The landscapes of Wu Bin (c. 1543-c. 1626) and a seventeenth-century discourse of originality.

Through reassessment of biographical information, this study finds that Wu Bin (c. 1543-c. 1626) served as a low-level scholar-official whose talents as a calligrapher, painter, and poet brought him to the attention of the emperor and the most influential intellectuals of his period. These intellectuals shared a critical vocabulary with the Gong'an theorists, a group whose ideas in turn drew upon the thought of Neo-Confucianists Wang Yangming and Li Zhi, particularly as regards issues of authenticity and originality. These issues emerge as primary concerns of seventeenth-century literary and art critics, for whom the key term in the discourse of originality was qi. Qi, a term of wide semantic range including strange, extraordinary, and unusual, is used in late Ming literary and art criticism to indicate issues of originality. This thesis provides a history of the term in critical literature. The usage of the term is examined in art criticism as well, and compared with other art critical terms to further distinguish its meaning, application, and nuances. As a participating and respected member of this group of intellectuals, Wu Bin addressed this shared concern in his paintings and inscriptions, giving visual form to a highly-charged critical concept. Examination of Wu's stylistic development provides a case study of late Ming shifts in artistic values as his paintings evolve from embracing the normative tradition in his formative years, to a radical expression of personal uniqueness at the end.PhDArt historyAsian historyAsian literatureBiographiesCommunication and the ArtsLanguage, Literature and LinguisticsSocial SciencesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/129674/2/9610088.pd