Week Seven: May 10 The Visual Culture of Inscription (Session at 3:30, Thomson Hall 317)

The history of making words a part of the landscape by erecting inscribed stelea at historic spots, temples, and other sites. The political uses of imperial calligraphy. Inscribing paintings, ceramics, books, and other valued objects.

Guest Speaker: Robert Harrist, Associate Professor of Art History, Columbia

University.

Assignments:

Read: *Robert Harrist, "Reading Chinese Mountains: Landscape and Calligraphy in China," Orientations, December 2000, 64-9.

*Robert Harrist, “Record of the Eulogy on Mt. Tai and Imperial Autographic Monuments of the Tang Dynasty,” Oriental Art 46.2 (2000), 68-79.

*“Qin Stone Inscriptions and Han Steles,” and “Stone Inscriptions of the Six

Dynasties,” in Yujiro Nakata, ed. Chinese Calligraphy, pp. 111-15, 119-

122.

*Lothar Ledderose, “Calligraphy at the Close of the Chinese Empire,” in Art at the Close of China’s Empire, ed. Ju-hsi Chou. pp. 189-208.

Recommended further reading:

Zhixin Sun, “A Quest for the Imperishable: Chao Meng-fu’s Calligraphy for

Stele Inscriptions,” in The Embodied Image, pp. 302-319.

Cary Y. Liu, “Calligraphic Couplets as Manifestations of Deities and Markers of

Buildings,” in The Embodied Image, pp. 360-379.

Patricia Ebrey, “Later Han Stone Inscriptions,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 49 (1980), 325-53.

“Copybook and Stele Studies of the Qing Dynasty,” in Yujiro Nakata, ed. Chinese Calligraphy, pp. 150-58.

Martin Kern, The Stele Inscriptions of Ch'in Shih-huang.

.

Questions for reading and discussion:

Robert Harrist, "Reading Chinese Mountains: Landscape and Calligraphy in China"

1. Harrist compares inscribing mountains to inscribing paintings. What similarities and differences do you see in the two practices?

2. Why do inscriptions in landscapes always attract others? (69)

3. The mountain inscription might be regarded as bringing together two of Chinese culture's great loves: landscape and writing. On the other hand, it might be regarded as pitting them against each other. In contemporary American urban culture, grafitti has mostly negative associations -- heedless youth, or street gangs bent on subverting authority, with the authorities "obliged" to spend public funds to undue the defacement of public property; perhaps this expresses some lack of reverence for the written word, or perhaps a recognition by grafittists of the equalizing power of writing. At any rate, in China, though some recent grafittists at the Dunhuang Buddhist caves have been shot for the crime of defacement, a negative attitude toward grafitti has rarely been expressed. Why do you imagine that an outburst like that of Yuang Hongdao (68) is such a rarity in Chinese culture?

Robert Harrist, “Record of the Eulogy on Mt. Tai and Imperial Autographic Monuments of the Tang Dynasty”

1. . In what ways was Xuanzong building on the precedents left him by earllier Tang emperors and in what ways was he doing something new? Given what you have learned about the history of Chinese calligraphy, why do you think Tang Taizong was the first Chinese emperor to have stelae erected not merely with his words but also with his calligraphy?

2. The illustrations in this article show that imperial stone inscriptions were in many different scripts. Why would emperors have chosen one script over another?

3. The three examples illustrated on p. 71 all illustrate imperially sponsored stelae but done in different moments in history they also display a diversity of styles. How would you describe this stylistic variation, and is there any significance to it which links style or aesthetics to political behavior?

4. The Stele of the Ascended Immortal Heir Apparent by Empress Wu (4) is one of the few examples we have this quarter by a female calligrapher. What do you make of this example, politically and aesthetically?

Qin Stone Inscriptions and Han Steles,” and “Stone Inscriptions of the Six Dynasties,” in Yujiro Nakata, ed. Chinese Calligraphy

1. By now you have read enough overviews of the development of Chinese calligraphy that much of what is presented here must seem familiar to you. Still, the general style of the presentation reflects the book's origins as an overview aimed at a Japanese audience. Can you see what these features are?

2. Do you agree that rubbings of stones from the Northern and Southern dynasties give closer access to the calligraphic styles of the period than copies of calligraphy on paper, such as surviving copies of the calligraphy of Wang Xizhi and Wang Xianzhi? What is lost in the process of carving and making rubbings? What is lost in the process of making tracing copies?

Lothar Ledderose, “Calligraphy at the Close of the Chinese Empire,”

1. Do you think calligraphers turned to seal script and stone drum script inscriptions as models for new forms of calligraphy because this was the only way they could do something new? Or did ideological motivations lead them to try to revive these styles? Or is there yet another explanation for their turning against a thousand year old tradition of basing calligraphy on xing and cao scripts in use since the Six Dynasties?

2. What would have been the technical challenges of using a brush and paper to copy styles used on bronze or stone?

3. At the end of this essay, Ledderose links these developments in calligraphy to the late Qing political situation, noting that "In a period of political destabilization the Qing calligraphers thus reinforced the
unity of Chinese culture," and further noting that "One cannot westernize calligraphy" (p. 206). Do you think these ideas can be pushed any further?

4. When, actually, does the Qing "stele movement" begin? If one imagines its origins to be earlier than late Qing, how does that alter our understanding of its purpose and importance?

5. Looking back from Ledderose's article to Harrist's article on Tang emperor Taizong's Mt. Tai Eulogy, we can imagine a long history of stylistic revivals intended to fit a variety of agenda, aesthetic and otherwise. What is it, if anything, that makes the Qing "stele movement" different?