tang dynasty times

Dreams of Mists and Clouds (氣吞雲夢)

 

So, what are you slobbering over now? he asked me.

He was himself slobbering, he said, over some high resolution reproductions of yuan dynasty scrolls on silk that he bought at the Palace Museum in Taipei. With his "imagination on steroids"... he could gaze at those scrolls for hours and be totally occupied and utterly transported.

感心 

He described being particularly impressed by the seals impressed on the scrolls.

A yuan scroll might have 30 or 40 seal imprints--800 years of slobering recorded in vermillion ink
seals like qianlong's "I liked it" and yongzheng's "being boss is hard"
Wow. And what are you slobbering over now?

How to tell him that I am still looking and slobbering over that same Southern Song painting:

 
Dream Journey over Xiao Xiang  瀟湘臥遊図巻

I once swore I could look at the painting everyday for the rest of my life and never grow tired of it, being continually and unendingly delighted by new details that I would discover one after another; day-by-day, at my own pace... gazing, slobbering, appreciating, noticing and delighting. It has been my computer wallpaper for over 10 years (probably closer to 15 years). And while most days I like to just space out and imagine myself floating in and out of the mist on one of those boats...

--drifting and dreaming of clouds and mists--

There are also days when I like to take a closer look at the many many collectors' seals and colophons that adorn the painting- the very first of which is the large sized calligraphy of Qianlong, 氣吞雲夢 (Dreams of Mists and Clouds). In fact, Qianlong had been much moved by this painting and had covered most of the available empty space in his remarkable calligraphy and vermilion seals. He also added to the handscroll by with a drawing of bamboo.

I described here how the scenery of Xiao Xiang had been a much celebrated artistic theme during the Song dynasty, and Dream Journey had come into being as part of a Song dynasty monk's great passion for the theme. Apparently the monk, a certain Master Yungu, had commissioned every painter he met to paint him their version of the famed landscape. This particularl rendition, however, by Painter Li, had particularly enthralled the elderly monk, who kept the painting close to him until the time of his death.

The painting then disappears from the historical record for a few hundred year until entering the collection of a Yuan dynasty collector. Thanks to the seals and colophons that now adorn Dream Journey, we know that during the Ming dynasty the painting was purchased by one of the most famous art collectors of the time, Secretary Gu Congyi. It was during this time that the great Ming scholar and calligraphery Dong Qichang inspected the painting and his assessment of the work of art in his impossibly elegant calligraphy (far right) that I have so admired on my computer screen all these years.

Secretary Gu had particularly prized 4 paintings in his collection: Dream Journey (by Painter Li, now a National Treasure in the Tokyo National Museum), Admonitions of the Imperial Instructress (attributed to Gu Kaizhi, now in the British Museum), Shu River (attrributed to Li Gonglin, now in the Smithsonion), and Nine Songs (once part of the Palace Collection but now missing). After Secretary Gu's death, the four paintings were scattered, each passing through different hands, and it was not until Emperor Qianlong, one of the greatest art-collecting emperors of all time, that the four paintings were reunited. So pleased was Qianlong for bring together these "old friends" that he had a special seal made with a dragon motif and the characters 四美具 ("four beauties") from his own calligraphy. A large size seal, he stamped this on all four paintings and then placed them in a special hall constructed for the sole purpose of housing them.

 **

So, you know how things go. On that very same day that my friend was asking me about my recent slobbering, another friend-- indeed, a mutual friend-- a certain Señor Haquelebac left an interesting comment here on my blog. I quote:

Buyers often added their chop mark to calligraphy they bought. It sounds vandalistic but as far as I know wasn't regarded that way. It seems like an attempt to absorb the prestige, magic, virtue, or whatever of the artist into your person. Not as barbarous as being buried with a painting, which almost happened to a Van Gogh.

And so we come back to the idea that in certain non-Western traditions, art objects were viewed differently than how we have come to understand fine art nowadays. A world apart from Kant, these art objects were never "seen" as merely "objects" for detached or pleasurable viewing, but rather were closer in function to "props" to be used in a particular kind of aesthethic-ethical practice. So that the collector was also a practioner, and the art objects themselves excerted power in sense that in a very specific context the objects affected  behavior. Aesthethic practice was thought to cultivate ethical sensibility. So, in this way a collector by adding his or her calligraphy or seal to a work of art was both inbibing some of the ethical power or virtue of the artist as well as weaving a bit of themselves with the object.

Does anyone know what happened to that Van Gogh, though?

For more on how this practice of art connoisseurship and pedigree was translated into Japanese ideas of o-meibutsu (お名物）, see the final part of this post: Anatomy of an Art Collector: Part 2 

Turkish Delight

Like Tibet, I sometimes dream of Istanbul. It is, of course, known as "the City"-- the city of dreams-- a city of bridges and tall minarets rising up from across the shimmering aquamarine waters of the Bosporus. Slowly gliding above the water, in my dream I watched as boats plied here and there across the busy harbor leaving great streaks of white-- like huge strokes of calligraphy-- in their wake.

I had, as you remember, an angel's eye view-- very much like that of a Persian miniature.

Pure geometry drawn from the timeless perspective of God; Ottoman Miniatures are pictures portrayed as if seen from the top of a minaret rising above the city of dreams. They are also known for their rich, vibrant, intoxicating colors. In my dream, the colors were like that: richly detailed and incredibly vibrant-- the shimmering and rich colors of Herat and Tabriz.

Settling in with a much awaited for box of Turkish Delight, I re-read My Name is Red.

*

The Sultan's ambassador, Enishte Effendi finds himself in Venice. A renown miniaturist in the service of the Ottoman Court, he is utterly speechless when he sees his first Venetian-style Renaissance paintings. That is, the paintings completely boggle his mind. What could they possibly mean, he wonders?

One painting in particular has him so disturbed he is unable to sleep. It is a portrait- done in the Renaissance style. It is not meant to present a timeless realm, or represent any deeper truths. It does not seek to embellish a tale or illuminate the perspective of God, but rather, he realizes, it is something which stands all on its own.

I learned from the Venetian gentleman who was giving me a tour through the palazzo that the portrait was of a friend, a nobleman like himself. He had included whatever was significant in his life in his portrait: In the background landscape visible from the open window there was a farm, a village and a blending of color which made a realistic-looking forest. Resting on the table before the nobleman were a clock, books, Time, Evil,  Life, a calligraphy pen, a map, a compass, boxes containing gold coins, bric-a-brac, odds and ends, inscrutable yet indistinguishable things that were probably included in many pictures, shadows of jinns and the Devil and also a picture of the man's stunningly beautiful daughter as she stood beside her father.

"What was the narrative that this representation was meant to embellish and complete? As I regarded the work, I slowly sensed that the underlying tale was the picture itself. The painting wasn't the extension of a story at all, it was something in its own right.

I have already written elsewhere something about the similar Chinese reaction to Renaissance painting. You see, this desire to portray in art the manner in which the eye sees things, was in fact unique. Aiming at something altogether different, many Chinese literati painters upon seeing a Western painting, perhaps simply wondered, so what?

That was Enishte Effendi first reaction as well. And yet-- and yet!-- he found himself increasingly intrigued by the idea of representing individual people or horses or landscapes. Unable to get the idea out of his head, he thought, "I, too, wanted to be portrayed in this manner."

This is how the idea came about to have the Sultan's portrait painted in the style of the Venetians.

Perhaps not so coincidentally, Minerva of my "ladies" group (yes, I use the term loosely) happened to recently post about Candide's journey-- which also ended in Istanbul. Like a piece of a puzzle, her email arrived  reminding me of something important at just the right place and time...

Talking about the mysterious manner in which people's personalities change depending on location, she eloquently writes:

I know this guy who has a Jekyll and Hyde personality depending on where he is even in his own country. He loves hiking and nature and when he's in the countryside is a really nice, relaxed, generous person, but he insists on living in Manhattan because of various complexes and delusions of grandeur of his, and there he's mean, nervous, absurdly competitive and rude. He moved there
thirty years ago because it's The Center of The Universe, even though he's miserable and there's nothing keeping him there except his youthful dreams of a life it's way too late for him to ever have. Time to wave the white flag and admit defeat. Giving up is underrated. Sometimes it's the only thing to do, and sometimes a place is just a place.

Like at the end of "Candide" when Candide meets a Turk in Constantinople who invites him home and offers him homemade sherbets of cream flavored with candied citron, orange, lemon, lime, pineapple, pistachio and some mocha coffee, and Candide says to him that he must possess an enormous and splendid property. The Turk answers, No, I only have twenty acres that I cultivate with my family
and the work keeps us from the three great evils: boredom, vice, and poverty. Professor Pangloss is going on about how "All events are linked together in the best of all possible worlds" ("there cannot possibly be an effect without a cause and that in this best of all possible worlds the Baron's castle was the best of all castles and his wife the best of all possible Baronesses" -- also known in other regions as Everything Happens For A Reason) and if Candide hadn't been kicked out of his homeland, if he hadn't gone up against the
Inquisition, if he hadn't traveled across America on foot, if he hadn't killed a baron, if he hadn't lost all his sheep in Eldorado, well, then he wouldn't be sitting here eating some nice candied citron and pistachios in Constantinople. To which Candide replies, That is very well put, but we must cultivate our garden. 

The question of place is interesting, of course-- and indeed, it is a question that seems to occupy Orhan Pamuk's writing to some extent. Pamuk has written again and again about the tension one feels between life in the Center of the Universe (New york City perhaps) versus that at the edges (Turkey).

When one lives one's life outside the center, he says, it can come to feel almost as though one's existence hardly matters at all. Talking about Turkey's own internal grappling with Western-style reforms, he says that in the beginning they arose in a manner which "sent the message to many that their culture was defective." This message, he continues:

"gives rise to a very deep and confused emotion: shame; and whenever a people feels deeply humiliated, we can expect to see a proud nationalism rising to the surface."

I see this conflicted kind of expression in the some of the translations I do for older generation Japanese business executives. It seems to inevitably rise to the surface in their speeches and writings-- a conflict between self and place; center and hinterland. This is also part of the project Hattori has written about which interests me as well-- this desiring need to be heard.

In my own case, I see things quite the opposite to Minerva and her friend. Traveling back and forth across Adonis' empire, I don't think my personality undergoes any significant change whatsoever. Yes, I tell more jokes and perhaps enjoy conversations more in the Eastern part of the realm, and enjoy books more in the Western part-- but that is perhaps the extent. On the other hand, while I don't change back and forth by place, still, over time my self is indeed influenced, stained and molded by place; indeed, the places we go, I think, are every bit as significant as the people we meet.

Back to Candide and the Turk's garden, though. A debate exists to whether Voltaire was implying a passive retreat from the outer world to cultivate one's inner Self, or whether he was advocating productive occupation and engagement (in the form of gardening) with the world-- that is working to improve the world through metaphorical gardening.

Candide's garden-- like all gardens-- could symbolize just about anything.

However, reading it in light of Orhan Pamuk's work, I think it means both-- simultaneously. Like a Japanese lacquer craftsman, in almost any interview or essay you read by Pamuk, he repeats the same phrase-- like a mantra. "All I want to do is sit in a room and write. That's it." It all comes down to that really-- some people require time alone, time apart. They truly only wish to focus on their CRAFT (which is their meaningful occupation). And, that is both a retreat into the self as well as part of the way in which they interact with the world-- which is to say that the garden serves, in the words of another Voltaire, as an End in Itself.

**

My Name is Red, remains one of my top 5 favorite books. This weekend, I also re-read Pamuk's Nobel Prize speech, My Father's Suitcase and think it remains recommended reading. Finally, regarding the literati project, Chinese art actually started off being strongly representational. By the late Tang, however, artistic trends were branching off, with certain styles "moving beyond" representation to pursue something more akin to modern Western expressionism. This project of the literati artists equally puzzled the Ottoman Miniaturists, and Pamuk describes it as the puzzling Chinese obsession with style or character.

*The BBC Interview (below) is highly recommended, but I think this older interview from Boston's public radio touches on more interesting issues (and it is on My Name is Red specifically.)

This BBC Interview with the author is also highly recommended. Though the interviewer tries to keep steering the conversation to Turkish politics, the Great Orhan keeps to his own project: "my devotion for the grand art of the novel... my devotion not to the art, but to my table, to my paper; to my fountain pen...; to being alone in a room and writing."