Calligraphy in

Photographs















































Abstract
This study traces the influence of eastern aesthetics upon Bernardo Bertoluccis The
Last Emperor (1987) by focusing upon a calligraphic painting of the ideogram (y,
change). The reason for this study is not to question how does the film reconstruct
the Chinese ideographic system? What are the effects of curating calligraphy in the
way presented by the films photography? (Although these questions will be
encountered) My choice of the painting in the film as the object of this study had
bearing from the sexual nature of scenes in which they appear, and it will conclude
with remarks about Bertoluccis representation of Chinese sexuality in the film. My
study depends upon a certain level of ignorance of the films Western audience
towards Chinese culture and its historical discourse on my part, so it has been to my
advantage in this case that I am not a student in Chinese.

Acknowledgements
I have had help translating calligraphy in the film from Dr. Alison Hardie at Leeds
Universitys East Asian Studies department, and Ms. Xiaofeng who is a Chinese tutor
that I met during a culture exchange with Buckland group in Guangxi province,
China. Tutors at Leeds Universitys school of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural
Studies who have been involved in my research include Dr. Liz Watkins for her help
with film studies and colour theory research and Dr. Eric Prenowitz for advice in
Deconstruction Reading Politics, Reading Sexual Difference, Reading Roland
Barthes and Translation studies. My interest in the East partly arose from a course in
Imagining Others taught at undergraduate level 2 by Dr. Eva Frojmovic and Dr.
Ashley Thomson.


Introduction

This study questions the meaning of ideographic language in a film meant for an
English-speaking audience. Focusing on a painting of the character (y) in the
emperors bedroom of the Imperial City, how does the photographic medium and
screenplay of The Last Emperor represent the Chinese calligraphic art form as an
object in the filmic language? To begin with most of the calligraphy in the film is
illegible due to it being made out of focus by the depth of field of the photographic
lens. The lens smoothed over the edges altering many of the characters in situations
where actors are in focus and calligraphic figures lie in the background of the scene.
In some cases it is very poignant in the narrative when actors write in their native
ideographic language or read from texts, whereas in others it is just for decoration.
The object brought into question by this study is extremely large, about the same
height as actors, so it interacts in the screenplay differently to other examples
especially since it was hand drawn rather than printed. Translations are given in the
study wherever possible, but this object was not chosen for its simplicity as much as it
represents calligraphic painting as an expressive Fine Art form.

A number of contemporary observations state that Chinese sitters
demanded to be shown full length and facing the camera or whole.
Such an iconographic requirement was certainly true for the traditional
formal portraits, which copied the rules of composition from their
painted counterparts.
1


1
Regine Thiriez, Photography and Portraiture in Nineteenth-Century China in East Asian History:
Numbers 17/18, June/December 1999 (Canberra: Institute of Advanced Studies at Australian
National University, 2000) (p.91)
Calligraphy in Photographs

Regine Thiriezs compilation of postcards from China
2
were a great inspiration at the
beginnings of this study for the deep analysis her project presents of early Chinese
photography studios practice in reprinting images for European postcards. Her
research into postcards of the late nineteenth century discovered that many of the
photographs on the cards were originally private portraits commissioned by Chinese
families, which were sold underhand by photography studios to European exporters.
The identity of subjects in the photographs became lost in this practice of postcard
publishers that reproduced portraits as types of people under captions such as a
Chinese family.

2
Regine Thiriez, Historical Chinese Postcard Project: 1896-1920
The auspicious emblem in the background means Double Happiness and is always present in
relation to Chinese wedding celebrations.

The full, frontal composition of sitters proposes that there is no Cartesian
divide between body and mind in traditional Chinese aesthetics, and neither is there
anatomy as we are accustomed to it in the West because it is hidden by the hanging
ruffles of Chinese silk garments. Before questioning Bertoluccis representation of
eastern aesthetics in his photography our use of the concept East must be defined. We
are not simply referring to the Orient because it only has meaning in opposition to the
Occident, and the purpose of this study is to reflect upon Western aesthetics by
pursuing and understanding of an eastern representation. In this notion, which is
wholly subjective from an English-speaking perspective, the East has become
subordinated, as in the Feminine as opposed to masculinity. Other concepts such as
the Unconscious are evoked in the same gesture.



Anatomical Realism of Photography and Abstract Calligraphy

Signifiers in the paintings matter are the colour black, expressions of dry
brush and wet ink, and the bamboo paper left empty in its negative space. A
contemporary trend with film theorists focusing on colour
3
has resulted in a painterly
language of colour in film, which the Italian collaboration of Bertolucci appropriate
well towards an idiosyncratic colour code. Black, a symbol of the pre-conscious,
when the dark space of the collective unconscious of a movie theatre is torn by
4

Black calligraphy in the film has a tendency to penetrate from out of focus positions
on back walls, through the depth of field, to the rear wall of the cinema. The sheer
scale of the Modern Chinese calligraphy in photographic images falls into an
opposition between anatomical realism (of photography) and abstract expressionism,
and through the discourse in Western Fine Art that accepted expression as a signifier
it can be understood. This opposition is important to twentieth century Chinese
painting, which began incorporating formalities of Socialist Realism when the PRC
was established.
Despite Picassos abstract figurative style, as a Fine art painter he had to
master anatomy and measured drawing before institutions could support his work and
the traditions of Chinese aesthetic thought changed when its artists began studying in
this way. It isnt necessary for a calligrapher to know anatomy, and measured drawing
would be far from traditional, however, in the West (including the art schools
teaching Socialist Realism in the PRC) we are accustomed to realism and nudity
especially in concern of photography, which represents anatomy perfectly. The final
step in calligraphy is to raise the image from the horizontal position for painting to the

3
See Color: the film reader ed. Angela Dalle Vacche and Brian Price (London: Routledge, 2006)
4
Vittorio Storaro, The Story of a Photographic Ideology in The Last Emperor: Multiple
Takes (p.57)
vertical position for viewing. By using an easel to paint in the vertical position the
object of study becomes aligned with the view of the canvas so the image can be
fresher in mind when the artist makes a mark; ideal for producing a realistic study.
Expressive painters make no attempt to represent the cognitive form of an object
because in Western schools they have been trained to know anatomy off-by-heart, and
by working from memory certain traces of their personality along with the anatomical
ideal transfer into representation. In the colour black, a capacity is created for abstract
connotation, within the masculine scrawls of Jackson Pollock or the precise strokes of
a Chinese Calligrapher.






During the sex scene when the painting comes between John Lone and his lover
Joan Chen the scale correlating with her height, along with diagonal brushstrokes
gesturing down towards the bed seem to narrate her desire to sleep with him; the first
image (figure 9) of her approach towards the emperors bed when the painting can be
seen between them, her drawback when his gun obscures view of the painting in the
second (figure 10), dropping the quilt to expose her bodily form under a light gown
(figure 11), and the fourth when her nudity covers the painting (figure 12). The
audiences side on view of the painting in the scene accentuates this effect and
shadows cast across the framed work in the same direction as the black gestures alter
the colour in negative spaces of the image. Light coming from empty frames behind
her imitates the surface of his silk sheets, all drawing attention to the painting and
posing the question - what does the ideogram mean? Whether the interaction between
characters and the painting is choreographed or completely improvised has been made
insignificant by Bertoluccis editing process, when he must have recognized the
abstract connotation and incorporated the movement into the language of the scene.
The process of shedding layers during the sex scene leads to many moments of
partial nudity that stand parallel to the painting and fixate a kind of anatomical gaze
over the whole image. Can calligraphy in this instance be separated from the films
erotic politics or was the difference between Western and Chinese sexuality
fundamental to politics motivating the films production? The painting itself is veiy
mouein because of the size of the single chaiactei, anu moie so; the iueogiam no
longei exists. It liteially tianslates as "Change", most iecognizable fiom the !"
#$%&' oi Book of Change, which is one of the oluest texts in Chinese liteiatuie.
Beaiing in minu the time in which 'The Last Empeioi' is set (this scene is just
befoie the }apanese invasion) at the beginning of China's Republic, "Change" has
piofounu significance. To put a uaik twist on the situation this is a time of change
fiom the Qing uynasty anu the 0pium Wais leu by the feuual goveinment anu
Euiopean colonizeis, which will biing even moie instability foi Chinese society
ovei the coming centuiy.

Having read Franois Julliens The Impossible Nude the transmission of qi
energy in paintings by Chinese artists becomes an unavoidable signifier of the
cultures painting tradition (an example of the theoretical limitations to studying
Chinese aesthetic theory through translations). The following analysis will explore
this preconception in the sex scene because it puts the choreography into a different
perspective following on consistently from the prior analysis of the black ink
calligraphys unconscious act, along with the practice of painting on a horizontal axis
then transferring it to a vertical position for viewing. As was mentioned before in the
anatomical fixation, from Joan Chens nudity to the painting beside her, at one point
in the scene it appears as if it was a woman upside down, on a material that is similar
in colour to the emperors silk bed sheets. The bed sheets become a surface in the
same way as the paper of the calligraphic painting. In the text Jullien remarks upon
the absence of anatomical form in the whole of Chinese aesthetics and coincidentally
in Last Emperor the act of love making is also absent of nudity. Not to suggest that
Bertolucci incorporated the Chinese aesthetic tradition because the film contains
nudity, for one in the moment of Chen joining Lone in bed, but he possibly made
recourse in this scene to mimic Chinese painting. The undulation of clothing of the
sweeps and folds, of the sleeves and of the gatherings at the waist is used to convey
this, for the array of curves created by garments is the only perceptible external sign
of the inner network of the cardinal channels
5

Julliens book not only recognized a signifier in Chinese painting, but also as
the title of the book suggests looked for evidence of how nudity came to be in
Western culture. Western painting always reputed an ideal form of anatomy and it
reached a state of perfection when photography was invented, the camera shot is

5
Franois Jullien, The Impossible Nude (p.61)
the point in time devoid of extension, but through which alone being is.
6

Photography not only captures anatomical form, it also captures history and all in all
presents a sense of truth. It was unavoidable that calligraphy in photographs would be
represented in an anatomical form; by imitating appearance and smoothing over the
finer details should this representation of the painting be regarded as a forgery?
Presumably the artist gave Bertolucci permission to deface the Imperial styled
reproduction and the Communist bureaucrats would have wanted it to be displayed in
this way. The point is that Guohua is no longer a uniquely Chinese art form and the
film is a moment of Chinas Cultural Revolution when the art form can never be
seen in the same way again. Imperial China has been stripped bare and in its place a
Modern Chinese Calligraphic painting, incorporating anatomy, records this point in
history when Chinese scholarly art became a universal form of Fine Art.













6
Franois Jullien, A History of Being in The Impossible Nude: Chinese Art and Western Aesthetics
(p. 26)

Reproduction of Calligraphy for The Last Emperor (1987)

What is the meaning of Modern Chinese Calligraphy in a film that re-appropriates the
ideographic language into a Western sign system in film?

The walls in the palace where the film was set are decorated with empty frames
after many of the paintings in the Imperial palace collection were dispersed during the
twentieth century of revolution, so the reproduction of paintings to fill those spaces
was essential to the films presentation. Y (), the painting selected for the film, is by
no means the original painting of the emperors bedroom so its presence as a sign must
be a specific part of the filmic language. At no point is the sign pictured in its entirety;
actors obstruct the frontal view in figure 5 and their choreographed movements seem
to interact with it in a specific way, which will be questioned here. The carved
wooden window lattices on either side of the painting are also unfamiliar outside of
China, because European windows are made out of glass, and their antique design
ages the whole image. Eunuch characters in the foreground wear Rococo-Chinoiserie
7

styled costumes, designed for the film, and Queue pony-tails that dont appear
particularly Chinese aside from the images other signifiers, but rather not modern and
non-Western in fashion. The painting is presented to make the whole image appear
Chinese and light coming through the antique, latticed windows at either side creates
an interior space so the audience interpolates this place inside the Emperors bedroom
in China.

7
Chinoiserie was a Rococo style of decoration and imagery from the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, which imitated Chinese themes and designs.
In key with the ethnocentricity of this study one problem that must be engaged
with is its limitation to sources in the field of Sinology, which lenses the view of
China and must have been an obstacle to Bertoluccis film because he is trained in
European art not Chinese. China is not the object of the investigation, but Sinology is
the common ground upon which both texts, The Last Emperor and this essay, are
based and so the ideas that produced the film will be found in Sinologists analyses
and translations. Although landscape painting traditions and portraiture for example,
Toaism and Confucianism can be spoken about, the logic of ideographic language
cannot be sufficiently explained by phonetic writing so, to account for the traces of
Chinese aesthetics, there were specialists who played a large role in the films
production, but havent been credited for the specific work they did.

I found quite a few Europeans and Americans there who spoke fluent
Mandarin. There was an American who had been born in Peking. He was
the son of a writer. He went to school in Peking and studied calligraphy
there, so I hired him to help me find a good calligrapher who could
reproduce the scrolls and calligraphy exercises made by previous dynasties
that hang on the walls of the Imperial city. Each dynasty had its own
style. You can imagine how impossible it would be for an untrained eye to
recognize certain styles of the calligraphy.
8


The artist who reproduced paintings for the Imperial City isnt credited anywhere in
English texts leaving Bertolucci, the subject of the film rather than the painting
subject, as the authenticator of calligraphy in the films photography. Even the

8
Vincent LoBrutto, Interview with production designer Ferdinando Scarfiotti in By Design:
Interviews with Film Production Designers (New York: Praeger, 1992)
signature of the artist next to the red seal has been made out of focus by the camera
lens so it is impossible to recognize the calligrapher. The disconnection between
calligraphy and its author hinders linguistic translation of it and points at the abstract,
connoted language of the ideogram as a graphic sign, which is completely subjective.
Speculations over who the artist was will come later in the study, however, for now all
that is known is Bertolucci has composed a kind of language with calligraphy in the
photography of The Last Emperor.