"Where is gangnam hundred views of the seven beaver restaurants?" I want to buy cheap turbid wine", which is one of the topics discussed in the player community of "Gangnam Hundred Views" in recent days. Since its launch, this ancient style mobile game has attracted attention because of the city style under the ink painting style. A hundred years ago, the secular life of the people is still fascinating to this day, however, for a long time, Chinese painting has focused on literati landscapes, and paintings with secular themes have not been able to enter the so-called "mainstream" painting.
In "For Use and Entertainment: Secular Paintings in the Prosperous Era of the Great Qing Dynasty", Gao Juhan analyzes more than 120 secular paintings of the Shengqing Dynasty, showing us a different picture of Chinese painting that is different from the literati landscape painting. Through the picture scrolls, we can glimpse the private life behind the emperor's prestige, and together with the painter, we can speculate on the Sacred Heart in the comparison of different editions of the paintings, and we can also walk into the streets of Jiangnan City and see the daily life of the people more than two hundred years ago. In terms of technique, the painters of the time selectively absorbed Western perspective and served a more readable Chinese expression in the fusion of East and West. However, it is worth pondering why these highly skilled paintings have long been excluded from traditional "mainstream" paintings.
Written by | Shen Lu
When it comes to secular paintings, the Northern Song Dynasty painter Zhang Zeduan's "Qingming On the River" is impressive. But looking back at this painting, it seems that there are few similar works that are well known to the world.
According to Gao Juhan's book "Use and Entertainment", the actual secular painting genre has appeared in the earliest stage of the development of Chinese painting, and occasional famous works have appeared in the Song Dynasty, but large-scale and diverse creations are concentrated in the late 17th to 18th centuries. At the end of the Ming Dynasty, Chinese society gradually developed the rudiments of early urbanization and commercialization from a farming-based society. The wealthy merchant community was also eager to experience the elegant life that was once exclusive to the gentry and officials of the imperial court, which constituted a market thrust that promoted the rapid rise of urban painters. In addition, the engraving and printing technology is becoming more and more mature, providing technical support for the scale of urban printing culture. All this made the Sheng Qing after the end of the Ming Dynasty (mainly referring to the "Kang Yongqian Prosperous Era") a fertile ground for the development of secular paintings made at the request of employers.
"Application and Entertainment: Secular Paintings of the Prosperous Qing Dynasty", [Beauty] Gao Juhan, translated by Yang Duo, Life, Reading, and Xinzhi Sanlian Bookstore, January 2022
Giving & Revealing:
Image pushing and pulling in secular paintings of the Qing Dynasty
The secular painters of the Qing Dynasty can be roughly divided into court painters who worked in the palace and urban painters who were far away from the rivers and lakes. Although all were functional works painted at the request of the employer, the royal "employer" had stricter requirements for the integrity of the painting and its suitability for formal display.
Most of the painters of the court painting academy came from southern cities, and they were often introduced by the townspeople of the imperial court officials, and later they could enter the palace with the emperor's approval, and sometimes the emperor would also choose the favorite person from the local painters who presented their works during the annual southern tour. These painters often have superb painting skills before entering the palace, able to customize paintings for specific occasions or uses, and some even take into account multiple fields, not only good at portraits but also proficient in the depiction of pavilions. In addition, because there are often large-scale celebration recording tasks in the palace, or portrait sketches of princes and ministers and harem concubines, the more the painters of the Realism School conceal their personal painting characteristics, the more they can integrate into group painting. After all, in such paintings, the emperor was not concerned about the style of painting, but whether he was eye-catching enough in the scenes surrounded by courtiers and concubines.
Figure 1 Anon. (possibly from Zhang Zhen or Zhang Weibang, or other painters) Yongzheng Xingle Figure Axis Silk color 206 cm × 101.6 cm The Palace Museum
For illustrative purposes, Gao Juhan cites several paintings in the book. Among them, this 2-meter-high "Yongzheng Xingle Tu" [Figure 1] depicts a picture of Yongzheng's private life in the Yuanmingyuan. In the painting, the Yongzheng Emperor is located in the foreground, sitting alone in the water pavilion, separated from the concubines and even without intersecting eyes, thus highlighting the imperial prestige. As the line of sight extends deep into the picture, the concubine and the maid are waiting not far away, and there are three other concubines in the cloister who are smiling and smiling, and the eyes seem to stay in the two children playing between the conversations. So, how to express the meaning of "walking music" without losing the imperial prestige? The subtleties of court painting convey subtle messages. In the lower left corner of the painting, the white cat is confronting a pair of white rats, all of which fall into the eyes of the flower cat, which is half hidden behind the trunk; in the middle scene, a black and white dog is about to jump up and cross the fence to frolic with another white dog; and a pair of cranes not far away meet their eyes. Pairs of animals symbolize the pursuit of graceful women by courteous men, and are also a cryptic footnote to the relationship between the emperor and his concubines.
In addition, Gao Juhan also paid attention to the fact that the concubines in the painting are not wearing Manchu costumes, but are all wearing Han costumes, and they are likely to be portrayals of Han concubines. However, this seems to be at odds with the etiquette at that time, and the Qing court has restricted women's Hanfu since the founding of the country. So is this painting a true record of history? Whether those palace wall bans were loosened in the private lives of the emperors, or whether they were actually a means for the Manchu emperors to reconcile tensions with Han Confucians while maintaining the cultural purity of their public image.
Figure 2 May be from the same group of figure painters as Figure 3 Qianlong Xingle Figure Axis Silk Color 227.2 cm × 160.2 cm The Palace Museum
Figure 3 Chen Mei, Lang Shining and other cooperation Qianlong Xingle Figure 1738 Axis Silk color 289.5 cm× 196.7 cm The Palace Museum
In fact, these court painters did not automatically conform to the Sacred Will as soon as they entered the palace, and they also experienced several run-ins, repeatedly speculating on the Sacred Heart in the tense revision after round of rejection. From the comparison of the two drafts of "Qianlong Xingle Tu" led by Chen Ming and Lang Shining and cooperated by six painters, we can already glimpse one or two [Figure 2 and Figure 3]. In the picture on the left, the Qianlong Emperor embraces a small child and is teasing him with a wooden mallet, as amiable as the grandfather of the neighbor. The rest of the people in the painting are in a relaxed posture, quite a bit of ordinary people's fireworks. However, this draft was refuted by the Holy Lord. In the revised painting, the emperor reoccupied the center of the painting, the eyes fell on the outside of the painting, the rest of the people although different postures, but overall dignified, the painter also added a few children to build snow lion details. In contrast, the picture on the right is less gentle and intimate, and more like a "family portrait or wedding photo taken in an old-fashioned photo studio."
Figure 4 Xu Yang Qianlong Southern Tour Volume VI: Along the Grand Canal into the City of Suzhou Partial Volume Silk Color 68.8 cm × 1994 cm The Metropolitan Museum of Art: The Dillon Fund Gift 1998 (1998: 360) The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Court secular paintings gradually became rigid and rigid in the above-mentioned run-in. Especially when court painters and urban professional painters depict the same subject, the visual impact of visual contrast is even greater. Suzhou painter Xu Yang spent six years to paint this "Qianlong Southern Tour Map" [Figure 4], a long scroll depicting the City view group portrait on the way to the Qianlong Emperor's southern tour, the roadside is the local officials to set up a stage for the ride, look closely into it, under a prosperous and prosperous picture, there are the same buildings and unrecognizable crowds.
Around the same time, a city painter in Suzhou was also hired to draw a map of the travels of Su Dingyuan, a local official in Jiangsu. Unlike the almost "copy-paste" depiction in the previous painting, this painting is given a lot of detail.
Figure 5 Anon. Su Ding's Journey to Tiger Hill 1768 Partial Volume Silk Colored Once in Andrew Franklin, London, Now in birmingham Museum and Art Gallery
Figure 6 Anon. Su Ding's Distant Journey to Tiger Hill Partially from Figure 5 from the same volume
"In a hotel near the canal, some guys are buying fish, some are greeting visitors and giving wine and dishes to guests upstairs; upstairs, maids are drying clothes, and in the downstairs room, two women are eating, probably waiting for a dispatch at any time, bringing tea and water to customers [Figure 5]. A maid, dragged by her children, looked badly at the river, and the three paintings of flowers and birds hanging on the wall behind her hinted at her simple but elegant life. Figure 6"
Figure 7 Anon. Su Ding's Journey to Tiger Hill Partially from Figure 5 from the same volume
Figure 8 Anon. Su Ding's Distant Journey to Tiger Hill Partially from The figure 5 comes from the same volume
"In the sixty-seventh episode of 'Dream of the Red Chamber', Bao Chao's brother brought her a lot of things from Suzhou, and Bao Chao gave some of them to Lin Daiyu, and when Dai Yu saw the things in her hometown, she 'touched the objects and hurt them'." Tiger Hill brought 'fashionable things' such as "mercury-filled fighting little boys, sand lamps, and clay man's plays". Where could you find an image that better matches this text than this painting? There is a toy shop in the picture, which may be selling the kind of 'self-propelled' toy, and a bespectacled artist is coloring the head of a clay man [Fig. 7]. Another shop is selling tumblers like Japanese Dharma auspicious dolls, a man with glasses is watching the female shopkeeper receive a father and son, and an older woman is making clothes for dolls in the back room. 【Figure 8】"
According to Gao Juhan's analysis in the book, this painting reflects how urban professional painters can give full play to their personal strengths to the extreme while meeting the needs of employers. The viewer must have followed Su Dingyuan's footsteps to get a glimpse of the daily life of the people in Jiangnan. It is not difficult to find that in the whole picture scroll, the details of the life of the local people in Tiger Hill are amazing, which may benefit from the life experience accumulated by the painter for many years in the local area, and these subjects are also familiar with and good at depiction. After that, in the face of the drawing needs of different customers, the painter only needs to slightly change the protagonist image of the rolling part, and the basic composition remains unchanged. Most buyers do not care whether the painting itself is original or not, because the celebration genre is like today's New Year paintings, and under the huge market demand, the functionality of the painting has long outweighed the uniqueness applicable to connoisseurship. But how can it be asserted that these paintings, which rely on functionality, do not reflect the high standards of the painter?
Borrowing and Perspective:
Spatial expression under the fusion of east and west
For a long time, the Chinese painting tradition has been deliberately or unconsciously secretive about the elements of foreign style, and even once the discussion of this topic arises, it is automatically classified as Eurocentrism or Chinese "Orientalism", at least in the traditional sense, people are reluctant to face up to the influence of Western art before the 18th century. In Gao Juhan's view, the word "influence" implies that the dominant party imposes its approach on the other party as the "recipient", and this habitual narrative inverts the potential subject-object relationship, perhaps in fact the "recipient" proceeds from the individual's will and selectively absorbs the parts that are beneficial to it from the available external information. From this point of view, the painters of the Qing Dynasty mainly captured the reproduction forms, composition types and visual illusion techniques in Western paintings, and less involved the imagery in the paintings.
Around the same time, two schools of painting were popular in Europe that enhanced the realism of paintings. Originating in the Netherlands and Flanders in northern Europe, it is known for its penetrating compositions. Painters often pay attention to the light and dark effects of light on the physical object, highlight the three-dimensional sense with the contrast of light and shade, and through the doors and windows with heavy holes, they depict the space of the layers of communication and gradual progression after the close-up. Another school, from southern Europe and Italy, prefers an approximately scientific method of extinction point perspective, based on the phenomenal characteristics observed by the naked eye, such as the two tracks of the railway looking far away as if they were converging at some point on the horizon. Under this technique, the painter guides the viewer to follow the painter's gesture into the depth of field space by setting the relationship between the viewer and the position of the scene in the painting.
In contrast, in fact, ancient Chinese painting also has its own unique spatial composition method, which is mostly found in indoor-based spatial expression. Gao Juhan mentioned that these Oriental painters often use the positional relationship between furniture, utensils and figures to establish a sense of space that is mutually exclusive and mutually referenced. Taking a painting by Jiao Bingzhen, a painter who was active in the Kangxi Dynasty, as an example [Figure 9], the painter easily creates a sense of space by depicting furniture utensils such as square tables, seats, and vases with flower arrangements, and also brings out a solid floor effect, while the moon-shaped windows reveal the solid sense of the distant wall. But when presenting complex spaces, this approach is slightly cramped.
Figure 9 Jiao Bingzhen Illustrator Woman Shaft Silk Color 154.5 cm×97.5 cm Unknown Hiding Place Christie's Images Ltd. (2004) All rights reserved (CHP250404430)
A large amount of evidence in the historical data shows that in the 17th century, many copperplate engravings from Europe and originally oil paintings spread in Chinese society. Many printmakers in Jiangnan actively absorbed the visual illusion techniques as resources, and made a lot of attempts to use novelty and exoticism as gimmicks. Although the point-of-death perspective derived from Italy is more suitable for creating visual illusions, the addition of a scientific and foreign spatial language to the more flat and line-based East Asian drawings always gives a visual sense of strange abruptness, which Gao Juhan calls "disturbing beauty" [Figure 10]. Therefore, oriental viewers are more receptive to the penetrating composition of the Dutch school.
Figure 10 Suzhou prints Liantang Xingle diagram Woodcut prints Two can be combined into a single composition One 74.6 cm × 56.3 cm The other 73.6 cm ×56 cm Umi-Mori Art Museum, Hiroshima Japan
The reason is that Gao Juhan analyzed that although the penetrating composition is slightly inferior in visual impact, it is more in line with the viewing habits of Chinese audiences. Especially in the intricate multi-character space scene, this brushwork facilitates penetrating the obscure narrative plot, helping the painter to present the complex relationship between the characters and the expression of emotions. Jiao Bingzhen's disciple Chen Ming's 1738 depiction of the December Affair of the Lady of the Palace, the "Moon Man QingYou" volume, is a masterpiece of the Dutch penetrating system and the Chinese right angle retreat and parallel line retreat method [Figure 11]. The interior of the painting is filled with ornaments symbolizing wealth and elegance, the ladies are viewing scrolls and antiques, and the maid in the lower right corner of the picture is also holding several other scrolls of paintings, and the incense burner and clothes cage next to it are used for heating and incense quilts. The inner room, the outside of the garden and the space where the main characters are located are all intermittently connected, which improves the readability of the whole painting. More importantly, the use of penetrating techniques is very hidden, and does not cause visual oppression to the viewer like the perspective of the point of extinction.
Figure 11 Chen Mei Both albums are from the "Moon Man Qingyou" 1738 Twelve folios on silk color 37 cm × 31.8 cm The Palace Museum
Under the fusion of East and West, these Qing Dynasty painters were able to add fresh and vivid elements to their works, and then realize the integration and reorganization of new and old, familiar and conservative, Chinese expression and Western techniques, which actually injected a new blood into the development of Chinese painting to some extent, and the intractable integration and use reflected the ingenuity of secular painters. However, even with such pioneering contributions, many painters were not taken seriously by connoisseurs of the time and were excluded from "mainstream" painting.
Looking up and forgetting:
Obscured secular painting traditions
In the long history of Chinese painting, what kind of paintings will be admired and defined as "mainstream"? According to Gao Juhan in the book, most of the paintings that have survived to the present day are actually the result of strict screening by the cultural elite who are full of poetry books. In the process of traditional succession, both Chinese and Western critics and collectors tend to pay more attention to the authentic works of famous artists, in which personal creation and personality expression serve as distinguishing symbols to enhance the value of painting collection.
It is worth mentioning that in the book, Gao Juhan analyzes the family collection list of Yan Song, the first assistant of the Cabinet of the Ming Dynasty, which contains all the valuable belongings of the Yan family, and the paintings are also included as evidence of his bribery and corruption. Hundreds of paintings are prominently listed, with Zhushou paintings as the bulk, and there are many practical paintings such as auspicious paintings such as Zhong Kui catching ghosts and anonymous beauty pictures. In addition to this long list, there is also a short list, which contains mostly paintings by famous artists. It is worth mentioning that the editor of this short list is Wen Jia. People at the time may not have heard who Wen Jia was, but most of them had heard of his father's great name, Wen Zhengming, who was known as the "Four Talents of Wu Zhong" along with Tang Yin and others. Influenced by his father since childhood, Wen Jia was also a well-known painter and connoisseur as an adult, and this screening result may not have been recognized by Yan Song himself, but it reflects the criteria for defining what is a proud collection by the literati connoisseurs represented by Wen Jia.
From the comparison of the two lists involving Yan Song's family collection, it is not difficult to see that the group of scholars represented by Wen Jia actually controls the whole process of painting inheritance and circulation, deciding which paintings are worth collecting, and which can be ignored or even eliminated. In fact, in addition to the paintings, the group division of the painter himself was also influenced by the mainstream discourse at that time.
Gao Juhan mentioned that Dong Qichang, the most influential figure in the history of late painting, once pioneered the theory of southern and northern painting, and the distinction between north and south here does not correspond to the concept of geography, but is derived from the two genealogies of Zen Buddhism. Among them, the Southern Sect comes from the "Epiphany" school of Zen Buddhism, which emphasizes "intuitive understanding", and the literati painters mostly fall into this category; the Northern Sect comes from the "gradual cultivation" school of Zen Buddhism, which is known for "hard work", mainly referring to professional painters and painters of painting academies. Regardless of the others, from the rhetorical point of view alone, Nanzong already has an innate advantage, if he can choose freely, who does not want to be named "talented"?
What's more, the Nanzong faction also accumulated social resources other than paintings. They were often born in a wealthy family, or entered the court as officials through the imperial examination, and were the real holders of the real power of the court; coupled with the fact that they were good at writing books and making statements, they were able to borrow ancient words and the present to interpret the deep meaning of the paintings, so they actually decided which paintings were worth cherishing. In contrast, professional painters, even if they work in skill, perceive subtleties and can convey the spirit of depiction, but they are often employed by others, and sometimes even seconded as "face painters" - to supplement the faces of the figures in other people's paintings. As Gao Juhan said, although in theory, the Northern Sect painters did not necessarily have the ability to paint Works of the Southern Sect, the problem was that no one may have asked them to paint such works at all. Professional status implies economic pressure, and the maximization of market interests urges the individuals involved to find the "positioning", "the painter can theoretically paint according to his own wishes, but in reality he is subject to the expectations of the seeker".
Figure 12 Li Rihua Xishan Dream Figure 1625 Hand Scroll Part 1-2 Ink on paper 23.4 cm× 253.3 cm Shanghai Museum
Specifically, what is the difference in the expressiveness of the Southern and Northern Sects? Compared with the late Ming Dynasty scholar Li Rihua's landscape hand scroll "Xishan Dream Map" [Figure 12] and the famous painter's "Family Qing Tu" [Figure 13] of the same year, it is not difficult for the viewer to feel two completely different painting styles. In Gao Juhan's view, Li Rihua's hand scroll is obviously more visually impactful, and the calligraphic brushwork has a sense of elegance, but it may not be enduring, and the non-depictive picture just exposes limited interest and creativity, and even appears to be a bit "clumsy". It is true that there are many fine works in literati paintings, but there are also some works that have become representatives of Chinese paintings going out of the sea because of the author's great name, or because the painting style caters to the concept of what is "elegant art". In the eyes of traditional conservative connoisseurs, a large number of secular paintings not only failed to "rise above life", but even classified as the last stream because of the overly delicate depiction of the details of the fireworks and the earthly world.
Figure 13 Anon. Jiaqing Part Late Ming or Early Qing Dynasty Long Scrolls Silk Coloring 94 cm × 176 cm Beijing Central Academy of Fine Arts
More importantly, the style of these paintings also deviates from the qualities that were admired in their birth. Gao Juhan believed that secular painting was intended for practical purposes, which was precisely what was disdained by the cultural environment that despised functionalism at that time. The highly respected literati painting advocates a kind of "useless use", but in fact, the basis of "useless" is based on the fact that literati painting is more often used as a recreational pastime for literati who study Confucian classics in their leisure time. However, this research interest has been constructed as the "grand purpose of Chinese painting" in the transmission from generation to generation, and everyone from experts and scholars to collectors and curators has consciously or unconsciously accepted this admiration for the interests of literati.
However, Gao Juhan actually has no intention of subverting the traditional concept of appreciation to affirm the overall artistic standard of literati painting, not to mention that he has also been immersed in literati painting for many years before. The shift in the interest of this round of research is actually more personal reflection, and he tries to call on a generation of scholars to increase the importance of secular paintings, collect and organize such paintings, and reclassify them for new evaluations. As for the view that Chinese painting since the Song Dynasty lacked attention to urban life, and such subjects are widely presented in both European and American painting traditions and In Japanese ukiyo-e, Gao Juhan found from these "forgotten" secular paintings of the Qing Dynasty that "the parts we think are missing in Chinese painting actually exist."
Written by | Shen Lu
Editor| Zhang Ting
Proofreading | Lucy