On Collecting: Meng Xinyu on Art and Possession

Where My Eye Began

I grew up in a village on the plains of eastern Henan. At markets and festival fairs, I was drawn instinctively to woodblock New Year prints, the clay figures called nidigou, and other forms of folk art. These were things I encountered firsthand from childhood. Their intense colors and expressive forms still move me deeply.

Those early impressions continued to shape my painting. They also planted the beginnings of my love for the folk art of the Central Plains and the ancient art of the East. As my horizons widened, so did my appetite. I came to love the weight and breadth of stone sculpture and pottery from the Han, Wei, Jin, and Tang periods; the elegance and vitality of Song, Liao, and Jin ceramics; and the profound, almost inexpressible subtleties of Song and Yuan painting. All of these have continued to influence my taste and my work.

China's long history is like a river flowing through thousands of years, depositing innumerable cultural treasures along its course. More and more people now take an interest in collecting and studying this inheritance. Their ways of collecting differ. As I see it, there are three main approaches.

Some people collect primarily to invest and make money. Personal likes and dislikes have little to do with their decisions: they buy whatever promises to appreciate, then sell when the profit is sufficient. If there is money to be made, even a fine object will not stay with them; an inferior one certainly will not.

Others begin with a personal interest but both buy and sell, using their collections to support further collecting. They continually replenish and renew their holdings, gradually raising the quality of what they own.

A third kind collects entirely for pleasure. These collectors concentrate on things they love. They buy without selling, unconcerned with whether prices rise or fall. When something appeals to them, they acquire it for the enjoyment of looking at it and for its affinity with their own aesthetic sensibility. I think I belong to this third group.

Archaeologists see collecting as a matter of culture and the transmission of historical inheritance. Merchants collect wealth and, along with it, objects carrying cultural substance. Most painters who enjoy collecting seem to me to belong to the third group: their motives are usually quite simple. They like what they like.

I have visited many painters' studios. These days, a painter with no stone carving, wood carving, or piece of pottery on display might almost feel embarrassed to call it a studio. For someone working in the visual arts, the pleasure of living among objects that hold both history and the qualities of ancient art is difficult to put into words.

Bringing the Collection into the Mountains

Ten years ago, I established a studio at Taihang Wuji, deep in the Taihang Mountains. Long ridges, broad slopes, and mountain mists surrounded it. There was no shortage of nature there, no end to the wild spirit of the wooded hills.

What the studio lacked, I thought, was a little cultivated elegance. So I transported my stone carvings, wood carvings, pottery figures, and ceramics up the mountain by the truckload. Carefully arranged, these abundant objects brought another kind of atmosphere into the wilderness. Fellow artists came to visit and openly expressed their admiration. My vanity was thoroughly satisfied.

Collecting is addictive. As my finances allowed, I became increasingly bold about what I would buy.

I had known an antiquities dealer from Jiangnan for years. Through photographs sent by phone, I had already bought old stone carvings and wooden plaques from him. One day, he called about a very large gatehouse from a Ming official's residence. He said it was going to be demolished because of construction and redevelopment. The price was reasonable. Did I want it?

After some thought, I decided I did. I left the bricks and roof tiles behind, but the carved woodwork, stone carvings, wooden doors, and doorframes alone filled three trucks. When they reached the mountain, they covered the studio courtyard.

Then, quite by chance, I discovered the long-lost source of Linlü stone, just below my studio. I was delighted. Emperor Huizong, a supreme connoisseur of viewing stones, had designated Linlü stone in the Northern Song's Yunlin Shipu as one of the three highest-ranking stones for imperial appreciation. Its forms resemble Taihu stone, while its material resembles Lingbi stone.

Something this good? Buy it.

Over three years, I brought more than ten truckloads of Linlü stone up to the studio. Soon the courtyard of Linlü Shanfang had become a veritable Lion Grove, with more stones scattered everywhere across the ground outside.

What I Still Longed to See

The objects kept multiplying. When you have pursued something far enough, you need to stop and reflect.

The mountains are quiet. I can often sit there in stillness and let my thoughts settle. When I paint, I am surrounded by the atmosphere created by all these objects. Surely that ought to be enough. Yet whenever I sit quietly, my mind returns to other places.

I think of the cultural remains scattered across the Central Plains: Longmen, Songshan, Gongyi's cave temple, and the Song imperial tombs. I think of Dunhuang, Maijishan, Yungang, and Bingling Temple; of the gardens of Suzhou, Yuelu Academy, old bridges and temples; and of the marvelous museums I have visited.

The objects are the hosts. We are only passing guests.

Most of the finest historical artifacts are in museums. If you want to see them and can make the time, you can buy a high-speed rail ticket and set off. In recent years, I have made my way through many of China's famous museums and important art museums across Europe. I have seen a great deal and learned a great deal. Those visits have helped me trace the course of art history more clearly.

Looking back over roughly the past decade, I have traveled west from my hometown of Shangqiu almost every early spring, following the direction of the Longhai Railway. I go to Kaifeng for the Po Pagoda and Iron Pagoda; to Gongyi for the cave temple and Song imperial tombs; to Songshan for the Songyue Temple Pagoda and Songyang Academy; to Luoyang for Longmen; and to Xi'an for the Small Wild Goose Pagoda and the Stele Forest.

Each circuit leaves me full of impressions. As time passes and my experience changes, what I feel when I look changes too.

The Northern Song imperial tombs lie scattered across open country. Their stone figures, weathered by a thousand years, stand silently in the fields of the Central Plains. Every encounter with them shakes me anew. The gravity accumulated through time, the wear of history, the bearing and spirit of a world a thousand years distant—all of it moves me deeply.

These figures have helped my painting and offered insights I cannot quite put into words. The depth of Central Plains culture has taught me that painting must avoid frivolity and shallowness, in its spirit as much as in its technique.

I cannot remember how many times I have visited Gongyi's cave temple. Almost every year, I go there to sketch. There are few visitors, and it is quiet. I always feel that a mysterious atmosphere hangs over the place, that something great lies concealed within it.

I converse, in my imagination, with Buddhist figures carved more than a thousand years ago. I look at them quietly and quietly depict them on canvas. Their forms seem to hold the essence of Eastern art, given enduring shape.

Years of returning to sketch them, meeting their gaze and entering into that silent conversation, have influenced my painting in ways that work beneath conscious notice. The nourishment they offer is a living spring. However often I look, I find something fresh; however much I draw from it, more remains.

The Song tombs, the Longmen Grottoes, Gongyi's cave temple, the museums—all are quietly there, whether I visit or stay away, whether I look or do not look. Beside them, my so-called collection is insignificant, hardly worth mentioning. Fortunately, time has also been working on me. My heart and vision have gradually opened, allowing me to see a wider world.

Things That Pass Through Our Hands

The great modern collector Zhang Boju was a legendary figure in a century of Chinese collecting. In his later years, he wrote Guoyan Yanyun—a title evoking clouds and smoke passing before the eyes. To me, he was someone who had come to understand life clearly. Late in life, he donated the collection he had assembled over a lifetime to the Palace Museum.

I think back to my own beginnings as a young person: picking up things for a few yuan, or ten or twenty yuan, searching market stalls and old households, gathering tile fragments from open ground while out sketching. At first, I took the humble pottery figures and tiles that others discarded. Later, I bought more and more.

These objects have stayed beside me through the years. They have refined my eye and corrected my aesthetic judgment. From time to time, I can take one in my hands and enjoy a brief interval of quiet pleasure. Yet however old they may be, they are only passing through my hands—clouds and smoke before the eyes.

Ma Weidu has said that collecting is one way he observes things in everyday life. When collecting brings you continually into contact with the finest works of art, your horizons and your outlook change accordingly.

How could my own so-called collection compare with the holdings of great museums, or with Longmen, the Song tombs, and Gongyi's cave temple after their thousand years of weathering? Standing in the Guimet Museum in Paris, I was astonished by the care with which Chinese art history had been presented: so clear, so beautiful to look at.

Every year, in early spring, I visit the Longmen Grottoes. The value of the ancient art in such places scarcely needs stating. Even imagining the stories that have unfolded there draws me in as if by magic. I picture these works bearing witness through history's upheavals, carried onward through time, until they can face me calmly in an age of peace. How could I remain unmoved?

Through these encounters, I came to understand something about the value of a life. It lies in observing and experiencing, in discovering something and grasping it inwardly, allowing the mind to deepen and rise beyond itself. Possession is no measure of that.