Painted Illustrations for Jin Ping Mei and Chinese Erotic Albums Paper for panel at AAS 2000, San Diego, “Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Jin Ping Mei.”
This brief presentation--more a report than a paper--has two main aims. First, to pass on to people in other fields of Chinese studies some discoveries and conclusions to which my recent research has led me, and so to open up materials that may be of interest to you; and second, to ask for your help in following up some of these new directions, with information and references that are outside my field of competence. I have already received a great deal of that kind of help from David Roy, Keith McMahon, Charles Stone, and others; but large areas of the picture I’m trying to put together are still fuzzy, and major questions remain unanswered. Because of these aims, today’s talk will be broad rather than focused, a rapid run through a set of interlocked matters, spreading well beyond the Jin Ping Mei illustrations that are its proper topic. Everything I will speak about grows out of a book project on which I’ve been engaged for several years, tentatively titled “Pictures for Use and Pleasure: Urban Studio Artists in High Qing China”; parts of it, including nearly everything in today’s talk, have been published in three articles, which are listed on the bibliographical handout, and I refer you to those if you want to read more on these matters.
The paintings I’m writing about make up a large and important but unstudied area of Chinese painting, ignored or even scorned by traditional Chinese critics and collectors because they were functional rather than self-expressive. They include (among others) pictures of the kind one would purchase or commission for such occasions as special birthdays, New Year’s celebrations, and weddings; family group pictures, narrative pictures, beautiful women (meiren); and erotic pictures, chiefly albums, my subject today. One of several sub-themes that have emerged unexpectedly in the course of my work is the close relationship between these “urban studio artists,” working chiefly in the great Jiangnan or Yangtze Delta cities, and the painting academy in the imperial court in Beijing, which was in fact staffed mostly with such artists from the cities. The production of beautiful-women pictures and (I argue) erotic pictures within the court was mostly the work of painters from the Jiangnan cities, and reflects, I think, a powerful desire in the Manchu emperors to appropriate some elements of the romantic and erotic culture of the pleasure districts of those cities, more or less covertly, into their courts and their lives. I have tried in my published articles to develop this idea and support it with evidence, and can only allude to it here.
S. (Leaf from late Ming woodblock-printed album pub. by van Gulik.) Up to late Ming, the most common form for erotic paintings appears to have been the handscroll; from the late Ming-early Qing, the album is favored. This change in form accompanies, and partly permits, a deeper change in character. Evidence both literary and pictorial (for the latter, late Ming printed albums such as this one) suggests that typical works of erotic painting before the 17th century presented a series of depictions of sex acts, with titles such as “Twelve Postures” or “Ten Glorious Positions.” (No erotic albums from Ming or earlier survive, to my knowledge.)
S. (Another leaf from the same.) These series correspond loosely with erotic fiction before Jin Ping Mei, such as the 16th century Ruyijun zhuan translated and studied by Charles Stone, of which the second half details serially the debaucheries of Wu Zetian with her lover Xue Aocao. This type of erotic album continues into later periods, and accounts for the great majority of surviving examples, which can mostly be dismissed as crude and uninteresting.
S. (Leaf from album by early Qing master Gu Jianlong, about which I’ll speak in a moment.) A new type of erotic album, however, appears to have been created in early Qing, in which leaves with erotic imagery are interspersed with others presenting scenes of flirtations, seductions, poignant moments in love affairs. Even in the overtly erotic leaves, the hard-core images appear in richly complex settings with sub-themes such as voyeurism that embed them in quasi-narrative situations.
S. (Leaf from another album from same period; the erotic image in the mirror has been painted out by the publisher.) These new elements serve, in Stephen Owen’s term and sense, to contextualize the erotic imagery. It scarcely needs pointing out that this new form, which I call the part-erotic album, can be seen as corresponding loosely with the new type of erotic fiction, notably Jin Ping Mei, and was probably inspired by it, perhaps by the artists’ experiences in making illustrations for it.
S. The earliest identifiable example of the new type of erotic album bears seals of the early Qing Suzhou master Gu Jianlong, and is known only through an old reproduction album--in which the publisher has expunged the unprintable parts by painting them over. Here, for instance, the young man is offering a sheaf of bills instead of, as he surely was in the original, his penis; in either case, he is soliciting oral sex from the reluctant maid, while another watches from behind.
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