MICROSTORY OF ART

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Dedicated to Zhong Kui

(Picture: Shen C. Y. Fu 1991, p. 54)

(Picture: Shitao; wikiart.org)

(11.3.2023) For today we have something extraordinarily funny: Zhong Kui is the name of a demon-queller from Chinese tradition, who does appear in art, in folklore, and in popular culture. One might say that he is an all-known figure in Chinese iconography. And for once I have to quote from Wikipedia here, because we get to know that »his image is often painted on household gates as a guardian spirit as well as in places of business where high-value goods are involved.« In places of business where high-value goods are involved, thus for example at auction houses, art fairs, and art dealers’ shops, as one might imagine.
It is a while ago that I had put together a gallery of ›assorted demons of connoisseurship‹, notorious objects, cases, controversies in art and culture – and Zhong Kui might be seen as the guardian spirit, meant to protect agains all these evils. But also notorious Chinese painter, connoisseur and forger Zhang Daqian used to depict Zhong Kui. More precisely: Zhang Daqian seems to have depicted himself as the demon-queller, as a demon-queller with a fairly good relation with all these evils, from which he might have protected certain people, but certainly not museum directors, scholars and collectors from the West. The German language has an idiom for making the worst possible choice as to a certain position: one does make ›den Bock zum Gärtner‹, and I am seeing that also the English language knows this phenomenon: ›to put the fox in charge of the henhouse‹, ›to set a fox to keep the geese‹ and so on (why not: ›to make Zhang Daqian a guard against assorted demons of connoisseurship‹?). And in this microstory we will hear Zhang Daqian laugh. Something extraordinarily funny might have happened. For knowing what it was, honourable reader, just go on reading.

One) …and the Dealer from Hong Kong Took it Back

On the left we see how one of the great masters of Chinese painting, namely Shitao, depicted Zhong Kui in the 17th century. This very painting also Zhang Daqian once used as a model, but, as Shen C. Y. Fu has pointed out, not showing Zhong Kui as an enemy of the demon that got crushed by him, but as a demon-queller who got »lauded« by the demon (pp. 94-95).
It does not really matter here, if this demon was in fact meant to represent a helpful demon, or rather a demon that Zhong Kui was meant to crush. What we know is that Zhang Daqian only too well knew that he was fooling other connoisseurs, museum directors and collectors. Mostly from the West, but not necessarily only from the West.
Werner Speiser, who was the director of the Museum für Ostasiatische Kunst at Cologne in the 1960s, probably got fooled with a depiction of Zhong Kui that, allegedly, was by Zhang Daqian. If Zhang Daqian had a hand in this affair we don’t know, and although Speiser told the story, we have to put together various parts from various books. In Speiser 1960, which is a book on Chinese art that was also translated into English, a faint replica of the above shown work by Zhang Daqian is the last work of art, the most modern work of art, as one might say, that is reproduced in the book at all. The book closes with this faint replica, which, for rather mysterious reasons, is designated as a replica and still is meant to represent the finesse of an artist like Zhang Daqian (I am not reproducing the replica here, but it is on p. 240). And I believe that Werner Speiser might have been fooled with this very work of art himself, because in another book (in Speiser/Goepper/Fribourg 1974, p. 9f.), he is telling a story of having been fooled with a work, allegedly, by Zhang Daqian. The book, more or less, opens with this story, and I do assume that the work of art in question, although it is not specified, is the replica of the Zhong Kui depiction (after the original shown above), which Speiser seems to have acquired in Hong Kong.
Zhang Daqian who had an exhibition at Cologne in 1964 (see [Galerie] Editha Leppich (ed.) 1964) also visited the German city, meeting with Speiser. And shown a work allegedly by him, he seems to have laughed, declaring that the work shown to him was actually (including the inscription) the very well-made (?) replica of a work he had given to a friend. Speiser says that the Hong Kong dealer who had acted in good faith (?) took the picture back afterwards, and obviously delighted by the story, Zhang Daqian sent a gift to the Cologne museum afterwards: a painting by him bearing the inscription that, indeed, this work was by him, an autograph work by Zhang Daqian. Later this work was shown to another connoisseur, as Speiser concludes his account, who declared it to be a 17th century work (the connoisseur had not been shown the inscription). And, hearing repeated laughters from various demons in various corners, we may have come full circle.

Two) A Fruitful Use

What I am suggesting here is to make use of such stories to get to know Chinese art better. We have to do with a legendary figure here that allow one to make some acquaintance with Chinese tradition, folklore, mythology, with the various episodes associated with this figure, episodes that, again and again, appear and reapper in Chinese contexts. Wikipedia has a gallery with Zhong Kui depictions, but mostly classic renderings. In the 20th century we might continue with Qi Baishi, Zhang Daqian and other masters, realizing that, obviously, in the 20th century (but perhaps earlier) it seems to have been possible to bring in an ironical note into renderings of Zhong Kui, the guardian spirit. Qi Baishi has a demon scratch Zhong Kui’s back, and Zhang Daqian, as Shen C. Y. Fu is confirming, has given Zhong Kui his own traits.

Three) Irony in Art and Ironies of Art

And we might continue our journey, asking if the way Zhang Daqian had staged himself in the West, in exile, after 1949, was another way of acting ironically as an artist: Zhong Kui, the legendary demon-queller, was actually a failed scholar, and he is rendered as a scholar in art or folklore. Zhang Daqian, on his part, staged himself partly as a scholar, with cap, long gown and beard, which might have just seemed exotic in the West, but those recognizing the occasional self-fashioning as a scholar might have recongnized an ironic, perhaps postmodern strategy, since Zhang Daqian was no traditional scholar, but a multifaceted exiled Chinese painter, who knew tradition very well, being aware that, in Western contexts, hardly anyone could match this knowledge of tradition, so that he could laugh, if he was, in a replica, in a fake done by someone else, shown as the demon-queller. Yet what Speiser, then, could not know was, on some level, that Zhang Daqian acted as the demon himself occasionally, namely, if he acted as the forger or as the seller of forgeries himself.

Selected Literature:
Werner Speiser, China. Geist und Gesellschaft, Zurich 1960;
Werner Speiser / Roger Goepper / Jean Fribourg, Chinesische Kunst. Malerei · Kalligraphie · Steinabreibungen · Holzschnitte, Zurich 1974 [1965];
[Galerie] Editha Leppich (ed.), Chang Dai-Chien [Zhang Daqian]. Ausstellung Chinesische Tuschmalerei 5. Mai bis 3. Juni 1964, exh. cat. [Galerie] Editha Leppich, Cologne 1964;
Shen C. Y. Fu, Challenging the Past. The Paintings of Chang Dai-chien, exh. cat. Arthur M. Sackler Gallery / Asia Society / St. Louis Art Museum, Washington, D.C. 1991 [with major contributions and translated by Jan Stuart]

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