Art
Sung and Yuan
John McEwen
The exhibition of Sung and Yuan paintings at the British Museum (till January 4) is approaching its end. Go now before it's too late; this is one of the most important exhibitions likely to be seen in London for a long time.
Of the twenty-seven masterpieces of Sung (AD 960-1279) and Yuan (AD 1280-1368) paintings, all but two come from the collection of Mr Wang bought by the Metropolitan in 1973. Mr Wang's collection of early Chinese paintings is the finest to have been gathered since the last period of private collecting in the seventeenth century — ten of the works on view derive from the imperial collection of the last Emperor Pu Yi. It is, therefore, the product of the ultimate redistribution of this kind in Chinese history, and of a rarity that needs no emphasis.
The earliest work on view (ptrotographically enlarged to the detriment of the ascetic nature of the exhibition as a whole) is placed by the entrance to the main room, and is the rightful centrepiece: a handscroll of 'Summer Mountains', ink and light colour on silk, its monumentality belied by a minute style. Traditionally, landscape painting disclosed the secrets of creation and as a later writer said: "Since man is the most sentient of beings, he alone is suited for making paintings." That painting is a final expression of philosophical truth is the strength and lesson of every work on view. Two of the most easily appreciated are of flowers. 'Orchids', one of the earliest orchid paintings in existence and a supreme example of Sung realist painting, deploys its rhythms to reveal principles of yin and yang asymmetrical balance. Even now with the silk browned and the colour flaked from its leaves, this philosophical purpose can be gleaned through its perfection. 'Narcissi', where a whole life-size border of the flowers is sustained in black ink the length of a twelve feet handscroll, is by • Chao Meng-Chien (d. 1267), considered one of the most cultivated men of the age. Meng-Chien epitomises the painter-scholar of the Southern Sung period, who saw painting as a means of self-expression: an introspective attitude that was to be reinforced by the repressive effects of Mongol rule following the invasion of Genghis Khan in 1227 and the final establishment of the Yuan dynasty under Kublai Khan in 1271. This was the first time the Chinese had been completely conquered, and painting as personal expression now held total sway, affecting all later development in the art. Meng-Chien sought refuge in the meditation of flowers and his narcissi were seen by the poet Chao as the only vision of life in a deVsastated land. Under the Sung Emperors a good painter could become an important official without other qualifications, such was the standing of the profession. This tradition of Court sponsorship was now swept away. Li K'an, the painter of 'Bamboo and Rocks', was a privy councillor of the Emperor Jen-Tsung (1312-20) in spite of his private obsession with painting. Like 'Narcissi', 'Bamboo and Rocks' is, in the accuracy of its description, a scientific treatise as well as an allegory. Subjects had to bc learned in the most disciplined manner before there was any attempt at improvisation. A man becomes what he knows. Bamboo painting trained a statesman's mind and broadened his vision. Purely calligraphic painting, a totally non-representational art, slowly emerged as an inevitable process of such a search for pure self-expression, and the painter-scholar became increasingly outcast and, indeed, persecuted.
There's plenty in this exhibition still beyond the reach of Western scholarship, never mind this reviewer, but it's an inspiration nevertheless. When Ni Tsan wrote 600 years ago that he never sought a representative likeness because he painted for his own amusement, he probably explained forever the continuing perplexity of most people when confronted with 'abstract art. But as this exhibition so triumphantly declares, it is in the defence of that very amusement that painting finds its sublirnest expression as a means to man's understanding and a guardian of his freedom.
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