Ten Thousand Things: Module and Mass Production in Chinese Art (The A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts)

271 Pages·2001·149.638 MB·English

by  Lothar Ledderose

Mutual combinationsofthe eight trigrams
result in theproduction ofthe ten thousand things.
—Shao Yong (1011-1077)
OuterChapteron Observation ofThings
The ten thousand things areproduced and reproduced,
so that variation and transformation have no end.
—Zhou Dunyi (1017-1073)
Diagram ofthe Supreme UltimateExplained

Lothar Ledderose
Ten Thousand Things

Module and Mass Production tn Chinese Art
The A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts, 1998
The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Bollingen Series XXXV:46
Princeton University Press

Princeton, New Jersey
Frontispiece Fu Shen (born 1937), Wanwu (Ten Thousand Things), March 1997. Calligraphy.
Copyright © 2000 bythe Trustees ofthe National Gallery ofArt, Washington, D.C.
Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, NewJersey 08540
In the United Kingdom:Princeton University Press, Chichester, West Sussex
This is the forty-sixth volume ofthe A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts, which are delivered annually at
the National Gallery ofArt, Washington. The volumesof lectures constitute NumberXXXV in Bollingen
Series, sponsored bythe Bollingen Foundation.
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ledderose, Lothar.
Ten thousand things : module and mass production in Chinese art/ Lothar
Ledderose.
p. cm. — (The A.W. Mellon lectures in the fine arts ; 1998) (Bollingen series ; 46)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN: 0-691-O0669-5 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Art, Chinese—Technique. 2. Mass production—China. |. Title. Il. Series.
Ill. Series: Bollingen series ; 46
N7340.L38 2000
709’.51—dc 21 99-34118
CIP
Composed in Berkeley and Formata by Dix!
Designed and edited by Brian D. Hotchkiss, Vernon Press, Inc.
Printed and bound by CSGraphics, Singapore
10987654321
1098765432 (pbk)
ISBN-13: 978-0-691-00957-5 (pbk : alk. paper)
ontents

Acknowledgments VI
Introduction
The System ofScript
w Casting Bronze the Complicated Way 25
b
A Magic Army for the Emperor
W 51
W
B FactoryArt 75
B
F Building Blocks, Brackets, and Beams 103
O
The Word in Print
N 139
The Bureaucracy ofHell
165
Freedom ofthe Brush? 187
215
Notes
Bibliography 229
252.
Glossary ofChinese Terms
Index 256
Picture Sources 204
Acknowledgments
AS A BOY, I FIRST CAME ACROSS MODULES IN THE GUISE Universityofferedme the opportunityto give the Slade
of a jigsaw puzzle. At one particular Christmas I was Lectures. At that time Jessica Rawson generously
given a puzzle different from all others I had had so helped me sharpen my arguments and to make my
far. A chain ofmountain peaks at the left flattened out Englishmore understandable. When Ernest Gombrich
toward the rightinto awide plain dottedwith a tower, once came to Cambridge, I mentioned to him that I
houses, trees, carriages, and a rider. Butthe pieces did was working on the issue of Versatzstticke in Chinese
not have curved edges or interlocking shapes. Rather art. Typically, Versatzstticke refers to pieces offurniture
theywere all simple rectangles,tall and thin, arranged and other set decor that can be used in a variety of
in a horizontal sequence. Altogether there were only ways and rearranged in many plays to create different
about a dozen of them. This is easy, I thought, actu- stage sets in a theater. Gombrich told me thathe knew
ally, prettyboring. what 1 had in mind, but that here existed no precise
Only when I took the pieces out of the box and equivalent for Versatzstiicke in the English language.
rearranged them on the table did it occur to methat, Thus, with his blessings, I settled on module, a term
unlike with other puzzles, there was no fixed position that is both more understandable and moreversatile.
for each piece. The mountains could go into the mid- Manyinstitutions and individuals contributed to
dle of the landscape or to the right; the tower would my further research. Unforgettable is the day when
as easily fitbetween thepeaks as on the plain, and the Yuan Zhongyi in Lintong descended with me into the
rider could be placed heading toward the hills or re- pit ofthe terra-cotta army. Standing among those sol-
turning. A coherent panorama invariably emerged. diers, I finally saw close up the extraordinary variety
The trick to completing this puzzle was that, on offaces, gestures, and armorthat Chinese artisans had
every single piece, the horizon crossed the left and achieved more than two thousand years ago in an in-
right edges exactly atmidpoint. The pieces could thus geniously devised system ofmodularproduction.
be put together in ever new combinations, thousands The Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaitmade pos-
of them, yet the continuous horizon always guaran- sible a sabbatical term that I spent at the Freer and
teed an intelligible composition. Sackler galleries’ marvelous research library in Wash-
Thisjigsawpuzzlehadbeen madein China. ington, D.C. The unflaggingsupport ofthelibrarystaft
under Lily Kecskes was invaluable, as were the many
Iremembered thatpuzzlewhenIstudiedwithVadime conversations with gallery staff members. Jan Stuart
ElisseeffinParis, in the 1960s. He attemptedto isolate read several chapters as I wrote them andoffered ex-
and definehundredsofdistinctmotifs in the endlessly pert criticism.
varied decor ofancient Chinese bronzes. His ultimate A new version of my text was presented in 1998
aim was to devise a computer program that would as the Mellon Lectures at the National Gallery ofArt
allow him to arrange all known bronzes in one in Washington. Henry Millon, Dean of the Center for
chronological sequence. We nowknowthat this could Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, and his staffcould
not have worked, because the corpus of bronzesis not have made my staymore enjoyable.
just too complex. Nevertheless, I was fascinated by The preparation of the final manuscript would
Elisseeff’s premise, which he often repeated—namely have been impossible without the professional assis-
that the Chinesecreate works of art by first defining tance of Patricia Fidler of Princeton University Press,
elements, and thenbyplayingwith them. and Brian Hotchkiss and Peter Blaiwas of Vernon
In the 1970s I joined the research group of Press. JudithWhitbeck graciously agreed to help with
Suzuki Kei inJapan to work on their survey ofpaint- the proofreading. At the Institute of Art History of
ings of the ten kings of hell.Minato Nobuyuki, then Heidelberg University, Ingeborg Klinger produced ex-
one of Professor Suzuki’ students, analyzed the ways cellent photographs and Tsai Suey-ling ably compiled
in which the painters of these scrolls assembled their the glossarywith the Chinese characters.
compositions from setparts. In anarticle on a king of Still many other friends and colleagues helped to-
hell painting in Berlin, I suggested that comparable ward completion of the work. To all of them, named
modes of production might be detected in yet other and unnamed,I offer ten thousand thanks.
areas ofChineseart.
I first systematicallypursued theselines ofinvesti- LLL.
gation when, in the Lent Term of 1992, Cambridge Heidelberg, 1999
Introduction
HROUGHOUT HISTORY THE CHINESE HAVE somewhatcontradictoryobjectivesarealways evi-
producedworksofartinhuge quantities: a dent: theyproduce objectsbothinlarge quantities
tomb ofthe fifthcenturyB.c. yieldsbronze and of great variety. Taken into consideration are
artifacts that total ten metric tons in weight; the the demands of notorious customers who ex-
terra-cotta armyin the third-century B.c. necrop- pected high qualityfor a lowprice and thrived on
olis of the First Emperor boasts more than seven setting difficult deadlines. Module systems were
thousand soldiers; lacquer dishes manufactured bestsuited to reachall these conflictinggoals.
inthe first centuryA.D. have serialnumbers rang- In roughly chronological sequence, the
ing in the thousands; a timber pagoda of the chapters cover a wide time span. Thefirst case
eleventhcenturyA.D. isconstructedofsomethirty studydealswithritualbronzevessels ofantiquity,
thousand separately carved wooden members; particularlyofthe twelithcenturyB.c. Chapters 6
and in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and 8, respectively, concern an encyclopedia of
China exported several hundred millionpieces of overonehundredmillioncharactersprintedwith
porcelain to theWest. movable type, and a series ofbamboopaintings,
All this was feasible because the Chinese both datingto the eighteenth centuryA.D.
devised production systems to assemble objects To pursue the same issue over a period
fromstandardizedparts. Thesepartswerepretab- spanningthreemillennia,withoutresortingtothe
ricated in great quantity and could be put to- Hegelian concept ofChina as a country ofeternal —
getherquicklyindifferentcombinations, creating stasis, begs for explanation. A fundamentaljusti-
an extensivevariety ofunits from a limited reper- fication is to be foundin the ubiquity of Chinese
toire of components. These components are script that was in existence from atleast the thir-
calledmodules in the presentbook. teenth century B.c. andis still in use today. Chi- |
Ten Thousand Thingsinvestigates module nese script, which is arguably the most complex
systems in the production of ancient Chinese system offorms that humans devised in premod-
bronzes, terra-cotta figures, lacquer, porcelain, ern times, is a module system par excellence.Its
architecture, printing, and painting. It also ex- fifty thousand characters are all composed by
plores technical and historical evolution in all choosing and combining a few modules taken
these fields as well as the implications ofmodule from a relatively small repertoire of some two
systems for particular makers and for society at hundred parts.!
large. Alongtheway, readerswilldiscoverthatthe Script profoundly affected the patterns of
West learned about modular production from thought in China. Almost everyonehadat least a
China, and ultimately the definition of art in rudimentaryunderstandingofthesystem,astotal
Chinawillbe addressed. illiteracy was rare. Most people knew a tew char-
The following eight chapters present case acters, if only those used in their own names, or
studies that focus on particular module systems somenumbers, andwhowouldnotrecognizethe
and ask similar sets ofquestions. The description characters representing happiness (fu) and long
and analysis ofa given system is the main subject life (shou)? For the educatedelite, writingwas the
of each chapter. The achievement of the module core of culture. The decision makers spent the
systemisthenassessedbyreconstructingthetasks ereater part oftheir formative years learning how
that the makers were assigned or that they set for to read and write, and then usedscript every day
themselves. Regardless ofthe situation, two basic, oftheir lives. In the course ofhistory, knowledge
2 ofcharactersbecame evermorewidespreadinso- Module systems do not occur in China
ciety. Thus, throughtheirscript, theChineseofall alone; comparable phenomena exist in other cul-
Introduction periods were familiar with a pervasive module tures. However, the Chinese started workingwith
system. This system is the topic ofthe first chap- module systems early in their history and devel-
ter and a paradigm foralllater discussions. oped them to a remarkably advanced level. They
All Chinese knew aboutstill othermodule usedmodules in theirlanguage, literature, philos-
systems. Probablythe mostpopular oneis the bi- ophy, and social organizations, as well as in their
nary code expounded in the celebrated opus of arts. Indeed,thedevisingofmodulesystemsseems
divinationandwisdomfromantiquity, theBookof to conform to a distinctly Chinese pattern of
Changes (Yijing), which has been called “perhaps thought.
thesinglemostimportantworkinChina’slongin-
tellectual history.” It teaches how to build units
through combinations of only two elements, a
brokenline and anunbrokenline. There areeight The AdvancementofModular
ditterentways to arrangethreelinesinone group; Systems
those are the eight trigrams. By doubling the
strokes into groups of six, the hexagrams, sixty- Emphasizing the pervasiveness of modular pat-
four different combinations canbe formed. Fur- terns in Chinese history does not mean to deny
ther limitless transformations and changes are that there have been developments and changes.
said to bring forth the“ten thousand things,” the Increasing standardization, mechanization, and
myriad categories ofphenomena in the universe. ever more precise reproduction constitute a uni-
ThebinarypatternofthoughtintheBookof fying trend. A preliminary overview reveals that
Changes has fascinated intellectuals in the West advances are especially noteworthy during a few
fromthetimetheyfirstencounteredit. Inthesev- crucialperiods.
enteenth century it confirmed the expectation of Thefirst such period came after culture in
the mathematician and philosopher Gottfried China emergedfromitsNeolithicbeginningsinto
Wilhelm Leibniz that China would become a the light of recorded history. At that point, the
majorplayerin a global scientific academy.’ thirteenth to twelfth centuries B.c., module sys-
Linguists may find modular structures in tems can be identified in script, bronze casting,
the Chinese language. There isa repertoire of and architecture, although noneofthese systems
some 440 syllables, most of which can be pro- had yet reached maturity. In script, stroke types
nouncedinfour differenttones. Almosteverysyl- werenotyetstandardized, norwere theshapes of
lable can assume various meanings. The correct characters, yetmore than twothirds ofthemcon-
meaninginaparticularcase derives fromits com- tain modular parts. Bronze casters deployed a
bination with other syllables. Words are formed module system to decorate vessels, and a techni-
by combining syllables, not by modifying them. calmodularsystemto cast them, buttheydidnot
Many other modular patterns canbe iden- yetmakeuse ofmechanical duplication. Inarchi-
tified in the Chinese cultural fabric. To mention tecture, abayand a courtyard systemevolvedbe-
but one example, a certain Buddhist rock cave, forebracketing cameinto use.
hollowed out in A.D. 616 not far from Beijing, By the late centuries B.c., bronze casters
contains four pillars with a total of 1,056 small had begun to reproduceidentical parts, and they
Buddhafigures carved in relief. Engraved next to mass-produced weapons and complicated com-
each Buddha is his name, consisting of three or ponents for chariots. Makers engraved their
four characters. The same characters occur again names on their products for the sake of quality
and again, but through combination over a thou- control. Builders assembledbracketclusters from
sand differentnames are formed.* standardized wooden blocks, and for the first
time, script was reproduced on flat surface. By Jingdezhen received an imperial order to deliver
the third century B.c., Chinese artisans had be- 174,700 pieces ofporcelain. Textile factories and
come so used to modular production that, with paper mills employed workforces ofover a thou- Introduction
no precedent to whichto refer, they could devise sandpeople. Anunprecedentedupsurgeinprint-
a system for a monumental task: the terra-cotta ingactivitymadebooksandillustrationsavailable
army ofthe First Emperor. In the sameyears,this toawiderangeofconsumers. Thedefinitionofart
emperor’ chancellor designed a standardized, expanded beyondcalligraphy and paintingto in-
geometrical type of script, in which almostall clude manufactured items such as porcelains and
idiosyncrasieswere eliminated. lacquerdishes.
Another seminal period was the fourth to Thiswastheveryperiodwhencontactsbe-
seventh centuries A.D. Buddhist painters and tween China and theWestbecamedirect andfre-
sculptorsproducedgreatquantities offiguresand quent, and interaction has not ceased since.
scenes through repetitive use of readily identi- DuringtheMiddleAges, techniquesofsilkmanu-
fiable motifs. Printing with wooden blocks, a facture had already been passed from Chinato
technique that allows virtually identical repro- Europe, and when Europeans mastered the tech-
ductions in limitless numbers, was simultane- niqueofprintinginthefifteenthcentury,ithelped
ously developed. A pervasive module system of to usher them into the modern age. Yet the great
timber frame architecture was firmly established. nineteenth-centurysinologueStanislasJulienstill
Its crowningachievementwasthe design ofa me- foundreasontolamentthattheWestdidnotlearn
tropolis laid out on a modular grid, which pro- about printing early enough. If there had been
vided a unified living space for over a million timely contacts with China, he says, many ofthe
people. Script types were codified and havere- chef d’oeuvres of Greek and Roman literature,
mained inplace for over a millennium and a half. nowirrevocablylost, wouldhavebeensaved.°
But thiswas also the timewhensystematic explo- When communications between Fast and
ration of the aesthetic dimension of art began. West intensified, China revealed thatit possessed
Certain calligraphic pieces were the first objects far superior module systems. Europe learned ea-
broughtinto art collections because of their per- gerly from China and adopted standardization of
ceived aesthetic qualities, and a theoretical litera- production, division of labor, and factory man-
ture arose that espoused aesthetic values, such as agement. By introducing machines, westerners
spontaneityanduniqueness,indiametricaloppo- carried mechanization and standardization even
sition to modularproduction. further than the Chinese, who continuedto rely
During the eleventh to thirteenth cen- more on human labor, as they had traditionally
turies, when the compass and gunpowder were done. Consequently, sincetheeighteenthcentury,
invented,block-printingprojectsofenormousdi- Westernproductionmethods have tendedto sur-
mensions, such as the Buddhist canon, werereal- pass those ofChinain efficiency.
ized. Printingwith movable type was invented as The story has not yet ended. Perhaps the
well. ThetreatiseBuildingStandards(Yingzaofashi) mostpressingproblemonthe globenowispopu-
ofA.D. 1103 prescribed a system for architecture lation growth. In coping with this situation, the
in which all parts were completely and minutely capabilities and social virtues that the Chinese
standardized. Ceramic productionwas organized have developed over the centuries while working
in large factories. Paintings whose compositions with module systems may, in the future, come
were built from movable parts depict Buddhist into their own yet again: to satisfy the needs of
hells asbureaucratic agencies. great numbers of people who are accustomedto
Inthesixteenthandseventeenthcenturies, living in tight social structures and to minimize
industrialproductionbecamecommonformanu- the use of natural resources by maximizing the
factured goods. In 1577, kilns in the city of input ofhumanintelligence andlabor.