resonance, one by a Japanese and the other by a Chinese. The nineteenth-century artist Wata- nabe Kazan (I793-184I) related spirit resonance to the primordial vitality in nature, and located its

artistic value in the virtuosity of brush and ink. And Guo Ruoxu (active last halfIIth century), an artist-

critic of the Song dynasty, equated spirit resonance with the elegance of thought and high moral stan-

dards.31 Despite these differences, Tokason argued that it was apparent that both Kanzan and Guo esteemed the concept of spirit resonance.32 This common ground enabled the author to argue for the

existence of a special "reverence for spirit resonance in Eastern painting." Tokason went on to suggest that Western painting (seiyoga) lacked spirit resonance because of its insistence on realism. However, he was not dismissive of all Western paintings. He praised Impressionism for not trying to compete with nature by "recreating its exquisite and intricate affects." He attributed the approach of the Impres- sionists to the "growing interest in studying Eastern painting in Europe."33

Three polarities relating to nanga can be discerned: subjectivism-objectivism, spirit resonance-

realism, Eastern painting-Western painting. These oppositional forms overlapped and were mutually

30 Tokason, "Toyoga to kiin" (Eastern painting and spirit resonance), Toyo (The Oriental Review) (October 1922), 86-89.

31 Alexander Soper, Kuo Jo-Hsu's Experiences in Painting (Washington, D.C.: American Council of Learned Societies,

I95I), 15. Also see Nikaido Riu, "The Spirit of Kiin Seido," Bijutsu shashin gaho I, no. 3 (March I9IO), 22-25.

32 In the early twentieth century, some Japanese not only viewed spirit resonance as integral to Japanese painting, but

that it connoted certain moral qualities. See for example, Araki Jippo, "Nihonga to kiin" (Nihonga and spirit reso-

nance), Bijutsu no nippon (February 1913), 2-3.

33 Tokason, "Toyoga to kiin," 88-89.

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dependent. They constituted the underlying structure of the Japanese perception of nanga in the early twentieth century. In those days, when theJapanese referred to "Eastern painting," they mostly meant

Japanese and Chinese painting. As the artist Tanaka Raisho (1868-1940) explained: "Speaking of the

East, its territory is vast. Beginning with our [country] Japan and China, it encompasses India, Thai-

land, Tibet, and other regions, but here [in the context of painting history] it pertains primarily to

Japan and China."34 Literati painting, seen as closely intertwined with Chinese painting, came to be

understood as "the essence of Eastern painting" (toyoga no shinzui). 35 An interesting result of this asser-

tion of a shared Eastern tradition with China was that it made the Japanese discourse of nanga more

amenable to the Chinese situation. The polarities that emerged from this discourse resonated with con-

temporary Chinese artists and theorists such as Chen Hengke, who consciously deployed them in the

representation of their native literati tradition.

2.

CHEN HENGKE'S THEORY OF LITERATI PAINTING

The history of Chinese literati painting is enigmatic. Some say it began in the Tang dynasty, others

say in the Eastern Jin (317-420), Song, or even the Yuan dynasty. It has been defined as a creation of

scholar officials; it is calligraphic, subjective, non-mimetic, expressive, and poetic. Above all, those

who seek to define literati painting return again and again to the notion that it is the antithesis of arti-

san, academic, and professional painting. However, many of these definitions are first and foremost

typological and rhetorical, rather than historical. Many scholars have shown that the nature of literati

painting, especially its dichotomous relationship with artisan, academic, and professional painting, is in fact extremely elusive.36 These studies reveal that the many so-called literati painters in reality lived as professionals, and their taste in art was not entirely unlike that of court painters. Neverthe-

less, most scholars would concede that the dialectic underlying attempts to define literati painting in

relation to professional painting has for a long time lent a discursive regularity to the theorization of

Chinese art history. In the early I920s Chen Hengke (fig. 5), an esteemed leader of the Beijing art world, propounded

a set of theories that illustrates the persistent habit of defining literati painting through reference to

34 Tanaka Raisho, "Toyoga no shinzui" (The essence of Eastern painting), Shoga kotto zasshi 26I (March I93I), 31.

35 Komuro, "Nanga no kanken" (Personal views on nanga), Bijutsu koron 2, no. 2 (February 1921), 5-9; and Matsubayashi

Keigetsu, "Nanga no shinzui" (The essence of nanga), Hoga 2, no. I (January I935), 2-3.

36 See for example, Sung Hou-mei, "Xia Chang yu ta de mozhu huajuan" (Xia Chang and his bamboo handscrolls), The

National Palace Museum Research Quarterly 9, no. 4 (Summer 1992), 78-83, and by the same author, "Yuanmo minzhe

huafeng yu mingchu zhepai zhi xingcheng: zhepai zhi xingcheng - Xie Huan yu Daijin" (From the Min-Zhe tradi-

tion to the Zhe School (part 2) precursors of the Zhe School: Xie Huan and Dai Jin), The National Palace Museum Research

Quarterly 7, no. I (Autumn I989), I127-31; Kathlyn Liscomb, "Shen Zhou's Collection of Early Ming Paintings and the

Origins of the Wu School's Eclectic Revivalism," Artibus Asiae 52, nos. 3/4 (1992), 2I5-55; Stephen Little, "Literati

Views of the Zhe School," Oriental Art 37, no. 4 (Winter 1991/92), 192-208; Sandra Jean Wetzel, "Sheng Mou: The

Coalescence of Professional and Literati Painting in Late Yuan China," Artibus Asiae 56, nos. 3/4 (I996), 263-89; and

James Cahill, The Painter's Practice: How Artists Lived and Worked in Traditional China (New York: Columbia Uni-

versity Press, 1994).

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what it is not. His theories appeared in two essays with almost identical titles and contents. The first, "Wenrenhua de jiazhi," in vernacular Chinese, was first published in the January 1921 issue of Huixue

zazhi, a publication ofBeijing University's Huafa Yanjiu Hui (Society for the study of painting meth-

ods).37The second essay, "Wenrenhua zhi jiazhi," in classical Chinese, was included in a volume enti- tled Zhongguo wenrenhua zhi yanjiu (Studies of Chinese literati painting).38 The titles of both essays can be translated as "The Value of Literati Painting."

In the opening paragraph Chen defined literati painting as follows: "The thing called literati paint- ing is 'spiritual' (xingling), 'intellectual' (sixiang), 'active' (huodong), it is 'non-mechanical' (fei qixie), and 'unsimplistic' (fei danchun)." Freedom of the mind is the main point here. The first quality, xing- ling, was culled from the vocabulary of the Gongan School of literature of the Ming dynasty, which saw xingling as a fundamental component of poetic expression; poetry that conveys xingling does not adhere stubbornly to ancient styles, but transforms the old and brings forth the new.39 The second and the third qualities, "thought [fulness] " and "active[ness] ," are also consistent with the idea of the free- dom of the mind. To clarify his meaning, he introduced two other qualities he considered antitheti- cal to the first three, namely, "mechanical" and "simplistic." Here, Chen betrayed his anxiety over industrialization and the machine, aspects of the modern world that literati painting could not accom- modate. He saw photography as the paradigm for that alien world. In the classical version of his essay, he added that "[if literati painting] were 'mechanical' and 'simplistic', it would be exactly like pho- tographs, undifferentiated and repetitive, and what could be precious about it then? How can it be

important as art? How can it be valuable as art? What is precious about art lies in its ability to nur- ture the spirit, express individualism, and reflect feelings."

Here Chen committed the same positivist error as the mid-nineteenth-century Europeans who saw

photography purely as a technical procedure that involved no subjectivity and reflectivity whatso- ever.40 Chen lived in an age when the development of science and technology in China was still in its

rudimentary stage, and he himself had been a student of natural science but had given it up because of what he perceived to be the inability of science to elevate the mind and ameliorate society. More-

over, writing after the First World War, he was also reacting against the dehumanization attendant on modern machine warfare. Photography, a product of science and technology, was to him naturally flawed. Literati painting on the other hand represented all that was not mechanically produced, and for him this meant literati painting was intrinsically individualistic, humane, and thoughtful.

Chen developed four criteria for literati painting that encapsulate his beliefs. These four criteria differ slightly between the two versions of "The value of literati painting." In the vernacular version, the four criteria are: I) moral character (renpin); 2) knowledge (xuewen); 3) capabilities (cai); 4) feel-

ings (qing). And in the classical version, they are I) moral character; 2) knowledge; 3) capabilities-feel-

37 This essay is reprinted inJindai zhongguo meishu lunji (Anthology of art writings in modern China), edited by He

Huaishuo, vol. 2 (Taibei: Yishujia chubanshe, 1991), 49-52.

38 First published by Shanghai's Zhonghua shuju and reprinted in 1992 by Tianjinshi guji shudian.

39 Gong Chanxing, "Chen Shizeng de wenrenhua sixiang," 60.

40 For a comprehensive analysis of Western reception of photography in the late nineteenth century, see Mary Warner

Marien, Photography and its Critics: A Cultural History, 1i83I-900 (New York: Cambridge University Press, I997).

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ings (caiqing); 4) thought (sixiang). Moral character and knowledge are standard literati, or more accu-

rately, Confucian ideals. What about capabilities, feelings, and thought? And why did he change the

third criterion from "capabilities" to "capabilities-feelings," and the fourth to "thought"? As men-

tioned earlier, "thought" in Chen's conception was the opposite of the mechanical and the simplistic, and paralleled the idea of the free mind as expressed by the terms "spiritual" and "active." Is it possi- ble that "capabilities-feelings" also has the same meaning?

A probable source for Chen's concepts of "capabilities" and "feelings" is Cheng Duanmeng's (II41-96) "Xingli zixun" (A primer of human nature and principle), a classical lexicon written in the

Song dynasty that clarifies many key terms in Neo-Confucianist texts.4I Cheng was an associate of the

foremost Neo-Confucian scholar Zhu Xi (1130-1200), and his primer was approved by Zhu himself.

Cheng wrote:

Acting in response to things, expressing the desires of one's nature:

this is called "the feelings" (qing). The qualities of one's nature, distinguished as hard and soft, strong and weak, good and evil: these

are called "capabilities" (cai).42

According to this definition, "capabilities" is simply a neutral term that accommodates a set of polar- ities, and it alone does not communicate the ideal of subjectivism and free-thinking. That is probably

why in the second version of his essay, Chen decided to combine the term with "feelings," which,

according to Cheng Duanmeng, carries more precisely the meaning of expressing one's desire, in

other words, subjective feelings. Hence, "capabilities-feelings" reinforces the last criterion, namely,

"thought." The eldest son of Chen Sanli (1856-I937), a scholar-official of the late imperial era and a renowned

poet, Chen Hengke was raised in a scholarly environment. This background accounts for his famil-

iarity with Confucian concepts. This, however, does not mean that classical Chinese sources were his

sole reference. For seven years (1902-09), Chen studied in Japan and some of the ideas propounded in

"The value of literati painting" patently paralleled contemporary Japanese discourse on the subject. In 1920, the year before the publication of the first version of Chen's essay, Komuro Suiun

(I874-I945), a leading proponent of nanga, had offered his view on the "true life of nanshuzga" in the

popular Japanese art journal, Bijutsu shashin gaho. He began with the following lines:

These days there are different theories about the meaning and value of nanga, but many of these

theories are weak... People do not really comprehend the spirit of nanga and try to judge it with

the same standards as the realistic art of the West. This is a grave misunderstanding.43

41 Cheng Duanmeng, Xingli zixun (A primer of human nature and principle), included in Song Yuan Xuean (Anthol-

ogy of Song and Yuan Education), compiled by Huang Zongxi, reprinted (Shanghai: Zhonghua Shuju, I936).

42 This translation appears in Wm. Theodore de Bary and Irene Bloom, eds., Sources of Chinese Tradition, 2nd ed., vol. I

(New York: Columbia University Press, I999), 815. 43 Komuro, "Nanshuga no shin seimei" (The true life of nanshga), Bijutsu shashin gaho I, no. 3 (March 1920), 26.

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This passage reveals that the idea of "value" was a subject of considerable debate among the nanga cir- cles in Japan. The term kachi (transliterated into Chinese as jiazhi) was a Japanese neologism derived from the writings of Adam Smith (I723-90), the Scottish economist who analyzed human relation-

ships in terms of market exchange. The idea of assigning values to cultural products was an economic idea that enabled different nations to join the world community. The greatest challenge facing literati

painting was whether it could measure up to global artistic standards and be relevant in the modern world. Although Komuro denied the universality of the realist style and the validity of imposing this

style on nanga, he was not suggesting that nanga should resist change. He was particularly critical of the practice of copying old masters, a practice commonly viewed at the time as stultifying. Towards the end of his exposition, Komuro exhorted nanga artists to shed the habit of imitating old styles and

ideals because of its subversion of individualism. "The modern future of nanga, " he believed, "depends

substantially on its ability to change with the modern spirit."44 The idea that individualism was an

essential feature of modernity was a recurrent theme in the cultural discourses of the time.

Chen, as we have seen, also put great emphasis on human agency. His main criticism of photo- graphy was that it was "mechanical," "undifferentiated," and "repetitive." Influence fromJapanese crit- ics played a crucial role in his understanding of photography and its implications for literati painting. In 1921, before revising his vernacular version of "The value of literati painting," Chen had read Omura

Seigai's essay on "Wenrenhua zhi fuxing" (The revival of literati painting). Omura was a professor at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts specializing in East Asian Art.45 Aware that the invention of photogra- phy had tempered people's perception of painting, Omura argued in his essay that painting should not be pitted against photography:

If we judge by the level of meticulousness and delicacy, painting is naturally far inferior to photo-

graphy. No one will make fun of the mechanical methods by which glass lenses and photosensi- tive science outdo painting, and the reason is evident. If painting from life and the matching of nature are the ultimate goals of art, then the invention of photography must mean the immediate

extinction of painting... However, this is not the actual situation. The advantage of painting lies

beyond objective representation; it has its own power and domain.46

Apparently Omura's essay struck a responsive chord with Chen, who proceeded not only to incorpo- rate some of Omura's ideas (including the reference to photography) into the later version of his essay,

44 Ibid., 27.

45 Books by Omura include Shina kaiga shoshi (A short history of Chinese painting) (Tokyo: Shimbi Shoin, I9IO); Shina

kaigashi taikei (Outline of Chinese painting history) (Tokyo: Tokyo Bijutsu Gakko Koyukai, 1925); Zhongguo meishu

shi (History of Chinese painting), translated into Chinese by Chen Binhe (Shanghai: The Commercial Press, 1928). For more on the career of Omura Seigai and his contributions and relationship to China, see Yoshida Chizuko, "Omura

Seigai to Chugoku" (Omura Seigai and China), Tokyo geijutsu daigaku bijutsu gakubu kiyo 26 (March I991), I-35; and

by the same author, "Omura Seigai no bijutsu hihyo" (Omura Seigai's art criticism), Tokyo geijutsu daigaku bijutsu

gakubu kiyo 29 (March 1994), 25-52; Anonymous ["One reporter"], "Mondai no hito Omura Seigai" (Omura Seigai, the person in question), Chu-o Bijutsu (March 1916), 15-20; and Yashiro Yukio, "Wasure enu hitobito sono ichi - Omura

Seigai" (People ever fresh in my mind, one among them: Omura Seigai), Yamato bunka 14 (June I954), 64-76.

46 Omura, "Wenrenhua zhi fuxing" (The revival of literati painting), Zhongguo wenrenhua zhi yanjiu, Ioa.

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but also translated Omura's essay into classical Chinese and published it as a pendant to his own in The

study of Chinese literati painting. The inclusion of Omura's exposition in his book on Chinese literati

painting not only meant an acceptance of aJapanese view on the subject, but it also showed how blurred the boundary between Japanese nanga and Chinese literati painting was becoming in historical writ-

ings. In an interview with the journal Shina bijutsu (Chinese art) Chen Hengke used very much the

same language as the Japanese in describing the relationship between Japanese and Chinese painting:

In the past among Japanese paintings, that is, nanga, there have been many masterpieces that

purely inherit the spirit resonance of Chinese painting. The spirit resonance of Chinese painting

pervades the Kano, Tosa, and even the Shijo Schools, and none of them is purelyJapanese. Recently,

Japanese painters have been stimulated by Western painting, and this creates a great barrier

between Chinese painting and [their art]. The Chinese, having ignored Western painting styles and dwelled on old methods, are building a fence around themselves. In any case it is my feeling that once the barrier is removed, a veritable Eastern painting should emerge.47

Literati painting in China was a waning tradition in the early twentieth century. The decline of the

scholar-officials as a social class after the fall of the Qing dynasty played a decisive role in this devel-

opment. In addition, the separation between literati painting and its traditional opposite, namely, aca-

demic and professional painting, had long been obsolete. But a new binary relationship took its place.

Beginning in the nineteenth century, the Chinese increasingly viewed themselves in relation to the

West. This was largely due to the leadership of the post-Opium-War "self-strengtheners" such as

Zeng Guofan (1811-72), who asked "why are they [Western nations] so small and yet strong? Why are we [China] so large and yet weak?" Zhang Zhidong's (I837-I909) advocation of"Chinese learn-

ing for essence/substance" and "Western learning for function" further engraved this dichotomy between native and Western ways on the minds of the Chinese people. Therefore when Chen Hengke

spoke of literati painting as a Chinese art in the I920S, he was also implying that literati painting was

decidedly non-Western

In 1922 The Oriental Review publihed an article by Chen titled "Concerning nanga.)" He did not

simply emphasize the historical convergence of Japan and China in the tradition of Eastern art, but

stressed the inherent difficulties he saw in reconciling Eastern and Western art:

Eastern and Western art after all stand apart; they have their own system, history, customs, and

intellectual basis... Of course they also share common features, but just in terms of painting, it is

not certain how they may actually converge. In the future when the world attains a great synthe-

sis, when knowledge and thought can be communicated in multiple ways, a merging [of Eastern

and Western] art and painting may perhaps be realized. But whether that time will come is still

unknown.48

47 Anonymous, "Chin Kokaku gahaku to no hanashi" (A conversation with painter Chen Hengke), Shina bijutsu I, no. 7 (March 1923), 2.

48 Chin [Chen], "Nanga ni tsuite" (Concerning nanga), TOyo (October I922), 131-32.

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Chen, who regarded Eastern and Western art as two separate and distinct domains, nevertheless enter-

tained the notion that they might some day be synthesized. This was not the first time he expressed such a view. In January I9I9 at the farewell function organized by Beijing University in honor of Xu

Beihong (I895-I953), who was leaving for Paris, Chen declared: "the principle (li) of Eastern and

Western painting is fundamentally the same, if we compare Chinese and Western paintings, we will

see that they have much in common... I hope that Mr. Beihong will harmonize China and the out-

side during this trip."49 Chen's belief that the "principle of Eastern and Western painting is fundamentally the same" was

related to a tendency among Chinese intellectuals in the early I920S to speak about native essence not

only in terms of form, but in terms of universal principles as well. The magazine Xueheng (Critical

Review), founded in 1922, achieved great success for its openness to both classical and Western learn-

ing. Its inaugural issue "was adorned with stately portraits of Confucius and Socrates printed back to

back."50 The Critical Review was a reaction against the Xin wenhua yundong (New Culture Movement), which saw the Confucian tradition as inimical to such "modern" values as freedom, science, and democ-

racy.s51 It asserted that the East and the West are not only compatible, and that in terms of historical

evolution, the East was no less progressive than the West. In the "Value of literati painting" Chen Hengke raised a similar point:

Western painting can be described as extremely faithful to form. Since the nineteenth century, in

accordance with the principles of science, [Western painting] has rendered meticulously objects with light and colors. Lately, however, Post-Impressionism has run counter to that course; it de-

emphasizes the objective, and focuses on the subjective, and it is joined in its revolutionary per- formances by Cubism and Futurism. Such intellectual transformations are sufficient evidence to

show that verisimilitude does not exhaust the good in art, and that alternative criteria must be

sought.s2

Chen disparaged the value of realism, not because it was a Western trait that necessarily conflicted

with Eastern painting, but because it was falling out of favor even in the West. He saw Post-Impres- sionism, Cubism, and Futurism as being driven by the same tendency to "de-emphasize the objective and focus on the subjective" as was literati painting. He recognized that people in China were demand-

ing more realistic pictures because they were associated with the progress of the West, but by invok-

ing the Western avant-garde, he contended that progress was already inherent in literati painting. At

one point in his essay, he simply declared that "literati painting does not strive for verisimilitude, and

49 Cited in Yuan Lin, "Chen Shizeng he jindai zhongguohua de zhuanxing," 22. Chen's emphasis on li clearly reflected

his Confucian learning.

50 Lydia Liu, Translingual Practice: Literature, National Culture, and Translated Modernity in China, 9oo-s937 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, I995), 247.

5I For the history of the New Culture Movement, see Lin Yu-sheng, The Crisis of Chinese Consciousness: Radical Anti-

Traditionalism in the May Fourth Era (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, I979).

52 Chen, "Wenrenhua zhi jiazhi," 5a.

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that is what makes it progressive."53 Chen Hengke's ideas proved to have enduring influence in Chi-

nese art historiography. Parallels between Eastern painting and Post-Impressionism occasionally are

cited in art historical literature even in the late twentieth century.54

3- AN ICON OF MODERNITY: SHITAO

What Chen Hengke preached in theory he applied in his art. His notions of individualism and his rejec- tion of verisimilitude are manifested in a landscape from 1908 (fig. 6). The background bluff and the

foreground rock are delineated by strings of tangled, ribbon-like strokes. Such strokes remind one of no

conventional models. Chen conducts a free play of linear rhythm that disembodies the forms, rendering the rocky substance airy and vibrating. He makes no attempt to represent a believable scene and con-

centrates instead on the calligraphic and energetic brushwork. The brush strokes in this painting are

reminiscent of the style of the seventeenth-century artist Shitao (I642-circa I7I0). A comparison with

a leaf from Shitao's Album for Old Yu (fig. 7) shows a similar combination of light ink wash, dotting, fibrous and reticulated lines. Chen is known to have studied the work of Shitao, especially those dating from the later years of his life,55 and the resemblance between the two artists' works is no accident.

Chen was not the only twentieth-century Chinese artist inspired by Shitao. Many of the leading masters of this era also took Shitao's paintings as their models, including Jin Cheng (I877-1926), He

Weipu (I844-I925), Wu Changshuo (1844-I927), Gao Yongzhi (1850-192I), Wu Guandai

(1862-1929), Qi Baishi (I863-I957), Xiao Xun (1883-1944), He Tianjian (189I-1977), Zheng

Wuchang (1894-1952), Qian Shoutie (1896-1967), and Zhang Daqian (I899-I983). These artists were

fascinated by Shitao's purported versatility and individualism. In the colophon on a landscape (fig. 8)

painted in I909, Jin Cheng wrote:

Master Shitao's brushwork is unrestrained.

His spirit resonance is profound,

Beyond the Four Wangs, Wu, and Yun.

He boldly treads his own path. At first he was not highly regarded in his time, But his mist, travelers, mountains, terraces

are all worthy of admiration.

To say that south of the great river

no one surpasses Master Shi is not an exaggeration.56

53 Ibid., 4b

54 See for example, Zheng Wei, "Hou yinxiangpai yu dongfang huihua"(Post-Impressionism and Eastern Painting), Meishu yanjiu (August 1986), 52-56.

55 Yu Jianhua, "Chen Shizeng xiansheng de shengping ji qi yishu" (The life and art of Mr. Chen Shizeng), Yu Jianhua meishu lunwen xuan (Collected essays on art by YuJianhua) (Jinan: Shandong meishu chubanshe, 1986), 349.

56 Here Jin Cheng is paraphrasing Wang Hui, Shitao's contemporary, who stated "South of the [Yangzi] River no one

surpasses master Shi."

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In the early twentieth century, a common criticism of Chinese painting was its lack of creativity, often

blamed on the preponderance of the orthodox style modeled after the so-called "Four Wangs, Wu,

and Yun." The Four Wangs, Wu and Yun (Wang Shimin I592-I680, Wang Jian I598-I677, Wang Hui I632-I717, Wang Yuanqi I642-17I5, Wu Li I632-I718, and Yun Shouping I633-90) formed a

close-knit group which later people called the "Six Masters of the Qing." Although each had his own

style, they generally followed Dong Qichang's precept and copied reverently the works by Song and

Yuan masters of the "Southern School" lineage. Some of the standard forms found in their works (land-

scapes in particular) are clusters of alum rocks, regularized alternations of painted and unpainted sur-

faces, as well as very controlled hemp-fiber strokes. Whether or not they were unimaginative and dull

are not questions that can be dealt with here, but the common belief among late Qing and early Repub- lican (I9I2-49) artists such as Jin Cheng was that the styles of the Six Masters had turned into cliches

that were stifling Chinese painting. Jin was a firm supporter of learning from the past, but did not

believe that all old masters were worth learning from; the Six Masters of the Qing represented an espe-

cially pernicious tradition and should not be emulated.

Jin regarded Shitao as an antidote to the orthodox tradition that had fettered Chinese art. Jin saw

him as someone who had transcended the Six Masters and blazed his own path. This perception was

rooted in the myth that Shitao followed nobody's style but his own, a myth stated by Shitao himself, who uttered this famous line: "the beards and eyebrows of the ancients cannot grow on my face, nor

can their lungs and bowels be placed in my body."57 In Jin's art collection were a number of Shitao

works, and the landscape from I909 was likely modeled after one of them.58

Shitao was forced to flee his home in Guangxi as a child and spent many years as a wanderer in

southern China. The difficult circumstances of Shitao's life, and his status as a left-over subject of the

Ming dynasty had special appeal in the modern era. He comes close to being what Lydia Liu describes

in the context Chinese literature as "a perfect embodiment of the dilemma of the modern 'man"':

Modern Chinese writers were immediately attracted to the idea of the individual, because it

allowed them to devise a dialogic language with which to attack tradition on behalf of the indi-

vidual as Lu Xun did in "The Diary of a Madman." But the idea was also fraught with problems, because this individual often turned out to be a misfit in the hostile environment of a rapidly

disintegrating society. The "superfluous man" from Russian literature, who figured so promi-

nently in Ya Dafu's works, thus became a perfect embodiment of the dilemma of the modern

"man."59

57 Shitao, Kugua heshang huayu lu (Monk Bittermelon's recorded sayings on painting), in Zhongguo hualun leibian

(Classified compilation of writings on Chinese painting theories), edited by YuJianhua, vol. I (Hong Kong: Zhonghua shuju, I973), I47.

58 According to the diary of Masaki Naohiko (1862-1940), an album by Shitao in Jin's collection was sold to the Japan- ese diplomat Okabe Nagakage (born 1884); see Masaki,Jusan shodo nikki (Diary of the Hall of Thirteen Pines), (Tokyo: Chuo Koron Bijutsu, I966), 787. A Shitao album that is almost identical to Jin Cheng's landscape appears in Chinese Brushwork in Calligraphy and Painting (New York: Dover Publications, I990), 57.

59 Lydia Liu, "Narratives of Modern Selfhood: First-Person Fiction in May Fourth Literature," in Kang and Tang, eds., Politics, Ideology, and Literary Discourse in Modern China, 103-04.

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Fig. I Kosugi Hoan (I881-I964). Long Summer and Thick

Willows. I9I9. Ink on silk. I39.5 x 50.7 cm. Courtesy of Mari Kosugi and the Tochigi Prefectural Museum of Fine Arts, Tochigi.

Page 19: Literati Painting Early XXth

Fig. z Morita Tsunetomo (1881--I933). Late Spring Landscape. 19I7-i8. Ink on paper. 58.5 x 78.0 cm. Yamatane Museum of Art, TokYo.

Page 20: Literati Painting Early XXth

Fig. 3 Kondo Koichiro (I884-I962). Inked Dam and Floral Rain (details of handscroll). I9I8. Ink and light color on paper. 20.0 x 670.0 cm. Yamanashi Prefectural Art Museum, Yamanashi.

Page 21: Literati Painting Early XXth

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Merciful Mother Kannon. 1884.

Color on paper. I96.o x 86.5 cm.

Courtesy of the Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

Page 22: Literati Painting Early XXth

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Fig. 6 Chen Hengke (I876-I923). Landscape. I908. Light color on paper. 94.0 x 28.8 cm.

Courtesy of the Shoto Museum of Art and the

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Page 23: Literati Painting Early XXth

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Courtesy of the C.C. Wang Family Collection, New York.

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Page 24: Literati Painting Early XXth

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Fig. 9 List of catalogues of Shitao's work. After Nanga Kansho (October I935), 40.

Page 26: Literati Painting Early XXth

Shitao was somewhat of a misfit. An yimin ("left-over" subject) of the Ming dynasty, he fled his native

province amidst the turmoil of the transition to the Qing dynasty. Historians have traditionally por-

trayed him as a free-spirit, unconstrained by rules, and considered his painting to be highly individ-

ualistic.6o In the early twentieth century, Shitao's individualism, coupled with his status as a misfit,

made him an icon of modernity. The Japanese also developed a taste for Shitao, and the painter Hashimoto Kansetsu (I883-I945)

wrote a book on him.61 Until the twentieth century, Chinese paintings from the Qing dynasty in

Japanese collections were limited largely to those influenced by the styles of the Ming. Shitao's works

from the early Qing were virtually unknown in Japan until the Taisho period.62 But suddenly the

Japanese began collecting Shitao; one of the most popular Shitao albums today, Eight Views of Mount

Huang, entered the Sumitomo collection in the early twentieth century. This interest in Shitao accom-

panied the revival of nanga. In I924, Hashimoto published an essay comparing Shitao and the nanga master Uragami Gyokudo (I745-1820). He judged Gyokudo to be "the only [Japanese] to have com-

pletely liberated himself from all conventions and rules, and to have expressed his true personal

disposition."63 "Wildness" (yasei) was a feature that Hashimoto associated with Gyokudo and with

Shitao, whosee works he knew from friends and collectors in China. Shitao's wildness made him a par-

adigmatic literati painter in the eyes of the Japanese.64

Gyokudo was not the only nanga artists famous for flouting rules. His older contemporary Ikeno

Taiga took pride in his ability to paint with his fingers and nails, and earned the reputation for being eccentric (ki). Earlier nanga artists, especially Gion Nankai (I676-I751) and Yanagisawa Kien

(I704-58), were also known to be somewhat untamed and lacking in self-discipline. But eccentricity was not a negative trait; Taiga, for example, was admired precisely for his idiosyncrasies. His finger

painting "performances" drew large crowds.65 This tradition of eccentricity deeply affected the per-

ception of nanga in the modern period. That was probably why Fenollosa likened Ikeno Taiga's image of Sakyamuni to a rickshaw driver in tatters and Yosa Buson's figures to escaped lunatics from a men-

tal asylum. Taiga and Buson might have had a good chuckle over Fenollosa's remark. The unruly char-

acter that had bedeviled nanga in Fenollosa's time (I870s-I890s) was precisely what restored it to life

in the early twentieth century.

60 Recent scholarship have shown however that Shitao's individualism has been much exaggerated and that his paint-

ings display features inspired by certain regional schools. See for example, Richard Vinograd, "Reminiscences of

Ch'in-huai: Tao-chi and the Nanking School," Archives of Asian Art 31 (1977-78), 6-3I; and Richard Edwards, "Shih-

t'ao and Early Ch'ing," in The World Around the Chinese Artist: Aspects of Realism in Chinese Painting (Ann Arbor: Uni-

versity of Michigan, 1987), 105-54; see alsoJonathan Scott Hay, "Shitao's Late Work (I697-1I707): A Thematic Map," (Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, I989).

61 Hashimoto Kansetsu, Sekito, ist ed. 1926, reprinted (Tokyo: Godo, I94I).

62 See Yonezawa and Yoshizawa,Japanese Painting in the Literati Style, I43.

63 Hashimoto, "Futatabi Gyokudo to Sekito ni tsuite" (Gyokudo and Shitao revisited), Chgo bijutsu I02 (May I924), 120.

64 Nakata Yujiro devotes a whole chapter to Shitao in Bunjinga ronshu (Essays on literati painting) (Tokyo: Chuo Koron-

sha, 1982).

6S For general studies of the nanga movement, see James Cahill, Scholar Painters ofJapan: The Nanga School (New York:

Asia Society, 1972); a good study of Taiga in English is Melinda Takeuchi, Taiga's True Views: the Language of Land-

scape Painting in Eighteenth-Century Japan (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992).

32I

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To be modern came to suggest the ability to define one's own persona, to be unconstrained by tra-

dition, to attain personal freedom, and to give free rein to subjective expression. Taki Seiichi used the

term hyogenshugi (expressionism) to describe literati painting in an essay published in I922.66 Taki tried

to couch his thesis in modern Western art theory by invoking the ideas ofBenedetto Croce (I866-I952). For Taki, Croce was someone who believed that beauty should be replaced by expression, and that the

mere imitation of objects cannot be art. He saw similarities between Croce's theory and the Chinese

concept ofxinyin (imprints of the mind), and posited both as integral to the creative process of literati

painting. Taki also equated spirit resonance with Kandinsky's Innerer Klang (internal sound) with the

intention of bringing literati painting and modern Western art closer together. The tendency to equate literati painting with the modern Western art persisted into the I930S. In

I935, the Japanese art journal Nanga kansho devoted its October issue to Shitao. In this issue was an

article by Liu Haisu (I896-I994), founder of the Shanghai Art Academy, who tied Shitao directly to

Post-Impressionism and Expressionism:

As soon as we think of the most progressive modern art of Post-Impressionism and Expression-

ism, even without measuring their profound artistic correspondence, we can discern in the end

their common principles [that is, progressiveness]. Moreover, compared to the progressive theo-

ries in these art [movements] of the West, the thought embraced by Shitao even seems to surpass their progressiveness in some respects. My belief is by no means presumptuous.67

Liu corroborated his arguments with quotations from Shitao's Kugua hesang hua yu lu (Recorded say-

ings on painting), including the famous lines: "no method, that is my method" and "to paint in close

resemblance to other schools is to drink their left-over soup." Shitao's conviction made him, in Liu's

mind, the "forefather of modern Chinese art."68 It is unclear how much Liu had been influenced by

Japanese scholarship when he linked Shitao to the Post-Impressionists, but one can safely assume that

he was familiar with the debates in the Japanese art world. Liu admitted that his friendship with the

Japanese painter Ishii Hakutei (I882-I958) had informed his vision of art education,69 and in I92I he

published a volume introducing contemporary Japanese art.70

66 Taki, "Bunjinga to hyogenshugi" (Literati painting and expressionism), Kokka 390 (November I922), I60-65.

67 Ryu Kaizoku [Liu Haisu], "Sekito to goki inshoha" (Shitao and Post-Impressionism), Nanga kansho (October I935),

26-27.

68 Ibid., 27.

69 In April I917, the young Liu Haisu met Ishii in Shanghai, and Ishii was reported to have said in one of their conver- sations: "After the war [the First World War], the greatest awakening in the world is the realization of the need to

promote artistic activities... [and that] Japanese artists these days generally desire to engage in artistic movements for

the people; the government also knows to support these efforts wholeheartedly." "After hearing these words," Liu

wrote, "I could not help but be swept away, and all the more I felt my aspirations could no longer be stopped or

delayed." Here, Liu was speaking about his aspirations to promote art education in China. See Yuan Zhihuang and Chen Zuen, eds., Liu Haisu nianpu (Chronology of Liu Haisu) (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, I992), 22.

70 Liu Haisu, Riben xinmeishu de xin yinxiang (New impressions on the newJapanese art) (Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1921).

322

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A testimony to the popularity of Shitao is a list of publications found in the same issue of Nanga Kansho (fig. 9). It enumerates twenty-four catalogues with photographic reproductions of Shitao's

paintings in both Japanese and Chinese collections. No Chinese artist inspired greater enthusiasm at

this time than Shitao. A close contender was Shitao's contemporary and distant cousin, Bada Shanren

(I626-1705), who shared his marginal existence as a "left-over subject." Like Shitao, Bada was also

compared in Japan with artists of the nanga tradition because of his liberated spirit.71 In the eyes of twentieth-century Japanese and Chinese admirers, Shitao and Bada possessed qual-

ities that matched the modern sentiments of the European avant garde. To what extent this view of the

two artists affected the practice of painting in either Japan or China is a question that awaits more

research. But an inscription on a painting by Wang Yun (1887-1938), a work datable stylistically to

the I920s, sheds some light on this question at least in the context of China; it reads (fig. Io):

Artists nowadays have abandoned the difficult in favor of the facile.

Arbitrary smears of black ink are called Shitao if not Bada. But Shitao and Bada had a magical brush; Not a stroke or drop of ink is perfunctory. Their skills emanate from within.

Every stroke is supremely free, and unconstrained by rules. How could this be like those who fool around today and paint in the name of Shitao and Bada?

Regrettable! [...]

Wang Yun's comment elucidates two concurrent phenomena: first, the pervasiveness of Shitao and

Bada as models for modern Chinese artists, and second, a degradation of the two masters' art through facile interpretations. Any "arbitrary smears of black ink," any artificial claim to artistic freedom was

justified in the name of Shitao and Bada. Unconcern for rules and abandonment of skills became uni-

versal soluticons for modern problems. If Wang's observation was accurate, individualism was con-

gealing into a cliche of its own.

After the I920S, literati painting in China was gradually subsumed into the generic category of

guohua (national painting), a term which itself was a neologism derived from the Japanese kokZuga. Hence it is not surprising that the rhetoric developed from the discourse of literati painting was also

transferred toc discussions of national painting. A good example is Wang Yachen's (I894-I983) essay, "Lun guohua chuangzuo" (On creating national painting), which defines national painting in terms of the East-)West dialectic, individualism, and spirit resonance:

71 Nikaido Riu juxtaposes a painting by Bada Shanren with one by Okada Beisanjin (1744-1820), see "The Spirit ofKiin

Seido, " 22-25. Both Shitao and Bada were cited as inspirations for Tomioka Tessai, see for example Ishii Hakutei, "Shina

meiga shu o kanshi" (Perusing Masterpieces of Chinese Painting), Shina bijutsu I, no. I (August I922), 7. For more on

Bada Shanren, see Judith G. Smith, ed., Master of the Lotus Garden: The Life and Art of Bada Shanren (I626-1705) (New Haven: Yale University Art Gallery, I990).

323

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Xie He of the Southern Qi originated the theory of the Six Laws of national painting, and his the-

ory has been highly regarded by posterity, especially the theory of "spirit resonance means vital-

ity," which is commonly acknowledged as the essence of national painting. The meaning of spirit resonance is probably a type of abstract depiction that operates from inner experience and transcends

physical appearance. It is derived from the ideal. Western paintings all depict the physical quali- ties of real objects, and their significance lies in realism; this is the general opinion expressed with

regard to both Eastern and Western painting. An idealistic work always pays attention to "spirit resonance means vitality," a realistic work stems from a dependence on the artist's sensations of real

objects. This is a point of fundamental difference between Western and Eastern painting.72

Wang had studied at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts from I9I5 to 1921, and this essay was written after

he returned to China, probably in the I920s.73 This background explains his particular interpretation of the Six Laws. Another returned student from Japan and the renowned author of Shuhua shulu jie ti

(Annotated bibliography of writings on painting and calligraphy), Yu Shaosong (1883-1949), also

characterized spirit resonance as the essence of Chinese national painting.74 Liu Haisu, Feng Zikai

(I898-1975), and Teng Gu (I90OI-4I), who had all stayed in Japan for long or short periods, likewise

discoursed on the Six Laws (especially spirit resonance), with the implication that they were intrinsic

to Eastern or Chinese painting.75 Even today, when some scholars discuss spirit resonance, they still

persist in the beliefthat th d is incontestably nested in the concept of individualism as represented

by the art of Shitao.76

These invocations of spirit resonance suggest that the discourse of literati painting developed in

pre-war Japan deeply affected the art historiography of twentieth century China. The re-publication of the essays on spirit resonance by Teng, Feng, and Yu in the IIIIjindai zhongguo meishu lunji (Anthol-

ogy of art writings in modern China) indicates that these theories continue to be of critical interest

today. Hitherto almost no effort has been made to bring Japanese literature to bear on the current inter-

pretation of these texts, but a conjunctive reading like the one attempted here surely throws new light on the discursive complexity of modern Chinese art theory.

72 Wang Yachen, "Lun guohua chuangzuo" (On creating national painting) inJindai zhongguo meishu lunji 5, 49. 73 This essay is similar in tone to several of Wang's essays published in the I920S, such as "Guohua gaijin lun" (On the

improvement of national painting; I924) and "Guohua shang liufa de bianjie" (Explaining the meaning of the Six Laws

in national painting; 1923), reprinted in Wang Yachen yishu wenji (Collected writings on art by Wang Yachen), edited

by Wang Zhen and Rong Junli (Shanghai: Shanghai Shuhua Chubanshe, I990.)

74 Yu Shaosong, "Zhongguohua zhi qiyun wenti" (The problem of spirit resonance in Chinese painting), inJindai zhong-

guo meishu lunji I, II5-22.

75 Liu Haisu, Zhongguo huihua shang de liufa lun (The six laws in Chinese painting) (Shanghai: Renmin meishu chuban-

she, I957); Feng Zikai, "Dongyanghua liufa de lunli de yanjiu" (Study of the Six Laws in Eastern painting), injindai

zhongguo meishu lunji I (I53-8I); Feng's essay is heavily reliant on the work ofKinbara Sogo, a reputable scholar of Asian

art history at the time and teacher of Fu Baoshi in the I930s when the latter was studying in Tokyo; and Teng Gu,

"Qiyun shengdong luebian" (Brief exploration of the concept of "spirit resonance means vitality"), Jindai zhongguo meishu lunji I, I23-26.

76 See for example, Shen Shuhua, "Lun Guo Ruoxu de 'qiyun feishi shuo,'" (On Guo Ruoxu's concept of"spirit resonance

as an unlearnable quality"), Meishu shilun 3 (I985), 73-75.

324

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GLOSSARY

Bada Shanren JA [llA bakufu -;i Bijutsu shashin gaho fI i.i "Bijutsu shinsetsu" -5fM4a bunjinga=wenrenhua 7,A Bunten Zt cai t

caiqing 7-'1 Chen Hengke ItWWj' Chen Sanli -__iz Cheng Duanmeng 32~.S! Dong Qichang ilEXI Dong Yuan SM,

fei danchun 4MAt~ fei qixie J fif Feng Zikai -t'[i Gao Yongzhi Ffi Gion Nankai t~ li Gongan School ~/_i.-. Guhua pinlu ~i t:n J-1

guohua=kokuga 9]3 Guo Ruoxu ^7[IS Guo Ziyi iP[f-{l Han Gan MW Hashimoto Gaho 5Tfl3 Hashimoto Kansetsu ;tA]M- He Tianjian Wi)' He Weipu {~U}}f) Hirafuku Hyakusui 2tE1M t Huafa Yanjiu Hui -tMMiR^* Huang Xiufu w{M_.I Huayulu Fn

~]

Huixue zazhi ~flH, huodong FSij hyogenshugi t5 Ikeno Taiga 1t7t Ishii Hakutei ;if4:; Jin Cheng ,~,~ Jindai zhongguo meishu lunji f;, 4 I L ~ f {TO -1 Juran , t kachi=jiazhi { {?t Kano Hogai ,T f jt kanshi Al|j ki ;T kiin=qiyun ' . [

Kim Yusong ,: kokuga [Siu Komuro Suiun /]J_-?g

Kondo Koichiro jr.i.--

Kosugi Hoan /]',J3F! Kuwayama Gyokushu A ll T-tJf li A Li Sixun ~,XJll Lidai minghuaji &~Y~ 5 Liu Haisu WIJI liufa / \ i "Lun guohua chuangzuo" fH I --iAI I Mi Fu 3 Morita Tsunetomo A ff I't_i moxi ^.,. Naikoku Kaiga Kyoshinkai 19, ll Jii.HA

nanga Ajij

Nanga Kansho MARM-IN

"Nanga shinron" Fijfaini nanshuga 4i,-j nanzonghua ~i j Nihon Nanga-in B -iJi?R Nihon Nanga Kai B 7*iSij Nihon Nanga Kyokai B ijjtitt Nihon Nanshuga Kai B lj4i,j Ogyu Sorai Ct~9~ Omura Seigai 5;lij Qi Baishi Y i5 Qian Shoutie }~S

qing '[' qiyun VAR

qiyun shengdong a-1fitSJ renpin An &

Ryuchikai glgt~ Shitao ;6

seiyoga 9T - sencha Br,>JX Shina bijutsu 5S|J Shuhua shulujieti SfZ fiOM . sixiang T,,*)

Southern Qi *ff Taki Seiichi tl^- Tanaka Raisho E3 E M-i Tanaka Toyozo EB * P5 Teng Gu W11 Tokason tJE t7f Tomioka Tessai

- FlSJ~

Toyo V 4! Toyo bijutsu M$ S W" toyoga no shinzui Wii ? 0J~ ~]I

"Toyoga to kiin" :-* ihi MB

325

Page 31: Literati Painting Early XXth

Tuhua jianwen zhi i"f.rl JS,S ,

Uragami Gyokudo ti ?_ _t Wang Hui ::_ Wang Jian TIt

Wang Shimin q:Bl1

Wang Wei :f:t Wang Yachen Sti~ Wang Yuanqi :1E:.:S Wang Yun ES Watanabe Kazan x?23^0lf wenrenhua X7 ;S "Wenrenhua de jiazhi" 5 -~fBlJ{ "Wenrenhua zhi fuxing" 5:A Mtfi

Wu Changshuo :, .iMO Wu Guandai :SiB5 Wu Li qj Xiao Xun lfgA, Xie He WUi Xin wenhua yundong {fi{[tS_ xinyin LiL,1[J xingling 'fSt

"Xingli zixun" .'t...i Xu Beihong ,~,~S,

Xueheng ~f-j xuewen t [nJ

Yanagisawa Kien OPMJAN yasei 'ft

yimin AR Yosa Buson --5-j,l Yu Shaosong 5,~, Rn5 Yun Shouping ':tTi

Zeng Guofan I'I -

Zhang Daqian tfI Zhang Yanyuan ;??

Zhang Zhidong 5_?(1 Zheng Wuchang % FEIl

Zhongguo wenrenhua zhi yanjiu rP S 7z - S-

Zhou Fang N1B,7 ZhuXi

326