This portrait and all like it were objects of ritual. The rituals in which food and drink were formerly prepared and offered, accompanied often by music, were deemed to attract the spirit of the dead individual to be present in the tablet. From the Song period, sculptures and paintings were made and, as with the spirit tablet, the spirit was thought to be present in their image at the moment the offerings were made. As Craig Clunas has put it, the ancestors “were certainly understood as being continuously ‘present’ with their descendents, and never more than when in pictorial form”. A reciprocal relationship was understood. In return for continued attention to the dead members of the family with offerings and filial respect, it was expected that the ancestors, the dead, would contribute to the benefits that the living hoped would continue throughout their own lives.
‘The Agency of, and the Agency for, the Wanli Emperor’, by Jessica Rawson P 97
Artists do not figure in this account, as the system of portrait production was institutionalised, undertaken by workshops, both private and official. The paintings are, indeed, skilful pieces of work that, in Gell’s terms, might be expected to “enchant” as a consequence of their technical virtuosity. But agency is highly unlikely to have been imputed to an artist by the viewers. For the family members and ritual specialists, who would have seen these paintings on set occasions, the effects of the painting would have been interpreted as making the person pictures, here the emperor, present. None of the viewers would have given the workmen any thought at all.
In the case of a Chinese ritual portrait… The artists have no role in the minds of the viewer. The subject, the Emperor, on the other hand was thought to have had direct agency, much more effectively than the subject matter of many Western paintings of the Renaissance period and later. The differences arise as a consequence of cultural assumptions of peoples in the two regions, however reluctant Gell might have been to examine cultural difference in his work on agency.
‘The Agency of, and the Agency for, the Wanli Emperor’, by Jessica Rawson P98-99
They had social roles (Emperor portraits) indeed and would no doubt have been the sort of work to interest Gell greatly.
For in effect he replaces discussions of works of art based on aesthetic qualities with a socially grounded approach. He inserts the work of art in a relation with the viewer, as though it was a member of that viewers’ society, as indeed the Wanli Emperor would have been deemed to be. The social role of the Emperor was mediated by this portrait. For the portrait made possible a form of engagement between the descendents and their ancestor, the Emperor. In addition, as mentioned, the Emperor was deemed to be actually present, especially when the descendents viewed the portrait. While in practice the descendents had given the portrait its power, by expecting it to be efficacious, they had turned the situation on its head, assuming that the efficacy of the Emperor had given the portrait power. In other words, the different interpretations of where the agency lies depends on the viewers’ perception of cause and causality, as the works of Pascal Boyer indicate.
….Gell discounts analogies with language. In their place Gell elevates the role of technology and its capacities to enchant. This forms a vital component of his discussion. The intricacy of all workmanship, Gell argues, resists interpretation and thus allows the viewer to assume that the works were produced by or had magical properties. He regards the so-called magical properties attributed to the canoe-prows of the Trobriand Islanders as a transcription into magical language of the sense that the ways in which their extraordinary forms and colours were produced cannot be readily understood. - - - - -GRAFFITI ?
The physical character of the painting is indeed important. Gell’s fear of traditional Western art history approaches and its terminology would have led him to reject the idea that the painting had any sort of aesthetic effect. Yet can we see the bright colours of the robes and carpet as anything other than intended to excite visual perceptions? These are what we call aesthetic interests. Gell avoids the obvious interest in form, pattern, pattern, line and colour by turning to technology. Had he considered the painting under discussion, he might have pointed out the extraordinary qualities of the execution that entrance the viewer and were intended to enthral the descendents and reinforce their beliefs about the powers of the dead Emperor on their lives. However, it would not have been to the visual sensations but to the qualities of execution that Gell would have pointed. For in the words of Nicholas Thomas, his argument is that “art objects mediate a technology to achieve certain ends, notably to enmesh patients in relations and intentionalities sought and prescribed by patients”.
It seems that Gell’s preoccupation is simply his way around this difficult question, Why do we find engaging skilled work in almost any medium that excites our visual perceptions? Many would say that fine works in almost any material baffle those who are not members of the group who practice such arts.
‘The Agency of, and the Agency for, the Wanli Emperor’, by Jessica Rawson P100-101
…an emphasis on technology in a Chinese context is in effect an emphasis on the skills available to a workshop in an environment in which objects and paintings were produced on a very high technical level on a large scale. Whether it is the enchantment of the technology or the dazzling qualities of the colours, the visual aspects of the work engage the viewers and influence their reactions.
To get away from the visual qualities, Gell indeed focuses on abduction. In this discourse, abduction refers to inferences about the causes that bring about the visual engagement. A concern with abduction is a concern with causality. Here we approach Semir Zeki’s account of the search for information and explanation. If people explain work in terms of supernatural causes, which is what Gell argues, then they also use the same artefacts and representations to supply information about the supernatural. This is another way to express the preoccupation that lies at the heart of Gell’s account, the human tendency, as we search for information, to impute cause to what we see, to believe that what we see must be directed toward us for some purpose. In the case of the Wanli portrait, it would be more appropriate to say that the viewers, rather than searching for causes, had certain expectations about the portrait, that offerings to the Emperor present in his portrait would provide benefits.
‘The Agency of, and the Agency for, the Wanli Emperor’, by Jessica Rawson P102
What Gell does not do in Art and Agency is explore, in any theoretical way, the contexts in which such expectations or abductions develop. Indeed, because he wishes to leave aside cultural conditions as part of his equations, Gell is not concerned with what seems to me the nub of the matter. For in the case of the Wanli portrait, the expectations of the viewer depended on a set of beliefs about the family and the role of the ancestors within the family, a set of belief h s about nourishing the dead, and a set of beliefs about the Emperors position in the Universe. Insofar as these sets of ideas embraced the social and institutional structures within which the portrait functioned rather than just a literal account of symbolism and iconography, Gell could not have been dissatisfied with them.
…a further set of beliefs was in play, concerning the decorative motifs on the robes and the carpet. The dragons, the cosmic emblems, and the patterns of clouds and precious treasures were deemed to have auspicious effects. This was and is a distinctly Chinese aesthetic dimension of agency. For the Chinese have sustained to this day the notion that decorative motifs, most especially of creatures and flowers, but also of many other items, ensure good fortune for those who wear clothes so decorated and live in buildings in which these designs are reiterated on architecture, furniture, and utensils.
From the Han period (206BC – AD 220), motifs such as dragons and written characters, embellishing dress, artefacts, and buildings were expected to have agency and to ensure for the inhabitants a good fortune. At all times in China, dragons were linked with cloud and rain, a benign fertilising force. Dragons could be expected to appear and be seen when the rains came. Conversely, if rain was desired, clay dragons would bring the rain, for the two necessarily appeared together.
An inversion had occurred; a consequence has been turned into a cause. The rain brings the dragons, so that dragons and pictures of dragons have agency and cause the rain. In the same way, when the emperor enjoyed good fortune, strange coloured birds, or tall ripe grains, would appear spontaneously. Like the clay dragons, propitious motifs and emblems on the robes of the emperor had agency to ensure that he too would enjoy the benefits of good fortune in the future.
‘The Agency of, and the Agency for, the Wanli Emperor’, by Jessica Rawson P 104
Like the robe in the painting, the gunfu in the tomb carried dragons in roundels and the twelve ancient emblems. In both cases, the robes effected a transformation, fitting the emperor not just for court life but for specific rituals. Transformation is, indeed, a major contribution of all dress, artefacts, and building structures. Here, they turned the naked, dead man into an Emperor, an empty hall into a court reception room, and an underground shaft and chambers in the earth into a place for the afterlife. In the case of the robe, the colours, the dragons, and the emblems were essential to effect this transformation and were deemed necessary to the efficacy of the Emperor in both life and death.
…it would appear from the abundant material evidence that most Chinese of all periods took the view that life after death was a continuation of this life. To ensure that the afterlife was properly provided for, tombs were equipped with the needs of daily life.
A rather special type of agency could be deemed to be at work here. Tombs, whether equipped with “real” objects or models were in themselves models of life that were deemed to make possible an afterlife. They had in effect the power, or, in Gell’s terms, the agency, to provide the tomb owner with a further and different, yet similar, life to the one in what we call life. The agency of the tomb is a consequence of engagement neither with technology nor with the primary aesthetic characteristics of artefacts or works of art. Rather, this is an example of the power of artefacts themselves.
…The artefacts ensure a good outcome. That is, the motifs on the robes and the decoration of the porcelains were intended to be auspicious. For instance, one of the women’s jackets carries a design of children, a decorative type intended to ensure many descendants. Presumably the efficacy of such decoration was to be present both in life and in the afterlife. In this arena, the artefacts affect the workings of the universe as a whole. ….the artefacts allow a difficult and inaccessible area, the life after death, to be thought about and provided for. They are in effect a tool for thinking about and affecting the unknown.
‘The Agency of, and the Agency for, the Wanli Emperor’, by Jessica Rawson
P 108 - 109
…if we are to understand the powers of artefacts and painting to engage us and our predecessors in different societies, we must recognize that it was the belief systems that enthralled viewers and provided them with the expectations that enabled them to see an emperor in a painted surface and a palace in a tomb. The skills of the painters and carvers were tools to bring those beliefs to the forefront of the viewers’ minds.
‘The Agency of, and the Agency for, the Wanli Emperor’, by Jessica Rawson P111
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