Review

Reviewed Work(s): Boundaries of the Self: Chinese Portraits, 1600—1900 by Richard

Vinograd
Review by: Susan Bush
Source: China Review International, Vol. 1, No. 1 (SPRING 1994), pp. 265-270
Published by: University of Hawai'i Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23728702
Accessed: 03-04-2017 06:18 UTC

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 Reviews 265

Richard Vinograd. Boundaries of the Self: Chinese Portraits, 1600-1900

Cambridge [England]; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992.

xv, 191 pp. 154 figures, 20 plates. $95.00.

This well-crafted book is a study of Chinese portraiture that far exceeds any pre
vious treatment of the subject, and is guaranteed to change readers’ perceptions
and preconceptions. Moreover, it is a work that effectively illustrates the course
of Chinese cultural history in the Ming and Qing dynasties, and hence should
have a general appeal to scholars in the China field. As contemporary art histori
ans have pointed out, "portraiture did not simply passively mirror other aspects
of culture but actively participated in the construction of self-awareness and self
image" (p. 29). Thus portraiture, commonly visualized by both China specialists
and amateurs as the traditional format of the ancestral portrait, is reinterpreted
by Vinograd as an expressive art form of central importance in Chinese cultural
development. Such an emphasis is possible because the text deals mainly with the
later periods of Chinese art and focuses on artists’ portraits and self-portraits in
particular. And representations of these figures serve as a kind of visual history of

successive stages of artistic culture from roughly 1500 on as it moved from Suzhou

to Shanghai. Finally, the status of portraiture is elevated through rereadings of

specific images in social, literary, and psychological contexts, and \%iograd makes
use of in-depth art-historical analysis inspired by recent literary criticism. Such
approaches are not always easily digestible, and the text is heavily weighted with
interpretation: One is forced to progress slowly through it, which fosters the ab
sorption of meaning. And by the end of the book one does believe Vinograd's in
troductory comment that new areas of research have opened up for him and oth
ers during the course of their study of Chinese portraiture.
As for the content, the general outline is chronological, since the first chap
ter deals with pre-Ming portraiture while introducing some concepts, myths, and
types of the genre, and the second, third, and fourth discuss portraits of var-ious
artists of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, respectively. The
well-crafted aspect of the text is exemplified by the amount of material intro

copyright 1994
duced in the first chapter that serves as a point of reference later on. For example,

by University of underlying concepts that endure to modern times are brought out by comparing
HawaiH Press a Qing woodblock illustration of portrait head features, similar to a Tang

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266 China Review International: Vol. i, No. 1, Spring 1994

physiognomic diagram, with a Ren Bonian head painted in 1884 (figs. 3,4). Vari
ous types of portraits discussed in the first chapter, such as the scholar in a land
scape setting (figs. 10,14), are the source for more sophisticated later versions. In
general the illustrations are well chosen and well spaced in the text for easy view
ing. The first chapter also deals with a wide range of portraiture that is not cov
ered in detail elsewhere, commenting on ancestral images and their social con
text. Indeed, it begins: "Portraiture is grounded in social practices having to do
with rituals of commemoration and claims of status or identity that are large-ly
public” (p. 1). And one might add that these identities, whether religious or his
torical, were generally conveyed through conventional types. However, as
Vinograd's title indicates, he is primarily interested in the more intimate portraits of
living figures that resonate with some awareness of "Boundaries of the Self."
"Introduction: Effigy, Emblem, and Event in Chinese Portraiture” is the
heading of the first chapter, and the alliterative three “Es” recur in the central
subheading. (Alliteration calls attention to itself in this chapter, which contains a
previous subheading of "Concepts, Categories, and Conventions" as well as two
subsections labeled "Surface and Structure" and "Public and Private Portraits")

As one might expect, an effigy is commonly an ancestral portrait, but it could

also be a Buddhist portrait statue, a commemorative image that often conveys a
sense of realism through conventions by relying on familiarity and at times on
overtones of magic. The emblematic portrait expresses individuality in a variety
of cultural roles, commonly surrounding the subject by significant objects or
props of status recognizable to contemporary viewers. The "Event" is not a dis
tinct type of portraiture like the first two (hence the artificiality of the heading),
but rather refers to the social or historical nexus of a specific portrait, including
negotiations between artist and patron/sitter and reinterpretations of the subject
by later writers. Because of the Chinese practice of inscribing images of impor
tant figures, the portrait event plays a significant role in Ming and Qing painting.
Chinese writings on portraiture in painting texts and albums or popular litera
ture are covered in less than five pages, stressing the early concept that accurate
representation was important for the political order and later stories of dream
images related to Buddhist shadow-reflections. The chapter concludes with a sur
vey of early Chinese portraiture that touches on the most important examples,
particularly those that provide models for later portraitists, such as Guanxiu's
grotesque lohans (fig. 12) and a variety of scholars in a garden setting.
Thus the foundations are prepared for the main line of development first
treated in the second chapter, "Boundaries of the Self: Images of the Artist in Sev
enteenth-Century Portraiture." An anonymous portrait of the Suzhou scholar
painter Shen Zhou (1427-1509) with a poem on it by the subject brings up the
topic of the low status of portraitists up to the later Ming, when specialists in the
genre did consort with contemporary literati. Boundaries are appropriately men
tioned in connection with Chen Hongshou (1598-1652), who painted both as a

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 Reviews 267

scholar and as a professional and was inspired by both literati and popular mod
els. Thus he copied engravings of moral paragons done in Tang or Song styles
but also did popular woodblock prints of playing cards showing historical figures
in exaggerated poses. A literary gathering (fig. 16)，where his contemporaries ap
pear in past roles, denies simple identification by emphasizing a split between art
and reality and making the focus of group interest differ from the viewer's focus.
His self-portraits in particular exhibit a painful self-awareness, and place isolated
figures against more overtly expressive settings in the emblematic mode of por
traiture. Chen's sophisticated use of past formulas to provide dark undertones of
dissoluteness or disillusion is far more sophisticated than the run of late Ming li
terati or professional portraitists.
In late Ming to early Qing times, Zheng Jing (1564-1647) practiced in Fujian
and Nanjing as the leading portraitist. European influence is likely to account for
the slight coloring and shading that model his heads, and is particularly evident
in a striking 1622 painting of Zhang Qingzi (fig. 26)，where the robe is done in
opaque white and â crossed leg hints at contraposto. A professional artist from
Yangzhou，Yu Zhiding (1647 to after 1716), encapsulated his subjects in anecdotal
portraits done in a wide variety of styles. A work of 1700 that appeals to a mod
ern sense of the ridiculous is his "Portrait of Wang Shizhen Supervising the Re
lease of a Silver Pheasant" (fig. 26). Done in the style of a Tang Yin handscroll, it
shows the impassive, square-faced scholar seated aslant on a heavy settee remi
niscent of Victorian furniture and quite indifferent to the action at the left where

a newly freed bird heads towards the moon in the misty vastness of the Southern
Song.
Not known as portraitists but as landscapists or painters of birds and ani
mals, or flowers and bamboo, the individualist monks of the early Qing provide
several highly analyzable images of selfhood such as Kuncan's "A Monk Meditat
ing in a Tree” of 1662, with â fierce inscription not transcribed here; Shi'tao's
"Self-Portrait Supervising the Planting of Pines” of 1674; and the "Portrait of
Geshan" (Bada Shanren) by Huang Anping, inscribed in 1674 (figs. 32,36,39). In
the latter, the slight figure of Bada Shanren is overborne by surrounding inscrip
tions, some by the subject and others by friends. It is thus our first example of

the portrait hanging scroll as an "extended event” with light shed on the subject's
identity over time. An obscure poem, presumed to be inscribed by Bada and to
refer to his place in the cosmos and in the Ming imperial lineage, ends: "Above
shape, below shape, / One dot in the round"(p. 67). Vinograd notes that "Bada
was at home with written words, which he used as a kind of refuge or disguise"

(p. 66), and the image of Geshan can also be seen as a refuge/disguise for the
rootless monk, a dot in the void. However, this interpretation is only conceivable
because of background information known about Bada and because of inscrip
tions on the scroll. The painted image itself does not carry the weight of commu
nication but rather exemplifies the noncommunication of a hidden self.

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268 China Review International: Vol. i, No. l, Spring 1994

The third chapter, on “Role and Representation in Eighteenth-Century Por

traiture," stresses ambiguities in social roles that may reflect changes in patronage
and in society. Against a background of disillusionment, cultural fictions come
into play more frequently as vehicles for portraiture roles. Thus the Qianlong
Emperor is portrayed both as â Daoist priest and as a Buddhist deity (figs. 41,
42), and scholar-officials like Gao Fenghan (1683-1749) project their images onto
dangerous ground as they face career pressures (figs. 45,47). Portraits by the
Yangzhou "eccentric" Luo Ping (1733-1799) and by his teacher Jin Nong (1687
1764) make up the bulk of the chapter (pp. 84-126). This section is introduced by
a meditation on Luo Ping's portrait of the poet Yuan Mei (1716-1798) rejected by
the subject in 1781 but returned to Luo for safekeeping. This work is hence a
prime example of the portrait as event and has inspired much commentary. In
deed, here we are aware that Vinograd is elaborating on the comments of his
teacher James Cahill, who previously had tp set Arthur Waley straight about
which portrait of Yuan Mei was in question. Moreover, Cahill has revised his in
terpretation of the portrait in a recent book, and the work itself, in a final twist,
is the only illustration in Vinograd、book to be printed in reverse (pi. 12; cf. pl. 12
detail). Obviously the portrait as event can take on a life of its own.
Vinograd analyzes the event under the main heading "Missing Persons: The
Portrait Situation,” with various overtly psychological subheadings including:
"Misrepresentations and Rejections, Balances of Power, Portrayal and Betrayal."
Some points made are that the artist, usually a "missing person” in the portrait
situation, is now almost on a par with the sitter, despite the fact that the painting
is unsigned, and that Yuan Mei is also missing here. In accepting that his family
take the picture not to be him, he questions the identity given by Luo and opens
up the possibility of a multiplicity of selves. As for betrayal, linked so euphoni
ously with portrayal, Yuan's inscription is said to imply that Luo betrayed his
proper role as portraitist, and thus betrayed or undermined the self of his subject.
Betrayal, undermining, depersonalization, and slyness, or even hostility, are
also seen by Vinograd in Luo Ping's 1760 portrait of his teacher, "Jin Nong's Noon
Nap beneath Banana Palms" (pi. 13). In it, the bearded, bare-chested, potbellied
Jin is shown napping in a chair, effectively back-to-back with a boy servant who
dozes against the trunks of the sheltering palms. While Jin himself condones be
ing caught off guard with an inscribed reference to Zhuangzi's butterfly dream,

an inscription of 1762 by his friend Ding Jing (1695-1765), possibly inspired by

Jin's seminudity, mentions his free attitude toward homosexual affairs. On the
other hand, a later inscription is phrased in Buddhist terms, appropriate since
both Jin and Luo were Buddhist laymen and since banana palms might symbol
ize the soul, whether insubstantial, decaying or enduring. Furthermore, other
images of and by Jin depict him as a Buddhist layman, a role he may have as
sumed for self-justification (figs. 57,63). And Luo may have thought the napping
Jin a reincarnation of Budai, the bare-chested, potbellied avatar of Maitreya, as

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 Reviews 269

he so designated a similar figure in his 1763 "Portrait of the Chan Buddhist Mas
ter Lan’’ (pl. 15), where Vinograd discerns "a blending of identities” deeper than
the common costume portrait (p. 101).
More than wordplay is implied when he notes that Luo Ping, who served as
a "ghostpainter" for his teacher Jin Nong, later became famous as a painter of
ghosts. (His jade-green pupils supposedly allowed him to see ghosts in daylight.)
In a Buddhist context, as Vinograd suggests, Luo may have shared the conception
of Guanxiu, his model for grotesque lohan poses, that a person was "a host for
reincarnate beings and dream identities” (p. 109). Jin was also portrayed by Luo
seated in weird lohan guise reading a Sanskrit text, as was his friend, the anti
quarian Ding Jing, who is shown in profile with a pictographic eye looking at his
own type of seal-script writing (figs. 58,60). Presumably these were the two
strange paintings of his elders kept by Luo that were mentioned in Yuan Mei's in
scription on the rejected portrait. This section is the richest in analyzable mate
rial because of the teacher-pupil tie between Jin and Luo and the links with
members of Jin's circle, Ding Jing and Yuan Mei, as well as the number of por
traits and self-portraits generated by Jin and Luo. Yes, there is a 1780 self-portrait
of Luo in the unconvincing guise of a rustic fisherman, and he does indeed look
capable of anything (fig. 65). His paintings, like Qianlong as Bodhisattva, are said
to reveal the insecurities of later Qing art, in which portraits are justified only by
"communion with or inhabitation by a predecessor" (p. 126).
The fourth chapter, "Portrait and Position in Nineteenth-Century Shang
hai," is more directly concerned with the social status of artist and patron. It
deals only with two painters, both decidedly common in origin, Ren Xiong
(1823-1857) and Ren Bonian (1840-1895), and the first is represented only with a
self-portrait (pi. 17) and the painting of Ding Wenwei (fig. 66) (details of these
two works appear on the front and back of the book jacket). Noteworthy here is
the fact that military man Ding is so finely conceived, after a printed bust por
trait of Jin Nong, and that Ren Xiong, who sympathized with the Taiping rebels,
portrays himself as an angry man in swordsman's pose, with drapery outlined in
slashing strokes and heroic stature conveyed by enlarged legs. Ren Bonian, who is
said to have forged Ren Xiong's work before the latter took him on as a pupil,
was â successful Shanghai professional. Still, Bonian was sought out by the schol
arly Wu Changshi (1844-1927)，who studied with him and was often painted by
him, most notably as a bare-chested and pot-bellied sensualist under banana
palms (pi. 14) but also as in "Portrait of the Poverty-Stricken Military Official”
(pi. 18). Whether in or out of office, Wu ChangshTs portrait inscriptions mock
himself and boldly criticize his times. Social positionings of the period were also
caught in photographs by John Thompson (1837-1923) (figs. 69,73,75) that
Vinograd compares with certain Ren Bonian paintings. Although Bonian used
Western modeling techniques as well as the side and frontal facial views often
seen in photographs, he continued to outline drapery in calligraphic strokes and

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 China Review International: Vol. i, No. 1, Spring 1994

to insert expressive landscape settings. Somehow the stated fact that he was
addicted to opium can influence one's perception of his faces: intense and yet
detached, they project over emblematic rocks or trees, or squirming animals like
an angry cat or a shrieking dog about to be butchered. With this last image in the
book (fig. 85), we realize the distance traveled from the ordered world of tradi
tional Chinese culture.

As might be expected, this substantial book is well equiped with scholarly

endnotes, glossary of characters, bibliography, and index. What needs to be said
in conclusion? Possibly something along the lines of advice for the author's fu
ture writings. A sentence from the section on Yuan Mei's portrait raises certain
issues. It reads: "The portrait set in motion a process that became, eventually, lit
erally self-destructive in the intensity of its analysis, but the image itself seems
unexceptional, and almost everything of interest presented up to this point has
been extraneous to the pictorial image as such” (p. 90). The analysis is, of course,
the author's own, and perhaps for the reader's sake, if not for himself, he should
keep in mind that it is not an uncontrollable process. Also he might note that in
terpretations can easily be projected onto paintings (now called texts), and this is
true even in the case of later Chinese paintings often so encumbered with written
texts. Furthermore, there is a danger in subtlety if the material dealt with is in
cluded for the sake of complete coverage, as may have been the case with some of
the less well-known Ming and Qing works that do not warrant in-depth analysis.
Occasionally psychological "intro-spection” (to coin a term) may seem to give
way to overt speculation in the treatment of less-famous subjects (for example,
fig. 25), where a detailed biographical context is not given. Finally, in matters of
style, some simplicity in sentence structure is not necessarily bad (and notice that
alliteration).

Susan Bush

Fairbank Center, Harvard University

James Cahill. The Painter's Practice: How Artists Lived

and Worked in Traditional China.

New York: Columbia University Press, 1994.180 pp. 119 illustrations.

To review the work of James Cahill after considering that of his student, Richard

Vinograd, is rather like turning to the expansive Sung poet Su Shih after reading
his more meticulous follower, Huang T'ing-chien. As the author of innumerable

copyright 1994 books on Chinese painting, Cahill has something of Su Shih's swiftness of mind
\yy university of and facility of expression, which enables him to cover and condense a great deal
Hawai'i Press of material (see, for example, the last page and a half of his i960 Chinese Painting,

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