Rêverie picturale pour moines bouddhistes chan et lettrés chinois sous les Song du Sud (1127-1279)

Abstract

This study aims to trace the rise and decline of the Chan Buddhist tradition of ink painting in Southern Song China (1127-1279). The definition of Chan painting is problematic, first, because it cannot be isolated as one clear-cut category, and, second, because Chan thought influenced artists and art critics far beyond the Chan monastic domain. Within the category of "Chan painting" I include paintings either illustrative of Chan subjects or made by Chan monk-artists, often in a style characterized by a distinctive handling of brush and light monochrome ink called "ghost painting" (wangliang hua). Beyond subject and style, which were experimented with by all kind of painters who were not necessarily monks, the clearest mark of Chan painting is a record of the Chan monastic context in which it was created. A unique handscroll, Dream Journey on the Xiao and Xiang, datable to around 1170, offers a combination of subject, style and historical context, by which the work can qualify not only as a literati painting but also as a Chan painting. Concentrating on this painting, this study demonstrates that Chan artists contributed to the development of scholarly painting and, conversely, that Chan painting would not have survived outside a scholarly context. The central question raised here is how both scholars and monks participated in the creation of a type of painting in the twelfth century and in its disappearance in the thirteenth century.