The pictorial wit of Qiu Ying's Handscroll painting

Abstract

Qiu Ying is one of the most celebrated and misunderstood painters in Chinese history. Eluding classification, Qiu’s oeuvre has mesmerized and confounded art historians for over four centuries, not only for his uncanny versatility and technical virtuosity, but also for the profusion of copies and forgeries that flooded the markets already in his own time. The silence enveloping the painter in official histories leaves a host of unresolved questions. This symposium explores the figure of Qiu Ying through issues of connoisseurship, artistic production, and cultural exchange across socioeconomic divides. Individual papers explore Qiu Ying’s chronological development and social milieu (Stephen Little), tease out unlikely influences in the artist’s style and brushwork (Wan Kong), reflect on Qiu Ying’s contemporaneous reception as a gauge for his creative freedom and restrictions (Einor K. Cervone), will take his magnum opus, Spring Morning in the Han Palace, as a case study in examining the role of playfulness in the creative process (Yeewan Koon) and the translation of poetic traditions into the visual (Wen-mei Hsü). We introduce the backstage of the curatorial research process and invite participants to engage in dialogue about the challenges of chronologizing, authentication and its implications, and the conceptual formulation of the artist as a historical figure.