Chinese women in both the western and eastern cannon have been obscured, hidden, and forgotten. Feminine participation in art creation from the Xia dynasty (2100–1700 BCE)[1] to modern day, has been left out of the ‘annals of history’[2], resulting in them forcibly existing behind men artistically and academically; their works may feel limited and rare but are not non-existent. The collections of institutions like the National Palace Museum in Beijing show several ‘exceptional artworks by women themselves and the subject of ladies’. Chinese, and all women’s participation in art creation in its simplest form can be defined into two roles: ‘as artists and as [pictorial]… subjects’ as muses or patrons. In both roles, there is a plethora of Chinese women who contributed to art creation as creators and visual stimulus across the Chinese dynasties. In the 21st Century, there is a new generation of Chinese women continuing this legacy and reclaiming their time in the spotlight and redefining Chinese femininity in art as both maker and muse.
One of the most recognisable subgenres of Chinese painting is “meiren hua[5]” 美人畫 (paintings of beautiful women) highlighting the importance of women’s roles as pictorial subjects. The genre originated in the Song Dynasty, then was later popularised in the Qing Imperial court from 1644-1911AD.[6] It has historically been associated with ‘male painters using gendered perspectives to create idealised female figures’’, a unique version of Laura Mulvey’s ‘Male Gaze’ focusing on Chinese women. Jake McIvor suggests the ‘Qing Dynasty was the most oppressive towards women’ based ‘largely on Confucian ethics’ with ‘patriarchal oppression’, reflected in the Twelve Beauties. The mieren hua genre operates on the reduction of Women to core idealised patriarchal virtues: beautiful, domesticated, and sexualised.
Prince Yong’s (1678 –1735[7]) Shi’er meiren tu 十二美人圖 (Twelve Beauties)[8] from the Qing court are quintessential mieren hua works. Prince Yong, a Qing dynasty prince who became the Yongzhen 雍正 Emperor in 1722 (AD), commissioned 12 large paintings for the hall in the Yuanmingyuan 圓明園 garden[9]. The Twelve Beauties combine the yueling tu 月齡圖 (Calendar paintings) genre with mieren hua to illustrate ‘court ladies’, ‘anonymous generic beauties’ as symbols of ‘royal privilege and power’.[10] The mieren hua style was largely influenced by the ‘pictorial repertoire of the Han dynasty’[11] in 206 BCE-220 CE[12]. Many of the ‘conventional stylistic attributes’ from the Song (CE 960 – 1279) and Ming (1368-1644 CE) paintings of women are evident within the mieren hua portraits; femininity operates as the focal point of this genre of work produced during these periods, therefore the participation of female sitters cannot be understated.
The women in the mieren hua genre are shown in an ‘idealised’ style, arguably a consistent trend within the entirety of the artistic canon. The genre illustrates the traditional Far-East Asian-centric patriarchal beauty standards in China: ‘long oval faces’, ‘slender bodies and pale white skin. This genre of painting can also function as a type of documentation of feminine fashion trends in the imperial court. The ‘Twelve beauties’ highlight key trends from the Qing period for women: ‘colourful embroidered robes’, ‘ornamental hair ribbons’, ‘jinbu yao’—a hair ornament worn by ‘royal ladies during the Han period’ (206BCE–220CE) gaining popularity among elite women in the Tang (618–907CE) era. Not only are these women the inspiration of the work but the social trends of the era determine the content, most of the paintings are ‘interior spaces’- in Confucian philosophy ‘nei 内 (inner)’ is symbolically a ‘feminine spaces. However, the mieren hua women’s ‘opulent’ and “trendy” appearance is an emblematic one, “she” is firmly positioned as unattainable but remains imbued with just enough eroticism to remain desirable. The ‘Qing emperors were fascinated with the erotic culture of the Jiangnan area’ and continued that sense of eroticism. The mieren hua paintings illustrate a core feminist complex of the feminine archetypes regarding sexuality, one is not able to be sexual but must be open to being sexualised for the pleasure of your male superiors, ‘a prince or emperor’. The Qing imperial court transformed the meiren hua into a sophisticated patriarchal display of economically and socially precious imperial goods: technology, fabrics, architecture, and women.
The forced ‘male subjectivity onto women evident in the mieren hua genre is pervasive over women’s participation in art creation in not only Chinese art but arguably the entirety of humanities creative works. Many women feel ‘forced to conform’ to these ‘male authored’ and popularised modes of ‘male authored representations of women’ in their own creative production. Art Historian Tani. E. Barlow suggests that ‘collectively women [have been used as a] medium, not a subject’. Laura Blanchard has documented how Laura Mulvey’s essay increased the popularity of female subjectivity and the understanding of ‘women as a medium’ in the Chinese art world in the late 1990s. The investigation into the reversal and reclaiming of the gendered positions of power in art, ‘man as the bearer of the look’ and ‘woman as the image’, became the focal point of many contemporary female Chinese artists. Flipping the ‘binary opposition’ of ‘male and female’ subjectivity through the muguang 目光 or guankan shixian 觀看視綫, (gaze) or the (viewer’s gaze).
Yu Hong is a ‘female contemporary Chinese artist’ who focuses on ‘female authored pictorial representation of women’ as an act of feminist reclamation. Her work, like the Twelve Beauties, reflects the ‘cultural positioning’ of Chinese women in society. Hong’s work centralised on the assertion of her ‘own sense of positionality’ enabling an exploration into ‘multiple issues from women’s perspectives. In 2003 Hong showed her series She includes the diptych Female Writer; it combines painting and photography transcending traditional mieren hua images of idealised beauty seen in Twelve Beauties. Hong allowed her sitter, Zhao Bo, to accompany the painting with an image of herself of her choice, assigning a sense of subjectivity back to the female pictorial subject. Hong also creates an interesting multiplicity in the work’s perspective linguistically in the Chinese series title- Ta 她. The character is the ‘third-person singular feminine pronoun’, 她 is either subjective or objective- Hong uses the ‘objective’. The works in Female Writer represent women as the ‘object of Hong’s gaze’ and simultaneously allow their ‘own subject position’.
The Chinese title of Female Writer, ‘meinü’, a synonym for “beautiful woman” creates a clear connection to the Twelve Beauties. Hong creates a ‘reinterpretation’ of the female pictorial subject from the ‘late imperial eras’ in Female Writer. The work stands as a 21st century feminist response to the archetypal images in Twelve Beauties and other mieren hua works. Hong doing so subverts and interrupts the ‘concept of gaze as a path to patriarchal pleasure’ through the feminine pictorial subject. Hong used similar iconography and compositional choices: interior spaces, personal belongings, and single female figures. However, the most significant yet subtle difference is the subjectivity of the female subject. In Twelve Beauties, the women are ‘generic idealised symbols’ only differentiated by stylistic choices like clothing or the spaces they exist within, the women lack any sense of personal agency. Hong used Chinese women diverse in age and ethnic groups across the She series as a means of recasting and reclaiming self-agency. Female Writer shows the ‘power of female authorial point of view in art’ and the currency of the feminist debates of ‘female subjectivity’ in art as a reflection of our patriarchal culture.
In conclusion, Chinese women’s participation in art creation is transcendent across Chinese history in multifarious ways: maker, muse, and model. The understanding and redefining of the patriarchal influences on women’s representation in Chinese art is a vital cultural tool. Works like Twelve Beauties and Female Writer stand together as a beautiful illustration of the progress that Chinese women have made in 21st Century China. However, they simultaneously highlight the struggles for self-agency women like Yu Hong and many other Chinese women have defied and continue to fight for through participation in art creation.
[1] Yunong and Fraser, ‘Chinese Calligraphy and Painting’.
[2] Museum, ‘She & Her’.
[3] Museum.
[4] Blanchard, ‘Defining a Female Subjectivity’.
[5] Cheng, ‘Idealized Portraits of Women for the Qing Imperial Court’.
[6] Cheng.
[7] ‘Prince Qing’s Mansion Period’.
[8] Cheng, ‘Idealized Portraits of Women for the Qing Imperial Court’.
[9] Cheng.
[10] Cheng.
[11] Cheng.
[12] Yunong and Fraser, ‘Chinese Calligraphy and Painting’.
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