Fu Shan's World: The Transformation of Chinese Calligraphy in the Seventeenth Century (review)

This is an ambitious and wide-ranging book. Qianshen Bai endeavors to construct the historical circumstances under which the scholar-artist Fu Shan (1607-1684?) contributed to dramatic changes in the practice of calligraphy during the late seventeenth century. In the introduction, Bai broadly defines the field of his cultural analysis to encompass "material culture, print culture, and social and intellectual history" (p. 2). This constitutes a background or "backdrop" (pp. 10, 48) against which is presented the ordinary work of art history, notably formal analysis or close looking. Nonetheless, Bai's construction of a lost "world," as he refers to the subject of his book, is designed to illuminate Fu Shan's life and art, and in particular Fu's experience of the dynastic transition from Ming to Qing. Thus, the four chapters of Fu Shan's World investigate the four periods into which Bai has divided Fu's biography. These four periods include Fu's exposure to certain aspects of late Ming culture during the waning years of the dynasty, his experiences during the early years of the Manchu conquest from the late 1640s through the 1650s, his scholarly activity in Shanxi during the 1660s and 1670s, and finally the artistic activity of his late years, after the Boxue hongci examination was conducted by the court of the Kangxi emperor in 1678-1679.

In chapter 1, "Late Ming Culture and Fu Shan's Early Life," we learn about changes in the practice of calligraphy and seal carving that were inspired, it is argued, by a widespread taste for qi, or the "unusual." Bai refrains from translating "qi," suggesting that the word designated an aesthetic proclivity influenced by diverse phenomena, including urban and popular culture in addition to foreign goods. Nonetheless, Bai asserts that manifestations of the unusual were "driven by the subjective individualism of contemporary Neo-Confucian thinkers advocating a search for the inner self" (p. 3). Bai's definition of qi is thus in turn expanded and restricted.

With respect to calligraphy, Bai proposes that qi and the search for "one's true self" (pp. 25, 49) motivated or brought about the "individualistic" calligraphy of Dong Qichang (1555-1636) and Wang Duo (1593-1652). In the hands of these two artists, "free copying," or lin—a practice by which calligraphers quoted the past at the same time that they modified or transformed the work of old masters—became more inventive and increasingly removed from its source. Bai even contends that Wang Duo parodied traditional models of calligraphy, including the work of the Two Wangs (that is, Wang Xizhi [307?-365?] and his son Xianzhi [344-388]) (pp. 47-49). To justify his use of the word "parody," which implies burlesque and mockery, Bai likens Wang Duo's work to that of contemporary playwrights who misquoted familiar texts, such as the Thousand Character Classic (Qianzi wen), by inserting words of bawdy humor (pp. 46-47). Poking fun at pedagogical practices, however, especially by means of ridiculing female sexuality, seems far removed from the practice of lin, which does not engage gender difference. Indeed, Bai is ambivalent about using the word "parody," acknowledging that Wang Duo "never dared openly challenge the authority" of the Two Wangs (p. 49). Later, he redefines Wang Duo's fragmentary and random quotation from Wang Xizhi's work as "ironic fusions" (p. 128). Whether parody and irony are compatible, or even pertinent, might be debated. But unavoidable is grappling with the self-reflexivity with which many calligraphers and painters of the late Ming practiced lin, reformulating it as an act of simulation. Lin is thus a meditation on copying itself, rather than a lens through which to attain a magical vision of the past in juxtaposition with the present. Bai's repeated allusions to popularized notions about authentic selves and the strange...