Citing Wang Wei: Mi Youren and the Temporal Dimensions of Landscape

Abstract

Mi Youren (1074– 1151), one of the few painters active during the transition from the Northern Song (960– 1127) to the Southern Song (1127– 1279) whose works survive, provides a rare window on the trauma of the Jurchen invasions of 1127– 30 that almost brought down the dynasty, and their effect on painting. Comments by Mi reveal that the evocation of the name of the esteemed poet, painter, and statesman Wang Wei (699– 759) continued to be a part of the literati painter’s practice at the end of the Northern Song, but what did Wang’s name mean precisely? Wang, in fact, presented multiple images as a painter— portrayer of figures, landscapes, even bamboo. More importantly, as the connoisseur Mi Fu (1052– 1107) pointed out, what constituted a genuine Wang Wei painting was little understood, as attributions of all kinds had proliferated. The practice of citation in painting will be reviewed against this backdrop, with attention paid to how familial and social contingencies shaped artistic decisions. Mi Youren, witness to the near collapse of a dynasty, presents particular urgency in his use of citation, layering evocations of both the near and distant pasts to affirm continuity in a period of great uncertainty. Specific emphasis is placed on Mi Youren’s Cloudy Mountains of 1130 (Cleveland Museum of Art). The landscape’s references to the painting conventions of the Tang dynasty (618– 907), juxtaposed with the background image of a problematic Wang Wei, reveal Mi’s efforts to establish an exclusive family vision, which he curiously labeled Xiao- Xiang after the poetic landscape of south China. Mi’s repurposing of this well- known landscape term obliquely reflects upon an important transformation in how the past was cited by the second generation of literati painters. Especially after the time of the art- theorist