Chinese Seals

Part 1: The oldest Daoist seals appear in the Eastern Han dynasty, growing in importance and complexity throughout the middle ages. In particular, the so-called Yue Seal had an enduring reputation in Daoist healing and exorcism, its transmission , reproduction, and transformation ranging from the Han to the Tang and Song. The preferred materials for Daoist seal-making were first stone and metal, and later wood notably wood struck by lightning. Various ritual rules applied to carving, including selecting auspicious dates and properly venerating and placing the seal.

Part 2: This second part of the study of Daoist seals focuses on types, building on Wang Yucheng’s earlier studies. They come in four: 1) seal script; 2) heavenly scripts; 3) talisman-inspired; and 4) graphic. The underlining criterion is the Daoist strategy of image-making: it sheds light on the interlocking relationship of Daoist texts and images. The first type is purely script-based, while the fourth is purely graphic. Between the two is the core zone of Daoist visual culture as it blends image with text.

This second part of the study of Daoist seals focuses on types, building on Wang Yucheng’s earlier studies. They come in four: 1) seal script; 2) heavenly scripts; 3) talisman-inspired; and 4) graphic. The underlining criterion is the Daoist strategy of image-making: it sheds light on the interlocking relationship of Daoist texts and images. The first type is purely script-based, while the fourth is purely graphic. Between the two is the core zone of Daoist visual culture as it blends image with text.

This book contains a photographic essay entitled 'Through the Half-opened Door' is composed of excerpts from my SOAS PhD thesis on 2nd-3rd century AD cave burials in Southwest China.

The publication explores parallel paths of research in archaeology and contemporary art.

The publication will be followed by an exhibit entitled  'Lithic Impressions: From Stone to Ink on Paper', an exhibition cum workshop to be held in Palazzo Zen (EMGdotART Foundation), Venice, from October to December 2018.

Content:
1. Lithic Impressions
2.Through the Half-Opened Door
3. Medieval Epigraphy
4. Contemporary Practice


Foreword:

Lithic Impressions: From Stone to Ink on Paper is a collaboration between archaeologist Lia Wei and art historian Zhang Qiang. The project departed from the wish to explore the toolkit of the Chinese antiquarian, especially the technique of full scale replication by rubbing, and to apply its techniques to the stones of Venice.

Lithic Impressions stems from earlier collaborative experiments in contemporary ink art and art historical research between Lia Wei and Zhang Qiang. Two major experiments in calligraphic abstraction,  entitled ‘Biface Graphy’ and ‘Open Scroll’, were led between the years 2009-2018. In parallel to the gradual growth of this artistic collanboration, between the years 2009 and 2017, Lia Wei and Zhang Qiang have investigated as series of sites dated between the 2nd and the 6th centuries CE, a troubled and culturally fertile period in Chinese history located between the great Han and Tang Empires, often referred to as ‘medieval China’. Two type of sites were investigated: the Eastern Han period cliff tombs (2nd to 3rd century CE) in the canyon and plateau landscape of Sichuan province and the monumental epigraphy of the monk and epigrapher Seng’An Daoyi (562-580 CE) in the mountaineous hinterland of Shandong province. The itineraries covered by the duo’s investigations thus do the splits between the grey limestones of Northeast China and the red sandstone of the Southwest.

The duo’s survey both revisited known funerary or epigraphic sites, which are mostly abandoned to decay, and discovered previously unrecorded sites. The technique of rubbing was used to replicate sculptural or architectural elements as well as calligraphic or pictorial traces. Seng’An Daoyi’s epigraphic production, rediscovered in 1996, exploits the natural shape of limestone cliffs in an unprecedented sculptural manner, which we can relate to no followers in the history of calligraphy. Eastern Han period rock-cut reliefs in sandstone reproduce wooden architectural shapes with virtuoso high and low relief effects, the soft and fine-grained rock surface also being a lively record of chisel marks. Both examples of stone working are challenging to replicate into rubbings, and stand on the frontier between two-dimensional and three-dimensional representation. By selecting cultural traces of times and areas of ideological, political, religious and artistic experimentation, Lia Wei and Zhang Qiang hoped to both cast a fresh eye on mainstream history and on the tools traditionally used to investigate and record the Past. Mapping frontier landscapes also meant exploring disciplinary boundaries, and producing an output that would remain in-between existing fields of practice and knowledge.

The rubbing process of both Northern Qi and Eastern Han remains by Lia Wei and Zhang Qiang was recorded by photographer and film maker Marie-Françoise Plissart in collaboration with anthropologist and sinologist Françoise Lauwaert in the years 2010 and 2011. The rubbings themselves form a corpus still awaiting publication, for which this exhibition represents a foretaste. Apart from the photographic and video report of survey and the rubbings themselves, research resulted in two monographs: one is devoted to the figure of Seng’An Daoyi and the other one to the funerary landscape of the Upper Yangzi River course, on the Han imperial frontier.

To cast a Chinese antiquarian eye on the history of stone carving in Venice, a workshop involving the production of rubbings from Venitian stone reliefs dating from Roman times to the 18th century will be held in the three days following the opening of the exhibit, and will lead to their subsequent display in China. Departing from the exhibit in Palazzo Zen, Venice, Lithic Impressions will travel to Belgium at the occasion of the Ink Art Week in Brussels (6-11th May 2019), where one day will be dedicated to rubbing and antiquarianism.

A series of small Chinese porcelain seals were discovered in Ireland during the late 18th and first half of 19th centuries. Allegedly, the finds came from all over the country from completely unrelated sites, such as an orchard, a bog, or a river bed. Although several sinologists mentioned that these artefacts were probably modern, the seals nevertheless became used in the intellectual propaganda trying to connect Ireland with the ancient East and explain the origins of the Irish people.

In this paper, I will analyze two sets of album leaves by Gong Xian in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in order to investigate how he used painting, calligraphy and seals to achieve the desired overall visual effect in album-leaf compositions. As a painting format, album leaves allows more opportunity for the direct interplay between painting, calligraphy and seals compared to hanging scrolls or handscrolls. Different from other formats, where the viewer has to move his/her vision around on a large hanging scroll or roll (and unroll) sections of a long handscroll, each album leaf is one immediately visible composition. And within this area there is usually a great deal of room left for calligraphy and seals alongside the painting. In addition to exploring the interaction between those three elements in a single composition, I shall suggest that the artist was also concerned about their interaction in between various leaves in an album. When the viewer browses through the leaves in an album or lay out several of them on the table, it becomes clear that the intercorrelation between the leaves was not something that would be left unnoticed by a good artist. Not only was he concerned about the composition on each leaf, but he was also mindful of the dynamics between the leaves in an album. Gong orchestrated painting, calligraphy, poem, and seal as integral components of his art to achieve a balanced and dynamic composition in each leaf and throughout an album. The deliberate usage of seals in Gongs works also indicates that almost a century after Wen Peng elevated seal carving into a gentlemen’s pursuit, seals have been firmly established as a crucial element of literati art by the seventeenth century.

Cette présentation est consacrée à la sigillographie-ou gravure de sceaux-un art souvent considéré mineur, néanmoins central dans l' équilibre des arts du lettré. La fonction contractuelle du sceau, tour-à-tour objet rituel ou de symbole de pouvoir, et son évolution vers l' expression d'une identité personnelle dans le cadre de la tradition lettrée seront évoquées. Pas à pas, cette intervention reprendra ensuite les étapes de la création d'un sceau, depuis la recherche étymologique du caractère, sa manipulation esthétique, la traduction formelle du trait de pinceau en trait de ciseau lors de son transfert sur la pierre, enfin son retour vers le papier. La discussion conclura sur le rôle clef joué par la gravure de sceaux dans la capture, l'appropriation et la réinterprétation des formes du passé par le lettré.