Exhibition dates: September 9, 2008 - January 4, 2009
Location: Galleries for Chinese Paintings and Calligraphy
Press preview: Monday, September 8, 10 a.m. - noon
The paintings of Wang Hui, the most celebrated artist of late 17th-century China, will be featured in an exhibition opening on September 9 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Landscapes Clear and Radiant: The Art of Wang Hui (1632-1717) will trace Wang's artistic development – from his early years as a brilliant reinterpreter of classic landscape styles to the pinnacle of his career, when he was chosen to illustrate the Kangxi Emperor's epic 1689 inspection tour of China's cultural heartland – through 27 paintings drawn from the Taipei and Beijing Palace Museums, Shanghai Museum, and several North American collections. The presentation of Wang Hui's career will incorporate 11 works that have never before been exhibited in the West, including two enormous panoramic landscape handscrolls. Wang's paintings will be complemented by a selection of earlier landscapes, drawn largely from the Metropolitan Museum's holdings, that will highlight the sources of Wang Hui's inspiration.
The exhibition is made possible by The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Foundation.
"The most revered painter of his day, Wang Hui played a key role in reinvigorating past traditions of landscape painting and in establishing the stylistic foundations for the imperially sponsored art of the Manchu Qing court," said Maxwell K. Hearn,
Douglas Dillon Curator in the Museum's Department of Asian Art. "He developed an all-embracing synthesis of historical landscape styles that constituted one of the
greatest innovations in the arts of late imperial China. Thanks to our cordial relationship with the three major repositories of Wang's art—in Beijing, Shanghai, and
Taipei—and to the Metropolitan's own exceptional holdings of his art, we have been able to undertake this major, one-man show."
Exhibition Organization
The exhibition will be organized in four chronological sections, as follows:
Part 1: Emulating the Ancients: The Formative Years, 1660-1670
This section will trace the artist's tutelage under the prominent painters Wang Jian (1598-1677) and Wang Shimin (1592-1680). They introduced him to the styles of the ancient masters and helped him gain access to many of the finest private collections in the region. Wang Hui's mastery of the idioms of 14th-century scholar painters such as Wang Meng (1308-1385) is demonstrated by his Reading Next to the Window in the Mountains (dated 1666, The Palace Museum, Beijing). Here, Wang Hui has animated his composition through a combination of dense, energized brushwork and dynamically pulsating landscape elements.
Part 2: Copying the Old Masters
Wang's facility in emulating earlier styles will be featured in this section. Commissioned by collectors, he produced a number of exact copies of ancient masterpieces. In them, the artist's authorship is revealed – even in the most faithful ones – by his expressive brushwork and kinesthetically charged compositions. Some of the copies, however, were mistakenly catalogued as originals when they entered the imperial collection.
Part 3: The Great Synthesis, 1670-1680
How the artist systematically expanded his repertoire of ancient styles in order to
achieve a "great synthesis" is the main topic of this section. This is the period when
Wang began to explore the potential of the infinitely expandable handscroll format. The Colors of Mount Taihang of 1669 is one of his earliest essays at reviving the monumental style of the 10th and 11th centuries. In it, Wang successfully reconfigures the towering vertical mountains of the 10th-century master Guan Tong into the horizontal format through the use of thrusting mountain forms and vigorous brushwork that powerfully convey the tectonic forces of nature.
Part 4: "Streams and Mountains Without End, 1680-1700"
The final section of the exhibition will document Wang's emergence as the preeminent landscapist of his day. One of the defining features of his national reputation was his singular skill at creating vast panoramic landscape compositions in the handscroll format. When the Kangxi Emperor (r. 1662-1722) began to make plans for a tour of the economic and cultural centers of the Yangzi Delta region of "Southern" China in 1684, Wang was already campaigning actively for a chance to create a pictorial record of the journey. Shortly before the emperor embarked on his tour, Wang painted Layered Rivers and Tiered Peaks (dated 1684, Shanghai Museum) for an influential court official; he clearly intended the 61-foot-long handscroll to be an example of his ability to document a monumental journey. In 1691 Wang's persistence was rewarded, and he was summoned to Beijing to create a pictorial document of Kangxi's second inspection tour of 1689 – the grandest artistic commission of the age. After working on the piece for seven years, Wang, with his assistants, finally completed a mammoth 12-scroll work (measuring over 740 feet in length) entitled the Kangxi Emperor's Southern Inspection Tour in 1698. Of the 12 scrolls, the exhibition will present Scroll Three (Metropolitan Museum), depicting the emperor's journey through the mountainous terrain of Shandong Province to Mount Tai, and Scroll Seven (University of Alberta, Canada), which follows the Grand Canal through China's"land of fish and rice," from the city of Wuxi to the great commercial and cultural metropolis of Suzhou.
Upon completion of the piece, Wang was granted an audience with the emperor and
was rewarded with the calligraphic encomium of "landscapes clear and radiant." He
hung it in his studio and thenceforth called himself "Master of the Clear and Radiant Hall."
Exhibition Catalogue
Edited by Curator Maxwell K. Hearn, Landscapes Clear and Radiant: The Art of Wang Hui (1632-1717) offers the first comprehensive study of the artist's career published in English. It features essays by three leading scholars that examine: the nature of his artistic achievement (Wen C. Fong, Edwards S. Sanford Professor (ret.), Princeton University, and retired chairman of the Department of Asian Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art); Wang Hui's life and artistic development leading up to his selection for the Southern Tour project (Dr. Chin-Sung Chang, Associate Professor, Seoul National University); and his masterpiece, the Kangxi Emperor's Southern Inspection Tour (Maxwell K. Hearn).
Education Programs
A variety of education programs will be presented in conjunction with the exhibition. Highlights include gallery talks and a September 30 documentary film screening of A Day on the Grand Canal with the Emperor of China (1988). Directed by Philip Haas, the film follows British artist David Hockney as he shares his insights while examining a late 17th-century Chinese scroll painting (46 min.). Maxwell K. Hearn will also lead a private gallery tour of the exhibition on November 20. The Museum's website at www.metmuseum.org will include a feature on the exhibition and details of all related programming.
The catalogue is made possible by the Joseph Hotung Fund and The Dillon Fund.
The exhibition is organized by Maxwell K. Hearn. Graphics are by Sophia Geronimus, Graphic Design Manager; and lighting is by Clint Ross Coller and Richard Lichte, Lighting Design Managers, all of the Metropolitan Museum's Design Department.
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August 19, 2008
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