BGuthrie Photos: DC -- Hirshhorn Museum -- Exhibit: Painting with Words: Gentleman Artists of the Ming Dynasty

DC -- Hirshhorn Museum -- Exhibit: Painting with Words: Gentleman Artists of the Ming Dynasty:

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Description of Pictures: Painting with Words: Gentleman Artists of the Ming Dynasty
April 16, 2016 – July 24, 2016
Poetry, painting, and calligraphy: Known as the “Three Perfections,” these genres were regarded as the ultimate expressions of Chinese literati culture during the Ming dynasty (1369–1644). Members of the Wu School, centered on the affluent city of Suzhou and nearby towns, earned admiration for their interpretations of these art forms. Painting with Words celebrates Wu School works, examining the relationship between their imagery, brushstrokes, and, especially, words. Selections are drawn from the Freer|Sackler—home to one of the best Wu School collections in the country—as well as other museums and collections.
Painting with Words: Gentleman Artists of the Ming Dynasty is organized by the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery with generous support from the Ellen Bayard Weedon Foundation.

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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. WORDS_160427_001.JPG: Painting with Words Gentleman Artists of the Ming Dynasty From music to drama, cuisine to garden design, members of the Wu School excelled in all forms of creative expression. Centered on the affluent city of Suzhou and nearby towns, this driving force of Chinese culture during the Ming dynasty (1369–1644) took its name from a kingdom that once ruled the region. Of all their talents, Suzhou's artists were most admired by contemporaries and later generations for their poetry, calligraphy, and painting. These complementary art forms, known collectively in China as the Three Perfections, were considered the ultimate modes of literati expression. Opening Saturday, Painting with Words: Gentleman Artists of the Ming Dynasty celebrates Wu School works, examining the relationships among their imagery, brushstrokes, and, especially, words. Selections are drawn from the Freer|Sackler -- home to one of the best Wu School collections in the country -- as well as other museums and collections. You'll encounter works by some two dozen Wu School painters and calligraphers in the exhibition, including the "Four Great Artists of the Ming Dynasty": Shen Zhou (1427–1509; see his work above), Wen Zhengming (1470–1559), Tang Yin (1470–1524), and Qiu Ying (ca. 1494–1552). This foursome exemplifies the two main groups of Wu School artists. Tang and Qiu were professional artists who accepted commissions from a range of clients and relied on their work to make a living. Shen and Wen were literati, or gentleman artists, who embraced the Three Perfections as both a personal pastime and a medium of social currency. At the time, most of China's professional artists worked in highly polished styles and favored traditional literary and historical subjects, which had wide public recognition and popular appeal. Gentleman artists, on the other hand, largely created works for each other, and their brushwork and themes tended to be more nuanced and personal in nature. Poetry was the primary vehicle of polite social exchange for most literati artists, as well as their preferred form of self-expression. Poems are ubiquitous throughout the exhibition, alternately inspiring, accompanying, and responding to the paintings and calligraphy. The above from http://www.asia.si.edu/exhibitions/current/painting-with-words/default.asp
2. WORDS_160427_005.JPG: A Cultural Center Suzhou, he central city of the Wu School, sat at the heart of literati culture for more than one hundred and fifty years, from the 1460s to the 1620s. Situated on flat fertile land between Lake Tai and the Yangzi River, Suzhou (present-day Jiangsu province) is one of the oldest cities in the Yangzi delta. Before the Ming dynasty (1369–1644), when it became a leading center of literati culture, Suzhou had enjoyed a prominent political, economic, and cultural position for most of its two thousand-year history. The city was a major transportation hub on the Grand Canal, which stretched 1,100 miles between the former imperial capital Hangzhou to the south and the Ming imperial capital in Beijing far north. Besides the capital, during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries Suzhou was the largest urban center in the Ming empire and perhaps the entire world. Shaped like a rectangle, Suzhou was dotted with temples and spacious residences boasting elegant walled gardens. A grid of canals and paved streets, including as many as three hundred stone bridges, crisscrossed the city, which was surrounded by a moat and a towering outer wall. Beyond its water buffer, the city spilled into the surrounding suburbs but soon gave way to a prosperous countryside of small lakes and ponds, rice paddies, and agricultural fields. Rustic villages and temples were nestled in the landscape; larger satellite townships rose farther off. An area of low-forested hills stood to the west of Suzhou, overlooking the broad expanse of Lake Tai and its several nearby islands. Local poets and artists frequently ventured to such rural and suburban locations and even chose these easily accessible sites for their private retreats and retirement homes.
3. WORDS_160427_043.JPG: Walking by a Mountain Stream Shen Zhou (1427-1509)
4. WORDS_160427_125.JPG: The Gentleman in Retirement Often hailed as the spiritual founder of the Wu School, the painter, poet, and calligrapher Shen Zhou (1427–1509) came from a well-connected lineage of gentleman artists who lived in the Suzhou suburb of Xiangcheng. Both his father and uncle were landscape painters. Shen rejected the official career path followed by most of his peers in favor of a life of art and personal fulfillment. Following his example, many later Wu School artists made the same choice. For gentleman artists in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Suzhou, retirement consisted of socializing with other literati, refined activities such as art collecting, and a love of creature comforts such as elegant private gardens. These examples of his paintings and calligraphy reveal aspects of Shen's life in retirement: engaging with likeminded friends, observing and commentating on everyday life, and spending time alone at home or in favorite pastimes, such as wandering the hills to find inspiration for poetry or a place to play his qin. Shen is said to have had an open, generous character. His palpable enjoyment of nature imbues each painting and poem in this section, graciously inviting us to join in. Owing to Shen's enduring influence and that of his immediate followers, these amiable qualities have come to characterize Wu School literati art.
5. WORDS_160427_128.JPG: In Full Flower The Wu School rose to its artistic zenith during the first half of the sixteenth century, led by three of its brightest stars: Wen Zhengming (1470–1559), Tang Yin (1470–1524), and Qiu Ying (ca. 1494–1552). Together with the older Shen Zhou (1427–1509), this group is known as the "Four Great Artists of the Ming." Shen and Wen exemplified the Wu School ideal of the gentleman artist, while Tang and Qiu epitomized the accomplished Suzhou professional. Qiu was solely a painter; the other three developed distinct styles of painting, calligraphy, and poetry. Although the Four Great Painters came from different social and economic backgrounds -- and more than sixty-five years separated the oldest from the youngest -- their lives and art intersected repeatedly. Wen and Tang had been friends since they were teenagers, and they both studied literati painting with Shen. Tang also studied under a local professional painter named Zhou Chen (ca. 1450–ca. 1535), to whom he and Wen later recommended the young painting phenomenon Qiu Ying. Such teacher-student and patron-client relationships were key to an artist's development and career in sixteenth-century Suzhou. Wen in particular had both a large number of outstanding students and a wide circle of local connections. Several of Wen's students and prot�g�s went on to develop careers and styles of their own, among them the two brilliant calligraphers Wang Chong (1494–1533) and Chen Shun (1483–1544), both of whom died before their former master. Despite their differences in style, approach, and social standing, professional artists and gentleman artists were codependent. Thematically, professional artists drew their material from the literature and history at the core of the literati tradition; in turn, literati artists wrote out the appropriate texts in fine calligraphy to accompany the professional artists' paintings. A primary distinction between the two groups was that the gentleman artist was also a calligrapher and a poet in his own right, and the fundamental purpose of his art was personal self-expression, usually prompted by an occasion or recent event. In some cases, one gentleman artist might have written a scroll of poetry for a friend or as a calligraphic exercise. Other times, individuals from both groups would collaborate on a scroll or contributed to a collective project. The above from http://www.asia.si.edu/exhibitions/current/painting-with-words/in-full-flower.asp
6. WORDS_160427_165.JPG: From http://www.asia.si.edu/exhibitions/current/painting-with-words/the-followers.asp : The Followers Known for decades as the Wu School's leader, Wen Zhengming (1470–1559) remained active as an artist until he died at age eighty-nine. By that time, several of his most outstanding followers had already passed away. Other artists, however, continued to work in styles heavily influenced by Wen Zhengming's approach well into the final quarter of the sixteenth century. Among these were his two talented sons, Wen Peng (1498–1573) and Wen Jia (1501–1583), who directly emulated their father and shared many of his interests and concerns. Qian Gu (1508–after 1574) also faithfully adhered to the styles that Wen Zhengming had developed and promoted. Other gentleman artists advanced Wen Zhengming's legacy in new directions, such as Lu Zhi (1496–1576), who developed a unique, almost luminous style of landscape painting. The flourishing professional painter Xie Shichen (1487–after 1567) incorporated elements from other popular styles, but he continued to draw inspiration and material from literati culture and to rely on gentleman artists for calligraphic contributions to his scrolls. Wen Zhengming's influence even extended to the generation of his great-grandson Wen Zhenmeng (1574–1636), a calligrapher. He and other local gentleman artists carried on producing collective scrolls and albums inspired by traditional themes, such as the "Eight Views of Xiao Xiang," as well as by contemporary occasions. Still, Wen Zhengming's death deprived the Wu School of both its center of gravity and its leading light, and the vitality and prominence of Suzhou painting and calligraphy ultimately waned. By the early seventeenth century, the city's economic clout also had diminished, owing in part to the rise of nearby Shanghai and other towns in the Yangzi delta region. Competing centers of artistic production diluted and eventually eclipsed the city's premier cultural status. By the 1630s, the Wu School, though still highly influential, had given up its role as a dominant force.
7. WORDS_160427_236.JPG: Painting with Words Gentleman Artists of the Ming Dynasty
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