| Chapter : | Introduction |
Heng (78-139) to show Fan. After seeing Dai's picture, Fan gave a sigh of admiration at its worth and came to value painting thereafter.24 In his Yanshi jiaxun (Parental teachings from the Yan family), the scholar-official Yan Zhitui (531-ca. 595) of the Northern Qi dynasty (550-577) wrote in the category of zayi (literally, miscellaneous crafts,
Yan cited the case of Gu Shiduan and his son Gu Ting in support of his point. These two scholars were both skilled in lute and calligraphy and were especially good at painting. As lower-ranking government officials, however, they felt ashamed and regretful every time they were made to provide their skills in the service of Emperor Yuan (reign 555) of the Liang dynasty (502-587).26 This explains why there were only a scant number of poems written about paintings that were done on fans and screens during the Six Dynasties period, as the majority of scholar-officials regarded painting as vulgar, even menial, and thus incapable of inspiring poetic feelings.
This aristocratic prejudice against painting during the Six Dynasties period did not go unchallenged, thanks to the efforts made by such artists as Gu Kaizhi (ca. 346-407), Zong Bing (375-443), Wang Wei (415-453), and Xie He to aestheticize painting-elevating it to a liberal art and liberating it from its orthodox role as a political, religious, and educational tool.27 These artists developed sophisticated discourses on painting, treating it as a liberal art capable of expressing the Tao. This period saw Confucianism yield its sway to neo-Taoism when it became a scholarly vogue to develop metaphysical discourses on the two Taoist classics-the Dao de jing (Classic of the Tao and virtue), or The Classic of the Way and Virtue, and the Zhuangzi-and to reinterpret the Confucian classic Yi jing (The Classic of Changes) in Taoist terms. In the meantime, two poetic genres-youxianshi (literally, poetry of the wandering immortals) and xuanyanshi (poetry explicating Taoist doctrines)-successively came