标题: An Exhibition of Chinese Album, at The Met [打印本页] 作者: choi 时间: 10-24-2014 11:07 标题: An Exhibition of Chinese Album, at The Met Lee Lawrence, A Real Page-Turner; The format of albums allows artists to craft an image through different viewpoints--an approach to storytelling and depiction different from that of handscrolls. Wall Street Journal, Oct 23, 2014
online.wsj.com/articles/the-art-of-the-chinese-album-at-the-met-a-real-page-turner-1414016425
(art review on “The Art of the Chinese Album. Metropolitan Museum of Art [The Met], Through March 29, 2015”; for the exhibition, see (e)(i))
Note:
(a) "Museums typically exhibit paintings from Chinese albums either as books open to a particular set of facing pages or as single, disembodied folios. Here, in addition to separate folios, we see some 25 works that Met conservators have carefully disassembled. Most have eight to 12 leaves and date from the 17th century, the golden age of the album."
(b) "As though to convince us that this will be worth our while, assistant curator Joseph Scheier Dolberg leads with a masterpiece from the Met’s collection. By Shitao (1642-1707), a Buddhist monk turned Daoist adept, 'Returning Home' 归乡图册 is bound into a book that opens from the right and adopts the widespread practice of placing the painting on the right and a page of calligraphy on the left. In the first spread, characters form two columns, faintly mirroring the adjacent composition: a river flowing down the page between two banks with, in its center, a skiff manned by a single, tiny boatman. * * * There is something unassuming about this calligraphy and painting—a simple statement in word and image that 'as falling leaves descend with the wind, I return by the water through a thinning mist…'”
(i) while (n): “the time and effort used (as in the performance of an action) : trouble <worth your while>” www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/while
(ii) 石濤
zh.wikipedia.org/zh-tw/石涛
(born 朱若極; 廣西桂林人; 別號很多，如 清湘老人)
(iii) adept (n; New Latin adeptus alchemist who has attained the knowledge of how to change base metals into gold, from Latin, past participle of adipisci to attain, from ad- + apiscito reach):
“a highly skilled or well-trained individual : expert <anadept at chess>” www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/adept
(iv) Read this and view the only photo (both in print and online), and one will be at loss. Turns out that the quotation is NOT about the photo. Here is the Museum’s Web page for the folios.
作者: choi 时间: 10-24-2014 11:07
(c) "then Shitao suddenly hits us with a densely packed page of bold characters paired with the album’s sparest painting: a boatman poling his craft forward, nothing around him but the suggestion of mountains high above and reeds far below. It is as though we have simultaneously plunged into the physical loneliness of this 'despondent man from Qingxiang' and the incessant loud chatter of his mind."
spare (adj): “not liberal or profuse : sparing <a spare prose style>” www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/spare
(d) “A few pages later, the album ends on a quiet, hopeful note with narcissus (among other things, a symbol of Daoist immortals) blooming against faintly outlined leaves and the final line, ‘how my quiet thoughts wander—beyond the boundless shores.’
Amazing: 幾回清思無涯 can pack so many thoughts.
(e) “Like handscrolls, albums take us on a journey with a prescribed beginning and end. But the image is continuous in handscrolls, while in albums the need to turn the page interrupts the flow, allowing artists to exploit these disruptions. Rather than portraying a unified landscape, for example, some use albums to build a depiction of a site through various viewpoints. In a late 17th- or early 18th-century album, Xuezhuang 雪莊 [or 釋雪莊] shows us the Yellow Mountains 黄山圖經 as a view both from and of his vegetable garden. An interesting riff on this genre, Michael Cherney’s 2005-06 ‘Bounded by Mountains: Mount Hua’ appears to be a collection of distant peaks and detailed rockfaces, though what we’re actually seeing are 12 grainy magnifications plucked from a single negative.”
(i) The Art of the Chinese Album. The Met, September 6, 2014–March 29, 2015 www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/ob ... amp;rpp=10&pg=1
includes the object at issue: Xuezhuang (Chinese, active ca. 1690–after 1718), Scenery of the Yellow Mountains. undated ("Lent by a private collection").
(ii) Michael Cherney, Bounded by Mountains: Mount Hua. 2005-2006 (accession number 2007.13) www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/73601
("Photographic album of twelve leaves; inkjet print on mica-flecked paper")
(f) “One of the show’s oldest works, Ma Yuan’s 馬遠 [南宋] early-13th-century ‘Viewing Plum Blossoms by Moonlight 月下賞梅圖 [扇頁]’ * * * A conventional scene of a scholar communing with nature takes on electric energy thanks to a craggy tree jutting into space, the embodiment of the man’s intense gaze.”
(g) "Finally, their portability make albums wonderful didactic tools. One gallery shows works intended to disseminate prized calligraphic scripts; another focuses on Dong Qichang 董其昌 (1555-1636), who used albums to celebrate past masters and establish a canon of painters. Later, however, some chafed at Dong’s orthodoxy, and we see Gong Xian’s 龔賢 'Landscape and Trees' (c 1679) subtly subverting its conventions. Like Dong, Gong celebrates revered elders. But, a turn of the page later, he preaches that 'in painting one need not follow any ancient masters' and points admiringly to contemporary artists. Gong also goes against the prevailing norm by placing his pages of calligraphy on the right. 'Being clever is not as good as being dull,' Gong writes a few pages earlier. 'The uses of cleverness can be grasped at a glance, while apparent dullness may embody limitless flavor.' This observation could apply to the show itself. Its one attempt to use clever technology inside the gallery is problematic: Progressing left to right on an iPad screen to evoke the experience of leafing through an album right to left proves disconcerting and unnecessary. Thanks to this effective presentation, we can taste the versatility and limitless offerings of Chinese albums through the objects themselves."
(i) Gong Xian, Landscapes and Trees. In
Album of twelve paintings, ca. 1679 (accession number: 1979.499). www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/1979.499
(ii) Regarding various quotations by Mr Gong. I simply can not find any in this album.作者: choi 时间: 11-1-2014 15:59
Nov 1
Lee Lawrence, 中國古代畫冊驚艷紐約. 华尔街日报, Nov 1, 2014
cn.wsj.com/big5/20141101/lux104331.asp
(“龔賢在之前幾頁寫道：’用巧不如用拙，用巧一目了了，用拙味玩不窮’”)
My comment: Just now I did a double check. In the previous posting dated Oct 24--at (g) specifically (attached below)--I supplied a link and stated, “I simply can not find any [quotation] in this album.” I re-visited the link just now and discovered that missed "SEE COMPLETE RECORD" midway down the Web page.
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(g) "Finally, their portability make albums wonderful didactic tools. One gallery shows works intended to disseminate prized calligraphic scripts; another focuses on Dong Qichang 董其昌 (1555-1636), who used albums to celebrate past masters and establish a canon of painters. Later, however, some chafed at Dong’s orthodoxy, and we see Gong Xian’s 龔賢 'Landscape and Trees' (c 1679) subtly subverting its conventions. Like Dong, Gong celebrates revered elders. But, a turn of the page later, he preaches that 'in painting one need not follow any ancient masters' and points admiringly to contemporary artists. Gong also goes against the prevailing norm by placing his pages of calligraphy on the right. 'Being clever is not as good as being dull,' Gong writes a few pages earlier. 'The uses of cleverness can be grasped at a glance, while apparent dullness may embody limitless flavor.' This observation could apply to the show itself. Its one attempt to use clever technology inside the gallery is problematic: Progressing left to right on an iPad screen to evoke the experience of leafing through an album right to left proves disconcerting and unnecessary. Thanks to this effective presentation, we can taste the versatility and limitless offerings of Chinese albums through the objects themselves."
(i) Gong Xian, Landscapes and Trees. In
Album of twelve paintings, ca. 1679 (accession number: 1979.499). www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/1979.499
(ii) Regarding various quotations by Mr Gong. I simply can not find any in this album.