Kaikodo Journal XII Autumn 1999

Scholarly Premises

Corresponding to the exhibition held between September 15 and October 13, 1999. 40 Chinese and Japanese paintings; 31 Chinese and Korean objects (71 color plates). Preface by Howard Rogers. 338 pages.

Includes the essays:
Sarah Handler:
    “At a Clean Table by a Bright Window:
    Furnishings in a Chinese Scholar’s Retreat”
Richard Edwards:
    “Thru Snow Mountains at Dawn, Ma Yuan’s Exceptional Fuel Gatherer”
Hiram W. Woodward, Jr.:
    “Is There a Shussan Shaka in the Ryoan-ji Garden?”
Arnold Chang:
    “‘The Small Manifested in the Large,’ ‘The Large Manifested in the Small’: the
    Connoisseurship of Chinese Painting”
Howard Rogers:
    “Tung Yuan Chronicle”

The first essay is by Dr. Richard Edwards, Professor 
Emeritus at the University of Michigan and one 
of a handful of scholars to be credited with 
creating the field of Chinese painting studies in 
the United States. Professor Edwards has long 
been concerned with painting of the Southern 
Song era.  His monograph on Li Di (Li Ti) was 
published in 1967 and his present essay on Ma 
Yuan hints at the rich harvest garnered during 
those years of research and thought. 
“Is There a Shussan Shaka in the Ryoan-ji 
Garden?” by Dr. Hiram W Woodward, then 
Curator of Asian Art at the Walters Art Gallery, 
poses a simple question that leads the author 
into fascinating speculations about inherent and 
significant meaning in structural patterns of 
paintings, gardens and temples. In this case the 
intentions of artists active in different media, 
countries, and periods of time are found to be 
linked by the shared religious beliefs manifested 
in the forms of their creations. The forms of art 
are also the focus of the study by Dr. Sarah Handler, formerly curator of the Museum of 
Classical Chinese Furniture in Renaissance, 
California. A specialist in furniture and the 
decorative arts as well as painting, Dr. Handler 
examines the roles played in literati culture by 
certain art-forms-the necessities and the 
playthings, as she terms them-as well as the 
social and cultural values assigned to these 
objects by the people who used and enjoyed 
them. Arnold Chang takes the widest view possible 
in his essay on connoisseurship, finding 
significant differences in approach between 
art-historian/connoisseurs on the one hand and 
painter/connoisseurs on the other, the former 
trained mainly in academic settings in the West, 
the latter in traditional master-disciple 
relationships in China. While arguing that both 
approaches, if applied in proper fashion with 
appropriate standards, should lead to identical 
conclusions, Arnold also finds that the differing 
emphases at times can lead to strikingly different 
results. Howard Rogers’s essay on Dong Yuan (Tung Yuan) is intended to 
suggest parameters of history and art-history by 
which the artist’s achievements may be 
measured and evaluated more precisely. Early 
source material is introduced in the belief that 
such evidence can be of great assistance when 
making critical judgments on any painter and 
his legacy in art.