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Chapter 4 Institutionalizing Narrative Illustration under the Tang Dynasty B he period from the late sixth century to just after the middle of the eighth has long been considered a “golden age” of Chinese history and civilization. The reunification of the Chinese empire by the Sui and Tang dynasties enabled the diverse innovations of the Period of Disunion to come together into an integrated and coherent culture .1 Early emperors drew upon a widespread devotion to Buddhism and Daoism to unify regions that had long been ruled by separate regimes and gained the support of the religious establishment . At the same time, the imperial court and the central government consolidated statist conceptions of Confucian ideology and projected official doctrines by many means, including compilations of orthodox learning and projects involving the visual arts. Tang rulers established enduring patterns of public, official patronage that not only provided a model for later dynasties, but also served as an important foil for the literati formulation of painting as a private and subjective mode of expression. Influential critics writing in the mid-ninth century identify the outstanding artists of this golden era as masters of figure painting, an essential element of narrative illustration.2 Figural representation takes precedence over all other categories in the hierarchy of genres discussed by Tang writers. As Zhu Jingxuan (fl. 840) observes in his preface to Record of Famous Painters of the Tang Dynasty (Tangchao minghua lu): “Painters give priority to the human figure, and thereafter rank in descending order birds and beasts, landscapes, and architectural subjects.”3 Moreover , the concept of painting as an instrument of moral cultivation was so well entrenched that Zhang Yanyuan could open his monumental Record of Famous Paintings of Successive Dynasties (Lidai minghua ji, preface dated 847) by proclaiming: “Painting achieves a civilizing influence, supports human relations, penetrates divine transformations, and fathoms the dark and subtle.”4 Further on, Zhang quotes Cao Zhi’s emphatic statement about the didactic power of images and ridicules Wang Chong’s objections to using pictures to promote moral awareness.5 Concerning the exemplary statesmen and generals who were portrayed in the Unicorn Pavilion and Cloud Terrace, memorial halls in the Han palaces at Xi’an and Luoyang respectively, Zhang asserts: “Seeing the good is sufficient to warn against evil; seeing the evil is sufficient to [make people] long for wisdom.”6 By the late Tang period, when Zhu Jingxuan and Zhang Yanyuan were writing, the efficacy of figure painting in official and religious contexts had become well established through innumerable paintings produced for the court and for the great monasteries and temples. Unfortunately, most of the works that survive from the Sui-Tang period are anonymous murals in tombs and in the Dunhuang caves, and very few of the painters that Zhang and Zhu discuss are associated with extant attributions. However, one of the most prominent artists in the early Tang court was Yan Liben (d. 673), for whom later catalogs list many narrative or expository paintings on themes of an official nature. A few of these works or faithful later copies of them exist today, offering a coherent body of material for analyzing early Tang narrative representation and its uses in furthering official ideology. Another painter particularly acclaimed by Zhang Yanyuan and active in the later part of the “golden era” is Wu Daozi (c.689–after 755), who is credited with developing the expressive potential of the brushline . Because Wu was primarily a painter of Buddhist and Daoist temple murals, genuine works from his hand did not long survive him. However, his disciples and later followers perpetuated his manner, and literary testimonials immortalized him as a genius who wielded the forces of Creation itself. I use these two artists to represent alternative modes of figure painting that evolved during the Tang and contributed to the repertoire of techniques and 50 Tang Narrative Illustration | 51 styles of narrative illustration. Moreover, in later periods, when these modes of representation became the antithesis of the private literati mode discussed in Chapter 5, their adoption signaled a painter’s intention to present his subject in a public, official “voice.” Yan Liben and the “Objective” Mode Yan Liben came from an old, distinguished family, one with a tradition of governmental service stretching back several generations .7 His father, Yan Bi (563–613), was an official at the Sui court as well as a painter. Yan Liben and his older brother, Yan Lide (d. 656), were raised in the capital and...

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