Everything about Shitao totally explained
Yuanji Shih T'ao, born
Zhu Ruoji (
1642 -
1707) was a
Chinese artist.
Born in
Quanzhou County in
Guangxi province, Shih T'ao was a member of the
Ming royal house. He narrowly avoided catastrophe in
1644 when the Ming dynasty fell to invading Manchurians and civil rebellion. Having escaped by chance from the fate to which his lineage would have assigned him, Shih T'ao assumed the name Yuanji Shih T'ao no later than
1651 when he became a Buddhist monk.
He moved from
Wuchang, where he began his religious instruction, to
Anhui in the
1660s. Throughout the
1680s he lived in
Nanjing and
Yangzhou, and in
1690 he moved to
Beijing to find patronage for his promotion within the monastic system. Frustrated by his failure to find a patron, Shih T'ao converted to
Daoism in
1693 and returned to Yangzhou where he remained until his death in 1707.
Art
Shih T'ao is one of the most famous individualist painters of the early
Qing dynasty. The art he created was revolutionary in its transgressions of the rigidly codified techniques and styles that dictated what was considered beautiful. Imitation was valued over innovation, and although Shih T'ao was clearly influenced by his predecessors (namely
Ni Zan and
Li Yong), his art breaks with theirs in several new and fascinating ways.
His formal innovations in depiction include drawing attention to the act of painting itself through his use of washes and bold, impressionistic brushstrokes, as well as an interest in subjective perspective and the use of negative or white space to suggest distance.Shih T'ao's stylistic innovations are difficult to place in the context of the period. In a
colophon dated 1686, Shih ao wrote: "In painting, there are the Southern and the Northern schools, and in
calligraphy, the methods of the Two Wangs [
Wang Xizhi and
Wang Xianzhi].
Zhang Rong (443–497) once remarked, 'I regret not that I don't share the Two Wangs' methods, but that the Two Wangs didn't share my methods.' If someone asks whether I [ShihT'ao] follow the Southern or the Northern School, or whether either school follows me, I hold my belly laughing and reply, 'I always use my own method!'"
The poetry and calligraphy that accompany his landscapes are just as beautiful, irreverent, and vivid as the paintings they compliment. His paintings exemplify the internal contradictions and tensions of the literati or scholar-amateur artist, and they've been interpreted as an invective against art-historical canonization.
"10,000 Ugly Ink Dots" is a perfect example of Shih T'ao's subversive and ironic aesthetic principles. This uniquely apperceptive work challenges accepted standards of beauty. As the carefully painted landscape degenerates into
Pollock-esque splatters, the viewer is forced to recognize that the painting isn't transparent (immediate, in the most literal sense meaning without media) in the way it initially purports to be. Solely because they're labeled "ugly," the ink dots begin to take on a sort of abstract beauty.
"Reminiscences of Qin-Huai" is another of Shih T'ao's unique paintings. Like many of the paintings from the late Ming Dynasty and early
Qing Dynasty it deals with man's place in nature. Upon a first viewing, however, the craggy peak in this painting seems somewhat distorted. What makes this painting so unique is that it appears to depict the mountain bowing. A monk stands placidly on a boat that floats along the
Qin-Huai river, staring up in admiration at the genuflecting stone giant. The economy of respect that circulates between man and nature is explored here in a sophisticated style reminiscent of
surrealism or
magical realism, and bordering on the absurd. Shih T'ao himself had visited the river and the surrounding region in the 1680s, but it's unknown whether the album that contains this painting depicts specific places. Re-presentation itself is the only way the feeling of mutual respect that Shih T'ao depicts in this painting could be communicated; the subject of a personified mountain simply defies anything simpler.
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