Taoist, Buddhist, and Confucian artistic expression in the Tang Dynasty: The case of The Wangchuan River Hanging Scroll by Wang Wei (699-759)
- José María Prieto 1
- Javier Bustamante Donas 2
- 1 IUCR and Dept. of Social, Occupational and Differential Psychology, School of Psychology, Complutense University of Madrid
- 2 IUCR and Dept. of Philosophy and Society, School of Philosophy, Complutense University of Madrid
ISSN: 2255-5889
Année de publication: 2023
Titre de la publication: The pope, new Moses. From Eugene IV to the Medicean popes
Volumen: 12
Número: 2
Pages: 397-422
Type: Article
D'autres publications dans: De Medio Aevo
Résumé
Wang Wei is the best paradigmatic exemplar of the religious artistic syncretism that characterizes the Tang dynasty. During this dynasty there is a synthesis of three religions, Taoism, Confucianism and Buddhism, in which elements of artistic and doctrinal expression are exchanged and mixed. This new synthesis, that gives birth to the Chinese expression San jiao he yi三教合一 («Three teachings make one»), created a valuable set of artistic expressions that take shape in Wang Wei›s work. In this article we analyze a hanging scroll that belongs to the patrimonial inventory of the Complutense University of Madrid. It is a landscape of the Wang Chuan Villa and River, and portrays a scene in a quintessential Chinese garden. It is a very rare example of vertical scroll that includes 24 ancient seals, checked one by one from different sources. Four of them may be attributed to Jia Sidao (13rd century), including the famous Chang seal, and eight belong to the catalog of the Qianlong and Jiaqing emperors (18th and early19th centuries). Three are unidentified and one blurred. Among the 126 paintings attributed to Wang Wei in the Xuanhe catalogue sponsored by the emperor Song Huizong and published in 1120 appears mentioned the content of this scroll. In the 21st century the scroll appears as a secular tribute, an “impressive work of Wang Wei”, preserved in the Complutense University of Madrid
Références bibliographiques
- Barnhart, R.M. (1997). The five dynasties (907-960) and the Song Period (960-1279), in Yang et al. Three thousand years of Chinese Painting (pp. 87-137). Yale University and Foreign Language Press.
- Bennett, Steffani (2010). The Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting A Reevaluation of the First Edition. https://digital.lib.washington.edu/researchworks/bitstream/handle/1773/16591/Bennett,%20The%20Mustard%20Seed%20Garden%20Manual%20of%20Painting%20.pdf
- Billeter, J. F. (2005). L’art chinois de l’écriture. Essai sur la calligraphie. Skira.
- Birch, C. (1965). Anthology of Chinese literature, from early times to the fourteenth century. N.Y.Grove press.
- Briessen, F. V. (1998) The way of the brush: painting techniques of China and Japan. Tuttle.
- Brinker, H., Kanazawa, H. & Leisinger, A. (1996). Zen masters of meditation in images and writings. Artibus Asia Pub, Supplement 40, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1522704
- Buckley E. & Bickford, M. (2006). Emperor Huizong and Late Northern Song China: the politics of culture and the culture of politics. Harvard University Asia Center.
- Buckley E., P. (2008). Accumulating culture: the collections of emperor Huizong. University of Washington Press.
- Bush, S. (2004) The Essay on painting by Wang Wei (415-453) in context, in Zong-qi Cai, Chinese Aesthetics: The Ordering of Literature, the Arts, and the Universe in the Six Dynasties, (pp. 60-80). University of Hawaii Press https://doi.org/10.1515/9780824861841
- Bynner, W. (1981). The Chinese translations. N.Y. Farrar, Straus, Giroux.
- Cahill, J. (1994). The painter’s practice: how artists lived and worked in traditionalChina. Columbia University Press.
- Cahill, J. (1996). The lyric journey: poetic painting in China and Japan. Harvard University Press.
- Calvin, L. & Brush-Walmsley, D. (1968). Wang Wei: painter and poet. Tuttle.
- Chang, H. (1955) A study of the principles employed in the compilation of the Shih-Chung and Shan-fang illustrated catalogue of seals, University of Hong Kong
- Chou, J.H. (2015). Silent poetry, Chinese paintings from the collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland Museum of Art.
- Cohn, W. (1951). Chinese painting. Phaidon.
- Contag, V. & Wang (1966) seals of Chinese painters and collectors of the Mingand Ch’ing periods. Hong Kong University Press.
- Dun, H. (2008) Two schools of calligraphy join hands: Tiepai and Beipal in the Qing dynasty, in Ouyang & Wen, Chinese calligraphy (pp. 339-377). Yale University Press.
- Fadon-Salazar, P. (2002). [Brief history Chinese Calligraphy] Breve historia de la caligrafía china. Historia Viva.
- Fang, J.P. (2004). Symbols and rebuses in Chinese art: figures, bugs, beasts, and flowers. Ten Speed.
- Foong, P. (2015). The efficacious landscape: on the authorities of painting at the Northern Song Court. Harvard University.
- González España, Pilar, “(2014) Sincretismo filosófico en la obra de Wang Wei”, [Philosophical Syncretism in Wang Wei works], Dialogía 8, pp. 22-43)
- Guantian, Z. (2008) An epoch of eminent calligraphers: the Sui, Tang and five dynasties, in Ouyang, Z. & Wen F., Chinese calligraphy (pp. 189-239). Yale University Press.
- Han, B.G. (2017): Shanzhai: deconstruction in Chinese, (untimely meditations). MIT Press.
- Harrist, R.E. (1998). Painting and private life in eleventh-century China: mountain villaby Li Gonglin. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
- Hearn, M. K. (1999). Along the riverbank in M. K. Hearn & Wen, F. Along the riverbank: Chinese paintings from the C.C. Wang Family Collection. (pp. 59-144) N.Y.: Metropolitan Museum of Art.
- Hearn, M. K. & Zhang, Y. (1999). Catalogue in M. K. Hearn & Wen F. Along the riverbank: Chinese paintings from the C.C. Wang Family Collection. (pp. 147-161) N.Y.: Metropolitan Museum of Art.
- Hearn, M.K. (2007). Cultivated landscapes: Chinese paintings from the collection of Marie-Hélène and Guy Weill. N.Y. Metropolitan Museum of Art.
- Huang, K. (2019). An Illustrated Guide to 50 Masterpieces of Chinese Paintings, Shanghai Press.
- Hung, W. (1997). The origins of Chinese painting (Paleolithic Period to Tang Dynasty), in Yang et al. Three thousand years of Chinese Painting (pp. 15-85). Yale University and Foreign Language Press.
- Jang, S. (2016) The culture of art collecting in imperial China, in M.J. Powers & K.R. Tsiang, A companion to Chinese art. Blackwell, 47-72.
- Jeong, E. (2019). Wang Wei’s Original “Wang Chuan tu” and Its Re-creation. Korean journal of art history, 302 (06), 199-236. http://dx.doi.org/10.31065/ahak.302.302.201906.008
- Karlsson, K. & von Przychowski, A. (2020). Shanshui: introduction to Chinese Landscape painting, in K. Karlsson &A. von Przychowski, Longing for nature. Reading landscapes in Chinese art. Museum Rietberg Zürich – Hatjie Cantz Verlag.
- Lai, T.C., (1983) Chinese Seals. Introduction by Jiu-fong L. Chang. Second Edition (Revised). University of Washington Press.
- Law, S. S. (2016). Reading Chinese Painting: beyond forms and colors, a comparative approach to art appreciation. Shanghai Press.
- Little, S. (2020). Where the truth lies: the art of Qiu Ying. Prestel.
- Lum, K. & Chen, J. (1998) II. Accusations of forgery: who painted “the Riverbank” (attributed to Dong Yuan) The recovery of the Tang dynasty painting: master Wang Wei’s ink-wash creation “on the Wangchuan River” in International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society, 11 (3), 439-449.
- Marmé, M. (2005). Suzhou where the good of all the provinces converge. Stanford, Stanford University Press.
- McCausland, S. (2003a). Gu Kaichi and the admonitions scroll. London: British Museum and Percival David Foundation.
- McCausland, S. (2003b). First masterpiece of Chinese paintings: the admonitions scroll. London: British Museum.
- McCausland, S. (2011). Zhao Mengfu: calligraphy and painting for Khubilai’s China. Averdeen: Hong Kong University Press.
- McNair, A. (2019). Xuanhe catalogue of paintings: an annotated translation. Ithaca, NY. East Asia Program, Cornell University, and for researchers is available at https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501766732/xuanhe-catalogue-of-paintings/#bookTabs=1 free.
- Mezcua-López, J. A. (2014). La experiencia del paisaje de China, “shanshui” o cultura del paisaje en la dinastía Song. [The experience of landscape in China, “shanshui” or landscape culture in the Song dynasty] Madrid: Abada.
- National Palace Museum & National Central Museum (1964) Signatures and Seals on Painting and Calligraphy: The Signatures and Seals of Artists Connoisseurs and Collectors on Painting and Calligraphy Since Tsin Dynasty. Volume I: From the Tsin to the Yuan Dynasty (265-1638 A.D.) Hong Kong: Cafa Company Limited.
- Ouyang, Z. & Wen, F. (2008). Chinese calligraphy, Yale University Press & Foreign Language Press.
- Park, J.P. (2014) Classic or Cliché: the Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting in modern context, Orientations, 46 (5), 96-102
- Sirén, O. (2005). The Chinese on the art of painting: texts by the painter-critics, from the Han through the Ch’ing Dynasties. Dover.
- Sullivan, M. (1980) Chinese landscape painting, the Sui and T’ang dynasties. Berkeley: University of California Press. https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_MZS7z17ZvIkC/mode/2up
- Sze, M.M. (1959). The way of Chinese painting: its ideas and technique with selections from the seventeenth century Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting. Random House.
- Sze, M.M. (1978). The Mustard seed garden manual of painting. Princeton University press. https://archive.org/details/brooklynmuseum-o17617-mustard-seed-garden-a-chinese
- Tanaka, A. (2012). A study of the classical landscape at the Wang River Villa of Wang Wei, Intercultural understanding, 2, 53-57.
- Wang, C.C. & Contag, V. (1966) Seals of Chinese Painters and Collectors of the Ming and Ch’ing Periods: Reproduced in Facsimile Size and Deciphered, Hong Kong University Press,.
- Wang, C.C. & Yang, K. (1988). The mystery of the “Chang” seal, Ars Orientalis, 18, 151- 160. https://www.jstor.org/stable/4629374_Freer Gallery of Art, The Smithsonian Institution and Department of the History of Art, University of Michigan.
- Wang, Y. (2000). Looking at Chinese painting: a comprehensive guide to the philosophy, technique, and history of Chinese painting. Nighensa.
- Weinberger, E. & Paz, O. (1987). 19 ways of looking at Wang Wei (how a Chinese poem is translated). Moyer Bell.
- Wen, F. (1962a) The problem of forgeries in Chinese painting, 1/2. Artibus Asiae, 25, 95-119.
- Wen, F. (1962b) The problem of forgeries in Chinese painting, 2/2. Artibus Asiae, 25, 121-140.
- Wen, F. (1999). Riverbank in M. K. Hearn & Wen, F., Along the riverbank: Chinese paintings from the C.C. Wang Family Collection. (pp. 2-57) N.Y.: Metropolitan Museum of Art.
- Wong, A.Y. (1999). The East, Nationalism, and Taishō Democracy: Naitō Konan’s History of Chinese Painting, Sino-Japanese Studies, 11 (2), 3-23. https://chinajapan.org/articles/11.2/11.2wong3-23.pdf
- Wong, A.Y. (2009). What is a `Masterpiece? Historiographical Anxieties and Classifications of Chinese Painting in the Modern Period, in J. Jiu, Writing Modern Chinese Art: Historiographical Explorations, (pp. 95-105). University of Washington Press
- Yang, X, Barnhart, R.M., Nie, Cahill, J, Lang S. & Hung, W. (1997). Three thousand years of Chinese Painting.. Yale University and Foreign Language Press.