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The Donkey Rider As Icon: Li Cheng and Early Chinese Landscape Painting Author(S): Peter C

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The Donkey Rider As Icon: Li Cheng and Early Chinese Landscape Painting Author(S): Peter C The Donkey Rider as Icon: Li Cheng and Early Chinese Landscape Painting Author(s): Peter C. Sturman Source: Artibus Asiae, Vol. 55, No. 1/2 (1995), pp. 43-97 Published by: Artibus Asiae Publishers Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3249762 . Accessed: 05/08/2011 12:40 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Artibus Asiae Publishers is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Artibus Asiae. http://www.jstor.org PETER C. STURMAN THE DONKEY RIDER AS ICON: LI CHENG AND EARLY CHINESE LANDSCAPE PAINTING* he countryis broken,mountains and rivers With thesefamous words that lamentthe "T remain."'I 1T catastropheof the An LushanRebellion, the poet Du Fu (712-70) reflectedupon a fundamental principle in China:dynasties may come and go, but landscapeis eternal.It is a principleaffirmed with remarkablepower in the paintingsthat emergedfrom the rubbleof Du Fu'sdynasty some two hundredyears later. I speakof the magnificentscrolls of the tenth and eleventhcenturies belonging to the relativelytightly circumscribedtradition from Jing Hao (activeca. 875-925)to Guo Xi (ca. Ooo-9go)known todayas monumentallandscape painting. The landscapeis presentedas timeless. We lose ourselvesin the believabilityof its images,accept them as less the productof humanminds and handsthan as the recordof a greatertruth. Jing Hao'sand Guo Xi's own writings on landscape painting largelyperpetuate the illusion that what is seen is firstand foremostnature's reality.z We areencouraged to appreciatethe subtle transformationsof seasonand geography, but not necessarily the human intentions that underliethe choice of one motif over anotherand its placementin the composition.3 Preliminaryresearch for this study was first outlined for the Chinese Poetry Group of SouthernCalifornia in Los Angeles, September,1991. Subsequent forms of the study werepresented at the February,1992 meeting of the College Art Associationin Chicagoand for the conference"Mountains and the Culturesof Landscapein China,"which took placein SantaBarbara, California, January,1993 sponsoredby the University of Californiaat Santa Barbara,the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundationfor Scholarly Exchange,and the MetropolitanCenter for FarEastern Art Studies.Those papers were respectively titled "TheDonkey Rider as CulturalIcon: A Studyin ChineseIconography" and "LiCheng and the LiteratiDiscourse on Realityin NorthernSong Landscape Painting." Du Fu, "Chunwang" (Spring gazing), Du shi xiangzhu,edited by Qiu Zhaoao(Beijing, 1979 reprinted.), 320-21. The poem is presumedto havebeen written in the thirdlunar month, 757. Jing Hao'stext, Bifa ji, is well-presentedin KiyohikoMunakata's monograph study ChingHao's "Pi-fa-chi": A Noteon theArt of theBrush, Artibus Asiae SupplementumXXXI (Ascona,1974). Guo Xi's Linchuangaozhi (Lofty Aspirations Among Forestsand Streams)is publishedin Yu Kun's(Yu Jianhua) Zhongguo hualun leibian (Taibei, 1977 reprint ed.), 631-50o.An old but serviceable translationof Guo Xi's text is Shio Sakanishi'sLin ch'uankao chih: An Essayon Landscape Painting (London, 1959). Portions of both areincluded in SusanBush and Hsio-yenShih, Early Chinese Texts on Painting (Cambridge, 1985), Chapter 4. See also Fu Songnian and ChenShaofeng, "Du Linchuangaozhi hua ji zhaji"(Notes on readingLinchuan gaozhi and the "Recordon Painting"),Meishu yanjiuno. 3 (1979),66-71, and SuzukiKei, "Linchuangaozhi hua ji yu Guo Xi" (Linchuangaozhi, the "Recordon Painting"and Guo Xi), translatedinto Chineseby Wang Weiming, Meishuyanjiu no. 4 (1982),70-76 [originallypublished in Japanesein Bijutsu shi no. (1980)].Guo Xi's text andpainting are the subjectof a Ph.D. dissertationby Stanley andthe log Murashige,"'Early Spring' 'Linchuangaozhi': Painting as RitualPerformance," University of Chicago,1991. 3 Among the few studies that specificallyaddress the subject of meaning in tenth- and eleventh-centurylandscape painting are RichardBarnhart, Wintry Forests and Old Trees,Some Landscape Themes in ChinesePainting (New York, 1972);Sofukawa Hiroshi, "KakuKi to Soshunzu" (Guo Xi and "EarlySpring"), Tjyjshi kenkyf XXXV, no. 4 (1977),62-86; and RichardBarnhart, "Figures in Landscape,"Archives of AsianArt XLII(1989), 62-70. To date, the majorityof studies of the monumentallandscape painting traditionhave been primarily concerned with issuesof dating,structural analysis, technique, style andlineages. These studies, too, however,commonly touch upon broaderquestions of meaningand intention. Among the more notableare Wen Fong, Summer Mountains(New York, 1975);Sofukawa Hiroshi, "GodaiHoku So shoki sansuigano ichi kosatsu"(A Study of the landscape painting of the Five Dynastiesand early Northern Song periods),Tihi gakuho419 (1977), 113-214;Ogawa Hiromitsu, "T6 So sansuigashi ni okeru imajineeshon- hatsubokukara Soshun zu Sh6sh6gakuyu zukanmade" (Imagination in Tang and Song - landscapepainting from the splashedink style to "EarlySpring" and "DreamJourney Along the Xiao-Xiang"),Kokka #1o34 (1980), 5-17, #Io35(1980), 35-45, and #1036(1980), 25-36; SuzukiKei, Chugokukaigashi, first volume (Toky6, 1981),especially 188-291. 43 This attractive quality of timelessness belies the fact that the formation of landscape painting during the Five Dynasties Period and early Northern Song, like any other movement in art, is subject to historical analysis, and the subtleties of the process of its development are recoverable.It is towards this goal that iconographical studies hold some promise, for isolating the associations of a prominent motif and analyzing its function over time potentially provide a small window of visability on the formation of the genre. The motif of choice here is one that at first may appear unworthy of serious study. The donkey rider seems but an insignificant and humorous player in the greater drama of mountainsand rivers that surround him. Ubiquitous in theseearly paintings, one comes to thinkof him as a naturaloutgrowth of the landscape,as timelessas the hills he traverses.Yet the donkey rider'spresence will be shownto be inextricablylinked to the veryemergence of landscapeas a dominantsubject in the tenthcentury and, as such,an importantkey to revealingthe valuesthat spurredthe development of thismagnificent art. The subjectproves far morecomplex than one might firstpresume, with multiplelines of potentialinquiry leading from what begins as a simpleprocess of identification.A numberof these will be followedin this essay,though none with the exhaustivedetail each ultimately deserves. The primary goal, rather, is to sketch some of the vistas that open through a study of the donkey rider. Not least among these is the historical process itself by which an icon takes form, expands and splinters into various themes, sub-themes and personalities. As will be demonstrated, there was a powerful tendency in China to root the values assigned to an icon with historical figures. In the case of the donkey rider numerous individuals are involved, including some of the most hallowed names of Chinese poetry and painting. None, however, plays as pivotal a role as the Five Dynasties Period landscape painter Li Cheng (919-67), who in many respects becomes the true subject of this study. The essay is loosely structured around three important attributions to Li Cheng: Travelersin a Wintry Forest(The Metropolitan Museum of Art), A SolitaryTemple amid ClearingPeaks (The Nelson-Atkins Museum), and Readingthe Steleby Pitted Rocks(The Osaka Municipal Museum). I. Travelersin a WintryForest: Ut PicturaPoesis We begin with Travelersin a WintryForest (figs. I, 2), a large and impressive painting on silk upon whose mounting above one finds the lofty proclamation, "The number one Li Cheng painting in the world," written by its former owner, the twentieth-century painter and collector Chang Dai-chien (Zhang Daqian [Zhang Yuan], 1899-1983). This is a painting that has attracted relatively little attention since it was purchased in 1973.4 A possible reason for this may be a persistent uneasiness concerning the painting's date. Unsigned, and with few seals, the style and technique of the painting are about the only things by which a date can be assigned, and analysis of these has resulted in wildly differing conclusions, ranging from the tenth to the twentieth centuries (see Appendix for a discussion of the painting's date). Ironically, if it had been known how the painting, or at least the 4 The painting was shown in the exhibition "WintryForests, Old Trees:Some Landscape Themes in ChinesePainting," organized by RichardBarnhart at ChinaInstitute in America,October 26, 1972- January28, 1973.It is reproducedwith ProfessorBarnhart's observationsin the catalogueto the exhibition,pp. 28-29. The paintingis alsopublished in Wang Shijie,ed., A Garlandof Chinese Painting(Hong Kong, I967), vol. I, pl. II, and NakataYajir6, ed., Tj Gen,Kyonen (Dong Yuanand Juran), Bunjinga suihen series (T6ky6, 1977),vol. 2, pl. 17. Most recently,the painting has been discussedand sumptuouslypublished by Wen Fong, Beyond Representation(New York,1992), 77-79, pl. 9, 9a-b. I would like to expressmy appreciationto MaxwellHearn
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