Traces of a Master

Professor Cheng Man-ch'ing left a number of ways in which people could observe and appreciate his work, and derive guidance for their own practice of taijiquan and other arts.
For instance, Cheng's own exploration of qi development (養生 yangsheng) is evident not only in his taijiquan movies and in the stories people tell of his medical abilities, but in his calligraphy and painting. After all, Chinese calligraphy is based on some of the same principles as taijiquan: alignment, focus (yi), balance, and relaxation. In these four examples below of his calligraphy, done over the span of fifty years, we can see—despite the low resolution of these pictures—how his work dramatically changed over time.

4th European Cheng Man-ch'ing Cup

The European branch of Cheng Man-ch'ing's lineage holds a large event, the European Cheng Man-ch'ing Cup every year or two with guest masters, workshops, practice, discussions, tournament, demonstrations, lion dance, banquet, and socializing.
This year's event will be held July 31-August 3 in the mountains of southwestern France near the border with Spain. Featured presenters include Rosa Chen, Wang Chin Shih, Chu Hong Bin, Nigel Sutton, Fong Sutton, Lau Kung Kim, Nils Klug, Ken Van Sickle, Epi Van der Pol, and William Nelson.
For registration information, see the group's website (English and French).
Un événement exceptionnel!   

Tracing the Past: Art Exhibit

"Tracing the Past, Drawing the Future: Master Ink Painters in 20th-Century China," an exhibit of Cheng Man-ch'ing's elder colleagues works will be held at Stanford University in California.

The exhibit presents more than 110 works, in two rotations, February 17 through July 4, 2010. Admission is free. “This landmark exhibition illuminates a turning point in the development of Chinese ink painting during the 20th-century,” explained Dr. Xiaoneng Yang, the Cantor Arts Center’s Patrick J. J. Maveety Curator of Asian Art. “Drawing upon paintings and calligraphy on loan from Chinese collections new to American audiences, the exhibition presents monumental portraits, vibrant bird-and-flower painting, and spectacular landscapes by Wu Changshuo (1844–1927), Qi Baishi (1864–1957), Huang Binhong (1865–1955), and Pan Tianshou (1897–1971). Collectively known in China as the ‘Four Great Masters of Ink Painting,’ these artists faced the dual challenges of negotiating the impact of encounters with the West, while inventing new directions for long-held practices of ink painting.”
A fully illustrated catalogue with scholarly essays in English accompanies the exhibition, including two introductory essays and essays on each artist. Full entries, translated from Chinese, accompany images of the works in the exhibition.
An international symposium, "The Politics of Culture and the Arts in Early 20th-Century China" will be held February 19–21. Cosponsored by Stanford’s Cantor Arts Center, Center for East Asian Studies, and Department of Art and Art History, the symposium is open free to scholars and the public."

Cheng Man-ch'ing was well acquainted with these men as colleagues in the Shanghai art scene, the art colleges, and painting societies. Wu Changshuo wrote a colophon for Cheng's 1924 album and praised the young Cheng highly. We can see an influence of Wu and Qi Baishi on Cheng Man-ch'ing's painting.

Painting by Wu Changshuo
Flower and Vegetables album:
Narcissus, Eggplant, Grapevines, Lotus, Chrysanthemum, 1904.
Album Leaves. Ink and colors on silk. Zhejiang Provincial Museum.
Reproduced with permission. 

Chinese Painting Forgeries

There is a long history in China of forged artwork, and these days it has become a big business, with "painting factories" churning out cheap imitations of great works. Cheng Man-ch'ing's paintings have, along with those of hundreds of other artists, been forged, often quite ineptly.

A forger copies the format and content of the original painting (in most cases working from a printed version), but unless the forger is highly skilled, the net result is nowhere near the work of the master. In this example of a forgery (left), Cheng's style is superficially copied in terms of layout, content, and subject matter. However, we can see that the forgery has missed the mark: it is flat and unexpressive, the plant has no life in it, and the parts of the plant do not relate to each other. When compared to an original work of Cheng's (right), we can see that the authentic work is imbued with qi, and that everything--composition, line, detail, brushstroke, color--"hangs together" as a whole. The plant looks alive, as if the wind has blown it into place just at that moment.

What is missing in most forgeries is the indelible mark of the artist, the focus of the mind and execution of inner expression, sponteneity, feeling, depth, skill, and technique: the power of brushwork, strength of line, facility in ink tones, and an intimacy of understanding the interconnected brushstrokes of both painting and calligraphy.

Ironically, forgery in Chinese art is to a certain extent a byproduct of study. An aspiring artist is expected to master the styles of prior great artists, and gradually work towards development of his or her own style. In fact, Cheng Man-ch'ing's friend and colleague Zhang Daqian (張大千 Chang Ta-ch'ien, 1899–1983), one of the great figures of 20th-century Chinese art, took great delight in creating such skilled forgeries that he was regularly able to fool experts. Nevertheless, forgery remains trickery.

2/2017 Update: Readers can find a comprehensive article on Chinese art authenticity, connoisseurship, and artist Huang Binhong here in Chinese Heritage Quarterly.

Seven Friends of Painting Exhibit

Cheng Man-ch'ing and six of his colleagues started the "Seven Friends of Painting Association" (七友畫會) in Taiwan, holding annual exhibits. This May, a retrospective exhibit is being held May 22–June 14, 2009 in honor of the group's 50th anniversary, at the National Museum of History in Taipei. The seven artists were Ma Shouhua, Chen Fang, Tao Yunlou, Zheng Manqing (Cheng Man-ch'ing, Liu Yantao, Gao Yihong, and Zhang Gunian (馬壽華、陳方、陶芸樓、鄭曼青、劉延濤、高逸鴻、張穀年), all influential figures in the painting scene during their lifetimes.

Cheng Man-ch'ing Videos

For t'ai chi ch'uan enthusiasts, a new authorized site has links to a number of video clips , and information about ordering DVDs.

Cheng Man-ch'ing's Literary Output

Professor Cheng Man-ch'ing had a love of reading, study, and writing that permeated everything he did. He was a college poetry instructor by his late teens, and as an artist, merged painting, poetry, and calligraphy into each of his works of art. He wrote poetry to mark occasions, to capture ideas and sentiments, and in honor of teachers, friends, and family. He wrote theoretical works about poetry, calligraphy, and painting, about medicine, and about tai chi ch'uan. Three compilations of his paintings were made, and he selected about five hundred poems for two volumes of his poetry. In his later years, Cheng distilled his thoughts on a number of Chinese classics: Lao-tzu's Tao Te Ching (Daodejing), the Analects of Confucius, the I Ching (Yijing), the Book of Poetry, and others.

Cheng wrote "as many books as he was tall" —all told, about twenty books. Of these, the one with possibly the most impact was his Cheng-tzu's Thirteen Treatises on T'ai Chi Ch'uan (鄭子太極拳十三篇), a work of theory, philosophy, and application aimed at an experienced audience. Cheng had worked on the book in the 1940s; it was published in the 1950s in Taiwan. It has since been translated into a number of different languages. In addition, he wrote several other books, still widely available, on t'ai chi ch'uan aimed at beginners, two of them in English.