Look, See

"Under the Manchu Dynasty, the city of Yangchow became a thriving commerical center and headquarters of the government salt monopoly. Until then it could boast of little cultural distinction. Beginning, however, in the last decades of the seventeenth centery, it emerged as the most vital urban center in China, replacing Soochow as the artistic capital and arbiter of culture.

The painter Shih-t'ao (also known as Tai-chi, 1642-1707) lived there for a time in the 1680s and his permanent move to the city in the 1690s marks the beginning of the city's artistic resurgence. The young painter Kao Hsiang became his friend, as did Kao Feng-han; they in turn became typical of the eccentric painters of Yangchow through the eighteenth centruy, and all were heirs of Shih-t'ao. Along with his art and the art of his followers in the city, Yanghow was celebrated for its gaiety, its flower boats and fine restaurants, its superb gardens, and its wealth. Its art market flourished; certainly one reason Shih-t'ao chose to settle there as a professional painter was the expectation that he would find a thriving audience for his art. The city honored eccentricity, originality, and skill; and Shih-t'ao was undoubtedly the most eccentric, original, and skillful painter of his time.

"He wrote three separate inscriptions on his painting Drunk in Autumn Woods (No. 35), an indication of the pleasure the work brought him. He painted it in the early eighteenth century, probably 1702, to commemorate an outing he made with some friends into the autumn hills. The landscape, with pavilions, paths, and bridges, is more like a small park or garden. The friends, recalling Wang Hsi-chih and the Orchid Pavilion, wandered about enjoying the autumn foliage, drank wine, composed poems, got drunk, fell asleep. Their activities are illustrated by Shih-t'ao in the intoxicating setting of the year's end. His inscriptions testify to the pride he took in his achievement: "In an instant, mists and clouds can return to their primeval form; red trees fill the skies spread fire through the heavens. I invite your, sir, to get very drunk on my black brushstrokes; lie down and watch the frosted forest as falling leaves swirl." His theme is intoxication; the exhilaration of wine and autumn woods, of creativity, friendship, and madness: "I have three kinds of madness: I am mad, my words are mad, and my painting is mad" (ANSCHWIN LIPPE, 1962, p. 159; modified). The chaotic, vibrating autumn woods appear as the "ten thousand dots of vermilion and orange" requested by Sung-kao (the poet Mao Chi-k'o, 1633-1708, for whom the picture was done). Within the woods, young and old figures, strangely misshapen, seen as if through a haze of wine, are engaged here and there in the casual activities of a fall picnic.

"Like Yun Shou-p'ing seeking to portray and express the elation afforded him by the wind from the lotuses, Shih-t'ao attempts to create an image and a style embodying the idea of intoxication. He was often drunk on the experience of art, nature, and life, and was always quite mad..."