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PHOEBUS 1
A JOURNAL OF ART HISTORY

PHOEBUS 1
A JOURNAL OF A R T H I S T O R Y

Published by:
Art History Faculty
Department of Art
College of Fine Arts
Arizona State University
Phoenix-Tempe, Arizona 85281

2

EDITORIAL BOARD
Hugh Broadley
Ju-hsi Chou
Anthony Gully
Michael Kampen
Jean Westin

Copyright © by Art History Faculty,
Department of Art, Arizona State University.
Design by Chip Kettering
Printed by Rocky Mountain Bank Note,
Phoenix, Arizona.

3

Table of Contents

Preface

p. 4

Dedication: Harry Wood, Professor Emeritus, Arizona State University

p. 6

Style and Symbolism in the Awatobi Kiva Mural Paintings
by Marvin Cohodas

p. 9

Mr. B. and the Cherubim: A Critical Examination of William Blake's
A Descriptive Catalogue of 1809
by Anthony Lacy Gully

p. 23

ARIZONA PORTFOLIO

p. 47

Henri Rousseau, LA MUSE DE GUILLAUME
APOLLINAIRE
Anonymous, Ming Dynasty, WILD GEESE,
FLOWERING PLANTS, AND TALL REEDS
Shang Dynasty, TING
Attributed to Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, HOMAGE T O
WATTEAU
A Note on a Letter from Roger Hilton to Terry Frost
by Jack Breckenridge

p. 65

Ming Idealism and Landscape Painting
by Ju-hsi Chou

p. 75

Classic Maya Elements in the Iconography of Rulership at El Tajin,
Veracruz, Mexico
by Michael Kampen

p. 93

Review:
Anne de Coursey Clapp, Wen Cheng-ming: The Ming Artist
Antiquity (Arbitus Asiae: Ascona, Switzerland, 1975)

and

p. 105

"7 + 5 Sculptors in the 1950s," An Exhibition in the Phoenix Art
Museum

p. 109

List of Contributors

p. 114

4

Preface

Phoebus has been three years in the
making. Its founders proudly present
this first edition of the only art history
journal in the state of Arizona.
Enthusiastic plans are well underway
for the second and succeeding issues.
Because of its nature, a local emphasis is inevitable. This does not
mean, however, that Phoebus will deal
only with local materials. In fact, its
coverage will be less concerned with
art being made in the state than with
art maintained and collected throughout the state. Nor does it intend to
discriminate among subject matter or
fields within the discipline, so long as
they fall within the interest of the
contributing Arizona art historians.
These could well be traditional
Western, contemporary Eastern,
Islamic, Pre-Columbian, North- or
Southwestern Indian, etc.
The editorial policy of Phoebus is
twofold:
1) To publish and publicize selected
works of art from the public and
private collections within the state, and

2) To serve as a rallying point for art
historians, museums, art centers, and
other institutions in the state, encouraging as well as providing a
channel for research and publication.
Policy No. 1 aims particularly at the
unfortunate predicament in Arizona
that, in spite of the unsuspected
richness and importance of its art
collections, national recognition is
slow in coming. It is hoped that
through "Arizona Portfolio," in a
regular series of articles and reviews,
our modern effort can in some way
remedy the existing situation.
Policy No. 2 may belie the current
"departmental" nature of this journal.
All contributors of this issue either are
or were associated with the Department of Art, Arizona State University.
However, the intention is to invite
future cooperation and participation of
individuals and institutions in the
state, thereby augmenting its scope to a
regional publication.
We are grateful to the successive
chairmen of the Department of Art,

Arizona State University, namely
Professors Clyde Watson and Leonard
Lehrer. Without their encouragement
and support, the journal may never
have become a reality. Credit must be
given to Professor Anthony Lacy Gully
for the choice of Phoebus as the title of
the journal; its solar allusion befits a
publication emerging from the Valley
of the Sun. To our excellent designer,
Mr. Chip Kettering, who generously
donated his effort and time, this
journal owes its appearance. Thanks
must also be given to David Sparks,
who, with his fine eye for detail, was
able to bring this journal within the
bounds of modern technical
scholarship.
Finally, it is to Harry Wood,
Professor Emeritus and chairman of
the Department of Art from 1955 to
1966, that we dedicate this first issue of
Phoebus.
Ju-hsi Chou
Editor-in-chief

6

Harry Wood, Professor Emeritus
Photo by Robert Gilge, 1974

7

Dedication

This inaugural issue of Phoebus
signals the hopeful beginning of an
effort to publish and make available to
a wide audience the researches of art
historians and others acquainted with
the artistic riches of Arizona, which are
to be discovered in its colleges and
universities, its museums and galleries,
and its various other collections,
private as well as public.
At the same time, this first issue
must also be recognized as the
culmination of a long and sometimes
arduous effort to stir an awareness of
Arizona treasures meriting recognition, but largely unknown and too
often inadequately appreciated.
If there is a single individual who has
worked harder than others to achieve
this goal, it is Harry Wood who, in
1955, was invited to assume the
chairmanship of the Art Department.
The art curriculum which he found
upon his arrival in Arizona was a
simple one, in which art history surveys were subordinated to other
courses. Indeed, there were no art
historians, strictly speaking. But

today, two decades later and largely
because of an ideal he nourished, there
is a faculty of ten full-time art historians representing at least as many areas
of specialization. There are undergraduate and graduate programs in art
history where there had been none.
And now, finally, there is an art
history publication which has the
capability of reaching beyond the walls
of the university and even farther, well
beyond the borders of the state.
Acknowledging his imaginative
vision of art history for Arizona State
University, and his unrelenting
energetic efforts to realize it, an appreciative faculty salutes Harry Wood
and with genuine affection, dedicates
this first issue of Phoebus to him.

9

Style and Symbolism
in the Awatobi Kiva
Mural Paintings

Marvin Cohodas

Awatobi, a Hopi pueblo on
Antelope Mesa in Arizona, was a
prosperous and populous town from
the thirteenth century until the
massacre of its population by other
Hopi in 1700. During the Pueblo IV
period, approximately A.D. 13001600, the art of mural painting in kivas
and other ceremonial chambers was
developed at Awatobi as well as in
contemporary pueblos in northern
New Mexico. These mural paintings,
recovered in excavation, provide a
unique insight into the continuity of
prehistoric and modern Hopi worship
and religious symbolism.
The Awatobi Kivasl which were 4-6
meters long and IVi-A meters wide,
were entered through a roof hatchway
and had a raised platform at one end.
The excavations show that these
chambers were constantly repainted.
They may have been whitewashed
after the conclusion of a ceremony,
and then at a yearly rite of renewal a
new mural painting would be applied.
Mineral pigments, with the addition of

carbon black, were mixed with saliva
and painted on dry plaster, probably
by male ritualists. The colors were
applied flatly, with no shading, and a
black outline was added last. Due to
the consistently poor preservation of
these chambers, mural painting
fragments usually survive only from
the lower and middle sections of the
walls.
In 1952, Watson Smith published his
analysis of the murals from Awatobi
and from the neighboring and contemporary site of Kawaika-a. The
major interpretive sections of Smith's
analysis concern a division of the
excavated fragments into four types
which Smith calls "layout groups." 2
These layout groups are defined according to the relationships between
figure, field, and frame. For example,
in layout group IV, figures are
dispersed on the field and there is no
frames. 3 By contrast, layout group III
consists of paintings with integrated,
all-over designs, on a solid color field
and with a thin framing line. Often the

10

designs are executed in the style of the
contemporary Sikyatki ceramics (fig.
1).

Layout groups I and II boast the
most complex and sophisticated
paintings. According to Smith's
analysis, group II is distinguished by
dynamic figures dispersed through the
field, either with no frame or a thin
framing line. 4 In group I, the usually
static figures are symmetrically placed,
and a wide band decorated with
blossom designs forms the bottom of
the frame (fig. 2). This paper will be

Fig. 1. Awatobi, Test 14, Room 3, Design 11.
Antelope Mesa, Arizona. Photo: Hillel
Burger; Courtesy of Peabody Museum,
Harvard University.

Fig. 2. Awatobi, Room 788. Antelope Mesa,
Arizona. Photo: Hillel Burger; Courtesy of
Peabody Museum, Harvard University.

concerned primarily with the superior
murals of groups I and II.
Smith employs these four mural
types, or layout groups, along with
ceramic remains in the painted rooms,
to suggest a chronology for Awatobi
mural painting. He suggests a threephase chronology for the murals from
Awatobi and Kawaika-a. 5 The early
phase consists of the group IV murals,
which are found in association with the
earliest ceramic assemblage of the
mural painting period. The second or
middle phase is much more important,

11

as it sees the contemporaneity of
murals of layout groups 1, II, and III.
These murals are found in kivas and
rooms with an intermediary ceramic
assemblage. The final or late phase
consists of murals associated with the
latest pre-contact ceramics. According
to Smith, only murals of layout group I
were painted in this phase. This threephase chronology thus suggests a
plausible development of Awatobi
paintings from the crude and scattered
forms of group IV in the early phase, to
the highly organized and complex
murals of group I in the late phase.
While Smith's sequence is certainly
correct in its outline form, it may be
possible to suggest some more detailed
aspects of the development and to
clarify its course. Since the murals of
group IV appear unrelated to the more
consistent development that occurs in
the middle and late phases, they will
not be discussed further. The following
discussion will thus emphasize the
changes in style and form between the
middle and late phases of Awatobi
mural painting.
It may be suggested that the murals
of the middle phase (which consists
primarily of Awatobi Test 14, Rooms 2
and 3, and of Kawaika-a Test 4, Room
4, and Kawaika-a Test 5, Rooms 2 and
6) all share a simplicity and
monumentality of form, and a lack of
extraneous detail (fig. 3). There is no
consistent spadal environment
suggested and figures are not related in
a natural way to the ground line.
Compositions are limited to three
anthropomorphic figures or a
repetition of animals and inanimate
objects. Within this general style
phase, three basic types of format may
be distinguished. The first is an
asymmetric format which corresponds
to Smith's layout group II (fig. 3). The

second format employs bilateral
symmetry in a framework that emphasizes central and flanking forms.
This format occurs both in the typical
mural style of group I and in the
Sikyatki-ceramic style of group III (fig.
1), as well as in a combination of the
two. 6 The third format employs serial
repetition and alternation in an equally
symmetric effect. 7 Compositions
employing this format often emphasize
a band inhabited with water creatures
and an unidentifiable quadruped. Both
the bilaterial and serial formats are
considered by Smith to belong to
group I although the distinctive
blossom band has not yet appeared. T o
summarize, the middle period of
prehistoric Hopi mural painting is
distinguished by monumentality,
simplicity, and an unspecified environment, with formats employing
asymmetry, bilateral symmetry, and
serial repetition.
The murals which belong to the late
phase of Awatobi painting (Awatobi
Rooms 528, 529, 788, and probably
Kawaika-a Test 5, Room 4) seem to be
more consistent among themselves
than those of the middle period. The
blossom band (fig. 2) which forms a
bottom frame or panel division, is
nearly ubiquitous, so Smith suggests
that all late murals are of layout group
I. The compositions of the late phase
are more complex, employing larger
numbers of figures and inanimate
objects with much more precise,
miniaturist detail. The environment is
more clearly specified by the
relationship of figures and objects to
the ground line. The use of more
rigidly defined formats, detailed and
pictorial compositions, thus differentiates the late phase murals from
the monumental and simpler murals of
the middle phase. Although most

12

Fig. 3. Top: Awatobi, Test 14, Room 3, Front
Wall B Design 2; Antelope Mesa, Arizona.
Bottom: Kawaika-a, Test 4, Room 4, Right
and Back Walls Design 2; Antelope Mesa,
Arizona. Photo: Hillel Burger; Courtesy of
Peabody Museum, Harvard University.

murals are arranged in bilateral
symmetry (fig. 2), some asymmetric
compositions remain (fig. 4). The
Sikyatki style, or layout group III, and
the serial formats of the middle period
no longer occur. It may be noted that
both the symmetric and asymmetric
compositions occur with the group I
blossom band, so that the distinction
between these two formats is not as
well defined as in the middle period.
To summarize, the late period of
Awatobi painting is defined by
complex and rigidly organized
paintings with a suggestion of pictorial
space, large numbers of figures,
animals and objects, and with an
attention to miniaturistic detail.

While the middle and late phases of
Awatobi mural painting may be
differentiated according to style, they
may be compared in terms of similar
contrasts in compositional formats.
The asymmetric and dynamic compositions, which are typed as group II
in the middle period, actually continue
into the late phase (fig. 4). In both
phases, these asymmetric compositions
contrast with paintings that are more
symmetric and static, and which Smith
types as group I (fig. 2). Since both the
asymmetric and symmetric formats
occur contemporaneously in the
stylistically differentiated middle and
late painting phases, it would appear
that this contrast in format exists

13

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14

independently of the stylistic
development.
In the following analysis, it will be
suggested that these contrasting types
of composition, the asymmetric and
symmetric, are expressions of opposing
symbolic themes in the Awatobi
murals. For the purposes of this
discussion, the asymmetric compositions will be referred to as group II,
even though later examples include the
blossom band; and the symmetric
compositions will be referred to as
group I. It will be shown that these two
groups of mural paintings illustrate
opposing symbolic themes in contrasting types of composition.
The murals of group II (figs. 3 and 4)
are distinguished not only by dynamic
and asymmetric compositions with
undeveloped frames, but also by some
consistent symbolic images. Almost all
fragments of group II murals appear to
be parts of a consistently repeated
scene. This scene comprises the battle
between two warriors. One of the
warriors holds a large shield from
which eagle feathers, birds, or prayer
sticks radiate like a sunburst. The
second warrior may be shown during
the attack, or afterward, vanquished
and supine. Watching this scene from
the sidelines is a female who is only
shown above the waist. This female,
surely a deity, has yellow painted skin
and wears a black skirt with a design of
negative dotted squares exactly like
older Hopi ceramic designs from the
thirteenth century. A Hopi informant
identified these scenes as the mock
battle which accompanies the Soyal
ceremonies of the winter solstice, and
which Stephens interprets as the battle
to turn the sun back on its path to the
north. 8 In addition, one of the
vanquished warriors (fig. 4) was
identified as a Hopi war god. 9 On the

basis of the visual images and the
informants' interpretations, it would
appear that the Group II murals
represent battles associated with solar
imagery.
The murals of group I (fig. 2) may be
distinguished by many features other
than the blossom band which forms the
lower frame in late examples. In fact,
these murals, in composition and
motifs, represent a complete contrast
to the group II murals. Whereas the
group II murals are dynamic and
asymmetric, those of group I are static
and symmetric. Whereas the group II
murals emphasize battle, weapons, and
solar symbolism, the murals of group I
emphasize plants, water animals, and
rain symbols. Finally, the female deity
who is relegated to the sidelines in the
group II battle scenes becomes the
central focus in many murals of group
I. This deity holds a netted gourd in the
group I murals which is still associated
with rain-bringing rituals in modern
Hopi worship. The murals of group I
thus emphasize themes of fertility,
represented by water, vegetation, and
the earth, as opposed to the martial
themes and solar symbolism of the
group II murals.
To summarize, two groups of
prehistoric mural paintings at Awatobi
are distinguished by Smith according
to the relationships between the figures
and the frame. Further analysis shows
that these two groups of murals may be
contrasted in other ways. The murals
of group II emphasize the theme of
battle, associated with the sun, using
feathered shields and warriors as the
primary motifs, and associated with
the compositional qualities of
asymmetry and dynamism. The murals
of group I emphasize the theme of
fertility associated with the female
deity, using priests and symbols of rain

15

and vegetation as the primary motifs,
and stressing the compositional
qualities of stasis and symmetry. The
clarity of the thematic opposition
between these two groups of paintings
appears to suggest that the compositional qualities are not related to
stylistic differences on a chronological
scale, but that they are employed to
express the differences in symbolic
intent between the murals of groups I
and II. In the following sections,
several aspects of modern Hopi ritual
will be analyzed in terms of a similar
thematic opposition, in order to explain the nature and meaning of the
contrasts of both composition and
symbolism in the Awatobi murals.
Modern Hopi ritual centers around a
season of Kachina dances, running
from the winter solstice until shortly
after the summer solstice. This period
may be divided into two phases: the
winter and the spring. These two
phases will be related respectively to
the symbolism of battle and death in
the Awatobi murals of group II, and
the symbolism of fertility and growth
in the murals of group I.
During the winter season, Hopi
kachina dances are held primarily in
the kivas, at night. The kiva was a
subterranean chamber in prehistoric
pueblos, and it still retains this underworld association through the
symbolic underworld entrance, the
sipapu hole in its floor. The dances of
this winter period emphasize warriors:
the mock battles of the winter solstice
ceremony have been mentioned above
in reference to the battle scenes of the
group II murals. Animals and hunting
themes are also emphasized, and the
dances are controlled by the clan of the
badger, a hunting animal. The
kachinas which dominate the winter or
night dances (fig. 5) are violent and

Fig. 5. Cliff Bahnimptewa, Wuyak Kuita
("Angry Kachina"). Courtesy of Northland
Press, Flagstaff, Arizona.

aggressive kachinas: they have beards,
toothy grins, horns, and snouts; they
are associated with animals and war;
they carry weapons or yucca whips;
and they often wear skins or anglo
clothing. The night dances are
aggressive and disordered, and are
enacted by motley assemblages of these
spirit beings. The best example of such
a kachina performance is the Soyoko
ceremony in February, in which a
group of monstrous devouring demons
terrorize the children. 10 To summarize, the winter season in the Hopi
ceremonial calendar is dominated by

16

aggressive, violent, and disordered
kachinas who dance primarily at night
and in the kivas. The winter season in
Hopi ritual is related to the group II
murals at Awatobi through the emphasis on action, warriors, and mock
battles.
The second season of kachina dances
occurs in the spring and is associated
with the renewal of fertility. With the
melting of the snow, kachina dances
may be performed out in the plazas, in
the daytime. These plaza dances still
include some winter-type kachinas, but
they emphasize a completely different
type of kachina and performance. The
dominant kachinas in the spring plaza
Fig. 6. Cliff Bahnimptewa, Nuyak'china
("Snow Kachina"). Courtesy of Northland
Press, Flagstaff, Arizona.

dances are beneficent rain-bringing
kachinas (fig. 6). In place of the snouts
and bearded grins, they wear cylindrical masks with tubular mouths.
They wear ceremonial kilts, sashes,
and belts rather than skin kilts or anglo
clothing. They hold rattles and
branches of fir trees rather than whips
or weapons. In addition, the graphic
designs which are painted on their
masks, body, and costume symbolize
rain, fertility, and vegetation.
These beneficent, rain-bringing
kachinas most often appear in line
dances. In these dances, a large number
of identically costumed kachinas sing
verses of songs to a stately step, as they
line up on each side of the plaza in
turn. These kachinas are never violent
or aggressive. They act, sing, and
move in a stately unison, and they
arrange themselves symmetrically. 11
The spring season in Hopi ritual is thus
distinguished by daytime plaza dances
which emphasize line dances of
identically costumed, passive and
beneficent kachinas. These spring
dances would relate to the murals of
group I at Awatobi because of the
symbols of fertility and the qualities of
quasi-stasis and symmetry in ritual
movement. It would appear that the
prehistoric Awatobi murals and
modern Hopi ritual share an opposition of death or martial themes
with fertility themes, and express this
opposition through the contrasts of
dynamism with stasis and asymmetry
with symmetry.
The same opposition may be expressed, in part, in the appearances of
two major Hopi deities in the form of
kachina dancers. These deities, a sun
god and a fertility goddess, may be
shown to express the opposition of
death and fertility in Hopi ritual.
The sun deity appears as a kachina

17

under various names, depending upon
the clan that sponsors his appearance.
The most important of these, Ahul (fig.
7), may serve as an example. Ahul and
the other sun gods are distinguished by
a round basketry mask with a bird
beak and a crest of eagle feathers,
suggesting that they are related to the
eagle. The stars, represented by
crosses, which are painted on Ahul's
face, suggest nighttime. The upper face
is divided into fields of yellow and
blue, both colors associated with the
west in Hopi direction symbolism. The
black in the area beneath is the
symbolic color of the nadir, and by
extension of the underworld. I 2 Ahul
appears to be associated with the eagle,
the west, and the underworld and
night. Ahul appears in the winter
season, primarily at Soyal when he
opens the kivas, and in the warrior
ceremony when he mimes the nightly
journey of the sun. Ahul appears to
represent the sun descending into and
in the underworld, and to be related to
the nighttime kiva dances of the winter
season. Finally, Ahul is the kachina
with the clearest precedent in the
Awatobi mural paintings. 13
The Hopi fertility goddess is most
often represented as the Butterfly
Maiden, or Pahlik Mana (fig. 8). The
Butterfly Maiden appears regularly in
the Plaza dances grinding corn. Corngrinding is a specifically female task,
and so this deity is set off from all other
Hopi kachinas, male or female, by
being the only one actually performed
by a woman. 14 The Butterfly Maiden
is clearly associated with fertility, the
growth and harvesting of corn, and
with female activity.
The costume of the Butterfly Maiden
suggests a clear contrast with the
costume of the sun deities such as
Ahul. While the sun deities wear a

round basket-mask, the Butterfly
Maiden wears a naturally-shaped face
mask. While Ahul wears a crest of
eagle feathers, the Butterfly Maiden
wears a headdress of wooden slats
called a tableta. This tableta, which
must be associated with fertility since it
is also worn in the women's harvest
dances in summer, appears to represent
a butterfly. Color symbolism provides
further contrast: Ahul's colors, yellow
and blue, are related to the west, while
Fig. 7. Cliff Bahnimptewa, Ahul or Ahola
Kachina. Courtesy of Northland Press, Flagstaff, Arizona.

18

)

Fig. 8. Cliff Bahnimptewa, Pahlik Mana
("Butterfly Maiden"). Courtesy of Northland
Press, Flagstaff, Arizona.

19

the Butterfly Maiden's colors red and
white are related to the east. Black, the
underworld color on Ahul's mask, is
contrasted to all-colors, the upperworld or zenith color which appears
on the Butterfly Maiden's mask and
tableta.1 5 The graphic symbols on
Ahul's mask represent stars, associated
with night, while rain, blossoms, and
corn, associated with fertility, appear
on the Butterfly Maiden's tableta. 1 6
The Butterfly Maiden, who appears
only in the spring season, appears to
symbolize the renewal of fertility
associated with this season in North
America.
To summarize, Ahul is a male sun
god who is associated with death and
martial themes, night, the underworld,
the west, the eagle, and the winter
season. By contrast, the Butterfly
Maiden is a female fertility goddess
who is associated with growth and
fertility themes, daytime, the upperworld, the east, the butterfly, and
the spring season. Like Ahul, the
Butterfly Maiden appears to have a
precedent in the prehistoric Hopi
muralsl 7 as well as in contemporary
murals from northern New Mexico. l g
The representation of these deitykachinas in the prehistoric murals
provides the most direct evidence for a
continuity between the ancient and
modern Hopi. Further conclusions on
the nature of the Awatobi murals will
be based on this evidence of continuity
through time.
The reason for the opposition of
themes of death and fertility may be
explained with reference to the Hopi
ceremonial calendar. The theme of
death and war is expressed by dances
in winter, when the earth's vegetation
dies and is covered by a blanket of
snow. Hunting dances are also
prominent, since hunting is an im-

portant enterprise in winter months
when farming is impossible. Fertility
themes are associated with the spring
season when rain-bringing and corngrinding ceremonies accompany the
growth of new vegetation and the
resumption of agricultural activity.
This new growth is not merely a birth
of vegetation and fertility, but it is a
rebirth which follows death as immutably as spring follows winter. Hopi
rituals express the seasonal cycle of
death and rebirth in the change from
the ritual dances of war and hunting to
those of benevolence and fertility. This
change is also represented by the
change from an emphasis on male
activities of war and hunting, with a
male sun god, to female activities of
harvesting and food preparation with a
female fertility goddess. The same
contrast may be seen in the Awatobi
murals, where the female deity who is
a subordinate figure in the battle scenes
of group II moves to the central
position in the murals of group I. It
would appear that the Awatobi murals
parallel modern Hopi ritual in the
expression of the cycle of death and
rebirth through the contrast of martial
with fertility themes, and of male with
female qualities.
The change from the winter season
and death to the spring season and
rebirth is also expressed in Hopi ritual
by the change from the underground
kiva dances at night, to the daytime
plaza dances. This upward movement
into the light parallels and reenacts the
major event in the origin myth of the
Hopi and other pueblo peoples. In this
myth, the first people lived in the
underworld, which was totally dark
and therefore a place of utter confusion, disharmony, and discontent.
The emergence of these people onto the
surface of the earth through the sipapu,

20

and their acceptance of agriculture and
settled community life, marks the
establishment of the present order. In
the Hopi myth, the emergence of man
from the underworld also appears to
parallel the growth of vegetation in the
earth's yearly rebirth of fertility. This
cycle of death and rebirth is thus expressed in Hopi myth through a
movement from lower to upper, from
darkness to light, and from chaos to
order. Exactly the same transformation
occurs in the Hopi kachina season, in
the change from the winter dances,
which occur at night and in the kivas,
and which feature violent and
aggressive kachinas, to the spring
dances which occur in daylight, in the
plaza, and which emphasize stately line
dances. It appears that the death of
vegetation in the winter is associated
with the entrance of the sun into the
underworld through violent battle,
plunging the cosmos'into a chaotic
state. This condition is reversed when
life is reborn from the earth goddess
and order is restored.
With this information, a last
comparison may be attempted between
Hopi ritual and the Awatobi murals. It
has been shown that both represent the
yearly cycle and renewal of fertility
through the opposing themes of death
and rebirth, as expressed through the
contrast of martial and fertility
symbolism. In addition, it would
appear that types of movement are
employed in both cases for their
symbolic value. The ritual motion of
masked dancers in Hopi dances, and
the visual motion of compositional
arrangement in the Awatobi murals,
both contrast dynamism and stasis,
asymmetry and symmetry, to emphasize the change from chaos to order
which underlies the death and rebirth
cycle.

It has been shown that the most
important of the prehistoric Awatobi
mural paintings may be divided into
two groups, which emphasize the
contrast of martial and fertility themes.
Through a comparison of these mural
paintings with modern Hopi ritual, it
has been possible to suggest that the
murals depict the opposition of death
in the winter, to rebirth in the spring. It
is further suggested that the contrast in
qualities of composition between the
two groups of mural paintings may be
interpreted as an expression of symbolic intent rather than as a
chronological difference.

21

NOTES
1 Watson Smith, "Kiva Mural Decorations
at Awatovi and Kawaika-a," Papers of the
Peabody Museum of American
Archaeology
and Ethnology, Harvard University, XXXVII
(Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1952), 13-32.
2 Ibid., pp. 107-112.
3 Ibid., fig. 43.
4 Ibid., fig. 59.
5 Ibid., pp. 315-317.
6 Ibid., fig. 59.
7 Ibid., fig. 60.
8 Ibid., pp. 312-313.
9 Ibid., p. 302.
1 °Barton Wright, Kachinas: A Hopi Artist's
Documentary (Flagstaff, 1973), p. 73.
11 Harold S. Colton, Hopi Kachina
Dolls,
with a Key to Their Identification (Albuquerque, 1959), pp. 3-4.
12 Ibid., p. 13.
13 Smith, p. 303.
14 Wright, p. 106.
15 Colton, p. 13.
16 Ibid., p. 18.
17 Smith, p. 308.
18 Frank C. Hibben, Kiva Art of the Anasazi (Las Vegas, 1975), figs. 64-65.

22

23

Mr. B.
and the Cherubim:
A Critical Examination
of William Blake's
A Descriptive Catalogue
of 1809
Anthony Lacy Gully

It is ironically prophetic that
William Blake (1757-1827) should
have selected Milton's phrase, "Fit
audience find tho' few" as an appropriate quotation for the advertisement for his only one-man show
that was held in his brother James's
hosiery shop in 1809. 1 For, indeed,
Blake attracted few visitors to his
exhibition and no sympathetic
response to the arguments he launched
in the accompanying guide book, A
Descriptive Catalogue.2 Blake's
Catalogue provides us with the artist's
most extensive writings on art. On the
following pages is an assessment of the
Catalogue and its relation to the
sixteen works in the exhibition.
Many arguments have been offered
on what impelled Blake to organize an
exhibition which failed so totally to
arouse the support he wanted for his
approach to aesthetics and subject
matter. 3 My reading of the text and
analyses of the works indicate that
Blake conceived of the exhibit and its
Catalogue as a public forum from

which to state his basic artistic premise
that style and content could not be
divorced, that only the successful
union of these two elements, coupled
with visionary insight, could produce
truthful art. All of the works Blake
selected for exhibition may be
classified as history paintings; that is,
they portray some significant human
event. In Blake's time the history
painting was considered the consummate achievement of the painter.
Only the most gifted could portray
these lofty and complicated themes.
Though antagonistic toward the Royal
Academy and its aesthetic theories,
Blake nonetheless was aware of this
tradition and elected to present his
visions of "historical reality" in the
most prestigious and respected format
available to him.
Blake's self-proclaimed role as
prophet is apparent in his art, in both
painting and poetry, for the two are
inextricably bound together. He hoped
to edify mankind, much as the
medieval carvers whose work at

24

Westminster Abbey he had admired so
passionately as a young man had used
their art as didactic devices. Blake's
prophecies, written and visual, though
often dismayingly perplexing, are
based on a highly personal view of
history, a mixture of his own
revelations and contemporary, antiquarian theories about the origins of
civilization, especially in Britain. In
reading the text of the Catalogue one is
struck by the desperate sincerity of the
language with which Blake attempts to
persuade mankind of the truth of his
"historical inventions." The arguments
launched with such volatile power in
the Catalogue and the unorthodox
novelty of his paintings and drawings
were lost on his contemporaries. The
exhibition was a financial and critical
disaster. 4 Robert Hunt scathingly
derided the exhibition in the show's
only lengthy review. 5 Blake intended
his art to fill a void, aesthetic and pedagogical. To him the art works he saw
about him were but empty exercises in
an "abominable style," failing totally
to reveal any of the great, hidden
truths of human existence, the raison
d'etre for art itself. He announces in the
Catalogue that "the times require that
everyone should speak out boldly;
England expects that every man should
do his duty in Arts, as well in Arms, or
in the Senate." 6 One must not forget
that the exhibition took place during
the Napoleonic Wars, and, though
Blake violently objected to war as a
perversion of energy, his hatred for
Napoleon whom he envisioned almost
as an anti-Christ incited this call to
arms. It is not accidental that the arts
lead this list of civic responsibilities.
For Blake, art was the signal sign of
civilization. Had Blake not seen, in
visions, "The Cherubim," the great lost
works of art created by the Biblical

patriarchs? 7 "The Cherubim" mirrored
spiritual truth and reflected the high
state of man's existence before his Fall
and divorce from the single essence of
divine energy. During that brief interlude of peace between France and
England in 1801, Blake had written to
John Flaxman: "The Kingdoms of this
World are now become the Kingdoms
of God & his Christ, & we shall reign
with him for ever & ever. The Reign of
Literature & the Arts Commences.
Blessed are those who are found
studious of Literature & Humane &
polite accomplishments. . . ."8 These
inflated notions of the artist's role are
even more explicitly stated in his
Public Address, ca. 1810, in which
Blake proclaims, "Let us teach
Bonaparte, and whomsoever else it
may concern, That it is not Arts that
follow & attends upon Empire, but
Empire that attends upon & follows the
Arts." 9
Blake felt keenly his artistic
isolation, often producing a strident
language that smacks of paranoia. His
inability to attract support for his
singular notions colored his assessment
of the state of art. Several times in the
Catalogue he complains of sinister
forces which are actively working
against him. In his entry for Number
VI, A Subject from Shakspeare [sic], he
writes that the work has been molested
by "blotting and blurring demons,"10
and in Number IX, Satan calling up his
Legions, from Milton, he notes that the
effects he was seeking were perverted
because of the interference of Venetian
and Flemish painterly approaches.
Blake accuses fictional demons, Old
Masters and his contemporaries, such
as Stothard and Reynolds, of attempting to deprive mankind of his
artistic and spiritual lessons. In the
advertisement for the exhibition Blake

25

states, "There cannot be more than two
or three great Painters or Poets in any
Age or Country; and these, in a
corrupt state of Society, are easily
excluded, but not so easily obstructed/' 1 1
Blake pleads in the preface to the
Catalogue with the public to be wary
of the perfidity and sterility of ideas
emanating from the Royal Academy.
He "appeals to the Public, from the
judgment of those narrow blinking
eyes, that have too long governed art
in a dark corner." 1 2 The tone throughout the Catalogue is aggressive and
assertive. Blake felt that with his
exhibit he had provided fuel for those
who thought him mad and, more
importantly, that he had vanquished
all opposition. In his Notebook there
appears a short apology for the
Catalogue which reads in part:
Who cries, 'all art is fraud,
and genius a trick,
And Blake is an unfortuante
Lunatic?'
I've given great provision to
my Foes,
And now I'll lead my false
friends
By the nose. 1 3
The essential quality which separates
Blake's art from that generally
produced in Britain, with the exception
of a few artists like Fuseli, is its
visionary character. Six years before
the exhibition, Blake explained in a
letter to Thomas Butts, one of his few
patrons, the spiritual basis of his art:
Now I may say to you, what
perhaps I should not dare to
say to anyone else; That I can
alone carry on my visionary
studies in London unannoy'd,
& that I may converse with
my friends in Eternity, See
Visions, Dream Dreams &

prophecy and speak Parables
unobserv'd and at liberty
from the Doubts of other
Mortals. . . .14
It is this fusion of artistic inspiration
and prophetic mission which gives
such vitality to Blake's writings and
art. In his Annotations to the 'Poems'
of Wordsworth (1826), he observes:
"One Power alone makes a Poet . . .
Imagination, The Divine Vision."15
The visionary artist alone can perceive
the true nature of things and events. In
his Public Address Blake makes a
distinction between invention (or
vision) and imitation. Imitation is
worthless; copiers of nature, he names
Rembrandt and Reynolds, cannot hope
to capture truth which resides as much
in the world of spirit as in revealed
nature. He goes on to say,
"Imagination is My World; this world
of Dross is beneath my Notice &
Beneath the Notice of the P u b l i c . " ^
Blake's belief that the artist is the
unique receptacle of truth is perhaps
most extravagantly stated in his annotations to a print of the Laocoon (ca.
1820): "Jesus & His Apostles &
Disciples were all Artists. Their Works
were destroy'd by the Seven Angels of
the Seven Churches in Asia, Antichrist
Science" and elsewhere, "A Poet, a
Painter, a Musician, an Architect: the
Man Or Woman who is not one of
these is not a Christian. You must leave
Fathers & Mothers & Houses & Lands
if they stand in the way of Art." 17
Blake clearly felt that his gifts for
revelation were unique and gave to his
work a power denied most of his
colleagues. In a letter to John Flaxman
in :L800 he stated his conviction that he
had enjoyed a spiritual pre-existence
which allowed him to recall the past
with utter clarity; it is this past which
he illustrated in the exhibition. He says

26

that his mind is filled with ". . . books
& pictures of old, which I wrote &
painted in ages of Eternity before my
mortal life. . . 18 And five years later
he repeats much the same idea to
William Hayley, adding what he hopes
to accomplish with his visions:
I speak of Spiritual Things,
Not of Natural; Of Things
known only to Myself & to
Spirits of Good & Evil, but
Not known to Men on Earth.
. . . It will not be long before
I shall be able to present the
full history of my Spiritual
Sufferings to the Dwellers
upon the Earth & of the
Spiritual Victories obtain'd
for me by my Friends. I 9
In the Catalogue Blake calls the works
he selected for exhibition "Historical
Inventions" and these were intended to
reveal partially his visionary concept
of history and art. How do these
visions manifest themselves? In his
entry for Number IV, The Bard, From
Gray, he describes the concrete images
from the spiritual realm which haunt
his mind: "A Spirit and a Vision are
not, as modern philosophy supposes, a
cloudy vapour, or a nothing: they are
organized and minutely articulated
beyond all that mortal and perishing
nature can p r o d u c e . " 2 0 The clarity of
Blake's vision is reflected in his
drawings with their emphasis upon
delineated contours and precise
description of parts.
Blake intentionally excluded portraiture from his exhibition. The Pitt
and Nelson paintings, Numbers I and II
in the Catalogue, are elaborate
historical allegories, and in his work,
The Bramins — A Drawing, Number
X, he illustrated Sir Charles Wilkins
(?1749-1836),_translating the
Bhagavadgita, not as a contemporary,

antiquarian scholar but as a nude
prophet, akin in spirit to the Patriarchs
who inhabit Michelangelo's Sistine
Ceiling. Blake had little use for portrait
painters; he dismisses them with a
terse, "Of what consequence is it to the
Arts what a Portrait Painter does?" in
his Marginalia on Sir Joshua Reynolds's
Discourses on Art. Blake's low opinion
of Reynolds and others who based
their fame on taking fashionable
likenesses is two-fold. On the one hand
he found reprehensible artists who
were "applauded & rewarded by the
Rich & Great." 2 1 Blake's pronounced
democratic viewpoint was repulsed by
the elitist character of such patronage.
In addition, the subject matter was not
significant enough for Blake. He writes
to his brother, James, in 1803, complaining about the commission to
execute a series of small, historical
portraits for William Hayley. Blake
struggled long on these works and the
letter expresses his bitterness about the
energy and time expended on the
series. "The truth is, As a Poet he is
frighten'd at me & as a Painter his
views & mine are opposite; he thinks to
turn me into a Portrait Painter as he
did Poor Romney, but this he nor all
the devils in hell will never do."22
Those strange visions thrust upon
the public in 1809, to be analyzed
below, fall into several distinct
categories. Five focus on Biblical
history. This is revealed human
history; the subjects are well known,
sanctified by time and tradition, and
they require no elaborate explanation
by the artist. His hope in showing so
many Biblical themes, almost a third of
the total number, is explained in his
entry for Number XIV, The Angels
hovering over the Body of ]esus in the
Sepulchre — A Drawing, in which
Blake says he wishes to awaken the

27

Fig. 1. William Blake, Soldiers casting Lots for
Christ's Garment. Reproduced by courtesy of
the Trustees of the Fitzwilliam Museum,
Cambridge.

28

British to the paucity of monumental,
religious art, compared to religious
monuments in Italy. He hoped his
works would be enlarged to ornament
the altars of England.
Choosing to analyze the Biblical
themes as they are presented in the
Catalogue, the first is Number XI, The
Body of Abel found by Adam and Eve;
Cain Fleeing away who was about to
bury it, fleeing from the face of his
Parents — A Drawing. The original
displayed by Blake has been lost. A
finished tempera drawing most likely
based on this lost design is in the Tate
Gallery and is dated around 1825. A
preparatory sketch for this later
version is in the Geoffrey Keynes
Collection. 2 3 Number XII, The
Soldiers casting Lots for Christ's
Garment — A Drawing, has survived
(fig. 1). This watercolor with grey ink
wash is in the Fitzwilliam Museum,
Cambridge, measuring 16-1/2 x 125/16 inches. It is signed with the artist's
initials and a date of 1800. David
Bindman has suggested that the
composition appears to be derived
from Poussin's Crucifixion (16451646), now in the Wadsworth
Atheneum. Blake may have seen the
original when it went on the block at
Christies in May of 1794 or may have
known the 1762 Bonzonnet-Stella
engraving. 24 Perhaps it is equally
important to note the unusual interpretation of this event, for Christ
and the two thieves are seen from the
rear and the foreground space is filled
with the gambling soldiers. Before
Christ are His mourners facing us and
beyond them a great mass of citizens
peer over the walls of Jerusalem, the
city indicated by a strange forest of
gothic spires! Number XIII, Jacob's
Ladder (fig. 2) has no explanatory text
in the Catalogue. The watercolor is in

the British Museum, measuring 145/8 x 11-1/2 inches. Though undated
it most likely was executed in 1800 as it
parallels imagery found in a poem
addressed to Anna Flaxman, wife of
John Flaxman; the drawing was in her
possession at the time of her death. It
was exhibited in 1808 at the Royal
Academy, the last time Blake attempted to combat the official style
with his own inventions. Angelic
figures accompanied by innocent
children drift up and down a spiral
staircase. This motif is unique and
prompted Anthony Blunt to suggest
that Blake may have seized the motif
from Francesco Salviati's Bathsheba
fresco of the mid-sixteenth century in
the Palazzo Sacchetti, Florence. Blake
may well have seen a print or a drawn
copy after the Salviati design or may
have alighted on the solution independently, for he never ventured to
the Continent, feeling it totally unnecessary for his artistic education.
Number XIV, Angels hovering over the
Body of Jesus in the Sepulchre — A
Drawing (fig. 3) formerly in the Sidney
Morse Collection, is a watercolor
measuring 16VA X ll3/4 inches. The
symmetrical, restrained composition is
powerful, the hovering angels forming
a pointed arch over the recumbant
figure of Christ. The general
arrangement recalls Plate II of Blake's
illuminated poem Europe, A Prophecy
(1794) and Blake's preparatory pencil
sketch and watercolor drawing of Four
and Twenty Elders Casting Their
Crowns Before the Divine Throne
(1804) in the Tate Gallery. Number
XV, Ruth — A Drawing (fig. 4) is a
watercolor illustrating that touching
moment when Ruth abandons her
homeland to follow and serve her
mother-in-law, Naomi. The drawing is
in the Southampton Art Gallery and

Fig. 2. William Blake, Jacob's Ladder. Reproduced by courtesy of the Trustees of the
British Museum, London.

30

Fig. 3. William Blake, Angels hovering over
the Body of Jesus in the Sepulchre. Location
unknown, formerly Sidney Morse Collection.

31

Fig. 4. William Blake, Ruth — A Drawing.
Reproduced with kind permission of
Southampton Art Gallery, Southampton,
England.

32

measures 14 x 12 Vi inches. It is signed
and dated 1803. Colored prints of this
design have survived and have often
been confused with the drawing,
certainly the work exhibited by Blake
in 1809. The artist reserves the entry of
this work to castigate practitioners of
oil painting. He is especially vehement
about the Venetians and Rembrandt,
and full of praise for the drawings of
Diirer, Michelangelo and Raphael who
agree with his "great and golden rule of
art, as well as of life is this: That the
more distinct, sharp and wirey the
bounding line, the more perfect the
work of art." 2 5 This statement requires
comment. Though Blake's linearity is
formally related to the neoclassic style
of the late eighteenth century, he
imbues line with a symbolic charge.
The clarity and purity of line is in
direct proportion to the clarity and
truthfulness of the idea illustrated.
Earlier, describing James Barry's Satan
Sin and Death, he commends Barry's
"hard and wirey line of rectitude, with
its depiction of the ineffable figure of
Death. . . ." 2 6 It is doubtful that Barry
would have comprehended Blake's
mystic definition of line, but it is
central to the understanding of Blake's
art to see the inseparability of his style
and content.
Five of the paintings exhibited are
tributes to poetic visionaries like
himself who have illuminated man's
history. The first of these is Geoffrey
Chaucer, whom Blake characterizes as
a "great poetical observer of men, who
in every age is born to record and
eternalize its [mankind's] a c t s . " 2 7
Number III, The Canterbury
Pilgrims
from Chaucer (fig. 5) is at Pollok
House, Glasgow. Blake's animosity
toward the London publisher R. H.
Cromeck and the artist Thomas
Stothard, whom Blake jointly accused

Fig. 5. William Blake, The Canterbury
Pilgrims, from Chaucer. Reproduced by
courtesy of the Trustees of Pollok House
(Stirling Maxwell Collection), Glasgow,
Scotland.

of stealing and publishing his Chaucer
design, is the main thrust of this entry.
He dismisses Stothard's work with "All
is misconceived, and its mis-execution
is equal to its misconception." 2 8
Blake's sensitive critique of Chaucer's
tale has been long accepted by scholars
but its perceptiveness is no more exceptional than the parallels Blake is
able to draw between his own art and
that of Chaucer. Suggesting the
universal lesson to be learned from
truthful art, Blake describes Chaucer's
tale thus:
The characters of Chaucer's
Pilgrims are the characters
which compose all ages and
nations; as one age falls:
another rises, different to
mortal sight, but to immortals only the same; for we
see the same characters
repeated again and again.
. . .29
Blake and Chaucer are among those

33

gifted to see and understand more than
most mortal men, to comprehend the
great schemes of the Divine. In Blake's
writing and art we find that his personal visions find expression in the
form of the epic. He freely uses events
of history (particularly those of the
British people) as materials for his
parables on the human predicament.
Relying on visions and his personal
conception of history, he magnifies his
experiences into an original
cosmology. History, like human
nature, is explained in symbolic
language, corresponding to the various
states of universal generation which
have their counterparts in the temporal
stages of human life. The great cycle
begins with total oneness with God or
the divine agent and is then marked by
the Fall. The separation from the single
essence has characterized most of
human history; man has existed in a
state of chaos and cultural inertia. The
Fall, however, has not been absolute

nor continual, for throughout history
prophets or seers, such as Chaucer and
Blake, have provided mankind with
glimmerings of the lost truth.
The second poet/visionary to whom
Blake pays tribute is Shakespeare. In
Number VI of the Catalogue, A
Subject from Shakspeare [sic]: A Spirit
vaulting from a Cloud to turn and
wind a Fiery Pegasus, has been lost.
Blake takes the subject from an obscure
passage of Act IV, Henry IV: Part One.
He extends the title in explanation of
his interpretation: "The Horse of
Intellect is leaping from the Cliffs of
Memory and Reasoning; it is a barren
Rock: it is also called the Barren Waste
of Locke and Newton." The work, like
so much of Blake's verse, communicates his hatred for rational
thought inherent in much of the
writings of these two seventeenth
century thinkers and subsequent
eighteenth-century enlightenment
writers.

34

Fig. 6. William Blake, Satan calling up his
Legions, from Milton. Reproduced by
courtesy of the Trustees of the Tate Gallery,
London.

35

Another figure who stimulated
Blake's admiration is that highly
original illuminator, John Milton. The
largeness and brilliance of Milton's
visions profoundly affected Blake's
poetry and art. 30 Number IX, Satan
calling up his Legions, from Milton
(fig. 6) is dedicated to the seventeenthcentury poet. He calls it an "experimental picture"; it is tempera with
varnish on canvas and measures
24 Vi x I6V2 inches, unsigned and
undated. The work is in very poor
condition; it is barely possible to detect
Satan atop a molten pinnacle, his body
highlighted with gold. The composition recalls Number II, The
Spiritual Form of Pitt guiding the
Behemoth (fig. 7), and other of Blake's
apocalyptic designs such as The Last
Judgment or The Spiritual
Condition
of Man; all seem roughly organized in
imitation of Michelangelo's Sistine Last
Judgment. Another affinity exists
between the Milton painting and the
Pitt allegory for both are among
several works in the exhibiton which
are very hard to read; the confused and
deteriorated "experimental" character
of these works seems to refute Blake's
arguments for clarity. Though obviously proud of his "portable
frescoes" with his newly-devised
techniques, Blake asserts that several
have suffered from the work of demons
who have blotted his imagery.
Two remaining works pay tribute to
more recent visionaries. The Swedish
mystic Emmanuel Swedenborg's True
Christian Religion inspired Number
VIII, The Spiritual Percept or, no
longer extant. Swedenborg's belief in a
universal mythology appealed to
Blake. The complicated cryptograms
employed by Swedenborg in his
critique of the Old Testament to
describe Christ's mental history prior

to His actual birth accorded with
Blake's belief that the Bible was but one
source of recorded history. Blake
firmly believed that non-Christian
writings possessed lost truths, a notion
he found attractively expressed in
Jacob Boehme's Mysterium
Magnum
(1623). Blake also believed, as did
Boehme, that the memory of every
man's acts followed him into eternity
and there formed a reservoir of all
human knowledge which could be
tapped by those with mystical insight.
Blake differs, however, from both
Swedenborg and Boehme in that he is
non-sectarian. He is not concerned
with rectifying the ills of the Christian
church, but with a broader
philosophical concept. Seeking truth
outside traditional European writings
drew Blake to contemporaries like Sir
Charles Wilkins, who is the subject of
Number X, The Bramins — A
Drawing, noted earlier. Blake's interest
in Hindu creation myths and other
facets of exotic Indian culture is not
unique. 31
Thematically linked with the above
is Number IV, The Bard, from Gray .32
In this vision the ancient Welsh bard is
seen as the last survivor of his kind, his
brethren having been willfully
slaughtered by Kind Edward I.
Unquestionably, Blake felt a kinship
with the bards, for like them he was
capable of understanding the past and
the future and had been persecuted by
the evil and the unknowing. The Bard,
from Gray seems, however, more
closely allied with the remaining five
works of the exhibition, all of which
deal with Britain's history.
Absolutely central to Blake's conception of history is the primacy
of the British people in the origins
of human civilization. Captain Wilford
in 1799 published his
Chronology

36

Fig. 7. William Blake, The Spiritual Form of
Pitt guiding the Behemoth. Reproduced by
courtesy of the Trustees of the Tate Gallery,
London.

37

of the Hindoos [sic] which offered
sympathize with those few visitors at
an explanation essentially identical
the exhibition who stood in amazement
to Blake's. Wilford maintained that
before Blake's visions and tried to
all civilized life came from Britain
imagine them on such a colossal
after the Deluge. Similarly, Sir Charles scale. 34
Wilkins in the Asiatic Record asBoth the Bard, from Gray and The
serted that the Hindus knew of
Ancient Britons owe much to the
Britain as the home of the Pitris, the
Welsh triads, collections of verse
fathers of the human race. Clearly
reputed to have been composed in
Blake was not alone in his bizarre
England's druidic past. 35 Blake's actual
notions of history. This kinship with
sources remain obscure but he may
other writers is even more pronounced
well have been inspired by such works
when one examines contemporary
as Edward Williams's Poems:
Lyrical
antiquarian reconstructions of
and Pastoral, published in 1794. In his
England's Druidic past. Blake's
catalogue entry for The Ancient
fascination with Druids was keen; two
Britons Blake tells us that he has in his
of the works in the exhibition were
hands authentic ancient British poems.
based upon Blake's visions of England's Blake may have been referring to
prehistory: The Bard, from Gray and
Williams's work, a collection of poems
Number VI, The Ancient Britons (since which Williams claimed to have found
lost). The latter work is extraordinary
in a sixteenth-century manuscript
in Blake's oeuvre because of its sheer
compiled by Llewelyn Sion, a Welsh
size; it measured ten by fourteen feet,
bard; or Blake may have been alluding
far larger than any known work by the to any of the similar collections then in
artist. The monumental scale of this
circulation. These miscellanies,
painting reminds one of Blake's
believed to contain the products of a
remarks in his entry for the Pitt
rich oral poetic tradition, recall the
allegory (Number II), in which he
popular "forgeries" of MacPherson and
comments, "The Artist wishes it were
Chatterton which greatly excited
now the fashion to make such
Blake's admiration.
monuments, and then he should not
In the same year of Blake's
doubt of having a national commission exhibition, Edward Davies published
to execute these two Pictures [the
his Celtic Researches: Mythology and
Nelson and Pitt allegories] on a scale
Rites of the British Druids. Like Blake,
that is suitable to the grandeur of the
Davies believed in a lost universal
nation." 33 Blake's projected
society and maintained that the
monuments, he tells us, were to be one- original seat of all human learning was
hundred feet high, duplicating the
Britain. Another contemporary who
majesty of the "Cherubim", those lost
shared many of Blake's beliefs was
colossal works of art created by the
Jacob Bryant, to whom Blake pays
Biblical Patriarchs that Blake had seen
tribute in the Catalogue.36
Between
in visions. This intention of creating a
1774 and 1776 Bryant published his
gigantic public art must not be ignored; three-volume study, A New System, or
one associates Blake with his modest
an Analysis of Ancient
Mythology
watercolors and book illuminations.
wherein an attempt is made to Divest
Clearly he imagined an entirely difTradition of Fable, and Reduce the
ferent kind of art as well. It is easy to
Truth to Original Purity. (How that

38

Fig. 8. William Stukeley, Plate from Abury,
A Temple of the British Druids, published
1743.

title must have appealed to Blake.) All
three writers would argue that Adam
and Noah were D r u i d s . 3 7
In an effort to lend historical
verisimilitude to his Druidic theme in
The Ancient Britons, Blake describes
the scene of the battle thus: ' T h e dead
and dying, Britons naked, mingled
with armed Romans, strew the field
beneath. . . . Distant among the
mountains are Druid Temples, similar
to Stone H e n g e . " 3 8 Visions of
Stonehenge occur repeatedly in Blake's
art. Undoubtedly Blake was aware of
William Stukeley, who more than
anyone else encouraged interest in
these ancient monuments. Stukeley
had read John Aubrey's manuscript,
Monumenta Britannica, 1659, and was
especially struck with a chapter
entitled "Templa Druidium." It was
Aubrey who first associated
Stonehenge, Avebury, and other sites
with Druidic rites. Stukeley did

archeological field work between 1716
and 1723, and in 1740 published
Stonehenge, A Temple Restor'd to the
British Druids, followed in 1743 by
Abury, A Temple of the British
Druids. A plate taken from the latter
(fig. 8), shows Stukeley's reconstruction of the entire temple complex
in the form of a giant serpent. This
serpentine vision is used by Blake in his
last plate of Jerusalem, 1804-1820 (fig.
9). Another plate from Jerusalem
illustrates the "Mythological Trilithon"
(fig. 10). This print also suggests
Stonehenge. The three small figures
which have been identified by some
Blake scholars as Bacon, Newton and
Locke suggest the poetic time continuum, or "poetic vigor", to use
Blake's own phrase, which characterizes so much of his art, the unexpected juxtaposition or blending of
historical personages and events.
To interpret precisely the meaning of

39

Fig. 9. William Blake, Plate from Jerusalem.

The Bard, from Gray or The Ancient
Britons seems impossible, for they, like
so much of Blake's verse, are composed
of a constantly shifting cast of
characters whose symbolic relationships and roles vary. The three ancient
Britons are identified in the Catalogue
as the Beautiful, the Ugly and the
Strong, interpreted by Frye as
equivalents to his mythical heroes,
Ore, Urizen and T h a r m a s . 3 9
The Druids are described in antiquarian literature in one of two ways.
They may be seen as brutal savages,
engaging in loathsome, sacrificial,
often cannibalistic rites, or they may
be seen as a gentle race of forestdwelling poets, or bards as in the
previously mentioned work by
Williams, or in narratives such as John
Ogilivie's The Fane of the Druid
(1787). The benign interpretation is
seen in Blake's The Bard, from Gray,
but elsewhere in Blake's writings one

finds him describing the Druids as an
alien, destructive force.
Blake's firm conviction that England
had once been the fountainhead of all
knowledge contributed to his disdain
for and suspicion of classical art. In the
Catalogue he explicitly refers to the
inferiority of Greek and Roman art
when compared to the lost splendors of
"The Cherubim." Writers such as
Davies argued that the classical writers
and philosophers like Pythagoras and
Diogenes Laertius referred to the
Druids as the teachers of mankind.
This may help explain Blake's observation in Jerusalem in which he
claims that Greek philosophy is only a
remnant of Druidic culture.
All of the above histories, as well as
Blake's Catalogue, have one thing in
common; all are attempting to accomodate the ever-growing body of
historical knowledge, regardless of its
accuracy, to that suggested by the

40

M<

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•

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r Ar
/#.V W /
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VIIV"/4M*<S
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4*
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t% •>.efih^r
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... « . 'i<
yt

. - v.- /.v*' , # v
- - m . / £*>rre fAmy

Fig. 10. William Blake, The
Trilithon, from Jerusalem.

as" eJ* * /?try*>**• ..v
(j#im
r /, -v**

Mythological

In a* i tx«k

f ^ rurJrx
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41

Patriarchal writers of Jewish history.
The practice seems associated with two
types of writers: those who, under the
influence of the Enlightenment, tried
rationally and scientifically to explain
man s past and to put legend, Biblical
and otherwise, in proper perspective,
and romantics like Blake, who sensed
in exotic or lost civilizations the
inherent mystery and chaos of the
universe.
Medieval art and literature
fascinated Blake. He saw the period as
one steeped in faith and imagination.
Two of the works in the exhibition deal
with England in the Middle Ages: The
Canterbury Pilgrims which has been
discussed above and, Number XVI,
The Penance of Jane Shore in St. Paul's
Cathedral
a poignant tale which attracted several artists. Blake's Penance
of Jane Shore is a pen and ink with
watercolor wash drawing in the Tate
Gallery, measuring 9-5/8 x 11-5/8
inches. This early work, dating from
Blake's student days (ca. 1778-1780),
has a delicacy and sweetness which is
foreign to the bold, mystic character of
his mature style. The scene is not
simply the public humiliation of Jane
Shore, the mistress of Edward IV who
was forced to do public penance by
Richard III, but suggests Blake's
distaste for the sexual hypocrisy which
he saw in society. The subject has been
correctly linked to Nicholas Rowe's
drama of the same subject first
performed in 1774. Interestingly, in
1773, Reynolds exhibited Mrs.Harteley
as Jane Shore at the Royal Academy.
Lastly, the first two paintings
described in the Catalogue chronicle in
symbolic language Blake's own time
and foreshadow the future. Both works
are in the Tate Gallery. Number I, The
Spiritual Form of Nelson guiding the
Leviathan (fig. 11), is varnished

tempera on canvas, measuring 30 x 245/8 inches. The work was begun
around 1805 and finished shortly
before the exhibition. Number II, Pitt
guiding the Behemoth (fig. 7), is
painted in the same technique,
measures 29-1/8 x 23-3/4 inches and is
dated 1805. These works have been
variously interpreted as entirely
symbolic or as apocalyptic visions
meant to describe recent events in
mythical terms. Given the thrust of
Blake's arguments in the Catalogue, his
constant attempt to relate the past to
the present and the meaningful
readings given to Blake's verse by
scholars such as Erdman, Keynes and
Frye, the latter would seem most
probable. It was surely not accidental
that these were the first two works in
Blake's Catalogue. Even Blake's
contemporaries sensed he was saying
something about the conduct of the
war and the guiding roles of the Prime
Minister and Admiral Nelson. Hunt
accused Blake of "whitewashing the
war policy associated with Pitt and
N e l s o n . " 4 0 Nothing could be further
from the truth. Blake, a confirmed
political radical, had long opposed
England's war with France, as he had
opposed Great Britain's repressive
campaigns against the American
colonies. Though repulsed by the
tyranny of Napoleon, Blake continued
to support the republican ideals formulated by Paine and by the American
and French revolutionaries. The
Nelson and Pitt paintings are
visualizations of the libertarian themes
found in his prophetic books.
Bronowski observes that Blake
shrewdly judged the temper of the
times and realized his radical views
were in direct conflict with the increasingly repressive and chauvinistic
patriotism of wartime England. From

42

Fig. 11. William Blake, The Spiritual Form of
Nelson guiding the Leviathan. Reproduced by
courtesy of the Trustees of the Tate Gallery,
London.

43

1791 when Blake and his publisher,
Joseph Johnson, decided not to print
his French Revolution, Blake increasingly shifted from the relatively
straightforward language of his earlier
works to the mystical obscurities of his
written and visual prophecies late in
his career. Blake could continue to
attack those forces which he felt stifled
the positive forces of imagination and
energy, the equivalents of personal and
political liberty. 41 Northrup Frye's
definition of evil as Blake would have
understood it would seem to describe
what we see in the Nelson and Pitt
allegories. Evil is "self-restraint or the
restraint of others — evil arises from
passivity, the negative refusal to
perform a creative act which results in
frustrating either one's own
development or that of others." 4 2 The
passive figures of Nelson and Pitt
directing the governmental and
military machinery of war are
surrounded by a cyclonic field filled
with chaos and confusion. These
allegories, like America and Europe,
demand the banishment of war and
repression. Pitt is seen in oriental garb,
with a Buddhist halo, singular imagery
which transports the contemporary
reference into a larger realm, suitable
for Blake's parable of evil at work.
Blake tells us that these works "are
compositions of a mythological cast,
similar to those Apotheoses of Persian,
Hindoo [sic], and Egyptian Antiquity,
which are still preserved on rude
monuments, being copies of some
stupendous originals now lost or
perhaps buried till some happier
age." 4 3 Implicit in this statement is the
existence of a lost art ("The
Cherubim"), which will remain
unknown until man has achieved a
level of purity. Until then he will be
denied access to Beauty and Truth.

Blake's hostility to the notable
historians of the period was acute. In
his entry for The Ancient Britons Blake
condemns Hume, Gibbon, and
Voltaire as "twisters of causes and
consequences." He proclaims that their
penchant for reason has blinded them
to real truth. Their works are false,
personal opinions that have no
correspondence to the actual historical
cycle. Blake exhorts, "Away with your
reasoning and your rubbish!" He
warns his readers that those who
ignore the spiritual agency, the improbable, because it does not fit within
their organized systems, are fools.
Twice in the Catalogue warnings are
issued to his fellow artists. In the entry
for Number VIII, The Spiritual
Perceptorf he writes that any artist
who mistakenly shuts "the doors of
mind and of thought by placing
Learning above Inspiration. O Artist!
you may disbelieve all this, but it shall
be at your own peril." 4 4 In the
following entry, Satan calling up his
Legions, from Milton, he again states
that if duped into accepting the
loathsome preachings of the
academicians young artists will be in
jeopardy for their very souls. The
continuous argument of these two
passages is further evidence that the
Catalogue was conceived as a single
argument. Each painting or drawing
with its accompanying text adds to the
cumulative lesson. For those sympathetic to his arguments Blake reveals
significant moral, historical and artistic
truths. In the last lines of the
Catalogue, Blake confidently informs
his readers that his arguments are
unassailable and that he can retire to
bed confident of the utter veracity of
his art.

44

NOTES
1 See Geoffrey Keynes, Blake
Studies:
Essays on His Life and Work (Oxford, 1971).
See especially Chapter 8, pp. 66-73, where
Keynes cites all known extant copies of the
Catalogue and the several advertisements
connected with the 1809 exhibition.
2 William Blake, A Descriptive
Catalogue,
(London, 1809), p. 61. The author wishes to
thank the Beinecke Library staff of Yale
University for its assistance. The so-called
"Copy F: Beckford-Hamilton Palace Copy",
at Yale was used for the preparation of this
article.
3 Many have argued that Blake's pique at
R. Cromek and T. Stothard's "theft" of his
design for The Canterbury Pilgrims, from
Chaucer sparked Blake's decision. Mona
Wilson, The Life of William Blake (London,
1927), p. 207, contends that the Catalogue is
an artistic manifesto eulogizing Raphael and
Michelangelo at the expense of Rembrandt,
Rubens and the Venetians. Northrup Frye,
Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake
(Princeton, 1958), pp. 409-10, suggests seven
motivations, all of which are valid:
(1) demonstration of the success of his fresco
technique, (2) the need for public art in
Britain, (3) the disadvantages of working in
oil, (4) insights into the political events of his
time, (5) an outline of the British archetypal
myth, (6) elaborate criticism of Chaucer and
English poetry, and (7) the bringing of
Swedenborg and the Bhagavadgita to the
public's attention.
4 The exhibition opened in mid-May on the
ground floor of his brother's shop at 28 Broad
Street, Golden Square, London. Though
scheduled to close on September 29, it
remained open for an extended period.
5 Hunt's review appeared in The Examiner
on September 17, 1809, and reads in part:
If beside the stupid and mad-brained
political projects of their rulers, the
sane part of the people of England
required fresh proof of the alarming
increase of the efforts of insanity,
they will be too well convinced from
its having been lately spread into the
hitherto sober regions of art —
When the ebullitions of a distempered brain, are mistaken for the
sallies of genius, by those whose
works are exhibited as the soundest

thinking in art, the malady has
indeed attained a pernicious height,
and it becomes a duty to endeavor
to arrest its progress. Such is the
case with the productions of
WILLIAM BLAKE.
For the complete review and a collection of
responses to the exhibition see Alexander
Gilchrist, Life of William Blake, I, II (London,
1880).
6 William Blake, The Complete
Writings of
William Blake with Variant Readings, ed.,
Geoffrey Keynes (London, 1966), p. 584.
7 Blake, Complete
Writings, p. 565. Here
Blake explains how he has been taken in
visions to "the ancient republics, monarchies,
and patriarchates of Asia" where he had seen
the colossal, lost works of art created by
these lost civilizations.

Blake, Complete Writings, p. 810.
William Blake, The Notebook of William
Blake Called the Rossetti Manuscript, ed.,
Geoffrey Keynes (London, 1935), p. 102.
10 Blake, Descriptive
Catalogue, p. 51.
11 Blake, Complete
Writings, p. 561.
12 Blake, Descriptive
Catalogue, iii.
13 Blake, Notebook,
pp. 86-87.
14 William Blake, The Letters of William
Blake, ed., Geoffrey Keynes (London, 1956),
p. 84. The letter written from Felpham is
dated April 25, 1803.
15 Blake, Complete
Writings, p. 782.
16 Ibid, p. 600.
17 Ibid, p. 776.
1 8 The letter is dated September 21, 1800.
See Blake, Complete Writings, p. 802.
19 Ibid, 862.
2 °Blake, Descriptive
Catalogue, p. 37.
21 Blake, Complete
Writings, p. 445.
2 2 The letter is dated January 30, 1803;
Blake, Complete Writings, p. 819.
2 3 Geoffrey Keynes, Pencil Drawings by
William Blake (London, 1956). The author
illustrates the sepia pencil preparatory sketch
in his collection.
24 David Bindman, William Blake,
Catalogue of the Collection of the Fitzwilliam
Museum, Cambridge (Cambridge, 1970),
p. 23.
8
9

45

25 Blake,

Descriptive Catalogue, pp. 63-64.
Wark, "A Note on James Barry
and Edmund Burke/' Journal of the Warburg
and Courtauld Institute, XVIII (London,
1954), pp. 382-385.
27 Blake, Descriptive
Catalogue, p. 14.
28 Ibid, p. 34.
29 Ibid, p. 9.
3 °Blake's enthusiasm for Milton was shared
by many of his contemporaries; for a
discussion of this see C. H. Collins Baker,
"Some Illustrators of Milton's Paradise
Lost,"
The Library (June and September 1948).
3 1 Any number of publications about Indian
antiquities appear in the late eighteenth
century; most notable are: Alexander Dow's
History of Hindostan (London, 1768);
Theodore Maurice's seven volume study,
Indian Antiquities (London, 1793-1800); and
Edward Moore's Hindo Pantheon (London,
1810). Indicative of Blake's fascination with
exotic societies is Number VII in the exhibition
The Goats, an Experimental Picture. Blake
merely states that the subject is taken from the
Missionary Voyage. Blake's picture was
inspired in fact by James Wilson's A Missionary Voyage to the South Pacific in the Years
1796, 1797, 1798 in the Ship Duff (London,
1799). The specific passage illustrated by
Blake can be found on pp. 129-130, where the
nude island girls climb aboard the ship, are
given skirts of leaves which are eaten by the
goats, soon after the ship has arrived at
Resolution Bay in the Marquesas.
2 6 Robert

3 2 The tempera painting is in the Tate
Gallery. A pencil preparatory sketch exists
in the Philadelphia Museum of Art; both the
verso and recto surfaces have Bard sketches.
33 Blake, Descriptive
Catalogue, p. 5.
3 4 Keynes, Blake Studies, p. 80. Keynes
quotes Robert Southey's criticism which
appeared in The Doctor written long after the
exhibition. For a good summary of nineteenth-century reactions to Blake's Catalogue
see Deborah Dorfman, Blake in the Nineteenth Century, His Reputation from Gilchrist
to Yeats (New Haven, 1969), pp. 14-15, 103,
259-260.
35 Northrup Frye, Fearful
Symmetry,
pp. 172-173. Here Frye nicely characterizes
Blake's enthusiasm for Bardic literature.
He writes:

Thus in various ways an immense
expansion of literary interests was
bringing to the attention of poets
much that had been left outside the
direct line of development from
Homer to Pope. The Arthurian and
Eddie myths, which we have seen
to be integral to Blake's symbolism,
were discovered or re-habilitated.
The whole poetic scene was filled
with Welsh and Scandanavian translations and adaptations, not wholly
out of fashion even when Blake
opened his Descriptive
Catalogue
in 1809 with an imitation of Welsh
triads.
3 6 Blake,

Descriptive Catalogue, p. 43.
writers sharing this idea are David
Jones in his translation of Paul-Yves Perzon's
The Antiquity of Nations; Rowland Jones's
The Origins of Language and Nation
(London, 1764) and James MacPherson's
History of Great Britain (London, 1773).
3 8 Blake, Descriptive
Catalogue, p. 50.
39 Frye, Fearful Symmetry,
p. 272. For an
analysis of the many facets of romantic
enthusiasm for Druidic literature and culture,
see Stuart Piggott, The Druids (New York,
1975).
4 0 Dorfman, Blake, Nineteenth
Century,
p. 14.
4 1 J . Bronowski, William Blake and the
Age of Revolution (New York, 1965),
pp. 69-85.
42 Frye, Fearful Symmetry,
p. 293.
4 3 Blake, Descriptive
Catalogue, p. 2.
44 Ibid, p. 53.
3 7 Other

46

THE
ARIZONA
PORTFOLIO

48

LA MUSE
DE GUILLAUME APOLLINAIRE
(The Muse of Guillaume Apollinaire)

Marie Laurencin (1885-1956), the painter
and mistress of Guillaume Apollinaire, is the
subject of this painting by the early twentieth
century naive painter, Henri Rousseau. The
title of the work is derived from two double
portraits Rousseau completed in 1909 of
Apollinaire and Laurencin, Le poete et sa
muse, in which Laurencin, dressed in a long
pleated, blue robe and flowery wreath, acts
as a muse of inspiration. The Phoenix Art
Museum's painting, also from 1909, is most
likely a tribute by Rousseau to Laurencin's
artistic genius. She is receiving inspiration
from a blond angelic figure at the right,
identical to the figure of Liberty in Rousseau's
1906 Liberty inviting the Artists to the
Twenty-second Exhibition of the Independents (Private Collection, Zurich). The
Phoenix Art Museum work must have been
painted after the first version of Le poete et sa
muse and possibly after the second version
because of the symbolic attributes for artistic
genius.
In 1909 Apollinaire, one of the few
individuals to be attracted to Rousseau's
"primitive" style, commissioned the artist to
execute his portrait. Rousseau worked
diligently and sent Apollinaire a flood of
letters pleading for adequate sittings and for
some advance payment. Rousseau was
displeased with the finished work, the first
version of Le poete et sa muse (Pushkin
Museum, Moscow, 131 x 97 cm.], and he

immediately began the second version {Kunstmuseum, Basle, 147 x 97 cm.). It is the latter
version which Rousseau exhibited at the Salon
des Independents in 1909. Both paintings are
in most points identical except for the wreath
on Laurencin's head, her gesture of inspiration, and the type of flower in the foreground.
In the first version Rousseau had painted
gillyflowers. Rousseau rejected the painting
because he thought the gillyflowers
inappropriate for his subject. In the second version he
substituted l'oeillet de poete, poet's carnation
or sweet william. Rousseau decorated the
foreground of the Phoenix Art Museum painting with the small and delicate blooms of the
poet's carnation. The inclusion of this row of
flowers in La muse de Guillaume
Apollinaire is an intentional symbolic reference to the missing poet and suggests that the
Phoenix Art Museum work was painted after
the first version of Le poete et sa muse.
Rousseau writes proudly at this time of his
invention of the "portrait paysage," the
portrait landscape. Rousseau's landscapes are
not merely decorative backdrops for his
figural studies but meticulously
described
visions. The lack of atmosphere and the
strangely sensuous silhouettes of foliage and
figures produce a magical sensation. The
Phoenix painting differs from the two double
portraits in that the depiction of the landscape
space is deep. The two stylized trees which
enframe the figure in the Phoenix painting

49

are similar to those found in the double
portraits, particularly the second version.
Rousseau often reuses motifs, not out of lack
of inventiveness but because every detail is
charged with special meaning to him.
If Rousseau's landscapes are haunting they
are no less compelling than his portraits.
Marie Laurencin is seen frontally, dressed in
severe black, holding a small bouquet, the
favored formula used by this artist for his
female portraits. Laurencin's rigid pose and
penetrating gaze recall Picasso's remarks
about the first work he purchased of
Rousseau's Mile. M., which he found in Pere
Soulier's junk shop in 1908. Picasso genuinely
admired the primitive clarity and directness of
Rousseau's vision. He writes:
Rousseau was not an accident. He
represents the perfection of the
central order of thought. The first
work of his I happened to acquire
produced an astonishing effect on
me. . . . It is one of the most
beautiful of all French
psychological
portraits.
Though we may perhaps take issue with the
suggestion that Rousseau's portraits are
penetrating psychological studies, like the
works of Degas or Picasso's own portraits,
there is no denying the powerful
impression
produced by his enigmatical and immovable
personages. We know from letters that for the
double portrait Rousseau took elaborate

measurements of Apollinaire's features; this
procedure may have been employed for his
interpretation of Marie Laurencin as well.
Apollinaire was shocked with the portrait and
reportedly very displeased with those who,
upon viewing Rousseau's Le poete et sa muse,
recognized him. Marie Laurencin may have
been equally surprised at her painted visage.
Her slight frame and delicate features, noted
by such contemporaries as Gertrude Stein and
Picasso's mistress, Fernande Olivier, are not
to be seen. The broad, impassive face of the
Phoenix painting is similar to all of Rousseau's
portraits of women. La muse de Guillaume
Apollinaire and the two double portraits
which most likely precede it, confirm
Rousseau's unusual approach to portrait
painting. The quiet figures who stand in a
strangely mute world are visionary tributes
to those he loved and respected.
Anthony Lacy Gully

50

La Muse de Guillaume Apollinaire
BY HENRI ROUSSEAU

Phoenix Art Museum
Accession Number 62-101
Gift of Clare Boothe Luce
60.9 cm. x 38.7 cm.
oil on canvas

52

WILD GEESE,
FLOWERING PLANTS,
AND TALL REEDS

The subject is wild geese and their habitat.
The season is predictably autumn. The style is
courtly and elegant. Thus one may describe
the impressive chung-t'ang {a large scroll for a
reception hall) in the Phoenix Art Museum
Collection, which is unquestionably
one of
the finest paintings in this genre from the
Ming Dynasty
(1368-1644).
In the painting, three wild geese rest on the
bank of a river. At least two of them are
aware of the descent, from the top right, of
another, whose wings are spread, neck
stretched, and feet readied for landing. Behind
them, to the left, is a cluster of tall reeds,
through which flowering peonies can be seen.
The autumnal mood is pervasive, not only
because the theme of migrating wild geese
traditionally lends itself to seasonal
evocation,; but the withering tips of the leaves of the
reeds, the timely bloom of the flowers, and
the interspersing of brownish hues amidst
greens are equally telling. In this respect,
even the tone of the silk, now mellowed to a
rich shade of gold, is ideal as a backdrop.
The composition itself is masterly.
Between
plants and plants, birds and birds, and birds
and plants, the interplay is intricate and
subtle. Its stately rhythm, taut
orchestration
and counterpoint indicate the hand of a
master. So do the ever-varying
brushstrokes,
which can be incisive and steely at one
moment, then soften to undulating waves at
another. It is noteworthy to mention that its

sonorous and crystal tone is unlike the misty
banality into which Ming treatment of this
genre frequently — and unfortunately — falls.
Remarkable,
too, is the condition of this
painting which, in spite of its nearly four
hundred year existence, has not suffered much
loss. Even the retouching has been minimal
and
self-effacing.
In view of the size, quality and condition of
the work, one cannot help but lament the
absence of a signature that could link it
unequivocally to a known artist. The Phoenix
Art Museum staff has attributed it to Lin
Liang (active 1455-1500), but the stylistic
framework and refined brushstrokes tend to
point to his equally renowned
contemporary,
that is, L'u Chi.
Lu Chi was active around 1500 and enjoyed
the patronage of the Ming Emperor,
Hung-chih (1488-1506). He was a prolific
painter and the probable head of an atelier.
Works attributed to L'u Chi are often
divergent in style and uneven in quality. The
Phoenix Art Museum chung-t'ang, however,
can be compared to the very best of them and
it may well be a prime example of either the
hand of L'u Chi or of his school.
Ju-hsi

Chou

54

WILD GEESE, FLOWERING PLANTS, AND
TALL REEDS

Anonymous,

Ming

Dynasty

Phoenix Art Museum
Accession Number 58-100
Gift of Elsie Sackler
204.8 cm. x 107.2 cm.
ink and color on silk

56

TING

The "savage elegance" of the ting, formerly
on loan to the Phoenix Art Museum, presents
another aspect of ancient Chinese art. The
ting is a key vessel in the ancient rituals of the
Shang and Chou periods
(respectively
1523-1027 B.C., and 1027-256 B.C.), where
offerings and libations were made to ancestors
and deities. The ting was a food container.
The style is mature Shang, around eleventh
century B. C., and its origin has been
suspected to be the capital city of An-yang.
Like most of the tings with this provenance,
the form of the vessel is strong and simple,
whereas the decor is complex and
zoomorphic. The usual configurations are
present: marked by strong axial flanges,
treated in high relief and backed by the
meandering lei-wen (thundercloud pattern),
the t'ao-t'ieh or the "glutton mask" takes on a
classic, menacing appearance. Indeed, so well
integrated is the mask with the vessel that,
when viewed from the proper angle, the
former virtually transformed the latter into a
living, mysterious organism.
As a matter of fact, of this particular ting,
it is the very t'ao-t'ieh itself that proves to be
the most interesting. Unlike the majority of
t'ao-t'iehs, its horns metamorphose into a
pair of fantastic animals which evoke aquatic
associations. In addition, the motif of the
pointed ear, which is common, is extended to
the treatment of the aquatic creatures, which
is uncommon.

In short, if it has been attested time and
again that each Shang ritual vessel is
individually conceived while falling into a
generic pattern, the ting in the Henry Luce III
Collection is but one more
confirmation.
Ju-hsi Chou

58

TING

Shang

Dynasty

Henry Luce III Collection
H: 25 cm.; d. 19.23 cm.
Bronze

60

HOMAGE
TO WATTEAU

In March, 1860 upon a return visit from
Rome to his native city of Valenciennes,
the
French sculptor Jean-Baptiste
Carpeaux
(1827-1875) began to formulate plans for a
monument to commemorate
the genius of
the city's most illustrious artist, the
eighteenth-century
painter, Antoine
Watteau.
In an extant letter to the mayor, M. Bracq,
Carpeaux offered to erect the monument at his
own expense, asking only for the cost of the
necessary bronze. The commission
was
granted, and for the next fifteen years until
his death, Carpeaux worked on the project.
It was realized in three versions: the Phoenix
Art Museum model reveals the artist's final
conception.
Carpeaux's first project, completed
sometime before the spring of 1860, took the form
of an isolated figure of Watteau.
Carpeaux
then favored marble for the monument and
insisted that the work be placed in the center
of the city's La Grande Place. These demands
resulted in frequent disputes between the artist
and members of the Municipal
Council.
A second version was completed in 1867.
According to the memoirs of Carpeaux's
daughter, the second version was based on a
now lost pastel portrait of Watteau. A model
of this version exists in the Musee des
Beaux-Arts, Valenciennes. It stands 27 cm.
high and shows Watteau, palette in hand,
surrounded by attributes of the
Commedia
dell'Arte.

Although Carpeaux exhibited in 1870
a statue of Watteau based on the 1867 version,
he seems to have simultaneously realized that
the isolated figure of Watteau would be
completely overpowered
by the monument's
future location; the Municipal Council was
adamant that the work was to be placed
against a building at the extremity of
La Grande Place. Thus, Carpeaux
amplified
his conception. The image of Watteau now
surmounted a two-tiered fountain designed in
Louis XV style. The double pedestal was
adorned with four figures from the Commedia
dell Arte, and they in turn were reflected in a
white marble basin in which swans, the
symbol of Valenciennes, were depicted as
well. The panels on this lower tier were
decorated with bas-relief designs based on
paintings by Watteau.
Representative of this third, and final,
design is the Phoenix Art Museum's Homage
to Watteau. The attribution of the Phoenix
cast, distinguished by its mold markings, is
complicated by the fact that the completed
monument was not dedicated until
October 12, 1884, the bicentennial anniversary of Watteau's birth, nine years after
the artist's death. The final project was
carried out by the sculptor, Eugene Hiolle,
and three architects appointed by the
Municipal Council. According to Claude
Souviron, curator of the Musee des
Beaux-Arts, Valenciennes, Hiolle executed

61

several casts from Carpeaux's original model
of the fountain. Generally, Carpeaux
worked
from simplified designs in his models to final
conceptions notable for their intricate
detailing. Both the Phoenix Art Museum
cast, and one in the Louvre, are distinguished
by their relative simplicity, and are stylistically related to the artist's first
conception
of the third version; they are unlike the more
involved surface incisions and modelling on
the pedestals of a third model in the Musee
des Beaux-Arts, Valenciennes. Moreover,
the
Phoenix and Louvre versions are dominated
by the figure of Watteau, which was ultimately cast from Carpeaux's 1870 statue, and
neither the Phoenix nor Louvre versions
exhibit the complexities of the figures on the
lower registers as completed by Hiolle.
Whether the Phoenix Art Museum version
was cast by Carpeaux, his atelier or Hiolle
is hardly relevant, since Carpeaux, like so
many nineteenth-century
sculptors,
produced
multiple versions and editions of his major
projects. The delicate, almost
rococo,
plaster cast in the Phoenix Art Museum
beautifully exemplifies Carpeaux's style at its
best, and serves as a poetic tribute to his
fellow countryman, Antoine
Watteau.

Robin

Dowden

62

Homage to Watteau
ATTRIBUTED TO
JEAN-BAPTISTE CARPEAUX
Phoenix Art Museum
Accession Number 64-79
Gift of F. M. Hinkhouse
H.: 76.92 cm.
Plaster

65

A Note On A Letter
From Roger Hilton
To Terry Frost

Jack Breckenridge

The accompanying letter is from the
English painter Roger Hilton (19111975) written to his countryman and
fellow painter Terry Frost who has
kindly made this copy available.
Hilton was one of that generation of
British painters whose development
was delayed by the Second World
War.l He, along with Frost, Peter
Lanyon, Patrick Heron, Alan Davie,
Adrian Heath, William Scott, and
others, reached artistic maturity in the
late 1940s and early 1950s. The London
gallery dealer, Leslie Waddington,
called them the "Middle Generation," a
name that stuck. 2 These painters
participated in the international art
scene in the two decades after the war
to an extent unknown in British art
heretofore.
Hilton was represented in the Thirtysecond Venice Biennale and
Documenta II in Kassel and numerous
other international exhibitions from
New York to Tokyo. So his
recollections contained in this letter,
written late in his life, represent the

views of one who had "been there."
Hilton was a student at the
Academie Ranson in Paris before the
war where he worked with Roger
Bissiere. His knowledge of modern
French painting was equalled in his
own generation probably only by
William Scott who had also studied in
France in the late 1930s. This experience gave Hilton a unique perspective on the European art scene in
the years immediately after the war.
In looking at English, French, and
American painting of this century, it is
apparent that World War II produced a
kind of "watershed" in art. There was
an art before the war and a different art
after the war. One gets the feeling that
everything was open for the young
British painter at this time. This
generation rejected the NeoRomanticism of war-time British
painting; Sutherland and Vaughan are
Hilton's examples. France, Hilton
makes clear, was "stuck in the
doldrums." The School of Paris no
longer had the power to intimidate

66

British painting as had been the case in
the pre-war years.
Hilton knew what was going on in
Parisian studios in the first years after
the war. Terry Frost has described to
this writer his trips to Paris with Hilton
where they visited artists like Soulages
and Manessier. 3
It is also clear that in those years
Hilton knew nothing of the work of the
Abstract Expressionists then painting
in New York. As he points out: "At
that time none of us had seen any
American painting except Scott and
Davie." This is perhaps the most important point in Hilton's letter. This
fact, too often, has been overlooked by
American and, surprisingly, British
critics. For example, the American
critic Gene Baro, in Studio International in October 1967, discussing
American influence on some young
British painters of the 1960s called
them "less derivative and imitative"
than their predecessors. 4 Presumably,
then, Baro means that the preceding
generation, the "Middle Generation,"
was more derivative and imitative.
Even an Englishman, Edward LucieSmith, in his book Late Modern, first
published in 1969, has written: "An
especially important event in the
struggle for primacy between Paris and
New York was the triumph of Abstract
Expressionism in Europe during the
late 1940s. . . ."5 The word "Europe,"
one supposes, includes England. He
certainly does not make an exception
of England. Both of these writers have
contributed to the erroneous notion
that British post-war art, "Middle
Generation" art, was shaped by the
influence of American Abstract Expressionism reaching out across the
Atlantic.
Hilton's letter is clear evidence that
Baro and Lucie-Smith are mistaken.

This has been confirmed to this writer
in interviews with other "Middle
Generation" artists.
The first exhibition of modern
American art in post-war Britain, apart
from some small Pollocks, was an
exhibition entitled "Modern Art in the
United States" shown at the Tate
Gallery in 1956. This was a
heterogeneous collection of paintings,
both figurative and abstract. The New
York Abstract Expressionists actually
were only a small part of this
exhibition; only one room of the five
or six rooms alloted to the show in the
Tate. 6 It can be surmised that this is
the exhibition to which Hilton refers in
the first paragraph of his letter when he
mentions how it was hung. William
Scott remembers that at that
exhibition, "Roger Hilton complained
that I had misled him — I had given
them [the American Abstract Expressionists] too high marks — they
were not painters,' they were
'stainers.' " 7 Abstract Expressionists
from New York were also exhibited in
a show circulated in Europe in 1958
and 1959 called "The New American
Painting." Whichever exhibition
Hilton is referring to, one must
remember that by 1956 British painters
of Hilton's generation had begun
exhibiting in New York. Peter Lanyon
exhibited at the Catherine Viviano
gallery in New York, January 1956,
with extremely favorable reviews in
both Art News and Arts magazines.
The key to the myth of American
influence on both British and French
painting before 1956 may be in Hilton's
statement in the letter: "One had
perhaps arrived at similar conclusions
to some of them [the Americans] by
different routes (via Mondrian, for
example)." Historians are going to
have to learn that the years from 1945

67

to 1955 are not a time of American
artistic colonization of Western
Europe, but rather a time when artists
were working in parallel directions
with only fragmentary reports of what
was being done elsewhere.
Hilton's description in this letter of
the New York art scene is indicative of
this. His remarks on New York artists
also illuminate the decidedly outspoken personality that all who knew
Roger Hilton remember. But the last
part of the letter remains as rather
poignant evidence of a commitment to
his work by an artist who for the final
eighteen months of his life was confined to his bed and yet continued to
turn out an immense amount of work.

NOTES
1 Information on Roger Hilton's life is most
readily available in the exhibition catalog,
Roger Hilton (London, 1974).
2 Unpublished taped interview with Patrick
Heron at Zennor, Cornwall, England, March
1977.
3 Unpublished taped interview with Terry
Frost at Newlyn, Cornwall, England,
April 1977.
4 Gene Baro, "British Painting: The
Post-War Generation," Studio
International,
CLXXIV, No. 893 (October, 1967), 133.
5 Edward Lucie-Smith, Late Modern:
The
Visual Arts Since 1945 (New York, 1969),
p. 18.
6 Patrick Heron, untitled article, The
Guardian (London, October 11, 1974), p. 10.
7 Alan Bowness, William Scott:
Paintings
Drawings and Gouaches, 1938-1971 (London,
1972), p. 72.

68

TRANSCRIPTION
OF ROGER HILTON'S LETTER
TO TERRY FROST
FROM A XEROX OF THE ORIGINAL
Les Masseries, July 24 [, 1963 ] 8
I have never taken any notice of
composition. I don't quite know what
you mean by a "sense of scale". Do you
mean the painting looking right for the
size of canvas, or a sense of bigness or
that the painting at least shouldn't
make the canvas look smaller or what?
American pictures tend to be and look
big because things are on a bigger scale
there. Everything is small in England,
fields, trains etc. The american spirit
way of life etc comes through their
painting & the French through theirs &
one hopes something comes through
ours. If you don't like it painting wise
that's just too bad. You can't turn
yourself into an American overnight. If
the American show had been hung like
ours with the paintings practically
touching each other, I think you'd have
received a very different impression.
We as Britishers were at the outset I
suppose trying to do something different to the accepted British painters
such as Keith Vaughan Sutherland
Merlyn Evans & so on. At the same
time French painting got stuck in the
doldrums so we appeared to be a bit
more exciting, (page two) At that time
none of us had seen any American
painting except Scott & Davie. One
had perhaps arrived at similar conclusions to some of them by different
routes (via Mondrian for example!)]. It
still strikes me that most Americans are
amateur & inexpert blunderers. They

are riddled with idealism & philosophical ideas rather than starting
with the paint. Even then as you say
the scale was different. A man like Still
had the courage of his ignorance. But I
think he certainly exploits one idea. So
did Pollock and Tomlin. When Pollock
tried desperately to move on he killed
himself. Tomlin died anyway before he
got around to trying. As for old Mr
pure souled bloody Newman he has
kept on harping on his one string for
around 80 years. As I say we had our
sights directed on the established
British art of the time & in our vague
way and with little knowledge of what
was done in America but with some
knowledge of French painting, we were
trying to make a sort of painting which
hadn't been seen in Britain. The
younger boys are taking direct from
America & I don't know that that's so
marvellous [sic]. Americans got a lot
from some very bad European established artists who happened to go
over during the war & mostly from a
hysterical German called Hoffman
[presumably Hans Hofmann] who had
picked up a few superficial ideas a la
Andre Lhote about painting (page
three) during his unsuccessful journey
across Europe. The Americans are very
gullible culture wise & when Hoffman
[sic] spoke they thought they were getting the real thing straight from the
fount. Likewise they swallowed Mas-

69

son & Matta. And of course they were
all helped periodically by our old
friend Bill Hayter on his trips to New
York with some of the smell of Picasso
& Braque still clinging to him. Our
artists are just as good as the French or
American!. ] What is missing is the
build up & the money & the critics.
You feel insecure & unsure of yourself
because you haven't got the build up.
You haven't got the booklets on you
that in your position you'd have had
automatically in Paris. In New York
you'd be in the museum with your
biggest & best picture. In general there
is not enough intellectual ferment in
London. Nobody cares really &
nobody is really going to stick his neck
out. Critics don't meet critics &
painters rarely meet painters. The
strength of the so called St Ives school
was that for the first time there were a
few painters with similar outlook who
actually met each other & there is no
doubt that Patrick [Heron] played a
great role in this. Whatever else he was
a critic with some fervour & integrity.
All this had gone now. That is natural.
In Paris groups are constantly forming
& then reforming. In England it only
happens very rarely, (page four) There
are not enough of us & there isn't the
intensive art industry around us.
Perhaps it's just as well.
Still as for exploring, of course one
has to explore. At the moment I am not
so concerned with the physical aspects
of painting as the the [sic] moral ones.
What are we supposed to be doing.
The mechanism of painting has to be
harnessed to some idea. You have to be
in other words representing something.
Now we can expose a totally blank
canvas & hardly an eyebrow will be
raised. You can't go further than that.
So we have to start again & paint
something. What? It is the old question

that led to nonrepresentational
painting in the first instance. What a
relief one didn't have to paint
anything. The main stumbling block
was got over. Well we have had a
lovely splash with it. But can we go on
splashing blithely for ever. Some time
there must be a meaning or a message.
Greenberg in a letter to me said Rothko
kept on talking about a message and
how this irritated him, Greenberg.
You've got to have something to hang
your hat on. We have leaned heavily
on various things but it doesn't seem
adequate. It's the old story. Once you
have learned to paint you've got to find
something to paint about. On the
contrary the pure abstraction I can do,
that is why I seldom do it any more.
One can't spend one's days turning out
things like Ellsworth Kelly, or if you
like 1955 Roger Hiltons. One hopes
eventually to make a synthesis between
the pure abstract & the personal
quality of my drawing show for instance, but this will take time.
R.

8 In a letter to Jack Breckenridge, received
January 1978, as this went to publication,
Terry Frost wrote that though Roger Hilton
went to Les Masseries on more than one
occasion, he believed this letter was written
in 1963.

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75

Ming Idealism
and
Landscape Painting

Ju-hsi Chou

From the outset, the reader would do
well to heed the warning that most of
the ideas presented below are tentative
at best. The aim here is to explore and
to provoke, not to reach for definite
conclusions. In point of fact, there are
far too many unresolved problems to
hope for certainty. Chief among these
problems is the lack of consensus
regarding Ming style in landscape
painting. So far, few have agreed on
either the characteristics or the range of
this style, let alone its philosophical
implications. For the time being,
however, these considerations will
have to be put aside; mainly, it will be
this author's idea of Ming style that
will count here. 1
Having so qualified the issue, we can
now proceed to the topic of "Ming
Idealism and Landscape Painting."
With respect to the first half of this
topic, namely, Ming idealism, those
who are familiar with the intellectual
tradition of Ming China (1368-1644)
would instantly point to Wang Yangming (1472-1528), easily the most

influential thinker of the time. In fact,
this article will begin with the thought
of Wang Yang-ming, though in no way
does it wish to suggest that Wang
Yang-ming is the cause of Ming style in
landscape painting. A simple point to
keep in mind is that he is roughly
contemporaneous with Wen Chengming (1470-1559), but later than Shen
Chou (1427-1509) and Tai Chin (active
1420-1450), 2 at whose time the generic
Ming style was already evident. Even
though Wang Yang-ming did exert a
measurable degree of impact on art
after his thought had attained wide
acceptance, the chronology alone
should lead us away from the simplistic
notion that all Ming painters did was
to paint his "ideas." Instead, one must
consider the alternative that, since
Wang Yang-ming came after the onset
of the Ming style, he was in all
probability expressing, as well as
sharpening, a point of view which
these painters, e.g., Shen Chou and Tai
Chin, had already shared — and
voiced — to some degree.3 We may

76

indeed have to characterize him as a
thinker who articulated the sentiment
of the time even though he also contributed enormously to it.
Notwithstanding the priority — in
time, not in significance — of art over
philosophy, we may still opt to begin
with the latter, for it communicates so
much more readily and explicitly. The
following passage, which is cited from
"recorded sayings" by this Ming
thinker, may serve as a convenient
point of departure:
The Teacher was roaming in
Nan-chen. A friend (a
disciple) 4 pointed to the
flowering trees on a cliff and
said, "You said there is
nothing under heaven external to the mind. These
flowering trees on the high
mountain blossom and drop
their blossoms of themselves.
What have they to do with
my mind?"
The Teacher said, "Before
you look at these flowers,
they and your mind are in the
silent vacancy. As you come
to look at them, their colors
at once show up clearly.
From this you can know that
these flowers are not external
to your mind.
The "Teacher" mentioned above is
of course Wang Yang-ming himself,
who was being taken to task by one of
his disciples. The latter, it is evident,
had not fully succumbed to the force of
Wang's thought, and was questioning
him by referring to something near at
hand. What indeed have the flowering
trees on the high cliff — trees that
"blossom" and "drop their blossoms"
by themselves — to do with one's
mind? Do they not exist independently
of it?

In more than one way, this stands as
a typical — and classic — confrontation between a realist and an
idealist. The realist has posed a
problem, and the idealist "subverts" it
to suit his own mode of thought. The
conclusion Wang Yang-ming reaches
here, "that these flowers are not external to your mind" is less a conclusion drawn from a commonly
agreed set of facts than an affirmation,
or confirmation, of his own beliefs.
The general train of thought here is
that, to him, reality is nothing but
mind's reality, and that the mind and
reality are co-extensive. "Before you
look at these flowers," he said, "they
and your mind are in silent vacancy.
As you come to look at them, their
colors at once show up clearly." This is
a virtual rejection of the time-honored
dichotomy of subject-object, perceiverperceived, upon which most of the
theories about perception and
cognition stand and for which, in this
instance at least, the disciple acts as its
spokesman. For Wang Yang-ming,
however, the flowering trees and the
mind have never been apart: they are
one. Perception occurs when the mind
decides to single out, focus upon, or
illuminate a given section of that
"silent vacancy," and brings the
flowering trees out of the original
dimness. It is not unlike a journey into
the unconscious, where the unknown
and the alien are not really unknown
and alien at all, but are there all the
time.
To sum up then, it is clear that, to
this Ming thinker, perception is introspection. One looks outward, but
sees the image within; the characteristics and appearance of the image
are as much a property of the object as
they are of the mind. This is the
quintessential Wang Yang-ming, who,

77

as it is well known, advocates that the
mind is the sole source of reason and
that things by themselves are devoid of
such, except when they come into
contact with the mind. It is the mind
that imparts its reality to them, infuses
its own essence into them and, for all
practical purposes, supplies them with
their raison d'etre.
To put it in another way, it is
tantamount to a declaration of the
victory of spirit over matter, and mind
over Nature. Matter, or Nature, is
inert and neutral, without principle
and essence of its own, a state which
Wang Yang-ming was wont to call,
"beyond good and evil." The spirit, or
the mind, however, can activate it,
bring it out of its inertia and neutrality,
as well as bestow upon it —
momentarily at least — with a sense of
order and coherence, which is not
inherent. In the end, all forms of
understanding, all forms of cognition,
must revert back to a primeval intelligence, an intelligence which is
known in Wang Yang-ming's doctrine
as liang-chih
and which is
variously rendered as "intuition,"
"conscience" or "clear intelligence."
Substituting "mountain-water" for
"flowering trees," the pattern should
remain intact. The next questions then
become: Can we discern the same
mind-supremacy at work in landscape
painting of the Ming period? Or
alternatively, is it possible to find there
a receptive Nature, one which is
without principles of her own, but is
given principles? Insomuch that these
questions run contrary to the conventional ideas about Chinese landscape painting, which hold that Nature
is supreme and that man desires only to
be in communion with her, we must
examine the problem with extra care.
Indeed, the evidence is encouraging.

Art theory supplies one clue, that very
medium between art and philosophy,
where, from the mid-fourteenth
century onward, few treatises of
painting would, as those in the Five
Dynasties (907-960) and Sung-Yuan
time (960-1279, 1280-1368 respectively), endeavor to treat Nature and
her "order."5 The silence here is
conspicuous as it testifies for changing
priorities. The only consistent and
innovative efforts in theoretical realm
lie in the emergence of ch'ii U as a key
concept in art, 6 which, as it pertains to
a subjective state, a state of subtle
excitement and exhilaration caused
possibly by external stimuli, fits quite
well into the context. As for the other
major current, namely Tung Ch'ich'ang's (1555-1636) Ch'an analogy
and mimetic theory of painting, it is so
patently under the influence of Wang
Yang-ming's thought that we need not
concern ourselves here. 7
Paintings also exhibit traits from
which we may infer a similar, subjective bent. Especially after the sixteenth century, the instances where
painters indulged themselves in willful
transformation, distortion, not to say
refinement of Nature, are too
numerous to recount in full. A random
selection should suffice for the time
being:
Item: In Old Trees and Cold Stream,
Wen Cheng-ming, the master from
Suchou, visualizes a highly restricted
vista within the tall and narrow frame
so typical of the Ming period. While
depriving trees and rocks of much of their
volume and mass, he also reduces their
intervals to such an extent that they are
pressed closely to each other, so closely
as to be, one might say, "unnatural.' 8
Item: Shao Mi, a late Ming painter
(active 1620-1640), conjures up a
landscape which is noted for its velvety

78

Fig. 1. Shao Mi, Album of Landscapes and
Figures, Leaf d. Collection of the National
Palace Museum, Taiwan, Republic of China

79

and lush texture, a transparency of
tone, and a curious silence that is made
almost tangible. One is tempted to
describe this painting by a term derived
from Western art, that is, "surreal"
(fig. 1).
Item: Wu Pin's (ca. 1568-1626)
mountainscape shows seasaw ridges
and curious perforations that are cut
less by natural forces than by the
artist's own will. So persistent is his
style that he has often been described
as "manneristic." 9
Item: Wen Chia (1501-1583), the son
of Wen Cheng-ming, takes his point of
departure from two lines of Tu Fu's
verse and arrives at an image that is as
unique as it is, for want of a better
term, elegant (fig. 2). Aside from his
"archaic" mode of rendering trees and
peaks, Wen Chia purposefully
mismatches the two halves of the
painting by means of a discrepancy in
levels and grades. In this way, the left
side is made to illustrate: "Blue water
flows from afar and falls in a thousand
torrents" and the right side pictorializes: "Jade mountians stand in a
lofty array, cold on their summits."10
There is no doubt that the above
selections, particularly the last, will
lend substantial support to the theme
of Mind-over-Nature in Ming landscape painting. However, this author
will willingly acknowledge that the
above approach cannot but be
regarded as haphazard and
fragmented. An inquisitive reader may
wish to ask: 1) Is there not a similar
symptom, or symptoms, in periods other
than the Ming? Could the Sung and
Yuan painters, of whom so little are
known, have done the same? 2) Even if
the painters discussed above indulged
in the transformation of Nature, are
they not perhaps unusual cases, singled
out of many more who did not share

the same beliefs and same attitudes?
T o the first question, our answer is:
even though there could be painters of
a similar bent in the Five Dynasties,
Sung and Yuan periods, they would
not find themselves in the mainstream.
The categories of excellence, such as,
say, those postulated by Ching Hao #
(ca. 900-60), specifically "down-grade"
thesepainters.il They cannot,
therefore, belong to the shen $ or
"divine class," where the masterpainter is said to accomplish his task
without deliberation, act without
action, but, akin to the creative forces
of Nature, "follow the flow to evoke
images."12 Nor will they be grouped
under the miao *} or "wondrous"
category, the criterion for which reads:
"His thought penetrates heaven and
earth as well as the sentiment and
disposition of myriad things." 13 They
may fall into the level of ch'i % or the
"distinctive," whose art embodies the
unexpected and the unusual and is
often contrary to "true sceneries," so
stated Ching Hao. And he sums up this
group by saying that while they "may
possess the skill of brushwork, but are
lacking in thought."! 4 The lowest, of
course, is the ch'iao
class, the
"precious," which is precious but
without truth and which twists the
pictorial composition in order to
augment atmosphere and movement. 1 5 It is not the purpose here to
intimate that the Ming painters discussed above belong to the inferior
classes. On the contrary, the salient
fact that emerges from this discussion
is that Ming painting has changed
markedly from its predecessors in
attitude and in orientation. Moreover,
it is important to stress that if the kind
of pictorial phenomena we witnessed
above had not been in the mainstream
in the earlier periods, it clearly became

. &
air

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l i t 4J.

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Fig. 2. Wen Chia, Landscape Illustrating
Tu Fu's Verse. Collection of the National
Palace Museum, Taiwan, Republic of China.

3a

81

so in the fifteenth , sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. This is true with
respect to Wen Cheng-ming and
Wen Chia, who are the pivotal figures
in the Wu school, and therefore the
very backbone of Ming painting.
To the second question, our answer
will be: While these painters do seem to
have gone on to a degree of subjectivity that was rare even among
contemporaries, one can nevertheless
suggest that Ming painting in general
— that is, the developed Ming painting
from the fifteenth century onward —
inheres an idealistic core and its generic
structure indeed is analogous to that of
Wang Yang-ming's philosophy. In
short, while we accentuated the extreme tendencies, we did not do so at
the expense of other, less radical expressions, which after all would have
been the norm. Indeed, with few exceptions, the evidence points to an
ordering intelligence at work, one
which exerts its will over a receptive
Nature.
How could this be substantiated?
The answer, first of all, is that the
Ming style is unique, as it sets its own
pattern and its own modality. It was
first developed, as far as we can
ascertain, in the late fourteenth and
early fifteenth centuries, around or
shortly before the time of Tai Chin, the
so-called "founder" of the Che school,
and continued into the seventeenthcentury before its expiration. The Wu
school also adhered to it, though with
significant variances in lineage and
tradition. Thus, it followed initially the
art of the Yuan masters and then extended itself into the T'ang and Sung
models; whereas the Che, the earlier of
the two schools, revived the Southern
Sung academic tradition. Regardless,
the two schools are fundamentally
alike, and a comparative study bet-

ween Tai Chin s Homeward Bound in a
Storm (fig. 3) and the Wu master, Shen
Chou's Landscape in the style of Ni
Tsan (fig. 4) will bring out their
kinship. Fortuitous it is not, for there is
in both works the same diagonal
movement or recession into depth, the
same arrangement of planes along a
steep grade, and the same inexorable
flow across the surface. Between these
examples, it is apparent that the two
schools, however different they are in
style, outlook, or even social status, 16
could at times speak with a common
voice and partake in the same generic
structure in one of its manifestations.
Secondly, what is this generic
structure? Broadly speaking, the Ming
style, as we have seen in our comparison above, is "planar." That is to
say, it organizes its motifs along a
series of planes which, by and large,
are parallel to the picture surface. In
this sense and in this sense only, Ming
painting displays a fundamental
kinship to other phases of Chinese
painting. The Sung, for example, has
its parallel planes. 17 The Yuan and
sometimes the Ch'ing (1644-1911), too,
have their parallel planes. However,
the Ming planes differ from those
above in that they are much more
insistent, much more forceful, and
much more compelling. At times they
are not only seen as inherent in given
landscape motifs, say a mountain or a
peak, but tend to supplant them and
reduce them from their former, corporeal state to "paper-thinness" (fig.
3). In addition, unlike all other planar
systems used in pre- or post-Ming time,
the Ming planes can at times be actually described as "serial," with
regulated intervals and a strong sense
of direction. The Sung planes, for
instance, are unpredictable: they may
shift to the left or to the right,

Fig. 3. Tai Chin, Homeward Bound in a
Storm. Collection of the National Palace
Museum, Taiwan, Republic of China.

Fig. 4. Shen Chou, Landscape in the Style of
Ni Tsan. Saito Collection, Sumiyoshi,
Japan (?)

Fig. 5. Wen Cheng-ming, Resting in the Sound
of the Pines. Collection of the National Palace
Museum, Taiwan, Republic of China.

sometimes oppose one another, and
frequently change between major and
minor steps and/or grades. 1 8 In
comparison, the Ming system plots the
planes along at an even pace, which,
though falling short of mathematical
exactitude, does manage to take on a
reasonable and foreseeable momentum, plus a directional thrust that can,
as in Tai Chin's case, anchor the
diffused presentation of landscape
elements. In that sense, the Ming style
is "structured," and this structure,
seemingly simple enough, could yield a
fairly wide range of variations.
In point of fact, the range is quite
impressive indeed. It can, as Tai Chin
and Shen Chou have already
demonstrated, pursue a diagonal
recession. It can, as Li Tsai (Early 15thcentury) has done in his Landscape,
plan a frontal assault. 19 It can also
make a high to low movement, so that
the distant mountains or hills sink
below the "horizon." 2 0 It can also
build up height by piling forms on top
of one another, the only sustaining
factor being its consistency and
continuity (fig. 5). This is different
from the Yuan version, where it is the
internal flow and flux, the serpentine
winding of the peaks and pinnacles
themselves that are salient.21
Meanwhile, the series of planes can
augment in number, or be reduced to
one or two (fig. 6); and their intervals
can lengthen as well as shorten.
Sometimes, dictated either by whim or
by some other considerations, a
painter might intentionally defy the
paralleling structure and install, in the
foreground, a series of angular
movements (fig. 7). However, as one
will find out, all of these are of short
duration; soon they will be reinstated
within the ordered sequence as
parallelism wins out in the end.

85

Whatever the case, the key is this:
this structure is not the structure
derived from Nature. Nothing in
Nature proceeds along so smoothly, so
measuredly, and so intelligibly. The
tall format compresses the landscape,
its tallness substitutes for the height of
the mountain, which is illusory (fig. 5).
The planes and intervals introduce
"thin" and "emaciated" shapes and at
times, induce conflict of "space" and
"volume." 2 2 And in one case at least,
the distant hill moves in line with the
determined direction of the serial
structure, so much so that it too begins
to turn upward and upward until it is
in a ludicrous position for not being
able to descend at all. 2 3 In all of these
instances, the Ming planar system
exercises its own logic, above and
superseding physical laws, and is
willful, arbitrary, but nonetheless,

Fig. 6. Ch'en Shun, Landscape Album, Leaf n.
Collection of the National Palace Museum,
Taiwan, Republic of China.

orderly and coherent. By extension, it
also makes Nature orderly and
coherent.
If this structure is not inherent in
Nature, then whence does it come? The
conclusion is easy to draw: it must be
inherent in the collective psyche of
Ming painters, who semi-consciously
or unconsciously — as this structure
has never been articulated — pave the
sequence and instill reason during the
creative act. As a matter of fact, even
as late as Tung Ch'i-ch'ang, at the time
when the gradual transition away from
Wang Yang-ming's thought had
already begun, the pattern remained
intact for that artist. 2 4 Parenthetically,
as this structure always presumes a
directional emphasis, which might be
interpreted to be away from a given
source, a given position, or a given
point of view, it also implies an in-

86

Fig. 7. Wen Cheng-ming, Spring Trees after
the Rain. Collection of the National Palace
Museum, Taiwan, Republic of China.

telligence that coordinates the network
of planes and regulates its rhythm.
This further strengthens our argument
for the mind's embodiment of landscape — a segment of Nature, of which
it has become aware.
In a curious way, particularly when
a frontal or diagonal recession is
shown, there is an unmistakable
resemblance between this structure and
the perspectival system of the West.
The latter, of course, entails such
features as vanishing point, ground
plane, geometrical precision and
exactitude. The Ming system has none
of these. Like Western perspective,
however, its aim is also to measure, to
ascertain, and to represent landscape/Nature along an intelligible line.
Their differences — and these being
differences of a cultural origin — lie,
on the one hand, in the extended
perception of the Ming system vis-a-vis
the isolation or elimination of the time
element in the perspective; and on the
other, in the former's intuitive, rather
than scientific approach, which is
effective not in a visual, but in a
spiritual sense.
So the Mind has won — at the expense of Nature, and only so when a
given segment of Nature is seen or
evoked. The continuum here is the
continuum of the Mind, from which
Nature accepts its dictates and receives
its order, which then becomes her
order.
Having concluded the structural
analogy between Ming idealism and
landscape painting, we can perhaps
begin to explain some of the noted or
notable phenomena in the latter
sphere:
First, it concerns the impressionistic
flavor in some of the Ming paintings,
in part or in whole. 2 5 These are
"impressions," marked not by solidity,

87

but by transiency, not by permanence, but by a sense of immediacy.
That this should be a salient feature of
Ming painting is perfectly logical, since
it lays Stress less on eternal verity than
on the "instantaneous" response of the
mind to a given situation and the
quality associated thereof.
Second, we may point to the general
surge of interest, particularly in the Wu
school, for ethereal landscape, landscape of fantasy, or landscape of
mythical origin. 26 We refer to the
presentation of such themes as the
"Peach-blossom Spring," the
"Immortal Isles," etc., which had
enjoyed vogue and was enjoying it all
over again at this time. Indeed, in no
other periods can we observe such a
perfect wedding between form and
content, representation and presentation, insomuch that the Ming style
is inherently cerebral and immaterial.
Could it be because the Ming painters
seized upon these subjects as a way of
fitting the content to form? One
wonders. However, there is no doubt
that, in the context of Ming idealism,
which reduces things to mental
phenomena, the distinction between
the real and the imaginary is tenuous at
best. The inverse is also true, for
frequently the "real" landscape can be
as imaginary as the imaginary landscapes.
Third, in line with the above, the
Ming painters, again particularly those
of the Wu school, were partial toward
a poetic approach in the art of painting. Once more, this was not new, and
T'ang (618-907) as well as pre-T'ang
verses had served as inspiration for
painters for centuries. However, in
their espousal of this poetic tendency,
the Ming painters, as in the case of the
aforementioned Wen Chia, went so far
that poetic sentiment virtually took

precedence over other, presumably
more logical, considerations (fig. 2).
Gone is the desire merely to elicit
poetry from a given scene, or to
maintain an equipoise between
lyricism on the one hand and "natural
laws" on the other. Here is none but an
"inner vision," in which mountainwater is no longer the subject matter,
but a metaphor. The same artist's
treatment of Pai Chii-i's The Song of
P'i-p'a is equally suggestive: from the
landscape itself, we are led, through a
process of transformation and
sublimation and through the filter of a
subtle and ineffable mind, to a world
which is archaic, untrammelled,
unreal, and therefore, all the more
poignant and memorable. 27
Lastly, the Ming period witnessed
archaistic survivals and revivals to a
degree that was unusual when the
dynastic and cultural heritage was so
firmly set in the hand of the natives.
Unlike the preceeding Yuan dynasty or
succeeding Ch'ing period, where archaism carried with it an urgency
underscored, as it were, by the alien
threats, the Ming archaism seemingly
was little more than an expression of
traditional leaning. Thus the Che
school revived the Southern Sung style
and the Wu school revived the Yuan
and the T'ang-Sung. The key to
remember is this: archaism, however it
is practiced, represents a state of mind.
If, indeed, as we have demonstrated
above, there is little distinction between a real and an imagined landscape, then there is also very little
distinction between a real and a
painted landscape — painted, that is,
by a past master. Why therefore
should an artist not begin his creative
venture with an imagined, or even
painted, landscape rather than a real
landscape, since it is not so much the

88

landscape per se, but the mind's
contemplation of it, which gives
substance to the painting. This is
exactly what the last great Ming
master, Tung Ch'i-Ch'ang, has advocated. By resorting to a continual
process of imitation, or fang at, which
demands that, in each and every instance, the artist contemplates either
the works or schemata of past masters
and then brings the weight of his
"intuition" to bear on them. 2 8 In this
way, as Tung Ch'i-ch'ang believes, the
mind will create and recreate in an intensified pitch and confers upon the
resultant work with its own luminous
presence. Between imitation and nonimitation, the Ming archaism accepts
both while denying none.
Meanwhile, landscape, or Nature
herself, was not to remain suppressed
for long, but ready to make a
comeback. This she did, at the
beginning of the Ch'ing dynasty, when
a new style was born, a new consciousness was fashioned, one which
operated under the assumption that
Nature indeed can exist independently of our mind, that she
herself indeed has her own law, her
own order. Ironically enough, in
painting this belief was first found
among Tung Ch'i-ch'ang's disciples
who, while retaining the fang practice,
helped in other ways to dismantle the
basis of their master's conviction,
which is Ming idealism and Ming style.

89

NOTES
1 There are two reasons for the lack of
consensus among art historians with respect
to the Ming style: (1) A dearth of documented
works, and (2) a profusion of forgeries. Their
combined impact renders uncertain the data
situation, so much so that we cannot assume
that a painting, if so attributed, would be
definitely Ming in date. Deprived of a sound
basis for scholarly inquiry, art historians have
been led to express their opinions and preferences, which remain nothing more than just
opinions and preferences. In my own case,
I arrive at the Ming style through a process of
elimination, which begins with a careful
consideration of Ch'ing painting and Ch'ing
style. By screening out Ch'ing fakes from
the corpus of works known to be Ming,
chances are that we can define the boundary
of Ming painting in a more precise and
objective way. See my unpublished article,
"Methodology of Reversal in the Study of
Wen Cheng-ming," which I delivered orally
at the University of Michigan Symposium on
Wen Cheng-ming, January 31, 1976.
2 For readers who are unfamiliar with the
history of Chinese painting, Shen Chou and
Wen Cheng-ming were co-founders of the
Wu school of painting, located in the famous
city of Suchou. Tai Chin is generally thought
to be the originator of the Che school, so
named because his native place is in the
province of Chekiang. These two schools,
plus the later Sung-chiang school of painting,
which revolved around Tung Ch'i-ch'ang
(1555-1636), span nearly four-fifths of the
Ming period.
3 We could, of course, bring up the case of
Ch'en Hsien-chang (1428-1500), who, as a
forerunner of Wang, could help to establish a
better symmetry in the parallelism between
Ming art and philosophy.
4 Parentheses mine. The "friend" mentioned
here refers to the friend of Wang's disciple
who helped to record the master's sayings and
compiled them under the title of Ch'uan-hsi Lu
'A V ' from which this passage is
taken. See Chan Wing-tsit, Instructions for
Practical Living and Other
Neo-Confucian
Writings by Wang Yang-ming (New York and
London, 1963), sec. 275.
5 The exception perhaps is Wang Li's
1 A treatise on painting; see Yu
Chien-hua
| , Chung-kuo
Hua-lun Lei-pien $ $ & ft «r <*

(Peking, 1957), II, 703-704. Wang Li however
was born in 1332, and he is too early for our
purpose. See below, p. 81, where I consider
the onset of the Ming style in painting as from
the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century.
6 The most consistent, and the most
thorough treatment of chu can be seen in Kao
Lien
, Yen-hsien Ch'ing-shang
Chien & jty ?f f , included in
Yang Chia-lo 4 it u- ed., I-shu
Ts'ung-pien tf? t
(Taipei,
1967), Vol. XXVII. It is possible that the concept of ch'ii, as is contained there, emanated
from the center of the Wu school, namely the
group of painters surrounding the master,
Wen Cheng-ming.
7 See my article, "The Cycle of Fang: Tung
Ch'i-ch'ang's Mimetic Cult and Its Legacy,"
to be published in the coming issue of Wen-lin
(Madison, Wisconsin).
8 This painting, which is dated in the year
1549, is an acclaimed masterpiece by Wen
Cheng-ming. It has been published several
times in the last decades, e.g., James Cahill,
Chinese Painting (New York, 1960), p. 130;
Chinese Art Treasures (New York and Washington, 1961). PI. 98 and back cover; and Ann
Clapp, Wen Cheng-ming: The Ming Artist
and Antiquity (Ascona, 1975), fig. 35.
9 See Osvald Siren, Chinese Painting:
Leading Masters and Principles (New York,
1956-1958), Vol. VI, PI. 298.
1 °Translated by James Cahill, Chinese
Painting, p. 134.
11 For the sake of convenience, I use Ching
Hao's Pi-fa-chi 3f * ^ ("Notes on
Brushwork") as an example of art theory in
the Five Dynasties and Sung periods. See Yii
Chien-hua, Chung-kuo Hua-lun Lei-pien, I,
605-612 for the text; also Kiyohiko Munakata,
Ching Hao's Pi-fa-chi (Ascona, 1974).
12 Yii Chien-hua, I, 606; and Munakata,
pp. 12-13. The original Chinese passage reads:
" Mil**l ."
1 3 The original Chinese passage reads:
" g i f i m K t i f i t f ." See
Yu Chien-hua, ibid.
14 Ibid. The Chinese passage reads:
" fe & ."
1 5 I am paraphrasing the Chinese text,
which reads: " U % * %
kk "

90

16 Painters of the Che school are, generally
speaking, professional artists; those of the Wu
school tend to be scholars.
17 See for instance Li Kung-nien's Landscape
in the collection of the Princeton University
Museum. For reproduction, see George
Rowley, Principles of Chinese Painting
(Princeton, 1959), PI. 19.
18 See Li Kung-nien's Landscape cited in
n. 17 above.
19 Siren, Chinese Painting, Vol. VI, PL 126.
2 0 As an example, we may cite the wellknown leaf from the album by Shen Chou in
the collection of the Nelson Gallery of Art.
See Richard Edwards, ed., The Art of Wen
Cheng-ming (Ann Arbor, 1976). PI. II-B.
21 See Wang Meng's Elegant Gathering in
Forest and Stream, PL 24 in Rowley, Principles of Chinese Painting. The tall and
narrow format, as far as we can ascertain,
began in the Yuan period, with Wang Meng
as a noted exponent. Then it remained
relatively conservative, with an optimum
ratio of 1:3 for the width and height. The
Ming version went much further and ratios
of 1:4 and 1:5 were not unknown. This format
compels the landscape to follow its dictate,
rather than allowing the latter to freely
"move about" within the frame. Often, the
appearance of height in the mountains is due
to the format itself, presenting a contrast
with, say, Fan K'uan's famous Travellers in
Mountains and Ravines (Chinese Art
Treasures, PL 18), where the height of the
mountains is real and unmistakable.

22

In Leaf n of his Landscape Album (fig. 6),
Ch'en Shun typically hangs the rocks and
waterfall on the pine branch. Similarly,
Chang Lu's Old Fisherman (Siren, Chinese
Painting, Vol. VI, PL 158) is a study in
paradox, where the fisherman is depicted
volumetrically, but not the net; the boat is
depicted volumetrically, but not the cliff in
front of it. To a Sung or Yuan painter, this
sort of spatial ambiguity and distortion is a
glaring fault in representation. See Jao
Tzu-jan's 4L t & recounting of ten
faults in landscape art, in Yii Chien-hua,
II, 692.
23 See Ch'iu Ying's T'ao-li Villa, PL 8 in
Tanaka Ichimatsu et al., Toyo Bijutsu
t * M l , Vol. II (Tokyo, 1968).
24 See Tung Ch'i-ch'ang, In the Shade of
Summer Trees, Chinese Art Treasures,
PL 104. Precisely because of this, Tung

Ch'i-ch'ang must be considered as a conservative since other late Ming painters were in the
process of evolving into the new tendency of
stressing volume over plane, and internal
growth over serial extension.
2 5 See Chang Lu's Old Fisherman,
cited
above in n. 22, where the fleeting touches of
the brush contribute to a sense of transiency
in the treatment of the foliage.
2 6 An example — and a fine one at that —
is Wen Chia's Immortals on the Island of
Immortality in the National Palace Museum,
Taipei (MV 183). It is reproduced in Ku-kung
Min-hua
(Taipei, 1968),
Vol. VIII, PL 19.
27 See PL 215A in Siren, Chinese
Painting,
Vol. VI.
28 See my article, "The Cycle of Fang in
Later Chinese Painting" cited in n. 7 above.

93

Classic Maya Elements
in the Iconography
of Rulership at
El Tajin, Veracruz, Mexico

Michael Edwin Kampen

Classic Veracruz sculptures include
portable yokes, palmas, hachas,
plaques and monumental sculptures
mainly from El Tajin, Veracruz,
Mexico, the metropolitan center of the
Classic Veracruz art style (c. A.D. 2501000). 1 Classic stone sculpture in
Mesoamerica is predominately a
lowland tradition shared by the Maya
and their northern neighbors in
Veracruz. While Maya art has been
studied by a large number of scholars
for over a century, Classic Veracruz
sculpture has received relatively little
attention by comparison, and the
interrelationships between these two
lowland Classic styles has not been
discussed in the existing literature.
Evidence exists, however, to show that
the artists and rulers at Tajin were
heavily influenced in their thinking and
workmanship by representations of
rulers in Maya art. Such Maya influences are most evident in the
sculptures decorating the Temple of the
Niches, the major architectural
monument in Tajin. The Temple and

carved relief sculptures on its upper
walls date from the beginning of the
Late Classic period, c. A.D. 600.
Conjectural restorations of the Temple
place the panels and friezes on the
upper half of the exterior walls above a
row of deep stone niches. This wall,
and many of the niches, have been
destroyed and none of the sculptures
remain in situ. A pair of statues set on
the platform above the balustrades
flanked the entry way to the Temple.
This study focuses on one extant piece
from this pair, Sculpture 1, and Panel 1
from the Temple wall (figs. 1 and 2),
and attempts to show how the Tajin
artists borrowed forms and ideas from
the Maya to represent Tajin rulers
associated with this Temple.
Panel 1 is a badly weathered relief
depicting an earth monster, feline,
skeleton, cacao tree and two men in an
architectural setting. The central
picture area is surrounded by two thin,
lateral borders of interlocked scrolls, a
much thicker lower border illustrating
a large grotesque head, and an upper

94

Fig. 1. El Tajin, Temple of the Niches,
Sculpture 1. Veracruz, Mexico. Drawing by
the author.

border which is now missing. Directly
above the grotesque, a second monster
with open jaws and a human arm
breaks through the earth to enter the
ritual scene. A tall cacao tree grows
from the monster's back as the beast

95

Fig. 2. El Tajin, Temple of the Niches, Panel 1.
Veracruz, Mexico. Drawing by the author.

licks the bottom of the stepped platform with his long tongue and raises a
limp wrist to touch the tail of a feline
beast crouching on the platform. A
man resting one hand on the head of
the feline wears a human skeleton in
his headdress. The skeleton in turn

places one hand near a pod on the
cacao tree. A second man, without a
skirt or kilt, wears his loin cloth on a
staff inserted in his headdress as he
marches up the side of the stepped
scroll form. A scroll resting on the
head of this second man also touches
the three feathers at the top of the
panel. His waist band is worn very low
to expose his penis as he ascends the

96

steps to present items to the man seated
on the summit.
Panel 1 is a portrait of a Tajin ruler
surrounded by badges of authority and
signs of wealth. Supernatural forces
are represented by the grotesque head
of the saurian god in the frieze below
the picture and by a second aspect of
the god equipped with jaws and an arm
as it appears within the picture area.
This earth monster, represented in
more grotesque forms than any other
Veracruz god, has multiple aspects and
is the Veracruz counterpart to the great
saurian of the Maya, Itzam, a favorite
god of the Maya rulers. A humanoid
version of the saurian god appears
within the outline of the stepped scrollform platform, a place sign for Tajin.
By its context on the Temple, the
architectural form refers to the Temple
of the Niches as the prototype of the
place sign for Tajin and the seat of
Tajin leadership.
The feline may be a jaguar, a
common Mesoamerican sign for regal
authority. Military leaders in Tajin,
ushering captives to the sacrificial
platforms, wear jaguar vestments in
the fashion of the Maya leaders
illustrated in the famous murals at
Bonampak. This Tajin ruler wears a
distinctive scroll-formed grotesque at
the rear of his waist: an unorthodox
position for this sign in Tajin art. It is
the grotesque form associated with the
rabbit deity of the pulque cult which
became very important in Tajin by the
Late Classic period. Pulque, a holy
intoxicant made from the fermented
juice of maguey plants, was drunk by
participants in ritual sacrifices. The
skeleton in the ruler's headdress, with
outstretched arms and one bent leg,
holds the pose of sacrificial victims.
Vultures, representatives of the sky
gods, have accepted this sacrificial

offering and picked the bones clean.
The man ascending the steps of the
Temple is also associated with the
pulque cult illustrated in other Tajin
sculptures. Figures in the building
columns at Tajin, affiliated with
rabbit and pulque symbolism, have
similar staffs set in their hair on head
bands. A priest of the pulque cult,
Panel 5, South Ball Court (fig. 3),
passes a rod through his penis as part
of a pulque and sacrificial ceremony.
Panel 1 may be a representation of a
pulque priest who has already performed this act of ritual blood letting.
The conspicuous way in which he
drapes his sex organ over the top of his
waist band demonstrates the wound of
his sacrificial ritual. He carries one or
two cylinders similar to those held by
figures attending sacrificial rituals
elsewhere in Tajin. The scroll rising
from his head and touching three
feathers attached to the upper corner of
the panel repeats an artistic device that
also appears with ball players in the
nearby South Ball Court. Priests of the
pulque cult in this Court have sashes
attached to the rear of their waists and
looped over their forearms, while the
priest in the temple panel, moving up
the long staircase, has tied his sash in a
large bow knot.
The skeleton in a sacrificial position
touching one hand to the cacao tree,
juxtaposes themes of life and death,
illustrating another aspect of the
ancient Mesoamerican concern with
the principle of duality. But the tree
growing from the earth monster
symbolizes more than fertility — it is a
cacao tree and cacao pods were a form
of money among the later Aztecs. They
had none of it growing in the Valley of
Mexico and had to import it from
southern Mexico and Veracruz. It is
possible that cacao is represented here

97

because, like pulque, it is a form of
drink, but it is more likely that cacao is
illustrated in this context because it is a
form of currency and a valuable export
crop.
All the signs agree: the ruler of Tajin
was a man of power. The great earth
monster pays homage to his regal
jaguar sign. The ruler is director of the
rituals of the pulque cult where he
offers human sacrifices that are acceptable to the gods. In his fertile lands
above the Tecolutla River, a cacao tree
grows from the body of the earth
monster. Money even grows on trees in
the wealthy land of this ruler: he is
king of men and beasts and is rich as
Croesus.
Panel 1 belongs to the Classic
Veracruz style but it does not represent
themes and present them in patterns
derived from earlier Veracruz arts. The
Fig. 3. El Tajin, South Ball Court, Panel 5.
Veracruz, Mexico. Drawing by the author.

strong interest in the iconography of
leadership and the representation of
the cross-legged ruler seated in an
elevated position, closely parallels the
representation of inaugural scenes in
the art of the Maya in such well-known
centers as Piedras Negras. This incorporation of Maya ideas of
representation within the Veracruz art
style is made much more evident in a
later addition to the sculptural
program of the Temple as a pair of
sculptures with obvious Maya affinities are set near the temple stairway.
A pair of statues, or stelae, almost
certainly bearing portraits of other
Tajin rulers, was added to the Temple
sometime around the end of the eigth
century A.D. Sculpture 1 (fig. 1) is a
single figure holding a long sash or
string of beads and a plumed bag. The

98

stocky man wears a short skirt with a
loin cloth, a waist band, an oval on his
chest, a necklace and a double
grotesque headdress. The legs and
body are carved in heavy threedimensional masses while the
shoulders and headdress are rendered
in low relief and blend into the prismatic background support. Much of
the headdress is missing and many of
the sculptural details are very badly
weathered and chipped, as if the face
and the ornaments held in either hand
were deliberately destroyed when the
Temple was razed.
Although this sculpture, which will
also be called the Tajin Stela, was
erected in Tajin, the metropolitan
home of the Classic Veracruz style, it is
related to Late Classic Maya sculptures
carved in three-dimensional masses,
commonly called stelae. 2 The majority
of Maya stelae are prismatic slabs
carved with low reliefs representing
single figures or relatively simple
figural compositions with little or no
indication of pictorial setting. Poses
tend to be static while the iconographic
associations of dress and decoration
are elaborate. By the Late Classic
Period, sculptors in some Maya cities
were carving stelae in high relief. The
best known examples come from
Copan where boldly carved figures
with massive, well rounded legs are
encrusted with elaborate dressings.
Copan figures cradle serpent bars with
their arms, leaving their hands empty.
Serpent bar symbolism, representing
the powerful god Itzam, a favorite of
the Maya leaders, appears throughout
the Copan stelae, even in the headdresses. Likewise, the Tajin Stela is a
massive figure with well rounded legs
wearing decorative vestments which
include serpentine heads and holding
symbolic attributes. This stela format,

associated with the Maya at Copan,
and to a lesser degree, illustrated in a
limited number of other Maya cities,
appears out of its normal Maya context
at Tajin. The stela format and figural
pose, used at Tajin, are taken from
Copan prototypes, but as we might
suspect, the Maya format was used to
illustrate a Tajin person, most likely a
ruler in typical Tajin dress. To
illustrate a Tajin ruler, certain details
of the Copan sculptural prototype had
to be changed: the Tajin Stela is
stripped of all Maya vestments and
attributes, and totally redressed according to the standards of Tajin
fashion for ritual performers. The
parquet patterns and diagonal hem line
of the skirt, the lozenge of lattice
decoration on the loin cloth, the attributes over the chest and grotesque
forms in the headdress are all proper
items of ritual dress in Tajin, illustrated
in other reliefs associated with the
major Tajin structures.
The figural pose in general, and
specifically, the position of the hands,
with the open and cupped palms
resting on the chest, repeat the gesture
of Maya figures at Copan cradling
serpent bars. Serpentine symbolism is
also popular in the headdresses of
Copan figures. Since there is no serpent
bar in Tajin iconography, the bar was
not borrowed along with the arm
arrangement that carried it. However,
the serpentine symbolism does appear
in the headdress of the Tajin Stela. This
particular version of the grotesque
used in the headdress of the Tajin
Stela, with an asymmetrical
supraorbital scroll, is another version
of the saurian creature in Panel 1 of the
Temple.
The empty hands of this Tajin figure
are used like hooks or hangers to
display a sash or a long string of badly

99

damaged beads (right hand) and a
plumed bag. Sashes are carried by
priests dedicated to the pulque cult, the
holy intoxicant consumed during many
Tajin rituals, including rituals of
human sacrifice. There is also a
constant association of beaded strings
and sacrificial rituals in the art of
Tajin. Beads are draped over beaks of
large birds near sacrificial victims, held
in the hands of sacrificial attendants
and placed over the shoulders of
sacrificial victims. The beads appear to
identify figures with the act and the
moment of human sacrifice.
The Stela figure also holds a Ushaped, plumed bag in his left hand.
Similar bags appear in the hands of
many ritual performers in other Tajin
sculptures. A plumed bag in the frieze
on the north wall of the North Ball
Court is attached to a round shield
penetrated by entwined spears. A pair
of large spears is superimposed over
the bag, as if to emphasize the
association of bags with weapons and
military power. The grotesque head to
the right of the bag is a saurian monster
comparable to those in the headdress
of the Stela figure. A fanged grotesque
monster with a plumed bag clenched in
his sharp teeth appears on one of the
vertical friezes bordering panels on the
Temple (fig. 4). This diving figure
appears to be delivering the bag from
the sky. The Stela figure displays his
plumed bag to demonstrate that he
possesses this important symbol of
military power and ritual authority
that came as a gift from the grotesques
in the Tajin sky.
The third conspicuous symbol on the
Tajin Stela is a pair of concentric ovals
secured on a strap over the chest. The
oval motifs have a sufficiently wide
distribution in Tajin art for us to interpret their meaning via contextual

I

Fig. 4. El Tajin, Temple of the Niches, Vertical
Panel Divider. Veracruz, Mexico. Drawing
by the author.

100

relationships. A man seated on the left,
Panel 1, South Ball Court (fig. 5),
presenting spears to the figure standing
in front of him, wears the concentric
ovals over his forehead, impersonating
grotesque that display this motif in the
same position in yet other sculptures.
Ovals are prominently displayed in the
center of the forehead by several
varieties of grotesque heads, including
that of the vampirish character that
delivers the spears and plumed bag
from the sky. While the subtle innuendos of meaning attached to the
ovals, plumed bag, beads and sash are
not clear from the remaining visual
Fig. 5. El Tajin, South Ball Court, Panel 1.
Veracruz, Mexico. Drawing by the author.

documents, these items are generally
associated with a common set of ritual
ideas in Tajin art and work in concert
to identify the figure on the Tajin Stela
as a major figure in the religious activities of the city. Despite the fact that
the basic form of the Tajin Stela has
Maya or Mayoid characteristics
borrowed specifically from the art of
Copan, the iconographic details are
clearly of Tajin origin: each of the
symbols would have been recognized
by a Tajin audience observing the
sculpture as it stood on the Temple of
the Niches.
But why did the sculptors at Tajin
use this foreign, Maya format for a
major monument when they already
had a highly developed sculptural style

of their own in use on the Temple? The
sculptured reliefs forming the upper
portion of the Temple walls, including
the ruler portrait on Panel 1, present
detailed accounts of the Veracruz
leaders. Some of the twentieth-century
delight in Maya sculpture may be no
more than a reflection of the tastes of
this historical period, a relative
judgment filled with prejudices that
another time period and civilization
might not appreciate. But the leaders at
Tajin were obviously aware that the
large, three-dimensional Maya
sculptures had expressive possibilities
that the Classic Veracruz sculptures
lacked. The existence of the Tajin Stela
suggests that the Tajin artists found the
monumental scale and massive forms
of Maya sculpture better fitted to the
task of portraying royal personages
and expressing themes of monumental
importance than their own very
detailed and shallow reliefs designed to
carry complicated iconographic
messages.
The iconoclasts that laid their hands
on these Mayoid stelae at Tajin were
anxious to erase the identity of the man
or men represented on the Stela and its
companion piece. The face of the Stela
is smashed and not one feature remains
to identify the man; the symbols of
ritual authority were literally knocked
out of his hands and the statue was
tumbled from its important position
within the major Temple at Tajin. The
companion piece received even worse
treatment: only the feet and ankles

remain to tell us that a second image of
a ruler at Tajin formed a pair with the
Stela and worked in concert with the
iconography of Panel 1 to document a
major contact between Maya and
Veracruz art taking place at El Tajin.

102

NOTES
1 T . Proskouriakoff has illustrated the
portable sculptures available for study in
"Varieties of Classic Central Veracruz Sculpture," Carnegie Institution of Washington,
Contributions to American
Anthropology
and History, No. 58 (Washington, D.C.,
1954) and M. Kampen has published drawings
of the architectural sculptures at El Tajin in
The Sculptures of El Tajin, Veracruz, Mexico
(Gainesville, Florida: University of Florida
Press, 1972). The following bibliography may
be helpful: G.F. Ekholm, "A Pyrite Mirror
from Queretaro, Mexico," Carnegie Institution of Washington, Notes on Middle
American Archaeology and Ethnology,
No. 53 (Washington, D.C., 1954); "The
Probable Use of Mexican Stone Yokes,"
American Anthropologist, N.S., XLVIII
(Menasha, Wisconsin, 1946), 593-606;
"Palmate Stones and Thin Stone Heads:
Suggestions on Their Possible Use," American
Antiquity, XV (1949), 1-9; Jose Garcia Payon,
Los Enigmas de El Tajin (Mexico City, 1973);
T. Proskouriakoff, A Study of Classic Maya
Sculpture (Washington, D.C., 1950); and
J. Eric S. Thompson, Maya History and
Religion (Norman, Oklahoma, 197;).
2 Proskouriakoff has discussed and illustrated related examples of stelae in "Varieties
of Classic Central Veracruz Sculpture,"
pp. 85-86; and A Study of Classic Maya
Sculpture, pp. 178 and 195.

104

Review

105

Anne De Coursey Clapp, Wen Chengming: The Ming Artist and Antiquity.
Publisher: Artibus Asiae (Ascona,
Switzerland, 1975)

The scholarly interest in Wen Cheng-ming
has been on the upswing for some time. In the
late 60s and early 70s, it was Chiang
Chao-shen who opened the way with a
thorough research of Wen's life. 1 Concurrently, the Harvard thesis of Anne Clapp
was being written, which eventually saw
publication under the aegis of Artibus Asiae
in 1975. Still more recently, the exhibition of,
and symposium on, the Wu Master, took
place in Ann Arbor; organized by Richard
Edwards, they rendered Wen an unprecedented homage. This reviewer, it may be
added, was a participant in that symposium
and presented a paper dealing with the
methodological aspect of Wen Cheng-ming
studies.2
It is not my purpose to review the exhibition
or the catalogue that goes with it. My purpose
is to review, with the advantage of having
seen the exhibition, Anne Clapp's Wen
Cheng-ming: The Ming Artist and Antiquity.
Indeed, having seen the exhibition, the
content of which overlaps the book, and
having also savored areas of controversy
brought to light by symposium participants,
it does make the task of reviewing Professor
Clapp's book so much easier. It is almost as if
we are seeing it through hindsight.
Thematically, Wen Cheng-ming: The Ming
Artist and Antiquity presents a well-articulated idea about Wen Cheng-ming's art and
its sources. The nine chapters, which touch on

Wen's life, his artistic evolution, and his
indebtedness to various masters, e.g., Shen
Chou, Chao Meng-fu, Huang Kung-wang,
Tung Yuan, Li Ch'eng, etc., follow a logical
order. They piece together a train of evidence
which leaves little doubt with respect to the
"eclectic" tendency of sixteenth-century Ming
painting in general and the Wu master in
particular. Indeed, with a knowledge of more
than 400 paintings and attributions by this
master, one would feel a sense of confidence
in trusting the author and her treatment of
the problem. 3
At the same time, it may be important to
point out that, as Chinese painting scholarship goes, every book written is always less
than definitive. "Provocation" perhaps is the
only attainable aim. Anne Clapp's Wen
Cheng-ming is no exception. While the
"eclectic" tendency of Wen Cheng-ming is
demonstrable, perhaps incontrovertible, the
selection of works to demonstrate these
borrowings could be extensively argued.
No two Wen Cheng-ming scholars would
select the same group of works as his oeuvres:
this is simply an unavoidable condition, due
to the fact that none of his paintings is documented with a degree of satisfaction that can
insure and assure authenticity. As a result,
scholar A may choose paintings a, b, c, d,
and e, while scholar B may reject c, but add to
the corpus f and g. Scholar C may then come
along and say that only h and j are reliable;

106

the others, including a, b, c, d, e, f , and g, are
all questionable. Intolerable as it may seem,
this situation is not without remedy. At
present, however, this reviewer will only
point to several key works reproduced in the
book as highly dubious attributions. In doing
so, this reviewer acknowledges that he too is
participating in the same game as every other
Chinese painting historian; he is however
more interested in highlighting the areas of
controversy, and does not intend this as a
criticism of Professor Clapp.
Fig. 17: Brewing Tea on a Spring Evening.
This painting is included in the exhibition
catalogue, R. Edwards, ed., The Art of Wen
Cheng-ming, No. XXVII. 4 In both silk and
painting style, it is much too recent for the
Ming date. Ming silk can be found in abundance in the Palace Museum paintings, and
none of them even comes close to the bright,
raw lustre of the Brewing scroll. Its style is
also contrary to the planar structure and
patterned seriality of the sixteenth century
and must therefore post-date Wen Chengming by a considerable margin. A comparison
with the Old Trees and Cold Streams can be
easily made (Clapp, fig. 35), with telling
consequences.
Fig. 20: After Wang Meng's "Mountain
Dwellings".5 The landscape presentation here
recalls the Ch'ing concept of lung-mo
("dragon vein"), and therefore a seventeenth
or post-seventeenth century date would be
more appropriate. Its style also has little to do
with Wen Cheng-ming, but stems, in all
probability, from painters like Kuan Ssu
(act. 1590-1630). One may indeed wish to
attribute it to a Ch'ing follower of that artist.
Fig. 24: Washing the Feet in the Green
Waves. Density and palpability of form, not
to say a heavy handed handling of brush and
ink, preclude it from being an acceptable Wen
Cheng-ming. Again, a later, Ch'ing date
would be more likely.
Fig. 25: Landscape. The Michigan scroll,
which is also included in the Ann Arbor
exhibition (Catalogue, No. XV) cannot have
been a genuine Wen Cheng-ming at all, contrary to the opinions of Professors Max Loehr,
Edwards, and Clapp. 6 I would regard its
uniformity of brushwork — and consequently
the lack of strength and vitality thereof — as a
telltale sign of its being a tracing copy. In
contrast, the Ku-kung Resting under Pine
Trees is a great masterpiece in the same genre,
which Anne Clapp only cursorily mentioned
in her text, but did not bother to reproduce.7

Fig. 26: Landscape after Wang Meng. So
admired by many and accepted without
question, this painting is in my opinion the
work of a late Ming painter, done around or
shortly after the time of Wu Pin (1573-1620).
Its restless surface and its bizarre effect bears
little relationship to Wen's own works,
or even to his disciples', but was to invade
their corpus later on due to such factors as
faking and mis-attribution. In addition, the
loosely straying brushwork is also atypical
for the Ming master.
Fig. 28: A Thousand Cliffs Vying in
Splendor. Magnificent composition but weak
execution reduces this to a close copy at best.
Fig. 32: The Seven Junipers of Ch'ang-sha.
In the Wen Cheng-ming symposium, Marshall
Wu argued convincingly that this was a work
of dubious origin. 8
Fig. 46: Old Trees and Cold Streams. The
presence of two hands in this otherwise fine
scroll (Catalogue, No. L) may place it as the
handiwork of a disciple, with possibly the
master himself adding the final touch —
to wit, the dark dry twigs at the left end of the
scroll — and, of course, the inscription. (This
will not invalidate Professor Clapp's thesis,
but merely add a qualification.) By comparison, fig. 47, Two scholars under a Cypress
(Catalogue, No. LVII), is no better than a
tracing copy, and an inferior one at that.
There are a number of other works which
this reviewer would also consider as
debatable, e.g., figs. 1, 4, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15,
19, 30, 36, 40, 41, and 44. Once again, it is a
matter of opinion, and conceivably, it is the
reviewer's own subjectivity, not to mention
his attitude of distrust, that has taken hold of
him in reaching these conclusions.
With equal subjectivity, this reviewer will
submit two critical comments vis-a-vis Wen
Cheng-ming: The Ming Artist and Antiquity:
1). That while Professor Clapp attends to
the problem of influences and sources, she has
not shown equal sensitivity toward Wen
Cheng-ming's own artistic personality. We
come away with the feeling that Wen only did
imitation or improvisation after this or that
ancient master. Even though Professor Clapp
does suggest repeatedly that Wen Cheng-ming
appropriated the ancient sources to his own
style and to his own syntax, exactly what his
style and syntax are, is never clearly set forth
to this reviewer's satisfaction. We sorely need
a further definition of the core of Wen Chengming's art, so that eclecticism — if it was
indeed his avenue to creative height — could

107

proceed from this core, as well as enriching
this core. Without knowing something about
Wen Cheng-ming first, we cannot adequately
explain how he operates vis-a-vis the ancient
heritage.
2). That Professor Clapp seems to have
shared with many of the interested scholars
a feeling of uncertainty as to the validity of
the Wu school paintings. This is not always
apparent in her treatment of Wen Cheng-ming
and his disciples, but the selection of works
attributed to these masters are frequently telling in the sense that so many of them are
inferior in quality. This is not surprising, in
view of the astonishing assertions that were
privately circulated among participants in the
symposium, who regarded Wen Cheng-ming
as no more than a "competent" artist. To this
reviewer, however, Wen Cheng-ming is a
great master, who, at his peak, was insurmountable and irrepressible,9 and even at his
low ebb, would not have produced works that
match the gift of a third rate forger. 10 Even
Wen Po-jen (1502-1575) and Wen Chia
(1501-1583) are painters of skill and originality: to wit, the two handscrolls in the
Palace Museum, Spring Dawn at Tan-t'ai,
The White-Deer Spring Retreat at She-shan,
and the hanging scroll, The Immortals on the
Islands of Immortality.11
They put to shame
those paintings that are normally attributed
to their name. 12
It is a compliment to Professor Clapp that
her translation of Chinese passages are generally excellent, with but two exceptions:
On page 3, Professor Clapp cites Wang
Shih-chen's comment on Wen Cheng-ming's
poetry:
1 nX-ipii
." Her translation reads: "It is like a small pavilion with
rustic windows; the building is placed to
perfection so that the view may be fully
enjoyed." Wang Shih-chen, however, was not
being so favorable, for he intended to say:
"It is like a small pavilion with rustic
windows, elegantly put together in every
way. However, the view from there is easily
exhaustible."
On page 82, Professor Clapp erroneously
translates the colophon by Wen as: "Because
Li Tzu-ch'eng is related to me through my
wife, he did me the honor to come several
hundred li to condole with me at Wu-men . . . ."
The original passage simply states that:
"Because Li Tzu-ch'eng knew about my wife's
death, he came several hundred li to condole
with me at Wu-men. . . ." " $ " here does

not denote kinship, but sorrow over death
in the family.
Ju-hsi Chou

108

NOTES
^"The Life of Wen Cheng-ming and the School of Suchou
Painting in the Middle and Late Ming," Palace Museum
Quarterly, V, No. 4 (Summer, 1971), 27ff; VI, No. 1
(Autumn, 1971), 17ff; No. 2 (Winter, 1971), 23ff; No. 3
(Spring, 1972), 15ff; No. 4 (Summer, 1972), 23ff; VII, No. 1
(Autumn, 1972), 49ff. This has since appeared as a monograph, Wen Cheng-ming yii Su-chou Hua-t'ai (Taipei, 1976).
2 " T h e Methodology of Reversal in the Study of Wen
Cheng-ming," presented on January 31, 1976 at the University of Michigan Symposium on Wen Cheng-ming.

^See the catalogue raisonne in her thesis (Harvard, 1971).
4 (Ann

Arbor, 1976). For convenience sake, this will be
designated as Catalogue below.
s T h is painting is available only in reproduction; neither
Professor Clapp nor I have been able to examine the actual
work itself.

^See Max Loehr, " A Landscape Attributed to Wen
Cheng-ming," Artibus Asiae, XXII (1959), 143-152.
7 See

Clapp, p. 62, n. 13.

8 This

painting is included in the Ann Arbor exhibition
(Catalogue, No. XXX). Marshall Wu's lecture is entitled
"The Honolulu Academy of Arts Seven Junipers of
Ch'ang-shu Scroll."
^For example, Clapp, figs. 22 and 35; see also Catalogue,
No. XII, XXIX and LVI. Great masterpieces of the W u
master congregate in the Palace Museum, e.g., Snow in the
Mountain Passes, Resting under Pine Trees, etc.
1 0 Clapp,

figs. 14, 24 and 47.

E . g., MH 32, MH 33 and MV 183 in the Palace
Museum collection, Taipei.
n

"^See Clapp, fig. 30 and p. 64.

109

"7 + 5 Sculptors in the 1950s": An
Exhibition at the Phoenix Art Museum
March 5-April 11, 1976

A collection of some fifty pieces of
sculpture, sixteen drawings, and two prints,
which comprises the Phoenix Art Museum's
"Sculptors in the 1950s" exhibition, offers a
rare opportunity to examine a pivotal decade
in twentieth-century sculpture. The exhibition
has a small but interesting sample of European
art, but it is dominated by works of
Americans which is only fair considering the
importance of the Fifties to American
sculpture. The American post-World War II
generation is well represented by artists David
Smith, Herbert Ferber, Ibram Lassaw, Isamu
Noguchi, Richard Stankiewicz, John
Chamberlain, and Louise Nevelson. The
Europeans, Giacomo Manzu, Eduardo
Chillida, Alberto Giacometti, Lynn Chadwick, and Jean Tinguely, serve as a kind of a
counterpoint to the Americans. Special to
Phoenix is the inclusion of the Henry Moore
bronze, King and Queen, on loan to the
museum from Norton Simon.
"Sculptors in the 1950s," originating at the
University of California, Santa Barbara, was
organized by Phyllis Pious who also wrote the
catalog. Pious urges us in the catalog introduction to consider this exhibition as the
works o f " . . . sculptors working in the
decade of the fifties who commanded serious
attention by means of their accomplishments." She specifically abjures any intention
to create a detailed survey of the
period. She argues that stylistic links among

these artists are hard to find. Perhaps she is
too cautious. There are links which unite these
works in various ways and it is not uninstructive to examine these if only to try to
understand why there is about this exhibition
a "period-piece" look, a "Fiftyish" look if you
will.
This is not meant to suggest that this
"Fiftyish" look has not worn well; on the
contrary, the exhibition is a particularly
strong one. What is meant is that this show
looks very different from a show that one
might have seen in the 1930s — the exhibitions
at either of the two World's Fairs in 19301940, for example. It also looks very different
from exhibitions of sculpture one would have
seen in the 1960s — more on that later.
To make sure that one's memory is not
playing tricks, go back to old art magazines
and recapture the look of those World's Fairs
at San Francisco and New York or look at a
book like Martha Chandler Cheney's Modern
American Art published in 1939. It was the
carver and the modeler who dominated the
sculpture of those years. Direct carving,
which Wayne Craven says Robert Laurent
introduced into American sculpture in the
1920s, was the avant-garde of American
sculpture of that period between the two
world wars. "Sculptors in the 1950s"
demonstrates that this technique has been
overthrown in the 1950s. None of those
massive stones of Zorach or the carved tree

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trunks of Chaim Gross are in this exhibition.
This exhibition makes it clear that the
sculpture of the 1950s has a unique character
all its own. It is not to be confused with what
went before nor with what was to come after.
Of the more than fifty pieces of sculpture in
this exhibition, nothing is carved. With the
exception of Nevelson's four assemblage
pieces in wood and a single small terra cotta
by Noguchi, all the sculpture is metal — either
cast or welded. All of the American works are
nonrepresentational. Only Moore, Manzu,
and Giacometti use recognizable, figurative,
subject matter.
This exhibition can give some clues to the
historical development of sculpture during the
1950s. For this purpose one may divide these
artists into three groups. Call them "the Early
New Yorkers," "the Later Assemblagists," and
"the European Melange.'
The "Early New Yorkers" consist of
Americans whose age and artistic development parallel the likes of Pollock or de
Kooning. These sculptors matured as artists in
New York in the 1940s and the early 1950s for
the most part. This group includes Smith,
Lassaw, and Ferber certainly, and possibly the
young Stankiewicz, even though his earliest
work in this exhibition is dated 1957. He was
using the welding torch in the early 1950s and
it is the oxyacetylene welding torch that is the
common denominator of this group; that, and
the abstract shapes the torch can cut and
attach. Smith is usually credited with
developing the torch as an artistic tool in
America after seeing illustrations of Julio
Gonzales' work in the early 1930s. Smith's
accomplishments led several other New
Yorkers in the 1940s to explore the
possibilities of this technique. In the 1950s
sculpture students in various parts of the
country eagerly seized upon the technique.
Their instructors, usually carvers and
modelers, watched, often with mixed feelings.
I recall in 1954 one of my instructors, a
skilled wood carver, saying in front of a
particularly linear piece of welded sculpture in
the Art Institute of Chicago, "But it just isn't
sculpture." He had difficulty coming to grips
with the way the work rejected the tradition
of sculpture as mass. He was not ready to
accept as sculpture a work that became a kind
of drawing in space. In this exhibition, appropriately, one of the earliest works is a
David Smith gouache drawing dated 1951.
The drawing is essentially a horizontal form
— all twists and spike-pointed endings,

balanced on a vertical strut, an anticipation of
the Agricola series.
If Smith's gouache reminds one of a Franz
Kline painting, it is helpful to be reminded of
this affinity between painters and sculptors in
New York in the late Forties and early Fifties.
It is commonplace today when discussing
the sculpture of the 1950s to warn of the
dangers of confusing the aims of AbstractExpressionist painters with those of sculptors
like this group here which I have designated
"Early New Yorkers." Plous's catalog makes
the obligatory cautions. But one must not
forget that the painters and sculptors were
contemporaries and in many cases good
friends. David Smith was an important figure
in the New York art world. His name is invoked on page one of Do re Ashton's book
The New York School and many times
subsequently. The famous "Club" was
organized in Ibram Lassaw's studio, a
sculptor's studio, which served as its first
regular meeting place. Herbert Ferber, as
early as 1943, was a member of the Federation
of Modern Painters and Sculptors in the
company of painters Adolph Gottlieb and
Mark Rothko, among others.
These sculptors shared the same milieu as
the painters. They shared the memories of the
Depression and World War II; they shared in
rejecting nationalism in art ("middle western
art," Gottlieb described it to me); and they
shared a sense of their own increasing importance as artists, coupled with a growing
realization of how much events of the 1940s
had freed them of dependency on School of
Paris syntax.
In this exhibition each of the "Early New
Yorkers" is represented by first rate works.
Especially impressive is David Smith's Tank
Totem VI. It combines so much of what this
group represents. It is welded metal, industrial
scrap transformed, with an additional element
that so many of these "Early New Yorkers"
works contain — the implication of the figure.
There is the connection to the base, leg-like;
the vertical middle, the torso; and some sort
of conclusion at the top, the head. During the
Fifties this did not impress itself on viewers as
it does today. Viewers then were more attracted by the new materials and new
techniques, together with the rejection of
imitative details. All this obscured the implicit
homage to the anthropomorphic element
traditional in sculpture since pre-history.
The passage of two decades has made this
anthropomorphism more apparent. It runs as

Ill

a motif through so many of the "Early New
Yorkers" works in this exhibition. Lassaw's
vertical pieces in the show have the same
implicit reference to the figure. Not in the
exhibition, but in the museum's permanent
gallery on the floor above, is Seymour Lipton's work The Knight. For all its textured
leaf-like shapes, it has the same figural connotations. It should be added, as a kind of footnote, that Smith's later work in the exhibition,
like Sentinel III of 1957, is evidence of the
direction his 1960s work was to take — away
from anthropomorphism.
The group referred to above as the "Later
Assemblagists" is a chronological successor to
the "Early New Yorkers." In this group I place
Nevelson, Chamberlain, Tinguely, and
possibly Stankiewicz with his use of
manufactured materials. This grouping has
nothing to do with actual age. Nevelson was
born before any of the previous group.
Chamberlain and Tinguely are much younger.
Assemblage pieces, as defined by William
Seitz, make use of pre-formed materials
originally intended for some other purpose.
The materials in the works in this exhibition
representing these artists do not totally lose
that original identity. Even Nevelson's wood
constructions retain a piece-by-piece process
of building toward a whole.
Two works by Chamberlain in the
exhibition make an interesting correlation
between painting and sculpture of the late
1950s. One is a crayon drawing and the other
is an enameled steel piece called Swannano.
The drawing is a typical second-generation
Abstract-Expressionist work with colored
shapes jostling each other for a place in the
drawing. The sculpture piece, though uncharacteristically subdued in color, has a look
not unlike the drawing. The metal, apparently
auto body scrap, is crumpled and twisted to
produce accidental shapes and abrupt spatial
transitions in a very Abstract-Expressionist
manner.
The French assemblagist Jean Tinguely's
work is the most discordant note in the whole
exhibition. One wonders why he is included. Only one of his works in the
exhibition is dated as early as the 1950s. More
than that, there are other features about his
work which are uncharacteristic of the other
works in the exhibition. First of all, they
move, being motor driven. In the 1950s,
movement was associated with Calder. His
pieces at that time moved with the random
motion of the wind, a surreal sort of

movement, very much in harmony with their
metal shapes. Tinguely's work in the
exhibition moves in a clanky, predestined
pattern very much at odds with the
biomorphic shapes and evolving structures of
most of the rest of the exhibition. He has
another quality not found in the rest of the
exhibition. His work has a mordant Dada
humor. The very slap-dash assemblage appearance of the pieces is a parody of the
power and polish usually associated with
machinery. The pieces lurch through their
patterns accomplishing nothing. Perhaps this
humor is the most uncharacteristic thing
about the 1950s. There is a seriousness about
New York art in the 1950s. The New Yorkers
may have been personally witty, but they
were very serious about their art. Clement
Greenberg has used the term "high art" to
describe the kind of art in which he places
great stock. One gets the sense of a religious
vocation from the way he uses the term.
Harold Rosenberg called the work of the Pop
group in the early 1960s "Gag art," implying
that those artists were not properly serious.
Tinguely's attitudes and his art seem more
related to the Sixties than the Fifties.
The other Europeans, in this review called
the "European Melange," are simply that — a
collection of artists that apparently were
readily available to the organizer. There
seems to be no reason why these particular
artists were chosen as opposed to others who
could have been chosen.
Certainly, they are all able sculptors.
Chillida's work has a resemblance of sorts to
the Americans, but it is a resemblance on the
same level as a comparison of Manessier to de
Kooning. Why particularly Chillida? There
seems to be no compelling reason. Kricke,
Consagra, or Stahly, for example, could have
served as well.
It is true Lynn Chadwick does represent the
"New Iron Age," as British sculpture of the
1950s was sometimes called. There is in his
work that abstract figuration discussed above.
He has the advantage also of having been
frequently exhibited on the international scene
from the early 1950s at the same time as most
of the other artists here. Manzu, Giacometti,
and the special Phoenix inclusion, Moore,
make almost traditional use of the human
figure — traditional in the context of this
exhibition. The installation in Phoenix places
Moore's King and Queen near an over-life size
standing female nude by Manzu in a very
happy juxtaposition. The positioning of the

112

two sculptures could serve as a symbolic
positioning of Moore in the European
tradition. Moore, the radical of the 1930s,
here fits very well into the line of tradition
descending from Donatello. Score a point for
the Phoenix Art Museum.
The only artist who does not fit neatly into
my exercise in "linkages" is Noguchi. His
works in this exhibition are of such a varied
nature and are so original in their inspiration
that they call for a reconsideration of this
often overlooked artist. Perhaps he has been
taken too much for granted for several
reasons: he spent part of the Fifties in Japan
somewhat out of sight of the art press; he has
been active for so long — in the 1920s he
worked as an assistant first to Gutzon Borglum and then Constantine Brancusi — and in
this long career he has never been fashionably
modern. His works in this exhibition range
from a small terra cotta of 1953 to a large
sheet steel piece begun in 1959 and only
finished in 1973. In the impressive array of
talent gathered for this exhibition, Noguchi
proves himself to be a very strong sculptor.
With the wealth of material in the
exhibition, it is perhaps unfair to speculate as
to who could have been added to make the
exhibition even more representative of the
Fifties. Pious seems to challenge us to do this
in her catalog introduction when she speaks of
". . . a diversity too wild and extensive . . . to
be neatly organized. . . . "
Who is missing? One might opt for the
inclusion of another wood sculptor, Gabriel
Kohn, for instance. Not quite an assembler in
the Nevelson manner, he was rather a
fabricator using pieces of lumberyard stock.
Kohn, though generally better known in the
1960s than in the 1950s, was well enough
known to be chosen one of the U. S. finalists in
the International Unknown Political Prisoner
Competition in the early 1950s.
Surprisingly absent, given the preponderantly male representation, is Lee Bontecou.
Her striking metal ribbed reliefs, covered with
stretched pieces of canvas, were frequently
exhibited in the late 1950s.
If any one thing is missed in this exhibition,
it is the potent imagery of Robert
Rauschenberg. One needs to be reminded
occasionally that some of Rauschenberg's
major three-dimensional works like
Monogram and Oblisque are very much the
product of the middle and late 1950s. In that
decade of metal welding something quite
different was taking shape in his studio. It is in

Rauschenberg's work, after all, that we may
get clues to both the painting and sculpture of
the next decade.
One of the most obvious differences between sculpture in the 1950s and what was to
come in the 1960s is color. A decade or more
has conditioned the viewer to expect a clash of
colors in any large c o n t e m p o r a r y sculpture
exhibition. Sculpture in the 1950s as this
exhibition demonstrates tended toward the
drab, the monotone of metal or flat paint.
Sprayed acrylic lacquer colors or impregnated
plastics are not to be found in this exhibition.
It is worth remembering that the Los Angeles
County Museum of Art's "American
Sculpture of the Sixties" with its veritable
flower garden of colors was gathered not
many years after the works in this exhibition
had been completed. There is little in
"Sculptors in the 1950s" which prepares us for
this change in attitude toward color. This
sudden interest in polychrome sculpture in the
1960s is an area for art historians to explore.
An exhibition like this reminds us that
developments in art are not linear — where
we are today does not predict where we will
be in a decade. Phyllis Pious is to be commended for recreating a period so recent and
yet so completely gone.
Jack Breckenridge

114

List of Contributors
Jack Breckenridge,

is a Professor of Art at Arizona State University. He
studied with Hans Hofmann in New York in 1952, the
Saugatuck Summer School and has degrees from the
University of Wisconsin and the University of Iowa
(MFA), where he was a Woodrow Wilson fellow. His
current interests are American and European painting after World War II.

Ju-hsi Chou,

is an Associate Professor of Art at Arizona State
University. He received his Ph.D. from Princeton
University. A specialist in later Chinese painting,
he has published articles dealing with the Ming and
Ch'ing artists and art theory.

Marvin Cohodas,

is an Associate Professor of Art History at the
University of British Columbia. He was formerly
on the art history faculty at Arizona State University.
Professor Cohodas received his Ph.D. from
Columbia University. He has published articles on
Mesoamerican art in Prima Mesa Redonda
de
Palenque and in the Sociedad Mexicana de Antropologia and The Middle Classic Period in Mesoamerica, New York, 1975.

Robin Dowden,

graduated with honors this May from the undergraduate program in art history at Arizona State
University. She will begin her graduate studies in
January, 1979 at the University of California, Davis.

Anthony Lacy Gully,

is an Associate Professor of Art at Arizona State
University. He received his Ph.D. from Stanford
University. His writings have been primarily devoted
to British art of the eighteenth- and nineteenthcenturies. He is the current President of the Rocky
Mountain Conference of British Studies.

Michael Edwin Kampen, is an Associate Professor of Art at Arizona State
University. He received his Ph.D. from the University
of Pennsylvania. He has served as an associate on the
Tikal Excavation Project sponsored by the University
of Pennsylvania. He is the author of El Tajin,
Veracruz, Mexico, 1972. Articles by Dr. Kampen on
Pre-Columbian art have appeared in Estudios de
Cultura Maya, Ethos, Man and Iconography
of
World
Religions.