In fact, this lively scene had been painstakingly prearranged by an artist of the time. He pulled in the crowd via a purposeful monodrama, featuring himself. By promising just to lift his right hand and paint two mere dots on the temple wall, he had attracted the entire population of the town.
The artist was a famous Tsin master painter, Ku Kai-chih (circa 345-411). The scene-bustling with all the noise and excitement he had anticipated-was entirely created for the purpose of soliciting majestic popular contributions for the new Wakuan Temple in Nanking.
The Wakuan monks had previously pleaded with the wealthy scholar-officials of the district for sufficient alms to support the new temple, but not one had contributed more than a hundred thousand paltry coppers.
Then, Ku, a poverty-stricken artist throughout his life, openly boasted that he himself would collect a million coppers to support the temple. He had one small request: prepare one wall in the temple for his sole use. The monks complied.
Ku closed the gates to the temple and, for a month, painted a portrait of a sickly appearing Vimalakirti on the designated wall. But he withheld the central eye dots from his painting, directing the monks: "Please first ask those who come to see it on the first day, to donate a hundred thousand coppers on the first day and fifty thousand on the second day. On the third day, the painting will be completed and all can come and contribute as they wish."
When the gates of the shrine were opened, people surged through them in waves. And in no time, a million coppers was raised.
The preceding anecdote is from the fifth chapter of Li Tai Ming Hua Chi (A Record of Famous Painters of Successive Dynasties) by Chang Yen-yuan of the Tang Dynasty (618-907). For the traditional Chinese art connoisseur, Chinese painting was then to be appreciated primarily through works on silk or paper. The mural was very special. However, the art of Chinese mural painting had-even then-a long history.
The Chinese muralist's basic technique differed from that of the West, where the fresco had the major role. Fresco requires the application of colors to a layer of moist lime plaster. Chinese and all Asian murals were painted on dry walls.
During the age of the legendary Yellow Emperor, Huangti, people were asked to fix two peach wood boards to each side of their front door. Bearing painted portraits of the two gods, Shen Shu and Yu Lu, the portraits were to ward off evil spirits. This legendary event has long been viewed as the very first application of the Chinese mural arts.
Ancient Chinese literature notes that murals of old were ubiquitous, executed on the walls of palaces, ancestral halls, royal tomb chambers, and noble residences.
During the Chou Dynasty (1122-249 B.C.), records relate that portraits of the legendary wise kings, Yao and Shun, and of the last tyrants of the Hsia and Shang Dynasties, Chieh and Chou, were painted on the walls of ming tang (ancestral halls). Though these works no longer exist, from literary sources, excavated royal tombs, and extant murals in Buddhist and Taoist temples and caves, it is evident that the artform goes back to very ancient times.
Chu Yuan's (343-290 B.C.) famous poetic work Tien Wen (Heavenly Inquiry) was inspired by wall paintings in an ancestral shrine of the Chu State nobility.
During the Chin (221-207 B.C.) and Han (206 B.C.-A.D. 220) eras, wall paintings were everywhere, decorating imperial palaces and garden walls, and the residences of high-ranking officials as well as their tomb chambers. Recorded descriptions of the murals of the Han period indicate that the artform was very highly developed at that time.
Emperor Wenti (179-158 B.C.) painted a chin shan ching (a nag symbol for an imperial advisor). Those who dared to admonish him were encouraged to beat the drum at the Chengming Palace and offer their advice under this flag!
During the reign of Emperor Wuti (140-88 B.C.), portraits of gods and ghosts were painted on the walls of the Kanchuan Palace.
In the time of Emperor Hsuanti (73-49 B.C.), portraits of meritorious officials appeared on the walls of the Chilin Pavilion.
During the years of Emperor Kuang-wu, portraits of two great generals, Chao Chung-kuo and Huo Kuang, were honored on the walls of the Wei yang Palace.
During the reign of Emperor Mingti (227-239), the court painters began to illustrate ancient classics and historical works. Portraits of time-honored heroes and other worthies decorated the palace walls, serving as constant reminders to the king to act justly, as the heroes reportedly had done, and thereby to avoid the dark fate assured for wicked rulers.
The Han Dynasty poet Wang Yen-shou, in a poem composed in the first half of the second century, describes a palace, its pictures and carvings:
Upon its great walls
Hover, gleaming, the spirits of the dead;
Here all Heaven and Earth is painted,
The painter shaping truthfully
all living things—
Strange spirits of the sea
and gods of the hills—
In his reds and blues.
During the Han Dynasty, murals decorated tomb chambers as well as imperial palaces, a link to the common aspiration to live onward as immortals and to be honored via elaborate funerals and interments.
In 1944, a tomb designed Peiyuan (Northern Garden), decorated with paintings in the style of the Han period, was excavated near Liaoyang in Liaoning Province. The tomb's murals depict feasting, jugglers, dancing, mounted horsemen, cockfights, chariots, cloud patterns, supernatural creatures, buildings, trees, and servants. Outlined in black, they were filled in with vermilion, brown, off-white, deep red, white, and green-white.
A wall of the tomb's east corridor shows ten acrobats performing around a large vermilion drum-standing on their hands, tumbling, juggling a single large wheel, balls, and a sword; diving, beating the drum. The figures are all male, clad in tight filling jackets and trousers, their heads apparently bound in cloth bands. To one side of the acrobats, at the south end of the wall, nine spectators in two rows watch forever. It is an eternal entertainment for the spirit of the deceased.
In an early Eastern Han tomb unearthed in 1952 at Wangtu in Hopei Province, all paintings and inscriptions were happily found intact, almost all of them applied to the four walls of the front chamber. The paintings consist of two registers separated by a horizontal line human figures in the upper part and animals and birds in the lower. Accompanying them are brief inscriptions—the titles of the persons portrayed or the names of the animals. The people were all officials who served under the deceased; the birds and animals are auspicious symbols.
In 1957, a Western Han (206-24 B.C.) tomb was excavated near Loyang in- Honan Province. Striking wall paintings in its main chamber include portrayals of astronomical bodies, Chinese fairy tales, and historical events. On a rear-wall architrave is a scene that has been tentatively identified as the famous Hung Men Yen (Banquet at Hung Men). Depicted is the feast hosted by Hsiang Yu for his rival, Liu Pang, at Hung Men, in which an attempt made on the guest's life has failed. The event has become a Chinese byword for describing similar situations into modern times.
Another Eastern Han tomb in Pinglu in Shansi Province is decorated in scenes of mountains, trees, birds, animals, fortified houses, and of farmers cultivating lands with oxen and wooden sowing machines.
Approximately 200 square meters of vivid pictures in an Eastern Han tomb in Mi County in Honan Province, depict acrobats, a procession, a kitchen, maids, wrestlers, clouds. These murals not only testify to the luxurious lives of the nobles of the time, but provide pictorial evidences for the study of the music, dancing, and entertainments of the age.
It is believed that the wall portraits and scenes of the Han palaces, ancestral halls, and royal tombs were executed by tai chao (officials waiting to be summoned) —artists in waiting under the aegis of the Huang Men (Yellow Gate), a bureau which trained the tai chao and made them available when required.
Lu Chi (261-303), a famous scholar of the Tsin Dynasty, in a revelation of the spirit of his time, wrote: "The exercise of painting may be compared to the recitation of ballads and songs extolling the beauty of great actions. Nothing is better than words for praising things, and nothing is better than pictures for recording shapes." So did painting, at least in the scholar's mind, follow upon song.
It was in the Han period, at about the beginning of the Christian era, that Buddhism entered the populous, civilized centers of China and began its steady expansion throughout the country. The religion quickly exerted great influence on the content and form of Chinese wall paintings. From their very beginning, the wall paintings centered on human figures and daily living, a sound foundation for a following art of portraiture.
During the more than 300 years from the time of the Wei State to the Northern and Southern Dynasties, China was a land fascinated by Buddhism. During the Northern Wei Dynasty, in Loyang alone, there were more than a thousand Buddhist temples. Wall paintings of this period entered on a larger scale of development, and it was at this time that a group of talented and prestigious wall painters first appeared in Chinese history.
From this point on, famous scholar-officials began to associate themselves with Buddhist temples and to engage in religious art. The subject matter, materials, and methods of their paintings took a religious shift - portraits of Sakyamuni, the Buddha, Bodhisattvas, the tien lung pa pu (eight classes of brave divine beings), and scenes from various Buddhist stories. Still, the religious subject matter of the temples did not yet reign, but with the worldly art topics of the palaces, advanced side by side, one rivaling the other in splendor.
Master mural painters of this period include Ku Kai-chih, Lu Tan-wei, and ChangSeng-yao.
Ku, of the Tsin Dynasty, enjoyed immense prestige in his own time. Tsin General Hsieh An once praised Ku's artistic attainments as "unmatchable since the existence of humankind began." It was said, indeed, that Ku was peerless in three major areas: literary talent, painting, and madness. If some of the literary descriptions of K'u's portraits are accurate, then the artist possessed the power of "transmitting the souls" of his models. In A Record of Famous Painters of Successive Dynasties, the following story appears:
"Once, Ku painted a portrait of a neighbor lass of whom he was quite fond. When he finished the picture, he put a pin in its heart, because the girl had resisted him. And the girl fell ill. But when Ku removed the pin, the girl became well again."
It is said that when Ku was painting a portrait, he sometimes would not paint the pupils in the eyes for a long time, to consider their final form. He believed: "The limbs may be beautiful or ugly. They are really of little importance in comparison with those mysterios features, the eyes." Besides portraits, he also painted fantastic illustrations from legends and poems.
Chang Seng-yao, one of the most active painters during the reign of Emperor Wuti of the Liang Dynasty, was also one of the Emperor's most trusted generals. The devout Emperor ordered the construction of many Buddhist monasteries and pagodas and appointed Chang to do the murals. Many legends exist concerning these paintings:
On one occasion, Chang painted four dragons on a wall of the Antung Temple, leaving the eyes undotted. When queried, he explained, "I am afraid they will break through the wall and flyaway." When at the insistent re quest of others, he painted in the pupils of the two dragons, lightning and peals of thunder broke the sky. And exactly as Ku had predicted, the two sighted dragons smashed the wall and soared off above the clouds.
Also, whenever a prince was sent off on an expedition, the Emperor, missing him, would ask Chang to paint a portrait. And the portrait could not be differentiated from the real person....
Any mention of the wall painting of the Northern and Southern Dynasties is still, today, a popular reminder of the murals (as well as Buddhist statuary and manuscripts) of the famed Tunhuang Caves in Kansu Province. Around A.D. 366, the first Mokao Group Caves (also called the Thousand Buddha Caves), began to emerge, carved from the cliffs southeast of Tunhuang. Over the following ten centuries, this activity resulted in one of the largest scale artistic efforts in the world. The murals at Tunhuang cover more than 45,000 square meters.
Tunhuang was a confluence of the ancient Chinese, Indian, and Persian cultures. Near the caves was a booming city which persisted from the Han to the Tang Dynasties.
Wall paintings from the Northern Wei Dynasty were influenced greatly by Indian Buddhism and Indian painting styles; they appear at Tunhuang, bold, rough, and simple. Portraits from the Buddhist pantheon are bare to the waist. Murals depicting the Jataka Story of King Sivi, the Jataka Story of Prince Sattva, and the Jataka Story of the Royal Deer are the representative works of this period.
In the caves completed at the time of the late Northern Wei Dynasty, during the period of the Northern Dynasties, wall paintings appear that carryon Han artistic styles. These include hunting scenes-with mountains, trees, and rivers in the background-and such purely Chinese immortals and supernatural beasts as the Royal Lord of the East, Royal Lady of the West, bluish-green dragons, white tigers, and the snake-like dragon with 12 heads.
During the Western Wei Dynasty (535-557), subject matter included the God of Thunder, flying immortals, and the snake-like dragon with nine heads. Costumes, vehicles, horses, and houses were now back completely to Chinese styles. Facial features of this period are lean, very different from those of the Northern Wei Dynasty.
The Sui Dynasty (581-618) constituted a transformational stage from the Han painting style, showing the influence of foreign cultures. During this period, a firm foundation was laid for artforms that reached their zenith during the golden days of the Tang Dynasty.
From the end of the Six Dynasties (222-589) to the beginning of the Sui Dynasty, among the famed muralists were· Chan Tzu-chien, Tung Po-jen, and Cheng Fa-shih, all of whom excelled at painting court palace scenes, buildings; pavilions, and chariots. From the Western Wei to the Sui Dynasty, such subject matter became more popular. Evidently, the painting style of the Central Chinese plains had now spread, greatly influencing the artists at Tunhuang.
The Tang empire's political, military, and cultural triumphs and its frequent economic, political, and military contact with Central Asia combined to bring the art of Chinese mural painting to its zenith. The artistic works of the Mokao Caves best demonstrate the prevalence of temple murals among all painting of Tang times.
From the reign of Emperor Hsuan-tzung, on foundations laid by the previous dynasty, muralists of the Tang sought inspiration from the daily activities of ordinary people. They also carried forward the creative experiences of the famous artists of the Central Plains among whom were Ku Kai-chih, Yen Li-pen, and Wu Tao-tzu—adding vibrant national color to imported Buddhist iconology.
The Tang wall paintings center on merry scenes of the Pure Land of the West, various Buddhist stories, and portraits of the Buddha, Bodhisattvas, and kung yang jen (benefactors, who donated for a cave or gave large amounts to charity). The faces of the Bodhisatt vas of this period are fleshy and soft, in contrast to the thin countenances favored by artists of the previous dynasty. The kung yang jen were actual persons, beatified via portraits. Portraits of wealthy Yueh Ting-kuei and his family members; of a prince of the Tibetan regime of the Middle Tang; and of Chang Yi-chao and his wife, all of the Late Tang period, are representative works in this category.
Fei tien (flying apsaras, or heavenly beings) and chi yueh (deva, or female musicians) are important subject matter in Tang mural art, though their representation actually dates back to the Northern Wei Dynasty. The apsaras and the deva play lutes, pipes, Chinese harps, chime stones, flutes, drums, etc. While they play the instruments, the ribbons of their costumes stream in the air, indicating celestial flight.
Royal tomb murals discovered over the past several dozen years are also among the treasures of the Tang period. Tang royal family tombs-such as the tomb of Li Shou (577-630), the tom b of Li Hsien (654-684), and the tomb of Princess Yungtai (684-701), are among the examples of the best wall paintings created in China over the millennia to the time of their fabrication. As a Tang poet noted, "Their excellence enlivens the walls of the royal palaces." He could have added, and all Chinese art to follow.
Buddhist monasteries and Taoist tem pies became veritable galleries of Tang art, attracting people from all walks of life; supervisors of both Buddhist and Taoist temples began to offer high prices and to vigorously solicit famous muralists. The number of artists and the quality of their works during this era were without paralle.
Wu Tao-tzu, the most celebrated muralist of the Tang Dynasty, has for the past more than a thousand years been revered in China as the Divine Master of Painting. Wu has also been considered by painters to be the fountainhead of sophisticated painting technique. It is said that during his lifetime, Wu completed more than 300 wall paintings on Buddhist and Taoist subjects. He excelled at both portraits and landscapes. On one occasion, as recorded in a literary work, he was commissioned to paint a more than 300 Ii (about one third of a mile) mural of the scenery along the Chialing River. He finished painting it in one day.
According to such ancient books as A Record of Famous Painters of Successive Dynasties, A Record of Famous Paintings of the Tang Dynasty, and A Record of the Famous Paintings of Yichou, in Sui and Tang times, there were altogether 114 master painters, among them prime ministers, generals, and Buddhist and Taoist priests. Although most of the murals then existing in Buddhist and Taoist temples were lost in A.D. 845, when Tang Emperor Wutzung ordered the destruction of all Buddhist and Taoist wall paintings, still, a great quantity survived in several provinces on the mainland to modern times.
In general, the Tang murals bespeak the superiority of Tang art via firm and powerful formats, rich and varied styles, lively and forceful lines, and splendid colors.
The period of the Five Dynastic (907-959) witnessed the establishment of the Imperial Art Academy, especially in the Western Shu and Southern Tang States. During the final chaotic years of the Tang Dynasty, when social upheaval swept the Empire, many skilled painters emigrated to the two states. Their prosperous economies and social stability continued to nurture the arts of the mural painters. As previously indicated, major artists of this era were anointed as tai chao (officials in attendance upon the Emperor), once accepted into the Imperial Art Academy. Famous muralists of this period include Ching Hao, Chu Yao, Chou Wen-chu, Li Sheng, and Huang Chuan.
During the Five Dynasties period, the Tunhuang area fell into the hands of Tsao Yi-chin. And gradually reducing its contact with the Central Plains, the "art-city" started to decline. Initiations of new cave chapels became constantly more rare, though maintenance and enlargement of extant caves continued. Tsao so dominated the Tunhuang area that he soon ordered scenes of his own inspection tours memorialized on the cave walls. During this time, the size of the memorialized philanthropists, the kung yang jen, grew till they were much bigger than real people.
The Northern Sung Dynasty (960-1127) Imperial Art Academy sponsored many large-scale religious mural projects, and participation in such efforts became the major task of academy artisits.
As a result of the energetic advocacy of the Emperors Chentzung (998-1022) and Huitzung (1101-1125), many new and immortal works again blossomed across the walls of Taoist temples. In A.D. 1108, Emperor Chentzung ordered construction of the Yu-ching-chao-ying Temple, and more than one hundred outstanding painters were recruited to paint the murals. Such celebrated scenes as Five Hundred Immortal Officials and Celestial Maidens Paying Their Respects to Yuan Shih Tien Tsun are the products of the collaboration of the recruited painters.
A precious wall painting pre-sketch from the Sung Dynasty still exists. It is in the style of a scrolled painting and is self described as: Chao Yuan Hsien Chang Tu Chuan (A Rolled Painting of a Procession of Immortals Paying Their Respects to Yuan Shih Tien Tsun). The painter of the pre-sketch is Wu Tzung-yuan, a very important master religious painter of the Sung Dynasty, considered the equal of Wu Tao-tzu, the Divine Master of Painting.
During the Sung Dynasty, the subject matter of Chinese paintings gradually forked into detailed branches; scrolled paintings and paintings on fans became popular, and literati painters sought inspiration from poems. Master painters before the advent of the Sung Dynasty were delighted to dedicate themselves to painting religious scenes in Buddhist or Taoist temples. They considered it an honor. But during the Sung, fewer and fewer famous painters engaged in mural painting. Many temple murals of this period are mere copies, by artisan-painters, of the works of famous artists of earlier periods.
The subsequent decline of the Tang Dynasty led to Tunhuang's loss of importance as an art center. The new art in the Tunhuang Caves continued to decline until all activity ceased during the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368). The representative murals of the Yuan period are in the Yungle Taoist Temple in Yunchi County, Shansi Province. Most muralists of this period were mere artisan-painters. However, in the court, special officials were made responsible for the production of wall paintings at various temples.
The artistic value of the Yungle Temple lies in more than 800 square meters of exquisite paintings on the walls of its Sanching, Chunyang, and Chungyang Halls.
Sanching Hall is the most important structure of the Yungle Temple. The mural Chao Yuan Tu (A Scene in Homage to the Yuan Shih Tien Tsun), completed in 1325, has pivotal importance in Chinese painting history. Covering an area of more than 400 square meters, this wall painting depicts 286 gods honoring the Taoist Pure Trinity. All the figures in the painting exceed two meters. Art experts find in it marked influence from Wu Tzung-yuan's Chao Yuan Hsien Chang Tu.
The Chunyang Hall mural's 52 successive pictures cover an area of 203 square meters. Its rich content models the society of the Yuan Dynasty from 1277 to 1368. Here are palaces, gardens, villages, streets, mountains, inns, kings, high-ranking officials, farmers, fishermen, Taoist priests, teachers, students -from a distance, a major community spreading before the eyes of the viewer.
The composition and inner location of the Chungyang Hall mural is similar to that in Chunyang Hall, which covers an area of 161 square meters—49 successive pictures, landscapes and figures, a recording of the life of a Taoist of the Kin era (1115-1234).
During the later Ming and Ching Dynasties, scholar-officials of the Empire disdained assignments to wall painting in the temples. Instead, artisan-painters were made responsible for the painting and the repair of old, damaged murals. The quality of the work was much poorer. However, some fine works were still accomplished, such as the murals of the Fahai Temple in Peking and the Pilu Temple in Hopei Province. Subject matter of this period included portraits of gods of various religions and scenes from religious stories and folk tales.
Chang Yen-yuan of the Tang Dynasty wrote in A Record of Famous Painters of Successive Dynasties: "Now people find gold in the mountains and pearls in the waters, and they collect these things without ceasing. But paintings, with the passage of time, are destroyed and scattered, until few now exist. Since those ingenious artists can never live again, can we refrain from grief?"