From the Hall of Spiritual Light to the Wuliang Ancestral Hall>>
Yang Zhishui (Research Fellow, Institute of Literature, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences)
From the Hall of Spiritual Light to the Wuliang Temple: The Remains of Imperial Art at the Turn of the Two Han Dynasties, by Miao Zhe, published by Sanlian Bookstore in October 2021.
In my mind, Miao Zhe's famous work is "The Trap of Proving History with Pictures" (Reading, No. 2, 2005), although he was previously famous for translating "The Clear Talk of the Angler", but I myself have made friends with him from this article. More than ten years have passed, but this article has never been forgotten, and always reminds yourself of the careful examination of famous objects. Now that the author is also engaged in this "high-risk" job, it is natural to avoid the trap. This unique work, intended to explore the birth of the Chinese painting tradition, is, according to the author, the first in a trilogy. In the absence of the "Imperial Art at the Turn of the Two Han Dynasties", the evicted documents and images completed the image restoration from the known (the existing Ludi Portrait Stone) to the unknown (the Imperial Art of the Two Han Dynasties), and then explored the court art and laws of this period and the reason for the occurrence, that is, the driving force of ideology, which could not be done without extensive insight, profound learning, and imagination generated on this basis. I don't think it's necessary to assign a title to this work, such as history, sociology, art history, and the historical context in which the object of study is located is never clearly defined. My reading, even abandoning the original intention of this work, and always paying attention to the various problems caused by it, especially the specific and subtle examination, such as confucius seeing the iconographic allegory of Lao Tzu, "the design and production of (Wang) Mang-style Boju mirror", and the popularity of the image of the Queen Mother of the West, so I always feel that the author's gaze when using common historical materials is like a torch. Of course, while challenging the theory, it is also easy to become a target, and the large number of annotations at the end of the book can be regarded as the author's strict fortification, and the reader cannot ignore it. Although the structure of the framework and the fact that some or even several points in the framework include some specific assertions or are questionable, in any case, it is impossible to reject the charm of this exploration that is truly a historical context.
Author: Yang Zhishui
Edit: Jin Jiuchao
Editor-in-Charge: Zhu Zifen