The Mongols' love of virtuosity is evident not only in court art and architecture, but also in the extravagant decorative arts of the various regions, which forms an incongruous balance with the Han people's humanistic endowment and classical insight into the art form.
The works of Ni Zan and other Chinese literati condense a world full of dangers, but the connection between blue and white porcelain and literati painting does not immediately evoke a crisis, but rather reflects a thriving regional art economy that values quality and innovation. The brand's identity is increasingly associated with enterprising individual manufacturers, as evidenced by the growing number of luxury items made by artisans, such as lacquer makers and Cizhou potters.
Peony pattern red disc carved "Yang Mao"
元代（1271—1368）
In part, this trend responds to a growing sense of self-consciousness in artistic practice, as exemplified by Zhao Mengfu's 1299 masterpiece Self-Portrait, which is now in the collection of the Palace Museum, and is the earliest self-portrait of Zhao Mengfu in China. Zhao Mengfu has always been regarded as a pioneer of the Chinese literati painting movement, but he undoubtedly also greatly influenced the professional painting practice of the mid-to-late Yuan Dynasty, and thus the production of high-level craftsmen. However, the synoptic approach to the art of the Mongol and Yuan dynasties is very interesting, and from the artistic practice of elites like Zhao Mengfu, we can unearth some clues that were unimaginable in the past—such as Zhao Mengfu's connection to Persian painting.
Scholars have long considered Zhao Mengfu's work to be quintessentially Chinese paintings, but now people are scrutinizing them more closely, as they may well refer to exotic visual images, whatever they may imply. For example, a rough comparison of "Self-Portrait" with "River Landscape with Bare Trees" from Diez's old collection in Berlin can be compared. They are similar in composition and in a range of visual elements, such as the overlapping effect of foliage, the turbulent water flowing across the landscape, and the richly colored rocks. Richard Vinograd wrote: "Yuan Dynasty painting...... With the mainland as the background and the multi-layered cultural field, we should think from a global perspective rather than a narrow central concept. ”
Zhao Mengfu, Self-Portrait, 1299, album, ink and color on silk
Riverscape of Dead Wood, Tabriz (?), 1300-1325, watercolor on paper
The issue of the art industry at the end of the Yuan Dynasty involved another dimension, and that was the role played by the Mongols: they actively supported the cultural industry and created favorable market conditions for it. At this point, there is a conflict between the material record and the written record, and in the "Pictures" section of the Shilin Guangji, we find that the text emphasizes a pair of complementary concepts. In one respect, the excerpts transcribed in the book reinforce traditional values, such as the concept of "conveying the spirit" in painting, which can be traced back to the Locus Classicus, the Sheikh's "Six Laws". The book argues on this point:
Zhangshan, ruler tree, inch horse, bean man, (so) pretending to be not a painting, will not be expressive.
In other words, if one paints entirely in accordance with the boundaries framed by lines, measurements, proportions, or dimensions, it is a work that lacks creativity and fails to demonstrate the function of painting. The section "Drawing" states in several places that painting is an art of the thinker that requires reflection, balance, and judgment. Therefore, "decoration" (i.e., stylized painting methods) can only be listed at the end of all kinds of painting disciplines, and at the top of the list are a series of amorphous subjects:
Wind, clouds, water, stone, ink, forest and mountain, sweeping plum, bamboo, boundary painting, figures, flowers and fruits, scales, grass insects, and decorations.
The Mongols' love of virtuosity is evident not only in court art and architecture, but also in the extravagant decorative arts of the various regions, which forms an incongruous balance with the Han people's humanistic endowment and classical insight into the art form.
In order to explore the development of art collecting and aesthetic taste in the Mongolian world, we can turn to another controversial topic in the study of Song and Yuan ceramics, namely the distinction between two closely related kilns in the 13th and 14th centuries, the Guan kiln and the Ge kiln. The official kiln was built in Hangzhou, the capital of the Southern Song Dynasty, and the kilns in the imperial city included the Xiunei Si kiln (now the site of the Laohudong kiln) built in the inner palace until the fall of Hangzhou in 1276.
Blue glazed long-necked vase, mouth edge and ring foot inlaid with copper buckle, Southern Song Dynasty. Guanyao, Hangzhou, Zhejiang. The glazed opening coils upwards with the rounded neck carcass, echoing the elegant naturalistic silhouette of the object
The official kilns may also be produced in other parts of Zhejiang, for example, some of the official kilns are very similar in appearance to the Longquan kilns on the eastern coast of Zhejiang. If there is no other place of origin, then the brother and the official kiln should be produced on a small scale in the Tiger Cave, and the artifacts that cannot be accurately identified are called the official kiln type or the brother kiln type ware. According to Kong, a critic in the last years of the Yuan Dynasty, he condemned authoritarian women, and according to Kong, the kilns were "fine and new, but their color was as smooth as the old", and elite connoisseurs regarded them as collectibles, so they were mostly regarded as heirlooms rather than everyday utensils. We have found some of these artifacts in the tombs, but the complete artifacts are mainly in museums, and most of the artifacts found at the kiln site are fragments.
The nail with the Ba Si Pa script, the Chinese translation of the text content as "Zhang Ji" or "Zhang Ji", was unearthed at the site of the Tiger Cave kiln in Hangzhou
The phenomenon of "no distinction between officials and brothers" is not surprising, and it has been discussed by some people at the end of the Yuan Dynasty and the beginning of the Ming Dynasty. Many of the surviving porcelains were later found in the Qing court, and are glazed with a series of appreciative poems by the Qianlong Emperor (r. 1736-1795). The question is compounded by the erratic level of connoisseurship of the Qianlong Emperor, but it is almost impossible to explore the issue beyond the prism of history. With the advent of archaeological research and the stratigraphy of kiln sites, the dispute between the officials and the brother has been transformed into a more specific issue of the Southern Song Dynasty/Yuan Dynasty.
Modern ceramic researchers tend to resolve the distinction between official and brother at the technical level, because they are in a position to investigate kiln sites and obtain stratigraphic data, or to conduct curatorial or documentary research according to their identity and responsibilities. In the latter example, Yu Peijin points out that the Song Xiunei Siguan kiln was built in the Shaoxing period in the mid-12th century, during the transition period from the Southern Song Dynasty to the Yuan Dynasty, but it was not until the end of the Yuan Dynasty that the typical characteristics of the Ge kiln ware (i.e., "iron feet" and "gold wires") appeared.
In her argument about the type of vessel, Yu Peijin linked a Ge kiln-shaped high-foot bowl (and a nail engraved with "Zhang (Zhang) Ji", see below) found at the Laohudong kiln site with a celadon incense burner found on a shipwreck in Xin'an, in order to identify the former. The Gaozu bowl excavated from the Tiger Cave is indeed a transitional type, with a pale beige glaze, which is distinctly different from the green glaze of the official kiln, and it also has a unique "gold wire" – that is, the black opening of the main body and the smaller golden opening of the interior - although these openings are neither dignified nor eye-catching, nor are they deliberately colored like some late Yuan wares.
Ge kiln high foot bowl, Yuan Dynasty, 14th century. In the hospitality scenes depicted in murals and prints of the Yuan Dynasty, such pairs of high-legged bowls often appear
In general, scholars have chosen to hold off on macro issues regarding the development of Song and Yuan cultures, preferring to wait for more archaeological materials and excavation reports to be unearthed. Ten years ago, when the fragments of the Laohudong kiln site in Hangzhou began to be widely cited by scholars, I examined the relationship between the two kilns from the formal level, and compared their formal characteristics according to the development of painting, especially focusing on the relationship between the shape of the artifact and the representation of the natural world. In my opinion, it is fragile to regard the official kiln as the Song Dynasty and the Ge kiln as the Yuan Dynasty, but it also needs to be examined according to the aesthetic development model of the Yuan Dynasty, the trend of painting art, and the evaluation of the elites.
This may be the starting point for a series of questions, such as: Who were the Yuan Dynasty people who sponsored and purchased the "official kiln" ware of the former Song Dynasty in Hangzhou? If they were not the Mongol royal family or their appointees, then what was their status? Geer kilns have common characteristics in terms of opening and coloring, but these characteristics are gradually developed in the production process, and the same is true for other arts, such as the transition from Liang Kai to late Yuan painting. In the Song Dynasty official kiln vases in Davide's collection, the neck opening is derived from the natural rounding of the carcass, while in the mature Ge kiln wares, the opening pieces seem to exist specifically for visual effect, as if they have been deliberately emphasized, and are completely independent of the body. Similarly, unlike the intense, pure cyan color of the official kiln, the color of the kiln indirectly refers to the color of processed materials such as straw, and seems to be governed by abstract tasting criteria such as "light".
Liang Kai's Taibai Xingyin Diagram Vertical Scroll Ink on paper The large Pa Si Pa inscription in the upper right corner reads "Da Situ Yin", and its owner is an anonymous high-ranking official in the Yuan court (left)
Anonymous (Yuan Dynasty), Portrait of Lü Dongbin, vertical scroll, ink and color on silk (right)
In the past few years, some new discoveries of the Tiger Cave in Hangzhou have been published, but the full material has not yet been made public. Among the excavations is a kiln furniture (nail) engraved with the Ba Si Pa script, which is a striking new object in this unique Yuan Dynasty mystery. 27 Overall, these discoveries do not alter the existing chronological sequence of the official kiln and the Ge kiln, but they complicate the question of the identity of the patron. What information does the nail unearthed from the site of the Tiger Cave kiln reveal about it? The inscription on it indicates that it is from the strata of the Yuan Dynasty and may be related to the authorities.
The Chinese antiphon of the inscription is "Zhang (Zhang) Ji", which may mean "Zhang (Zhang) clan [family's] property". Since the Phas-pa script is phonetic, the word Zhang can spell out more than one surname, the common "zhang" or, less commonly, the "zhang" (both pronounced zhāng), as discussed in the previous chapter. The appearance of the surname Zhang (Zhang) is of great interest to scholars, as it partially confirms an oft-cited mid-Ming dynasty document:
Ge kiln and Longquan kiln are both from Longquan County, Zhou. In the Southern Song Dynasty, there were Zhang Shengyi and Shengsheng two brothers, each with a kiln. The one who gave birth to a potter is the brother kiln, and the brother is the brother, and the two potters are Longquan, which is also named after the place.
The discovery that the potters would use the Pas-pa script on ordinary nails was a surprising discovery. Although it was invented in 1269, it was not until the early 14th century that it was widely used throughout China, to be precise in the twenties of the 14th century, as discussed above (see Chapter 5, "The Spread of Culture and Education"). In addition to the positive reaction to the "Xinxue" Mongolian script in the Shilin Guangji, we can also note other initiatives, such as the Taiding Emperor's 1324 edict to the provinces to present portraits of the Phags-pa Lama for reverence and worship.
In 1980, a porcelain tablet unearthed at the Luomaqiao kiln site in Jingdezhen contains the Chinese surname of the craftsman (pronounced Zhu, which may correspond to Zhu, Zhu, Zhu or Zhu) translated from the Ba Si Pa script, indicating that in the 40s of the 14th century, the Ba Si Pa script was quite common in decorative art, especially for writing Han surnames. This fragmented evidence paints a picture that the use of the Phags-pa may be much broader than has been recognized so far. The question that the researcher needs to explain is how the official language is used in this context, and to what extent does the use of the Phags-pa imply official involvement? Even without the direct involvement of the authorities, we still need to consider the role of the current situation of Mengyuan in promoting a connoisseurly production environment in the kiln.
*This article is excerpted from The Mongolian Century: Visual Culture in Yuan Dynasty China (1271-1368) (Ma Xiaohong, translated by Lai Xingrui, Joint Publishing Co., Ltd., 2023-12)