About as edifying as wallpaper

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I used to be drawn to a small noodle shop in Shida because it was wallpapered with different stylizations of the Chinese character for book (書). Although no explanation of the styles was offered, I enjoyed contemplating the different types of calligraphy over a bowl of wonton noodles (餛飩麵).

The current exhibit at the National Museum of History, A Drop in the Ocean: Modern Contemporary Chinese Calligraphy and Painting Exhibition (滄海一粟—近現代書畫展), could have been an excellent opportunity to educate the public about the long and revered Chinese traditions of ink painting and calligraphy, which are said to date back at least two millennia. What has been presented instead is an exhibition that is barely more edifying than the wallpaper in that now-closed noodle shop.

Apart from a brief four-paragraph introduction, there are no explanations — in Chinese or any other language — as to the exhibit’s purpose. Although a title and artist are given for each work, the medium is not listed, and there are no dates or other clues as to why these works should be worthy of viewing, aside from hackneyed appeal to cliches such as “the meaning of life” and “cultivating one’s emotions and feelings.”

Consequently, viewers are left to figure out for themselves the meaning, context and tradition of each of the more than 300 ink paintings and calligraphic works that have been handsomely hung in glass cases throughout most of the museum’s second floor. The title of the exhibit is also misleading because fully two-thirds of the works on display were created before the “modern contemporary” period.

Part of what makes an object worthy of being placed in a museum is the tradition within which it exists. The genius of Chu Teh-chun’s (朱德群) abstract expressionist paintings, for example, only makes sense in the context of his evolution as an artist in a particular place and time. (An excellent retrospective of Chu’s work is currently on display as a special exhibit on the museum’s first floor. For details on that show, see the review on Page 15 of last Wednesday’s Taipei Times.)

It is difficult to believe that the curator or the two collectors who lent the works on display didn’t know the precise dates of the scrolls and paintings, which presumably were appraised before being hung. And since the artists’ names are given, the curator or museum could have at least provided the dates of the artists’ lives.

Chinese calligraphy has five essential styles, which are sometimes used in combination, and the museum could have taken advantage of some of the works on display to reveal the evolving and changing nature of calligraphy, the manner in which is was taught and why it was so important to the literati throughout Chinese history. The same applies to the ink paintings. Unfortunately, Wikipedia gives better descriptions of both traditions (“East Asian script styles” and “Chinese ink painting,” respectively) than this exhibit does.

I visited the exhibit three times and spoke with museumgoers of different ages to gain a sense of what they were or were not seeing. A younger university-educated woman showed tremendous patience with my incessant questioning because she often couldn’t answer even the most basic questions: What dynasty did this painter live in? What does that classical poem mean and was it written by the calligrapher? An older gentleman preferred to lead me to the ink paintings and scrolls he had some familiarity with, but, aside from noting that the artist was well-known, he often couldn’t answer the question: What makes the works worthy of being hung? Most visitors, meanwhile, walked briskly through the calligraphy sections and only paused briefly to look at the ink paintings.