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Copying in Imperial China

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

Danielle Elisseeff
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Extract

“Copying”: this practice, in China as elsewhere, was and still is the first exercise of every apprenticeship at the same time as an irreplaceable technique for spreading know-how, talent, and innovation; but the place and interest accorded to it throw light on the rather special positions being taken up. Thus, when a Chinese author speaks of copy, he is thinking primarily of the “copy-image,” in two dimensions. Sculpture in China plays a religious and propitiatory role; it only indirectly gives rise to reflections about art. The copies of objects thus found themselves relegated to the sphere of the utilitarian, even of the frankly deceptive (the “fakes”); they held little interest for esthetes, with a single exception: that of archaic bronzes, which I shall be dealing with later since they fall within the scope of an overall reflection on history, ritual, and the foundations of the state. Now the latter, like the bases of painting, flow from an original cultural context, the elements of which that are most resistant to comparison are language and writing.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 46 , Issue 183 , September 1998 , pp. 7 - 23
Copyright
Copyright © 1998 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

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References

Notes

1. See Vincent Durand-Dastès, "Disputes dans la maison de Cang Jie. Le regain des querelles idéologiques sur l'écriture chinoise dans la presse et l'édition de Chine populaire," Revue bibliographique de sinologie (1998), pp. 329-344.

2. See the recent work by James Cahill, The Painter's Practice: How Artists Lived and Worked in Traditional China (New York, Columbia University Press, 1994).

3. Danielle Elisseeff, "Le rapport homme/animal. Quelques vérités premières à la source des croyances chinoises," in Boris Cyrulnik (ed.), Si les lions pou vaient parler… Essais dur la condition animale (Paris, Gallimard, 1998), pp. 1476- 1485.

4. François Cheng, Souffle-Esprit: Textes théoriques sur l'art pictural (Paris, Seuil, 1989).

5. Karine Chemla (ed.), "La Liste," Extrême-Orient/Extrême Occident, 14 (1992).

6. The word xian corresponds to two characters: the first, including the key of man, refers to an image graphically faithful to its model, which, according to the ancient texts, corresponds to a ritual image; the second, lacking the key of man, is often rendered by "symbol."

7. Anne Cheng, Histoire de la pensée chinoise (Paris, Seuil, 1997), p. 342.

8. Craig Clunas, Pictures and Visuality in Early Modern China (London, Reaktion Books, 1997).

9. See Zhang Yanyuan (810?-880?): "It is not the unfinished one should distrust, but rather the finished, since the unfinished does not mean the unaccom plished" (quoted in French translation by Yolaine Escande, Guo Ruoxu: Notes sur ce que j'ai vu et entendu en peinture (Brussels, La Lettre Volée, 1994), p. 19.

10. Kathlyn Liscomb, "The Power of Quiet Sitting at Night: Shen Zhou's (1427- 1509) ‘Night Vigil'," Monumenta Serica, 43 (1995), pp. 381-403.

11. On the distinction between "photographic" painting and "visual equivalent" painting, see Valerie Hansen, "The Mystery of the Qingming Scroll and Its Subject: The Case Against Kaifeng," Journal of Sung-Yuan Studies, 26 (1996), pp.183-200.

12. Nicole Vandier-Nicolas, Le Hua-che de Mi Fou (1051-1107), ou le Carnet d'un connoisseur à l'époque des Song du Nord (Paris, PUF, 1964). Mi Fu constantly classifies the paintings into two big categories: the "authentics" and the "copies," good or bad, but he never says on what criteria he is basing his judgment, other than habit for someone who like him was brought up sur rounded by ancient and modern paintings in a rich family of collectors. As for the famous theorist Xie He (4th century), he wrote bluntly that "transmitting without creating is not the best of things for a painter" (William Reynolds Beal Acker, Some T'ang and Pre-T'ang Texts on Chinese Painting, Leyden, Brill, 1954, p. xl).

13. On the enhanced value (or lack of it) of the written in India and the Far East, and the effects flowing from it, see Viviane Alleton (ed.), Paroles à dire, paroles à écrire: Inde, Chine, Japon (Paris, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, 1977).

14. See, for example, the treatise by Shitao (1641-1719?) translated by Pierre Ryck mans, Les Propos sur la peinture de Shitao: Traduction et commentaire pour servir à l'étude terminologique et esthétique des théories chinoises de la peinture (Brussels, Institut Belge des Hautes Études Chinoises, 1970; new edition, Paris, Her mann, 1984).

15. John Hay (ed.), Boundaries in China (London, Reaktion Books, 1994); see espe cially John Hay's own contribution, "Boundaries and Surfaces of Self and Desire in Yuan Painting," pp. 124-170.

16. Yu Zhonghang, "Yun Shouping Wang Shigu hezuo shihuace [An Album of Paintings and Poetry By Yun Shouping and Wang Shigu; in Chinese]," Wenwu, 1 (1996), pp. 81-89).

17. Gao Jianping, The Expressive Art in Chinese Art: From Calligraphy to Painting. Uppsala, Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 1996).

18. Nicole Vandier-Nicolas, op. cit., pp. 154-155.

19. Wu Hung, The Double Screen: Medium and Representation in Chinese Painting. (London, Reaktion Books, 1996).

20. Peter C. Sturman, "In the Realm of Naturalness: Problems of Self-Imaging by the Northern Sung Literati," in Maxwell K. Hearn and Judith G. Smith (eds.), Arts of the Sung and Yüan (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1996), pp. 165-185.

21. Sewall Oertling, Painting and Calligraphy in the Wu-tsa-tsu: Conservative Aes thetics in Seventeenth-Century China (Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Cen ter for Chinese Studies, 1997).

22. Nicole Vandier-Nicolas, op. cit., p. 155.

23. Hua Rende, "Ping tiexue yu beixue [Considerations on the Study of Manu scripts and the Study of Steles; in Chinese]," Shufa yanjiu, 1 (1996), pp. 12-21.

24. Julia K. Murray, "Illustrations of the Life of Confucius: Their Evolution, Function and Significance in Late Ming China," Artibus Asiae, 57,1-2 (1997), pp. 73-134.

25. On the history of publishing in China and the vigorous development of illus trated editions under the Ming dynasty, see Michela Bussotti, "General Sur vey of the Latest Studies in Western Languages on the History of Publishing in China," Revue bibliographique de sinologie (1998), pp. 53-68.

26. Julia K. Murray, "Water Under a Bridge: Further Thoughts on the Qingming Scrolls," Journal of Sung-Yuan Studies, 27 (1997), pp. 99-107.

27. Craig Clunas, op. cit., pp. 25-76.

28. William P. Alford, To Steal a Book Is an Elegant Offence: Intellectual Property Law in Chinese Civilization (Stanford, CA, Stanford University Press, 1995).

29. Vadime Elisseeff, Bronzes archaïques chinois au Musée Cernuschi /Archaic Chinese Bronzes (Paris, L'Asiathèque, 1977).

30. Michel Cartier, Danielle Elisseeff, Georges Métailié (eds.), "Les animaux dans la culture," Anthropozoologica, 18 (1993).

31. On the market value of paintings and calligraphies, and for a critical examina tion of the received ideas surrounding them, see the iconoclastic article by Yolaine Escande, "Classements et évaluations à partir du Shuduan (Critères de la calligraphie) de Zhang Huaiguan," Études chinoises, 16, 2 (1997), pp. 39-113.