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7 Chapter  Redrawing the Concept of Chinese Narrative Illustration 1hinesenarrativeillustration”isanelusiveconcept.Inmodern Chinese the term most often used to mean “narrative illustration” or “narrative painting” is gushi hua, which literallymeans “ancient-matterpainting”or“storypainting,” depending on which shi character is used.1 Although Ming writers occasionally mention paintings with the word gushi in the title, referring to illustrations of specific stories,2 gushi hua as a formal classification dates only to the early eighteenth century. The category first appears in Chen Bangyan’s Classified Poems Inscribed on Paintings throughout the Ages, Imperially Prescribed (Yuding Lidai tihua shilei) of 1707, a large collection of poems about paintings compiled at the behest of the Kangxi emperor (r. 1662–1722). In a section called gushi lei (“ancient-matter” category), Chen placed poems that had been written for paintings whose titles referred to people of earlier ages, usually in the context of some action or event. Although Chen does not explain his criteria, his selections suggest a categorizing principle that combines the ideas of depicting “ancient matters” and of portraying a “story.” Moreover, he lists the painting titles in chronological order according to the lifetimes of the people depicted, ranging from legendary antiquity to the early Southern Song period (1127–1279). Accordingly, even the most recent example was nearly five hundred years earlier.3 Because Chen refers only once to a specific Yuan artist and otherwise does not mention even the dynasties in which the gushi were painted,4 the reader infers that the genre itself belongs to antiquity. Indeed, this assumption would be consistent with the well-known dictum of the late Northern Song critic Mi Fu: “People nowadays absolutely do not paint gushi [stories].”5 Although Chen Bangyan’s criteria for categorizing paintings as gushi initially appear to be simple and straightforward, his apparent consistency is an illusion. In fact, poems in other sections of his massive compendium also refer to paintings of ancient people engaged in some action. For example, the Human Affairs section (renshi lei) includes a poem about a painting of the legendary recluse Yang Pu moving house. There are even cases in which paintings on the same subject are divided between gushi and some other classification. Such an overlap occurs between gushi and the Old Sites category (guji lei). Both contain poems written for paintings of places that were made famous by the events that took place there. For instance, both sections have entries for the Orchid Pavilion (Lanting), where the calligrapher Wang Xizhi (c.303–361) and his friends held a celebrated gathering in 353. Similarly , poems for paintings of Su Shi’s outings to the Red Cliff are also divided between the two categories. These ambiguities and overlaps make it difficult to use Chen’s gushi category as the basis to define narrative illustration for the purposes of this book. Conceptions of narrative representation in recent scholarship on Chinese art in European languages are equally confusing. Not only is the term applied to a great variety of pictures, it is used in both a narrow technical sense as well as in a broadly metaphorical one. Although many scholars call any painting that refers to a story a “narrative illustration,” others would insist that the picture itself visually portray the development of the story. A “narrative” designationis often given to pictures that are related to any kind of text, even a moral treatise, philosophical tract, religious scripture, lyrical poem, or catalog record.6 In addition, numerous writers describe generic scenes of livelihood and amusement as narrative, and some extend the term to landscape compositions that suggest passage through time and space.7 An especially widespread idea is that narrative illustration is an objective, third-person mode of representation, no matter what the subject.8 Divergent understandings of narrative are not confined to discussions of Chinese art, because similar inconsistencies can be found in writings on European art. As Marilyn Lavin has pointed out, the meaning of 8 | m i r ror of mor a l i t y “narrative” seems to vary according to what is being set in opposition to it, ranging from devotional portrait icons to Abstract Expressionism.9 Definitions of Chinese Narrative Illustration A rudimentary but influential taxonomy of Chinese narrative painting originated with John Hay’s 1972 article about the tenthcentury handscroll Early Snow on the River (Jiangxing chuxue tu) by Zhao Gan (fl. c.961–975). As a background to his analysis of the painting, Hay offered a few comments on narrative...

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