The Met’s Exhibition of Chinese Garden Paintings

choi

I completed the following in the Friday afternoon, last Friday, but could not copy and paste until today--for various reasons (eg, an old Apple computer whose Firefox is useless to, and Safari could not cut and paste in, gmail.com; and another computer which, meant to be a dummy computer for library catalog  search, intentionally had little memory). I knew people had more time on weekend--and thus were more probable to read this posting if I posted last Friday or in the weekend. But there was nothing I could do.

So the "tomorrow" in Note (1) referred to last Saturday, Aug 18.

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Holland Cotter, Ancient Heavens of Reflection and Renewal. New York Times, Aug 17, 2012.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/1 ... -museum-of-art.html

Note:
(1) The Exhibit will start tomorrow:
Chinese Gardens: Pavilions, Studios, Retreats. Metropolitan Museum of Art, Aug 18, 2012–Jan 6, 2013.
http://www.metmuseum.org/exhibit ... 012/chinese-gardens

(2) The following is the exhibition: "The exhibition opens with a spectacular eighteen-foot-wide vision of the Palace of Nine Perfections, painted in 1691 by the artist Yuan Jiang. Catering to the wealthy salt merchants living in the commercial center of Yangzhou, Yuan presents an imaginary panorama of a seventh-century palace so grand that the emperor had to ride on horseback between pavilions."
(a) Palace of Nine Perfections  九成宮
(b) YUAN Jiang  袁 江
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuan_Jiang
(His specific years of birth and death are not known)
(c) The year of 1691 falls in Qing Dynasty (1644-1911).
(d) Yangzhou  江苏省 扬州市
(e) The seventh century was during Tang Dynasty (618-907).

(3) The art review opens with this:
"Daily I stroll contentedly in my garden

There is a gate, but it is always shut.

In the early fifth century, the Chinese poet Tao Yuanming, who called himself Tao Qian, Recluse Tao, thus described his life."
(a) The poem was "園日涉以成趣，門雖設而常關." 歸去來辭並序
http://web.nutn.edu.tw/gac220/in ... %B8%A6%E5%BA%8F.htm
(b) TAO Yuanming  陶渊明 (365–427 AD)
(c) TAO Qian  陶潜 (which Mr Cotter or some others interprets to mean "Recluse Tao")

(4)
(a) “The Pavilion of Prince Teng,” by Tang Di (1287-1355)
(i) 滕王阁
http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%BB%95%E7%8E%8B%E9%98%81
(位于中國江西省南昌市贛江畔; 屢毀屢建，今日之滕王閣為1989年重建; "始建于唐永徽四年 [653 AD]。为当时任洪州都督的唐高祖李渊之子李元婴 [封号为“滕王”] 所建")
(ii) TANG Di  唐棣 (元 Yuan Dynasty (1271–1368)
(b) The review remarks, "Wang Bo (649-676), the Percy Bysshe Shelley of the Tang dynasty, stopped at the pavilion while on a trip to visit his father in what is now northern Vietnam. He was offered dinner; he accepted. At some point in the evening he composed the 'Preface to the Pavilion of Prince Teng.'”
(i) WANG Bo  王 勃 (c 649-676)
(ii) Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)
(iii) Preface to the Pavilion of Prince Teng  滕王阁序

(5)
(a) “Odes of the State of Bin":

"In the sixth month the cricket shakes its wings

In the seventh month it is out in the grounds

In the eighth month it is under the roof

In the ninth month it is in the doorway

In the 10th month the cricket is under our bed."

(i) Odes of the State of Bin  (or Odes of Bin)  豳風圖 (title of the painting, not of the poem)
(ii) The Chinese text of the above poem:
"五月斯螽動股，六月莎雞振羽。
七月在野，八月在宇，九月在戶，
十月蟋蟀入我床下。"
詩經----豳風
http://www.yasue.cc/ban_fung.html
(iii) 豳
http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%e8%b1%b3
(具体位于今陕西省彬县)
(b) The painting:
MA Hezhi  馬 和之 (Chinese, c 1130–c 1170) Period: Southern Song dynasty (1127–1279)
http://www.metmuseum.org/collect ... ollections/60007156

(6) The review states, "A 1560 painting called 'Gathering at the Orchid Pavilion,' by the Ming artist Qian Gu, records an alfresco affair that had taken place centuries earlier. The main event on that spring day was a poetry contest among scholars, during which so much wine flowed that it was hard for people to write. The exception was the calligrapher Wang Xizhi (307-365), who described the goings-on in an essay called the 'Orchid Pavilion Preface.'”
(i) Gathering at the Orchid Pavilion  兰亭集会 (which occurred in 353 AD)
(ii) QIAN Gu  钱 谷
(iii) The painting:
http://www.metmuseum.org/Collect ... ollections/60019531

(7) shtick (n; Yiddish shtik pranks, literally, piece, from Middle High German stücke; First Known Use 1959):
"one's special trait, interest, or activity : bag <he's alive and well and now doing his shtick out in Hollywood — Robert Daley>"
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/shtick

(8) The review reminisces, "The Met’s Astor Court, which serves as the exhibition’s de facto centerpiece, is modeled on a section of the city’s Garden of the Master of the Fishing Nets, which dates from the Ming era (1368-1644)."
(a) Astor Court
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astor_Court
("The first permanent cultural exchange between the U.S. and the People's Republic of China, the installation was completed in 1981. Conceived by museum trustee Brooke Astor [1902-2007], the courtyard was created and assembled by expert craftsmen from China using traditional methods, materials and hand tools")
(b) For Garden of the Master of the Fishing Nets, see Master of the Nets Garden  网师园
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_of_the_Nets_Garden

(9) The review notes, "And Wen [Zhengming  文征明] had a hand in the Garden of the Humble Administrator (or Inept Administrator, in the Met’s translation), a so-called backyard garden, meaning one behind and connected to a house. He had a studio there, and an album of his garden illustrations is at the Met. One of the pavilions he painted, the Hall of Distant Fragrance, still stands."
(a) Garden of the Humble Administrator (or Inept Administrator)  拙政园
http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%8B%99%E6%94%BF%E5%9B%AD
(b) Hall of Distant Fragrance  远香堂

(10) The review observes, "A visit to the Suzhou gardens is a stimulating but disorienting experience. You get a firsthand sense of the complex stop-and-start movement and expansion and contraction of space that classical garden design creates."

stop-and-start (modifier): "(of traffic) constantly stopping then starting = stop-start"
http://www.collinsdictionary.com ... lish/stop-and-start

(11) The review compares lotuses in the exhibit to "lotuses, in contemporary photographs by the American artist Lois Conner, [that] withered to black stems."
(a) Lois Conner
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lois_Conner
(1951- ; She is noted particularly for her platinum print landscapes that she produces with a 7" x 17" format banquet camera; at Yale University received MFA [Master's of Fine Arts])
(b) Lois Conner, Hehua (lotus). Freer l Sackler, 1995.
http://www.asia.si.edu/collections/zoomObject.cfm?ObjectId=53508
(Platinum print on vellum paper)

(12) The review comments, "In a 13th-century painting called “Returning Home,” we see him sailing across a lake in a skiff toward his beloved willows and his garden with its high walls. He opens his arms, elated. He’s where he belongs. The painting of him was once attributed to the Southern Song artist Qian Xuan (1225-1305)."

(a) The painting:

Unidentified Artist, Returning Home.
http://www.metmuseum.org/collect ... ollections/60007510
(After Qian Xuan; Description: "Toward the end of his life, however, he complained that his works were being forged. Here, both the calligraphy and painting are modeled closely on Qian's style, suggesting that the work is a faithful copy")

歸去來辭圖
(b) QIAN Xuan 钱 选
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qian_Xuan
(1235-1305)

(14) The review at last avers, "The Met owns one of his flower pictures, of a blossoming pear tree, inscribed with a poem * * *:

Behind the closed gate, on a rainy night, how she is filled with sadness,

How differently she looked bathed in golden rays of moonlight, before darkness fell."

(a) The painting: 梨花圖 卷
(b) For the inscription in Chinese, see

衣若芬, 「江山如畫」與「畫如江山」 ——宋元題「瀟湘」山水畫詩之比較. 中央研究院 中國文哲研究所, 中國文哲研究集刊 第二十三期 頁 33∼ 70, at page 50 (2003年 9月)
www.litphil.sinica.edu.tw/home/p ... n/23/23-033-070.pdf
("「梨花」的意象令人聯想起 錢 選 ( 約1 2 3 5 - 1 3 0 7之 前 ) 的 「 梨 花 圖 」( 附圖    1 2 ), 錢選在畫面左方自題道 : 寂寞闌干淚滿枝,洗妝猶帶舊風姿。閉門夜雨空愁思,不似金波欲暗時。如果沒有畫家的自題詩,「梨花圖」和一般的花卉圖似乎無異,不看題詩的觀者 也能夠從梨花形象的美感得到視覺的愉悅。然而,熟諳「梨花」意象的觀者應該 會由繪畫的題材聯繫到〈長恨歌〉的名句,如果再對畫家入元不仕的亡國悲痛有 所認識,則梨花的寂寞之淚、風姿不減舊時之美、昨日之金波月影、如今之夜雨 愁思,在在都有了深切的韻味 , 是「詩傳畫外意,貴有畫中態」 的具體表現")
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