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RE‐READING INSCRIPTIONS IN CHINESE SCROLL PAINTING: THE ELEVENTH TO THE FOURTEENTH CENTURIES
Author(s) -
HONGXING ZHANG
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
art history
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.1
H-Index - 19
eISSN - 1467-8365
pISSN - 0141-6790
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-8365.2005.00481.x
Subject(s) - eleventh , antinomy , literature , painting , reading (process) , sign (mathematics) , icon , symbol (formal) , scroll , art , history , visual arts , linguistics , philosophy , mathematics , computer science , mathematical analysis , physics , archaeology , acoustics , programming language
Art historians often regard Chinese art as the classic example of the unity between word and image. Such a view is predicated on the uncritical acceptance of canonical Chinese art theory and on mistaken notions about a changeless China and ideographic Chinese writing. Those misconceptions have prevented an understanding of the historical specificity of the relationship between the two graphic systems. In applying Charles Sanders Peirce's theory of the three fundamental types of sign (icon, index, symbol) to Chinese writing, scholars tend to conclude that it is not a symbolic‐indexic system, but primarily an iconic one. Taking as the point of departure an antinomy between word and image, I demonstrate that the introduction of inscriptions into Chinese scroll painting was a long and uneven process. Between the eleventh and the fourteenth centuries, inscriptions initially entered pictorial space timidly; gradually growing in size and type, they eventually became separated from the pictorial elements, bringing about a fundamental change to the relations between word and image. In the age of the advent of codex and the invention of printing, inscriptions, through their intrusions into and encounters with painting, served to rescue the scroll from oblivion and to transform it into the major bearer of pictorial culture.