Bottle ID: 00647

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WANG XISAN, CRYSTAL W/SNOWY WINTER LANDSCAPE & INSCRIPTION

Date: 1970. BOTTLE: 1750-1860

Height: 63 mm

Crystal, ink and watercolors, of squared form with rounded shoulders, with white and brown irregular inclusions throughout, painted on the inside with a continuous snowy winter landscape of Huang Chenyen astride a donkey, an inscription above reading: 'at the Yihu Zhai (One Bottle Studio), painted in 1970' and with a seal; the reverse with a snowy mountainous landscape of towering peaks with dwellings and trees in a valley.

Similar Examples:

Crane Collection nos. 386 and 904.
Sotheby's, Los Angeles, October 31, 1984, lot 181, Collection of Alice B. McReynolds, Part I.

Provenance:

Robert Hall

Exhibited:
 

Annual Convention ICSBS Toronto, October 2007

During (and prior to) the Cultural Revolution, Wang Xisan liked to use older bottles for painting where they were available. It is intriguing that Wang used this bottle in 1970 at the official end of the Revolution in such a deliberate and effective manner. The stone with its frosted look and irregular inclusions provides a natural snow-filled winter setting for Wang's bleak painting. With these few examples, of which the Crane Collection houses two more, Wang is fusing the bottle and the painting to become one single work of art, enabling the object to become part of the process of communication from artist to viewer. Wang was sending a message in a language that could be readily understood by the cognoscenti that these scenes represent his feelings of solitude and enduring hardship. It is clear that in the East, the artistic medium is just a part of the process of art and a method of communication under a strict political regime of expressing the feelings of an individual.

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