Creating Academic-Museal Dialogue In-Between Ivory Towers and Unwritten Pages: Tsinghua University Art Museum and Its Collection of Chinese Contemporary Calligraphy

Hertel, Shao-Lan

doi:https://doi.org/10.7202/1073067ar

“Of the Four Great Ancient Civilizations of the world,
only the Chinese civilization had no rupture through
its history”[1].

Introductory text plate hung in the Ruins of Yin Museum, UNESCO World Heritage Site, Anyang, Henan

Theme and Scope

This article explores the reciprocally constitutive discursive spheres of academies and museums as educational institutions actively shaping the theory, practice, and reception of art in present-day Mainland China. Addressed in this particular context is the novel institutional framework of university art museums: what roles do these play; which responsibilities, potentials, and challenges do they carry as assumed academic, museal, curatorial, and pedagogical models within higher education, and with regard to the field of Chinese art history and our understanding of Chinese art? The case of Tsinghua University Art Museum (TAM, Qinghua Daxue Yishu Bowuguan, 清华大学艺术博物馆), a pioneer in Mainland China in terms of its institutional form and large-scale project scope[2], is critically discussed as to its intersectional, recursive structure, and the ambitious mission, to meld top-level academics with museum practices of collecting and curatorial display; or, in the directorate’s bold wording: “to manifest humanistic spirit, gather artistic essence, exhibit quality collections, conduct academic researches, facilitate domestic and foreign exchanges, communicate information, cultivate new cultural trends and educate talents”.[3]

The museum, whose self-proclaimed aim is “to create a world-class art museum with university characteristics”[4], carries a significant historical legacy as a flagship of the highly reputed Tsinghua University established in 1911, to whose educational institution it belongs. The notably diverse exhibition agendas revealed at TAM since its opening in 2016 can, to some extent, therein be understood as a reflection of this university museum’s fundamental incentives, to assume and negotiate the (im)material cultural and intellectual heritage of eminent first-generation Tsinghua University scholars like Liang Qichao (1873–1929), Wang Guowei (1877–1927), and Chen Yinke (1890–1969), who valued and promoted the conservation of traditional Chinese culture and arts as well as the modern-day interaction between Chinese and western cultures, the sciences and humanities, the ancient and modern; and through whose profound impact TAM sees itself established ideologically, as the embodied form of bronze statues erected in front of the museum building conveys (fig. 1).

Aims and Structure

Against this historical backdrop, the present article pursues two primary objectives, along two argumentative lines. Following a general introduction to the museum, the first objective lies in carving out TAM’s collection and display of Chinese calligraphy—a genre which, now as ever, presents a highly contested culture-specific domain of Chinese art historical and critical discourse—as a relevant issue of investigation and prism of perspective. Drawing from the museum’s rich repository of artworks, its recorded exhibition and publication history, and acquired interview material, it is of interest to discuss the minor fraction of twenty-two artworks that represent the contemporary period post-1949 among TAM’s vast calligraphy collection, which currently counts around 330 works, and spans a production period of over 500 years. Despite (and on grounds of) the evidently small corpus of contemporary-period works, this fraction provides a useful focal point to sharpen out and illuminate TAM in its larger structures as a university art museum. The second objective pursued in this article lies, then, in developing and expanding the critical discussion on the position and status of TAM in these larger structures; moreover, on TAM’s time-and-space-specific functions and meanings constituting a zone of cultural dialogue and encounter between different scholarly generations of Tsinghua representatives in 2019.

Set apart, and likewise connected, by the roughly one century that has passed between the days of their active engagement, while Tsinghua’s representative older generation of the “Four Great Tutors of Chinese Learning” (Qinghua guoxue si da daoshi) now adorn the outer façade of the museum building, among others, a newer generation of educators can be discerned in their special multifunctional roles as actively engaged professors, artists, and curators contributing to the identity construction of this young university museum enterprise. Emerging through TAM’s institutional framework and network as actors and agents embodying a present-day, quasi “all-in-one” professor-artist-curator identity of sorts, they crystallize the complex of potentials and challenges faced by TAM as an example of university art museums in China today.

TAM’s adopted educational mission—on the one hand, to consolidate and perpetuate Chinese culture and art based on traditions that have been defined throughout China’s historical past, and, on the other hand, to translate and redefine precisely these inherited traditions towards integration into the contemporary global discourse—finds all the more pronunciation and exposure in this special year of 2019. Indeed, a branded year, marked by numerous celebratory occasions of historical significance, one may resort to 2019’s designation as a “Big Year for Anniversaries”[5], marking, prominently, the centennial anniversary of China’s 1919 May Fourth Movement; the seventy-year anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China; likewise, the tabooed events that took place thirty years ago and became known to the world as the Tiananmen Massacre of June 4, 1989.

Years and numbers omnipresent and omniabsent alike, they are deeply shaped by and in turn deeper shaping an acute sense of cultural, national, and historical identity in the Chinese collective (sub-)consciousness today. The year of 2019 therein calls for the crucial moment to take stock and reflect upon China’s modern history and its momentary cultural developments, and to further ponder its outlook towards the future from various perspectives. In discussing this university museum as a time-and-space-specific sphere of encounter and space of negotiation between actors and agents of different ages—indeed, separated by a generational gap: the gap constituted by the circa three decades of Mao-period China (1949–76); yet likewise bonded through their adopted (im)material cultural and intellectual heritage—the notion of 2019, as The Big Year for Anniversaries, invaluably provides a critical lens to point towards and make room for several, hitherto largely unaddressed issues. With regard to the case study of TAM, these issues may be perceived as situated somewhere between what is termed, metaphorically, as TAM’s “Ivory Towers and Unwritten Pages”, therein further lending this article its title.

In the following, this article thus first proceeds, structurally, “from the large to the small”, transitioning between different levels of narration: departing from a general overview of TAM and, then, its calligraphy collection, to a more specific presentation of this collection’s contemporary-period fraction, and further, to a focused discussion of works by one calligrapher. In the last section of the article, the narrative perspective zooms out again, aiming to draw a critical and conclusive “larger picture” in review and reflection of the discussed themes and issues; addressed in the presently given historical context entitled “Omnipresences and Omniabsences 2019: China’s Year of Anniversaries, Year of Adversaries”.

Tsinghua University Art Museum, “A Newborn Palace of Art”

Located on the southeastern side of the Tsinghua University campus in Beijing, this comprehensive art museum, architected by the Swiss Maria Botta (born 1943), and whose establishment was funded by various institutions and individual donors, opened to the public on September 10, 2016. With a construction area of 30,000 m², TAM houses over 14,000 collected objects and no less than fourteen exhibition halls spread across four stories. It has seen the simultaneous undertaking of up to ten exhibitions at one time, momentously earning itself the designation as “A Newborn Palace of Art”[6]. The museum’s abundant in-house collections, which largely stem from the old collections of the former Central Academy of Arts and Design (CAAD, Zhongyang Gongyi Meishu Xueyuan) founded in 1956, include objects of pre-modern, modern, and contemporary calligraphy, painting, bronzeware, ceramics, textiles, furniture, and multi-media artworks[7]. They provide a significant basis for TAM’s exhibition agenda—and indeed, the legitimization for the museum’s initial conception in 1999, when CAAD was incorporated into the university, henceforth renamed Academy of Arts & Design, Tsinghua University (Qinghua Daxue Meishu Xueyuan). The museum’s officially stated incentive to represent “a world-class art museum with university characteristics”—whose “basic positioning lies in exhibiting artworks of the highest quality, of all historical periods, from China and outside of China, toward a broad audience of teachers and students as well as the society at large”—is further revealed through rigorous exhibition planning in form of large-scale collaborations with both national and international museums, collections, and other academic and cultural institutions.

Since its opening, a total of over fifty exhibitions projects realized in TAM’s various permanent, temporary, and special display halls have showcased collection pieces, both museum-own and on loan, from around the world, including pre-modern-, modern- and contemporary-period artworks and artifacts from East Asia, Central Asia, Europe, and North America[8]. The diversity of simultaneously undertaken exhibition formats and their respectively showcased objects is also manifest in terms of heterogeneous, oftentimes contrasting narrated (art) histories that come to the fore. While some lay stronger emphases on global perspectives and cross-cultural dynamics in the production and consumption of art, others espouse Sinocentric viewpoints in affirmation of a Han-Chinese rhetoric of art and culture[9].

TAM’s Collection and Display of Chinese Calligraphy

Among the ca. 14,000 objects counted in the collections of TAM, one tenth of ca. 1,400 works belongs to the calligraphy-and-painting category (shuhua), denoting works executed in the traditional media of Chinese brush-and-ink on paper or silk. Within this category, the number of “purely” calligraphic works (that is, those not bearing classical pictorial elements) constitute around one quarter, counting a total of ca. 330 works by ca. 150 calligraphers[10], executed in script types of semi-cursive (xing), cursive (cao), seal (zhuan), clerical (li), and standard (kai) script, on material formats of hanging scrolls, hanging scroll pairs, scroll sets, horizontal scrolls, fan leaves, and albums[11]. The textual content of their respective calligraphic inscriptions includes poems, auspicious phrases, and self-composed essays as well as citations of literary texts, philosophical treatises, historical documents, and political quotes. In terms of production period, though the quantitatively rich calligraphy collection encompasses an impressive time span of over half a millennium[12], a closer look at the chronological timeline reveals that the spanned periods are not represented in equal manner. The most strongly represented periods are those of the mid- to late Qing and early Republican periods; the least represented those preceding the mid-Ming, the mid- to late Republican period, and the People’s Republic including both the Mao and Post-Mao periods through to the present[13].

As for TAM’s activities of exhibiting and publishing its calligraphy collection since opening in 2016, the permanently installed calligraphy-and-painting gallery at TAM displays sixteen calligraphy works in various formats: a concise selection of prestigious Chinese calligraphers, among them, Dong Qichang (1555–1636), Chen Jiru (1558–1639), Huang Yi (1744–1802), Qian Dian (1744–1806), Yi Bingshou (1754–1815), Chen Hongshou (1768–1822), Xu Gu (1824–1896), and Wu Changshuo (1844–1927); the selection of whom is grounded in their “representative quality”, as expounded by TAM’s Executive Director Du Pengfei in an interview undertaken by the author[14]. Their works are mingled together with a larger selection of ca. seventy paintings, presented chronologically under the themes Ming Dynasty Calligraphy and Painting (Mingdai shuhua), and Qing Dynasty Calligraphy and Painting (Qingdai shuhua). This permanent display, which was curated upon invitation by Zhang Gan, Deputy Dean and Professor of the Academy of Arts & Design, Tsinghua University, is conceived as part of the exhibition series Tsinghua Treasures: The Art of Chinese Ink and Brush[15]. Aside from this, several single calligraphy works have been sporadically displayed in temporary and special exhibitions or published in accompanying catalogues as well as individual features in TAM’s periodical; their allover number, however, is scant[16]. Currently still undergoing its first-time systematic inventory, the vast majority of the ca. 330 works has so far not been presented to the public in the form of a comprehensive exhibition, or an exhibition devoted specifically to the matter of Chinese calligraphy[17].

As acknowledged by Du Pengfei, while TAM’s collection of contemporary calligraphy dating from after 1949 indeed showed an evident lack, conceding that as of now, this area of TAM’s holdings “can basically be considered an empty space”[18], he explained that this was largely due to the collection’s particular history as being an incorporation from the former CAAD; for the time being making it difficult to undertake any large structural adjustments. Du also made the point that TAM’s extant holdings of post-1949 works could not be considered in terms of “representative Chinese calligraphy art”, due to fact that they did not stem from highly achieved calligraphers, but to the large part from Tsinghua’s art school professors. Though active as artists, these professors are primarily known within the field of painting, including representatives such as Zhang Ding (1917–2010), Yuan Yunfu (1933–2017), and Du Dakai (born 1943). He also stated that while TAM’s planned, systemized supplementation of contemporary calligraphy artworks is certainly wished for, the issue of how to build a representative collection henceforth poses a big challenge. At any rate, Du concluded: “One should go step by step… A museum is not built in one day. First in order stands the planning of calligraphy exhibitions of academic significance, through which the drive to pursue further collection and research activities will gain momentum continuously, thereby achieving success”[19].

Following from this information, the present reader may wonder: why then, lay special focus on this “non-representative” portion of TAM’s calligraphy collection—the collection of contemporary calligraphy, which “can basically be considered an empty space”—as the article at hand proposes to do? Indeed, the answer is that it is precisely this, its (purported) “non-representational” quality, which is of interest. For the very reason that it constitutes a seemingly random, insignificant, and incomplete part of the collection, it gives rise to relevant questions: how and why, then, did these works find entry into the collection? While the selection of the sixteen works showcased in TAM’s permanent exhibition hall appear to legitimate their presence based on their “representative” quality, the batch of twenty-two contemporary works, by contrast, is more difficult to place and validate in terms of art historical status and significance. Given the fact that they bear their physical presence in the collection, how to read the texts they embody and (re)present?

Chinese Contemporary Calligraphy at TAM: “Basically an Empty Space”?

Following Executive Director Du’s description of TAM’s extant contemporary-period calligraphy collection as constituting “basically […] an empty space”, we are curious to take a closer look at its specific composition. Since its overall corpus comprises a manageable number of pieces, may space here allow for a concise overview and introduction, upon which a discussion of select aspects shall serve to illuminate our understanding of the works and their respective significance in the context of the collection in question.

TAM’s twenty-two contemporary-period works that can be dated post-1949 stem from the hands of thirteen different calligraphers, namely[20]: Chen Shuliang (1901–1991 [5]), Wu Lao (1916–2009 [1]), Zhang Ding (1917–2010 [4]), Shang Aisong (1918–2006 [1]), Tao Rurang (born 1931 [1]), Yuan Yunfu (1933-2017 [1]), Hou Dechang (born 1934 [2]), Kita Kazuaki (born 1934 [2]), Zhuang Shouhong (born 1938 [1]), Du Dakai (born 1943 [1]), Li Yan (born 1943 [1]), Chen Boyang (born 1970 [1]), and Ujiie Suikō (born 2^nd h. 20^th c. [1]). All of the collection pieces bear a classical single hanging scroll format and are executed in the traditional media of brush-and-ink on paper. The majority bears a standard size of around 135 x 35 cm. All works carry artist signatures (luokuan), datings, and artist seals that make it possible to allocate them historically in the contemporary era post-1949. While fifteen works, the larger majority, date from the post-Mao period, two works date from the Mao period (one work of Ujiie Suikō, and one of Chen Shuliang; both produced in 1965). Five works (two further works of Chen Shuliang; two of Kita Kazuaki; and one of Chen Boyang) do not carry a dating, yet are to be related to the post-1949 era on logical grounds of birth dates, seals, and style.

The twenty-two pieces can further be differentiated formally, according to script type[21]: semi-cursive (10); seal (4); cursive (3); clerical (2); cursive-seal (2); and abstract (not text-/script-based) (1); and moreover, semantically, according to textual content: citations of quotes and texts by Mao Zedong (10); citations of well-known poems (7); citations of auspicious phrases and sayings (3); essayistic compositions (1); and abstract (not text-/script-based) compositions (1).

With regard to the function of the works, as can be gathered from their respectively inscribed luokuan—i.e. the artist’s signature, generally including a specific dedication with reference to time, place, and occasion of writing the piece—fifteen works are inscribed, respectively, with dedicatory inscriptions towards the former CAAD, and, notably, signed with the same production dates[22]: these pieces were written on the alternative occasions of the twenty-fifth anniversary of CAAD’s founding in 1981 (3); the birth centenary of Mao Zedong in 1993 (6); and the merging of CAAD into Tsinghua University in 1999 (3). Different from TAM’s collection of Ming, Qing, and Republican-period calligraphies (among which the large part carries dedications to specific individuals, mostly unidentified; presumably gift recipients, donors, friends, clients), the post-1949 contemporary-period works are either dedicated to CAAD, or without any explicit dedication, such that it can be concluded they were made and officially presented as gifts towards the art school; later to find entry into the museum collection. To be sure, form and function of these fifteen works must be read in their very meaning as presented gifts, official tokens of sorts, recursively acknowledging, and therein legitimizing, the status and relationship between individual and institution. As will be illuminated, the written texts they respectively carry further cement this status and relationship.

Indeed, seventeen of the twenty-two above-counted pieces stem from a total of ten individuals who serve or served as professors of art and art history at the CAAD, now The Academy of Art & Design, Tsinghua University: Chen Shuliang, Wu Lao, Zhang Ding, Shang Aisong, Tao Rurang, Yuan Yunfu, Hou Dechang, Zhuang Shouhong, Du Dakai, and Li Yan. It should be noted that while next to their active engagement as academic faculty these individuals are all known (in part, even more so) as themselves practicing artists, only the first-named Chen Shuliang can be considered a calligrapher of relatively established renown[23]. The others, moreover, represent artists of varying renown and influence working primarily within the fields of ink painting and oil painting (as already pointed out by TAM’s Executive Director in the above interview context); for whose works (and, in part, curatorial activities) the halls of TAM have moreover served as an ongoing exhibition platform since its opening[24].

The overall traditional—that is, typical, conventional, formalized—application of calligraphic practice that can be registered in regard of the above-listed aspects of the chosen writing materials, script types, and text genres (and, for that matter, also the recognizable brush styles—albeit these cannot find deeper discussion here), testify to the coherence with classical standards of calligraphy discourse in the Chinese tradition[25]. Though several works, in particular those executed in seal-script types, aptly reflect some of the modernist trends current during the initial decades of the post-Mao period (ca. mid-1970’s to mid-1990’s) aimed at breaking the mould of traditional Chinese calligraphy discourse, the overall majority of TAM’s collected contemporary-period works pertain to the concurrently prevalent classicist trends aimed at preserving and substantiating the conservative canonical tradition, i.e. the normative history of Chinese calligraphy discourse[26]. With the two latest dated calligraphy works in TAM’s entire calligraphy collection being ones of Zhang Ding and Wu Lao, both dated 1999, it may be registered that TAM’s collection activities do not evidence any new acquisitions since that time. TAM’s corpus of contemporary-period calligraphy moreover reflects, in aspects, the dimensions of Chinese calligraphy discourse in Mainland China prior to the year 2000.

Furthermore, among this corpus, four pieces stem from what can be considered the underrepresented margins of this discourse: the margins represented by female practitioners, and the margins represented by non-Chinese practitioners. These four, all entering into the former CAAD collection as gifts, were likely produced and presented to the art school on official occasions: one semi-cursive-script calligraphy dated 1993 of Zhuang Shouhong, a female professor-artist of the Tsinghua art academy; one semi-cursive-script calligraphy dated 1965 of Japanese-born female calligrapher Ujiie Suikō; and two undated works of Japanese-born Kita Kazuaki, one inscribed with cursive-script calligraphy, and one with abstract (non-script-based) calligraphy. The detailed discussion of these works is subject of another study, yet they receive particular mentioning here on grounds of their very marginality: in their marginal status among TAM’s contemporary-period calligraphy collection, thereby pointing towards TAM’s evident structural lacks and collection desiderata; as well as in their marginal status among Chinese calligraphy discourse in present-day Mainland China at large[27].

Though perhaps only of minor significance, it appears nevertheless noteworthy that the four above-addressed works seem branded, both materially and immaterially, as “other ones” among TAM’s collection: the labels seen on the respective backsides of the scrolls, affixed for inventory purposes, as well as the extant museum records, are annotated with the additional remarks “female” (nü), and “Japanese” (ri)[28]. They therein reveal an apparent desire or necessity to disambiguate these pieces according to categories of gender, and nationality, for whatever reasons. At the same time, with regard to future researches on and displays of TAM’s calligraphy collection, it is useful that these works have been marked accordingly, making it possible to identify them in their peripherality. They entice us to ponder the meaning of their rarity as few single works that constitute, statistically, just over 1 % among the entire calligraphy collection at TAM; only less than one fifth of TAM’s collected contemporary-period calligraphy; and no more than two females among the total of around 150 calligraphers represented at TAM.

“Proper Men Shed Blood, Not Tears”: TAM’s Repository of Calligraphy by Chen Shuliang

Following from this general panoramic overview, I would like to zoom in closer and lay focus on a particular group of calligraphy works, inasmuch as they—like the four just-referenced ones standing at the peripheries of the discursive field—indicate certain deviations from the allover corpus of calligraphic forms found among TAM’s contemporary-period repository. The tangible perspectives provided through this small yet extant handful of works—indeed likely to be overseen or dismissed among the vast corpus housed at TAM—can achieve to refract out viewing prism carved out thus far: the works of Chen Shuliang, who among all of the contemporary period is represented with the highest number of works in TAM’s collection.

As noted, Chen differs from the other above-named professor-artists as a comparably established calligraphy artist—which is, in part, surely due to the various notably high-ranking positions he fulfilled throughout his lifetime[29]. As can be gathered through Chen’s published oeuvre, the works now stored in the TAM collection are considerable as historical artifacts of special value, also inasmuch as they stem from an otherwise less-represented period of Chen’s work[30]. While two works are undated, the other three are signed with dates, namely: the years 1965, 1976, and 1980. They therein span a crucial fifteen-year-period of uttermost social, political, and artistic unrest and transition in twentieth-century Mainland China. Indeed, the production dates of the former two works—one, more specifically, dated December 1965, and the other, November 1976—are separated, more or less accurately, by the decade of the Cultural Revolution (1966–76). The 1965 work (fig. 2) is inscribed with a citation from Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book (Mao Zhuxi Yulu) that aggressively expresses anti-American threats and espouses China’s political prowess[31]. Executed in a fervent wild-cursive (kuangcao) semi-cursive script, its calligraphic brush strokes—invariably reminiscent of the idiosyncratic brush style propagated by Chairman Mao himself[32]—appear to momentously fire the revolutionary belligerence of the text they carry.

To be sure, I shall not undertake any in-depth art historical analysis, i.e. of form, style, and aesthetics (which is what I would normally resort to do as an art historian specialized on Chinese calligraphy), but only a rudimentary one. Moreover to be carved out given the context and scope of the present article is the material and immaterial value of works like these as historical artifacts and documents: here, specifically, readable as instances marking the given decade’s eve and aftermath—physically, intellectually, and emotionally; and, furthermore, inasmuch as in Mainland China, up to this day, the material and immaterial historicity of the Cultural Revolution period systematically remains to be jinqu, restricted “no-go area”, whose historical documentation is quasi omniabsent—even (or rather, all the more so?) at Mainland China’s most prestigious university, Tsinghua[33].

Juxtaposing Chen’s 1965 work with that of 1976 (fig. 3), though rendered in the same materials and on a paper sheet of nearly identical dimensions, and likewise bearing a quote of Mao, here in form of “Let a hundred flowers bloom, weed through the old to bring forth the new”[34],the calligraphic brush strokes now imbue their written text with new, different meaning. We read them through the eyes and hands of someone who is looking freshly upon, indeed, just gravely awakening from, the disastrous decade passed: a decade that would go down in history as the “Ten Years of Great Chaos” (Shi nian da luan); the generation of “failures” and “losers” (shibaizhe); furthermore, a chapter of China’s most recent history that would become silenced by means of a decreed amnesia, waiting to sit itself out and pass over into infinite collective cultural oblivion.

While at the time of their dissemination in the 1950’s, Mao’s optimistic words had embodied revolutionary ideas of an “old” and “new” Chinese society, now in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution, its seemingly outdated text can be read but implosively: as targeted against an altered, self-alienated form of “old” society; moreover, an unknown form of “new” society, yet to be discovered; the hope for “a hundred flowers to bloom” now resounding all the more acutely. Contemplating Chen’s 1976 work and its momentous visual body of imposing large-sized written characters, they reveal nothing of the horror seen and lived. Their physical, composed standing presence are statement enough. The words they transport are inscribed with re-inscribed meaning, leaving us to wonder and imagine what kind of transformation may have taken place within the calligrapher himself, between then and now.

Further juxtaposing the above two with the third of Chen’s dated works collected at TAM, a semi-cursive-script calligraphy dated December 1980 (fig. 4), carrying the poem “Ascending Stork Tower” (Deng Guanque lou) of the Tang poet Wang Zhihuan (688–742), we find that it is, again, executed in the same materials, on a paper sheet of the same size. However, viewing the shape and structure of the individual written characters as well as the piece as a whole, an altered mode of brush movement and body language becomes tangible. Different from the steady and balanced, overall well-aligned and neat compositions of the afore-discussed two pieces, the written characters in this 1980 work tilt and tumble erratically as they work their way down three vertical columns of written text and across the paper plane. The brush strokes extending this way and that with vigor and speed, creating exaggerated proportions even bordering on the deformed, they convey the calligrapher’s dynamic mind-body condition, which appears to be fueled by and further fueling an energy of agitated deeper unrest. Is the calligrapher now, again half a decade on, exposing himself and thus allowing us a glimpse into his inner world; one that, in the meantime, may have left its paralyzed state of traumatic shock—and entered into an expressive state of active emotions, turmoiled by images, memories, thoughts and questions[35]?

Of course, we can’t know. However, considering the above artifacts in their traditional meaning, as calligraphic artworks, we can try to read the narrative lines and traces left by the calligrapher more comprehensively. In studying Chen’s three pieces, we are enticed to take a closer look at the details—the easily and often overseen, idiomatic “fine print” of these artworks’ texts. Reading the artist’s luokuan, “Written by Shuliang, December 1965” and “Written by Shuliang, November 1976” in the earlier two pieces, respectively “December of gengshen, Shuliang, age 78 [sui]” in the 1980 piece, the former two signatures appear uniform: balanced and tight, free-flowing and invigorated. Written with the casual automatism of a frequently drawn sequence of brush movements, they are coherent with the signatures typically found on Chen’s calligraphies[36]. The work of 1980, interestingly, reveals a somewhat different rendering of the two characters 叔亮 (Shuliang) of the artist’s name: wiry and curdled, again bordering on the deformed and ugly as does the main inscription of this piece, the movement of the brush seems restrained, even handicapped. Though this manifestation of the hand could be due to progressing age and impaired motoric skills on part of the scribe, the overall confident and versatile handling of brush-and-ink conveyed through the work’s main inscription strongly belie any possibility of anatomical weakness. We are, moreover, inclined to read this artwork in its entirety, as an expression of the scribe’s sound technical ability, yet whose command may be riddled with subtle moments of internal discord and upheaval[37].

Furthermore, deciphering the seals that Chen chose to impress on the three works can offer another potential glimpse into the various changing states of his person and identity between the tumultuous years of 1965 to 1980—indeed, all the more given the Chinese belief that a seal carries, in itself, “the world in miniature”[38]. While all three works are consistently impressed with formal name seals (mingzhang) below the artist’s signature—“Seal of Shuliang” (Shuliang zhi yin) in the 1965 piece; and “Seal of Shuliang” (Shuliang zhi yin) and “Chen Clan of Huangyan”[39] (Huangyan Chen shi) in both the 1976 and 1980 pieces—all works are each additionally impressed with a different leisure seal (xianzhang) of the artist in the upper right corner of the scroll. Typically inscribed with an alias, a motto, or a philosophical thought, the leisure seal seen in the earliest piece of 1965 carries the pseudonym “Bookworm” (Shu daizi), conveying a humorously self-mocking image of an eager, even naive scholar of sorts as he cowers over books. The leisure seal of the 1976 work, then, is carved with the very words “Let a hundred flowers bloom”, therein reiterating Mao’s phrase to be read in the calligraphic inscription of the work itself, and—given its time-specific production context—suggesting the artist’s emphasis on his hopes for renewal and political spring.

The leisure seal seen in the 1980 work carries a striking inscription. The words, a credo, read: “Zhangfu liu xue, bu liu lei. 长夫流血, 不流泪”. This wording, idiomatically equivalent to the English-language saying “Big boys don’t cry”, is haunted. All the more so when read in the given Chinese historical context, where its message comes downright to the fore. For, the characters incised on the seal read, in their verbatim meaning: “Proper men shed blood, not tears”; a wording violent in all its implications, and beyond question befit. As alienating its main inscription “Let a hundred flowers bloom” feels in the Chinese context of 1976, so does this seal aptly fulfill its function as a “fine print”, both in the figurative and literal sense of the term: “fine print (faIn) n.: the detailed wording of a contract, lease, or the like, often in type smaller than the main body of the document and including restrictions or qualifications that could be considered disadvantageous”[40]. As far as could be gathered by the author, this seal is not found on any other examples of Chen’s published works. Moreover, as is the case with all of Chen’s other leisure seals, its upper-right positioning on the scroll as the calligrapher’s so-called leading seal (yinshou zhang) strongly suggests that it was not someone else’s (e.g. a collector’s), but Chen’s own.

On the note of discussing the various decisions made by the calligrapher when creating a piece, a remark may be made concerning his / her individual choice of the written text. This text, in first instance, functions formally as the vehicle by which to visually transport aesthetic content and meaning through calligraphic brush strokes (the signifier, i.e. the written word as an iconic and symbolic carrier of sense; therein moreover becoming the signified, i.e. the written word as a visual carrier of aesthetic form). At the same time, the written text in its semantic content should always also be taken into consideration to interpret and comprehend the artwork as a whole, since it was likely chosen by the calligrapher to express and emphasize certain thoughts, conditions, and feelings in a given context of time and place. As noted, the above-listed seventeen works of the professor-artists that were created on various official ceremonial occasions of the art academy aptly illustrate this very relationality between form, function, and context, applicable to the production of any given calligraphic work in China’s history; without exception.

And so, even though the exact circumstances surrounding Chen Shuliang’s discussed pieces of 1965, 1976, and 1980 remain obscure, their written texts can nevertheless be interpreted, respectively, as conveying an individual viewpoint; a time-and-space-specific perspective on things, and on one’s being-in-the-world. While the text of the pre-Cultural Revolution example appears to manifest the aggressively optimistic outlook of an art educator at the zenith of Mao China’s revolutionary spirit, the somewhat unhomely and displaced context of the post-Cultural Revolution example seems to gape at us like a freshly open wound, tangible in all its acuteness, sobriety, vulnerability. The poetic verses, then, which were chosen as the formal vehicle to execute the 1980 piece half a decade later, appear to reveal the yearning of a person who seeks to rise above and beyond things, and find solace at some higher level of the world; whose visceral conflict and struggle, moreover, are displayed through the turmoiled shapes of the written words[41]. Indeed, the inscribed Tang-dynasty poem “Ascending Stork Tower” reads: “To the furthest mountain the bright sun shines, to the distant sea the Yellow River flows; in order to see one thousand miles, ascend to a higher level”[42].

The Fine Print: Reading Chinese Calligraphy and Its Omnipresent and Omniabsent Conditions

Whether or not we choose to read TAM’s collection of Chen Shuliang’s calligraphy as capable of conveying the calligrapher’s artistic transformation over time is not of primary concern here. Of importance is the fact that Chen’s works remain today and bear their existence as artifacts to be further studied and contextualized through art history and museum display; all the more so since they valuably fill a gap in our knowledge of a recent time-and-space-specific past—visually, materially, intellectually, (art) historiographically. They present crucial remnants in our attempt at both piecing together fragments, microcosmically, of one person’s individual biography, and, macrocosmically, of history in a broader sense. This is pointed out in the context of Chen Shuliang, inasmuch as the two additional, here not further discussed works housed at TAM are undated pieces, thus posing some problems as evidential material for (art) historical analysis and assessment. However, based on aspects evident, including Chen’s brush style, his luokuan, seals, and choices of text; and equipped with the well-preserved references of the three dated works at TAM, we are able to establish sound assumptions, such as, that the two undated calligraphies stem from the same creative period as the 1965 example. Given the precarity of (art) historical artifacts and documents of that time, as well as the precarity of academic research conducted on artifacts and documents of that time, TAM’s repository of Chen Shuliang’s five calligraphies should be considered a fortunate batch that deserves and hopes for deeper exploration[43].

Notable on the side, yet indeed not “peripheral” enough to be moved properly to the footnotes, and perhaps a further form of fine print adhering to the artwork in question (as with the above examples of calligraphy of female, respectively, non-Chinese representatives): as it happens, the label that was affixed, for inventory purposes, to the backside of Chen’s 1980 hanging scroll erroneously designates the scroll title as “Chen Shuliang’s calligraphy of ‘Ascending Stork Tower by Wang Wei’ ” (Chen Shuliang shu Wang Wang Wei “Deng Guanque lou”), instead of “[…] by Wang Zhihuan”. Though possibly only an accidental error due to a moment of inattentiveness, this minor mishap may nevertheless be read as a symptomatic manifestation of the general cultural wind of amnesia that had swept across the Mainland by the time the piece had been acquired by the former CAAD (logically, in, or after 1980); leaving behind, perhaps, only the traces of the most prominent of canonical names, including that of the great towering Tang poet Wang Wei (699–759).

In any case, to round off this initial, surely not sufficiently deep, yet for the moment effectively engaging dive into TAM’s repository of Chen Shuliang’s works, a cross-reference should finally be made to the one piece of Yuan Yunfu (fig. 5), likewise extant among TAM’s collected twenty-two contemporary-period works, even if without detailed discussion. Dated 1993, the former CAAD art professor Yuan Yuanfu produced this hanging-scroll semi-cursive calligraphy for the academy on the afore-noted celebratory occasion of Mao’s birthday anniversary. The main inscription reads Mao’s famous expression: “Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought contend”[44]; the artist’s luokuan reads: “In commemoration of Chairman Mao’s centennial birthday anniversary. Written by Yuan Yunfu”[45]; impressed below the artist’s signature is the name seal “Yunfu”. Read on the basis of these elements, we see how the piece perfectly fulfills pedagogical, ideological functions of the “new literati” (xin wenren) professor-artist role model, whose calligraphic text transports the scholarly spirit of a Chinese intellectual and educator, while expressing reverence towards Chairman Mao.

In connection with the discussed works of Chen Shuliang, we are, however, called upon to add some further layers into our reading, and embed Yuan’s work more accurately: into the contexts of its position and presence among the collection at TAM, formerly housed in the collections of CAAD. One look at the structural composition, the brush style, and, not least, the choice of text, and it is evident that this calligraphy of Yuan is based on Chen Shuliang’s 1976 piece. Interestingly, the second line of Yuan’s inscribed text, reading “Let a hundred schools of thought contend”, replaces Chen’s utilized line, “Weed through the old to bring forth the new”. This, however, should not merely be understood as Yuan’s wish to set himself apart from Chen and lend his own work an individual note. Yuan’s deviation indicates a willful response to, and active continuation of Chen’s inscription; establishing a “direct rapport”[46] between himself and his model. Historically, Mao’s initial wording “Let a hundred flowers bloom, weed through the old to bring forth the new”, stated in a letter in 1951, laid the terminological and ideological ground for the later official party slogan “Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought contend”, chosen in 1956 to espouse the Hundred Flowers Campaign, and promote artistic flourishing and scientific progress in reaction to demoralized intellectuals. Yuan’s inscription, then, must be read, for one, as the framing of its text into an appropriate setting and towards a perhaps more conformable environment; more agreeable with Yuan’s contemporaneous times of the early to mid-1990’s, which indeed saw a powerful surge of new schools of thought entering into the increasingly internationalized and intellectualized arena of the Post-Mao art world[47]. Importantly, in addition, Yuan’s inscription indicates a responsive form of communication with Chen, creating a dialogical connection to Chen’s piece of 1976—in terms of form, textual content, and style, as well as historically, and, not least, personally. In any case, the multiple layers of (meta)text found in Yuan’s piece—comprising the formal academy-based occasion of its production context; the party-true citation of Maoist ideology in its inscription; the “filial” dedication towards Mao Zedong in Yuan’s luokuan—they are permeated by and intertwined with the text layers of Chen Shuliang’s piece, from which Yuan Yuanfu’s evidently draws, including Yuan’s deliberate alteration of the quoted lines.

“To read the fine print” of a calligraphy work, this means: to become attuned to its omnipresent and omniabsent conditions; moreover, attuned, much in the sense of the originary Chinese term ting 聽, denoting the actions of “hearing” and “listening” as virtuous acts, whose perceptive range indicates not only the sensual capacities of the human ear (er 耳), but, moreover, mind-awareness of the human heart (xin 心). “To read the fine print” of a calligraphy work, this means: to hear and listen to, as perceptively and comprehensively as one can, its multitude of texts both tangible and intangible—black-on-white, frontside and back; “white-on-black”, and in-between; between lines and brush strokes written and seen. Just like the footnotes and endnotes, appendices and addendums, and all that can be read along and through the scripts of an academic paper, this fine print, or “small print” of sorts—“often in type smaller than the main body of the document and including restrictions or qualifications that could be considered disadvantageous”—though at times tedious and less user-friendly to absorb and digest, may prove all the more worthwhile towards one’s interest and patience.

After having proceeded in this article from the large to the small, both methodically and physically—that is: from the general introduction of TAM, to the introduction of TAM’s calligraphy collection; to an overview of this collection’s contemporary-period fraction; to a focused discussion of the batch of works by Chen Shuliang among this fraction; and to a closer reading of these works’ decipherable fine prints, we may now open our field of vision and perspective anew—and connect from the “small prints”, back again, to the “large prints”: as tangible in the momentous statement cited at the very outset of this article, that is, the omnipresent text found on the introductory plate hanging in the Ruins of Yin Museum, on display for all visitors to clearly read upon entering: “Of the Four Great Ancient Civilizations of the world, only the Chinese civilization had no rupture through its history”[48].

Standing at this UNESCO World Heritage Site in Anyang, Henan—the region considered the “Cradle of Chinese Civilization” (Zhongguo wenming de yaolan)—and reading these words, we are enticed to ask: how, in fact, is a rupture defined? How, continuity? How must we adjust our perception and comprehension of these notions in the Chinese context? Does the historicity of the Cultural Revolution, for example, attest to a rupture—or rather, a continuity—within the Chinese world, its culture and society, its collective identity, (self)awareness? How, then, does the discovery of a single seal, reading the words “Proper men shed blood, not tears”: stamped clearly, quasi “black-on-white”, for all eyes to see, yet stored away from public view, inform and transform our understanding? How, further, the observation of a purposefully altered calligraphy inscription that draws from an earlier model—written clearly, black-on-white, for all eyes to read, yet somehow obscured and blurred through its official guise as a product of institutionalized display?

Far from believing (or, for that matter, even wanting) to be able to provide definite answers, my aim with this article is, moreover, to open up these critical questions in general, and ponder their inquiry towards the histories seen and unseen, told and untold; as viewed from the perspective of TAM, and its institutional embeddedness at Tsinghua University; as an institution situated between what this article entitles, metaphorically, TAM’s Ivory Towers and Unwritten Pages. Looking through the prism of the multiple perspectives carved out in the above, in the following, I formulate a more essay-type, critical reflection.

Omnipresences and Omniabsences 2019: China’s Year of Anniversaries, Year of Adversaries

Officially promoted anniversaries function as a mechanism to maintain and perpetuate extant histories; as well as to instate and incorporate new histories as parts of larger narratives that permeate various administrative levels and institutional forms within the political, cultural, and educational spheres. Their celebration efficaciously feeds the construction of a collective identity and culture of remembrance. For a country in which the celebration of officially promulgated anniversaries marking and commemorating historical events carries stronger significance than ever, 2019, China’s “Big Year for Anniversaries”, is shaped by and deeper shaping cultural-national identity in the Chinese collective (sub-)consciousness.

Seen from the microcosmic perspective of the nation-state, 2019 prominently marks the seventieth anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China as well as the centennial anniversary of China’s 1919 May Fourth Movement. On the subversive level, it also marks the thirtieth year since the student-led protest movement culminating in the Tiananmen Massacre of June 4, 1989, whose name, texts, and images remain subaltern, censored domain in the PRC up to this day, and take on, moreover, deictic status as a discourse of the non-worded, non-visualized adversary. 2019, this year affords us the crucial moment to reflect upon China’s modern history, omnipresent and omniabsent alike, in all its (in)tangibility. Indeed, these lines I write from my Beijing workplace on-campus while I simultaneously try to follow the news—transmitted with interruptions, in fragments, via the chronically half-connected half-disconnected in-between state of the VPN on my cell phone that allows me uncensored access to news agencies’ websites based outside the PRC, beyond China’s Great Firewall: news on Hong Kong’s resistance as it finds unprecedented violence today, on July 1, 2019, the twenty-second “anniversary” of Hong Kong’s so-called “Return to China” that took place on July 1, 1997, in face of the extradition law that may soon pass and inevitably result in the systematic limitation and violation of the freedom of thought and action for Hongkongers henceforth[49].

Seen from my microcosmic perspective of a researcher currently based at the collections department of TAM, the year 2019 is furthermore marked by several particular occasions on campus of Tsinghua University: on a more auspicious note, perhaps, the twentieth anniversary of the merging of CAAD into Tsinghua University in 1999, thereby establishing Tsinghua’s Academy of Arts & Design, and laying the initial conceptual cornerstone for the founding of the university museum discussed. To be sure, officially promoted anniversaries such as the three academy-related occasions in 1981, 1993, and 1999, which were addressed above as providing respective productive contexts for the large part of contemporary-period calligraphy works now housed at TAM, efficaciously contribute, whether intentionally or not, to the constitution of a collective self-image and outer face, both in the immaterial sense of mind and memory, and the material sense of physical body and corporeal identity.

To be emphasized here again, this majority of contemporary-period calligraphy stems from new-generation representatives of Tsinghua faculty members; art professors, themselves practicing artists working in the traditional media of Chinese brush-and-ink, whose artwork has in part been specially displayed and promoted through the museum, and whose professorial activities, in some cases, have extended into the field of curating since the museum’s opening. Emerging through TAM’s institutional framework and, in this sense, recursively effective structure, as actors and agents fulfilling a multiple professor-artist-curator function of sorts, they aptly, critically, illustrate the complex of potentials and challenges faced by TAM’s model in its mission “to create a world-class art museum with university characteristics”. The current status quo of TAM’s repository of contemporary-period calligraphy as “unrepresentative” (according to Executive Director Du Pengfei) not only testifies to the collection desiderata that need to be filled—all the more so in light of TAM’s contemporary self-positioning as a “world-class art museum”. It further indicates that the actual conception and realization of future special exhibitions focused on the contemporary period poses inherent difficulties desiring solution. In any case, it shall be followed with some interest whether, and if so, what kind of new calligraphy acquisitions may find entry into the TAM collection in the upcoming context of the art academy’s twentieth anniversary, on November 20, 2019—an occasion surely deemed important enough to be officially celebrated and brought to attention in the public eye on campus.

This I point out inasmuch as the present year counts at least two more notable anniversaries which are rooted at Tsinghua University and of interest with regard to TAM’s identity construction—albeit on a much more solemn note of celebration. For one, 2019 marks the fiftieth year since Chen Yinke’s misfortunate passing away during the Cultural Revolution on October 7, 1969; and further, the ninetieth year since Wang Guowei’s commemorative stele (Wang Guowei jinian bei), carrying an encomium written by Chen Yinke for Wang, was erected in the Tsinghua Garden on June 3, 1929, two years after Wang committed suicide, on June 3, 1927[50]. Inscribed with the celebrated line “An independent spirit, an unfettered mind”[51], the stele stands, physically, spiritually, ideologically, as a heart symbol of Tsinghua University[52].

While Chen and Wang have been heroically embodied into the collective mind as “Tsinghua’s Two Great Historians” as well as two of “Tsinghua’s Four Great Tutors of Chinese Learning” (as noted, now adorning the outside façade of TAM in form of bronze statues), their ghosts today are also tangible as less harmonized spirits of “The Two Scholars Who Haunt Tsinghua University”[53]. Held high as the intellectual fathers of both Tsinghua University and TAM, the above-addressed anniversaries occurring this year in the context of their names will indeed pass largely unseen. Though the ninetieth anniversary of Chen’s passing away on October 7 has not arrived yet, here too, it is foreseeable that it will not be officially commemorated. The fiftieth anniversary of erecting the Wang Guowei stele on June 3, in any case, wasn’t—that is to say, not in the common sense, and certainly in no way appropriate to the occasion. Rather the case, ironically, the stele received some involuntary public attention (among attuned contemporaries) several weeks prior to its duly anniversary, when Tsinghua University formally celebrated the 108^th year of its founding in 1911, on April 27–28, 2019. Just in time for the festivities surrounding this occasion, the garden area where the stele stands was closed off on April 25 with a surrounding metal barrier (fig. 6), onto which a sheet of office paper had been meagerly taped stating, “Construction in progress, thank you for your understanding for the inconvenience caused”, blocking any potential visitors from paying their respects at the stele during this time; a standing tradition among some Tsinghua scholars. Ironically, hanging below the official statement, a further sheet had been attached to the barrier, reading (in slightly bolder typeface): “An independent spirit, an unfettered mind”, offering a makeshift replacement of the stele’s essential message, now degraded to a punchline. Sure enough, the “construction work” ended just in time with the conclusion of the university’s anniversary festivities: by April 30, the garden area with the stele was accessible again[54].

As it were, among the notable visitors who had come to seek out the stele during these days was Xu Zhangrun (b. 1962), whose name appears before your eyes at this moment in this journal, yet may, by now, have vanished entirely from the open book shelves inside the People’s Republic of China. The suspension of this eminent Tsinghua University law professor in March 2019[55], on grounds of his critical publications targeting Xi Jinping as the nation’s party-state-army leader, aroused significant resistance among the broader national and international scholarly community, accusing Tsinghua’s unmoral actions as being “at odds with the university’s motto of ‘Self-Discipline and Social Commitment[56]’ ”[57], and enticing a nationwide and international petition to the president of Tsinghua University demanding to reinstate Xu[58]. The outspokenly pompous annual celebration of Tsinghua’s establishment end of April closely coincides with the annual May Fourth anniversary, commemorated in the PRC as the National Youth Day (Wusi qingnian jie); a “time to celebrate the enthusiasm and independent spirit of youth”[59]; and yet, likewise one that only last year had been addressed by sinologist and China Heritage editor Geremie Barmé in its significance as “entwined with the distorting history of the Communist Party”[60], concluding that “[e]very year since the student-led protest movement of 1989, the weeks leading up to 4 May have been a time of heightened political anxiety”[61].

Despite a certain immaculate academic reputation enjoyed by Tsinghua University, the institution is likewise historically connoted with the somewhat adversary ivory tower image of exclusive scholarly elitism. This image harks back to its founding decades and the intellectual elites that formed in light of China’s New Culture and May Fourth Movements, generally considered promoters of conservative views, and by comparison less radical than the representatives associated with neighboring Peking University. Noteworthy along these lines is a commemorative exhibition that was held for Wang Guowei at TAM from December 30, 2017, to May 4, 2018, shortly upon TAM’s opening, inasmuch as it carries symbolic and representative significance for the public face of this university museum as it revealed itself to the world. Chiefly curated by TAM’s above-introduced Executive Director Du Pengfei, the exhibition title, Alone in the High Tower: Commemorative Exhibition of Wang Guowei’s 140^th Anniversary of Birth (Du shang gaolou: Wang Guowei danchen 140 zhounian jinian zhan), transported a message of pensive, even ambivalent nature. Whether intentionally or not, it invoked the very ivory tower image adhering to Wang’s alma mater. In any case, it was appropriately chosen: given the mournful tragedy of Wang’s life ending in suicide, and Wang’s identity as a scholar who had devoted his life to scholarly learning—and, likewise, his studies to a lifetime in solitude.

What Barmé has described as a “heightened political anxiety” indeed became tangible this year inside the campus gates of Tsinghua University (among the attuned) in form of a sudden gust of icy wind that swept across the Tsinghua Garden while it was in full bloom of cherry blossoms—at least two times. While the first gust swept a respected law professor of considerable impact, known for his effective academic dissemination of free thought, away from the seat of his on-campus workplace, a second gust that came to ward off the visitors of Wang Guowei’s stele, including the revisiting law professor, only just managed to keep them away.

To conclude, after zooming in into the depths of TAM’s repositories and having undertaken a focused investigation of select collection pieces, in this final, more essayistic part of the present contribution, my aim lay in drawing, again, a larger picture of sorts, in critical review and reflection of the discussed themes and issues. Addressed here under the title “Omnipresences and Omniabsences 2019: China’s Year of Anniversaries, Year of Adversaries”, it should be emphasized that while the discussion of taboo topics that prevail in Mainland China today may appear self-evident, worn-out, or even redundant to the acquainted western reader “as seen from the outside”, the life reality of “working from the inside” as a scholar based at an institution situated at the very heart of the Mainland-Chinese system provides a different set of premises and conditions upon which this officially censored discussion emerges and is able to take on form and meaning.

As for the question, then, “for whom” this contribution is written, and “why”: in first instance, its text sees itself embedded within the academic field of East Asian art history, specifically, Chinese art history. Speaking from an interdisciplinary perspective, it also sees itself in its intertwinements with related fields, including sinology, history studies, cultural studies, and museum studies. Yet, given the life realities, both of scholars working from “the inside” and “the outside”, and the existentiality of the intellectual capital and scholarly freedom at stake—fully in Wang Guowei’s sense of “an independent spirit, an unfettered mind”—this text moreover seeks to address the humanities and academics at large, in a universal context, beyond disciplinary, cultural, and national boundaries.

By pointing up various areas and levels of extant and non-extant dialogue alike, its incentive and rationale is, indeed, to further, and therein create dialogue: seen, historically, by bringing into context the different generations of scholars represented by Tsinghua including its academic and museal spheres, such as the individuals Wang Guowei and Liang Qichao of the Republican-period; Chen Shuliang and Yuan Yunfu of the (post) Mao-period; or Du Pengfei and Xu Zhangrun of the present day; as well as the contemporary-period generic type of professor-artist-curators thematized in their significance as to the formation of TAM and its collection of Chinese calligraphy. The focal point of TAM here engenders a zone of encounter, inasmuch as all these figures (with the exception, perhaps, of Xu Zhangrun) are in one way or another intrinsically enmeshed with the shape and shaping of this university art museum as it exists today: be it form of the museum agendas conceived by TAM’s directorate; exhibitions curated by professor-artists of Tsinghua’s art academy; original artworks kept in the storage room, signed and sealed by hand; or symbolic bronze statues, adorning the museum façade, primarily serving as a popular background for visitors’ selfies and group photographs.

Essentially, the incentive of “creating dialogue”, as purported in the title of this article, signifies that ongoing dialogue among us, as scholars, engaging with the topics and materials of our commonly shared fields. Indeed, with regard to the present study, many issues are and remain of hazy, indistinct, often contradictory nature, situated somewhere in-between things said and unsaid, seen and unseen; constituting that blurred space designated in this article, “Between Ivory Towers and Unwritten Pages”. The given context of TAM’s case study offers itself to de-blur some of these issues, at least partially, in some respects. To be sure, their scope extends far beyond the walls of the museum and the gates of the university, and yet they are intrinsically cemented by and entrenched with their foundations. Though the present article does not, indeed cannot perform any complete and fully satisfactory handling of these issues, its aim, to provide a view in limited yet targeted manner, may nevertheless suffice to justify and honor its space among the selected contributions of the present special journal issue, and possibly spark further impetus in the scholarly world.

Between Ivory Towers and Unwritten Pages: A Poetic Dialogue

Robber’s Ladder

On the Auspicious Occasion of

We Wish Them Longevity of Ten Thousand Years

In Commemoration of

We Mourn and Remember Their Untimely Deaths

Big Words

Weights of Our Great Ancient Civilizations

Small Words

Imprints of Worlds en miniature

Which Model For Dialogue: —In-Between?

A Real University:

Is-Found-Not-In-Grand-Buildings-But-In-Great-Scholars[62]

We are: Now Housed in The Collection of

How to Write This Page?

…All These… Numbers…

Construction! In Progress!

We are: Written at The Studio-That-Isn’t-A-Studio[63]

Internal Server Error

We Are Trying to Reconnect For You

The Page Cannot Be Found

The Page You Have Requested Cannot Be Opened

Unable To Connect—

We are: Alone in the High Tower

Connection Failed—

Thank-You-for-Your-Understanding-for-The-Inconvenience-Caused

The Connection Was Lost—

This Stele of Stone

This Pillar of Old

What Does It House? Is It Great?

I Can See Its Tip Rise Above the Shields

Right, It Must Be There

Must Be Proper

What Does It Say? I Can’t Quite See—

Hey, You! Yes, You!

Can You Quickly Help Me With A Räuberleiter Here?[64]

I Need to Ascend, Get a Better View…

Creating Academic-Museal Dialogue In-Between Ivory Towers and Unwritten PagesTsinghua University Art Museum and Its Collection of Chinese Contemporary Calligraphy

Abstract

Résumé

Theme and Scope

Aims and Structure

Tsinghua University Art Museum, “A Newborn Palace of Art”

TAM’s Collection and Display of Chinese Calligraphy

Chinese Contemporary Calligraphy at TAM: “Basically an Empty Space”?

“Proper Men Shed Blood, Not Tears”: TAM’s Repository of Calligraphy by Chen Shuliang

The Fine Print: Reading Chinese Calligraphy and Its Omnipresent and Omniabsent Conditions

Omnipresences and Omniabsences 2019: China’s Year of Anniversaries, Year of Adversaries

Between Ivory Towers and Unwritten Pages: A Poetic Dialogue

Notes

Note biographique

List of figures

Abstracts

Abstract

Résumé

Article body

Theme and Scope

Aims and Structure

Tsinghua University Art Museum, “A Newborn Palace of Art”

TAM’s Collection and Display of Chinese Calligraphy

Chinese Contemporary Calligraphy at TAM: “Basically an Empty Space”?

“Proper Men Shed Blood, Not Tears”: TAM’s Repository of Calligraphy by Chen Shuliang

The Fine Print: Reading Chinese Calligraphy and Its Omnipresent and Omniabsent Conditions

Omnipresences and Omniabsences 2019: China’s Year of Anniversaries, Year of Adversaries

Between Ivory Towers and Unwritten Pages: A Poetic Dialogue

Appendices

Notes

Appendices

Note biographique

List of figures

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