It is no accident that Han Xizai's Banquet, Travels in the Mountains, Rivers and Mountains over a Thousand Miles, Rivers and Rivers during the Qingming Festival and other masterpieces have all emerged from the Five Dynasties to the Southern Song Dynasty. During this period, many interactions and changes that had a profound impact on Chinese painting were taking place, but few were thought and discussed together.
The art historian Wu Hong recently published his new work "Chinese Painting: Five Dynasties to the Southern Song Dynasty", which focused on this special and critical stage in the history of Chinese painting. This is a comprehensive set of works on the history of Chinese art, including three books. Last year, Chinese Painting: From Ancient Times to the Tang Dynasty was published, as well as the third book in writing - from the Yuan Dynasty to the Qing Dynasty.
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Wu Hung, a famous art historian, critic, curator, and professor of the University of Chicago. In 1963, he was admitted to the Department of Art History of the Central Academy of Fine Arts. From 1972 to 1978, he worked in the Painting and Calligraphy Group and the Jinshi Group of the Palace Museum. In 1978, he returned to the Fine Arts History Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts to study for a master's degree. From 1980 to 1987, he studied at Harvard University and obtained a double doctorate in art history and anthropology. He then taught in the Department of Art History of Harvard University, and was appointed as a tenured professor in 1994. In the same year, he was employed to preside over the teaching of Asian art at the University of Chicago. In 2002, he established the East Asian Art Research Center and served as the director. In 2008, he was selected as a lifelong academician of the National Academy of Arts and Sciences, and won the Special Contribution Award for Art History Teaching of the American University Arts Society. In 2022, he won the "Outstanding Lifetime Achievement Award for Art Writing" of the American University Arts Society.
The history of Chinese painting has been written by many scholars at home and abroad, and has formed some fixed paradigms, such as writing in series with dynasties and famous artists: the name of a painter, a biography, a summary of the style, and if there are paintings circulating, list representative works.
The writing method of general history of painting, which has become the "prescribed action", may be convenient but not satisfying. Chinese Painting: Five Dynasties to the Southern Song Dynasty gave up this traditional writing method and tried to present a more diversified and interactive art history.
This diversity and interaction is three-dimensional, and it is not easy to present it. In terms of the selection of works used, Wu Hong attaches great importance to the latest materials of archaeological art, including the paintings excavated in tombs and the existing murals in the ruins. There is no problem with their authenticity and age. At the same time, he also tried to use the handed down paintings accepted by most painting historians and some original early copies. Although some paintings are famous, if they do not belong to these two categories, they will not be used as key historical evidence. In this sense, the main task of "Chinese Painting: Five Dynasties to Southern Song Dynasty" is not to list the important painters in history based on limited literature materials, but to analyze painting, including many nameless paintings, as a method of writing history, so as to present the face of Chinese painting in this period.
Why is the position of scroll painting so important? How did the tradition of literati painting come into being? What are the far-reaching impacts? What kind of "female space" does Song Dynasty painting have? What is the uniqueness of Chinese burial art? Starting from these problems, we took the opportunity of the publication of Chinese Painting: Five Dynasties to Southern Song Dynasty to conduct an exclusive interview with Wu Hong.
Present a diversified and interactive
Chinese Art History
Beijing News: The writing of "Chinese Painting: Five Dynasties to Southern Song Dynasty" has abandoned the traditional writing paradigm of general history of painting. How do you consider the overall structure of this book?
Wu Hong: I have considered the issue of "architecture" for a long time, because it determines the overall appearance of a book. I made some investigations into the original works on the general history of Chinese painting. It was first written by some Japanese scholars in 1920-1930, and was translated and written into Chinese. Then came some popular general theories on the history of Chinese painting, such as Yu Jianhua's History of Chinese Painting, as well as those written by Japanese and Westerners, such as Suzuki Jing's History of Chinese Painting and James Cahill's History of Chinese Painting in Pictures. Although these are not focused on this paragraph (from the Five Dynasties to the Southern Song Dynasty), they provide a general historical writing method. This practice has lasted for a long time.
There are two reasons why I didn't adopt a painter oriented architecture. One is that there are not many visual things in this architecture - that is, works. Although many painters have records in ancient times, no credible works have been circulated. In fact, the record of copying a few lines of words is not very useful to explain the paintings of that period. Moreover, this kind of writing method is easy to distinguish between true and false: if you put a painting under Dong Yuan, the first question becomes whether it is Dong Yuan's painting? Art historians had to deal with this problem and were led by the nose. This "painter list" style of writing can not really reflect the situation of Chinese art history, especially we now have a lot of materials and research beyond this list. In recent years, the relationship between art history and history, culture and society, as well as a large number of archaeological art materials, are difficult to be contained by traditional writing. The challenge we face is to find a new structure that can maximize our understanding of Chinese art, including materials and concepts.
Chinese Painting: Five Dynasties to the Southern Song Dynasty, written by [US] Wu Hong, Century Wenjing | Shanghai People's Publishing House, June 2023.
Another question is whether to adopt the framework of dynastic history. The current practice is to basically use this framework, because this set of books will eventually become a general history that can be used as a textbook. It is written in Chinese again. The history of dynasties is the time frame that Chinese readers are most accustomed to. My approach is to use this familiar structure, and then deconstruct and adjust it appropriately. For example, the first book, "Chinese Painting: From Ancient Times to Tang Dynasty", is not entirely a history of dynasties, because there were no dynasties in ancient times. The narration in the second volume, "Five Dynasties to Southern Song Dynasty", does not regard the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms as a strict paragraph, but adopts the more reasonable concept of the 10th century in my opinion.
Beijing News: This book hopes to present a more diversified and interactive art history. How do you understand this diversified interaction?
Wu Hong: For example, when I wrote about the 10th century, I would like to include the interaction between different regions, not just the so-called "Five Generations" concept. In this way, we can see more artistic trends. For example, there was a great development in realistic portraits at that time. There were good examples from the south to the north, from the Liao Dynasty, Dunhuang to the Southern Tang Dynasty. There must be interaction between them, and we also found that painters in different regions are running around.
However, in the Northern Song Dynasty, although there was some communication with external painting traditions, the interaction between literati, court and professional painters became more important. Painting has its cultural and historical environment, an overall mechanism, and it is a life. This book hopes to write this mechanism and vitality. For example, the Song Dynasty, on the one hand, "ruled the country by culture", but also had multiple localities. How does painting relate to this environment? As a living body, how can art grow in a larger space? This is what I would like to talk about.
Beijing News: Will this approach bring new dissatisfaction or "restrictions" in the writing process?
Wu Hong: If the word "restriction" is used, it means that the narration at a specific level needs certain norms. Talking about a picture can also be used to write a book. For example, Huang Xiaofeng's recent "Spring outing picture of the wife of Guo State", I think it is very good. I used a lot of materials to talk about a picture, which can give full play to a work. My book is not of this kind. It is still a general theory. Of course, we need to discuss specific works, but we need to decide where to talk about the most appropriate and effective.
This is not to say that there is a scientific standard here, but it needs to rely on the intuition and experience of the writer. On the one hand, it is necessary to bring readers the visual experience of each picture, including the analysis of the picture structure and brush and ink, but on the other hand, it cannot be talked about too much. It must be condensed and selected, or what you call "limitation". Writing is like building a house. A house must always have a symmetrical structure. If the wall is not high and the wall is low, then the house will be gone and there must be a sense of balance.
One clear decision I made was that this book was not a work on identification of calligraphy and painting. The reason is that if every painting handed down from generation to generation is discussed about authenticity and dating, and many experts' opinions are quoted, then it is impossible to write a general theory that can be read. My approach is: if a painting is particularly controversial, even if it is a very famous painting, I will not take it as evidence or just mention it. The paintings that are used as important evidence and analyzed are generally those that most scholars identify, or although they are copies, they reflect the style of a certain period to a considerable extent. I will leave the discussion on the appraisal level of the handed down ancient paintings to other books.
Why is media important?
The Transformation of Chinese Painting from Murals to Scroll Paintings
Beijing News: I noticed that you have been paying attention to media for a long time. It has been 27 years since the publication of Double Screen (1996). You also have another new book, Art and Materiality, which also focuses on related issues. What kind of opportunity began to pay attention to the media and physical properties of art?
Wu Hong: In the mid-1990s, I published two books that were totally different: "Monumentality" in Chinese Ancient Art and Architecture in 1995, and "Re screen: Media and Representation in Chinese Painting" in 1996. "Double Screen" mainly talks about screens and also about hand scrolls. When I read them later, I found that many of the considerations in these two books were related to "things".
The word "object" has two meanings: one is object, object; Another is material or material, such as jade, bronze, plastic, glass, etc. The "physical property" we are doing now belongs to the second category, while the painting media discussed in Double Screen is closer to the first category: each painting is an object at the same time, whether it is a scroll or a screen, it is always a material carrier. People have done paintings for so many years, but they seldom talk about this.
Double Screen: Media and Representation in Chinese Painting, [US] Wu Hong, translated by Wen Dan, Century Wenjing | Shanghai People's Publishing House, July 2017.
At that time, I saw and learned a lot of things from other cultures in Harvard University, and felt that the similarities and differences between different painting traditions in the world were shown in the content and image of paintings, as well as in the use form and viewing method of paintings. The second aspect was actually more basic. When we jump to the image comparison, we will go beyond a very important level.
I taught a class at Harvard University. There are only a few graduate students in it. Now they are all professors of important universities. At that time, we didn't have a tool like photoshop. I asked them to copy the cut black and white pictures printed on the book, and then use scissors, paper and paste to make a hand scroll. After such reconstruction and further analysis, the articles written are very different. I immediately realized the method of reading pictures and saw the flow of time in the picture. Of course, the emphasis on painting media is not my own opinion, but I have always emphasized this aspect.
Art and Physical Properties, compiled by Wu Hong, Shanghai Calligraphy and Painting Publishing House, May 2023.
Beijing News: From the perspective of painting media, you especially emphasize the position of hand scroll and vertical axis in this book. Why are they so important in this period?
Wu Hong: After the Tang Dynasty, a great change in Chinese painting was the completion of the transformation from architectural painting to scroll painting. The mature vertical axis appeared in the late Tang Dynasty or the 10th century, which had a great impact on the composition and viewing methods of painting. Scroll painting - including vertical scroll and existing hand scroll - is a movable painting, which is a separate work. In a strict sense, murals are part of a building, subordinate to a larger space, such as a temple or a cave. The rise of scroll painting shows that painting has undergone an essential change, and individual painting has become the main creation object of artists. Europe also experienced a transition from murals and altar paintings to individual works.
In the book "Chinese Painting: The Five Dynasties to the Southern Song Dynasty", my discussion on media materials went a step further than before, emphasizing the role of vertical axis in Chinese painting. The vertical shaft is very different from the hand roll. Although the mounting method is similar, it is hung on the wall or on the pole. It is clear at a glance, unlike the hand roll, which needs to be slowly opened. They are completely different painting media. It entered the mainstream as soon as it appeared, and had an interactive impact on the creation of hand scrolls.
One thing I haven't talked about with others before is the interaction between the vertical axis and the scroll, which caused great changes in painting in the 10th century, even a revolution. Many great scrolls were produced at this time, including Gu Hongzhong's "Han Xizai's Night Banquet", Zhao Gan's "The First Snow on the River", and later, "The River during the Qingming Festival". So it seems that many changes are brought about by media, just like when people invented the film, they can use it to create unprecedented works. The same was true in ancient times. By this time, the hand scroll was "reinvented" and used to do many different things, such as montage or long lens.
Zhao Gan, Part of "The First Snow on the River"
Beijing News: Can you be more specific about the influence of wall scroll painting or vertical scroll painting on the scroll?
Wu Hong: The single painting represented by the vertical axis urges the painter to explore the depth in composition. I once made a comparison: Zhou Wenju's unique painting, "The Picture of Playing Chess on Double Screen", is to stack several frames and go deeper and deeper inside; The scroll of Han Xizai's Night Banquet is a horizontal movement of these frames. These two patterns are completely simultaneous. In the past, neither of these two kinds of paintings existed. They should be interrelated creations. Although the painter did not write these theories at that time, the work itself showed new exploration. How to develop in depth in the limited space of vertical axis? How do you go in one floor at a time? This appeal further affected the creation of the scroll. The painter was more clearly aware of the timeliness of this medium, and had a search for different timeliness. Since the dialogue between these two media just appeared at this time, the impact or enlightenment on artists was also the strongest, so there were so many great works in the 10th century.
Zhou Wenju, "Double screen chess game"
Gu Hongzhong, Part of Han Xizai's Night Banquet
Beijing News: Has the research and thinking in this field changed in the past 30 years?
Wu Hong: Over the years, the research on Chinese painting media has made great progress. Under the influence of "Double Screen", some younger Westerners and Europeans also wrote books, some of which discussed the relationship between landscape painting and hand scroll. The importance of media materials has entered the minds of many people, so there is still great progress. But not everyone pays attention. I think it doesn't matter. More and more people pay attention to it.
How to restore the characteristics of media in contemporary art museums?
Beijing News: The scroll has basically disappeared now, and the way of watching it has been changing. Is it difficult for art museums to restore the media characteristics of paintings?
Wu Hong: Yes. Now even though we can see the original scroll when we go to the Forbidden City, it is covered in a glass cover. Once it stops moving, the hand roll will become a dead thing. As far as I know, no museum in the world has found an effective way to reproduce the media properties of hand rolls. Although we can use digital technology to move the scroll on the computer screen. But the original scroll works must be moved by hand. It is not only visual, but also tactile. The viewer not only moves his eyes, but also his hands. So I said that hand scrolls are the most extreme private media. Like books, books are not read by a large number of people together, but by one person. The ancient hand scroll can only be seen by one person, and others stand behind to watch, which is completely opposite to the public display now.
Here I can make a suggestion that the art museum should pay attention to when designing the display. When the famous hand scroll paintings are displayed in the glass cabinet, high-definition replicas are also displayed, so that the viewer can pull up and feel the timeliness of the hand scroll. At the same time, it can also be combined with the mobile hand roll recovered with digital technology. We have built a website of this kind at the University of Chicago（ https://scrolls.uchicago.edu/ ）Anyone can go up and feel the moving picture of the scroll.
The Beijing News: There are so many things to see now, and the way of watching has become very extensive. Few people will stay in front of a picture for so long as the ancients did. The way of watching also affects the way of creation. Do you think such extensive and rapid interaction will cause problems?
Wu Hong: There is a problem in this comparison. It is to compare the best works in ancient times with the worse works in modern times. In fact, good and fine films can be made for many years now, and directors pay great attention to every frame. Just like Hou Xiaoxian's "Flowers on the Sea", he also hopes to make the same long lens as the ancient famous paintings. There were also many bad paintings in ancient times, many of which were made for consumption.
Media is a very technical problem. The media of modernity, including photography, television, film and digital, are all based on the technological revolution. It is also natural that people nowadays can't look at paintings as carefully as the ancient people, because modern people have too many things to choose from, and painting has become a traditional form. Unless you are deeply educated and intend to read ancient works in depth, this interest is not inherent in real life. Painting is also different from painting. Like modern abstract expressionism, it emphasizes the overall and instantaneous effect, which is very different from the meticulous painting after the Renaissance. Zhang Zeduan's painting can be said to be a primitive film, a work of movement completed in time.
The question is whether we are still creating exquisite works of art that have never been created before in this era, and whether artists regard this purpose, rather than practicality, as the pursuit standard. If no such example can be given, there is a problem.
"Female Space" in the Painting of Women in the Song Dynasty
Beijing News: You mentioned several paintings on women in your book, such as "The Spinning Wheel" and "The Beautiful Ladies". If you look at these pictures with your concept of "female space", you can see what kind of state and situation women were in at that time?
Wu Hong: In the book "Women's Space" in Chinese Painting, "space" refers to a large context in painting. I object to talking about women's images separately. When I talk about "painting of beautiful women" or "painting of beautiful women", it means what the eyebrows look like, what the nose looks like, and what the cherry mouth looks like... It is very vulgar and lacks knowledge.
"Women's Space" in Chinese Painting, written by [US] Wu Hong, Life · Reading · Xinzhi Sanlian Bookstore, January 2019.
The female characters in ancient paintings often belong to a larger painting space, in which there are often men, children, landscapes, and stories, all of which constitute a work. There are such paintings in all ages, but later, especially after the Song Dynasty, there was a tendency to make women independent and become isolated subjects.
The Beijing News: Did this trend start in the Tang Dynasty.
Wu Hong: Yes, but those women in the Tang Dynasty showed healthy and energetic images. The Song Dynasty was different. The "Spinning Wheel Painting" you mentioned painted poor women. The "Beautiful Ladies Painting" showed a kind of lonely space like a royal back garden. The female characters felt a little sad and totally immersed in their own interior. Although there is no man in the painting, there is actually a man's eyes looking into the space. This was a new model in the Song Dynasty, but not in the Tang Dynasty.
Su Hanchen, The Painting of Beautiful Ladies
The Painting of Spinning Wheel is actually very interesting. The mother-in-law and daughter-in-law in the painting are both very poor, and they are connected by a line, which determines the space in the painting. The former is a poor old lady, and the latter is a poor young woman who is still nursing. The absent husband may have been forced to become a strong man. Two women weave for paying taxes, and this space forms a family.
Anonymous, The Painting of Spinning Wheel
The book "Chinese Painting: Five Dynasties to the Southern Song Dynasty" emphasizes the importance of the painters in the Song Dynasty to the family. Many paintings depict family life. The picture of "Spinning Wheel" also belongs to this new model. It represents a family, but it is a female family. It is really a rare and particularly touching picture in Chinese painting. The original study of the painting did not look at it from this perspective, nor could it be included in the "painting of beautiful women".
Beijing News: Yes, and it does not represent a "beautiful" female image.
Wu Hong: Even ugly, half human and half animal. But in fact, it is very profound and humanistic, which can also be said to convey the painter's social criticism or political criticism. In order to explain this painting, I quoted the poems of that time, describing the sufferings of rural women, which can be completely matched, and the painting tradition of "refugee map" also came into being in this period.
Part of the "Spinning Wheel Painting"
Beijing News: You once mentioned Laura Morvey's theory when analyzing Chinese painting. Is there a male gaze perspective in the history of Chinese painting? On the one hand, women's paintings have given women a "female space". On the other hand, the perspective of watching women's paintings is often male. At present, the network is full of all kinds of beautiful women pictures, and there are similar processes in production and viewing methods. What do you think of this tension?
Wu Hong: This problem is actually quite complicated. Generally speaking, we will say that the image of beauty often implies a male perspective, but I also mentioned that the users and observers of these female images may also be women themselves. For example, in the Tang Dynasty, many women were painted in the tombs of some princesses or high-ranking concubines, such as Princess Yongtai's tomb. There was also a small painting in Dunhuang, which was presented to a female relative by a female painter. It was a typical Tang Dynasty beauty. So are these paintings used or viewed by men? This is a problem. Including today's women's fashion pictorials, women often look at them, right?
This theory of "male gaze" was once very popular, but there is still room for reflection, because female images are a complex artistic phenomenon, which cannot be generalized. We can also say that in a patriarchal society, men have a controlling position over the whole artistic interest, so it will become a national perspective. But what role do women play in it? Is it totally passive? This is more complicated. I don't usually enter this level, which belongs to a special field of "feminist art history", and I haven't made a particularly in-depth study of this field.
When the book "Women's Space in Chinese Painting" came out, someone asked, why don't you look at these paintings from a feminist perspective? One important reason is that the study of feminist art history is generally about female painters, which is related to such issues as the "subjectivity" of painting. Most of the "female paintings" I discussed were painted by male painters. Only from the Ming and Qing dynasties did there appear more concentrated boudoir painters and brothel painters. Feminist art history is a serious research concept, which has developed its own theory. But it does not mean that all art historians should choose this angle.
Beijing News: Can you tell us in detail where women's painting focuses from the perspective of the history of Chinese painting?
Wu Hong: First of all, we need to realize that female painting has a very important position in the history of Chinese painting. This has been true since ancient times, but this position has been ignored and misinterpreted. Take a book "History of Chinese Painting of Beautiful Women" to see that it is a distorted and demeaning writing method. "Female Space" in Chinese Painting hopes to put the painting system with women as the main characters in a more correct historical position through historical research.
The far-reaching influence of literati painting tradition
Beijing News: You mentioned that in the development of painting in this period, the subjectivity of literati was consciously constructed. Can you talk about the aspects of conscious construction?
Wu Hong: In the Northern Song Dynasty, there was a very clear channel to construct the subjectivity of literati. One is to determine what the ideal painting should be like through words. The greatest strength of the literati is that he has the right to speak. He can write, and no one else can say anything about it. But look at Su Shi, he may not paint a lot, or even whether there is no clear, but he left a lot of poems, postscripts and painting theory, and put forward a lot of theories. For example, we should not talk about similarity in shape. Realism is a relatively low artistic ideal. A really good painting should show the feelings and interests of scholars. The promotion of landscape painting and the relationship between poetry and painting have a great impact on later literati painting.
Su Shi, The Painting of Dead Trees and Strange Stones
Another channel is to find the former pioneers for this new art. First of all, Wang Wei of the Tang Dynasty proposed "painting in poetry, poetry in painting"; Then we found Dong Yuan in the 10th century. As a pioneer in techniques, this is another kind of construction.
We gradually see that poetry, painting and calligraphy are linked. First, the theory gradually turned into practice, and by the Yuan Dynasty, a truly vast tradition of literati painting had been formed.
Ma Yuan, "Spring Walk on Mountain Path"
The Beijing News: You mentioned the tradition of "refugee map" in "Chinese Painting: Five Dynasties to the Southern Song Dynasty", but it didn't expand much. What do you think of the emergence of refugee painting in the Song Dynasty and its subsequent changes? Including the poetry of the Song Dynasty at that time, there was also the face of criticizing the shortcomings of the times, which may also be part of the "public turn" of Song paintings.
Wu Hong: I think this problem is very good and worth doing. This is not just a historical record. We do have actual works. In this book, I discussed the "refugee map" and the "spinning wheel map". At that time, there was also a set of "500 arhats map", one of which also had the image of poor people such as beggars at the bottom. The whole picture highlighted the polarization between rich and poor in society.
Why does this type of painting appear at this time? It must have something to do with the politics of the Song Dynasty, and also with the literati's use of painting. It was in this period that the literati might have written an article or a previous memorial to express their political opinions and used painting as a tool to achieve a political purpose. In the Song Dynasty, "governing the country by culture", the literati had a political center, and painting became their vocabulary and tool. Maybe these two things together have produced such a new painting tradition, which is a new change in the function of artistic creation.
(Biography) Li Tang, Village Doctor
Beijing News: You mentioned the relationship between the emergence of literati paintings in the Song Dynasty and the "degradation" of female paintings. What was the opportunity for this reflection?
Wu Hong: I found a very strong contrast when I studied the book "Women's Space in Chinese Painting". Female paintings before the Song Dynasty had a very high status. For example, three of the most important early Chinese paintings, "Women's History Proverbs", "Luoshen Fu" and "Lienu Ren Zhi Tu", all centered on women. The female image of Zhou Fang, a painter in the Tang Dynasty, was also rated as "divine" by Zhang Yanyuan. But later, the theme of "beautiful women" became weaker and weaker, and finally became a decorative "beauty painting". How did this change happen? In fact, people in the Song Dynasty gave a clear explanation. For example, Mi Fu put the painting of beautiful women together with the painting of animals, and thought that this kind of painting could only be enjoyed by your son, which was very unpleasant. ("To read the story map of the Buddha statue, we should give priority to exhortation; secondly, the landscape has infinite interest, especially the misty scenery; secondly, bamboo, wood, water and stone; secondly, flowers and grass; as for the feather of a lady, you should play games and not play games.") The impact of this argument on painting did not appear immediately in the Song Dynasty, when some very creative paintings on women appeared, As we just said, the "Spinning Wheel Painting" has become more and more influential since the Ming and Qing Dynasties, and the landscape has become the theme that best represents the feelings of scholars.
People can certainly evaluate this phenomenon, but as historians, we mainly work at the level of interpretation. This kind of work should also increase our overall understanding of Chinese painting. For example, we have seen this historical change, found this problem, and seen the limitations of the concept of literati, we should jump out of it. Don't always adhere to the concept of literati, as if it is natural, but in fact it is a very specific historical phenomenon.
Put Chinese ancient art on a larger scale
Only in the coordinate system can we recognize its uniqueness
The Beijing News: You published Art under the Yellow Spring very early, and listed tomb murals separately in Chinese Painting: Five Dynasties to the Southern Song Dynasty. Why do we emphasize the study of tomb art? Mayan civilization and ancient Egyptian civilization also have the form of burial art. Compared with them, what are the characteristics of our burial art?
Wu Hong: I have really been promoting the research on "tomb art". This word was also put forward by me in 2007. I believe that tomb research should be a sub discipline of art history. After that, I worked with many domestic scholars for a long time. We held six or seven burial art conferences every two years, and a total of six anthologies were published. Slowly, it was indeed recognized as a separate field of art history.
The original situation is that researchers regard the tomb as a storage room. Open an advanced tomb, take away the painting to write the history of painting, and study porcelain. If you see porcelain, the tomb itself will be deconstructed. But tombs are created as a whole in history, and each one is a complete work. From design, construction, materials, to how to place and where to paint, it is a whole thing. The purpose of the tomb art is to take the tomb as the whole research object, including everything in it.
Art under the Yellow Spring, written by [America] Wu Hong, translated by Shi Jie, Life · Reading · Xinzhi Sanlian Bookstore, December 2010.
China's tomb art has a complete history of thousands of years. It can be studied from the Neolithic Age to the Ming and Qing Dynasties, longer than any other art category, and is unique in the world in terms of research materials. It also provides a new field for the exploration of research methods and concepts of art history. We should not only look at individual objects, but also look at the whole environment, etiquette, culture and purpose when studying tomb art.
Why didn't anyone study burial art as a field before? Because the concepts it is based on are new.
There are very important tombs in foreign countries, such as ancient Egypt, but they were excavated earlier and no research disciplines such as tomb art have been developed. Now our research has begun to influence scholars in other countries. Sometimes we tend to feel inferior and think that the study of western art history is always better than us and more advanced than that of Chinese art history. In fact, this is not the case in many aspects. For example, I talked about the importance and research of painting media. We are not later than the western painting research, nor did we get it from them. It is generated through the research of China's own materials, which in turn will have an impact on the western art history or the world art history. These new ideas are not all based on translation or borrowing, which is absolutely not the case. Tomb art is the best example. When you go to the West, there is no monograph on tomb art. When they began to put forward the concept of "tomb art", they still did not understand it. Could tombs be art? Of course, I am not the only one who promotes this trend. Many people are doing it.
Pines and Cranes in the Bamboo Forest, the mural in the tomb of Wangshang Village, Dengfeng, Henan Province at the end of Jin Dynasty and the beginning of Yuan Dynasty
Beijing News: You have used ritual vessels, tombs, hand scrolls and mountains and waters to cut into the "ancient Chinese art in the global landscape". From what perspective did you choose these keywords?
Wu Hong: I chose these four because these art categories are not only available in China, but also in foreign countries, so we can make some comparisons. For example, there are all kinds of burial cultures, but China's tombs are an important base for the continuity of artistic creation. A large number of funerary objects are made for tombs, and tombs have become a storage place for art treasures, which has lasted for thousands of years - which is not found in other countries. The same is true of landscape painting or "landscape painting". So every chapter in that book (Ancient Chinese Art in the Global Landscape) contains comparisons, including "ritual vessels": several other civilizations in the ancient world also created ritual vessels, but the most important works they produced are monumental large-scale buildings. In this way, we will put Chinese culture in a larger context to understand its uniqueness and value. I introduce these comparisons in order to guide readers to think more about Chinese culture and art, instead of always observing Chinese culture and art in their own cultural circles, so that they will forget what its uniqueness is. It is empty to say that it has "uniqueness", which is obtained by comparison.
Ancient Chinese Art in the Global Landscape, written by [US] Wu Hong, Life · Reading · Xinzhi Sanlian Bookstore, January 2017.
Beijing News: You mentioned that the perspective in western painting is very similar to the "business position" in Chinese painting. Do you often have such "contrast and enlightenment" moments in your research?
Wu Hong: It's very natural for me. I don't mean to compare, but understand by analogy. Now more and more people will use this method, because they see more and more things, and systematic art exhibitions and exchanges are also increasing. When you look at Chinese portraits, you will think of how portraits in other art traditions are represented, right? This is very natural for me, including the example you mentioned.
In my opinion, China and the West are not completely binary opposites. One example is that painting is separated from public buildings and becomes a separate painting product belonging to private space, which belongs to the same phenomenon in the development of art history, both in China and the West. Although the forms of expression are different, they are the same in concept or basic historical logic.
Beijing News: So don't make the perspective of comparison too absolute.
Wu Hong: Yes, I think we sometimes overemphasize the difference and contrast. In fact, they are all human beings. They have two eyes, not three. They actually see the same things.
Beijing News: What about your own experience?
Wu Hong: For me, I have lived in China for more than 30 years before I went abroad to study for a doctorate. Although I have experienced many frustrations, various movements or gaps, I should say that I have been basically influenced by Chinese culture from the perspective of one's growth process.
I like ancient Chinese very much. In addition to my experience in the Forbidden City, learning from them in a western institution of higher learning on this basis will not replace the original storage. In my opinion, the key is how to integrate the two, so this is a personal experience.
Look carefully, think carefully, after a long time - it has a process of accumulation, not all of a sudden can reach a certain level. Keep your interest and regard what you see and read as a question, not a conclusion or purpose. Academics is to constantly ask questions and explore. I always feel interesting, can get in and open my eyes to questions. It's fun.
If you don't write for a day, you will feel uncomfortable,
Even feel oppressed
Beijing News: Many of your previous works were written in English and then translated into China. In recent years, you have published a number of works written directly in Chinese. The Panther Trace published last year is also quite different. It is a beautiful Chinese writing. How do you feel about doing research and writing in Chinese and English?
Wu Hong: This is actually a complicated story. I loved writing before I went abroad, and I tried to write novels and poems. But after going abroad, from the 1980s to the beginning of 2000, Chinese articles could not be said not to have been written at all, but they were basically written in English. The Chinese language is basically abandoned in this paragraph, but it is not easy to pick it up later. I am used to speaking many academic concepts in English, so it will take some trouble to turn back.
However, after 2000, it probably began with a series of small articles published on the Sanlian's "Reading", which were later published as a collection of Ten Comments on the History of Fine Arts. One reason is that China's art history is developing very fast. More and more people are doing it. I have more and more opportunities to come back for meetings and organize meetings. Writing is always for the readers. You can write wherever the readers are. The readers are not empty, and the domestic readership is particularly large. Now it can't be said that it has been completely translated into Chinese - there have also been three or four books published in English in the past two years. The whole situation is that the two lines intersect each other. Sometimes the Chinese book is written first, sometimes the English book is written first, and there are also works that have not been translated into each other. This is not entirely my decision, sometimes it is an opportunity.
Ten Discussions on the History of Fine Arts, written by Wu Hong, Life · Reading · Xinzhi Sanlian Bookstore, January 2016.
For Chinese writing, I have a process of picking it up and learning again. I guess my current Chinese style is different from the original one, which is a combination of English thinking style. English writing is rigorous, while Chinese is easy to be poetic, and does not necessarily need subject, tense, gender, and can be very vague. In my Chinese writing, especially those with literariness, I hope to combine the two, which is both rigorous and relaxed. Therefore, each Chinese manuscript is edited more frequently.
Beijing News: How do you maintain this high density of output?
Wu Hong: I don't have any secret. I don't write fast, and I have changed it a lot. It's not a rush type. I don't think it is due to diligence - the word "diligence" seems to mean a special effort. I just write honestly and regard it as a part of life. For me, writing is just like eating and drinking water. I need to do it every day. If I don't do it, I will feel uncomfortable and even oppressed. Write it when you get up in the morning, and continue to write if you are free in the afternoon. I think this is a part of life or a part of life. How many things it can create in the end, let it go, whether more or less, is not the main thing.
The Trace of Leopard, written by [US] Wu Hong, Utopia | Shanghai Sanlian Bookstore, June 2022.
Beijing News: The next volume in the series of "Chinese Painting" is the "Yuan, Ming and Qing" volume. Is there any difference in its structure from this one?
Wu Hong: I still take the dynasty as the basic clue, which is relatively clear, but there are many fine adjustments to be made. The "dynasty" in the history of painting has no absolute starting point and end point. Many painters in the Song Dynasty lived to the Yuan Dynasty, and some famous painters in the Yuan Dynasty lived to the Ming Dynasty. The boundaries between the dynasties were not so obvious. The end of this volume, I think, may not end in 1911, but may end in photography and enter the Chinese grottoes. As soon as photography entered, it brought great changes. The observation of painting and the whole reality was different. As for the overall structure of the book, the first level is the overall development, trend and tendency, but it will give the painter a more obvious position. This is because we have more materials and evidence about painters during this period, and we can talk about the development process of painters for the first time. One of the purposes of this whole set of books is to reflect that the materials of art history are constantly changing, and our narrative and interpretation should also change accordingly.
Photographed by/Zhang Ting
Edit/Walk
Proofreader/Lucy
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