|
 |
     |
 |
Reinventing the Past: Antiquarianism in East Asian Art and Visual Culture—Part 2 |
< Back Imitation and Reference in China's Pictorial Tradition Martin J. Powers University of Michigan In the post-Renaisance European tradition, "imitation" was the key frame within which an artists work was situated in relation to the canon. Some centuries earlier, critics in early modern China had adopted a comparable framework, establishing a canon and articulating an artist’s style in relation to it. The two systems of evaluation shared a common artistic, historical, and social problematic, but differed markedly in terms of the role assigned to the past, and this difference emerges most clearly in the key terms Chinese critics employed to define that role, fa 法and fang仿. The problem is ripe for comparative analysis, but colleagues in Euramerican Studies have largely ignored it, while within the field of Chinese Studies the difference is obscured in part because the Platonic term “imitation” continues to serve as a translation for fa and fang. This essay attempts to clarify the special roles assigned to the past within China's Classical tradition, not with the aim of essentializing differences between a putative "East" and "West" but, on the contrary, in order to disaggregate Classicism as a phenomenon from its traditional role in exclusionist accounts of "Western" art. The rhetorical role of the past in artistic discourses is closely tied—not to national character—but to the evolution of the art market. As Joseph Alsop once noted, art collecting is rare in history and across the globe. He argued, in fact, that the practice was originally invented only twice in world history, once in ancient Greece, and once in early China. All other art collecting traditions derive from these two. Of course art collecting requires a set of standards, a canon of works recognized as exemplary. A canon, in turn, requires a self-reflexive awareness of the past, which is to say, a tradition of writing histories. This practice, also, was common to Classical Europe and China. It was these two practices—history writing and art collecting—which allowed societies at two ends of the Eurasian landmass to create their own, distinctive Classical traditions. Although nationalist and Orientalist discourses have favored exclusionist narratives of European Classicism, it should be evident that what sinologists refer to in as "archaism" is no different historically than what is commonly called Classicism in Europe, and I will treat the two as local instances of a single phenomenon. Considered within a comparatist framework, Classicism can be seen as playing a distinctive role in the evolution of early modern society, East and West, as Classicism created a new medium for negotiating social norms. Classical authority, in fact, creates a secular field of moral authority, a discursive space in which elites can debate or promote novel social values without violating religious taboos. Clearly the existence of such a space is essential if non-aristocratic individuals—a broader public—can participate in public debate over core social values. This is why debates over the Classical tradition become more intense in both China and Europe after the emergence of early modern institutions such as print culture and an open art market. While Classicism offers a more flexible field for debate than religion, its role is to establish stable parameters for social values. For this reason, Classicism offered to every artist, writer, and potentate two basic alternatives: (1) one could follow closely the standard model or (2) one could deviate from it. Unlike religion, Classicism leaves scope for personal deviation, but the range of that deviation is limited by Classical precedent. For this reason both Chinese and European critics developed special terms for mediating the relationship between individual artistic practice and the Classical past. In early modern Europe "imitation" was perhaps the most important term for this purpose; in China, fa and fang performed this function. In both China and Europe, those who controlled the ranking of Classical standards in effect controlled social norms. As long as it was the courts and aristocracy who determined what counted as the exemplary past, then debates over Classical standards served mainly as a vehicle for competing sets of aristocratic values, e.g. Nanbeichao China and Renaissance Europe. But once the art market embraced the general public, groups of middling-status individuals could promote alternative values through the medium of public opinion. This liberation from what Bourdieu calls "ecclesiastical and aristocratic tutelage" marks a watershed in the history of individual assertion. From this point on the power to influence social norms gradually spread from a relatively homogenous group of hereditary elites to ever-wider and more variegated social units, the “autonomous” groups to which Bourdieu has devoted much attention. By Qing times in China, we find assertions over artistic norms based upon completely idiosyncratic views, a practice which required the rejection of Classical standards. This paper attempts to trace how that shift from small, homogenous groups to loosely-organized individuals can be traced in the changing rhetorical uses of the past. |
