CHANG LU'S “A POET CONTEMPLATING A WATERFALL”

Abstract

Early Ming painting of the Che school has received considerable scholarly attention and reevaluation in the past few years. Previously the works of this school had been given a subsidiary position in discussions of Ming painting, maintaining the dominant role of the contemporary Wu school of which Shen Chou was its most renowned member. The achievements of the Che school have been colored by depreciative comments by contemporary and also later critics who referred to these artists as “mad and depraved.” The context for such remarks remains troublesome, for when viewing Che school works, it is difficult to identify the coarseness and ugliness of which the critics write. More likely, the spontaneity and expressiveness of the works become excitingly apparent. Thus, recent scholarship has questioned the validity of these condemnations and sought possible explanations involving artistic, aesthetic, social and philosophical differences between the artists and their critics. The collection of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts includes a fine hanging scroll depicting a scholar contemplating a waterfall signed P'ing-shan (more commonly known as Chang Lu), one of the central figures in this group of artists (Figure 1). The scroll is an excellent example of Che school painting and will become the focus for a discussion of the character of the Che school but more specifically for an analysis of the life and works of a representative artist of the school, Chang Lu.