Both were on show as a part of the International Print Exhibition/l983, sponsored by the ROC Council for Cultural Planning and Development over December and January. This showing featured 99 historic prints from local museum collections and loaned from collections abroad.
The earliest print was from the collection of the British Museum, and the earliest multiple-color print from the troves of Taipei's National Museum of History. The exhibit also featured 24 of the precious "Shoochow New Year" prints, which are now part of a Japanese collection. The rest of these prints were destroyed during Ching Dynasty warfare. The remainder of the exhibits derived from the personal collection of collector Pan Yuan-shi, and from the extensive collections of the island's three major museums.
The first print originated at Tun-huang, Kansu Province, and dates back to 868 A.D. It was an insert into a Buddhist sutra, illustrating Sakyamuni preaching beside a tree, and is now part of the collection of the British Museum. This illustration and its accompanying text utilized a wood-block printing process, involving an ink-squeezed block in the same way inscription-rubbings are taken today. Demonstrating advanced carving skills and good printing quality, the world's oldest extant block-print illustration is evidence of the attainments of Chinese printmakers of the Tang Dynasty (618-907 A.D.). The earliest such print discovered to date in the West is of St. Christopher in 1423 A.D. Early prints, both in Europe and China, focused on religious themes. What the sutras meant to the Chinese of the Ninth Century is mirrored in the meaning of the Bible to Europeans of the 15th Century.
Anticipating the actual development of block-printing in China-before the achievements of the Tang Dynasty—were many contributory advances in inks and pigments, printing, and carving itself. The earliest carving/printing skills trace back in pre-history to the initial oracle-bone inscriptions-most a kind of Chinese hieroglyphics.
During the Han Dynasty (206 B.C.-220 A.D.), patterns and figures engraved on stone ornaments erected before graves or shrines, had a direct relationship to wood carving. Utilizing relief patterns or intaglio, or a combination, sometimes even lines or dots, the extant Han stone engravings have, in their carving techniques, a close resemblance to printmaking plates.
Wood and jade carvings of the Han Dynasty included signature "seals"—which in the early days were used to show, not to print. Such seals, carved into animal patterns as well as Chinese characters, were finally used to print al about the time of the Han Dynasty, the imprints being used either for the purposes of identification or of aesthetics. During the Second or Third Centuries, the combination of ink, carving, and imprinting was already at hand. The invention of paper, about the same time, 105 A.D. (late Han Dynasty), though at first of a rough quality, opened the way to modern printing.
The exact designation of an earliest date for block-printing during the Sui Dynasty (581-618 A.D.) revolves around an academically disputed Emperor's order "to carve and print" old sutras. Scholars are in firm concensus that block-printing was not only in existence by the late Ninth Century, but that it gave full indications then of having undergone considerable development in far earlier periods.
The society of the Tang Dynasty contributed to the growth of printmaking; it was prosperous and characterized by the spread of knowledge. Though the government itself didn't sponsor printing, Buddhist believers soon made good use of the technique, and most extant prints of the period concern religious themes and served as illustrations for sutra texts.
The oldest print, Picture of a Garden where Sakyamuni Preached, is the final product of a relief process. Neat lines and complex composition present the Buddha in an aureole, and surrounded by 18 disciples and deities, plus nags and scenery. It evidences the fact that skills in carving and printing had already reached sophisticated levels.
At the time of the Five Dynasties, officials and governments, as such, encouraged both printing and the circulation of books. Two prime ministers of the Shu Dynasty of northern China invited printers to publish Confucius' Analects and other Confucian literature, widening the scope of printing themes. Woodblock printing methods gained attention and general acceptance.
But, though the printed' texts were going beyond religious subjects, woodcut prints of the period were still illustrating Buddhist themes. Among the extant half-a-dozen prints, a portrait of the Buddhist Guardian of the North and an image of Kuan-yin (Goddess of Mercy), bear the name of the carver, Lei Yen-mei, the earliest Chinese carver known today. These two prints, found at Tun-huang, Kansu Province, feature delicate linework, a result of differing skills and tastes from those which influenced two exhibited prints found at Chekiang Province, south China. These differences make manifest the fact that the printmaking industry was no longer centered solely in the north. Chang-an, capital of the Tang Dynasty, no longer dominated printing.
The Sung Dynasty (960-1279 A.D.) marked the beginning of a development period of traditional Chinese prints. The scope of the prints had gradually expanded beyond Buddhist texts and images to include a broader range of topics: almanacs, plants, landscapes, figures, etc.
The Sung period also witnessed a rapid and growing interest in rhythmic verse, spurring a buoyant market for printing. And it was a prime period for Chinese painting, which led to a keen interest in illustrated texts.
Graphic presentations of biographical personages, instruments in music books, medicinal herbs and acupuncture points in medical books, and of maps and constellations were equally weighted with text, the formats usually putting the images physically above the text. Captions were also introduced. And in some volumes, pictures dominated, as in painting workbooks. As the Sung Dynasty matured, single prints of local and folk deities were produced, and prints gradually achieved some independence from illustration and from religious themes.
Two existing books typify the development of printing in the Sung Dynasty: Biographies of Women and Drawings of Chinese Apricots Reprints dating from the Yuan Dynasty are now in the collection of Taipei's National Palace Museum. Biographies of Women dates from 1063 and contains 123 illustrations of women above texts on the same pages; it had great influence on the design of the period, combining prints and texts on a major scale. Drawings of Chinese Apricots, dated 1238, detailed phases of the flowering tree from bud to full blossom. The delicacy achieved, enhanced the artistic level of printmaking to the point that the text became secondary.
A two-color printing process was introduced during the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368 A.D.); its earliest example (1340) is a preface-illustration- Picture of the Sacred "Mushroom" (fomes japonica). Overhanging pines in the background are in black ink; three monks below them are in red. Color printing in China thus appeared about a century earlier than in Europe; the earliest known Japanese color print dates from 1627.
The art of printing in the Yuan Dynasty remained generally within the scope of presentations of the Sung Dynasty. But the period was marked by quantitative reprinting of old books and, at the same time, quantitative illustrations in these books. Most of the wood cut prints in this middle period (Yuan and Sung Dynasties) of Chinese print development depended on outlining skills on the relief block; the added colors covered separately delineated areas. The multi-color printing process was utilized by the authorities to print paper money in three colors (black, red, and blue). The widespread use of this currency contributed to public interest in the technique.
Yuan Dynasty popular literature, especially rhythmic verses which could be chanted and episodic literature, triggered the imaginations and creativity of illustrators. Wider scope, more skillful and relined presentations, and uniform printing formats marked the period.
The Ming Dynasty (1368-1644 A.D.) was the golden age of Chinese printing. Scripts and drama gained popularity during the Ming, directly contributing to the opportunity for and interest in print-illustrated books. Bookstores, both government and private, burgeoned. And they demanded ever more prints to appeal to a mass market.
Liao Shiou-ping, an expert at Seton Hall University in the United States, notes that the brilliance of Ming Dynasty printwork follows from the fact that the profession had by now become a family-inherited trade. Skills advanced with each generation, and the craft evolved into a sophisticated and artistic profession. In Anhui Province, the Huang and Wong families were the most famous wood-block carvers of that time.
Accomplished Chinese painters of the Ming began to do original print designs, so that prints were no longer mere copies of paintings. Many carvers began to concentrate only on block-cutting, and more than one carver sometimes participated in producing the blocks for multi-color prints; specialization enhanced their craftsmanship.
The Ming Dynasty actually breaks down into two periods that each had special effects on the arts. Within the first 150 years of the Dynasty, society was recovering from the wars and turbulence that had underlined the dynastic shift, and there was little change in print-making. Prints still relied on relief-carved blocks, showing sharp line delineation. Though multiple blocks were used for colorprints, the renderings were in separate, primary colors. Painters and carvers were not differentiated. Most of the prints of this period tried for realistic presentations, illustrating such books as Strategies and Weapons and Agriculture, and geology books as well as sutras. Most bookstores and publication centers clustered around Chien-an. Fukien Province, a source of wood products, and Hang-chow, Chekiang Province, a political and cultural center in southern China.
During the later period of the Ming Dynasty, covering about 120 years from the mid-16th to the mid-17th Century, Chinese prints reached a crest in both quality and quantity. Prints were focused, first just to reproduce previous works, later to create magnificent or shabby characters, suitors and beauties, settings and happenings for fiction and historical epics. Stories of the West Chamber was printed in 16 editions (now represented in the National Central Library in Taipei), 11 of them illustrated. One edition offers an astonishing 272 prints.
A multi-color block-printing process was used in two landmark publications -painting workbooks: Master Fang's Notes on Ink, by Fang Kan-lu, and Master Cheng's Garden of Inks, by Cheng Chun-fang, stimulated widespread use of color graphics.
Yet, their examples were soon surpassed by Hu Cheng-yen, who used a multiple-block process to produce Reproductions of Painting and Calligraphy in the Ten-Bamboo Pavilion, and Miscellaneous Notes from the Ten-Bamboo Pavilion. The process utilized a different block for each color. Furthermore, the printing paper was pressed between matching intaglio and relief-carved blocks in order to create raised or embossed areas on the print.
Each of the two books offered more than 200 prints, those in the former based almost on an outlining technique, those of the latter relying in great part on a semi-abstract ink-splashing technique. A whole new style was created for Chinese print-making. The block-print now transcended its previous limitation to illustration in support of texts and attained the level of an independent art. Hu's two works themselves are masterpieces, reflecting a refined craftsmanship which has rarely been surpassed.
In the ensuing ages, with the decline and overthrow of the Ming Dynasty, the glory of the Chinese print began to fade.
European printmaking began to move rapidly into new realms of copper plate-the gravure process-in the 16th Century, and into stone-plate lithography in the late 18th Century, periods when the Chinese remained dedicated to woodcuts. Devoted European printers upgraded their artistry to the level of the fine arts; their prints reached the heights of painting, no longer serving as mere illustrations and supplementaries to printed texts.
In China, as noted, blockprinters were developing a multi-color block-printing process during the late Ming Dynasty (1368-1644 A.D.), perfecting it and advancing Chinese printmaking to its crest. Late Ming attainments were accomplished and influential, as reflected in their role in the development of the ukiyoe style (17th-19th Centuries) in Japanese prints.
But as the years advanced, Chinese printmaking entered an ever steeper decline-from about the middle of the Ching Dynasty (1644-1911 A.D.)—largely because of wars and turmoil, but also because of the inroads of mass-production as exemplified in Western lithographic and gravure techniques.
The new Ching Dynasty's printworks were mere shadows of the glories of the Ming. But the art, nevertheless, continued to develop-that is to grow more widespread. During the reigns of the early three emperors, Kang-hsi, Yung-cheng, and Chien-lung, special prints were created for so-called Palace Editions, produced for the Ching court. Another grade was produced for commercial circulation by private book makers. The court prints largely mirrored the grandeur of the dynasty. Scenes from the Emperor Kang-hsi's Birthday Celebration, carved by Chu Kuei, provides possibly the finest example of Palace Edition block-prints.
In contrast, printwork nostalgic for the former dynasty-moody and reminiscent - developed a certain uniqueness among the contemporary Chinese prints. Grief of Departing is probably one of the most famous such productions.
For the important multi-color handbooks for painting, the most outstanding example for this period was probably The Mustard Seed Garden Painting Manual of 1701 A.D. Though its scale and craftsmanship did not surpass Hu's manual, it remains one of the most complete and comprehensive works on Chinese painting techniques ever produced, containing detailed analyses and instructions- on a full range -of topics from individual brush-strokes to the composition of complete works.
A new market for block-printing developed during this time; wood-block Chinese New Year illustrations began to serve on ever expanding clientele. These single-sheet prints became extremely popular and were often rich in local flavor. Of special merit were works with calligraphic wishes as well as depictions of the local gods as produced by Yang Chia-po of Weihsin, Shantung Province, Yang Liu-ching at Tientsin, and Tao Hua-wu at Soochow.
The ability of this art form to reflect the holiday thoughts and feelings of the common people of the time on a broad range of topics, within a rich but straight-forward style, gave it enormous popularity. New Year pictures created in Soochow quickly established their own uniquely elegant and neat style, creating a complementary southern center for this art form against the fame of Yang Liu-ching at Tientsin.
The introductions of copper plates in the intaglio form in the late 18th Century and of lithography in Shanghai in the late 19th Century actually did not pose a challenge to traditional woodcut prints at first. But joined to the disorders and wars of the late Ching Dynasty, the new technology gradually superceded the wounded old craft, and the Chinese woodcut never fully recovered.
From the extant printings in the exhibition, the riches of Chinese woodcut printing are apparent.