AbstractsPhilosophy & Theology

Painting outside the lines : how Daoism shaped conceptions of artistic excellence in Medieval China, 800 – 1200

by Aaron Kenna Reich




Institution: University of Hawaii – Manoa
Department:
Year: 2016
Keywords: daoism; taoism; art; Medieval China
Posted: 02/05/2017
Record ID: 2126993
Full text PDF: http://hdl.handle.net/10125/101020


Abstract

M.A. University of Hawaii at Manoa 2012. One place religious traditions lend themselves to a better understanding of artistic creativity is where they throw light on the question of what it means to create in the first place. In all its cultural manifestations, a particularly fascinating expression of the intricate and interwoven relationship between religion and creativity appears in the prolific theoretical treatises of traditional Chinese painting. This thesis discusses the role of Daoism in the formulation and eventual exaltation of the 'untrammeled category' (yipin 逸品) of painters of the Tang (618 – 906) and Song (960 – 1279) dynasties as an example of this phenomenon.2 The theory of painting took a dramatic turn in the Northern Song (960 – 1127), particularly in the eleventh century. An influential art theorist and Daoist alchemist, Huang Xiufu 黃休復(late tenth to early eleventh century), in collaboration with other contemporary theorists from Sichuan province, reinvented the theoretical standard by making adjustments to the gradational classification of painters inherited from previous works of traditional painting criticism.3 This theoretical move confirmed that a new ideal for artistic excellence in painting had emerged by the eleventh century, one that held spontaneous (ziran 自然) expression as the ultimate desideratum. This thesis problematizes the historical causes for the generation and perpetuation of this new trend in Northern Song painting theory. Through a detailed exegetical analysis of painting texts written from the ninth to eleventh centuries, I argue that the eleventh century elevation of the yipin class of painters developed in response to a growing intellectual interest in the Daoist textual tradition and its application to aesthetic theory. My argument challenges the claims of previous scholarship that painters and art theorists of the Song looked primarily toward philosophical and religious systems other than Daoism for their ideas about art. In one famous work of this kind, James Cahill argues that, by the Song, Daoist concepts had become 'so thoroughly assimilated into Confucian thought that the Sung scholars had no need to turn to other sources for them.'4 Some scholars in the last couple of decades have also argued for the prominence of Neo-Confucian thought in Northern Song aesthetic theory.5 However, as Peter Bol has demonstrated more recently, the cumulative intellectual tradition known in Western language scholarship as Neo-Confucianism did not become central to literati life until the twelfth century; therefore, referring to the many developing philosophies prior to the time of Zhu Xi (1130 – 1200) as 'Neo-Confucianism' elides the nuances between traditions that 'can include diverse, even contradictory practices.'6 Though some aspects of nascent philosophies that would later be compiled and codified by Zhu Xi may indeed have influenced painting theory to some degree, each of these studies has overlooked the more pivotal impact of the contemporaneous Daoist tradition on the formation…