Contemplating the Ancients: Aesthetic and Social Issues in Early Chinese Portraiture

Contemplating the Ancients

Audrey Spiro

Contemplating the Ancients

Aesthetic and Social Issues in

Early Chinese Portraiture

University of California Press Berkeley Los Angeles Oxford

University of California Press

Berkeley and Los Angeles, California

University of California Press, Ltd.

Oxford, England

© 1990 by Audrey Spiro

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Spiro, Audrey G.

Contemplating the ancients: aesthetic and social issues in early Chinese portraiture / Audrey Spiro.

p. cm.

Bibliography: p.

Includes index.

ISBN 0-520-06567-0 (alk. paper)

1. Portraits, Chinese. 2. Art, Chinese—Three kingdoms-Sui Dynasty, 220-618. 1. Title.

N7591.C5S65 1990

704.9'42'0951—dc20 89-31515

CIP

Printed in the United States of America 123456789

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.

For MES and JPS, with gratitude

Contents 1

Contents 1

Illustrations

Preface

Introduction

Virtue Triumphant

Portraits of Jin

Patterns to the Future

Contemplating the Ancients

Like-minded Companions

Conveying the Spirit

Abbreviations in Notes and Bibliography

Notes

Glossary

Bibliography

Index

Illustrations

Table

1. Tomb Inscriptions 164

Figures

2. I’m afraid we’re pretty much the same thing, over and over. Drawing by Gahan Wilson. 2

3. The Seven Worthies of the Bamboo Grove and Rong Qiqi. South wall, tomb at Xishanqiao. 4

4. The Seven Worthies of the Bamboo Grove and Rong Qiqi. North wall, tomb at Xishanqiao. 6

5. The Seven Worthies of the Bamboo Grove and Rong Qiqi. West wall, tomb at Wujiacun. 8

6. The Seven Worthies of the Bamboo Grove and Rong Qiqi. East wall, tomb at Wujiacun. 10

7. The Seven Worthies of the Bamboo Grove and Rong Qiqi. West and east wall panels, tomb at Jinjiacun. 12

8. Painted silk banner from tomb no. 1 at Mawangdui and detail from vertical section. 17

9. Painted silk banner from tomb no. 9 at Jinqueshan. 20

10. Confucius Visits Laozi. Detail of a stone relief, Sichuan. 24

11. Confucius Visits Laozi. Detail of a stone relief from the Wu shrines. 25

12. Confucius Visits Laozi. Stone relief, tomb in Yinan county. 26

13. The Four Graybeards of Mount Shang. Detail from a basket excavated at Anak, Korea. 34

14. Portrait of Dong Shou. Wall painting from a stone tomb at Anak, Korea. 40

14. Detail of a wall painting from a stone tomb at Yuantaizi. 41

15. Xi Kang. Relief detail, tomb at Xishanqiao. 46

16. Xi Kang. Detail of figure 2. 47

17. Ruan Ji. Relief detail, tomb at Xishanqiao. 48

18. Ruan Ji. Detail of figure 2. 49

19. Shan Tao. Relief detail, tomb at Xishanqiao. 50

20. Shan Tao. Detail of figure 2. 51

21. Wang Rong. Relief detail, tomb at Xishanqiao. 52

22. Wang Rong. Detail of figure 2. 53

23. Xiang Xiu. Relief detail, tomb at Xishanqiao. 54

24. Xiang Xiu. Detail of figure 3. 55

25. Liu Ling. Relief detail, tomb at Xishanqiao. 56

26. Liu Ling. Detail of figure 3. 57

27. Ruan Xian. Relief detail, tomb at Xishanqiao. 58

28. Ruan Xian. Detail of figure 3. 59

29. Rong Qiqi. Relief detail, tomb at Xishanqiao. 60

30. Rong Qiqi. Detail of figure 3. 61

31. Ruan Xian. Detail of figure 3. 96

32. Xi Kang. Detail of figure 2. 97

33. Liu Ling. Detail of figure 3. 97

34. Wang Rong. Detail of figure 2. 99

35. Xi Kang and Ruan Ji. Detail of figure 2. 102

36. Crow in the Sun. Relief mural, tomb at Jinjiacun. 137

37. Hare in the Moon. Relief mural, tomb at Jinjiacun. 137

38. Lion. Relief mural, tomb at Jinjiacun. 139

39. Immortals with Dragon. Relief mural, tomb at Wujiacun. 140

40. Immortals with Tiger. Relief mural, tomb at Wujiacun. 141

41. Immortal with Tiger. Detail of relief mural, Xiu’anling. 142

42. Immortal with Dragon. Details of figure 39. 144

43. Celestials with Tiger. Detail of relief mural, Xiu’anling. 146

44. Celestial. Detail of figure 39. 147

45. Celestial. Detail of relief mural, tomb at Jinjiacun. 148

46. Musicians on Horseback. Detail of west wall, tomb at Jinjiacun. 149

47. Ruan Ji. Detail of figure 4. 155

48. Rong Qiqi. Detail of figure 5. 156

49. Ruan Xian. Detail of figure 5. 157

50. Wang Rong and Shan Tao. Detail of figure 5. 158

51. Xi Kang. Detail of figure 6, west wall. 159

52. Liu Ling. Details of figure 6, west wall. 160

53. Shan Tao. Detail of figure 6, west wall. 161

54. Ruan Ji. Details of figure 6, west wall. 162

55. Wang Rong. Detail of figure 6, east wall. 163

56. Another Shan Tao. Detail of figure 6, east wall. 165

57. Ruan Xian. Detail of figure 6, east wall. 166

58. Rong Qiqi. Detail of figure 6, west wall. 167

59. Portrait of Louis XIV, by Hyacinthe Rigaud. 173

Preface

This book is about portraits that were not intended to be physical likenesses of their subjects and about why they look the way they do. It began when, reading several studies of recent archaeological finds in China, I wondered why someone in the fourth century would want to be buried with portraits of men who had lived a century earlier. I had not expected that answering this question would be so timeconsuming, so intricate—and so intellectually rewarding. Although I do not know who first created the composition of the Seven Worthies of the Bamboo Grove and Rong Qiqi, studying these works of art from the other side, that of the patrons, has increased my appreciation of the artist’s genius. As is proper for a rhetorical work, that creation has instructed, moved, and delighted me. I continue to be in awe of the artist’s ability to translate ideas into an enduring work of visual art, precisely as Lu Ji, in his great third-century Rhyme-prose on Literature, had insisted for another art form. The function of style is, to be sure, to serve as a prop for your ideas, he noted (in Achilles Fang’s translation).

I first encountered Lu Ji’s essay years ago in a seminar on early Chinese painting and aesthetics directed by Martin Powers, who introduced me to the important critical and aesthetic ideas of the Period of Disunion. Analyzing these ideas under his guidance, I came to understand that theories of the arts could not be divorced from practice, and that neither could be divorced from the social values of those who wrote about, created, or commissioned works of art. My greatest debt, therefore, is to my former teacher, Martin Powers. His unflagging encouragement and counsel when I, naive and blithe, first leaped into uncharted waters—and much later, when I was less naive and even less blithe—were the buoys that kept me afloat. Above all, he taught me the true meaning of style, for which I am most grateful.

Ellen Johnston Laing’s fine studies of the Seven Worthies theme in Chinese art were the initial stimuli for my interest in their earliest known portraits. My own examination of the theme gazes up to contemplate the ancients and is offered as the parallel to her demonstrations of the patterns it bequeathed to the future.

I have incurred many other debts in the course of this research and regret that I can here acknowledge only a few. That which I owe to Richard B. Mather is evident throughout this book. I have learned much both from his published works and from his private communications. In addition, I should like to thank him for the pleasure I continue to derive from his wonderful translations, so copiously quoted in this work. May all his youtiao be crisp.

I am indebted also to Chi-yun Chen for his early guidance through the vast historical literature of the period. James F. Cahill first enabled me, long ago, to study good photographs of the Seven Worthies murals and to formulate some of the issues. His continued interest in my research has been much appreciated. Joanna-Woods Marsden thoughtfully recommended appropriate studies in the field of Renaissance portraiture; Sheldon Nodelman gave generously of his time for lively and stimulating discussions of the genre of portraiture.

Research in China in 1984-1985 was made possible by the award of a Dickson Fellowship from the Department of Art, Design, and Art History at the University of California, Los Angeles. I was able to complete that research only with the help and encouragement of many friends and colleagues in China who patiently answered questions, opened doors, and offered important advice. I will always remember their generosity, and I cherish the friendships that transcend time and borders. Juanjuan wang xishi. I am grateful also to the authorities at the Nanjing Museum for their kind permission to photograph relevant artworks.

I owe much, personally and intellectually, to Thomas A. Metzger, Madlyn Millner Kahr, Sarah Handler, and Willis Barnstone. Suzanne Cahill suffered through many inchoate monologues and rough drafts of the manuscript. For her unwavering support, informed understanding, and criticism, I thank her. Harumi Ziegler’s keen editorial assistance was invaluable and saved me from many an error. David Ziegler and his staff at the UCLA Slide Library offered important help in preparing some of the photographs that could be reproduced only from previously published sources. The poor quality of many of these publications was a challenge to Ron Reimers, the staff photographer, who labored to produce the best quality possible.

It is a pleasure to acknowledge the assistance of Jeanne Sugiyama, Amy Klatzkin, and Gladys Castor of the University of California Press. For their warm encouragement, eagle eyes, and high standards, I am especially grateful.

Finally, I wish to thank James Cahill, Nicholas Cahill, Amy Powers, and Martin Powers for their generosity in permitting me to reproduce many of their photographs of tomb reliefs. K. H. J. Gardiner kindly granted permission to reproduce the portrait of Dong Shou illustrated in his Early History of Korea, as did the Reunion des Musees Nationaux for Rigaud’s portrait of Louis XIV.

For the sake of uniformity, the romanization of Chinese characters throughout the text conforms to the Hanyu pinyin system of phonetic transcription. Bibliographic citations, of course, appear in their original forms.

1

In things there is nothing more manifest than having results, and in argument there is nothing more decisive than having evidence.

Wang Chong (A.D. 27-ca. 100

Introduction

I’m afraid we’re pretty much the same thing, over and over, remarks a bald, chinless, hook-nosed gentleman of his ancestral portraits. Indeed, only the variegated clothing hints at generational, but not genetic, differences among the framed figures of Gahan Wilson’s New Yorker cartoon (fig. 1). Confounding Mendel’s Law, identical bald, chinless, hook-nosed faces stare down from the walls at their still-ambulatory replica.

The witty cartoon challenges the common view that a portrait is merely a record of one never-to-be-replicated being, the document, like a passport photo, warts and all, of a unique individual. It is a pictorial translation of a grander statement by Gertrude Stein:

People really do not change from one generation to another, as far back as we know history people are about the same as they were, they have had the

same needs, the same desires, the same virtues and the same qualities, the same defects, indeed nothing changes from one generation to another except the way of seeing and being seen. … The creator in the arts is like all the rest of the people living, he is sensitive to the changes in the way of living and his art is inevitably influenced by the way each generation is living.¹

Alike we may all be; yet the commonplace view cannot be denied. For the portrait, by any definition, is always particularistic, your ancestors or mine. One function of portraiture, then, must be to document that particularity. However, its other functions—aesthetic and social—affect, and may even subvert, the depiction of that unique phenomenon. It is that very tension engendered by the necessity to serve multiple, often conflicting, functions that invests the study of portraiture with enduring interest.²

Recent archaeological finds in China offer an opportunity to investigate some of these tensions anew. If modern portraits, both literary and pictorial, are prime examples of Stein’s insistence on the changing ways of seeing, so, I suggest, are these portraits of a different time and place. At the same time, they prompt a reexamination of old issues within the field of Chinese art history or of preconceptions firmly held—often most firmly when visual evidence was lacking. Drawing on new pictorial evidence, this study will consider the problem of early Chinese portraiture, its nature and functions.

The discovery of a brick tomb with portrait reliefs datable to the late fourth or early fifth century of this era was reported in 1960.³ Accidentally unearthed near the Xishan Bridge outside present-day Nanjing, in Jiangsu province, the tomb contained relief-murals of eight figures, each named by inscription (figs. 2 and 3). Seven of the figures depicted are historical personages, famous in Chinese history and literature as the Seven Worthies of the Bamboo Grove (Zhulin qixian). The eighth figure, one Rong Qiqi, is not historical but legendary, a famous figure in Chinese literature.

The reliefs, heralded as a unique find in both construction method and subject matter, were widely discussed—as the only examples of Jin-Liu-Song (A.D. 317-420, 420-479) portraiture, as compositions that differed dramatically in form and style from Han dynasty tomb art, and as authentic examples of the styles of various Jin-Song painters.⁴ They ceased to be unique, however, when the finds from an imperial tomb excavated in 1965 in Danyang county, Jiangsu province, suggested that another portrait-mural of the Seven Worthies may have existed.⁵ Although pictorial evidence had long since disappeared, its identification and location on the long walls of the main chamber were determined by the presence of a brick engraved in intaglio with the characters Xi xia xing, a reference to one of the Seven Worthies, Xi Kang.

The assumption of a second, similar, mural grew firmer when two more royal tombs excavated in 1968 in the Danyang area yielded pictorial evidence of the Seven Worthies as well as inscribed bricks naming the same personages (figs. 4-6).⁶ Despite their poor and fragmented condition, it is clear that these Danyang depictions of the Seven Worthies and Rong Qiqi follow the basic composition of the Nanjing mural, although we shall observe minor differences that are significant for this study. By consensus, all three of the imperial Danyang tombs are datable to the late fifth century—that is, to the Southern Qi dynasty (A.D. 479-502).

With the discovery of three sets of portraits of the same personages spanning a period of some fifty to one hundred years (and the probable existence of a fourth at the time of entombment), we may conclude that we confront no idiosyncratic choice of tomb decor. Rather, we possess a set of portraits that testifies to a convention or fashion during that period known as Nanbeichao in a specific region of China.⁷ In that sense, the set of three mural-portraits is unique and offers a fresh opportunity to examine, within narrow but detailed limits, a traditional category of art history, that of portraiture.

Although a much-studied art form in the West, portraiture has received comparatively scant attention in traditional Chinese art history, and Western scholars of Chinese art have rarely shown enthusiastic interest in the genre.⁸ Few studies devoted exclusively to the subject have appeared in this century. In 1912 Berthold Laufer published a study of portraits of Confucius. William Cohn produced a slim volume devoted to portrait painters of East Asia in 1922, and S. Elisseev examined portraiture of the Far East in 1932.⁹ Thereafter the pattern of once a decade dissolved. Only in 1960 did Max Loehr turn his attention to the subject of early portraiture, thereby barely anticipating the publication of the first Seven Worthies mural.¹⁰ Loehr’s paper thus truly stands as the seminal study for work that followed, most notably Ellen Johnston Laing’s "Neo-Taoism and

‘The Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove’ in Chinese Painting." More recently Hou Ching-lang published a study of portrait painting of the early Western Han period.¹¹

Compared with the body of scholarly literature on Western portraiture—even for any one period, say, Roman or Renaissance portraiture—these are scant gleanings. Yet extant historical documents attest to Chinese portraiture for the early periods, and extant pictorial documents affirm that the art of portraiture existed at least as early as the Han dynasty (206 B.C.-A.D. 220). An inquiry into the nature of that portraiture for one period, the Six Dynasties, and one

place, the region of modern Jiangsu, seems therefore to be both in order and unlikely to exhaust the topic.

When, however, we turn for guidance to the literature of Western art for definitions and models we may experience bewilderment. For little consensus exists as to precisely what portraiture as an art form may be. Consulting the Encyclopedia of World Art, for example, we find that, in the broadest sense, portraiture is the representation of an individual, living or dead, real or imagined, in drawing, painting, or sculpture, by a rendering of his physical or moral traits, or both. The key word, apparently, is individual.¹²

The Encyclopedia further tells us that portraits offer a veritable anthology of the ways of conceiving of man; that the different

portrait styles of, for example, Van Eyck and Titian may have been determined as much by different moral attitudes as by different artistic personalities. Moreover,

conventions of costume and gesture may loom as large as—or larger than—physiognomical fidelity. The attributes or signs used in a portrait must always be considered in their historical and social context, since [their] significance can vary with different epochs and cultural traditions. The new and more complex classifications of portraiture that are needed must be based as much on the varying functions of portraiture as on the changing fashions in iconography and style.

Are there, then, no limitations, other than that the work of art must depict, in some way, an individual? An exhaustive search of the scholarly literature for definitions of portraiture itself poses a topic for research. Yet a few selected comments may offer further guidance.

J. D. Breckenridge, for example, grapples with the problem of definition in his study of ancient portraiture and confesses that avoiding the issue may be the better part of valor.¹³ Reviewing the literature, he examines the essential requirements for a true portrait set forth by Bernhard Schweitzer:

1) It must represent a definite person, either living or of the past, with his distinctive human traits. 2) The person must be represented in such a manner that under no circumstances can his identity be confused with that of someone else. 3) As a work of art, a portrait must render the personality, i.e., the inner individuality, of the person represented in his outer form.¹⁴

Recognizing the pitfalls of these criteria, Breckenridge suggests that, at least for studies of ancient portraiture, Richard Delbriick’s definition may be more viable: a portrait is the representation, intending to be like, of a definite individual.¹⁵

Intending to be like thus joins individual as a key word or phrase. However, the criterion of the ‘true’ portrait… is in no sense merely literal accuracy or fidelity to optical appearances; on the contrary, the creation of a successful portrait… will call for some manipulation of visual appearances on the part of the artist.¹⁶ Fidelity? Manipulation? One is reminded of Lysippus’s remark that a good portrait depicts men not as they are but as they should be.

What then of likeness or resemblance—those presumably chief criteria forjudging a contemporary portrait? E. H. Gombrich considers their meaning in a series of papers, the most notable being The Mask and the Face.¹⁷ Perceptions of resemblance vary, he reminds us in that paper. As he remarks in Action and Expression in Western Art, the problem for the traditional arts is that they lack most of the resources on which human beings and animals rely [for recognition] in their contacts and interactions. The most essential of these, of course, is movement.¹⁸ The maker of the portrait must therefore find pictorial substitutes—schemata—for these resources if the observer is to recognize the individual portrayed. What Gombrich calls the correct portrait is not a faithful record of a visual experience but the faithful construction of a relational model.¹⁹

The portrait, then, is a construction intended to be like an individual—in short, an illusion, that very illusion rejected by Plotinus

for its irrelevance to reality. For the art historian, however, that illusion, that deliberate construction, reaches beyond reproduction to metaphor whose possibilities can be explored and whose real meaning is to be extricated with the established techniques of formal and iconographical analysis.²⁰

It is a beginning. The Seven Worthies murals are portraits intended to be like specific individuals. We know this, not because the viewer recognizes the figures at a glance (although he may), but because he recognizes the name attached to each figure. To put it more accurately: because a name is attached to each figure, the viewer recognizes it as a portrait.

The question then is, In what ways were these portraits intended to be like the eight individuals identified by inscriptions?

I shall use both formal and iconographical analysis to explore the metaphors from the Chinese point of view. For if we hope eventually

to place Chinese portraiture within a general rubric of Portraiture, we must first determine what it meant within its own specific rubric. What meaning and significance, that is, did the Seven Worthies murals have to the people who commissioned them or to those who viewed them? This we cannot know until we know much about the patrons themselves—their sensibilities, their tastes, and the conditions that formed those tastes. As Gombrich reminds us, The form of a representation cannot be divorced from its purpose and the requirements of a society in which the given visual language gains currency.²¹

In the following pages I shall demonstrate that the few Nanbeichao portraits available for study are character portraits—portraits that render a man’s moral traits—made for the purposes of admiration, identification, and emulation. Like their Han dynasty predecessors, they are exemplary portraits, and they employ surprisingly similar pictorial devices to convey their messages. But some of these messages have changed. What is new for this later period of Chinese history is not the depiction of character but the nature of the character depicted. What was its visual language and among whom did it gain currency?

The Sages established images in order to express their ideas exhaustively.

Da juan

Virtue Triumphant

The recently excavated portraits on which this study focuses have their pictorial roots in portrayals of the Han dynasty (206 B.C.-A.D. 220). It is a truism that the latter were essentially ideal portraits. Requiring no less artistic skill than portraits made from life, as Max Loehr has noted, they relied for their expressiveness on gesture, pose, or action.¹ We may interpret this reliance on posture (rather than on the face, for example) as merely a stage in artistic development. However, we may equally well admire this reliance as a felicitous choice— for a society that judged the moral nature of a man by his conduct, the artistic emphasis on gesture, pose, and action seems singularly appropriate.

The portrayals of the fourth and fifth centuries, however, are so visually different from their Han predecessors as to prompt the initial conviction of dramatic developments in the art of portraiture—from the use of stock figures to depict ideal beings to an emphasis on individualized images to depict real personages, pictorially distinct, as in life, from all others.²

As dramatic as these visual differences are, analysis of the portrayals of the two periods and their respective historical contexts reveals that the portraiture of both periods was idealized, concerned, that is, with the depiction of persona, not personality. The Nan- beichao portraits, moreover, rely as much as their predecessors on gesture, pose, or action for their expressiveness. They do so because, in both periods, conduct was the key to a man’s character. Depict a man’s behavior and you have depicted him.

Pictorial devices changed very little. What changed dramatically was the audience that was targeted, its values, and therefore the way in which these devices were combined and presented. For both periods the subjects, as depicted, exemplified in their persons, which is to say by their behavior, qualities deemed worthy of emulation. Whereas in the Eastern Han period (A.D. 25-220), virtually all portraits, sacred and secular, depict culture heroes of a Confucian persuasion— whether the loyal Duke of Zhou, Confucius himself, or devoted sons of humble station—the later portraits, as we shall see, celebrate, if not quite the antithesis of Confucian virtue, at least a different kind of virtue.

In both cases there were political ramifications for the pictorial exhortations. And in both cases an important message to the viewer was that an individual, even in private life, by his example could affect the body politic. The transitional period that followed the fall of the Han dynasty in the third century is frequently cited as the period that saw