inspiration; spontaneous execution; traditional sources inter­ Accompanying Tao-chi's signature is his , which quotes preted in an unmistakable personal style; and the understated Wen T'ung's saying "How can I live one day without this aesthetic of monochromatic ink painting. gentleman [i.e., ]." Old trees stood for endurance and fortitude. In a reaction Although the painting is undated, it is very close stylis­ against the strict code of obligations of the Confucian official, tically to works dated 1691 and 1694; paintings Tao-chi Taoist philosophers extolled the "uselessness" of gnarled, did after 1696 tend to be even freer in execution. sap-dripping trees. Unsuitable for any practical purpose in­ Bamboo in Wind and Rain is the ninth work by Tao-chi to cluding the construction of buildings or coffins, the useless enter the Museum's collection. With the promised gift of six tree could escape the woodcutter's ax and survive a full life more works by this master from john M. Crawford, Jr., the span. "Uselessness" was a potent metaphor for the scholar Metropolitan will have the most important concentration of living under the harsh policies of the foreign rule of the Tao-chi's painting and outside of China. Mongols. Wu Chen was a well-educated man who in more Two other notable gifts from Douglas Dillon, Six Odes peaceful times would have sought an official position. He Starting with "Wild Geese" (1984.475.1) by Ma Ho-chih (active chose instead to live in the mountains of Chekiang Province, ca. 1130-70) and Dragon Pine (1984.475.3) by Wu Po-li (active and calling himself the Plum Blossom Taoist (Mei-hua Tao­ ca. 1400), have been published in an earlier Museum publication jen), he made a living through the practice of divination. His (Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 39, no. 3 [1981/82]). profession suggests an additional significance for the dragon pine in our hanging scroll: the tree was regarded by Taoists as Bibliography: Suzuki Kei. Chugoku bijutsu ( in Western collections). Vol. 2. Tokyo, 1979, no. 83. a manifestation of an auspicious site where the forces within MKH the earth converge. Wu Chen jotted a brief note along the left margin of the painting telling of his inspiration: "In the winter of the third year of Yiian-t'ung [1335] while traveling to Cloudy Grotto (Yiin-tung), I saw an ancient pine, twisted and gnarled. There­ upon I brushed this picture in order to record just what I saw. Mei-hua Tao-jen playing with ink." An error in the date (there were only two years, not three, in the reign entitled Yiian­ t'ung) may be attributed to a rapid succession of Mongol reign names as well as to Wu Chen's legendary reclusion; it is likely he simply had not heard of the newly promulgated designation. AM

TAO-CHI (Shih-t'ao) Chinese, 1642-1707 Bamboo in Wind and Rain Ch'ing dynasty (1644-1911). Hanging scroll, ink on paper, 873/s X 271//' (222 X 70 em). Edward Elliott Family Collection, Gift of Douglas Dillon. 1984.475.2 am boo, admired in China since the time of Confucius B (551-479 B.c.), is often compared to the virtuous gentle­ man, who may bend in the winds of adversity but always returns to the upright. Because the leaves, stalks, and joints of the bamboo can be depicted with the same brushstrokes used in writing, monochrome paintings of bamboo have been a favorite subject for the "ink-plays" of scholar-artists since the eleventh century. Tao-chi, one of the most outstanding landscape masters of his time, was passionately devoted to bamboo painting. In his monumental Bamboo in Wind and Rain, perhaps the artist's finest extant depiction of bamboo, Tao-chi reveals his strong spiritual bonds to earlier masters in an inscription that quotes the scholar Su Ch'e (1039-1112), on the Northern Sung bamboo painter Wen T'ung (1018-1079): Wen Tung painted bamboo in ink without colors and regarded it as fine bamboo. A guest saw it and was startled. Su Ch'e explained, "Walking among bamboo in the morning, being a companion to bamboo in the evening; drinking and eating amid bamboo, relaxing in the shade of bamboo. Only after much observation of the transformations of bamboo can one completely understand it. If this is not done, then whether horizontal or slanting, crooked or straight, its character will be obscured." If that guest had not been startled, my heart would not be on the right path, and I would always have been an outsider in bamboo painting.

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