The Zoomorphic Imagination in Chinese Art and Culture

474 Pages·2016·7.496 MB·English

by  Jerome Silbergeld, Eugene Y. Wang

Edited by
Jerome Silbergeld
Eugene Y. Wang
the zoomorphic imagination
in Chinese Art and Culture
the zoomorphic imagination
in chinese art and culture

The Zoomorphic Imagination
in Chinese Art and Culture
edited by
Jerome Silbergeld and Eugene Y. Wang
University of Hawaiʻi Press
Honolulu
© 2016 University of Hawaiʻi Press
All rights reserved
Printed in China
21 20 19 18 17 16 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The zoomorphic imagination in Chinese art
and culture / edited by Jerome Silbergeld and
Eugene Y. Wang.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-8248-4676-3 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Art, Chinese. 2. Animals in art. i. Silbergeld,
Jerome, editor. ii. Wang, Eugene Yuejin, editor.
n7340.z66 2016
704.9'4320951 — dc23
2015021586
This publication is made possible in part by the
Barr Ferree Foundation Fund for Publications,
Department of Art and Archaeology, Princeton
University.
Frontispiece: Unidentified artist (late twelfth
century). Gibbons Raiding an Egret’s Nest (detail).
Han dynasty (206 bc – ad 220). Fan mounted
as an album leaf, ink and color on silk,
24.1 × 22.8 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
John Steward Kennedy Fund, 1913, 13.100.104.
University of Hawaiʻi Press books are printed
on acid-free paper and meet the guidelines for
permanence and durability of the Council on
Library Resources.
Designed by Binocular, New York
Contents
vii Preface Eugene Y. Wang
ix Acknowledgments Eugene Y. Wang and Jerome Silbergeld
xi Chronology of Chinese Dynasties
1 Trading Places: An Introduction to Zoomorphism and
Anthropomorphism in Chinese Art
Jerome Silbergeld
chapter 1
21 The Taotie Motif on Early Chinese Ritual Bronzes
Sarah Allan
chapter 2
67 Labeling the Creatures: Some Problems in Han and
Six Dynasties Iconography
Susan Bush
chapter 3
95 Representing the Twelve Calendrical Animals as Beastly,
Human, and Hybrid Beings in Medieval China
Judy Chungwa Ho
chapter 4
137 The Didactic Use of Animal Images in Southern Song Buddhism:
The Case of Mount Baoding in Dazu, Sichuan
Henrik H. Sørensen
chapter 5
171 Evil Dragon, Golden Rodent, Sleek Hound: The Evolution of
Soushan Tu Paintings in the Northern Song Period
Carmelita Hinton
chapter 6
215 Animals in Chinese Rebus Paintings
Qianshen Bai
chapter 7
253 The Pictorial Form of a Zoomorphic Ecology: Dragons and
Their Painters in Song and Southern Song China
Jennifer Purtle
chapter 8
289 The Political Animal: Metaphoric Rebellion in Zhao Yong’s
Painting of Heavenly Horses
Jerome Silbergeld
chapter 9
341 How the Giraffe Became a Qilin: Intercultural Signification
in Ming Dynasty Arts
Kathlyn Liscomb
chapter 10
379 Weird Science: European Origins of the Fantastic Creatures
in the Qing Court Painting, the Manual of Sea Oddities
Daniel Greenberg
chapter 11
401 Huang Yong Ping and the Power of Zoomorphic Ambiguity
Kristina Kleutghen
433 Glossary
443 Contributors
447 Index
vi Contents
Preface
Most books on animals in Chinese art in Western language focus on
symbolism. They meet the public curiosity about what a particular animal
stands for in Chinese culture. The premise of symbolism, however, can
be misleading. Yes, a tiger may stand for this or that, but there is more to
that substitution. A book that indexes the symbolic values of animals is
serviceable, but it does not even begin to describe the dynamic nature of
what animals do in Chinese art and culture. Animals may be saddled with
the responsibility of particular symbolic values. What makes the Chinese
use of animal images distinct is not so much what they stand for as how
they stand in relation to each other. In other words, it is the way they all
add up and work in concert that matters most. The web of relationships
to which they are integrated is the key to Chinese animal “symbolism.” A
tiger is more meaningful if it is to be understood in relation to a dragon.
The dragon/tiger pair, in fact, covers vast terrains, at once signaling
mercury/lead, ascent/descent, sun/moon, south/north, fire/water, male/
female, heart/veins, pneuma/saliva, blood/semen, red/black, floating/
sinking, host/guest, self/other. The list can keep growing. It would be
maddening to keep track of all the equations or referential values. We
would have missed the point. If we take care to note how this system
works, we observe a pattern built on binaries. We then realize that it is
not so much that the dragon/tiger equates mercury/lead as it functions as
shorthand to correlating and corralling two sets of binary qualities. One
might even say that it is a computational device that can automate the
generation of the values — the list can keep piling up. And we begin to
get the hang of it. Unlike other books on animal symbolism, this book is
about that system of values expressed through animal images.
Its appearance is timely. The book speaks to the recent resurgent
interest in animals, which stems in large part from our growing environ-
mental sensibility. We are now acutely aware of the inadequacy of our
profit-driven man-over-nature triumphalism that jeopardizes natural
resources. China’s long history provides food for thought in that regard.
There was an ideal vision, as articulated around 139 bc:
Birds beat their wings in the air in order to fly. Wild beasts stomp
on solid ground in order to run. Serpents and dragons live in
the water. Tigers and leopards live in the mountains. This is the
vii
nature of Heaven and Earth. . . . Each accords with where it lives
in order to protect against the cold and the heat. All things attain
what is suitable to them; things accord with their niches. From
this viewpoint, the myriad things definitely accord with what is
natural to them, so why should sages interfere with this?
Stances like this probably help foster a widespread perception about
the traditional Chinese exaltation of nature. Study of Chinese animal
images gives us a chance to examine closely what that allegedly exalted
“nature” amounts to. If we take “nature” to mean natural physical envi-
ronment and wilderness whose enormity and eco-diversity is beyond
any human ken or design, then that is not the kind of nature Chinese
art — at least in its early phase — is about. Early visions of natural envi-
ronment a cknowledge the way it operates on its own. As soon as it is
filtered through human-designed schemes, however, nature becomes an
ordered state of affairs. Animal images play a large part in that schematic
ordering. Early representation of nature hardly goes without animal
images. “Feathered creatures” call to mind rivers; “shorthaired animals”
suggest mountain forests; “scaled creatures” epitomize mountains; “furry
animals” recall “tombs and puddles”; “shelled creatures” embody earth;
and “d irectional animals” evoke heaven. Animals, as it becomes clear,
amount to a taxonomy of topography.
As Chinese notions of nature focus largely on patterns of change and
evolving processes, animals also become figural building blocks of that
conceptual template. Seasonal changes are visualized in early classics as
swallows and sparrows diving into the sea, where they transform into
clams in winter; spring, in contrast, is marked by the transformation
of hawks into doves. Not that they physically do; rather, animal images
embody the changing states of natural processes. It is the pattern of change
that is the core of the Chinese notion of nature. Animal images are to be
understood in this vein.
As is always the case however, concrete images embodying abstract
concepts can be an unruly state of affairs. The visual noises inadvertently
send unintended signals. Animals — forces of nature — take on lives
of their own as well. Hence the complexity of the signifying practices
involving animals that calls for some careful sorting out and accounts.
This is what this volume is about.
Eugene Y. Wang
viii Preface
Acknowledgments
Like all complex projects, this book has been long in coming. A first note
of thanks goes to Alan Chong for when he was curator at the Isabella
Stewart Gardner Museum. In 2007, Alan initiated an exhibition involving
me and my graduate student, Michelle Wang. Our collaboration resulted
in A Bronze Menagerie: Mat Weights of Early China, a beautifully produced
catalog edited by Michelle Wang, and an exhibition held in the Gardner
Museum. The symposium Alan and I convened featured a roster of
speakers whose papers inspired us to think of publication of a volume.
Oversized ambition overtook me and I began to harbor a larger plan. I
organized, in the following year, a workshop at Harvard and invited more
scholars on board, aiming at a more comprehensive volume on animal
images in Chinese art. The roster included the core group of authors of
the present volume.
Collecting and editing the essays subsequently turned into an
on-and-off affair for me. Soon other projects began to eclipse and over-
whelm this one. It began to dawn on me that the loss of momentum
might eventually doom this project. My longtime friend Jerome
Silbergeld, one of the authors I invited to the Harvard workshop, became
my deus ex machina. Jerome kindly answered my plea for help. As in a
long, drawn-out baseball game, Jerome was the most decisive closer. And
close it he did, not with a whimper but with a bang. He took over the
whole pile. With his care and nurturing, lo and behold, that unweeded
garden with things rank and gross turned into a fully revitalized nursery.
Moreover, Jerome also raised the main bulk of funding to offset the cost
of publication.
Things go in circles. Jerome left Seattle more than a decade ago to
take up the P. Y. & Kinmay W. Tang Professorship of Chinese Art History
at Princeton. His bond with Seattle remains strong. Michael Duckworth,
formerly chief editor at the University of Washington Press at Seattle,
had put the Asian art publication in the map for the press. Jerome was
his sidekick, and vice versa. After an odyssean journey, Michael has now
come back from Asia after jump-starting Asian art publications at the
Hong Kong University Press. Now heading the University of Hawaiʻi
Press, Michael treats this project as one of his homecoming pieces. It is
a happy reunion for the three of us. I was Michael’s author when he was
in Seattle; Jerome’s partnership with Michael has been unwavering. So
ix