From the “Four Monks” to Shitao: Professor Luo Yanzi on the Return of Individuality and the Deepening of Subjective Consciousness in Qing Painting

Edited Interview Transcript 4

If, in the previous section on the Ming, Professor Luo Yanzi and I discussed how Shen Zhou reassembled the traditions of the Song and Yuan and gave literati painting in the Ming a more rounded, more everyday, and more socially inclusive revival, then the next question arose naturally: by the Qing, why did literati painting once again assert “individuality” so forcefully? How did this shift take place?

With that in mind, I invited Professor Luo to continue. Her answer was immediate: any discussion of Qing painting almost inevitably leads to one central group, the “Four Monks”—Shitao, Shixi, Hongren, and Bada Shanren. In her view, Qing painting deserves special attention precisely because it both inherited the literati tradition of earlier centuries and, under highly particular historical conditions, pushed individual spirit, artistic innovation, and subjective expression to a new level. In the work of the Four Monks especially, long-accumulated literati lineages in painting began to emerge in a sharper, more self-aware, and more unmistakably personal form.

Professor Luo pointed out in particular that two of the Four Monks, Shitao and Bada Shanren, were directly connected to the Ming imperial house: both were descendants of the fallen dynasty. Because of that background, their art cannot be understood as a matter of style alone. It is also bound up with dynastic collapse, loss of status, and profound psychological trauma. She noted that Shitao entered a monastery at the age of four and spent nearly all of his early life in a religious setting. That experience meant he did not grow up in a stable, comfortable, or protected world. Later he went to the capital, hoping his art would receive broader recognition, yet he never truly received the level of acknowledgment he sought. Later still, he experienced both a return to secular life and a renewed turn toward Daoist practice. Professor Luo sees this complex and difficult life history as crucial to the formation of Shitao’s artistic temperament, giving him a sharper edge and a stronger sense of independence than many painters before him.

At that point, I found myself drawing an obvious connection: Shitao’s forceful commitment to innovation and his willingness to push back against tradition may have arisen from more than artistic self-consciousness alone. It seems deeply tied to his formation as a person. Compared with literati painters raised in relatively stable cultural environments, Shitao appears to have realized earlier that tradition was not a world one could simply inhabit without question. He had to find his own place within it, and at times even create distance from it. For that reason, his art never settles for simply “painting accurately” or continuing inherited methods. It brings his own thought, attitude, and inner disposition actively into the pictorial process.

In Professor Luo’s view, Shitao holds such an important place in Qing art history not only because his paintings are extraordinarily inventive, but also because he was one of the rare artists equally outstanding in theory and practice. She particularly mentioned his Comments on Painting by the Monk Bitter Gourd, a text of major importance in the history of Chinese painting theory. Several of its propositions have become key points of entry for understanding the transformation of Chinese painting in the Qing and even into the modern period. The most famous of these is surely the phrase, “Search out all the strange peaks to make your draft.”

Professor Luo explained that, on the surface, the phrase still seems to stress direct encounter with nature and close observation, so that one might initially see some continuity with Song figures such as Fan Kuan, who spent long periods before the mountains of Zhongnan and Huashan. Yet on closer examination, Shitao and Fan Kuan are operating on very different levels. Fan Kuan’s idea of “taking nature as teacher” is closer to arriving, through deep engagement with the natural world, at an understanding of mountain structure and cosmic vitality. It still carries a strong element of objective observation. Shitao, too, “searches out all the strange peaks,” but in his case those peaks have already become material for creation rather than an end in themselves. In other words, he is not seeking a faithful depiction of actual mountains. He is absorbing nature into his own inner life, then allowing it to ferment and transform within subjective consciousness before “drafting” it anew—reorganizing it, reinterpreting it, and generating it again.

Following that line of thought, I offered an interpretation of my own. If Song landscape painting still remains closer to a highly developed technical effort to honor and render nature, then by Shitao’s time the artist no longer seems satisfied with “fidelity to nature” as the highest goal. What matters more is fidelity to the self. Nature remains crucial, but it is no longer the sole center. The artist’s own thought, experience, individuality, and understanding become the true inner vehicle of the painting. In that sense, Shitao really can be seen as a turning point in the history of Chinese painting.

Professor Luo agreed. Compared with painters of earlier periods, she said, Shitao more consciously incorporated his own ideas and was more willing to challenge certain established assumptions within tradition. He was no longer content merely to study from nature, and he was certainly not content to repeat earlier masters. He actively sought the possibility of painting differently. That “difference” is not simply a deliberate pose of novelty. It is a necessary consequence of intensified subjectivity: once an artist truly recognizes the importance of the “I” within painting, he no longer pursues only a correspondence between image and object, but begins to establish his own order in brushwork, composition, and the selection of forms.

At this point I also made a comparative observation. From one perspective, there are certain parallels here with the development of Western art history. In both China and the West, painting often passes through an early stage that emphasizes closeness to nature, fidelity to the object, and the pursuit of likeness. Yet once that capacity has reached a certain level of maturity, art history often turns toward stronger forms of subjective expression, and likeness ceases to be the only standard. This is not to say that Chinese and Western art developed in identical ways. Rather, it suggests that within the history of painting itself there may be a recurring internal movement from representation toward expression, and from the object toward the subject.

When the conversation turned to specific works by Shitao, I asked Professor Luo to mention several representative paintings that would be useful starting points for viewers or students. She referred to a well-known painting of Lake Tai. Its composition is quite unusual: a large portion of the picture is given over to the undulating force of water, while the mountains and rocks occupy comparatively little space. This treatment itself says a great deal about Shitao’s art. He no longer follows a fixed landscape formula, but dares to reorganize pictorial order and shift the visual center of gravity, thereby creating a new experience of looking. Professor Luo also mentioned the large number of Shitao’s smaller works, many of which vividly reveal the vitality of his brushwork and the freedom of his compositions.

Alongside “search out all the strange peaks to make your draft,” Professor Luo also discussed another core concept in Shitao’s theory: the idea of the “one painting” or the “one stroke.” In her explanation, a painting for Shitao is not built through the mechanical accumulation of scattered brushmarks. From the first stroke, the life of the whole is already set in motion. That one stroke is a single stroke, yet it may also be understood as the point from which ten thousand strokes begin. Professor Luo connected this idea to Daoist thought, seeing in it a clear philosophical resonance with the principle that “the One gives birth to Two, Two gives birth to Three, and Three gives birth to the ten thousand things.” Shitao’s painting theory, then, is not an isolated technical doctrine. It is deeply rooted in the broader intellectual traditions of China. What he emphasizes is not formal complexity for its own sake, but a vision of life in which the myriad forms of the world unfold from an originating source.

Professor Luo went on to note that Shitao also invokes ideas such as “the great image has no form” and “the great sound is scarcely heard.” The most important image may not be the visible, concrete one directly before the eye. It may instead be the spiritual image that surpasses physical form. Seen from this angle, the broader trajectory of Chinese painting becomes easier to understand. From the Song onward, painters were at once refining their ability to depict nature and pushing painting beyond mere likeness. For Professor Luo, the movement from likeness toward what exceeds likeness is not an accidental change of taste; it reflects a deeper logic of the Dao itself. Once art reaches a certain stage of development, it must gradually free itself from dependence on the object and begin asking who the maker truly is.

Once Shitao carried this inquiry to an extreme, his impact on later generations became especially profound. As Professor Luo put it, Shitao’s importance lies in the fact that he did not simply overturn the ancients. He stood on their shoulders and reopened tradition from within. His painting is deeply grounded in earlier practice, yet also full of individuality and living force, fully achieving what Chinese criticism calls qiyun shengdong, vital resonance and animation. Because of this, later painters saw in him a new possibility. Landscape could be more than a representation of nature; it could also be a recreation of the world after nature had been absorbed, transformed, and digested by the mind. The artist, in confronting nature, did not need to erase the self. Nature could be internalized and then generated anew from within.

Another major figure placed alongside Shitao is Bada Shanren. Professor Luo noted that Bada, too, came from the Ming imperial lineage, yet compared with Shitao his mode of personal expression is more extreme and more cutting. Throughout his life he never truly bowed to Qing rule, and that posture of spirit is powerfully embodied in his paintings. Professor Luo gave a vivid example: the birds, fish, and animals in Bada’s work often confront the world with sidelong glances, cold stares, even expressions approaching hostility. These images are more than stylistic eccentricities. They are direct manifestations of personality and historical circumstance. In Chinese painting, she suggested, depicted things are never simply things in themselves. They often serve as vehicles through which the painter writes the heart and gives symbolic form to inward resolve. Just as classical Chinese poetry often uses scenery to express emotion and objects to carry meaning, Chinese painting continually lodges the artist’s inner condition within outward form.

Professor Luo was careful to point out, however, that although Shitao and Bada are often paired together, their influence on later generations took very different forms. Bada’s individuality is so intense that later painters often find him difficult to “learn” from directly. One paints a bird with a slanting eye and it easily looks like Bada, yet that does not mean one has entered his spiritual world. Shitao, by contrast, offered a brush language, compositional method, and body of artistic thought that could be studied, transformed, and continually reinterpreted. Professor Luo illustrated this with the example of the modern painter Fu Baoshi. Fu once said that the reason he called himself “Baoshi” was that he was “embracing two stones”: one was Shitao, the other Qi Baishi. By holding onto them both, he could then express himself. It is a wonderfully concrete formulation, and it captures Shitao’s place in later painting very well: he is part of the tradition, but also one of the starting points from which later artists could rethink tradition and reconstruct individuality.

At that point I tried to summarize Shitao’s historical significance in broader terms. If Bada Shanren represents the more extreme and less reproducible end of Qing individual expression, then Shitao seems more like a figure of true historical transition. He carries forward inherited understandings of nature, brushwork, and the generative power of creation, yet he also achieved major innovations in subject matter, composition, and theory. Unlike Bada, whose intensely personal style can be powerfully exclusive, Shitao retained a certain openness, and for that reason became a resource more readily absorbed, transformed, and developed by later generations.

Professor Luo responded that Shitao’s greatest impact on later artists can indeed be seen most clearly at the level of the larger historical arc. She especially emphasized the word “vitality.” Shitao’s pictures are full of life, and that life-force was exactly what his generation of painters pursued so intensely. More importantly, his innovation was not limited to one fresh technical device or another. It was a total refusal of confinement: the picture is unconstrained, the brushwork is unconstrained, the composition is unconstrained—everything may arise from the mind. Because the role of inner consciousness is elevated to such importance, later painters gradually came to realize that if one loses the self entirely in the search for nature, art may finally be reduced to the object alone. What truly matters is to preserve the self first, then absorb nature into the chest and heart, and only afterward re-express it through understanding, sedimentation, and inward fermentation.

On this point, I also felt that this strengthening of subjectivity is especially worth noting. It is not a sharp, adversarial form of subjectivity. It does not treat the world as an enemy, nor does it seek to negate external reality through the image. On the contrary, it is closer to an inclusive form of subjectivity. Nature, tradition, other people, even everything different from the self, need not be excluded. All of it may enter the self’s inner world, be re-understood, reworked, and made one’s own. The Shitao described by Professor Luo embodies something deeply distinctive in the Chinese artistic tradition: the subject does not come into being by cutting itself off from the world, but by continually absorbing the world, digesting it, and expressing it anew.

If the earlier sections of the interview traced Chinese painting from the natural order of the Song, to the inward spiritual self-possession of the Yuan, and then to the rounded revival of the Ming, then in the Qing—especially with Shitao and the Four Monks—we see a further development. Painting is no longer concerned only with facing nature, lodging feeling, or harmonizing the relation between humanity and landscape. It begins to ask, more consciously than before: how do I use painting to establish my own world? In this sense, the “return of individuality” in Qing literati painting is more than a matter of eccentric style or formal innovation. It marks a further deepening of subjective consciousness in the history of Chinese painting.

Taken as a whole, Professor Luo Yanzi’s central judgment on Qing painting may be summarized in three broad points. First, the art of the Four Monks is inseparable from dynastic trauma, biographical rupture, and historical dislocation; the emergence of individuality was therefore rooted in the combined force of时代 and fate. Second, through concepts such as “search out all the strange peaks to make your draft” and the theory of the “one painting,” Shitao transformed nature from an object to be depicted into a resource to be absorbed and reworked by the subject, thereby greatly advancing the expressive possibilities of Chinese painting. Third, Qing painting did not abandon tradition. Rather, it intensified the role of the subject within tradition itself, allowing landscape to become a true outward form of the inner world.