Clunas, C

Clunas, Craig

Oxford University Research Archive

All READING A PAINTER ’S PRICE LISTIN REPUBLICAN SHANGHAICRA I G C LUNASEven after we relinquish the traditional image of the disinterested Chi-nese literatus, rejecting commissions from the vulgar rich and paint-ing purely as an expression of untrammeled subjectivity, the followingadvertisement still has the power to startle.1 It appeared in Shen bao,the principal Chinese-language newspaper of Shanghai, on March 7,1928 (fig. 1). A full English translation reads:Landscape Price List of Zhang GunianMister Zhang Gunian [張穀年] of Piling [毘陵] has outstanding nat-ural talent and from an early age was inducted into the secrets ofpainting. He also received the assiduous teaching of his uncle Mas-source: notes in the history of art. fall / winter 2016. © 2016 by bardgraduate center. all rights reserved. 0737-4453/2016/3501-0003 $10.00This content downloaded from 163.001.203.194 on September 01, 2017 00:49:04 AMuse subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).All use ter Feng Chaoran [馮超然] and saw the masterpieces of many col-lectors; through devotion to study he reached masterly understand-ing and creates work of subtle excellence. For those who constantlyseek him out, the price list on the left has been established:Vertical hanging scrolls [zhi fu 直幅]3 feet, 14 yuan4 feet, 20 yuan5 feet, 26 yuan6 feet, 36 yuanTsubjectHorizontal hanging scrolls [heng fu 橫幅]: the sameScreen panels [bing tiao 屏條]3 feet, 8 yuan4 feet, 12 yuan5 feet, 16 yuan6 feet, 22 yuanFan leaves: 4 yuan per itemHand scrolls [shou juan 手卷]: 5 yuan per footSpring scenes and snow scenes: add in general 50 percent. “Blue-green,” gold ground, and fine brushwork: add in general 100 per-Figure 1. “Landscape Price List of Zhang Gunian,” Shen bao, March 7, 1928.Reading a Painter’s Price List in Republican Shanghai 23his content downloaded from 163.001.203.194 on September 01, 2017 00:49:04 AM to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).Source24All use subcent. Specific subjects or additional scenes: to be discussed indi-vidually. Payment is in advance. Add a separate 10 percent forgrinding ink.: NTjectNew Year of the year wu chen [1928], inserted on his behalf byWang Tongyu [王同愈] of Xuyuan [栩緣]Postal address: The Feng Mansion, 84 Songshan Road, French Con-cession, or the Advertising Office of the Shen bao Press.2This is not the first price list (run li 潤例 or run ge 潤格, literally acharge for “moistening” [the brush]) in Chinese history. Price listswere not utterly unknown in the Qing period (1644–1911), but thereis little before the twentieth century that matches the explicitness withwhich this short text reduces art to commodity.3 Nor do I know ofanything comparable from elsewhere around this time; Picasso andRabindranath Tagore, for example, did not publish price lists in news-papers. Neither “traditional” and “Chinese,” nor “modern” and “West-ern,” a price list like this seems to complicate the opposition betweenthese terms which still sometimes structures the discussion of art inthe China of the Republican period (1911–49).Our perplexity is only the greater when we realize that what ZhangGunian (1905–87) does here (or allows to be done on his behalf) is ab-solutely standard; there are hundreds, if not thousands, of such listssurviving from the early twentieth century. Ninety-two such lists ap-peared in Shen bao in 1928 alone.4 They do not represent the completespread of artistic styles practiced at the time; rather, they advertiseonly those painters working in the manner which was coming to beknown as guohua 國畫.5 This term literally means “national painting,”using a neologism analogous to others appearing at the time–for ex-ample, guoyu 國語, “national language,” and guohuo 國貨, “nationalproducts.” All such terms were equally artifacts of a willed, nationalrepublican modernity, making the common translation of guohua now-adays that much more ironic: “traditional Chinese painting.” A read-ing of one such list is here presented as a tentative step toward deep-otes in the History of Art / Fall 2015 / Winter 2016his content downloaded from 163.001.203.194 on September 01, 2017 00:49:04 AM to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).All ening our understanding of the complexity of artistic practices in Chinaduring the Republican period. Although Zhang Gunian went on tohave a respectable career in the very different art world of post-1949China, he is by no means famous, even to specialists; it is the very or-dinariness of the price list established in his name which makes it valu-able as an example.6The advertisement begins with a general encomium on the skill ofthe young painter, telling us that he was “inducted into the secrets ofpainting” or, more literally, that he “participated in the Chan [Zen]of painting” (can hua chan 參畫禪). Hua chan is a phrase recallingJottings from the Studio of the Chan of Painting (Hua chan shi sui bi畫禪室隨筆), a text by the highly canonical Ming painter and theoristDong Qichang 董其昌 (1555–1636).7 The text then associates theyoung Mr. Zhang’s training with the name of his uncle, Feng Chaoran(1882–1954), at this point (and indeed subsequently) a much betterknown and better remembered figure.8 The text clearly implies thatit is the uncle’s superior social capital and connections which havegained his nephew access to the private collections necessary for anunderstanding of the history of painting; at the time, publicationsand museums were only tentatively beginning to take the place of pri-vate collections. Initial training by family members, followed by tute-lage with a senior master (also perhaps a relative), had been the stan-dard method of training in the art of painting in China for millennia,and in the 1920s it was not yet superseded by the new apparatus ofart schools, both private and public, that had been emerging sincethe turn of the century.After asserting that Zhang Gunian is a young man with a qualitypedigree, the price list gets down to business. It takes us through theprices he will charge, on a by-the-foot basis, for paintings of differentsizes in the principal guohua formats (hanging scrolls, screen panels,fans, hand scrolls) before specifying extra costs incurred by tricky stylesor subject matter. The present state of research makes it hard for theseprices to be understood in absolute terms, but it is certainly possible toReading a Painter’s Price List in Republican Shanghai 25This content downloaded from 163.001.203.194 on September 01, 2017 00:49:04 AMuse subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).26All situate Zhang Gunian in relation to his immediate peers and to seehow he fitted into contemporary pricing hierarchies. The work is pricedin yuan 元, or dollars, presumably the silver dollars of the Republicancurrency reform of 1914. If, very crudely, we take the fourteen dollarscharged by Zhang for a three-foot vertical hanging scroll as providingsome sort of baseline, we get a working figure of 4.6 dollars per foot.This is by no means the highest price that could be paid. On March 14,1928, Li Qiujun李秋君 (1899–1973) posted a price list which includesa similar baseline price of ten dollars a foot, while on July 15 of thesame year Liu Haisu 劉海粟 (1896–1994) advertised his work at thesame high figure; both of them were charging more than twice whatZhang Gunian asked.9 Both, too, were glamorous figures, much betterknown than Zhang Gunian; Liu Haisu had an unmatched flair for per-sonal promotion, having founded his own art school at the age of six-teen, while Li Qiujun was both the pupil and the lover of Zhang Daqian張大千 (1899–1983), a leading young star of the art world and a manwho could publish in 1928 a price list with the astonishing charge ofno less than thirty dollars a foot.10 This was the stratosphere of pricing,and Zhang Gunian was far from its dizzying heights. However, he wasasking for sums far above those of the pullulating underclass of paint-ers whose advertisements fill the pages of the same newspapers. Withhis famous uncle, and his access to famous collections, he was in a dif-ferent league from those many artists who were charging one dollar afoot, not to mention the pseudonymous (and now totally unknown)Wulin Yuzi 武林漁子, who advertised on July 19, only days after thehigh-priced Liu Haisu, an offer to paint for payment in postage stamps,at fifty cents per foot.11The actual pricing structure for Zhang Gunian’s work is complexand must include nuances which escape us today. Much more re-search is necessary before overall conclusions can be drawn. The nu-ances are multiplied by the complexities attendant on specific subjectmatter or styles, as well as by the slightly enigmatic statement “Spe-cific subjects or additional scenes to be discussed individually.”12 Thus,Source: Notes in the History of Art / Fall 2015 / Winter 2016This content downloaded from 163.001.203.194 on September 01, 2017 00:49:04 AMuse subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).All even as the brute facts of commercial exchange are put on the table(and emphasized by the bald statement that payment is required in ad-vance), they are masked slightly by the reminder that social inter-course with the artist is a necessity if customers are to get what theyreally want.The end of the advertisement contains the important informationas to where the artist can be contacted by customers. The “Feng Man-sion” referred to is presumably that of his uncle Feng Chaoran, situ-ated in Shanghai’s French Concession, an area favored by many artistsand intellectuals. But before reading the address, we receive the also-important information that the advertisement was inserted on the art-ist’s behalf by Wang Tongyu (1856–1941). Wang, a significant culturalfigure with a successful political career, was into his seventies by 1928and two generations older than the artist. He had the ancien régimecredibility associated with earning the highest degree in the imperialexamination system (in 1889) a successful political career and withhaving published substantial literary and antiquarian works.13 WangTongyu and Feng Chaoran must have been acquainted (perhaps inanothermaster-disciple relationship), since fans jointly painted by bothmen occasionally pass through the art market today.The introduction of an artist–sometimes described as the “fixing”(ding 定) of a price list–by an established cultural celebrity is part ofa number of advertisements and, in particular, of an artist’s advertise-ment debut, where the approval of what is sometimes a large commit-tee serves to launch a career and convince potential purchasers of thequality of the product. The “fixing,” in other words, serves the samepurpose as the blurbs on the jackets of books today.Again we see the intertwining of social and economic capital, whichis the distinctive feature of art markets of many times and places, ifrarely so explicitly expressed. But again, too, there are nuances whichtime and changed social circumstances have erased. Is it classier tohave just one well-known person “fix” your price list, or is it a caseof themore names, themore impressive the endorsement? Does an art-Reading a Painter’s Price List in Republican Shanghai 27This content downloaded from 163.001.203.194 on September 01, 2017 00:49:04 AMuse subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).28All ist’s position in the canon today (as marked crudely by appearancesin print and in online reference sources) bear any relation to the cir-cumstances in which they were introduced to the public? A numberof the artists who in 1928 had their price lists “fixed” for them by thepainter, entrepreneur, and cultural celebrity Wang Zhen 王震 (1867–1938) are still names to conjure with: Did his fame launch them on ca-reers which had staying power? Certainly Zhang Gunian remains aknown, if hardly stellar, presence in both reference books and onlineencyclopedias today, and his work circulates in the art market, thoughhardly for the spectacular sums paid by collectors for the work of someof his contemporaries.The advertisements which appear in Shen bao for the work of guohuapainters take their place alongside other advertisements, for soap andtoothpaste and patent medicines, which, in contrast to the textual aus-terity of the price lists, are generally illustrated.14 Perhaps it is not soparadoxical that advertisements for paintings (paintings as yet uncre-ated by their artists) should contain no pictures.The price lists also take their place alongside the extensive newspa-per coverage of the Shanghai art world in its multifarious forms, in-cluding the world of painters eschewing the practice of guohua in favorof oil painting, often in modes originally studied abroad. From Febru-ary 20 to February 29, 1928, the newspaper printed no fewer thanseven stories relating to the solo exhibition of work by Lin Fengmian林風眠 (1900–1991), the Paris-trained modernist, held in the hall ofa missionary institution in Shanghai (again, in the cultural hub ofthe French Concession) and including huge expressionist canvases(all now lost) with titles like Searching (Mosuo 摸索) and Humanity(Rendao人道) (fig. 2).15 The exhibition was such a success that a charge(a modest forty cents) had to be instituted to limit the number of visi-tors. Lin was then and is now one of the most celebrated figures intwentieth-century Chinese art; his fame, however, is in absolutely in-verse proportion to the survival rate of the pictures which initiallymade him such a celebrity.Source: Notes in the History of Art / Fall 2015 / Winter 2016This content downloaded from 163.001.203.194 on September 01, 2017 00:49:04 AMuse subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).All Figure 2. “The Good Companions,” Liangyou huabao 良友畫報, January 30, 1928.Lin Fengmian’s painting Humanity is the one at the top of the page.This content downloaded from 163.001.203.194 on September 01, 2017 00:49:04 AMuse subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).30All We know almost nothing about the economic aspects of practice fora painter like Lin Fengmian, who worked in the new conventions ofexhibitions and never posted a price list. Was Zhang Gunian, on theeve of his own debut, one of the twelve–thirteen thousand visitorswho crowded to see an exhibition of pictures so different from hisown? That we cannot ascertain. But what we can know is that, comfort-able as it may be for art history to situate the guohua painter and theoil painter in two quite different worlds, they moved in the same spacesand were read about by the same audiences, turning the pages of thesame newspapers.NOTES1.2.3.4.5.6.7.Souuse sJames Cahill, The Painter’s Practice: How Artists Lived and Worked in TraditionalChina (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994).Wang Zhongxiu 王中秀, Mao Ziliang 茅子良, and Chen Hui 陳輝, Jinxiandaijinshi shuhuajia runli 近現代金石書畫家潤例 (Shanghai: Shanghai huabaochubanshe, 2004), 219. This compilation of painting price lists is very in-complete; see note 4 below.Cahill, Painter’s Practice, 22.The number comes from the complete database of all advertisements inShen bao currently being compiled by Dr. Pedith Pui Chan, of City UniversityHong Kong, and her students. I am grateful to Dr. Chan for sharing this in-formation and supplying the image.Aida Yuan Wong, Parting the Mists: Discovering Japan and the Rise of National-Style Painting in Modern China (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press,2006); Pedith Pui Chan, “Art in the Marketplace: Taste, Sale and Transfor-mation of Guohua in Republican Shanghai,” in The Transcendence of the Artsin China and Beyond: Approaches to Modern and Contemporary Art, ed. RuiOlivera Lopes (Lisbon: Artistic Studies Research Centre / Faculty of Fine Arts,University of Lisbon, 2013), 72–104.Zhang appears, for example, in Michael Sullivan, Modern Chinese Artists: ABiographical Dictionary (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 216.Yu Shaosong 余紹宋, Shuhua shulu jieti 書畫書錄解題 (Taibei: TaiwanZhonghua Shuju, 1968), juan 7, p. 9b.rce: Notes in the History of Art / Fall 2015 / Winter 2016This content downloaded from 163.001.203.194 on September 01, 2017 00:49:04 AMubject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).8.9.10.11.12.13.14.15.All use sMichael Sullivan, Art and Artists of Twentieth-Century China (Berkeley: Uni-versity of California Press, 1996), 301.Wang, Mao, and Chen, Jinxiandai jinshi shuhuajia runli, 219, 223.Ibid., 222.Ibid., 223.I acknowledge with gratitude the help of Dr. Pedith Pui Chan in translatingthis sentence.Yun Ruxin 惲茹辛, Minguo shuhuajia huizhuan 民國書畫家彙傳 (Taibei:Taiwan Shangwu Yinshuguan, 17.A helpful compilation of such advertisements is online at the website TheCommon People and the Artist in the 1930s: An Essay in the Cultural andSocial Metahistory of China through Visual Sources, http://commonpeople.vcea.net/Image.php?, part of a research program of the European Joint Lab-oratory established under the auspices of the French National Center forScientific Research between the Institute of Chinese Studies at HeidelbergUniversity and the Institut d'Asie Orientale at Ecole Normale Supérieure andLumière Lyon 2 University, accessed August 10, 2015.The dates of the Shen bao stories are February 20, 21, 23, 24, 25, 26, and 29.I used the online digital edition of the newspaper, at http://shunpao.egreenapple.com/WEB/INDEX.html, accessed August 10, 2015.Reading a Painter’s Price List in Republican Shanghai 31This content downloaded from 163.001.203.194 on September 01, 2017 00:49:04 AMubject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).

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