A Trip to the National Palace Museum

TheNational Palace Museum is one of — if not — the biggest cultural institution in Taiwan. It’s home to, again, one of — if not — the best collection of Chinese art. This is due to the fact that Taiwan was the haven for the Nationalists led by Chiang Kai-Shek when they were driven out by Mao Zedong and his Communist revolution. Art had a lot bigger philosophic and symbolic weight for the Nationalists — who wanted to be seen as the inheritors of years of Chinese culture — which is one of the reasons this collection of art was privileged enough to be taken care of as the 1948 war effort deteriorated. 

Anyways, the collection is so vast (and the museum so small — at least according to my own previous expectations) that 1% of the collection is exhibited at one time, and the museum basically completely redoes its exhibits every few months. 

I had a chance to go this weekend, so I can only comment on the exhibits they had out during this “turn”. The exhibit was completely dedicated the Southern Song Dynastywhich only lasted for a relatively short amount of time — 153 years (1127-1279) — but had a great impact on the cultural life of China. (You can go here for the museum’s website’s mult-page bit on the exhibit, if you’re interested — it’s pretty good.)

Most of the exhibit was dedicated to carvings, statues and othertrinkets — many made from jade — which wasn’t exactly my cup of tea. But the paintings they did have were incredible.

The style was great, but the contents were what I was really drawn to. There were lots of scholarly recluses but also some great scenes of tranquil everyday life. None of the scenes really had more than one or two people (if at all), and they all emphasized refinement, tranquility and elegance. Taken as a whole, there was an overall balance between the natural world and scholarly pursuits, the educated and the common man. As the museum’s website reads, 

Southern Song culture tended toward refinement and elegance as court painters excelled at rendering the palace banquets, activities of the seasons, and ceremonial celebrations in and around the capital of Hangzhou. Whether records of real events or flights of the imagination, they all reflect the prosperous and sumptuous spirit of actual life among members of the upper classes and the imperial family in the Southern Song. The elegance of scholar life, private gardens of recluses, viewing of paintings and chanting of poems, tasting of tea and unrolling of scrolls, and appreciation of curios are all found in the works of art done at this time, becoming specialized subjects in painting.

The subject of figures and genre had appeared in painting starting from the Five Dynasties and Northern Song period, also including artists who specialized in them. Along with the commoners mentioned in poems and songs, they all reveal and relate to the tradition of folk life. A rich variety of works in this subject also appear in the Southern Song, and with consummate perfection of skill in rendering, they further express the feeling and appearance of everyday life among ordinary folk.

This paintings made me want to raise my hand and offer to live a whole different lifetime in a completely different time, but, in some ways, they also provided some light on why the dynasty was so shortlived. 

I don’t have much more to say about these paintings, but I thought some of them would be worth reproducing on this blog. They are whatever I could find from this time period on google images — I think I saw all of them I saw. Some of the paintings are darker or more yellow than the originals which is unfortunate, but there still worth perusing.