Pop and purpose, with due respect

Chinese landscape painting is one of the great historical traditions in world art. Whether as the setting for figures engaged in different kinds of narratives, or as the direct and independent subject of a painted scroll, landscape assumed an exalted place in the history of Chinese art.

The same cannot be said for portraiture -- not by a long shot. Formal portraits memorializing worthy figures for their achievements are not rare; examples are found all the way back to the fragmented era of the Warring States, more than 2,200 years ago. But neither did portraits engage the same scholarly and philosophical attention at court as did, say, a depiction of mountains, river and sky.

The landscape seems to have presented Chinese artists -- not to mention their patrons -- with a hugely appealing opportunity for an imaginative journey into time and space. That voyage trumped the more proscribed possibilities to be found in rendering the individual human face.

Considerable curiosity value therefore attends a touring exhibition currently at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. It is billed as the first significant show ever devoted to Chinese ancestor portraits, a specific genre of portraiture linked to the belief that spirits of the dead can be beneficial to the living. Organized by Washington’s Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, the joined Smithsonian affiliates from whose collection the show’s three dozen examples have been drawn, it presents an often fascinating survey of an aesthetically minor form of painting.

These are portraits with a job to do, although exactly how the form evolved remains a matter of speculation. An iconic pose is common to the often life-size portrait subjects -- rigorously frontal, usually seated, painted in flat colors and decorated with elaborate two-dimensional patterns. It suggests the paintings’ function as a ritual art.

The highly informative catalog to “Worshipping the Ancestors: Chinese Commemorative Portraits” explains that, even after burial of a corpse, some aspect of its spirit was believed to linger. If those spirits were properly attended to, the ancestors could become a source of “wealth, good luck and many sons” for their descendants. Neglected, they could wreak havoc in the form of ghosts.

Commissioning a portrait for future use was one way to start the process of appropriate veneration. Ordering one up after death was another. Hauling out the painted-silk portrait scroll for ceremonial days -- a New Year’s celebration, a feast day -- could keep the magic going.

In the show, a monumental 18th century double-portrait of a prince and his wife is emblematic of the genre’s common attributes. Seated in richly carved and upholstered seats, whose throne-like configuration exalts their regal bearing, the pair is posed before a blank background that dominates the upper half of the 6-foot-tall hanging scroll. Their schematic bodies are engulfed in rich, worldly color and dazzling pattern, which identifies their station in life. But in a subtle manner that slyly evokes the pervasive power of the natural landscape in Chinese culture, their heads and shoulders stand out against the blankness like ancient mountain peaks against the sky.

The painter has mixed bits of reflective mica into the indigo pigment of their matching robes, which gently shimmer in the light. The prince’s feet peek out from beneath his elaborate dress; his wife’s are demurely hidden. He possesses the power of mobility in the world; she does not.

Most remarkably, his aged face is rendered with an acute naturalism -- hollowed cheeks, careworn eyes, meticulous beard. The incisive degree of observation, so different from the stylized patterning that otherwise dominates the picture, endows him with a sense of unique and highly individual presence. By contrast, her face has the idealized simplicity of a beautiful mask.

Indeed, the difference between the male and female faces is almost as stark as the difference between a high-resolution digital photograph and a smiley-face decal. Partly it’s the result of the doughy white make-up commonly worn by women of her class. Mostly it’s because of a Confucian prohibition against a woman being seen by a man who is not a member of the family.

An artist -- always male -- commissioned to paint a female portrait faced an obvious dilemma if he couldn’t even look at her. The problem was solved through the use of pattern books, where an array of standardized facial features and head-shapes could be mixed and matched, according to a husband’s description of his wife. Think of the practice as an elegant version of a modern police sketch, with the woman cast as China’s Most Wanted.

Who were these portrait artists? Good question. Rare is the ancestor portrait that is signed with any but the sitter’s name. What was important was the ancestor, not the painter. The brilliant litany of identified landscape painters from the past thousand years is long, but the painters of ancestor portraits were largely anonymous journeymen.

In the West, Chinese ancestor portraits mostly gained favor in the early 20th century as exotic elements of interior decorating schemes. The exhibition proposes that our general lack of regard for the artistic significance of the genre is a function of cultural bias, which has its roots in Western ideas of portraiture. Chinese ancestor portraits are indifferent to European and American portrait traditions, which value expressive psychological meaning.

The argument is unpersuasive. Stylistic shifts and compositional anomalies do turn up along the way -- an equestrian portrait here, a half-length portrait there -- and skill in production varies. But Chinese ancestor portraiture doesn’t possess the visual range and intellectual fireworks of painting produced for the Chinese literati. This work emerges instead as a spirited form of popular art -- necessary to daily life, driven by formula, tied to an enduring function with specific needs. The real cultural bias is the one we still hold against popular art.

The modern introduction of photography finally disrupted the popular tradition of ancestor portraiture, eventually bringing to a virtual end a practice that dates back a thousand years. In its own way, however, the mechanical apparatus of the camera gave the handmade genre an artistic stature it never had before.

The show might not be convincing as a testament to a major genre that has been overlooked, but it is a fascinating examination of a remarkable form of cultural artifact that ought to be better known.

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‘Worshipping the Ancestors’

Where: Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 1130 State St., Santa Barbara

When: Tuesdays-Saturdays, 11a.m.-5 p.m.; Fridays, 11a.m.-9 p.m.; Sundays, noon-5 p.m.

Ends: Feb. 15

Price: Adults, $7; seniors, $5; students, $4

Contact: (805) 963-4364