Peter Sturman, Professor, Departments of History of Art and Architecture, East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies University of California, Santa Barbara. 

Recent exhibitions in China of the Ming-dynasty individualist Xu Wei (1521–1593) typically included a few pieces by such contemporary and later artists as Chen Chun (1483–1544) and Bada Shanren (1626–1705), whose work resonates in ways that suggest influence in one direction or the other. Sometimes visually convincing, other times less so, in the least such additions provided welcome context for understanding both the conventions of artistic expression in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century China and Xu’s creativity. One shared arena is the exploration of artful combinations of poem, calligraphy, and painting known as the sanjue, or “three perfections.” The term’s familiarity, unfortunately, has dimmed the original novelty of the sanjue, but when applied as something more than the sum of its parts, the three perfections are not simply multidisciplinary but interdisciplinary as well. In this lecture, we will revisit the sanjue and consider them as dynamic elements interactively working toward a goal of syncretized expression of talent. Prompted by some of Xu Wei’s innovations, it will be suggested that looking at the sanjue as performing within a spatial matrix offers a more full-bodied, even three-dimensional, picture of talent in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century China.