Kaikodo Journal V Autumn 1997

Among Flora & Fauna

Corresponding to the exhibition held between September 18 and October 11, 1997. 45 early Chinese and Japanese paintings; 45 early Chinese and Korean objects (90 color plates). Preface by Howard Rogers. 396 pages.

Includes the essays:
Richard Barnhart, James Cahill, Maxwell Hearn, Stephen Little, and Charles Mason:
    “The Tu Chin Correspondence, 1994-95”
Howard Rogers:
    “Second Thoughts on Multiple Recensions”
Joseph P. McDermott:
    “The Art of Making a Living in Sixteenth Century China”

Several of the problems faced by all collectors, 
connoisseurs, and scholars of Chinese painting are 
illumined if not conclusively solved in a series of 
letters exchanged among a number of renowned professionals in our field of Asian Art.  Richard Barnhart, James 
Cahill, Maxwell Hearn, Steven Little, and Charles 
Mason deal with multiple recensions of the 
same composition in Chinese painting.  The letters are not published 
here in full but were abridged so as to preserve 
the full context of the sometimes highly-charged 
arguments. Readers will be struck by the varying 
conclusions that can be and are drawn from the 
same basic set of visual facts and this in turn should 
encourage us all to examine our own beliefs on the 
relationships obtaining between aesthetic quality, 
verisimilitude, spontaneous expressiveness, and 
authenticity.

During the short period of time that has elapsed 
since our Spring 1997 exhibition, a startling number of 
other versions of one of the paintings in that show 
have come to light, making the ideas discussed in 
the letters of more than passing interest to us. 
Additional historical material was thus gathered 
and is presented here after the letters in an essay by Howard Rogers on 
the range of circumstances in which multiple ver
sions of the same painting could come into being.

Implicit in some of the arguments raised especially in the letters are assumptions about the basic 
factors that governed artistic production during the 
middle Ming period. An examination of one of the 
most important of these, the economic context in 
which many Suzhou literati lived and worked, is 
made in an essay by Joseph P. McDermott, Fellow 
of St. John’s College at Cambridge University. Professor McDermott, who collects as well as studies Chinese painting, notes how changing economic 
circumstances led to a commercialization of the 
Suchou literati style, especially in the small-scale 
format of fans, and suggests how, in the 17th cen
tury, Dong Qichang and other Songjiang literati responded to that crisis in values.