Ink Plum: The Making of a Chinese Scholar-Painting Genre (review)

Reviews 365 Maggie Bickford. Ink Plum: The Making ofa Chinese Scholar-Painting Genre. Cambridge, New York, and Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1996. xix, 295 pp. Hardcover $85, isbn 0-521-39152-0. This well-constructed, highly articulate, and carefully nuanced study will stand the test of time as a survey ofthe origins and development ofinkprunus painting in China. The main outlines ofthe story are well known. Inkprunus followed the lead ofink bamboo in becoming a literati painting genre as a subject first canonized in literature before being painted in a scholarly setting associated with Su Shi (1037-1101). Unlike bamboo, securely tied to the virtues of the scholar-gentleman, the plum done in ink was initially linked to the purity of the Song learned monk and then reinterpreted as a Yuan emblem ofinner resistance to the domination of the Mongols. This shift in emphasis from a feminine role to a more masculine stance may have been possible in part because of the multivalent associations of the plum that Bickford investigates in detail. The work is divided into four roughly symmetrical parts, each in three chapters systematically outlined. The first part, "Foundations of the Flowering Plum Tradition," has an introduction to the plum in nature, art (painting and poetry), and popular culture, and then treats the flowering plum in Chinese culture from the Southern Dynasties on, focusing on its idiom and aesthetic. The second part deals with the flowering plum in painting up through Northern Song times and discusses the textual record, early experiments in ink flowers, literati art theory, and the first scholar-painting genres. Part 3, "The Birth of the Ink Plum Genre and Its Early Development," focuses on the ink plum founder, Zhongren (d. 1123), his tradition as interpreted by Yang Wujiu (1097-1169) and others, and the balance ofchoice still possible between academy and amateur modes in the Southern Song. The last part, "Momei under the Mongols," defines Yuan ink plum's reformulated iconography, its thought and theory, and its practice, and ends with a treatment ofWang Mian, founder of the modern momei tradition. All in all, considering the fact that this project started out as a dissertation planned to be a monograph on Wang Mian, the scope ofthe completed work is impressive. Throughout the book, Bickford is concerned with defining how a subject matter becomes a scholarly genre, how meihua (plum blossom) is transformed into momei (ink plum), and in this attempt she tries to get behind and beyond traditional explanations ofthe process by Chinese scholar-critics. One point to be© 1998 by University kept in mind is that, unlike bamboo, the plum in nature does not seem the ideal ofHawai'iPresschoice for an inkpainting. However, since itblossoms in winter before putting out leaves, a portion ofthe tree seen as shadow on a paper window might indeed inspire a poet or painter. Nonetheless, a lot ofinput was necessary to create the 366 China Review International: Vol. 5, No. 2, Fall 1998 type-forms ofthe ink plum tradition that could evoke the botanical structure of the tree. Its choice was indeed dependent on poetic appreciations, first in yongwu couplets of the Liang court, then in verses by the reclusive Lin Bu (967-1028), and finally and significantly in poems of exile by Su Shi. But as a symbol ofthe south, often the "branch of spring" sent to a distant friend, the plum became the rage in Southern Song, becoming the focus of poetic plum cults while at the same time appearing in all forms ofmaterial culture. Here recent archeological excavations enable Bickford to round out our understanding of the plum's importance in that period as a popular decorative motif. Plum appreciation derives from its singularity, its blooming in a wintry setting , and the purity ofits white blossoms. The transience of their flowering led Liang poets to cast the tree as a woman—a pure, isolated beauty—depicted both in Southern Song literature and in Academy fan painting. But, when the tree was personified as Lin Bu and considered a suitable companion for the pine and bamboo , this image was overlaid by that of the flowering-plum recluse. Still, even when "Mr. Plum's Life" is written...