Revisiting the Eastern Fence: Tao Qian's Chrysanthemums

Revisiting the Eastern Fence: Tao Qian's Chrysanthemums

The poet Tao Qian (365-427), who retired to the country to farm, drink, and write, was fond of chrysanthemums. Tao came to be one of China's best-loved poets, and the chrysanthemums in later art and literature served to represent personal, philosophical, and political values associated with him...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Art bulletin (New York, N.Y.) Vol. 83; no. 3; pp. 437 - 460
Main Author: Nelson, Susan E.
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: New York College Art Association 01-09-2001
College Art Association, Inc
Subjects:
Alcohol drinking
Allusion
Art criticism
Art history
Art museums
Chinese
Chinese art
Fences
Flowers
Flowers & plants
Palaces
Poetry
Poets
Politics
Scrolls
Tao Qian (365-427)
Values
China
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Summary:The poet Tao Qian (365-427), who retired to the country to farm, drink, and write, was fond of chrysanthemums. Tao came to be one of China's best-loved poets, and the chrysanthemums in later art and literature served to represent personal, philosophical, and political values associated with him. Those values, however, could be variously construed, and the meanings and uses of chrysanthemums in visual culture are accordingly mutable and complex. The chrysanthemum's iconographic multivalence testifies to the protean vitality of the culture hero in Chinese history and demonstrates how such signs function dynamically in Chinese pictorial systems.
ISSN:0004-3079
1559-6478
DOI:10.2307/3177237