Painting in eighteenth-century Yangchow, a city that dominated the
political and economic scene of mid-Qing China, has traditionally
been viewed as the product of a group of nonconformist, "eccentric"
artists who were supported by wealthy merchants.
This book, however, does not focus on the creative energy of the
individual artist, the rise of the Yangchow school of painting, or
patronage narrowly defined. Rather, it studies eighteenth-century
Yangchow paintings as artistic products shaped by collective social
and cultural experiences, and by constant exchanges between the
artists and their audience. The author examines the paintings as
commodities, revealing the mechanism of their exchange and the
values negotiated, and she interprets the paintings in a framework
that moves beyond economics into the social, political, historical,
and literary contexts of their creation and appreciation.
The book begins by considering merchant patrons long associated
with the Yangchow school of painting, and goes on to reveal that
there were patrons from lower socioeconomic levels who were, in
fact, perhaps the major consumers of Yangchow painting. The author
then discusses four artists who exemplify the diversity of
backgrounds and artistic traditions of Yangchow painters and
patrons.
Fang Shih-shu represents the traditional scholar painter of
conservative orthodox landscapes. Huang Shen, by contrast,
represents painters with craftsman backgrounds who mingle the
values of the literati with the technical skill of artisans. The
last two painters, Cheng Hsieh and Chin Nung, represent the
emergence of new types of artists who adopted painting as an
occupation and commercialized both their artistic products and
their personal cultural refinement and literati status.
By reconstructing the economic lives of these artists, examining
their social roles, identifying their networks of patronage, and
investigating their aesthetic choices, this book illuminates the
process of professionalization of the scholar-artist and the
commodification of literati culture in late imperial China.
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