SOME OBSERVATIONS ON THE PRACTICE AND PROBLEMS OF ART HISTORY IN CHINA (Unpub. paper, written after spending several months in China in 1986)
The Chinese literature on art, like the Chinese literature of most other subjects of cultural importance, is unmatched in priority and richness: by the time Vasari inaugurated European art history in the mid-16th century with his Lives of the Most Eminent Architects, Painters, and Sculptors of Italy, China had already produced a long series of histories of painting (leaving aside writings on other art forms). We could begin the series with Zhang Yenyuan's monumental ninth-century Lidai minghua ji, or "Record of Eminent Painters of Successive Dynasties," which is easily the most informative and sophisticated art-historical text written anywhere up to that time--or, for that matter, for some centuries after. The writings that precede Zhang's work, from the Six Dynasties and early Tang periods, although they set up the major issues and define the criteria by which painters and paintings should be assessed, cannot perhaps be considered as truly art-historical texts. But from Zhang's time onward, a succession of serious, informed, and comprehensive writings, down to Xia Wenyen's Tuhui baojian (preface 1365), carry the history of painting forward, each building on the last, providing basic information on artists and institutions, assessing trends, discussing issues, and telling us a good deal, at least, of what we want to know about painting of those periods. Our Western art colleagues, learning of this succession of major early texts, can only be envious.
Writings that can properly be called art-historical continue to be produced through the later periods; one has only to mention such names as Dong Qichang or Zhang Geng or Qin Tsuyong to realize on how high a level. But no comprehensive histories comparable to those of the earlier dynasties are attempted in later centuries, and the thrust of later writings tends to be rather toward art criticism, art theory, or matters of connoisseurship. No large-scale, general accounts of painting of the Ming and Qing periods, for instance, are attempted until quite recent times, and even then they are more documentary than (in our sense) art historical. Art history as it has developed in this century in the West--largely as a German invention, although with major contributions from other countries--has only begun to penetrate China. The recent Chinese literature on painting (to consider only one art form) is of course extensive and distinguished; biographical and other studies of artists, studies of paintings or of problems in the history of painting, or of art theory and texts, make up an extensive body of scholarship on which all of us outside China depend heavily. And it is by no means confined to traditional Chinese approaches--a good deal of innovative scholarship has appeared in print; the Chinese art journals are publishing more art-historical articles than ever before, and most of them are valuable additions to the knowledge and understanding of our subject. Nevertheless, there are some ways in which art history in China lags behind, or at least is out of step with, its practice in other countries.
Some of the reasons for this are the familiar ones: art history, like other areas of scholarship, is still emerging from the long and destructive hiatus of the Cultural Revolution, and from a longer period during which it was not considered an ideologically justifiable pursuit. I first came to China in 1973 as a member of what was called a Chinese archaeology delegation; in fact it was made up of art historians--only one of us had ever engaged in archaeology at all. We were, of course, deeply interested in the recent archaeological finds in China, and used them in our teaching and writing. But we could not have come to China then as art historians. Archaeology was at that time an acceptable discipline, providing as it did materials and information for the writing of history, as well as evidence for foreign observers of China's continuing commitment to the understanding of its past. Art history was not acceptable--although, as we soon learned, research on old works of art was still being carried on by knowledgeable people in the museums and institutes.
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