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• 1 2023-07-24T04:29:21+00:00 The Story of the Western Wing
  西廂記 (1640) 49 plain 2025-07-21T20:22:30+00:00

  Woodblock Prints
  Publisher:  Min Qiji 閔薺伋 (1580–after 1661)

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  LINK TO THE WOODBLOCK PRINTS

  • Woodblock Prints held at the Museum für Ostasiatische Kunst in Cologne.

  INFORMATION

  • Title: The Story of the Western Wing 西廂記
  • Publisher:  Min Qiji 閔薺伋 (1580–after 1661)
  • Date of publication: 1640
  • Object: Set of twenty-one color woodblock prints
  • Size: Each print about 25.5 x 32.2 cm.
  • Collection: Museum für Ostasiatische Kunst, Cologne
  • Accession Number: Inv.-Nr. R 62,1

  INTRODUCTION

  The Museum für Ostasiatische Kunst in Cologne, Germany, holds the only surviving and complete set of one of the most sophisticated print illustrations ever produced of Story of the Western Wing. Although the exact print designer remains unknown, this set of color woodblock prints was published by the publisher Min Qiji 閔薺伋 (1580–after 1661) and will be referred to as the Min Qiji album in this unit. Published in 1640, the set is composed of a title sheet and twenty prints. Each of the twenty prints corresponds to the standard twenty scene division of the drama as established by the early seventeenth century. The prints, however, assume that its sophisticated audience is already familiar with the narrative beats of the drama, because each print is identified only by scene number, and not by any of the scene’s titles. 
  
  In the highly competitive world of late Ming commercial printing, the Min Qiji album sets itself apart through its luxurious polychrome palette, and, more significantly, its cheeky and sophisticated engagement with the objects of material culture that would be familiar to its elite audience. The late Ming was a period of intense consumption of luxury objects, as attested to in manuals and discourses on material culture and taste, such as Wen Zhenheng’s 文震亨 Treastise on Superfluous Things 長物志 (about 1615–1620), which identified the most desirable places of production for specific object types, delineated the appropriate places and seasons for the display of particular objects, and distinguished between so-called elegant and vulgar things.
  
  The richness of Ming material culture is certainly on display in the Min Qiji album on the prints that depict the interior spaces of elite quarters or the private garden spaces within the walls of elite monasteries and households. What has captured scholarly attention, furthermore, is that the prints are not content with merely providing a window into a narrative scene, but situates those scenes onto the bodies of material objects like handscrolls, hanging scrolls, folding fans, standing screens, spinning lanterns, and porcelain ceramics. The art historian Wu Hung has thus characterized them as “metapictures” (Wu, Double Screen, 243–59), or pictures-of-pictures. Craig Clunas argues that they are even more complicated than a metapicture by pointing out that they are a “printed picture of a picture on a thing” that “contains so many layers of referentiality that it undercuts the possibility of saying ‘this is a picture of that’ with any sort of certainty” (Clunas, Pictures and Visuality, 56–57). Jennifer Purtle has examined them as examples of what she calls “scopic frames” that reveal multiple modes of visual engagement in the material world of the late Ming (Purtle, “Scopic Frames,” 55). 
  
  In this unit, we will consider how the Min Qiji album presents a dense network of references to the physical presence of material objects within its pages. Ostensibly, each print in the Min Qiji album is—in the most literal sense—a still and silent image on a printed sheet. Yet, objects are not meant to only be seen, but handled, picked up, and manipulated. Thus, when those images appear on the bodies of objects, we are encouraged to imagine how we might interact with that object. The bodies of objects are also potential pictorial surfaces that allow for additional layers of references. In looking at these prints, we might ask: How does the imagined manipulation of the object position the viewer of the prints? How do visual quotations within the images enrich the interpretation of such interactions? How do the compositions themselves serve to tell the story in a non-textual manner? In what follows, we will consider how the Min Qiji album encourages active engagement from its elite audience, who are asked to imagine how they might handle and manipulate the depicted objects, as well as decipher references to other artworks, literature, and even cosmology to enrich their understanding and interpretation of a story that has already been retold over and over.    

  THEME: Beyond Text: Objects in Pictures and Pictures on Objects

  
  In the first print, the scene of Scholar Zhang heading towards Universal Salvation Monastery is rendered on the picture plane of a handscroll. As objects, handscrolls do not reveal their painted surfaces all at once, but frame-by-frame, as the viewer holds the scroll in both hands, and furls and unfurls an arms-breadth at a time. The horizontal handscroll reveals its contents from right to left, similar to a movie camera panning across a landscape. Here, Scholar Zhang rides along a snaking mountain path that leads the eye from the lower right towards the left where Oriole has already arrived at the monastery. Above Scholar Zhang, swooshing lines appear as surges of waves or gusts of wind that also sweep from the upper right towards Oriole and the monastery on the left. The composition itself inexorably rushes the viewer along towards the fateful meeting; the viewer imagines further unrolling this scroll to get to the next part of the story. Without the viewer actively imagining that the handscroll continues onward, Scholar Zhang is permanently stuck on his journey and will never actually reach Oriole! 
  
  As an object held in the hands, handscrolls are also suited for intimate viewing by oneself or with only a few intimates, in contrast to hanging scrolls or European framed paintings whose images are revealed all at once and hung for all to see. In contrast to experiencing the story amidst a crowd at the theater, a viewer of the Min Qiji album experiences the tale as a private experience; that intimacy is emphasized in the imagined handling of the handscroll.
  
  
  As early as the thirteenth century, scenes from Western Wing appear as surface ornamentation on the glazed bodies of ceramics. Images on paintings and prints likely served as the models for ceramic artists who translated those images onto ceramic surfaces. Scenes from Western Wing continued to be popular subjects for porcelain decoration in the Yuan and Ming; they were especially popular during the Transitional Period (about 1620–1683) between the late Ming and early Qing when imperial control over the kiln site of Jingdezhen lessened, and its potters turned to non-imperial domestic and international markets. 
  
  The second print, therefore, refers to the world of image-bearing porcelain ceramics with which its viewers would be familiar, and likely even own themselves. Here, Scholar Zhang meets with Crimson in the garden of the monastery and asks after her mistress, Oriole; unbeknownst to both, they are spied upon by the resident monks, one on the left hiding behind a potted pine, the other on the right peering out from a sliding door. This scene wraps around the body of a porcelain bowl. A decorative band of scrolling lotus flowers, a common motif in Buddhism, circles the lip of the bowl, and complements the narrative setting within a Buddhist monastery. The bowl appears next to a red stand—the viewer is encouraged to imagine picking up this bowl, rotating it to look at its other side, and setting it on its stand. As the bowl is picked up and held up to eye level to be admired, the viewer also takes on the position of actively spying on the meeting between Scholar Zhang and Crimson. We see one side of the ceramic bowl—we are encouraged to imagine how the story may continue on the other side when the bowl is rotated in the hands. The viewer is therefore not a passive onlooker, but actively sets the narrative into motion. 
  
  
  
  The density of references within the Min Qiji album is not limited to the material culture and dramatic arts of the late Ming, but also to other visual and literary references. Identifying these extra gems is not necessary for comprehending the main idea, but provides an additional source of delight upon recognition and offers another layer of interpretation. An avid and keen-eyed consumer of printed images of Western Wing may even recognize when one print designer references another’s composition. In a print edition of Western Wing published right before Min Qiji’s album, the artist Chen Hongshou 陳洪綬 illustrates the key moment of Oriole receiving Scholar Zhang’s love letter. In Chen Hongshou’s design, Oriole stands in front of a large folding screen; the surface of the folding screen is decorated with birds and flowers of the four seasons and motifs of romantic dalliance. As discussed in chapter 4 of HTRCD, Chen’s design is rich in poetic and artistic allusions that attest to his versatility in the competitive market of late Ming image making (Sieber and Zhang, “Western Wing,” 120). 
  
  The corresponding print in the Min Qiji album preserves Chen’s central motif of a screen that serves as both an architectural room divider—i.e., a physical barrier that enables hiding and spying—and also as a painted surface. In contrast to Chen’s design, the print here inverts our viewing relationship to the characters: We see the scene from behind, so that Oriole’s seated body is almost entirely hidden by the screen, while we get a clear view of Crimson peeking around the screen to observe her mistress’s reaction to Scholar Zhang’s letter. Instead of birds-and-flowers of the four seasons on a four-panel folding screen, the single panel standing screen in this print displays a monochrome river landscape with a lone boatman rowing towards a thatched hut on the shore. The position of the boatman on the screen corresponds to where Oriole’s head would be, so that it appears that as Oriole reads his letter, she is also thinking about Scholar Zhang’s loneliness, his metaphorical distance from her, and his striving to reach her. So even though Scholar Zhang is not physically present within the print, his presence is made visible in his letter and in the screen painting. Furthermore, as Wu Hung has pointed out, the Min Qiji print not only inverts Chen Hongshou’s composition, but also directly quotes from Chen’s own painting of a lone fisherman on a river (Wu, Double Screen, 255).
  
  
  The standing screen hides Oriole’s body from view, but her face is revealed in the reflection of her mirror. This print seems to visually quote a scene from the handscroll, Admonitions of the Instructress to the Court Ladies 女史箴圖 attributed to the Eastern Jin painter Gu Kaizhi 顧愷之 (c. 344–c. 406 CE). The Admonitions scroll presents alternating lines of text and image that relate to the proper conduct of a virtuous woman. A scene in the middle of the scroll depicts a woman seated with her back to us; her face is revealed as a reflection in her mirror as she applies her makeup. Alongside the image, lines of calligraphic text read “People know how to adorn their faces, but there is none who knows how to adorn their character. Yet if the character be not adorned, there is a danger that the rules of conduct may be transgressed.” By visually quoting this scene from Admonitions, the print may indicate that Oriole is also reflecting upon the dangers of transgressing the rules of conduct by pursuing her unsanctioned romance with Scholar Zhang.  
  
  
  The visual motif of reflection continues—we might even say “is mirrored”—in the next print. As Scholar Zhang contemplates jumping over the garden wall to rendezvous with Oriole, his body is hidden behind a Lake Tai rock. His presence is made visible in two ways, both related to the optical effects of light: as a reflection in the water and as a shadow cast behind him. The prints of the Min Qiji album thus not only play with tactility of objects, but also the visual effects of reflective surfaces and cast shadows produced by those objects, as well as produced within the spaces of the built environment, such as private gardens. In other words, the print series also engages with the various optical effects of late Ming visual and material culture.
  
  Scholar Zhang’s reflection is paired with the reflection of the moon in the water. A common motif in Zen Buddhist art is a long-armed gibbon reaching for the moon’s reflection, which of course, can never actually be grasped; the visual metaphor refers to both the presence of the real, but also the futility of reaching for illusions. By depicting Scholar Zhang as a reflection, it is possible that the print is also alluding to what immediately follows in the narrative—Oriole and Zhang do not physically meet that night as her resolve wavers and she sends him away. 
  
  
  Oriole does not stay away from Zhang for long though. In this climactic scene of Oriole and Scholar Zhang’s consummation, the print artist enhances the voyeurism of the scene by wrapping the bed in a screen, like a gift box tantalizingly opened. We are presented with a series of spying-upon-spying: Crimson stands by the open bed and eavesdrops on the couple; she herself is spied upon by Oriole’s little brother peeping at her from around the corner. As the viewer, we also peek into the entire scene and into the bed, where the couple’s tryst is shown as bodies completely hidden under the bedsheets. 
  
  
  The presentation of their illicit lovemaking may be a deliberate reference to similar scenes in the 10th century Southern Tang handscroll, Night Revels of Han Xizai 韩熙载夜宴图 by Gu Hongzhong 顧閎中, where the debauchery within the court official’s home also includes bodies hidden under the sheets of semi-enclosed beds that are tittered at by the household maids and musicians. Night Revels also presents us with a scene of voyeurism-of-voyeurism: The serving maids are peeking into the beds, but the painted record of this night revel was supposedly the result of an act of spying by the court artist Gu Hongzhong, who was acting as an agent of the outraged emperor. The moral judgement of the scenes in Night Revels, however, remains ambivalent:  On the one hand, the painting appears to condemn impropriety in a dissolute minister’s household. On the other hand, it can also be interpreted as valorizing an upright minister’s conscientious withdrawal from a corrupt and declining government. In the Min Qiji print, the visual quotation of Night Revels might also present the young lovers’ tryst as morally ambiguous—as viewers, we will have to decide that ourselves.
  
  
  
  The penultimate print draws its viewer’s attention directly to staged performance—in this case, a marionette puppet show. The characters of Crimson and Cousin Zheng Heng appear on a miniature theater stage as miniature puppets inhabiting a miniature room furnished with miniature objects of late Ming material culture. Above them, two puppeteers lean over the standing screen and reveal themselves as the manipulators of the characters’ movements and voices; behind them, a musician beats a drum and plays a clapper. Puppet theater is one mode of dramatic performance that would be familiar to a late Ming audience, and is thus also a mode in which an audience would encounter Story of the Western Wing. But why specifically a puppet show and not another form of theater? The puppet show translates a full-scale stage performance into a miniaturized performance; the viewing angle of the print reveals the skilled artifice of the stage by showing us the musician and puppeteers. 
  
  But we might also consider how this print uses the format of puppet theater to “tell” the narrative of this scene. At this point in the story, we have multiple moments of manipulation by our scheming characters. Crimson is trying to convince Cousin Zheng Heng, Oriole’s original betrothed, to let Oriole marry Scholar Zhang; Cousin Zheng Heng will soon spread the false news that Scholar Zhang has married another woman. As each character “pulls the strings,” we see literally see behind the scene to the puppeteers pulling the actual strings of the marionettes. To the left of the stage, the marionettes of Oriole, Scholar Zhang, General White Horse, and a Buddhist monk hang from the eaves, so that even though they are technically not active within the scene, their presence remains felt (i.e., seen). The two young lovers are literally suspended in anticipation and currently helpless against the machinations of others.  
  
  The final print depicts Scholar Zhang “returning home in glory” (yijin huanxiang 衣錦還鄉); he has successfully passed the examinations and is shown here seated in an official barge and wearing the hat and robes of a government prefect. While the previous print called attention to the constructed nature of theatrical performance, here, the print is not a picture-of-a-picture-on-a-thing. At the same time, the print is also not a simply transparent view into a narrative moment. The black linework of the central scene of Scholar Zhang’s water journey is contrasted against the colored wisps of cloud that float around the print’s borders. Among the clouds, the animals of the Four Cardinal Directions lend a sense of cosmic gravity to this last print. The Red Bird of the South, the White Tiger of the West, the Black Warrior of the North, and the Azure Dragon of the East appear to escort Scholar Zhang back to Oriole. Their presence frames Scholar Zhang within a cosmic diagram, signaling that all is set to rights in the world and that heaven itself approves of Scholar Zhang and Oriole’s imminent nuptials. In other words, their romance does indeed end happily ever after.
   

  WORKS CONSULTED: CLICK TO EXPAND/COLLAPSE

  Clunas, Craig. Pictures and Visuality in Early Modern China. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997. See pages 55–56.

  Hsu Wen-chin, “Illustrations of ‘Romance of the Western Chamber’ on Chinese Porcelains: Iconography, Style, and Development.” Ars Orientalis 40 (2011): 39–107.

  Purtle, Jennifer. “Scopic Frames: Devices for Seeing China c. 1640.” Art History 33, no. 1 (Feb 2010): 54–73.

  Sieber, Patricia and Gillian Yanzhuang Zhang. “The Story of the Western Wing: Theater and the Printed Image.” In How to Read Chinese Drama: A Guided Anthology, edited by Patricia Sieber and Regina Llamas, 101–126. New York: Columbia University Press, 2022.

  West, Stephen H., and Wilt L. Idema, ed. and trans. The Moon and the Zither: The Story of the Western Wing. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991.

  Wu Hung. The Double Screen: Medium and Representation in Chinese Painting. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. See pages 243–259.
   

  AUTHOR

  Patricia J. Yu