'Drinking and Singing at the Foot of a Precipitous Mountain' by Zhang Daqian, formerly attr. to Guan Tong. Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
This past Thursday, I journeyed to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, for a job interview. Following that, poked around the exhibits a bit. Summers seem to be pretty quiet in terms of major exhibits, at least for the Asia department. I wonder what the logic is behind that, and when the busiest season is.
Still, I was very excited to see the exhibit on Zhang Daqian, premier 20th century Chinese forger, the curatorial debut of a friend/former coworker of mine. The exhibit included a number of works by Zhang, both original works created under his name and signed, and forgeries sold by Zhang to the Museum either directly or through art dealer middlemen. It also included, and this is what I think is the best part, letters taken from the Museum’s archives, revealing the precise wording of the exchanges between Zhang and the Museum, and bringing to life the story of Zhang’s relationship with the Museum.
One of the pieces, which I take to be the centerpiece of the exhibit, was of particular interest. Claimed by Zhang, who sold it to the Museum through a dealer, a middleman, in 1957, to be a 10th century original by Guan Tong, it is not only expertly executed in the appropriate style, with artificial aging, and content appropriate to the period and style, but goes beyond that. It is titled and attributed so as to match a long-lost work from the Imperial Collections, thus contributing largely to its ability to fool anyone who were to seek it in the primary source documents of the Imperial Collections records. Inscriptions and seals placed upon it form a false provenance or object history, and lush Japanese silks and other materials used in the mounting help to support a false story about it being in the collection of a Japanese collector for much of the previous century (if not longer; I don’t remember exactly what the exhibit said Zhang’s story was), and thus falling off the radar of art in China.
Zhang’s artistic skill is incredible, but his skill at creating false provenance and convincing museums of the authenticity of his works, even while meeting with Museum staff directly in person to sell them his own original works, is no less impressive.
Joe was quite modest about the whole thing, as is to be expected, but I think he did a fantastic job, if it’s not too presumptuous of me to say (i.e. who asked for my opinion, that of a lowly former intern?). It’s great to see an exhibit that really brings to life the story of this individual, not just through his art, but through other objects and through detailed, but not excessive, gallery labels which themselves also included photos and other images. I love to see museums use a greater variety of objects/images than just the art itself, and to focus on biography or history and not just on the art. It’s not a deviation from their mission – it’s just another kind of art history. Gee, I wonder what Joe would have to say about my interpreting his approach in this way.
