Túhuà jiànwén zhì 圖畫見聞誌
Records of What I have Seen and Heard about Painting by 郭若虛 (Guō Ruòxū, fl. 1070–1075, 宋, zhuàn 撰)
About the work
The continuation of Zhāng Yànyuǎn’s KR3h0009 Lìdài mínghuà jì, composed by Guō Ruòxū in the middle Xīnínɡ 熙寧 reign (1074–1080). In six juàn, it covers art-historical theory (juàn 1: sixteen short essays — Xùlùn 敘論) and the painters from late Táng (Yǒngchāng 1, 689 — the close of Zhāng Yànyuǎn’s catalogue) through the Five Dynasties to Xīnínɡ 7 (1074): 27 late-Táng painters, 91 Five-Dynasties painters, 13 gōngsì (princes and high officials), 2 gāoshàng (recluse-painters), as well as numerous specialist painters of the Northern Sòng court including the emperor Rénzōng himself. Guō explicitly abandons the grading system of Liú Dàochún KR3h0014 KR3h0015 and Huáng Xiūfù KR3h0016, on the grounds that painters change with their season and that style cannot be flattened into rank; instead he proceeds by topical anecdote and brush-history. The book is the unique source for many aspects of pre-Xīnínɡ Northern Sòng painting, especially the imperial collecting policy and the Túhuàyuàn 圖畫院 (Imperial Painting Academy).
Tiyao
Abstract
The Túhuà jiànwén zhì is one of the three foundational art-historical texts of Northern Sòng China (with the two Liú Dàochún books). Guō Ruòxū (zì unknown), grandson of an unidentified Sītúgōng, came from a Tàiyuán 太原 family that had assembled an important painting collection alongside the contemporary collections of Dīng Jìngōng 丁晉公 and Mǎ Zhènghuì 馬正惠 (Mǎ Zhījié 馬知節). The work’s first juàn of sixteen short topical essays is the principal Northern Sòng theoretical treatise on painting: it includes the famous formulation that “the human pulse animates the brush, and what you cannot teach is the qìyùn” (氣韻非師), which Sū Shì and Mǐ Fú both build on; the comparison of Northern (Lǐ Chéng, Fàn Kuān, Guān Tóng) and Southern (Dǒng Yuán, Jùrán) landscape lineages that becomes the framework of the late-Míng Nánběi zōng theory; and an extended evaluation of the position of Wú Dàozǐ versus Wáng Wéi as ancestors of the Sòng tradition. The catalogue juàn (2–6) constitute the principal source for nearly all painters between the late Táng and Xīnínɡ. The composition window is bounded internally by the Xīnínɡ 7 (1074) terminus given in the preface and externally by Guō’s relative silence on events after that date; modern scholarship treats the work as completed c. 1074–1080.
Translations and research
- Soper, Alexander C. Kuo Jo-hsü’s Experiences in Painting (T’u-hua chien-wen chih): An Eleventh Century History of Chinese Painting Together with the Chinese Text in Facsimile. Washington: American Council of Learned Societies, 1951. (The standard Western-language version, with facsimile.)
- Bush, Susan, and Hsio-yen Shih, eds. Early Chinese Texts on Painting. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985 (selections).
- Maeda, Robert J. Two Sung Texts on Chinese Painting and the Landscape Styles of the 11th and 12th Centuries. New York: Garland, 1978.
- Bush, Susan. The Chinese Literati on Painting: Su Shih (1037–1101) to Tung Ch’i-ch’ang (1555–1636). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971 (on Guō’s “qìyùn fēi shī” formula).
- Yú Jiànhuá 俞劍華 (ed.). Túhuà jiànwén zhì 圖畫見聞誌. Beijing: Renmin Meishu Chubanshe, 1963 (collated text).
Other points of interest
Guō’s six-character formula qìyùn fēi shī 氣韻非師 — that the highest level of painting “cannot be transmitted by a teacher” — became one of the central planks of the literati art-theory and underpins the entire Northern-Sòng / Late-Míng-and-after argument for the priority of cultivated character over technical training in the visual arts.