Pictures for Action: Painting and Collecting Nature in Modern China, from Zhao Zhiqian (1829-1884) to Jin Cheng (1878-1926)

• Author / Creator

  Tu, Anran

• The thesis project concentrates on the Ouzhong wuchan juan (Scroll of Local Products from Wenzhou, 1861) by late Qing artist Zhao Zhiqian (1829-1884) and its copy (1922) by the Republican-era artist Jin Cheng (1878-1926). The two paintings, which are not only aesthetic objects but also pictorial collections of natural objects, pose a range of questions regarding the role of visuality in producing “scientific” knowledge in modern China: How does a painting of natural objects claim to be a representation of authentic knowledge? How do texts and images create a visual experience equivalent to looking at the actual natural objects? What did it mean to depict and collect natural objects in modern China? Answering these questions by examining materials associated with the two artists’ artistic and intellectual practices, the thesis seeks to illuminate the discourse on seeing and knowing in Chinese tradition underlying in both Wuchan scroll and its copy, with which the artists engaged in representing and organizing “scientific” knowledge of both nature and culture from late nineteenth century to early twentieth century China.
  The first chapter, “Collecting Nature in the Age of Evidential Study: Zhao Zhiqian’s Scroll of Natural Products from Ouzhong and the Scroll of Strange Fishes (1861)” seeks to examine Zhao’s two “natural history” scrolls within the context of the epigraphic movement and evidential scholarship during the late Qing period. Asking how the pictorial surface of traditional Chinese painting was transformed into a site to collect natural objects and represent their knowledge, the chapter situates Zhao’s scrolls in both the artistic tradition of “xiesheng” in Chinese art and the production of technical illustration (tu 圖) in late imperial China. Zhao’s scrolls, I hope to demonstrate, created a visual effect of realness not by delineating the visual details of each object, but through capturing the liveliness of these beings from living nature, careful arrangement of text and image to represent the process of knowing, and turning the artist’s personal experience in situ into a visual statement on the pictorial surface.
  The second chapter, “Collecting Nature in Modern China: Jin Cheng and his copy of the Scroll of Natural Products from Ouzhong (1922),” explores the conceptual complexity of Jin’s practice of copying, with regard to his practice of collecting and scientific studies of nature. Bringing together Jin’s copy of the Wuchan scroll and his other copies, the chapter examines how Jin saw and used the practice of copying as a means to acquire both art historical knowledge and knowledge of natural science, meanwhile engaging with the Republican-era discourse on cultural preservation. The chapter further examines Jin’s later involvement in the Peking Laboratory of Natural History and the production of scientific illustrations, bringing his intellectual trajectories in art and science into conjunction. Jin’s practices of collecting natural objects pictorially both responded to and reflected on the Republican-era intellectual trend emphasizing the visualization and organization of the nation’s material knowledge.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • visuality
  • art and science
  • visual experience
  • modern China
  • natural history
  • Chinese painting
  • knowledge

• Graduation date

  Fall 2018

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Master of Arts

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R3Z60CJ1T

• License

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