Li Gonglin / The Classic of Filial Piety / Northern Song dynasty (960?1127), ca. 1085Li Gonglin
The Classic of Filial Piety
Northern Song dynasty (960?1127), ca. 1085

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Creator Nationality: Asian; Far East Asian; Chinese
Creator Dates/Places: China ca. 1041?1106
Creator Name-CRT: Li Gonglin
Title: The Classic of Filial Piety
View: Principal view
Creation Start Date: 1083
Creation End Date: 1087
Creation Date: Northern Song dynasty (960?1127), ca. 1085
Object Type: Decorative Arts and Utilitarian Objects
Materials and Techniques: Handscroll; ink on silk
Dimensions: various dimensions
Description:

Song scholar-artists believed that painting was not just a record of sensory experience but also a reflection of the artist's mind, a revelation of his personality, and an expression of deeply held values. In giving form to this ideal, Li Gonglin fundamentally transformed Chinese art. Prior to Li's time, painting served a public function: it was primarily decorative or didactic in intent. With Li, painting joined music, poetry, and calligraphy as a medium of self-expression. Li's revolutionary new style established the three essential desiderata of scholar-painting: moral purpose, learned stylistic references to the past, and expressive calligraphic brushwork.

The Classic of Filial Piety, a text composed between 350 and 200 B.C., teaches a simple but all-embracing lesson: beginning humbly at home, filial piety not only ensures success in a man's life but also brings peace and harmony to the world at large. During the Song dynasty, the text became one of the thirteen classics of the Neo-Confucian canon and remained a cornerstone of traditional Chinese moral teaching until modern times. The images accompanying Li's transcription of the Classic do more than illustrate the text; using his art to criticize, exhort, and subvert, Li presents subtle commentaries on the Classic's moral relevance to the Song world.

Purposefully restrained and without the decorative appeal of color, the paintings alternate with transcriptions of brief chapters from the Classic. Like the paintings, the calligraphy is written in an archaic style instantly recognizable to the connoisseur as a sophisticated plea for a return to simple virtues and plain-living rectitude .


AMICA Contributor: The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Owner Location: New York, New York
ID Number: 1996.479
Credit Line: Ex coll.: C.C. Wang Family, From the P.Y. and Kinmay W. Tang Family Collection, Gift of Oscar L. Tang Family, 1996
Copyright: Copyright ? 2002 The Metropolitan Museum of Art. All rights reserved.
Rights: http://www.metmuseum.org/education/er_photo_lib.asp
AMICA ID: MMA_.1996.479
AMICA Library Year: 2002
Media Metadata Rights: Copyright (c) 2002 The Metropolitan Museum of Art. All Rights Reserved

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