The Three Perfections: Chinese Painting, Poetry, and Calligraphy

by Michael Sullivan

What do the Chinese write on their paintings? Why do they write on them? In this newly revised volume--now illustrated in color--Michael Sullivan provides a lucid and engaging analysis of the intimate relationships among painting, poetry, and calligraphy in Chinese culture. The fundamental unity of writing and painting is shown to be an ancient, though still valid, concept in China. Twenty-six luminous reproductions of celebrated works of art illustrate key aspects of this superb union of literature and the visual arts.

Genres: Art, China

86 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1974

About the author

Donovan Michael Sullivan (Chinese: 蘇立文), 29 October 1916 – 28 September 2013, was a Canadian-born British art historian and collector, and one of the major Western pioneers in the field of modern Chinese art history and criticism.

Sullivan was born in Toronto, Canada, and moved to England at the age of three. He was the youngest of five children of Alan Sullivan (pen name Sinclair Murray), a Canadian mining engineer turned novelist and his wife Elisabeth (née Hees). Sullivan was a graduate of Rugby School and graduated from the University of Cambridge in architecture in 1939. He was in China from 1940–1946 with the International and Chinese Red Cross followed by teaching and doing museum work in Chengdu, where he met and married Wu Huan (Khoan), a biologist who gave up her career to work with him.

He received a PhD from Harvard University (1952) and a post-doctoral Bollingen Fellowship. He subsequently taught in the University of Singapore, and returned to London in the 1960s to teach at the School of Oriental and African Studies. Then he became Christensen Professor of Chinese art in the Department of Art at Stanford University from 1966 to 1984, before moving to the University of Oxford as a Fellow by Special Election at St Catherine's College, Oxford. He lived in Oxford, England. He was Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Oxford for 1973–74.

Sullivan was a major art collector who owned more than 400 works of art, including paintings by Chinese masters Qi Baishi, Zhang Daqian, and Wu Guanzhong. His was one of the world's most significant collections of modern Chinese art. He bequeathed his collection to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, which has a gallery dedicated to Sullivan and his wife Khoan.

Reviews

[Whitney · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wrote a paper on this book and found it to be very fascinating (the book- not my paper!) It is a wonderful read on the connection between the three modes of expression in ancient eastern art: painting, poetry, and calligraphy, and the discoveries that have been made on both meaning and form behind them. I would definately recommend it to anyone interested in learning about different cultures, art, and people

[Sreena · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Chinese painting is a dance between brush and ink, a dialogue between the artist and the subject. As the great master Li Bai once said, 'The artist captures the essence of a subject in a single stroke, revealing the hidden beauty that lies within.'"

"The written word, in the form of calligraphy, carries the rhythm of a poet's heart. Wang Xizhi famously remarked, 'The brush dances across the paper, its strokes embodying the emotions that words alone cannot express.'"

"Poetry, the language of the soul, finds its visual counterpart in painting and calligraphy. As Su Shi eloquently wrote, 'In the strokes of the brush, the poet's words come alive, revealing the essence of existence.'"

[Lillian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Textbook for Chinese Art History. Gave a good overview of the philosophy of Chinese painting, and provided examples.