Landscape after Wang Hui, Xiao Junxian

Exhibition Label: “The Boundaries of Heaven: Chinese Ink Painting in the Republican Period, 1911-1949,” Feb-2009, Kris Ercums Schooled in brush-and-ink painting during the twilight years of the Qing dynasty, Xiao bridges classical forms of late imperial literati painting and the new directions that reshaped Chinese art in the twentieth century. In this hanging scroll, Xiao references Wang Hui汪晖 (1632-1717). Together with his teachers Wang Shimin (1592-1680) and Wang Jian王 鉴(circa 1598-1677), and his contemporary Wang Yuanqi王原祁 (1642-1715), Wang Hui formed the so-called “Four Wangs”—a group of staunch conservatives who modeled their painting on the works of canonical “masters.” By the Republican period, the school of Four Wangs was deeply criticized by most reform-minded artists as a primary reason for the degeneration of Chinese painting traditions in the late nineteenth century. However, Xiao remained true to his training and advocated the Four Wang approach throughout his career as an art educator. Many of the academies at which Xiao taught were established in the late Qing and Republican periods to bolster modernization and educational reforms. His continued adherence to what was viewed as an outmoded, unresponsive approach to art doomed him to obscurity for much of the twentieth century. However, as an educator Xiao’s legacy is one of vital transmission, instructing a generation of artists in brush techniques that allowed them to find new means of reviving Chinese painting in the twentieth century.