AMAM Exhibit Explores Spectrum of Chinese Art
by Emma R. Lundgren

The Allen Memorial Art Museum is now showing the Chinese Art Collection: Culture and Context. The major part of the exhibition is from the Allen’s permanent collection and a few are here on extended loans.
Curator of Asian Art Charles Mason, who has been at the Allen for more than five years, explains that this is the first exhibition in the museum devoted entirely to Chinese art. “It is a good chance to get some stuff out that people haven’t perhaps ever seen before,” Mason said.
The collection’s focus is on six subjects: tombs, temples, the imperial court, a scholar’s studio, a merchant’s residence and the modern art movement. The earliest object the museum has is a piece of Chinese porcelain dating back to 1894.
According to Chinese tradition, it was customary to bury a person with a personal belonging. “Ox-Cart with Attendants,” from the seventh century, was one of those objects which was buried; beautiful in its aesthetic construction, it displays a detailed handwork.
Spiritual and religious sources had great influence on pre-modern China. In temple art, Buddhism served as the greatest inspiration of the arts. A framed hanging scroll, “The Heavenly Paradise,” done in ink and color, is typical of the eighteenth and nineteenth century. The painting integrates Buddhist, Daoist and Confucian images. “It was popular art for the majority of the population, because they weren’t too concerned about the theological background of the different religions. Everything kind of got blended all together,” Mason said.
“There is an extremely long history of, for example, landscape in Chinese art, and what is very interesting is sometimes the way art critics talk about the western landscape,” said Rene Johnson, professor of English composition. “It is almost as if they discovered it, when in fact Chinese landscape paintings have been around for millennia.” Indeed, the “Hall of Green Wilderness,” a work by Yuan Jiang from the time of the imperial court, is one of those paintings. The painting shows fields and distant mountains where time seems to have been forgotten.
Before modern art was established in China, the so-called Chinese intelligentsia dominated the art scene; these men were wealthy and educated scholars who favored art only understood by experts in particular area, and not the common audience. Wu Xiza’s “Seal-Script Calligraphy” is one example. “The text is written in Aramaic, 500 B.C., and only a tiny percent of the population could read Aramaic, probably even less could understand the painting,” Mason said. When the Qing dynasty collapsed, modern art took form in China. There were many opinions on what exactly constitutes “modern art.” This can be seen in the contrast between two paintings from this period.
The “River Landscape” (1934), by Zhang Daqian, one of the most accomplished Chinese painters in the twentieth century, is influenced by the imperial court. This becomes clear in the similarity between his landscape painting and the one by Jiang. In contrast, “Ma,” painted in 1993, is a large painting based on a photograph. It depicts a woman literally holding the painting on her shoulders. The melancholy essence of the painting suggests the unfulfilled promise of women’s liberation in China.
This collection has been accumulated over the years through gifts from missionaries like Charles F. Olney and Charles L. Freer. The works will be on display until June 2.