The Embodied Image: Chinese Calligraphy from the John B. Elliott Collection
The Art Museum, Princeton University
March 27 - June 27, 1999
The Embodied Image: Chinese Calligraphy from the John B. Elliott Collection, a landmark contribution to the understanding of Chinese calligraphy and civilization, is on view at The Art Museum, Princeton University.
The exhibition includes fifty-five major examples of Chinese calligraphy ranging in date from the third century to the modern period from the collection of John B. Elliott in The Art Museum, Princeton University, together with works on loan from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Gest Oriental Library, Princeton University. The exhibition is also enriched by works on loan from the collections of Robert H. Ellsworth and the Richard Rosenblum family. Many of the works in the exhibition have never been published and will be on view for the first time.
Calligraphy, "the art of writing," played a formative role in Chinese civilization, where the past is treated as a source of cultural authority and legitimacy. Because the legacy of the past is transmitted through the written character, there is a personal and public reverence for writing, which accounts for calligraphy, more than painting, sculpture, or architecture, being the most venerated art form in China.
Arranged in three sections, the exhibition opens with an introduction to the origins of Chinese writing and the early formation of a public, monumental script style, in which oracle-bone writing and graphs cast in ritual bronze vessels are shown in relation to script types written in brush and ink on bamboo, silk, or paper.
The second section examines in chronological order four major stages in the development of Chinese calligraphy: the calligraphy of Wang Hsi-chih (A.D. 303-361), the most influential calligrapher in China, who elevated calligraphy to an art form and through whose influence calligraphy came to be seen as an embodiment of the mind and personality of the writer; a new, public monumental script style developed in the T’ang dynasty; the intimate, expressive calligraphy styles that emerged around scholar-artists in the Sung dynasty (960-1279); and a reformulation of a monumental calligraphy style in the Yüan dynasty (1279-1368).
The final section focuses on the calligraphy of the succeeding Ming (1368-1644) and Ch’ing (1644-1911) dynasties through the modern period, during which calligraphy styles ranged from innovative and highly idiosyncratic to a metamorphoses of past styles.
Motivated to form a collection for teaching, for the training of young scholars and the advancement of the understanding of a civilization and culture that meant so much to him, John B. Elliott, Class of 1951 of Princeton University, established one of the premier collections of Chinese calligraphy outside China. Wen C. Fong, Edwards S. Sanford Professor of Art History at Princeton, described the collection as "the only historically comprehensive selection of Chinese calligraphy outside China."
With John B. Elliott’s death on July 25, 1997, Princeton University lost a loyal alumnus. The impressive quality and scope of the collection is celebrated in the exhibition and the accompanying catalogue by Robert E. Harrist, Jr., and Wen C. Fong, with contributions by Qianshen Bai, Dora C.Y. Ching, Chuan-hsing Ho, Cary Y. Liu, Amy McNair, Zhixin Sun, and Jay Xu. The essays examine aspects of the culture of calligraphy from religious writing, the aesthetics of the strange or unusual, to the significance of stele, couplet, and letter formats. Introductory essays discuss the "four revolutions" in the history of calligraphy and the importance of reading calligraphy to its practice and appreciation.
The exhibition, organized by The Art Museum, will travel to the Seattle Art Museum, February 10 - May 7, 2000, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, September 15, 2000 - January 7, 2001.
Curators of the exhibition are Cary Y. Liu, associate curator of Asian art, The Art Museum, and guest curator, Robert E. Harrist, Jr., associate professor of art and archaeology, Columbia University, assisted by Dora C. Y. Ching, project coordinator.
THE ART MUSEUM, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
