Could Bada Shanren (八大山人) be the first caricaturist in China?

Edward Tsang 2015.01.19; updated 2015.02.02; 2024.12.24

Bada Shanren (八大山人) might have been the first caricaturist in China. In his paintings, many animals stared upwards, as if they don't think much of things above them.

Bada Shanren (1626-1705)

Bada Shanren was a distant branch in the Ming monarch in China. After the Manchurian defeated the Ming dynasty (around 1644), Bada Shanren hid himself in a Buddhist monastery in Nanchang (南昌). He appeared to have gone mad, screaming from time to time. He could have play-acted to reassure the emperors in the Qing Dynasty that he was not a threat to them. Only he himself knew what the truth was. He left the monastery after 40 years, when the Qing dynasty was in secure control of China.

Riddle in Bada Shanren's signature (哭笑不分)

Written top to bottom, the four characters of his name (八大山人) form Bada Shanren's signature in his later life. This signature looks like the character "laugh" (笑) as well as the character "cry" (哭). Only Bada Shanren knows whether that was deliberate, and if so, what messages, if any, he wanted to convey.

Caricatures by Bada Shanren (諷刺畫)

Bada Shanren was a well-known painter. In many of his paintings, animals (especially the weaker ones) stared upwards. This gesture was exaggerated and unmistakable. It is possible that the painter did not think much of the authority, but did not want to speak it out. (Many were killed for speech crime (文字獄) at the time, under Qing (from 1644).) So he probably expressed his disapproval of the authority in his paintings.

Early caricaturists worldwide

As Bada Shanren was (apparently) using exaggerated characters to deliver his message, his paintings were caricatures. Some of the earliest caricaturists that I can find in the List of caricaturists in Wikipedia were Jacques Callot (1592-1635), Pier Leone Ghezzi (1674-1755) and William Hogarth (1697–1764). So, Bada Shanren (1626-1705) could be the world's second earliest caricaturist by birth.

References

The Bada Shanren Museum (in Chinese)
Analysis of Bada Shanren by Professor ZHU Liangzhi, University of Beijing (in Chinese) 朱良志著《八大山人研究》
Bibliograpy of Bada Shanren (in Chinese)
Ten of Bada Shanren’s paintings in high-resolution
Peter Way, "Connoisseurship versus criticism (a discussion of a problematic paining by Bada Shanren)", Bulletin de l'Ecole française d'Extrême-Orient, Année, 1991, Volume 78, Numéro 78, pp. 229-258
Tan Hwee Koon, "The Impact of Bada Shanren, Late 17th Century Recluse Painter on the Paintings of Zhu Wei, Late 20th Century, ‘Post-89’ Contemporary Chinese Artist", http://zhuwei.artron.net/news_detail_33201 (assessed 2015.02.03)
Unscrolling the masterpieces that were made in China at the V&A, The Independent, Tuesday 03 February 2015

Acknowledgement

Professor Weihua YE (Jiangxi University of Finance and Economics (JUFE) explained Bada Shanren's work to the author in Nanchang in 2014. He also provided some of the links above.

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