The tenth-century Chinese handscroll The Night Banquet of Han Xizai
(attributed to tenth-century artist Gu Hongzheng), long famous for its
depiction of a decadent party hosted by a government official, is used
by De-nin Lee to explore how art objects are created and the many
sociopolitical eras and individual hands through which they pass. By the
tenth or eleventh century, and in earnest by the thirteenth, viewers of
Chinese paintings lodged their responses to a work of art directly on
the object itself, in the form of seals, inscriptions, and colophons.
The scrawls and markings may amount to distractions for the seasoned
admirer of European easel painting, but Lee explains that a handscroll
painting without its complement of textual accretions loses its very
history.
Through her deft detective work, we watch the Night Banquet
handscroll-much like the enigmatic seventeenth-century Cremonese
instrument in Francois Girard's film The Red Violin-travel through the
centuries from owner to owner and viewer to viewer, influencing and
being influenced by the people who contemplate it and add their
thoughts, signatures, and seals to its borders. Treating the scroll as a
co-creation of painter and viewers, Lee tells a fascinating story of
cultural practices surrounding Chinese paintings. In effect, her book
addresses a question central to art history: What is the role of art in
a society?
