Time Europe, Nov. 20, 2005
The Art Of Power
Three emperors from the Chinese Qing dynasty used the decorative arts to
reinforce their imperial authority. The dazzling results are on display
at London's Royal Academy
BY ANN MORRISON / LONDON

[image] A REGAL POSE: Yongzheng in Taoist guise in one of his "costume
portraits"
Given the western fascination with all things Chinese — from feng shui
to fusion food, from Mandarin collars to the mainland economy — it is
hardly surprising that London's Royal Academy would mount an exhibition
devoted to its art. All the riches of Chinese civilization are on
display at the sumptuous "China: The Three Emperors, 1662-1795" show
until mid-April: artifacts from ancient dynasties, flowing calligraphy,
elaborate scrolls, magnificent dragon-decorated robes, priceless jades
and ancestor paintings that represent the most important Confucian
value, filial piety. In fact, the subjects of this exhibition are a
father, his son and grandson — the Qing Emperors Kangxi, Yongzheng and
Qianlong — who ruled the Middle Kingdom for 133 consecutive years and
expanded China even beyond its present-day borders.

And the trio weren't even Chinese. They were Manchus, hunters and
fishers from north of the Great Wall who successfully vanquished the
crumbling Ming Dynasty in 1644 and were greeted with surprising
resignation by most of their new subjects. How these foreign rulers used
Chinese tradition, culture and ritual to consolidate their vast empire
is a principal theme of the show and is illustrated with 400 objects,
most the Emperors' own treasures, on loan from the Palace Museum in
Beijing's Forbidden City. Some items reveal facets of their
personalities; others are designed to create imperial images that would
promote their subjects' fealty. So important were the artworks in
buttressing the family's right to rule that Qianlong inspected them all
at draft stage.

The Manchus had ousted the last Ming Emperor, whose rule was marked by
financial bankruptcy and internal rebellion. Kangxi was only 7 in 1662
when he assumed the throne from his father, the first Qing Emperor, who
died in a smallpox epidemic. Surviving the contagion (with scars intact,
as portraits show), Kangxi worked skillfully to identify himself with
both his native tribal culture and the scholarly traditions of the
Chinese. Two likenesses, commissioned when he was about 30, demonstrate
his Manchu soldier–Chinese scholar balancing act. A vibrant silk hanging
scroll shows him in Manchu military armor, with crossbow and arrows at
the ready. Like most of his tribe, he was an expert archer — and, as
ruler of a still restive empire, he relished his role as commander in
chief. In the other portrait Kangxi sits at his desk in a simple Chinese
robe, holding a large brush to practice calligraphy, the most prized
Chinese art and one of his favorite pastimes. Though he kept ordinary
Chinese segregated from the ruling Manchus, Kangxi spoke their language
fluently, studied Confucianism daily, and presented himself as the true
Son of Heaven, fitting heir to the Chinese dynasties before him.

Kangxi was a strong and effective leader who ventured throughout the
empire to raise his profile among his subjects and to reinforce his
absolute authority. A 26-m-long hand scroll, The Kangxi Emperor's
Southern Inspection Tour, is a lively record of his 1689 voyage from
Nanjing to Jinshan on the roiling Yangtze River. In the middle of a vast
flotilla of two-masted sailing vessels is the Emperor's ship, identified
by the yellow standard at the stern and the five-clawed dragon on the
side. In a horseshoe-backed chair on the deck, Kangxi sits calmly
stroking his beard.

For all his achievements in scholarship, empire building and propaganda,
the Kangxi Emperor had one major failing. After 60 years in power, he
died without naming an heir among his 20 sons (by various wives, of
course). Competition among the young men was fierce, and the victor, who
took the name Yongzheng, was forced to spend most of his 13 years in
power defending his claim. One remarkable hanging scroll, painted in the
second year of Yongzheng's reign by the Jesuit priest Giuseppe
Castiglione — who had been brought to court by Kangxi and lasted well
into Qianlong's time — can be read as a political piece. Pine, Hawk and
Glossy Ganoderma was commissioned to mark the Emperor's birthday and is
replete with imagery. The pine tree stands for wisdom and long life, and
the ganoderma, also known as lingzhi, is a fungus associated with
immortality. But the majestic, rare white hawk — it dominates the
painting — is the most auspicious symbol, representing a sovereign's
virtue and legitimacy.

Though Yongzheng's reign was short — he may have accidentally poisoned
himself searching for the elixir of life — the art associated with him
is perhaps the most intriguing in the exhibition. One set of hanging
scrolls shows six of the 12 Portraits of the Yongzheng Emperor Enjoying
Himself Throughout the Twelve Months. In all of them, Yongzheng is
portrayed as a Chinese scholar participating in such traditional
activities as playing a qin, a classical stringed instrument, and in
such celebrations as the Lunar New Year festival, where one of his sons
sets off a firecracker. A set of paintings from a small album for
private viewing depicts the Emperor in 13 different guises, from a
Taoist sage to a Mongolian noble to a Westerner, in wig and waistcoat.
Was Yongzheng trying to make the point that he was the embodiment of his
multiethnic empire, or was he just having a bit of fun?

Hongli, Yongzheng's favorite son and Kangxi's most beloved grandson,
became the Qianlong Emperor in 1736 when he was 24. He abdicated 60
years later, not wanting the length of his reign to eclipse that of his
grandfather. During that time, he consolidated the Qing empire,
strengthened the bureaucracy, improved tax collection and amassed one of
the greatest art collections of all time.

Qianlong was a true connoisseur. He not only admired bronzes from
China's earliest dynasties, classical paintings and calligraphy, but he
also wrote about them — sometimes on the works themselves. He stamped
his approval on a piece quite literally, and his seals seem to be
everywhere. For instance, several seals and a colophon mark Spring's
Peaceful Message, a charming double portrait, painted by Castiglione
around 1736, of Qianlong and his father. The older man is handing his
son a sprig of flowering apricot, symbolizing a peaceful transition of
power and wishes for a fruitful reign. Yongzheng did not want his chosen
heir to suffer the questions of legitimacy that he did.

The Royal Academy exhibition is much more than Qing propaganda,
exquisite as it is. There is a large room devoted to literati paintings,
some produced by Ming loyalists protesting foreign rule in subtle works
that speak of isolation, removal or quiet outrage. And many artifacts
demonstrate the three Emperors' fascination with technology from Europe,
like clocks and sextants, and religions from Asia, particularly
Buddhism. In one painting on cloth, Qianlong sits cross-legged in
Buddhist dress, surrounded by religious iconography. He holds the wheel
of teaching — the traditional Buddhist symbol — in his left hand and,
with his right, forms his thumb and forefinger into the classical
discussion mudra, or gesture. The show also documents the gradual
influence of Western art on Chinese painting — mainly Castiglione's
introduction of light and shadow, focal point and perspective. The
Jesuits brought art and science to the Qing court, but didn't make many
converts.

The curators have brilliantly juxtaposed many of the items in the show.
A sedan chair used by Qianlong is placed before an enormous painting,
Imperial Banquet in the Garden of Ten Thousand Trees, in which a similar
chair, borne by 16 eunuchs, ferries Qianlong to a celebration with
Torghut Mongols who kneel before him. A circle framing the portrait of
Qianlong writing calligraphy on an enormous banana leaf is echoed in an
intricate jade carving of a round moon gate — as well as in an
architectural moon gate that separates two rooms in the exhibition. A
display case of ruyi scepters is paired with a hanging scroll, The
Yongzheng Emperor Admiring Flowers, in which that sovereign holds just
such a symbol of power.

Although the Manchus continued to rule China until the last Emperor
abdicated in 1912, the Qing Dynasty declined after the reigns of Kangxi,
Yongzheng and Qianlong. Their weaker successors were humbled by European
powers and never matched the splendor and sophistication their forebears
deployed in marrying art with empire building. The three, shrewd
emperors knew exactly how to make power politics look good. It's a skill
that the resurgent China of today may yet acquire.

http://www.time.com/time/europe/magazine/article/0,13005,901051128-1132776,00.html

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telegraph, 15/11/2005
A beautiful, colourful marriage

The Royal Academy's dazzling new blockbuster explores China's art at a time when the country was forging a new relationship with the West. Richard Dorment reports

In pictures: the Three Emperors 1662-1795
[image] The Pine, Hawk and Glossy Ganoderma, 1723-35, by Lang Shining (Giuseppe Castiglione); hanging scroll, colour on silk
[image] Portrait of the Kangxi Emperor in Court Dress, late Kangxi period (1662-1722), by anonymous court artists; hanging scroll, colour on silk
[image] Decorative flattened flask (bian hu) in the shape of an ancient bronze, Qianlong period (1736-95), made at the Qing court; copper decorated with cloisonne enamel with gilding
[image] Spring’s Peaceful Message, circa 1736, by Lang Shining; hanging scroll, ink and colour on silk
[image] One of 14 album leaves, Yongzheng period (1723-35), by anonymous court artists from Album of the Yongzheng Emperor in Costumes; colour on silk
[image] The Qianlong Emperor Hunting Hare, 1755, by Lang Shining and others
[image] Teapot and cover, Yongzheng period (1723-35) , Jingdezhen, Jiangxi Province; porcelain with monochrome celadon glaze
[image] Blue and white jar with ten thousand 'long life' (shou) characters, Kangxi period (1662-1722), Jingdezhen, Jiangxi Province; porcelain with underglaze cobalt-blue
[image] The Nine Elders of Huichang, 1787; nephrite (green jade) boulder

As you enter the Royal Academy's autumn blockbuster, China: the Three Emperors 1662-1795, you are confronted by near life-sized portraits on silk of the first three rulers of the Qing dynasty: the Kangxi Emperor, who reigned from 1662-1722, the Yongzheng Emperor (1723-1735) and the Qianlong Emperor (1736-1795). All are shown seated and fully frontal, wearing eye-popping court robes of yellow silk elaborately embroidered with flowers and dragons.

[image] Spring's Peaceful Message, a hanging scroll by Giuseppe Castiglione (c 1736)

These curiously deadpan portraits were executed by anonymous court artists according to a set of formal conventions established over centuries. The uniformity of the three poses, the diagrammatic treatment of the costumes and the flattened torsos are all characteristic of Chinese art. But something is different about these three images and it takes a moment or two to realise what it is: the subtle modelling of each vividly realistic face and the use of perspective in depicting the thrones are both pictorial traditions imported from the West.

China: the Three Emperors focuses on the personalities of these very different rulers at the time of China's first extensive encounters with European art and technology. The works on show - dazzling, subtle and occasionally downright hideous - demonstrate the sheer diversity of aesthetic experience and the range of technological innovation that typified art made in the reigns of the three emperors.

The period covered by the exhibition roughly corresponds to the reigns of Louis XIV, Louis XV and Louis XVI in France. Just as the Gobelins factory was established in Paris to produce furnishings for Louis XIV's household, and Louis XV controlled the royal factory for making Sèvres porcelain, so in China the imperial workshops existed to turn out paintings, porcelain, clocks and other luxuries for the emperor and his court.

In the second gallery of this show, we are given some idea of the scale of the lands ruled by the Qing emperors in a series of staggeringly detailed silk hand scrolls, shown in vitrines that extend down most of the length of the gallery.

To see the most beautiful one, depicting the Kangxi Emperor's Southern Tour of Inspection, the viewer starts at one end, with a marshy landscape, then slowly moves down the scroll to "travel" through mountainous terrain and over the Yangzi river. When we finally spot the emperor, he sits calmly enthroned on a vessel flying yellow pennants while wild winds and high waves rage around him.

Apart from the incredible delicacy of the drawing, it's the insignificance of the tiny human figures against the vastness of an endlessly unfolding landscape that is so striking, a sense that to hold all these dominions together, the emperors must have been remarkable men.

Around the walls of this gallery we find large-scale scroll paintings executed by the most brilliant of the many Jesuit artists at the Qing court, the Italian baroque painter Giuseppe Castiglione. Although these are painted in the traditional Chinese technique of colour and ink brushed on to silk, Castiglione uses the Western pictorial devices of foreshortening and perspective, while his figures are modelled in subtle tones of light and dark. Western, too, is the way he shows the emperors as ordinary men doing ordinary things.

Castiglione depicts the Qianlong Emperor shooting deer in a forest, or on New Year's Eve surrounded by his young family. Later in the exhibition we will meet all three emperors depicted in a surprising number of different roles - as military men, Buddhist deities, Daoist priests, scholars, and connoisseurs.

These roles reflect their different personalities. The Kangxi Emperor was a scholar, an austere man who commissioned dictionaries and encyclopaedias, and whose taste in art was for the low-keyed. The Yongzheng Emperor was more of an antiquarian, interested in collecting ancient bronzes, jades and porcelains from the Tang and Song dynasties. And the Qianlong Emperor was simply omnivorous in his collecting. Never before or since has one man amassed so stupendous a collection of fine and decorative art. Not only did he collect, but, like a modern curator, he also assessed, annotated and commented on the objects in his possession.

[image] A charcoal stove from the Qianlong period

All three emperors encouraged controlled contact with the West. If the Jesuits embedded themselves in the Chinese court in an attempt to convert the country to Christianity, the English and Dutch were in China for commercial reasons. To gain trade concessions, merchants and diplomats presented the emperors with Western clocks of gilt bronze studded with coloured stones. But the Chinese were quick to learn from the Europeans and we also see clocks made in royal workshops in Beijing under the supervision of the ubiquitous Jesuits.

Later in the show, a series of 12 ravishing portraits of court beauties commissioned by the Yongzheng Emperor when he was still a prince reveal that one of these elegant ladies carried a Western pocket watch and another lived in an apartment with a Western-style table clock.

The complex interaction between Eastern and Western techniques can be seen to perfection in a set of 12 chrysanthemum dishes made of delicate Chinese porcelain that has been embellished with the Western technique of enamelling. The depth and subtlety of the colours achieved by the marriage of the two materials is astonishing, while the flower-like shapes of the dishes come as close to perfection as you will ever see.

Of course, this marriage of East and West sometimes went wrong. A gilded vase in the rococo style, made of copper inlaid with enamelled Western landscapes, must count as one of the ugliest objects ever exhibited at the Royal Academy. But then, Chinese taste is not Western taste. It is easy to admire a silk robe embroidered with hundreds of tiny birds and flowers, or a yellow porcelain bowl over-glazed with enamelled orchids, because they correspond to European ideas of beauty.

But when I first looked at a case containing 10 sceptres (valued as good-luck talismans), I thought: "How ugly!" Then, on my second visit, I looked again at the intricately carved pieces of jade, coral, gold and boxwood, and found that they now exuded a sense of mystery - an exoticism that we find strange because it belongs so completely to Chinese conceptions of beauty, not ours.

If at times the convolution, complexity and strong colours of these decorative objects feel visually indigestible, try to imagine them in the settings where they were first seen. The palaces of the Forbidden City are grand but austere. Against essentially monochrome backgrounds, richly coloured porcelains and cloisonné enamels would have lit up the rooms in which they were shown.

But if you are simply not susceptible to the beauty of objects of such incredible elaboration, you are not alone. Even at the time of the three emperors, the luxurious art of the Qing court provoked a reaction. The Literati were independent artists and poets who painted simple studies of nature in a monochrome palette. They represented the puritan counter-reaction to the excess of the court style. In both their art and poetry, they valued naturalism over stylisation, and minimalism over excess. In the gallery where the works of the Literati are displayed, I was enchanted by a scroll showing squirrels competing for chestnuts by the artist Hua Yan, its utter simplicity the antithesis of much of the art in the rest of the show.

As always, the incomparable Ivor Heal's design brings order and lucidity to a subject of extraordinary complexity. The organiser of this show, Dame Jessica Rawson, is one of Britain's living national treasures, a great scholar who has the ability to communicate her excitement about this material in vivid and easily digestible prose. All the catalogue essays are excellent (and the catalogue itself a work of art), but Rawson's stands out.

I will slowly make my way through the catalogue over the coming months. There is no hurry because the show is on until April, and I intend to return again and again.

# 'China: the Three Emperors' is at the Royal Academy of Arts, London W1 (0870 848 8484), until April 17.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2005/11/15/badorment15.xml

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the china post, 2005/11/15
London's 'China' show proves globalization isn't new
By Martin Gayford BRUSSELS, Bloomberg

The more you consider history, the more you come to realize that globalization has been around for a long, long time. A sumptuous new show at London's Royal Academy, "China: The Three Emperors 1662-1795," offers more evidence.

This is an exhibition that deserves to be seen for its sheer spectacle. Nothing except a visit to the Palace Museum in Beijing, where most of the exhibits come from, could give a better idea of the material splendor that surrounded the rulers of old China.

The visitor is greeted by an array of highly realistic, life-size imperial portraits. Next door, in the R.A.'s grandest room, is one of the red-lacquered thrones on which the emperor sat, flanked by huge stands bearing bells and sonorous stones. Paintings on handscrolls chronicling the festive pageantry of imperial life run the length of the room.

The mere dimensions of these are amazing. The scroll detailing the Qianlong emperor's 80th-birthday celebrations is more than 60 meters (about 65 yards) long. It would be hard to find a better example of Chinese pictorial space, which unwinds past you as you walk along. This is quite different from Renaissance perspective which you look into, as if you were in front of a stage.

Though these scrolls are extraordinary, on close examination, there are not that many actual masterpieces of art to be seen. There is a huge amount of eye-popping jade, metalwork, ceramics and other artifacts. The costumes throughout are magnificent --and look as if they were run up yesterday. Outstanding paintings are thin on the ground, and, surprisingly, many of the best were painted by an Italian.

And it must be admitted that there is quite a bit that, by the standards of old-fashioned good taste, is hideous. A solid gold Buddhist tea ewer with enamel floral decorations wins the prize in that department. It looks like something from Liberace's piano. There is plenty more in that vein.

That is partly because, in terms of Chinese history, the period of this exhibition is rather recent -- not much older than the day before yesterday. The trio of emperors in question -- the Kangxi emperor (1662-1722), the Yongzheng emperor (1723- 35), and the Qianlong emperor (1736-95) belonged to an upstart dynasty of interlopers who conquered China.

They were Manchus, a north-east Asian people from beyond the Great Wall, who swept in and destroyed the preceding Ming Dynasty. Their successors ruled until 1911. Since they were followed by a turbulent period of political change and warfare, in many ways their real successors are the Chinese communist leaders of today.

There is some irony in the fact that Hu Jintao, the Chinese president whose visit to London coincides with the opening of the R.A. exhibition, was greeted by banners calling for a free Tibet.

It was in fact the Kangxi emperor who originally annexed that country in 1720. Indeed, the Manchus created the modern Chinese state: A multiethnic empire that comprises not only the ancient Middle Kingdom, but a large swath of Islamic central Asia and also Mongolia, now independent again.

The Manchus -- non-Chinese, and initially not Mandarin- speaking either -- were careful to maintain the outward trappings of their predecessors. They took over the Ming capital, Beijing, and the old Imperial Palace, also known as the Forbidden City.

Yet they were also innovators. And they were the first Chinese rulers to encounter Western Europeans in force. A huge painting, "Envoys From the Vassal States and Foreign Countries Presenting Their Gifts to the Emperor" (1761), depicts various wigged and frock-coated emissaries paying their respects.

The Manchus did not order an overnight westernization (as did their contemporary, Peter the Great, in neighboring Russia). But Chinese officialdom did toy with conversion to Christianity and succumbed to a more lasting fascination with western gadgets --especially clocks and automatons.

A bizarre example of multiple cross-cultural fusion is a clock by an Englishman, Timothy Williamson. It is a piece of chinoiserie -- a European rococo style based on a very loose imitation, almost a caricature, of Chinese art. But it was exported and proudly installed in the Imperial Palace in Beijing.

The work of a Jesuit missionary-painter, Giuseppe Castiglione (1688-1766), is prominent in the exhibition and fascinating. Castiglione, whose Chinese name was Lang Shining, came up with a blend of Chinese and Occidental painting that you might call Sino-Baroque.

His equestrian portrait of the Qianlong emperor (1739 or 1758) is very much the sort of image Velazquez produced of the Spanish Hapsburgs, except the emperor is riding through a traditional, misty and monochrome Chinese landscape. The effect is a bit like a collage.

Some of Castiglione's work is beautiful: "Spring's Peaceful Marriage," for example, from about 1736, has an odd look of pop art, with its combination of bright colors, stylization and near-photo-realism.

The great age of Chinese painting was centuries in the past, though diehard Ming gentlemen such as Kuncan (1612 to about 1673) could still work in that idiom with conviction. Look out for his "Landscape After Night Rain Shower" (1660).

This exhibition suggests that in China, superficially everything was continuing as it always had -- while beneath the surface much was changing. That combination is very Chinese.

The show, which is sponsored by Goldman Sachs Group Inc., continues through April 17.

http://www.chinapost.com.tw/art/detail.asp?ID=72004&GRP=h

 

 

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Matthias Arnold
(Art-Eastasia list)

http://www.chinaresource.org
http://www.fluktor.de

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