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Issues of Authenticity in the Field of Chinese Painting: a Critique*

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Issues of Authenticity in the Field of Chinese Painting: a Critique* Stanley-Baker Issues of Authenticity in the Field of Chinese Painting 1 Issues of Authenticity in The Field of Chinese Painting: A Critique* Joan Stanley-Baker 2000 What the reader will find in my essays is an endeavour to put into words the characteristic qualities of various painters. At the same time he will be given the fragmentary results of a student’s experience of attribution problems which, though often ridiculed, nevertheless seems to me if not the purpose at least the basis for any serious art research, and in which those gentlemen who look haughtily down on it also participate – though generally with little talent. – Max J. Friedländer, in Introduction to From Van Eyck to Brügel, 1916 (English translation, Phaidon Press, 1969) On December 11, 1999, The New York Metropolitan Museum of Art hosted an international symposium entitled “Issues of Authentication in Chinese Painting”. The hall seating 890 persons was filled to capacity with standing room only. According to eye- witnesses, a remarkable percentage of those attending were interested in and often knowledgeable about Chinese painting, while a great many others came for the sensation. The fulcrum of this extraordinary event was the public “trial” of a very large Chinese hanging scroll featuring a grand landscape painting in silk. Professionals were aligned on opposing sides to debate whether Along the Riverbank was painted by Dong Yuan (active 930s-960s), the Southern Tang (Five Dynasties period) progenitor of the Southern School of painting, or by the brilliant twentieth-century artist and forger Zhang Daiqian (1899-1983). The idea that an answer may be found outside these two options had not been entertained. It was High Noon at the Met. A catalogue heavy with essays advocating the painting’s authenticity, Along the 1 Riverbank: the C. C. Wang Family Collection, was sold out weeks after its September publication. For the symposium itself another tome was issued containing pro and con * In July of 2000, this study appeared in Oriental Art Magazine XLVI.3; pp106-117. Deep thanks to Aileen Lau, publisher, for graciously granting permission for its web-appearance here. 1 Maxwell K. Hearn and Wen C Fong, Along the Riverbank: Chinese Paintings from the C.C. Wang Collection (174 pp), catalogue published in conjunction with the exhibition “The Artist as Collector: Masterpieces of Chinese Painting from the C.C. Wang Family Collection,” held at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, September 3,1999 – January 9, 2000. Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art and distributed by Harry. N.Abrams, Inc. New York. Maxwell Hearn is Curator of the Department of Asian Art, and Wen C. Fong is Consultative Chairman and Douglas Dillon Curator of Chinese Painting, Department of Asian Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Professor Emeritus, Princeton University. Stanley-Baker Issues of Authenticity in the Field of Chinese Painting 2 2 arguments by the (all male) Panel of Speakers. This has been a bonus year for students of authentication in Chinese painting, where so much detailed scholarship has been made available in high quality printing and photographs within a period of five months. From this distance, however, the dubious aim of the scholarly gathering (to dicide if a painting is from the tenth or twentieth century leaving no room for other possibilities) casts doubts on the integrity of The Metropolitan as an institution and on the spirit of objective research of participants who had to make set conclusions their mission. For in the process they abandoned the ground rules of authentic scholarship. These include examining the painting without first giving weight to its attribution(s), title or seals, discovering into which period it best fits by identifying all known works that best relate to it in structure, motif, brushwork and expression. Had authentic scholarship been practiced, the answer could well have been neither of the extremes imposed, and a greater degree of mutual and collective understanding of Chinese painting would have been reached. Instead, from the outset efforts were made all around to compile arguments that would prove the author to be Dong Yuan of the tenth century, or Zhang Daiqian of the twentieth. What a wretched commentary on the commercialization of scholarship and the erosion of integrity of the field of Chinese painting! This critique is not concerned with the authenticity of Riverbank but with that of the scholarship so extravagantly mounted in its promotion. In the handsome catalogue Along the Riverbank: the C. C. Wang Family Collection, and in the subsequent volume, Issues of Authenticity in Chinese Painting containing arguments for Riverbank’s tenth or twentieth- century dating and other issues of authenticity, impressive, well-illustrated essays are gathered under one cover representative of latter twentieth-century scholarship (albeit males only). This should afford the student a veritable feast for the eye and mind with regard to studies in authentication. But some of the key arguments invoked leave much to be desired. In the following space we shall explore the inauthentic and faulty scholarship used to defend museum purchases. For the long essays published in heavy, profusely illustrated books and special volumes present to the novice in effect a methodological minefield. As well, 2 Judith G. Smith and Wen C. Fong, eds., Issues of Authenticity in Chinese Painting, 320 pp. New York, The Metropolitan Museum,1999 was published “on the occasion of the international symposium ‘Issues of Authentication in Chinese Painting’ held on December 11, 1999, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.” Essays include James Cahill, “The Case Against Riverbank: An Indictment in Fourteen Counts”, Kohara Hironobu, “Notes on the Recent History of Riverbank”, Sherman Lee, “Riverbank: A Recent Effort in a Long Tradition”, Qi Gong, “On Paintings Attributed to Dong Yuan”, Maxwell Hearn, “A Comparative Physical Analysis of Riverbank and Two Zhang Daqian Forgeries”, Shih Shou-chien, Positioning Riverbank”, Jerome Silbergeld, ”The Referee Must Have a Rule Book: Modern Rules for an Ancient Art”, Wan-go Weng, “A Tall Pine and Daoist Immortal: An Examination of a Painting attributed to Chen Hongshou”, Stephen Little, :Du Jin’s Enjoying Antiquities: A Problem in Connoisseurship”, Maxwell Hearn, “An Early Ming Example of Multiples: Two Versions of Elegant Gathering in the Apricot Garden”, Wen C Fong “Riverbank: From Connoisseurship to Art History”, Robert Harrist, Jr. , “Connoisseurship: Seeing and Believing”. The Harrist essay is to my mind the most authentic investigation, based as it was on an open mind rather than the need to arrive at a particular verdict. The well-illustrated articles are followed by a good glossary and index. Stanley-Baker Issues of Authenticity in the Field of Chinese Painting 3 we shall review authentic approaches to these problems. Authenticity in ressearch is defined by a genuine intent to discover the truth and not to ‘establish facts’. Issue #1 Hidden Emotional and Financial Agenda We must acknowledge it whenever there is an emotional (or financial) factor predisposing us to a certain view of a work. Such “strings” or attachments are rarely aired. Students would sometimes admit, “We love this work as an eleventh-century Northern Song (960-1127) monument. We don’t want to think of it as a work of the Ming Dynasty (1368- 1644), even though we now see that it cannot predate the sixteenth century. We feel we have lost something when we regard it as a Ming work.” We have seen in the Met authentication project the heavy expenditures invoked to make a point, and the fierce verbal battles in often emotional displays that are agonizing to 3 concerned colleagues. Responsible art historians must understand this most vulnerable and highly emotional aspect of our psyche, and recognize it whenever it arises before we can contemplate objective research in art history. Let us examine this emotionality: Emotional Attachment arises from two main causes. a) The beauty of a work creates a form of direct communication with us and forever changes the way we view things. For its role in delivering us to higher levels of ecstasy or delight, we become attached to it and incorporate it into our self-identity. b) Social pressure: the work belongs to us, has been given or promised to our museum. The hunger for prestige among patrons or dominance among museums causes us to abandon rational objectivity. Defenders become (sometimes embarrassingly) emotional about the work. Acquiring it, they are alternately exultant or, under quizzical eyebrows, brutishly defensive. Proud to have it, they soon make it the -est among extant works: the oldest, the largest, the most expensive, most beautiful, by the most esteemed Master, etc. etc. Superlatives lacking in either sound judgement or discretion. Facing an artwork for the first time, in truth, our reactions are often (perhaps unavoidably) emotional. We need therefore to counter-balance this tendency by acknowledging it and admit reflectively, I see that I don’t like this work, I see that I think it is fabulous, or very dull. Having made conscious observations of our emotional state, we can with greater detachment proceed to discover the truth about the work, liberated of a priori verdicts. But by yielding to emotion- or finance-driven needs for a tenth-century date for its acquisition, the discipline of Chinese painting has through the Met released a strong odour of 3 Here the personal acrimony gleaned in the writings of Richard Barnhart in his Letters to the Editor of Orientations magazine (Vol. 28, no.11, December 1997; Vol 29, no.8, Sept 1998) of passionate and subjective defence of Riverbank against James Cahill’s and Carl Nagin’s suspicions made painful reading for scholars admiring of Barnhart and Cahill both. In fact Barnhart himself mentioned in a subsequent Commentary in Orientations that he regretted the fanfare and hype deployed by the Met in the defence of a painting that to him needed no defending, being already a rare and magnificent masterpiece.
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