Ni Zan in Oxford Art Online
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Ni Zan in Oxford Art Online http://www.oxfordartonline.com.ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/subs... Oxford Art Online Grove Art Online Ni Zan article url: http://www.oxfordartonline.com:80/subscriber/article/grove/art/T062602 Ni Zan [Ni Tsan; zi Yuanzhen; hao Yunlin] (b Wuxi, Jiangsu Province, 1301; d 1374). Chinese painter and calligrapher. He is designated one of the Four Masters of the Yuan (1279–1368), with HUANG GONGWANG, WU ZHEN and WANG MENG. Ni Zan’s family were of Xixia (Tangut) origin. His tenth-generation ancestor Shi came to China as Xixia ambassador in 1034–7 at the time of Emperor Renzong (reg 1023–63), and the family settled in Duliang (modern Anhui Province). In 1127–30, under Emperor Gaozong (reg 1127–62), Ni Zan’s fifth-generation ancestor Yi moved south with the Southern Song (1127–1279), settling at Zhituo village in Wuxi, modern Jiangsu Province, where the Ni family prospered. Ni Zan and his elder brother Ying were the sons of a concubine, Yan. Their father died when they were young, and they were raised by their eldest half-brother, Ni Zhaogui (1279–1328). Ying was mentally incompetent, and after Zhaogui’s death Ni Zan assumed responsibility for the family estate, a role ill-suited to his natural inclinations. He led a privileged and secluded home life for 20 or more years; in the mid-1340s he spent most of his time among rare books, antique paintings, calligraphy and flowers in his favourite studio, the Qingbi ge (‘Pure and secluded pavilion’). Ni Zan was an ardent admirer of the great Northern Song (1127–1279) artist and connoisseur, MI FU, and shared two of his idiosyncrasies: fastidiousness and generosity. Reportedly, he had the large hardwood trees around his studio washed daily and once left a party given by the poet Yang Weizhen (1296–1370) in disgust because carousing party guests began passing around a young woman’s shoes filled with wine. Ni’s generosity to friends in need on at least one occasion proved awkward: the poet Tao Zongyi (c. 1320–after 1402) related how a scholar, Chen Bo, when presented by Ni with a gift of 100 piculs of rice at a party, felt publicly humiliated and distributed the rice among the assembled courtesans and attendants, breaking off his friendship. A copy (Taipei, N. Pal. Mus.) of a portrait of Ni Zan in the early 1340s shows the artist dressed in immaculate white linen, sitting on a couch surrounded by a painted screen, scrolls, an inkstone, antique bronzes and ceramics, flanked by two attendants—one holding a feather duster and the other carrying washing implements and a towel. From the late 1330s natural disasters—flood, drought and locusts—struck China year after year; by 1337 there were more than 400,000 starving families reported in Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces alone. The Mongol government responded initially by taxing wealthy families and then by coercing them to make payments; Ni Zan suffered increasingly harsh treatment. In 1351 full-scale rebellions broke out all over China, and in early 1352 Ni abandoned his home and took refuge in a houseboat in the water country of Lake Tai, with its network of small streams, numerous bays, inlets and islands covered with mulberry trees and aquatic plants. Between 1356 and 1366 Ni and his family lived in Lize, near Suzhou, at the ‘Snail’s Hut’ (Guaniu lu). Here, unlike many literary figures, Ni Zan steadfastly declined repeated invitations from the rebel Zhang Shicheng to join his forces. Zhang 1 of 4 3/23/12 10:04 AM Ni Zan in Oxford Art Online http://www.oxfordartonline.com.ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/subs... Shicheng was eventually defeated by Zhu Yuanzhang, who became the Hongwu emperor (reg Copyright © Oxford University Press 2007 — 1368–98) when he founded the Ming dynasty (1368–1644). In the meantime Ni had lost his wife, 2012. Jiang Yuanzhao, and had again been forced to abandon his home. After the establishment of the new dynasty, he briefly visited the water country of Lize and then spent the next few years wandering through the Jiangnan area (the south), visiting old haunts. In the autumn of 1374 Ni finally returned to his native Wuxi, where at the home of a relative he fell ill and died. In calligraphy, Ni Zan absorbed some influences from Zhao Mengfu (see ZHAO, (1)), the leading calligrapher of the early 14th century, who lived in Wuxing, across Lake Tai from Wuxi. However, whereas Zhao, the elegant scholar–official, had a courtly and formal style, Ni, the country recluse, preferred a primitive, rustic mode (see also CHINA, §IV, 2(V)(B)). Ni’s main calligraphic model was Zhong You (AD 151–230), who developed the archaic clerical script (li shu) of the Han period into an early form of regular script (kaishu; see CHINA, §IV, 2(II)). Jian Jizhi biao (‘Memorial to recommend Jizhi’), attributed to Zhong You, was in the collection of Lu Xingzhi (1275–after 1349) at Lake Feng, not far from Ni’s home. Ni re-created an archaic running-clerical style, with squat or square characters, mostly level strokes, generally simplified brushwork and prominent, wavelike ending strokes. Since he consciously used calligraphy to express himself, graphological analysis is useful in the interpretation of his works. Similar characters from dated inscriptions from between c. 1340 and 1374 are generally consistent as regards formal elements but vary greatly in expression as achieved through compositional structure and brushwork. The development of Ni’s calligraphy is divided into four periods: c. 1340, during his life of luxury and cultivation at the Qingbi ge, his style was smooth and graceful; between 1345 and 1355, when he was fleeing from tax collectors, his writing was filled with tension and discord, and he seemed purposely to explore the lopsided and eccentric aspects of his style; between 1356 and 1366, calm and composure returned to his work, and the conflicting elements of his calligraphy were brought into a new synthesis; finally, between 1366 and 1374, his writing achieved a stable form and showed an unmatched strength and self-assurance. In Ni’s earliest extant painting, Qiulin yexing (‘Autumn grove: exhilaration in wilderness’; 1339; New York, Met.), a man sits quietly in a pavilion in an autumnal landscape. A poem inscribed by Ni on the painting describes the feeling of early autumn: inkstones and seat mats are cool to the touch, clothing feels fresh, a yellow mist after a shower rises over distant boulders, bamboo leaves flutter during the day and shadows of cedars waver in moonlight; incense is lit in a gilded duck-shaped vessel and a bag of flower petals lies by the pillow. The whole is indicative of a man in exquisite repose. The emphasis on the wild and natural reflects Ni’s attempt at this period to insulate himself from ordinary society both physically and mentally. In Liu junzi (‘The six gentlemen’), from the period when Ni was evading the tax collectors, the calligraphy has a nervous energy. The brushwork is taut and bony; parts of the written characters are tightly wound and lopsided; contradictions between the regular-script and clerical-script forms are deliberately exaggerated to create tension; and the naturally slanting regular-script elements are forced into a horizontal, clerical structure. The painting shows six sparse, looming, spiky trees dominating a riverbank; a thin mist rises across the river, giving the viewer a sense of isolation from everything except the river and the trees. A colophon by Huang Gongwang notes that the trees symbolize Ni Zan and his friends as they ‘stand facing one another, upright, straight and unbending’. The modelling of the rocks, after the 10th-century master DONG YUAN, uses hemp-fibre texture strokes (pima cun) loosely directed and building layer upon layer. The composition has a fully developed and realistic spatial structure: elements extend in an integrated vision along a convincingly receding ground plane. Ni’s rounded brushstrokes (yuanbi) ‘write’ the trees and rock forms as in seal-script (zhuan shu) and cursive-script (caoshu) calligraphy. Slow, gentle cursive brushwork, though full of inner emotion, maintains an outward calm and balance. The metaphor of clustered trees as friends in a lonely and hostile world became Ni Zan’s favourite subject. The poems on his paintings 2 of 4 3/23/12 10:04 AM Ni Zan in Oxford Art Online http://www.oxfordartonline.com.ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/subs... Ni Zan; inscribed by Ni Zan and Qianlong Emperor reg… tempt the viewer to eavesdrop on a private world of intimacies and lost conversations, but his sublime imagery admits no superfluous details and instead presents a pure and privileged natural domain. Ni repeated the composition of trees with rocks again and again, refining and distilling, achieving an effect that is pure mood and poetry. His references to ancient masters were made not only as expressions of feelings and moods but also as a conscious effort to combine and summarize the best of the ancient styles. By bringing together in his brushwork the hemp-fibre and axe-cut (fu pi) idioms popular in the mid-14th century and the T-shaped (dingxiang), horse-tooth (machi) and other less familiar modes of Northern Song landscape, Ni forged a new creative synthesis. The subtlety of his painting lies in the extraordinary range of effects he achieved with his seemingly simple and sparse brushwork. In one of his famous late works, Yushan linhe (‘Woods and valleys of Mt Yu’; see fig.), the angular, crystalline rock forms are achieved with a dry wash (ran) technique of softly rubbed, richly fused brushstrokes.