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DISCLAIMER: This document does not meet current format guidelines Graduate School at the The University of Texas at Austin. of the It has been published for informational use only. Copyright by Yifu Wang 2016 The Thesis Committee for Yifu Wang Certifies that this is the approved version of the following thesis: Space, Movement and Chinese Hand Scroll --- Reading Xia Gui and Huang Gongwang APPROVED BY SUPERVISING COMMITTEE: Michael J. Charlesworth, Supervisor Yunchiahn Sena , Co-Supervisor Space, Movement and Chinese Hand Scroll ---Reading Xia Gui and Huang Gongwang by Yifu Wang, BA; MA Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts The University of Texas at Austin May 2016 Dedication I dedicate this work to my parents Zhang Shifang and Wang Chengwei Acknowledgements I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my primary thesis supervisor, Dr. Michael J. Charlesworth for his intellectual support and patient guidance throughout the process of my thesis writing. In every advisory meeting we had, Dr. Charlesworth not only kept giving me insightful suggestions and valuable comments that helped me reevaluate my project from various angles, but also kept encouraging me when I went through the slow and sometimes frustrating writing process. I would like to thank the co supervisor of my thesis--also my academic advisor--Dr. Yunchiahn Sena, who not only offered me insightful comments and critiques on my research and thesis outline, but also provided me with invaluable lessons and practical advice that I will continue to benefit in the future throughout the two year of my graduate studies at the University of Texas. I am really very grateful to both Dr. Charlesworth and Dr. Sena for their patience, hard work and fast responses to my last thesis draft which I turned in a little behind the schedule. Without their support and academic advice, I wouldn't be able to finish my thesis in time. Special thanks goes to Dr. Louis Waldman and Dr. Stephennie Mulder for their useful advice, kind help and constant encouragements in different stages of my academic studies in the past two years. I would like to thank my friends and classmates Vivian Lin and Tao Tao, whose intellectual stimulation and constant encouragement helped me survive different stages of writing. Many thanks to my other professors in the Department of Art History at UT, from whom I took various kinds of inspiring and exciting lessons that helped deepen my passion and polish my skills in doing research on art history in general and Chinese painting in particular. I would also like to thank my family and friends. They were always supportive and encouraging me with their best wishes. Yifu Wang University of Texas at Austin May 2016 v Abstract Space, Movement and Chinese Hand Scroll --- Reading Xia Gui and Huang Gongwang Yifu Wang, MA The University of Texas at Austin, 2016 Supervisor: Michael J. Charlesworth Co-Supervisor: Yunchiahn Sena My thesis discusses the significance of the horizontal format for Chinese paintings in the 13th and 14th centuries. Focusing on the issues of continuity and intimacy that are fundamental to the horizontal format, I intend to examine the functions of such a format in helping these two artists to either create the illusionistic space effect or explore the more modernist and analytical problem of spatiality in their two exceptionally beautiful long hand scrolls. In A Pure and Remote View of Streams and Mountains by the Southern Song dynasty academy painter Xia Gui, I find the issue of “view” particularly relevant: the panoramic view organized through both the atmospheric and the aerial perspectives has been very effective in helping construct the desired “poetic spaces” through dramatic juxtaposition of and rhythmic alternation between disjunctive elements of void and solid, near and far. Huang Gongwang’s Dwelling in Fuchun Mountains, on the other hand, demonstrate a more conscious effort of explore the reality of spatial relations, and a consciousness about the role of speed, the notion of process as well as the materiality of mediums and marks for our exploration of the poetics of space. Ultimately, I attempt to relate the physical continuity of the works to their temporal and material continuity as well as the intimacy of the artist’s hand. vi Table of Contents Acknowledgement Abstract Introduction---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------1 Chapter One: The “Poetic Space” of the Horizontal Scrolls—Continuity and Temporality in the Xia Gui Scroll-------------------------------------6 1. Effecting the “Poetic Space”: Continuity and Progression-------------------------9 2. Narrating Nostalgia—Continuity as Temporal Progression----------------------16 3. Intimacy, Speed and the Continuity of the Artist’s Career and Style------------19 4. Colophons and the Art-historical space----------------------------------------------26 Chapter Two: The “Poetics of Space”—Intimacy, Spatiality and Materiality in the Fu-chun scroll------------------------------------------29 1. Wang Xizhi, “Elegant Gathering” and the Horizontal Scroll-------------------30 2. From Literary Gathering to Literati Gathering (or “Daoist Gathering”)------39 3. Continuity and Spatiality—Repetition, Transformation and Completion-----49 4. Intimacy, Temporality and Materiality—Geometry and Intimacy of Materials- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------54 5. Wang Huizhi, Shen Zhou and the Transmission of Two Masterpieces-------57 Coda: The Blurry and the Fuzzy-------------------------------------------------61 Bibliography-----------------------------------------------------------------------64 Images-------------------------------------------------------------------------------66 vii Introduction It is a sad coincidence that the two best-loved long hand scrolls of Chinese landscape painting have all accidentally lost their opening sections, or their heads. While Xia Gui’s A Pure and Remote View of Streams and Mountains (ca. early 13th century) may have suffered its loss in the hands of some careless remounter or greedy owner, according to the inscription of Emperor Qianlong on the scroll (“the artist’s signature was lost when the part of the scroll was carelessly cut off for remounting effect,” or “漫嫌割截失名氏”), Huang Gongwang’s Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains (1350) narrowly escaped an even more atrocious disaster in the hands of one of its passionate lovers who decided to take it to his tomb but fortunately failed to carry it out, resulting in the beginning part of this scroll getting burnt and broken off, later separately collected in a different museum. Such unfortunate happenings may not be purely coincidental, however. The very format of these two scrolls, or their exceptionally long and panoramic composition, makes it a particularly vulnerable target for such “crimes,” hence the easy loss of particularly the beginning or ending parts of the work, as in the case of the Xia Gui scroll: while the implied narrative of “lyrical journey” that James Cahill proposed may justify the current ending of the scroll, the absence of the artist’s signature normally found at the end of Xia Gui’s other hand scrolls still calls into question the validity of its current ending, which is further challenged by the clear sign of its missing a large portion of the 5 paper that had originally been (part of) the beginning sheet of this scroll, now with only 25 centimeters left of the original sheet which would otherwise be 95 centimeters. Even the more convincing ending of the Fuchun scroll, though corroborated all the while by the artist’s detailed inscription as well as its clear history of transmission, also becomes dubitable when challenged by those variant endings of a few extant imitation copies of this well-known scroll as well as that forgery copy (i.e., the “Ziming scroll”). After all, as many of such long hand scrolls are physically usually made up of several sheets of paper joined together, it is very likely that the part of paper that presumably carries the artist’s inscription was later joined to the end of the current painting rather than (its) being originally there. The authenticity of such long horizontal scrolls has therefore been more frequently problematized and easily compromised by the very format itself than in the cases of those smaller album leaves or vertical hanging scrolls, which admittedly also have their own specific authenticity problems. This naturally brings us to the issue of space in such long horizontal scrolls that had flourished in especially the Southern Song and early Ming dynasties. The significance of water and water way that had been only secondary factor and supporting element in Northern Song monumental landscape becomes a central and structural force that has a crucial function in helping organize the spatial composition of the horizontal scroll. The void for water or sky or the snow scene and the solid representing more substantial existence became complementary in a remarkable way starting from the Southern Song. While this remains mostly compositional in album leaves or vertical 6 hanging scrolls, it acquires a dramatic power and helps to produce a rhythmic progression in the long horizontal ones, initially in company to the explicit or implied narrative, but gradually become independent and increasingly formal in the works of amateur literati artists.

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