Some Models of History and Culture
During the Northern Song (960-1127) a new social class emerged in China – the scholar-officials, or literati, whose advancement in society owed to talent rather than birth. The accomplishments of the greatest among them were much celebrated in the later literati painting tradition. Story-paintings featuring the pre-eminent ‘men of culture’, like the literary titan Su Shi (1037-1101) are commonplace.
Creating a lineage for literati culture, later artists also portrayed tales about earlier figures, notably the doyens of literary culture from the era of individualism between the two great early empires, Han (206 BC – AD 220) and Tang (618-907).
Some of these story-paintings describe congregations of scholars, for instance attending the definitive literati social event, the ‘elegant gathering’. Even fictitious groupings of men were portrayed assembled in this milieu. The handscroll was a favoured mounting format in which the arts of poetry, calligraphy and painting, made to commemorate an event, could all co-exist.