Taiwan Today

This may have all begun with the advent of silk—the earliest decorated fragments, discovered among Shang Dynasty remains dating from the 14th Century BC, were fully painted (in this case with a lacquer linear decor). Although the extant fragments are only from costumes and interior decorations, written accounts of portrait painting go far back into Chinese history. Records of intrigue, even warfare, over works of art date from the Warring States period (roughly, the 5th to 3rd Centuries BC).

By the 4th Century AD, calligraphy, reaching its zenith as an art form, had also come to be regarded as the "heart-print" of its creator. Collecting the calligraphy and paintings of great masters became an ever larger passion, and critical treatises discussing techniques, theories, and rankings of artworks proliferated.

Ancient texts reveal a host of fascinating criteria by which ancient collectors and connoisseurs studied paintings. Methods were developed to analyze the silk or paper, to appraise the colors of the ink, trace the collectors' seals, to compare various extant versions, and to study the colophons added to the paintings by friends and by later collectors or viewers.

The Chinese habit of marking possessions with special seals outlines the travels of Chinese paintings. Inscriptions by admirers and authenticators add a fascinating periphery for the collector, whose focus expands beyond the individual works of art to encompass microcosms of particular cultural clusters or lineages, themselves alive and replete with mutual references. Later, paintings and calligraphic works in particular, from the 14th Century onwards, became veritable time tunnels, echoing across the centuries their vivid, dynamic stories.

As the works of particular masters rose in esteem and dropped in supply, market conditions nurtured other gifted artists in the role of forgers. Herein they found a kind of immortality as well as assurance of immediate financial benefits. Creative, high-quality copies are, thus, enshrined along with the genuine works. Over the centuries, a famous master's oeuvre may even have acquired an enlarged image as new creations were added to his originals—sometimes even outshining the master's own works.

This may especially have happened as the spirit of the time was changing from the more somber, reclusive aspect of the 14th Century Yuan Dynasty, to the sociable, convivial early Ming Dynasty (15th Century).

By the late 1300s, critics had focused on Yuan masters destined to enjoy eternal fame—and imitation: Huang Kung-wang (1269-1354), Ni Tsan (1301-1374), Wang Meng (1307 -1385), and Wu Chen (1280-1354). The first three lived in Soochow toward the end of their lives and often wrote inscriptions on each other's paintings, leaving the world a legacy of their friendships. The fourth, however, was a genuine recluse.

Wu Chen lived in Chia-hsing and did not associate with the other three, though his works may have been known to them. Within six years of his death, an admirer scoured the homes of the gentry in the Chia-hsing area for a glimpse of Wu Chen's hand. In three years of intensive search, the admirer found only one bamboo painting, on the back of which he inscribed a long eulogy describing both his search efforts and his admiration for the master.

But by the next century, in the mid-1400s, there was no longer a scarcity of Wu Chen's works. Clearly, they had proliferated in accordance with market demand despite the painter's 100-year absence from among the living. Today, six hundred years later, there are nearly 40 works in his name in public and private collections throughout the world.

Students of the history of Chinese painting who manage to free themselves of blind animosity, may regard the development of remarkable works and, later, of superb forgeries, as two sides of the same creative process. And in this clear light, they may come to identify the highly significant, even vital role of the Chinese practice of constantly looking back to the past for present inspiration. The works of ancient masters are used as intensive models.

This is not to say that collectors knowingly tolerate forgeries. On the contrary, with each generation, many a connoisseur has added new techniques for authentication. However, the forger has often been at least as clever as the curator-connoisseur. For each method of authentication, he came up with a new technique for verifying the genuineness of his own spurious works.

Forgers studied ancient texts. Noting the features recorded about a particular painting, especially if it was no longer extant, they would create one to fit the description. They familiarized themselves with the lives of the painters in whose styles they specialized. They even mastered the calligraphic and verse styles of the favored painters' friends. The forger created paintings with convincing colophons which became veritable documents, confirming indications from ancient records.

In 1633, (the sixth year of the Chung-chen era of the Ming Dynasty), an imaginative and unscrupulous art dealer, Chang Tai-chieh, who had built on his property a noted treasure tower named Pao-hui-lu, commissioned a supreme collection of forgeries. They ranged from the Six Dynasties period to his own day, mirroring the greatest masters in the history of Chinese painting. Chang published a catalog of his made-to-order antiquities also called Pao-hui-lu. Leafing through its pages today is something like viewing an excellent historical costume movie: it fills one with joy and longing. The revered masters, resurrected, now prance on the screen amid all sorts of apocryphal events. It is lively reading and once made the paintings it offers irresistible for the unwary collector. A typical entry reads:

"(Album of) Twenty Leaves, painted for Wei (Su) Tai-pu (1303-1372), by Mei Tao-jen (Wu Chen, 1280-1354)."

(Please note, that Chinese artists used pen names and may also have had nicknames, resulting in the varied references as seen below.—Ed.)

The inscriptions read:

"Spring Woods After Rain, ink play by Wu Chen.
"Mei Tao-jen playfully imitates the brush of Pei-yuan (Tung-Yuan).
"Mei Tao-jen's ink play, 2nd Day, 4th Month of the year jen-yin.
"Scholar in Wooded Glen, by Mei Tao-jen Chen, 2/11/jen-yin,"

and so on for twenty titles.

There follows a movingly salable self-inscription:

"I live as a recluse far from the mundane world....In leisure, I burn incense, read, and play with brush and ink. Often I make small paintings, but if they fail my ideas in the slightest, I consign them to fire or water. But when there are those who upon seeing (my paintings) immediately love them, I would then make a present of them. Nearly eight or nine out of ten cases are like this.

"Some years back, Mr. Tai-pu (Wei Su) sought my paintings with twenty pieces of good paper. Since my art bears such weight with him, how dare I refuse him? I've dragged on for two years, and yet he has not blamed me (for being slow). Truly, he knows me indeed! This spring I completed the album for his amusement and to atone for my crime (of tardiness). I am so very fortunate. Inscribed in the 3rd month of the chia-chen year of Chih-cheng—Mei Tao-jen (Wu Chen)."

Next is an encomium in the name of the recipient, Wei Su (Tai-pu), a highly prestigious scholar and historian whose circle of acquaintances included several famous painters. It reads:

"Wu Mei-an is my most intimate friend. He is lofty in conduct. There is no (worthy) book he has not read, and he excels in painting...as if (the recluse poet) Tao Chien of the Chin period were his model. I love his paintings and even more his person. He refuses no request from me, and (the paintings) are always excellent and marvelous. There is such divine spirit in this album that even if (the Tang Dynasty spattered-ink master) Wang Hsia or the (10th Century masters) Tung Yuan and Chu-jan were to be reborn today—where could they possibly surpass him?

"Mei-an says of himself that he has long been steeped in his own principles (of painting). He holds that calligraphy and painting should be comfortable and leisurely, and that they will suffer from speed. Therefore, it must have taken two years to finish this album. I write this at the end of the album so that when Mei-an sees this in the future, he will say that I truly understand him.—Inscribed on the 11th day of the 4th month (of the same year) by Wei Su of Lin-chuan."

A third and also remarkable inscription reads:

"Great painting masters of the Yuan Dynasty were scattered in all directions, and yet those living in Chiang-nan were the most excellent. Wu Chung-kuei was one of these. He lived to the east of the coterie (painters active in Soochow), and alone grasped the orthodox tradition of Tung and Chu. His paintings of bamboo and rock are considered supremely marvelous. He has (that capacity known as being) 'pale without being irritating, simple and yet civilized.' And yet this is not generally known....These twenty leaves were originally passed down by Wei Tai-pu. Today they are in the collection of my friend Mr. X. Seeing his (Wu's) paintings makes one think of his person. Paintings have traditionally been considered important, and yet the person (artist) is also eminently worth respecting. If there are those who stop with looking at the painting (without resurrecting the spirit of its creator) then they know Chung-kuei in a most superficial way indeed!—Written in the Wu-yen-shih Studio two days after the full moon in the 7th month of the 11th year of Chia-ching, the year jen-cheng cycle (1532)."

Ownership of famous works held a unique and highly emotional appeal among the Chinese of old. When word spread about the discovery of a rare and ancient painting or the calligraphy of a famous master, in spite of a usual measure of caution, the chances were high that a prospective collector would want to believe it genuine, want to own it or become associated with it in some way.

For the gifted and studious forger it was a road to irresistible, if partly vicarious, success.

Reading on in Mr. Chang's catalog, we note that the language has fully captured varied perspectives typical of the ancient game of collecting and connoisseurship. But it adds a further note of abject obsequiousness. And though this may be typical of certain artists dependent on patronage, it was quite inappropriate for Wu Chen.

The catalog also produces a disquieting similarity of phrasing, giving rise to the suspicion that all three texts for the Wu Chen album were written by the same person.

Art historians have translated the cyclical dates into specific years according to the Christian calendar. The very first dedicatory date might have tipped off the wary: the year jen-yin translates into either 1302—one year before the supposed recipient's birth, or 1362, eight years after the painter's death. It appears twice and is followed by kui-mao, cyclically the following year (1363). In spite of the dates' evident internal consistency, it is very clear that the inscriptions (and the entire work) are forged. It is, furthermore, clear that the forger could not have been aware that Wu Chen had died in 1354, in the 14th year of Chih-cheng in the chia-wu year, or that the recipient, Wei Su (Tai-pu), was born in 1303.

Chang Tai-chleh's catalog is, nevertheless, a rare and valuable documentation of the ideals of early 17th Century collectors.

To now read the Pao-hui-lu, aware of the counts against it, the reader may look more deeply and savor the sensitive care lavished upon each entry. The catalog was, still, a work of love. It was created with the same devotion that the collector of genuine paintings lavishes upon his own contemporary tastes. Its pages conjure up an ideal collection, built to order for contemporary preferences.

Its tailor-made works of art also perfectly meet mid-17th Century needs, in this respect being more perfectly matched to their times than genuine works from the dim past. Chang Tai-chieh wished—and knew all lovers of antiquity would have wished—that such a collection could have existed on this earth Chang's catalog also indicates the degree to which fragments from the past were welcomed, and the fact that collectors were no longer content to own merely paintings, but preferred those with the multiple inscriptions of previous owners and admirers from among the "elite."

In their abstracts or ti-yao, the imperial bibliographers compiling the mammoth imperial library (the Szu-ku chuan-shu, Pref. 1782), observed in the entry on the Pao-hui-lu catalog:

"Chang Tai-chieh...received his chin-shih degree toward the end of Emperor Wanli's reign (1573-1620)....He had a Pavilion of Painting Treasures (Pao-hui-lu) on his estate and claimed that he possessed many genuine examples of famous paintings. His language is high sounding, and yet he mentions having works by the 3rd Century master Tsao Pu-hsing (active in the second quarter of the 3rd Century A.D.) which were already exceeding scarce by the time Hsieh Ho wrote his Ku-hua pin lu (Record of Ancient Paintings Classified, compiled in the second quarter of the 6th Century)....Masters of the Six Dynasties period are stacked up high on his shelves, and he relegates legendary masters of the Tang—like Wu Tao-tsu, Wang Wei, and Li Ssu-hsun—to the 6th and 7th section as if to lessen their importance because of their relatively plentiful supply. Logically, this is highly unlikely. Moreover, the inscriptions by worthies of all dynasties sound as if from a single hand, further adding to the suspicious nature of the work."

The contemporary bibliographer Yu Shao-sung, in his Shuhua shulu chieh-ti (Pref. 1931) cites the above, and a critique by Wu Hsiu (1764-1827), who wrote in his Poetic Critique of Paintings Seen (Ching-hsia kuan lun-hua chueh-chu, Pref. 1824): "...in the Chung-chen era (1628-1644), Chang Tai-chieh collected forged paintings from the Chin and Tang onwards and published a 20-chuan catalog where masters up to the Yuan are all represented. Pre-Sung masterpieces are all inscribed by Chao Meng-fu and other masters of the Yuan period, ending with Wen Cheng-ming (of the Ming period), without traces of any other calligrapher....This is really laughable. First he distributes his catalog, and then puts up his collection of fake paintings for sale hoping to reap a handsome profit. Over the last few decades, I have seen more than ten specimens. All the poetic inscriptions are written by one person, mostly using a light buff Sung-chiang paper. The Ssu-ku chuan-shu ti-yao has included this book but also suspects that (all the works) derive from the same hand. It is really not to be trusted."

If its nature is surveyed calmly today, the book's worth as evidence of the 17th Century collector's ideal or dream collection, is of incontestable value. Much as the "Great American Dream" testifies to America's mid-20th Century values, so the Pao-hui-lu is a reflection of the aesthetic values of a major segment of mid-17th Century Chinese society.

Today, the old forgers would have a harder time. Modern students of Chinese painting focus increasingly on the works themselves—on the style and brush-wielding of the artist under study. This is termed internal evidence. Colophons, seals, and textual information comprise external evidence, and materials (paper or silk, ink and pigments) may be termed material evidence. It is now also possible to subject the materials to microscopic analysis and determine their date and, in time, possibly even their place of manufacture.

With the help of technology, we can determine if a painting purported to be of Sung date was, say, actually painted with Ming materials, or if a work thought to be Yuan may have been done entirely with Sung materials. In the first case, we would know that we are looking at a work that is not earlier than Ming. In the second case, we learn that our Yuan painting has a very good chance of being genuine, and the possibility would exist that it is a Southern Sung work. In both cases, however, there is always the possibility that a later artist created a work using old materials—Sung paper and Sung ink—and specialized in painting in the Sung manner; our technology would determine it to be of the Sung period.

At no point in our technological analyses, however, could we ascertain the identity of the artist. And it is at this point in his search for genuine specimens of a given master's work, that the student or connoisseur must face the painting alone, considering it purely from its internal evidences.

Ho Wai-kam once made a study of a painting associated with Chu-jan in the Cleveland Museum Collection. He first determined the Northern Sung date from the Shang-shu-sheng yin with reasonable certainty in a positivist manner. But the identification of the artist relied on a combination of traditional attribution, elimination of conflicting images of Chu-jan, and on the descriptions of the monk's painting style by early chroniclers.

In this case, Ho cites Shen Kua (1031-1095), who remarked:

"To the south of the river there were Tung Yuan and the monk Chu-jan who established their independent styles by (the use) of pale ink and light mist" (Meng-hsi pi-tan chiao-cheng, 1955). By a two pronged process of ascertaining, a. the painting's possible date of execution, and, b. contemporary descriptions of painters' styles, Ho zoomed in on the problem of Chu-jan and tried in a laudable way to establish the authorship of the painting called Chi-shan lan-jo with reasonable certainty. While no case can definitively be established that the unsigned painting comes from the veritable hand of Chu-jan and not that of a contemporary follower or associate, it does reflect his style and dates from a period close to his period of activity.

In time, after we are more than reasonably sure of the genuine works of given painters, we will be able to feed their particularities into computers and let the machines authenticate untested works. But that is a long way off from the present state of scholarly readiness in the field of Chinese painting. According to some scholars, we have not yet begun to make those systematic studies which could be more than reasonably secure in defining characteristics of individual masters. Really, how much can we rely on ancient testimonies? What do they mean when they say "pale ink and light mist?"

We may consider the image of a given master in levels, as it develops across the centuries.

(1) The original, first-hand image—For many of the earliest masters, this is no longer possible to determine. From the Yuan period onward, most masters are associated with a fairly large multiple personage and "hands".

(2) Contemporary study-copies, variations, or forgeries—This level involves imitations or copies made within a generation or so of the artist's lifetime, including works and line-copies by direct students to which the master has signed his own name. Later, unscrupulous dealers put the names of the masters to closely related works. There were also outright forgeries by artists living at the same time and place who were well versed in the master's brush habits and mental attitudes.

While such works lack the high quality of the master's own, they are of immense value to us as they very closely reflect his original image. These we may call quasi-originals.

(3) Study copies made beyond the first generation—In the early phases of their training, traditional Chinese artists make numerous direct copies of all the masterpieces they can lay their hands on...far more copies of such ancient works than they create in new composition. Here, each successive time period presents its own light, changing the image accordingly. While change may initially be subtle, not easily discernible, from a distance of 50 or more years, originals, and forgeries including close copies, are marked with the imprint of their time. The same image closely copied so many times across the centuries reveals much about other times, and about the original as well.

(4) Later forgeries based on a reliable original or quasi-originals—The forger, removed from the master by time, studies the master's works and reliable attributions (quasi-originals) and thoroughly grasps his style. He creates works which he feels would make sense as an original. Here, the images resemble those of (3) and differ only in intent.

A related group of forgeries are created when unscrupulous dealers get their hands on fine study-copies and variations of category (3) and forge the original master's signature. In this case, the works from category (3) innocently become those of category (4).

(5) Creative forgeries made by high-caliber artists—The artist's own verve and flare dominate and enliven the works; there is no sign of the awkwardness and unnaturalness typical of the copyist, nor the uninspired, immature look of the study exercise. Here, the artist creates the image of an ancient master whose works are in all probability rather scarce. Faithfulness to the original image, style, technique, and certainly content, is not so important to such an artist as is the delight in playing with that old master's image as he freely imagines it: the goal is to satisfy himself.

Such works are usually of very high quality and are often treasured more than the originals. For as time moves on, those tastes reflected in a forgery are closer to the collector in time and flavor.

Category (5) works are high caliber and creative and should be understood as art works of their own time rather than mere reflections of the ancient master. They should be regarded in the same light as category (6).

(6) Signed, creative "variations on a master's theme" by later artists—These are original works by masters in their own right. The challenge is to express oneself via the brush-mode of the ancient master. These works are really of the same type as those in category (5) except that here, the artist signs his own name instead of the name of the ancient master.

At present the study of Chinese painting has reached an exciting second phase. The biographies of great masters, based on both contemporary and later accounts, have been compiled in several languages.

More importantly, Professor James Cahill of the University of California and Professor Suzuki Kei, Emeritus of the University of Tokyo, have made tremendous contributions in photographing and cataloging extant Chinese paintings in public and private collections around the world. Photographic archives now enable the student and connoisseur to compare different versions of the same composition or trace the development of variations on a given master's style over the centuries. The time has come to zoom in for a closer look at the brushwork details of the works, to analyze the wrist-movements and brush-habits of the artist.

Indispensable now is the traditional connoisseur's hand-eye: he paints and he looks. Discernment of the quality in a single painter's-line comes from personal experience with brush-wielding and with collecting, and with close examination of thousands of paintings. Such experience is traditionally transmitted without explanation, only by repeated exposure to works which one's teacher has deemed "good" or "bad."

When the prying Western mind meets Eastern experience, many questions are raised. And, for the first time in history, in this context, this type of cross-cultural endeavor can be undertaken.