Day 8: November 17, 2016, #212
The Emperor’s Campaign
Two rather large engravings hung side by side in a snug alcove at the rear of the Chinese galleries. Incised and inked plates had produced impressively detailed prints with the thinnest of lines. On a small adjacent wall, four textile roundels the size of dinner plates hung two over two. Embroidered with silk and metallic thread, only a small bit of their blue satin ground remained visible. In front of me were only six objects but a load of description. I had not expected that my hour would ever funnel down to so few things that would require so much focus. The dim gallery with greige-colored walls did not help. To be fair, curators are custodians and both works on paper and textiles are notoriously sensitive to light. Ambiance, check; illumination, not so much. The edited alcove had a point to make, but I could not make it out. I needed a label.
As I summoned the energy to approach the wall, I became aware of a statuesque stickiness along with a mounting self-consciousness that can come with being at a loss, especially in a museum. “How long have I been looking in this direction? Do I look like I am engaged? Is anyone looking at me?” These were the thoughts that ran through my mind. I had only a surface understanding of what was in front of me and no inkling of what it meant. “Looking” had temporarily lost sight of its object and circled back to me. Smoothly, so as to not reveal my inner predicament, I glanced away for relief. Pushed to the left side of the alcove were four Chinese-inspired gallery stools which were eye-catching because nothing hung above them, a rare sight in the museum. On the opposite side of that wall, a small elevator that takes visitors to four additional Chinese galleries on a third floor did its heavy lifting. A whir which started and then stopped as the cab was needed was strangely satisfying. Something was working.
Reading labels with a pressured need to get to the end often reminded me of taking the SAT. There are usually so many proper nouns in so little space. The one beside the engravings explained that the prints depicted episodes from the Emperor Qianlong’s Turkestan campaign. Instantly, the room felt a little more greige. I had no foothold for either of these facts. The emperor had triumphed in 1759. I was still at a loss. Why these two prints? Imagery and political power? That was usually a safe guess. The label noted more. The engravings, dated 1770, had been executed in France after etchings made by an Italian who had modeled his effort on silk paintings that depicted the emperor’s military campaign. A history was being codified as it worked its way through various media leaving behind images like a foregone conclusion: war, victory, commemoration. Paintings, etchings, prints. Though separated by a decade, the emperor’s army and the French royal printshop were a unified front. The military captured the territory, the royal workshop, the past.
The print that hung to the left depicted cavalry soldiers in an intense battle as a convoy with cannon-topped camels follows a league behind. In the print to the right, the emperor marches in a formal victory procession. First this then that, I thought. The mind craves a narrative. Only upon exiting the gallery did I realize that other engravings from the series referred to on the label were exhibited in the gallery next door. There were many. For some reason, these two had been selected for the alcove.
After some minutes it occurred to me: it’s a numbers game. On the battlefield or inside the picture frame, domination comes by way of headcount. Numbers deliver drama and give victory its oomph. That this was all figured out compositionally was a coup in itself. The more I studied the prints, the more I saw how cleverly the draftsmen involved had avoided a visual melee. Small mounds in the foreground of the battle engraving masked the confusion of the horses’ galloping legs. Only a few warriors had bloodlessly fallen to the ground; the other warring party was in retreat. Most of the figures were headed in the same direction. That synchronized tear magnified the print’s visual rush. In truth, the cavalrymen were so similarly drawn that only their head gear allowed me to discern the two sides. As for more fallen soldiers, they would have been much messier to draw. Aesthetic decisions solved problems and expedited production step by step. The scene (and history) were being cleaned up.
In the celebratory parade engraving, court figures kneel at the edge of a wide lane reserved for the emperor and his retinue. This print’s aerial view enabled the depiction of more heads which had been organized into blocks quite like a halftime show. Win-win-win. Easy to draw, grand depth of field, and the emperor who looked huge, even greater than life-size on his litter in the foreground, clearly commanded legions. The print proved it.
I pivoted to face the roundels still wondering why they were there. One more label down and it all made sense. The roundels on the wall closely resembled the circular emblems on the front of the emperor’s ceremonial robe, the one he wears in the procession engraving. What appeared to be a pretty but unanchored curatorial gesture when I arrived at the gallery was actually making a succinct point. The words “art” and “history” took a step toward each other with a curator’s choice.
Within each roundel a single furious dragon writhes to the bounds of a circular frame. Bulging eyes, a gaping maw, slithery whiskers and five scaly legs that end in talons create a grisly picture. As a Jungian, I did have a thought or two about dragons. Along with the leviathan of ancient scriptures, the dragon has imaged the dark invisible in the human imagination for millennia. It remains a symbol par excellence of the unconscious and still finds its way into our dream life and onto the big screen. Whether lurking in the bowels of the earth or flying skyward on its primordial wings, there is no place this libidinous creature cannot go. For a saber-rattling, territorial-obsessed leader, I could imagine the affinity. But the size of the gallery emblems was far from intimidating. I could hardly make out their design ten feet away. So what purpose did they serve on an imperial robe? Were they protection, a talisman, perhaps? The label did not commit but did offer this curious sidebar on the pecking order of image and power. The gallery’s dragons were depicted in profile. The ones on the emperor’s cloak face forward. The gallery’s emblems had belonged to a prince.
Despite the headcount under the emperor’s control, all the bodies the prints were organized to tally and depict, the imperial family still felt a need for otherworldly reinforcement. Who doesn’t? The dragons picked up where history and its visual record left off. They guarded the most precious thing, the future. As for the past, Qianlong’s campaign in Turkestan was one of the most lasting accomplishments of the Qing period. I learned this from a label.
