Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms

Lessons from Paintings at the Periphery: The Murals from Baoshan Tomb 2 and Five Dynasties Art History

Lessons from Paintings at the Periphery: The Murals from Baoshan Tomb 2 and Five Dynasties Art History1 De-nin D. Lee Introduction What do we know about painting during the period of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms? If we follow a recent treatment, we would recognize the period as “brief but artistically fertile,” and, according to this account, the artistic richness was the result primarily of artists working in three regions, at the court of Shu in Sichuan, at the court of Southern Tang in the Jiangnan region, and the area comprising former capitals of Chang’an, Luoyang, and Bianliang, that formed the cultural “center” during that period.2 In this center, bird-and-flower painting flourished, and the majestic and monumental landscapes of the North developed simultaneously with the riverine landscapes of the South.3 Figure painting, the most venerable of Tang dynasty art traditions, appears in this framework, too, albeit briefly. A fragmented image of bodhisattvas preparing incense attests to the further refinement of the iron-wire technique associated with the Tang dynasty master Wu Daozi 吳道子 (fl. ca. 710–760), and a discussion of Guanxiu’s 貫休 (832–912) set of sixteen arhat paintings, though not technically dated to the Five Dynasties period (according to an inscription they were begun in 880 and finished in 894), speaks of “human truth, not aristocratic artifice” in a world filled with destruction and suffering, the result of persecutions directed against Buddhism in the ninth century.4 If our picture of Five Dynasties painting focuses on new developments in the genres of bird-and-flower painting and landscape while still recognizing the continued production of Buddhist images, then where 5D10K_main text_27Jun.indd 101 22/07/2011 5:24 PM 102 · De-nin D. Lee would we situate works such as the early tenth-century murals depicting elegant, erudite ladies in Baoshan Tomb 2, located in Inner Mongolia (Figs. 1 and 2)? These images, although beautiful, compelling, and accompanied by poetic inscriptions, do not fit into any of the three categories of painting discussed above, nor do they hail from the artistic center, nor is there an artist’s name associated with them. For these reasons and perhaps some others, these exquisite murals have not garnered much attention outside Chinese language publications, nor have they become integrated into the mainstream narrative of medieval Chinese painting.5 The scholarly disregard suggests gaps in how we currently map the terrain of Five Dynasties painting and what kinds of questions we pursue. This essay tries to fill this lacuna by using these murals as a case study to challenge our conceptual tools and expand our approaches for ordering, analyzing, and understanding painting during the Five Dynasties period.6 With this purpose in mind, this essay begins by introducing the murals in Baoshan Tomb 2 and suggesting several different contexts for appreciating their art historical significance. It goes on to discuss how the current scholarly discourse on painting of the Five Dynasties period could be altered so that heretofore anomalous and overlooked works (such as the Baoshan Tomb 2 murals) may be integrated into a history that is more heterogeneous and perhaps a little untidy, to be sure, but one that is also more accurate and attuned to the features that distinguish art made during the dynamic and unsettled time between the Tang and Song dynasties. The Murals from Baoshan Tomb 2 Located in a cemetery near Chifeng in Inner Mongolia, Baoshan Tomb 2 was discovered by chance when another recently looted tomb was being excavated in the winter of 1993–1994. The other tomb, Baoshan Tomb 1, fortunately had an inscription identifying its occupant as a fourteenyear -old boy, Qinde 勤德, a younger son of a Kitan nobleman named as Da Shaojun 大少君, or “Great Young Lord.”7 Qinde’s identity is not clearly known, but his tomb helpfully included an inscribed date of 923. The close physical proximity and the similarity in style of murals of both tombs are the primary reasons for dating Tomb 2 to approximately 923. Tomb 2 is oriented to the east, with a passageway (19.25 m) sloping gently down to the entrance (Fig. 3). Constructed of brick with features mimicking wood architecture, the tomb has a nested structure, with a 5D10K_main text_27Jun.indd 102 22/07/2011 5:24 PM Lessons from Paintings at the Periphery · 103 Figure 1. “Su Hui.” Ca. 923. Mural painting, inner stone chamber, south...