Dimensions of Originality: Essays on Seventeenth-Century Chinese Art Th eory and Criticism

Chapter 8: The Other Dong Qichang

chapter 8 The Other Dong Qichang* The art and theory of Dong Qichang 董其昌 (1555–1636) has received almost continuous attention by theorists, critics, collectors, and scholars from the time of their production to the present. Though seventeenth-century art experts broadly appreciated Dong’s art and writings—especially those expressive of what is now termed an Originalist aesthetic (where Originalism is defined to be the seventeenth-century trend to emphasize qualities regularly identified in conceptually original works of art such as newness, difference, and contemporaneity), those of the eighteenth century and later tended to hold an appreciative but more conservative and essentializing view of Dong’s art, one that constricts his contributions to an inaccurately narrow range of expectations. This essay attempts to see Dong’s painting and calligraphy as he and his contemporaries did. By reassessing a dominant aesthetic at play in Dong’s artistic production, it endeavors to enrich the critical vocabulary and understanding of the art of Dong Qichang and by extension, that of his contemporaries. Because his art criticism and theories are examined in Chapters 6 and 7,1 his painting and calligraphy can be the focus here. It is hoped this will make it possible to recoup the Dong Qichang who has been lost to us, that seemingly other Dong Qichang. Explanation for the narrowed yet persuasive view of Dong’s art has been offered by Dong Qichang scholar Nelson Ikon Wu. Wu reasons, “The early Qing Dynasty saw the creation of a special taste in painting, and consequently certain other types of Dong Qichang’s work were not particularly appreciated.”2 To some extent, this appears to have been because 204 | dimensions of originality of Dong’s technical abilities, or seeming lack thereof. Wu concedes what many interpret to be Dong’s technical deficiencies especially during his early years, yet stresses nonetheless that Dong was experimenting during this time and eventually “conquered the traditional landscape painting and transformed it into an art of brushwork, of ink, of light-and-dark progression , of contrasting forms, and of rhythmic vibrations. The delineation of forms became secondary to the interreaction of the brush strokes and other pictorial elements.”3 I take Wu’s point. Moreover, it also seems that in a tradition in which mimesis was already assigned a position of lesser importance, Dong’s standards and goals for painting were different even from earlier literati masters. Much like the purposefully raw constructions of Cezanne in France’s nineteenth century, Dong’s conceptions resolutely push against standard expectations of what literati art was for his immediate predecessors, and would be for later generations. Indeed, it seems that the aesthetic preferences of later generations have affected our understanding of Dong’s art. Nelson Wu argues that the changing taste of the “post-Southern School eighteenth century” has made it difficult to assess earlier seventeenth-century works. From this vantage point, the paintings of many seventeenth-century artists including Dong Qichang, “looked like the immature school work of the students of the suave Four Wangs, who knew all the techniques of the new art form and had always taken them for granted.”4 Consequently, Wu reasons, “To look at the paintings by the early warriors properly and to understand them, one must first purge one’s eyes as well as one’s mind of any painting and experience with paintings of the seventeenth century and later.”5 Well, maybe not all paintings of the seventeenth century. I would argue rather that Dong’s works are best understood as part and parcel of the new Originalist aesthetic that dominated the period. Wu’s argument is amplified by Kohara Hironobu who observes that despite Dong’s elevated stature as a theorist and critic, other critics, especially of the nineteenth and earlier years of the twentieth century, tended to disparage his artwork, if not directly then obliquely or by omission.6 Moreover, such critics made “no attempt at exploring Dong’s creativity in any concrete terms, nor any analysis of his ‘unusual talent’ and his ‘ingenuity .’ The inability to assess Dong Qichang’s paintings fully can be seen as chapter 8: the other dong qichang | 205 a limitation of art criticism in traditional China. The character of Dong’s paintings was simply beyond the vocabulary of these critics.”7 In other words, eighteenth-, nineteenth-, and earlier twentiethcentury critics and artists had an affinity for Dong’s links to literati-style...