Chen Hongshou and Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove

our second series we're back in the late

Ming that exciting time of controversy

and change and masters of striking

originality some of them such as woobin

and zhang whom have been undervalued in

traditional chinese writings and others

like the subject of this lecture Chun

Doong show have had a lot written about

them but not much that seems to me

really to the point at least as is seen

by one modern and foreign artist Orion

but is myself lots of biographical stuff

lots of work done from texts not much

less based on looking at his paintings

virtually nothing that tries to

interpret their expressive subtleties

this lecture is about a few of cheong

shows many surviving paintings and it

will also be about people I've known who

have been somehow involved with him in

his paintings such as collectors or

dealers or as museum people or in some

other capacity I myself have been deeply

engaged with genre from early in my

career

our first seminar exhibition at UC

Berkeley that is the Restless landscape

of 1971 o-72 included five of his

paintings the exhibition did and other

exhibitions and publications I worked on

include quite a few more maybe 30 or so

in all he was a prolific artist there's

a lot about him in Chinese literature as

I say and his paintings raise lots of

interesting problems not only stylistic

first images please I begin with a poor

image pulled from the website of our

Berkeley Art Museum where the painting

is now of this very familiar work many

people know it why is it so familiar

it's a genuine and fine work but it's

hardly one of the most striking or the

most significant among seung-jo's works

it was owned by Victoria corndog part of

the collection she put together during

her years in Shanghai in 1940's her

collection was stored at the Nelson

gallery in Kansas City

looked after by her old friend Larry

sickman Lawrence sickman

and and chick Minh when he came to write

the his part of the textbook titled the

art and architecture of China we

produced it and wrote about it there and

since that's the textbook that we used

for many years and teaching Chinese art

history and slides were all the works

and that were easily available and so

were there were in many of university

side libraries we all thought of it as

something so typical work when the Kahn

talk sale to Brundage failed and her

paintings were dispersed we acquired

this one for our berkeley or then called

University Art Museum now Berkeley Art

Museum I won't talk about the painting

now because I don't have good slides

maybe in a future lecture because this

certainly won't be the last one to treat

chuckling so when his paintings next

three paintings by him were in my

fantastic sand eccentrics exhibition of

1967 it was written about in the

Restless landscape catalog Mason mostly

by Stella Lee seen here in her essay on

late main figure painting although we

did include one the landscape she wrote

as an author writing with lots of

original perceptions and supplied

information that the scholar with girls

servants for instance there's a

signature that he began usually only in

1646 but it must be a late work she is

very smart and was and still is a

terrific writer next I put on this group

photo taken at one of my birthday

celebrations with a group of my former

students only to call attention to the

person of the far left standing somewhat

apart and wearing glasses

this is wakeland Tong and I seem to have

no other photo of him easily accessible

and I use him to introduce another

seminar in another book the one titled

the painters practice how artists lived

and worked in traditional China the

seminar was held in the early 1990s and

the book was published in 1994 wakeland

Tong was a principal participant in that

and he worked hard

two words to help me in organizing all

the diverse materials that had been

collected by him and the others so that

I can make the lectures and a book out

of them

he has also recently worked long and

hard revising and correcting the Chinese

translation of that book which is just

now January 2012 appeared in Chinese so

tell your Chinese friends to buy copies

next quite a few chunks show paintings

are cited in this book and incidents

from his life because he is among other

artists especially well recorded on page

109 of that book are we produced these

three works by Chung and used them to

make points about how Chinese studio

artists used family members and

assistants who are named in Sons and

scriptures on these to help with the

coloring filling in fabric patterns and

other workshop jobs and also how a

painter of this kind might make multiple

copies of a composition for sale the

people who needed them for celebrations

or presentations or presentations of

birthdays or weddings renews the

immortal presenting gifts which is the

subject of these paintings would be

appropriate for either one and this

tells us one basic thing about Trentham

show that he was such an artist who used

followers or helpers who fulfilled

commissions who turned out functional

paintings in numbers for sale to his

customers

in short it was a thoroughgoing to

professional artists and if you believe

that a painter of this sort couldn't

really produce great paintings think

again or as I've said before go join

that other lecture room down the hall

next please once more I show a group

photograph to call attention to the

person at far left this time along with

myself and harden Marianne Rogers

sitting and drinking tea on the veranda

of some Japanese villa

it's an burkas now and burkas Chason who

took her doctorate with me and teaches

now at the University of Illinois in

urbana-champaign

Payne she took arms chandram show for

her doctoral dissertation topic and she

wrote a terrific

multi-volume work on him with masses of

translation and other information as

well as all the fruits that were very

acute mind but alas she has never

reworked it from publication as I had

been urging her to do for decades next

please I put an on screen to introduce

another story about a son whom Stroh

painting I was on the East Coast with a

group of my students and I arranged for

some of them to come with me to CC

Wong's apartment where we asked him to

show us all the trunk show paintings

that he had and this one came out among

others it's hanging against the

background of his closet in this image

and Anne went for immediately and

convinced me which wasn't hard about how

good and important it was and I ended up

creating something that long wanted for

it and getting it as my own I think it's

still in the Berkeley Art Museum it

represents the meeting between two

generals of the Han Dynasty Sulu and Li

Ling okay now I'm going to read from a

distant mountains book about these

paintings here we go paintings have to

be roughly dated to the same period that

is the weight 1630s by its style style

and its inscription is Chung chose

meeting of Sulu and Li Ling Li Ling was

a Han Dynasty second century BC general

who when he was captured by the Huns

transferred his allegiance to the

punished Khan whose daughter he married

his old friend su Wu was sent out on a

peace mission to the Huns when his

companions went over to the Khan service

he refused to join them and as

punishment he was sent to the bleak

northern regions to herd sheep Li Ling

was dispatched to make a last attempt to

persuade him to renounce his Chinese

loyalism but he failed the theme

especially is depicted in the in the