1 00:00:00,210 --> 00:00:10,440 Let me start with a kind of general position, which is by proving that well-known figure, but maybe not well-known as an art historian. 2 00:00:10,440 --> 00:00:18,180 Donald Rumsfeld, George Bush's secretary of state, who famously said, well, there are known knowns. 3 00:00:18,180 --> 00:00:26,730 The things we know, we know are the known unknowns, the things that we know, we don't know. 4 00:00:26,730 --> 00:00:35,070 And then there are the unknown unknowns. That is the things that we don't even know, that we don't know them. 5 00:00:35,070 --> 00:00:39,120 And he probably didn't invent it. 6 00:00:39,120 --> 00:00:46,620 But I think there's some interesting parallels. And so it's it's a kind of mental framework that you can apply to all things. 7 00:00:46,620 --> 00:00:53,360 So I think we want to start that beginning by thinking that the painting of mentalistic China, 8 00:00:53,360 --> 00:01:00,060 that is the China from thirteen sixty eight to 16, 44 is a topic that we know a lot about. 9 00:01:00,060 --> 00:01:07,200 We know a lot of biography because we have a lot of factual painting surviving from 10 00:01:07,200 --> 00:01:13,360 the main period and we've got lots of writing about painting from the Ming people. 11 00:01:13,360 --> 00:01:18,120 It's a well-documented era of Chinese history. 12 00:01:18,120 --> 00:01:28,080 So there are kind of quite a lot of things that we knew we don't know, or we only have kind of tiny tip of the iceberg. 13 00:01:28,080 --> 00:01:39,810 So, for example, we just take one example. We don't know anything as much as we might like to know about the economic aspects of Ming painting, 14 00:01:39,810 --> 00:01:45,210 like how much did a painting cost if we went to a professional artist and wanted a picture? 15 00:01:45,210 --> 00:01:53,370 How much did it cost? We know that pictures that were professional artists that you go on commission things. 16 00:01:53,370 --> 00:01:58,380 We have some of those things, but we don't know how. We don't exactly know what the prices are. 17 00:01:58,380 --> 00:02:07,000 And this is a contrast, if you like, to what we knew about European painting at the same time where because of the kind 18 00:02:07,000 --> 00:02:12,940 of notarial system that particularly Italians used in the 15th and 16th century, 19 00:02:12,940 --> 00:02:19,260 we got lots of contractors. We don't have a single mediumistic contract. 20 00:02:19,260 --> 00:02:26,340 On the other hand, you've got other kinds of things from Ming Dynasty, China, that we don't have from the 15th and 16th century Europe. 21 00:02:26,340 --> 00:02:31,650 We've got large amounts of personal correspondence by artists and we've got large amounts of 22 00:02:31,650 --> 00:02:39,600 writing by artists that vastly out to dwarf anything that exists from Europe in the same period. 23 00:02:39,600 --> 00:02:44,820 So that kind of how much should a picture cost? That would be in my account of Rumsfeld here? 24 00:02:44,820 --> 00:02:50,910 No, no, no. That is a topic we know. We don't know very much about. 25 00:02:50,910 --> 00:02:56,250 But then there are the question of the kind of the unknown unknowns. 26 00:02:56,250 --> 00:03:03,960 And that might be a theme that runs through this, that we might kind of begin to grope towards some of the things that we think. 27 00:03:03,960 --> 00:03:12,090 OK. We're only just beginning to realise that this is a topic that we don't know very much about. 28 00:03:12,090 --> 00:03:16,260 Now, the man period. 29 00:03:16,260 --> 00:03:20,520 Thirteen. Sixty eight. Sixteen. Forty four in Chinese history. 30 00:03:20,520 --> 00:03:27,180 I think one of the reasons that one can do this, of course, there's plenty of painting that survives from prior to the main period. 31 00:03:27,180 --> 00:03:33,870 And I'm just showing you two more or less randomly chosen, but very wonderful premium painting. 32 00:03:33,870 --> 00:03:44,520 So we have actual painting from the. But we have it in very much smaller quantities. 33 00:03:44,520 --> 00:03:46,980 And we only have certain kinds of it. 34 00:03:46,980 --> 00:03:55,920 I think one of the things that makes it feasible to do a series on painting and culture in the main period and as opposed to, 35 00:03:55,920 --> 00:04:01,260 say, painting in culture in the time period of painting in the culture, in some period you could do it. 36 00:04:01,260 --> 00:04:11,070 But the quantity of surviving evidence is very much less and very much more limited. 37 00:04:11,070 --> 00:04:20,130 We we. Let me just make another general point about the survival of material evidence for the past, because that's what we're dealing with here. 38 00:04:20,130 --> 00:04:24,270 We're not just I suppose this applies to textual evidence as well. 39 00:04:24,270 --> 00:04:35,660 I think I'm applying it here to material, which is that let's take as a basic premise that most of what was done in the past is lost. 40 00:04:35,660 --> 00:04:47,160 All right. Actually, what we have is a very small percentage of what was done in the past, but it's not an equal percentage fees. 41 00:04:47,160 --> 00:04:53,580 We don't simply have five percent of everything that was done in the past. 42 00:04:53,580 --> 00:05:00,010 We might have 10 or 15 or 20 percent of certain kinds of. 43 00:05:00,010 --> 00:05:12,340 Things that were done and we might have won or nought point five or even more, scarily zero percent have some other kinds of things. 44 00:05:12,340 --> 00:05:19,000 So when I say painting survives in relatively large quantities from the mean period, I want to lay down right the beginning. 45 00:05:19,000 --> 00:05:22,870 I don't think that we've got, you know, five percent of the Ming painting. 46 00:05:22,870 --> 00:05:24,910 We might have, you know, 47 00:05:24,910 --> 00:05:32,320 seven or eight percent of certain kinds of things that we might have nought point one or even zero percent of certain other kinds of things. 48 00:05:32,320 --> 00:05:39,850 And one of the things I'd be doing in this series is drawing attention to if you're like Ray or survive office, where, you know, 49 00:05:39,850 --> 00:05:44,800 we might have one surviving example of something that may once have existed in very large, 50 00:05:44,800 --> 00:05:51,910 much larger numbers, larger numbers than the things which survive now in bigger numbers. 51 00:05:51,910 --> 00:06:04,210 So survival today is not a sound basis on which to judge quantity or importance or presence within the culture, the past. 52 00:06:04,210 --> 00:06:13,120 And that's a very important kind of basic premise. So we don't have an equal survival of everything, even from the main period. 53 00:06:13,120 --> 00:06:19,750 Let me just give you one example of where I think the unequal survival. 54 00:06:19,750 --> 00:06:26,530 Half a million park was a big place. It had a population of about 150 million. 55 00:06:26,530 --> 00:06:32,680 In the 16th century, similar to the population of the whole of Europe at the same time. 56 00:06:32,680 --> 00:06:38,060 It's geographically very large from north to south to be about as long to get from Beijing. 57 00:06:38,060 --> 00:06:45,490 Wong Jo down in the south as it would take you in the 16th century to get from Vienna to London or crack off to London. 58 00:06:45,490 --> 00:06:56,530 So it's over. It's a very, very big place. But I would say that the evidence that survives or it's not just the evidence that survives, 59 00:06:56,530 --> 00:07:03,920 but the evidence that history and art history has most intensively drawn on is geographically skewed, 60 00:07:03,920 --> 00:07:10,330 is skewed towards one area of the media empire, and that's the region known in Chinese as Jonathan, 61 00:07:10,330 --> 00:07:15,340 which means the region south of the Yangzi, which you maintain as the townsmen. 62 00:07:15,340 --> 00:07:26,290 Not everything sounds of the Yangtze River, but this area here shown in my in my flow up here, which is, you know, blown up again. 63 00:07:26,290 --> 00:07:30,240 This area at the mouth, really. 64 00:07:30,240 --> 00:07:42,100 The Yangtze Delta is is one way of thinking about this area was economically the most developed and the empire was the most heavily populated. 65 00:07:42,100 --> 00:07:47,860 It was the most heavily urbanised. It was the most heavily commercialised. 66 00:07:47,860 --> 00:07:59,050 And it's the site of many of the major cities that are going to come off as names in the subsequent lectures. 67 00:07:59,050 --> 00:08:08,320 But as I said, the main empire is a big place and there's been a considerable concentration of scholarly attention on this area. 68 00:08:08,320 --> 00:08:15,010 And one of the things that we need to think about is what's happening, what's happening in the rest of this very large space. 69 00:08:15,010 --> 00:08:22,960 And are the generalisations about mean painting that one might mean? 70 00:08:22,960 --> 00:08:29,350 Are they really generalisations which apply across this large imperial space, 71 00:08:29,350 --> 00:08:39,340 or are they distinctive to this highly commercialised, highly organised area at the mouth of the Yangtze? 72 00:08:39,340 --> 00:08:49,140 So that's just one example of the way in which our study of the period is kind of is kind of skewed. 73 00:08:49,140 --> 00:08:57,100 Now, let just off for a brief kind of justification for for kind of studying painting as a topic. 74 00:08:57,100 --> 00:09:00,670 This is not something I'm reading back into the period. 75 00:09:00,670 --> 00:09:08,860 Painting, if you like, is a topic that people in the Ming Dynasty would have recognised themselves as as a theme, 76 00:09:08,860 --> 00:09:14,970 a topic, a suitable object for study, a discourse, if you like. 77 00:09:14,970 --> 00:09:21,430 The Chinese word that I'm using is all painting. 78 00:09:21,430 --> 00:09:26,290 It forms part of a number of components in Chinese. 79 00:09:26,290 --> 00:09:32,220 One of the most important that it forms is the compound for calligraphy and painting. 80 00:09:32,220 --> 00:09:41,020 And let me just mark our cards that it's simple. The order there is important because if you like, in terms of a hierarchy of esteem, 81 00:09:41,020 --> 00:09:47,470 of which kinds of cultural practise are more important, calligraphy is more important than paint. 82 00:09:47,470 --> 00:09:52,060 You don't have to be a painter to be an educated person in the main period. 83 00:09:52,060 --> 00:09:54,730 You don't even have to be interested in painting at all. 84 00:09:54,730 --> 00:10:00,580 But if your calligraphy, your handwriting, your production of script with it, with the writing. 85 00:10:00,580 --> 00:10:10,690 Is deficient. That's a black mark against you and certainly against your claims to be a person of culture or status or or or dignity in the moon, 86 00:10:10,690 --> 00:10:13,240 they would have used the term block, 87 00:10:13,240 --> 00:10:22,270 which means something like the field of painting in the sense that, you know, I'm using that in the sense of BUJU as a field of cultural production. 88 00:10:22,270 --> 00:10:30,280 Quite often means kind of everyth painting and everything to do with it and is a term that would encompass the actual making of painting, 89 00:10:30,280 --> 00:10:34,690 the trading and painting, writing about painting, discussing painting. 90 00:10:34,690 --> 00:10:45,220 So the term plotline is, if you like, the meaning tone for what I'm calling painting culture in China. 91 00:10:45,220 --> 00:10:48,860 It's a term which is modelled on an even older term. 92 00:10:48,860 --> 00:10:55,690 Shenkar the field point is everything to do poetry and everything to do with it. 93 00:10:55,690 --> 00:10:58,630 And the fact that the poetry comes out loud, 94 00:10:58,630 --> 00:11:04,930 I think again reflects the fact that in terms of a hierarchy of cultural practises within the main period, 95 00:11:04,930 --> 00:11:08,290 poetry is more important than painting as well. 96 00:11:08,290 --> 00:11:16,220 You have to you have to have an interest in poetry or knowledge or poetry in order to countries a present educated person. 97 00:11:16,220 --> 00:11:21,170 Now, here's a quote that I've used in books and that people have drawn attention to, 98 00:11:21,170 --> 00:11:30,320 which possibly helps us to understand some of how people, some of whom some people thought about painting in the make period. 99 00:11:30,320 --> 00:11:34,320 This is a quote from a writer who Louisiana, himself a painter, 100 00:11:34,320 --> 00:11:43,730 born in the late May period and living through the transition between the Ming and Ching periods, which took place in the 16th 40s. 101 00:11:43,730 --> 00:11:48,470 He said in ancient times there were pictures and he uses the word, too. 102 00:11:48,470 --> 00:11:56,660 But no paintings for pictures depict objects, portray people or transcribe events. 103 00:11:56,660 --> 00:12:04,880 As for paintings, the same isn't necessarily true. One uses a good brush in anti kink and execute siege on a piece of old paper. 104 00:12:04,880 --> 00:12:11,330 As for the things in a painting, they are cloudy hills and misty groves, precipitous boulders and cold waterfalls. 105 00:12:11,330 --> 00:12:20,240 Plank bridges and rustic houses may maybe figures or new figures to insist on some specific subject or the representation of some event. 106 00:12:20,240 --> 00:12:25,040 These very low class right now. 107 00:12:25,040 --> 00:12:32,300 This distinction, if you like, between pictures, which kind of depicts stuff I'm painting, 108 00:12:32,300 --> 00:12:41,000 which is about, if you like, the expression of the artist, but not about depicting an outside world. 109 00:12:41,000 --> 00:12:51,040 And the idea that the distinction between these is a kind of class distinction is one that has been made quite a lot of in the literature, 110 00:12:51,040 --> 00:12:59,300 in the secondary literature and the contemporary secondary literature and on Chinese painting, not least by me, you know, I mean in a book. 111 00:12:59,300 --> 00:13:01,100 But one rethinks things. 112 00:13:01,100 --> 00:13:12,470 And one of the things I'm kind of currently rethinking is the extent to which this is a safe guide to the practise of the period. 113 00:13:12,470 --> 00:13:20,560 This distinction between pictures and paintings is vocalised, if you like, here in the 17th century. 114 00:13:20,560 --> 00:13:26,750 But is it safe to assume that it goes a whole lot farther back? 115 00:13:26,750 --> 00:13:33,140 I suppose the kind of things that he might use by two is let us just remind ourselves that 116 00:13:33,140 --> 00:13:39,230 there are all sorts of pictures in the being period that are definitely not paintings. 117 00:13:39,230 --> 00:13:46,790 So this porcelain vase from the 16th century definitely has a picture on it, but that's not a painting. 118 00:13:46,790 --> 00:13:51,370 This printed book has a picture. 119 00:13:51,370 --> 00:13:59,720 Any good illustration. But that's not that's not a painting either. 120 00:13:59,720 --> 00:14:04,520 You could say that this is in histones in common sense terms. 121 00:14:04,520 --> 00:14:10,430 In the 17th century, the 15th century picture is a picture and not a painting. 122 00:14:10,430 --> 00:14:15,760 It's an anonymous war during Paris, women and children celebrating the new year. 123 00:14:15,760 --> 00:14:20,540 It's the colour over very heavily faded. It's a figure of subject. 124 00:14:20,540 --> 00:14:29,780 And it's definitely if we go back to him, you know, the representation of some specific event shows women and children, 125 00:14:29,780 --> 00:14:34,760 if you like, decorating the house form for the new year festive. 126 00:14:34,760 --> 00:14:41,570 So arguably, we would say that in one sense terms this is a picture and not a painting. 127 00:14:41,570 --> 00:14:46,170 Anonymous, specific subject, finger painting. 128 00:14:46,170 --> 00:14:51,310 It's of lower class. And I think the fact that he's I'll come back to some of the gender issues of 129 00:14:51,310 --> 00:14:55,460 something like this in subsequent lectures with the relationship of kind of 130 00:14:55,460 --> 00:15:02,600 lower class and gender female in this kind of theorising around painting pictures 131 00:15:02,600 --> 00:15:07,850 is something that we need to we need to kind of be constantly aware of. 132 00:15:07,850 --> 00:15:10,580 But on the other hand, is this is this absolutely. 133 00:15:10,580 --> 00:15:21,300 This distinction between pictures and painting that is vocalised in the 17th century isn't necessarily readable back what might well be 200 years, 134 00:15:21,300 --> 00:15:30,050 200 years. And I just think one clue is one of the things that women are doing here. 135 00:15:30,050 --> 00:15:40,880 This detail shows a woman pasting up a picture of quite possibly a printed picture rather than rather than something done by hand. 136 00:15:40,880 --> 00:15:49,400 And it's a kind of an I'm one of the things you do at New Year's put out particular kinds of pictures of particular gods who defend 137 00:15:49,400 --> 00:15:58,820 the household against sort of dangerous and noxious elements that might be around in the cosmos as they as the year termism. 138 00:15:58,820 --> 00:16:04,130 And the site of the cosmic cycle kind of moves from one year into another. 139 00:16:04,130 --> 00:16:07,930 But these things are always called even when they're printed the in the. 140 00:16:07,930 --> 00:16:13,090 Well. New York paintings or New Year pictures. 141 00:16:13,090 --> 00:16:26,990 And I think the use of that term should. Remind us for saying that this distinction between picture and painting may not be as far as definite, 142 00:16:26,990 --> 00:16:34,610 as safe as the polemical position of guns and put out in the in the 17th century. 143 00:16:34,610 --> 00:16:45,420 So maybe the category is a bit more fuzzy at the edges than some of the literature, including some of the literature by me makes it sound. 144 00:16:45,420 --> 00:16:52,980 It's worth remembering that even for the elite, painting is a practise in, amongst other practises. 145 00:16:52,980 --> 00:16:58,060 It kind of fits in with other things. It's not been a completely separate place myself. 146 00:16:58,060 --> 00:17:02,520 And I'm showing you here a set of four paintings all the same size. 147 00:17:02,520 --> 00:17:10,470 In reality, I've just blown one of them off a bit bigger and four paintings from about fifteen hundred showing what are often referred to as 148 00:17:10,470 --> 00:17:22,890 the four the four gentlemanly pursuits or the four pastimes of of the educated male member of the elite teens who want zero play. 149 00:17:22,890 --> 00:17:28,260 Playing the zither. The fortunes are a musical instrument that really made that play. 150 00:17:28,260 --> 00:17:33,060 Playing chess, calligraphy and paint. 151 00:17:33,060 --> 00:17:34,410 All right. So here's the appearance. 152 00:17:34,410 --> 00:17:42,600 Paying attention right at the beginning to something which is kind of, if you like, slightly distinctive about this. 153 00:17:42,600 --> 00:17:53,400 You know, the Victorian representation of what these four pastimes, chin, a gentleman playing this chess, gentleman playing chess calligraphy, 154 00:17:53,400 --> 00:18:02,810 gentlemen executing calligraphy, painting, a gentleman looking at a painting like he's not doing a painting. 155 00:18:02,810 --> 00:18:06,300 You're not actually painting. He's looking at a painting. 156 00:18:06,300 --> 00:18:15,900 And it's the only one of the four which is about, if you like, observing the activity rather than rather than carrying out the activity. 157 00:18:15,900 --> 00:18:24,920 Does this tell us something about the kind of position of painting within the total realm of elite culture? 158 00:18:24,920 --> 00:18:30,210 That's something that will kind of come back to now. 159 00:18:30,210 --> 00:18:34,020 I just want to be in this very first lecture run through. 160 00:18:34,020 --> 00:18:41,490 This may be very, very familiar to some of you, but run through some of the what you might call formal aspects of my painting. 161 00:18:41,490 --> 00:18:47,490 What are these objets these things that we're kind of dealing with? 162 00:18:47,490 --> 00:18:54,690 Let me use this as a starting point. And I'll just point out for those of you actually taking a special subject, 163 00:18:54,690 --> 00:18:59,510 here's a reminder that if the background of my slide is this eye popping sheet, 164 00:18:59,510 --> 00:19:05,850 you know, that means that we're looking at one of the prescribed images within that, if you like. 165 00:19:05,850 --> 00:19:12,210 This is a set of images with students taking this course are kind of required to be familiar. 166 00:19:12,210 --> 00:19:21,600 So that's why the background of my slides changes from a restful pale blue to an eye popping yellow at certain points. 167 00:19:21,600 --> 00:19:24,210 Let's start with this picture dated 14 37. 168 00:19:24,210 --> 00:19:34,170 It's a detail of a much, much larger picture, a point which I would term, but it shows a gentleman looking at that picture. 169 00:19:34,170 --> 00:19:39,320 The painting that they're looking at is in the format of a hanging scroll. 170 00:19:39,320 --> 00:19:43,840 That is, it is longer than it is. Why is they held up here? 171 00:19:43,840 --> 00:19:51,310 Have our servant. Then this gentleman who is studying this is holding it in his hands. 172 00:19:51,310 --> 00:19:56,390 I find a lot of pictures of gentleman looking at pictures now. I'll certainly mention them again. 173 00:19:56,390 --> 00:20:07,500 And as we go along. But it's kind of interesting in that it also gives us a sense of some of the other formal aspects, 174 00:20:07,500 --> 00:20:11,880 which is how, if you like, pictures are are produced. 175 00:20:11,880 --> 00:20:20,400 Just to remind ourselves, the two principal surfaces on which Chinese painting is done are silk paper. 176 00:20:20,400 --> 00:20:26,550 Things that we'll be looking at are either painted on sale or they're painted on paper. 177 00:20:26,550 --> 00:20:33,420 They're painted with a brush brush, which is essentially the same in its construction as the brush, 178 00:20:33,420 --> 00:20:38,840 which is used in writing from the production of the characters of the Chinese language. 179 00:20:38,840 --> 00:20:43,950 And all of the colours that are used, there's a wide range of colours. 180 00:20:43,950 --> 00:20:49,230 Some of them are mineral colour. Some of them are vegetable colours. But it's all there, all in a water based medium. 181 00:20:49,230 --> 00:20:54,660 So essentially, everything we're looking at is a watercolour. It's therefore susceptible to fading. 182 00:20:54,660 --> 00:20:55,140 And therefore, 183 00:20:55,140 --> 00:21:03,930 one of the things we just have to bear in mind is that almost every main picture is not as bright as it was when it was first painting this picture. 184 00:21:03,930 --> 00:21:09,330 Not my shows, just looking at. But here are, if you like, the tools of the trade. 185 00:21:09,330 --> 00:21:15,300 This gentleman here has the brush in his hand. He's poised to write something on a sheet of paper. 186 00:21:15,300 --> 00:21:22,950 Probably a comment to record what these gentlemen, the act of connoisseurship in which they're looking at this painting together. 187 00:21:22,950 --> 00:21:27,650 The other thing I'd just draw attention to in this one is that this is a social activity. 188 00:21:27,650 --> 00:21:34,260 This is not a solitary activity. The act of looking at these pictures is something that the gentlemen are doing together. 189 00:21:34,260 --> 00:21:38,940 And there's this kind of interaction between them. 190 00:21:38,940 --> 00:21:44,400 So he's looking at a hanging school. But I think it's all. Here's another hanging score. 191 00:21:44,400 --> 00:21:51,930 And that's the tone one uses in English for these are different times in Chinese for the different formats these days. 192 00:21:51,930 --> 00:22:01,670 This does a high school in English. It's just worth remembering that there's a great variability of size in sports. 193 00:22:01,670 --> 00:22:09,090 The effect of of the classroom effect is to flatten everything to the same scale. 194 00:22:09,090 --> 00:22:18,030 So things either. There's this one, in fact, is very much larger in reality than it appears on this on this slide. 195 00:22:18,030 --> 00:22:23,100 But some of the things that I'm sure you are very much smaller in reality are, if you like, blowing up. 196 00:22:23,100 --> 00:22:27,600 So it's quite a big variability in in size. 197 00:22:27,600 --> 00:22:33,090 And remember that there's no technical reason for this paper in the media as 198 00:22:33,090 --> 00:22:37,950 the sheets could be joined together to make the surface for large school silk. 199 00:22:37,950 --> 00:22:44,300 Silk could be joined together in by law to be kind of quite large. 200 00:22:44,300 --> 00:22:48,900 And so the reason why school is big or small is not to do with technical aspects. 201 00:22:48,900 --> 00:22:55,120 It must be to do with the choice of the artist. The context for which it's made, et cetera, et cetera. 202 00:22:55,120 --> 00:22:59,460 So there has to be a kind of a reason for this. 203 00:22:59,460 --> 00:23:06,620 There's recently been a kind of interesting argument which says that in general, schools are getting smaller through history. 204 00:23:06,620 --> 00:23:13,110 That is in the 10th, 11th century, by and large, Chinese schools were very big and and they got smaller. 205 00:23:13,110 --> 00:23:17,730 And I'm I'm slightly suspicious of that because what they're really saying is 206 00:23:17,730 --> 00:23:24,110 that most of the schools that survive from the earlier periods are big ones. 207 00:23:24,110 --> 00:23:26,760 And that's, again, about the survival of evidence. 208 00:23:26,760 --> 00:23:34,750 We don't know, for example, may maybe many smaller things in our periods, but it certainly was observable that in the Ming. 209 00:23:34,750 --> 00:23:41,580 There is a considerable variation in the size of a hanging scroll. 210 00:23:41,580 --> 00:23:46,740 And as we've seen, you know, if you go back to this one, a high school can hang on a wall. 211 00:23:46,740 --> 00:23:52,890 But just Doumar her column here. That's not necessarily the only way in which it's going to be viewed. 212 00:23:52,890 --> 00:24:00,990 It may well be viewed in this kind of context for a servant is holding it up on a stick. 213 00:24:00,990 --> 00:24:12,030 Now, I haven't really got a lot of time to kind of go into these technical aspects, so I'm kind of whizzing through the other great format. 214 00:24:12,030 --> 00:24:19,020 The other major format used in the main period is what it's called in English hand school or horizontal scroll. 215 00:24:19,020 --> 00:24:26,730 And that's something that rules this week. Again, there's a variation in scale of landfilled or not so much variation in scale size. 216 00:24:26,730 --> 00:24:32,430 The biggest handspring tends to be about that high and the smallest one tends to be about that. 217 00:24:32,430 --> 00:24:40,230 So there's no space in that way. But of course, the variation that we can be enormous and some of them are 90 feet long. 218 00:24:40,230 --> 00:24:46,950 I mean, there are there are some that are smaller. This one's Victoria's office about that size. 219 00:24:46,950 --> 00:24:55,380 But some of them can be 30, 40, 50 feet long. And they can be they can be they can be very big. 220 00:24:55,380 --> 00:25:02,100 This photograph is an unusual photograph in terms of what you'll see in terms of Chinese painting books, 221 00:25:02,100 --> 00:25:10,920 because it shows you the whole physical object. What you tend to see in a painting, paintings in books is just, if you like, a pictorial surface. 222 00:25:10,920 --> 00:25:22,320 That's worth remembering that a Chinese scroll, a hanging school of hands for both physical Three-Dimensional objects that require manipulation. 223 00:25:22,320 --> 00:25:26,790 They take up space and here a handsaw. This one's been unrolled. 224 00:25:26,790 --> 00:25:30,960 And then these wooden blocks that you see here hold down. 225 00:25:30,960 --> 00:25:37,770 If the kind of the ordinary portion and the continued portion of the person may be more here. 226 00:25:37,770 --> 00:25:46,890 And in this case, there is there isn't more painting. Was a great year for writing here in the form of coliforms, subsequent comments, 227 00:25:46,890 --> 00:25:52,210 people comments by people who've seen this painting through history since it was painted in 50/50. 228 00:25:52,210 --> 00:25:58,930 Going on through the 16th century, 18th, 19th centuries. 229 00:25:58,930 --> 00:26:08,890 There very little written about what you might call these these physical aspects and the freemen of of Chinese painting. 230 00:26:08,890 --> 00:26:18,250 The only book really about Mountain is one written 60 years ago by Robert Frank Coolac. 231 00:26:18,250 --> 00:26:22,690 And we'll come back to that in a subsequent in a subsequent lecture. 232 00:26:22,690 --> 00:26:25,600 But just to show you the kind of the importance of mountain, 233 00:26:25,600 --> 00:26:36,160 I'm showing you a person this this is a famous and quite controversial picture in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. 234 00:26:36,160 --> 00:26:40,870 It's not of main or feature very much. Again, you the New Zealand season book. 235 00:26:40,870 --> 00:26:45,700 That's what you see, right? It's a painting on Silk Road. 236 00:26:45,700 --> 00:26:54,210 That is what it looks like or fits by. Sell in this case as it all falls back on the paper. 237 00:26:54,210 --> 00:27:00,040 And that paper backing is renewed at subsequent periods through history many times. 238 00:27:00,040 --> 00:27:05,980 So actually, this is the pictorial surface. This is all that survives. 239 00:27:05,980 --> 00:27:13,870 This is what it looks like in the conservation studio when it's removed from its from its paperback. 240 00:27:13,870 --> 00:27:17,800 And it's you know, it's not in great shape. It's supposed to be a thousand years old. 241 00:27:17,800 --> 00:27:21,580 So, you know, it's maybe a reason for not being in great shape. 242 00:27:21,580 --> 00:27:30,870 But these physical aspects of mounting and framing and so on are things that we won't have a great deal of time to talk about. 243 00:27:30,870 --> 00:27:41,500 But that will feature in these lectures a little bit. Now, there's a problem with the hand scroll, which is that it doesn't fit on the page, right? 244 00:27:41,500 --> 00:27:48,820 It doesn't fit on the page and it doesn't fit on the on the screen. 245 00:27:48,820 --> 00:27:59,260 And I'm showing you here. Here. So what normally tends to happen in books and lectures like this is that you get details. 246 00:27:59,260 --> 00:28:04,110 This is a detail of a hand school. It's not a it's not a picture. 247 00:28:04,110 --> 00:28:13,090 So if you like a detail taken over the picture. And what I'm showing you here or are these are these are single objects. 248 00:28:13,090 --> 00:28:20,290 All right. So this is is not for pages is one picture that goes one, two, three, four. 249 00:28:20,290 --> 00:28:26,740 But you can imagine that if you were to photograph it like that and and and put it all on one slide, 250 00:28:26,740 --> 00:28:31,570 what you would see would be a thin line about that size. 251 00:28:31,570 --> 00:28:36,730 You know, absolutely nothing would would be visible and that would be true in a book as well. 252 00:28:36,730 --> 00:28:43,900 Now, of course, it's very inconvenient. Of people in the media industry did not take into consideration the needs of 253 00:28:43,900 --> 00:28:48,250 our history professors in the 21st century is extremely thoughtless of them. 254 00:28:48,250 --> 00:28:55,540 They should have they should have paid more attention to what I want. But it's an issue that I think is a genuine issue, 255 00:28:55,540 --> 00:29:07,030 that if you feel like it's easier for the for the the the the literature to deal with images like works of art like this, 256 00:29:07,030 --> 00:29:15,610 which which fit entirely into the screen or that one, then it is to deal with things where, you know what, you can't get the whole thing on the page. 257 00:29:15,610 --> 00:29:27,220 You can't get the whole thing on the screen. So that's another, if you like, formal aspect that we kind of need to think about. 258 00:29:27,220 --> 00:29:35,230 So the hanging scroll, the can scroll. These are, if you like, two of the key formats of paintings in the mean period. 259 00:29:35,230 --> 00:29:40,000 But that by no means the only format, the only one that was, if you like, 260 00:29:40,000 --> 00:29:51,470 a novelty of the main period is is fan painting or more precisely, falling fan painting. 261 00:29:51,470 --> 00:29:53,290 And it's a novelty, the main period, 262 00:29:53,290 --> 00:30:02,950 because a folding fan was itself a novelty that made you rethink of the folding fan as kind of quintessentially part of Chinese culture. 263 00:30:02,950 --> 00:30:08,320 But it's developed outside China, probably in Japan, possibly in Korea. 264 00:30:08,320 --> 00:30:13,250 There is still a certain amount of debate and an argument about that, 265 00:30:13,250 --> 00:30:18,340 but they are certainly novelties in China and do appear there before about the 15th century. 266 00:30:18,340 --> 00:30:29,350 And just incidentally, that's an, I think, an interesting reminder about what you might call Ming China's porosity and openness to the outside world. 267 00:30:29,350 --> 00:30:38,830 Some of the older historical literature about the Ming Dynasty written during the Cold War and very much under the influence of a Cold War mentality. 268 00:30:38,830 --> 00:30:43,180 This image of the Ming Dynasty kicking the Mongols out of China and pull the 269 00:30:43,180 --> 00:30:48,280 shutters down and they don't want anything to do with the with the outside world. 270 00:30:48,280 --> 00:30:58,100 This is a fantasy. And if you like, the fact that something we know think of is quintessentially Chinese, the Fooldom fan. 271 00:30:58,100 --> 00:31:03,790 Come into use in China from elsewhere in Asia, in this field and in Egypt immediately, 272 00:31:03,790 --> 00:31:11,900 almost immediately taken off as another surface form, which painting can be carried out? 273 00:31:11,900 --> 00:31:15,530 Now, obviously, you will immediately trade. 274 00:31:15,530 --> 00:31:19,770 This is blown up very much bigger than it is in reality. 275 00:31:19,770 --> 00:31:26,090 In reality, it's going to be about that size folding this folding van. 276 00:31:26,090 --> 00:31:30,200 And then we might want to think about the kind of presence and absence it's carried on the body. 277 00:31:30,200 --> 00:31:32,300 It's there. It's not there. 278 00:31:32,300 --> 00:31:42,700 So immediately we're starting to think about kind of viewing and context of viewing and who's viewing, who's viewing where this van is. 279 00:31:42,700 --> 00:31:49,100 It's obvious that it's missing. This wooden sticks that would actually make it into a fan at some point in its history. 280 00:31:49,100 --> 00:31:50,480 The paper sheet, 281 00:31:50,480 --> 00:32:01,400 the folding paper sheet that forms the body of the fan has been taken off its wooden stick with no bamboo sticks and mounted into into a book. 282 00:32:01,400 --> 00:32:08,240 And it therefore relates to another format of main painting, which we call the album. 283 00:32:08,240 --> 00:32:16,500 And the album Leaf is, as the name suggests, a small painting which is going to be bound into it, into a book format. 284 00:32:16,500 --> 00:32:25,610 So, again, something like this in reality is going to be very, very, very much smaller than it looks. 285 00:32:25,610 --> 00:32:32,390 In fact, these two pictures are the same size. In reality, the use of this size. 286 00:32:32,390 --> 00:32:38,180 And they both come from an album of paintings by the artist Jim Game. 287 00:32:38,180 --> 00:32:49,280 This one, called Examining Antiquities, is a painting of people looking at a painting in the context that you yourself will be looking at the paint. 288 00:32:49,280 --> 00:32:53,360 So it's it's an album leaf. It would have been mounted in a book. 289 00:32:53,360 --> 00:33:01,220 What it shows is, gentlemen, looking at paintings and a book is any sort of kidney shaped things here. 290 00:33:01,220 --> 00:33:06,230 These are going to be fine paintings of an all of our kind. 291 00:33:06,230 --> 00:33:07,850 That is not a folding file, 292 00:33:07,850 --> 00:33:18,290 but as sort of circular found had a steak on it that had been in use for a giant indigenous life for some kind of hundreds of years. 293 00:33:18,290 --> 00:33:24,110 Just know that, again, this is a social event. It's another one of our pictures of people looking at pictures. 294 00:33:24,110 --> 00:33:28,790 But it's a social event. It's it's gentlemen kind of getting together. 295 00:33:28,790 --> 00:33:39,920 So hanging scroll hands, scroll fan fan, closely related to album leaf. 296 00:33:39,920 --> 00:33:48,020 All of these formats of painting that I've talked about up to now are mobile, are extremely mobile. 297 00:33:48,020 --> 00:33:51,860 And you can you can see here sort of servants springing up with others. 298 00:33:51,860 --> 00:33:58,860 He a little boy here. He's got over his shoulder a bundle of hanging scorpions. 299 00:33:58,860 --> 00:34:00,980 That is when they've finished looking at the album Leaves. 300 00:34:00,980 --> 00:34:05,450 They're going to look at the hanging skulls, but they may these may be things that have been brought. 301 00:34:05,450 --> 00:34:08,960 Perhaps somebody has come. One of these gentlemen has come to visit another. 302 00:34:08,960 --> 00:34:14,150 He's brought three highlights of his collection for them to enjoy together. 303 00:34:14,150 --> 00:34:20,630 Pictures are extremely mobile, or rather, some pictures are extremely mobile. 304 00:34:20,630 --> 00:34:29,090 And those formats which I've discussed up to now, which are extremely mobile, are the ones that survive best. 305 00:34:29,090 --> 00:34:36,200 There are other formats of painting in the main. And one of those is, if you like, the screen painting. 306 00:34:36,200 --> 00:34:40,940 Let me come back to my set of the four gentlemanly accomplishments. 307 00:34:40,940 --> 00:34:44,480 This is painting. And this one's calligraphy. 308 00:34:44,480 --> 00:34:52,550 You'll notice that as well as the painting that he's looking at, though, is the hind in in both of these cases. 309 00:34:52,550 --> 00:34:56,540 How large would be free? 310 00:34:56,540 --> 00:35:00,470 A large standing's screen. A large wooden frame. 311 00:35:00,470 --> 00:35:08,780 And within this frame, there is a painting in this in this case, a landscape painting of trees in the distance. 312 00:35:08,780 --> 00:35:12,480 This is a scene I don't know how well it shows up from where you're sitting. 313 00:35:12,480 --> 00:35:18,320 I think we should move all of these chairs ten feet this way for survivors of these lectures. 314 00:35:18,320 --> 00:35:23,450 This is a sea of waves. It shows kind of Tocumwal turbulent waves. 315 00:35:23,450 --> 00:35:34,130 Now, not we have plenty of evidence from the big period that these kinds of screens may appear in pictures all the time. 316 00:35:34,130 --> 00:35:38,480 We actually do have wooden lifesaver. 317 00:35:38,480 --> 00:35:43,430 Not more than one or two might be three of these. 318 00:35:43,430 --> 00:35:54,290 Would you surviving frames? Well, we don't have a single surviving painting in a frame in a screen frame like this from the big picture. 319 00:35:54,290 --> 00:35:57,900 Not one. Not one zero zero. I. 320 00:35:57,900 --> 00:36:02,670 So that's one of my cases where the stuff we know existed. 321 00:36:02,670 --> 00:36:08,400 It doesn't mean that we've got very little of it. None of it. Absolutely none of it. 322 00:36:08,400 --> 00:36:15,510 We do have certain pictures which form their from their proportions. 323 00:36:15,510 --> 00:36:25,020 The proportions of these more a European, if you like, land what we call last on your computer would be called Lancey format. 324 00:36:25,020 --> 00:36:33,660 We have some pictures that tell that scale and size and which we think might probably once have been screening panels, 325 00:36:33,660 --> 00:36:38,790 but they're all now mounted as any scrolls. 326 00:36:38,790 --> 00:36:43,170 There's no there's no surviving one like this. 327 00:36:43,170 --> 00:36:54,600 And then the same is true on what you might call the most sort of what had once been one of the most such a century. 328 00:36:54,600 --> 00:37:01,620 So there's a hanging stool and there's the screen painting for comparison. And then there's the issue of all paint. 329 00:37:01,620 --> 00:37:13,860 Now, if we go back into Chinese history and read texts from the eight, nine, 10, eleven century, 330 00:37:13,860 --> 00:37:21,750 it's quite clear that some of the most prestigious and important artists of those early periods, 331 00:37:21,750 --> 00:37:27,330 some of the most important things they did were wall paintings, which might be in palaces. 332 00:37:27,330 --> 00:37:33,150 I was at the imperial family palaces of the rich, but also in temples. 333 00:37:33,150 --> 00:37:39,150 And in the main period, people still thought that some of these pictures survived. 334 00:37:39,150 --> 00:37:48,660 That is, people describe seeing things or walls that they thought were by important early artists of the past. 335 00:37:48,660 --> 00:38:00,270 We also know that in a couple of contexts, significant artists of the main period were involved in war painting, but none of that survives at all. 336 00:38:00,270 --> 00:38:07,140 None of that survives. While I'm showing you the chancellor is the shrine of the Jena TAIONE in Shanxi Province. 337 00:38:07,140 --> 00:38:12,480 And I'm here while outside the Jong-Nam Urban Artist Corps. 338 00:38:12,480 --> 00:38:16,020 This is a very important early building. It's an 11th century building. 339 00:38:16,020 --> 00:38:23,490 It's one of the most important surviving pieces of 11th century wood architecture in China. 340 00:38:23,490 --> 00:38:29,710 And in the early 16th century, we know that it was decorated on the outside. 341 00:38:29,710 --> 00:38:34,200 You see really these these panels are these panels here. 342 00:38:34,200 --> 00:38:41,600 So basically, you come up to the front of the building, which would have been, I think, eye popping, 343 00:38:41,600 --> 00:38:49,800 a colourful themselves when they were when they were first painted in the early 16th century book, which I know extremely faded. 344 00:38:49,800 --> 00:38:55,410 But I show you this just to say that, you know, there is painting on walls in the Ming period. 345 00:38:55,410 --> 00:39:00,930 It's all done. All of it which survives is religious, right. 346 00:39:00,930 --> 00:39:04,180 There's no secular wall paintings surviving from the main period. 347 00:39:04,180 --> 00:39:16,920 The only surviving war painting is is in Coneheads religious buildings, all of it done by anonymous craftsmen, artisan painters. 348 00:39:16,920 --> 00:39:22,770 It's all in good science terms to a no juat picture another painting. 349 00:39:22,770 --> 00:39:30,180 And it's all rather lower class, although will kind of investigate that as we go. 350 00:39:30,180 --> 00:39:38,610 Now, I suppose one thing I'd just like to kind of take on board at the beginning and forgive me if this seems kind of patronising, 351 00:39:38,610 --> 00:39:42,780 but when I've taught courses about Ming painting before, 352 00:39:42,780 --> 00:39:46,500 one of the kind of unspoken fears that people sometimes have, 353 00:39:46,500 --> 00:39:52,830 which I think it's part of get out on the table at the beginning, is isn't it all going to look the same? 354 00:39:52,830 --> 00:40:03,360 Is that all going to look the same? There's going to be a man and some trees and a little white guy and, you know. 355 00:40:03,360 --> 00:40:04,710 What do you what do you do with it? 356 00:40:04,710 --> 00:40:13,250 Well, I could kind of say, well, there are an awful lot of Madonnas in European art that's never that's never stopped anybody, 357 00:40:13,250 --> 00:40:16,350 anybody from talking about them. 358 00:40:16,350 --> 00:40:24,270 But I hope to demonstrate that while there are certain just as there are certain recurrent themes in European painting that come back again and again, 359 00:40:24,270 --> 00:40:30,550 there are certain recurrent themes in Chinese painting, most principally landscape, which comes back again and again. 360 00:40:30,550 --> 00:40:35,460 But I hope I can demonstrate that there is a range of other things going on. 361 00:40:35,460 --> 00:40:43,410 And I don't think you would need to have taken a lot of art history to see that this picture doesn't look very like this picture. 362 00:40:43,410 --> 00:40:49,670 You know, here we have something which is highly coloured, which is figuring out which is finger painting and interesting. 363 00:40:49,670 --> 00:40:57,810 And I just know we'll see this picture again. It's actually a real picture of somebody making a painting, a painting this. 364 00:40:57,810 --> 00:41:07,710 His poor portrait will come from. We'll come back to that. It doesn't look it doesn't look at all like this. 365 00:41:07,710 --> 00:41:12,360 One of the things that I think is striking about the Ming and also, you know, as I said, 366 00:41:12,360 --> 00:41:23,370 we've got a wider range of evidence is that we have a great range, if you like, of different kinds of makers of painting. 367 00:41:23,370 --> 00:41:28,410 So, for example, we've got pictures by emperors. 368 00:41:28,410 --> 00:41:32,780 We've got pictures by an early 15th century emperor. We don't have any Europeans. 369 00:41:32,780 --> 00:41:36,790 We don't have any photos of the first Charles 5th Henry. 370 00:41:36,790 --> 00:41:42,210 Henry, your faith is kind of contemporary of this guy. They're not famous far for the production of painting. 371 00:41:42,210 --> 00:41:47,460 But Ming Emperors, or at least some of them, were significant artists in their own right. 372 00:41:47,460 --> 00:41:54,600 We've got work by by courtesan's, by professional female entertainers. 373 00:41:54,600 --> 00:42:04,560 We've got work by female members of the elite, female members of the of the upper classes. 374 00:42:04,560 --> 00:42:13,140 We've got work by religious professionals, monks, both Daoist and Buddhist monks. 375 00:42:13,140 --> 00:42:19,020 We've got work by what loosely we might call professional artists. 376 00:42:19,020 --> 00:42:23,100 And I just draw the attention, the fact that these these two works, 377 00:42:23,100 --> 00:42:30,180 both by professional artists, by professional artists, is a term that covers a very wide span. 378 00:42:30,180 --> 00:42:33,900 This guy we know the name of the biography we do. 379 00:42:33,900 --> 00:42:42,570 We have dates. We kind of have a sense of this is, if you like, completely anonymous work produced again in a context of religious devotion. 380 00:42:42,570 --> 00:42:48,750 So a time like professional painter carries a whole very, very wide span. 381 00:42:48,750 --> 00:42:54,480 And we'll be picking apart as we go on some of exactly what. What does that mean? 382 00:42:54,480 --> 00:43:03,430 We have paintings by high members of the imperial bureaucracy who are also wealthy landowners. 383 00:43:03,430 --> 00:43:10,660 And we have paintings by wealthy landowners who were not successful members of the imperial bureaucracy, 384 00:43:10,660 --> 00:43:20,340 but hence had but still had considerable social and economic and cultural status within within the period. 385 00:43:20,340 --> 00:43:27,630 One of the things I hope to convince you over these eight weeks is that maybe painting doesn't all look the same. 386 00:43:27,630 --> 00:43:28,500 This, if you like, 387 00:43:28,500 --> 00:43:40,050 highly detail that rendering of the urban scene in which you can zoom in and look at the kinds of goods being sold on the streets of a great city 388 00:43:40,050 --> 00:43:52,110 is not the same kind of painting as this painting of this landscape AIDS and not of a specific place very much linked to the practise of poetry, 389 00:43:52,110 --> 00:43:56,520 very much kind of working together with the texts written on it. 390 00:43:56,520 --> 00:44:03,400 These just aren't the same kinds of paintings from. 391 00:44:03,400 --> 00:44:11,110 Here's a. A difficult looking chart. 392 00:44:11,110 --> 00:44:12,250 And I don't want to. 393 00:44:12,250 --> 00:44:21,310 I just want to kind of finish by this really the message I want to take away from this is just like painting was done by lots of people. 394 00:44:21,310 --> 00:44:27,250 Painting played lots of different roles in the main period. It's not one kind of thing. 395 00:44:27,250 --> 00:44:30,470 This is a chart by the anthropologist, 396 00:44:30,470 --> 00:44:41,390 the Alfred Jail from his book or an agency in which he tries to make a sort of system of thinking about what pictures do. 397 00:44:41,390 --> 00:44:49,860 And he deals in four times the artist, which is kind of easy with the that the index, which is his technical term. 398 00:44:49,860 --> 00:44:57,100 Why? For the work of art. Right. So the painting is the index of the bus for the time being. 399 00:44:57,100 --> 00:45:09,940 The thing over there in the world to which the painting relates, broadly speaking, the subject matter and recipient the viewer. 400 00:45:09,940 --> 00:45:17,860 I just want to kind of whiz through three examples to show you, you know, that maybe this is a kind of helpful. 401 00:45:17,860 --> 00:45:23,970 Or at least it gives us a way of thinking about the variety. Here's a picture we looked at for Sharon Jones. 402 00:45:23,970 --> 00:45:29,560 Hold on a moment. Very important artist, very highly regarded in this day. 403 00:45:29,560 --> 00:45:36,130 But I think one of the things that's happening in this painting is what you might call what's happening in this clops. 404 00:45:36,130 --> 00:45:41,230 Material inherently dictates to artists the form it assumes. 405 00:45:41,230 --> 00:45:46,230 Now, this is what you might call the modernist idea of truth to materials. 406 00:45:46,230 --> 00:45:50,860 Plus, it should look like plastic chairs you're sitting on. Should look like plastic chairs. 407 00:45:50,860 --> 00:45:57,100 No facsimiles of of wooden chairs. The importance of ink. 408 00:45:57,100 --> 00:46:05,270 One of the things is that this this foregrounds the fact this is a deliberately, extremely monochrome monochrome picture. 409 00:46:05,270 --> 00:46:10,900 And it's very much about telling you that this is in on a surface. This is this is in on itself. 410 00:46:10,900 --> 00:46:14,460 It's it's not. It's not. It's not. 411 00:46:14,460 --> 00:46:18,700 It's definitely not. See, law class painting. 412 00:46:18,700 --> 00:46:24,030 It's not a depiction of some specific event. It's that it speeds up. 413 00:46:24,030 --> 00:46:33,100 But it's it's as much about ink, the material as it is about the point of a mountain. 414 00:46:33,100 --> 00:46:40,000 So that's one aspect. One of gals sort of possibilities. 415 00:46:40,000 --> 00:46:50,620 Here's a quote from the very early morning right at Waterloo who claimed great sacred mountain 416 00:46:50,620 --> 00:46:56,110 man PLI in northern China and unproduced to see these paintings are my paintings at home. 417 00:46:56,110 --> 00:47:00,850 And once someone by chance saw them, he thought they were contrary to all painting styles. 418 00:47:00,850 --> 00:47:04,960 I'm surprised I asked, who's your master? That's the kind of thing you would ask somebody to make it. 419 00:47:04,960 --> 00:47:09,520 Who taught you this? Where did you get this from? Who was your master? 420 00:47:09,520 --> 00:47:18,280 I replied, I take my heart, mind. And that's another sort of arched translation of the Chinese time scene. 421 00:47:18,280 --> 00:47:27,550 But in China, the kind of there's there's not a separation that you get in Cartesian for between a seat of the rational functions and the emotion. 422 00:47:27,550 --> 00:47:33,550 In early modern Europe, the kind of emotions are here and the rational bit is here. 423 00:47:33,550 --> 00:47:37,560 But the Chinese understand exactly what the Chinese understand. 424 00:47:37,560 --> 00:47:44,350 What do you do to make that decision? That distinction, which is why people often use this translation. 425 00:47:44,350 --> 00:47:50,660 So I take my heart mine to be my teacher. So I learn from kind of what's in me. 426 00:47:50,660 --> 00:47:59,440 It takes its master, my eyes, which in turn reveal amongst PLA as their teacher. 427 00:47:59,440 --> 00:48:07,720 So in a sense, you've got this. What made the painting the mountain toward the eyes. 428 00:48:07,720 --> 00:48:12,310 The eyes to the heart. Mind. The heart. Mind. Talk a hand produced. 429 00:48:12,310 --> 00:48:19,060 So in a sense, the painting made its pick made that the man made the painting. 430 00:48:19,060 --> 00:48:25,990 A prototype as cause of index. Is that the man who causes the picture? 431 00:48:25,990 --> 00:48:33,400 The escort agency is in some sort of way. No one knew was a doctor. 432 00:48:33,400 --> 00:48:41,450 And just to kind of that, he'd he brought on medicine as well to veer into the medical for a moment here to woodblock. 433 00:48:41,450 --> 00:48:51,730 Pictures definitely to Moha from a May 15th century edition of attempts to Orthodox essentials of eating and drinking, 434 00:48:51,730 --> 00:48:56,990 orthodox essentials of eating and drinking, the text that originally been written back in the 14th century. 435 00:48:56,990 --> 00:49:05,860 We understand. But this, if you like, gives us an insight into into what painting can do, which is very different from. 436 00:49:05,860 --> 00:49:11,560 What you might call or history or or or any notion is that it's. 437 00:49:11,560 --> 00:49:16,180 Because this is the painting as a therapeutic object. 438 00:49:16,180 --> 00:49:25,020 And just to put it very briefly, and some of you may well be aware of Chinese understandings of the body at this period. 439 00:49:25,020 --> 00:49:31,480 There are a whole set of five phases, but they're also about the balance in the body between yin and yang, 440 00:49:31,480 --> 00:49:39,430 between the kind of cool with principle of yin and the hot, dry principle of yang. 441 00:49:39,430 --> 00:49:45,240 And one of the things which this book, which is about, it's about food and medicine, because, again, 442 00:49:45,240 --> 00:49:49,230 Ming Chinese doesn't make a distinction between the categories, food and medicine, 443 00:49:49,230 --> 00:49:55,030 stuff and stuff you take in that keeps you in balance, that keeps your health. 444 00:49:55,030 --> 00:50:00,880 Well, one of the things you can do to keep it healthy is if you've got too much gain in your body, 445 00:50:00,880 --> 00:50:04,920 you can look at a painting or something that's got a lot of yang. 446 00:50:04,920 --> 00:50:14,250 All right. And that's what's happening here. These people are not kind of engaging in some sort of aesthetic experience. 447 00:50:14,250 --> 00:50:19,420 They are rebalancing the yin and yang in their body by looking at paintings. 448 00:50:19,420 --> 00:50:24,630 And there's the paintings are actually doing stuff to them. 449 00:50:24,630 --> 00:50:29,860 And that's what Gale would have called in-depth source of power over a recipient to sit in. 450 00:50:29,860 --> 00:50:38,470 The spectator submits like the paintings and doing things that actually doing things to the to the people in here. 451 00:50:38,470 --> 00:50:45,400 This lady is looking at. She's looking at this as a Phoenix bird here. 452 00:50:45,400 --> 00:50:48,910 And then this is her shrimps and praise the Lord. 453 00:50:48,910 --> 00:50:56,640 So you kind of things, lobsters and crayfish and so on, which are going to be very young because they where they live in the margins. 454 00:50:56,640 --> 00:51:02,660 And therefore, she's balancing the the effects of her body. 455 00:51:02,660 --> 00:51:11,440 And she's balancing the the principles of yin and yang in her body. 456 00:51:11,440 --> 00:51:20,260 Now we can see this. They might say, well, this is very kind of this is very different from what one might think about. 457 00:51:20,260 --> 00:51:29,950 But I've just I just think it's probably unwise for art historians to kind of completely forget about this rule of painting as well. 458 00:51:29,950 --> 00:51:38,480 We noticed that one of the paintings that she's looking at here is painting of animals so that the animals kind of there's only hunting. 459 00:51:38,480 --> 00:51:47,590 I think this is this is a hunting scene, but it makes one think that is that is that sort of sense of a painting is doing something to the viewer 460 00:51:47,590 --> 00:51:54,790 is not completely absent when one looks at a wider range of paintings that the people looked at. 461 00:51:54,790 --> 00:52:00,190 I think it would be very unwise of the art historian. I would say this is not known to do with us. 462 00:52:00,190 --> 00:52:07,530 This is something completely different. I think we want to think take seriously the notion of painting and culture in the mainstream. 463 00:52:07,530 --> 00:52:13,910 We're going to have to take the widest possible framework for understanding how paintings were made, 464 00:52:13,910 --> 00:52:18,520 how paintings were viewed and what painting or people thought paintings were for. 465 00:52:18,520 --> 00:52:22,450 And that's what I'm aiming to do for the next seven weeks. 466 00:52:22,450 --> 00:52:25,711 So thank you very much for your attention today.