Thesis Topic
In the fifth year of Huichang (AD 845), Bai Juyi hosted a gathering known as the “Shangchi Gathering” at his residence in Luoyang, where he invited elderly gentlemen who had not held official positions to participate in a banquet. This event later became the origin of the “Elderly Gathering” and inspired the renowned painting subject “The Painting of the Nine Elders”. Over time, this work evolved through successive generations of transmission and replication, leading to the development of new visual paradigms. The meanings of the images also shifted in response to changes in historical context.
Simultaneously, the model of elegant gatherings established by the “Nine Elders Gathering” was continually emulated by later literati, generating new events, texts, and images. The subjects of these images were no longer the original Nine Elders from Xiangshan but instead became imitations of elderly gatherings from various eras. Examples include the Northern Song Dynasty’s “The Painting of the Five Elders of Suiyang” and “Qiying Gathering”, the Ming Dynasty’s “Elegant Gathering in the Apricot Garden” and “The Recluse Elders of Mount Xian”, and the Qing Dynasty's “Ten Elders of Loudong”. These images, sharing a similar “gene”, resonated and intertwined through the appropriation of visual motifs and the writing of accompanying texts, forming a complex system that integrates imagery, literature, and history, profoundly influencing the cultural connotations of the “Elderly Gathering”.
In this process of continuous transmission, traditional paradigms were persistently referenced, while new frameworks were constantly established. A clear analysis of these connections is necessary to reveal the true cultural significance and political implications behind these images.
Thus, the core issue of this paper is to elucidate the complex process of the formation of this image system: using the “Nine Elders Gathering” and “The Painting of the Nine Elders” as the main threads, it explores how this concept was formed, became a model, and was continually imitated, reinterpreted, and utilized by different groups throughout history to shape their identities.