Skip to Main Content

 Admission is always freeOpen today: 10:00  to 5:00  Directions             Play Artle            

                  -  Visit                      - Visit
                    - Getting Here
                    - Accessibility
                    - Tours, Guides & Maps
                    - Food & Drink
                    - Gallery Shops
                    - Visitor Policies 
                  -  Collection                      - Collection
                    - Highlights
                    - Search the Collection
                    - Artists Search
                    - Acquisition Highlights
                    - Stories
                    - Games 
                  -  Exhibitions                      - Exhibitions
                    - Current
                    - Special Installations
                    - Upcoming
                    - On Tour
                    - Past 
                  -  Calendar                      - Calendar
                    - Films
                    - Performances
                    - Talks
                    - Guided Tours
                    - After Hours
                    - Fun for Kids
                    - Festivals
                    - Workshops 
                  -  Learn                      - Learn
                    - Teachers
                    - Families
                    - Teens
                    - Adults
                    - Learning Resources
                    - Music Programs
                    - Film Programs 
                  -  Conservation                      - Conservation
                    - Projects
                    - Publications
                    - Resources 
                  -  Research                      - Research
                    - The Center
                    - Publications
                    - Make an Appointment
                    - Archives
                    - Library
                    - NGA Online Editions 
                  -  Support                      - Support
                    - Donate Now
                    - National Membership
                    - Circle Membership
                    - Leadership Groups
                    - Planned Giving
                    - Major Giving
                    - Gifts of Art 
                  -  Shop                      - Shop
                    - Books
                    - Jewelry
                    - Apparel & Accessories
                    - Kids
                    - NGA Custom Prints 
                  -  Play Artle

Home>Research>Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts>Research Projects>Members' Research Report Archive>Lisa Claypool, 2016–2017

About Fellowships

Senior Fellowships

Visiting Senior Fellowships

Postdoctoral Fellowships

Center/YCBA Postdoctoral Fellowships

Predoctoral Dissertation Fellowships

Center Members

Members’ Presentations

Former Members

Members’ Research Reports, 2011–2018

About Center Meetings

Recent & Upcoming Meetings

A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts

Wyeth Foundation for American Art Programs

Sydney J. Freedberg Lectures on Italian Art

Research at the Center

The Index of American Design

History of Early American Landscape Design

The History of the Accademia di San Luca, c. 1590–1635

About the Center Publications

Recent & Upcoming Publications

Reflections on the Collection: The Edmond J. Safra Visiting Professors at the National Gallery of Art

Studies in the History of Art

Seminar Papers

*Center Report*

From the *Bulletin*

Research Publications

Special Publications

National Gallery of Art Shop

# Members' Research Report Archive

*Hearing Color: Yu Fei'an's Pigeon Paintings in Modern Beijing*

**Lisa Claypool**, University of AlbertaAilsa Mellon Bruce Senior Fellow, 2016–2017

Yu Fei’an, *Doves*, c. 1951–1952. Mactaggart Art Collection. © 2004 University of Alberta Museums, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada

Yu Fei’an’s (1888–1959) compendia of bird paintings are equally compendia of colors. The switch from dove to woodpecker in his *Gongbi huaniao xuanji* (Selection of fine-line bird-and-flower paintings; 1959) is a switch from thinnest gray to the fattest red. Yu linked such explorations into color to ancient ink paintings and to the silvery browns and matte green threads of embroideries. After all, from the establishment of the socialist People’s Republic of China in 1949, it was politically expedient to position ink painting as more than a feudal bourgeois practice. The folk—represented by the craft of embroidery—mattered. The materiality of Yu’s colors matched the materiality of the socialist revolution.

There is more to Yu Fei’an’s colors, though. To a measured extent, Yu pursued seeing in a naked way on its own merits, so that a pigeon could be rendered as the bird itself, a creature occupying space, as did the ink brush composed of a bamboo tube and animal hair in his hand, or the thick sheet of paper spread before him as a painting surface. For instance, Yu dedicated himself for an entire year to the project of sketching pigeons on the streets of Beijing, annotating his pictures with descriptive language from ornithology. He sat in bitter wind and dust to capture the light on pigeon wings and the angle of the bodies as the birds launched themselves into the air. He labored at achieving minute fidelity in his use of color. His pictures and notes were published serially in the Beijing *Chenbao*(Morning Post), where he worked as a reporter, and then in 1928 as *Dumenhuangeji* (Record of domestic pigeons at the capital gates).

Color-coded bird physiognomy was enthusiastically promoted by bird watchers and scientists. What made their perceptual practice especially distinctive as a modern science was a matter-of-fact acceptance that acute vision relied on sound. To hear was to see. Yet “hearing color”—seeing a bluebird flashing away out of the corner of an eye or seeing it in the mind’s eye by matching sound to color—also had its own nation-building logic. It had to do with the peculiarities of how bird call itself was heard and documented. As related by George D. Wilder, the first president of the Peking Natural History Society, in his 1926 presidential address:

An old teacher of *kuanhua*[official language] of mine, who was himself an ardent sportsman and knew his birds very well indeed, used to say to me with a kindly smile when I asked him the name of a bird whose note we heard: “Ask the bird himself. Birds call out their own names” [*Niao tzu hu ch’i ming*]. That is a hoopoe, hear him say: “hu popo, hu popo.” And there you have the cuckoo, “k’eku, k’eku,” and also the *chick a dee dee*, only in China it says *tzutzuhei’rh*, and *tzutzuhei’rh* is its name.

His salient points: a Chinese language teacher proposes that birds call their own names; people hear those names differently, depending on where they are from; documentation of bird call and name could be recorded and mapped—especially when heard as Chinese—onto the new linguistic boundaries of the nation represented through the alphabet in the Wade-Giles system of romanization. The half-hidden color of the bird, then, is made visible by its call; its call is made legible within the same “universal” alphabetic language system used to record the Chinese language.

In sum, Yu’s bird paintings embody political rhetoric about the socialist nation: through tactile and aural perception of color the pigeon is transformed into a cultural thing that weaves together folk and elites, and a migrating thing that flies away from those cultural meanings onto a “universal,” international stage. Still, this chapter in my book-length study on intersections of science and brush painting in early to mid-twentieth-century China questions the ways in which Yu’s paintings actively resisted cultural politics and political rhetoric. The challenge is to probe the limits of such interpretation. I instead ask: how do Yu’s paintings become sites for, and mediate, visceral contact with nature in order to suggest—to all beholders, then and now—modes of interacting with it?

*Center 37*

### Stay connected

Learn more about our exhibitions, news, programs, and special offers.

About
          - About the National Gallery
          - Stories
          - Press
          - FAQs
          - Contact Us

Plan a Visit
          - Getting Here
          - Accessibility
          - Today's Tours
          - Food & Drink
          - Calendar
          - Downloadable Map

Get Involved
          - Donate
          - Membership
          - Volunteer
          - Opportunities
          - Shop Online

Resources
          - Search the Collection
          - Conservation
          - Library
          - Archives
          - The Center
          - Film Programs
          - Music Programs
          - Audio/Video
          - Open Access Images

Hours: 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. daily

**West Building**6th St and Constitution Ave NW*Enter or exit from Constitution Avenue, 4th Street, or 7th Street. The Madison Drive entrance is currently closed.*

**East Building**4th St and Constitution Ave NW*Enter and exit from 4th Street.*

**Sculpture Garden**7th St and Constitution Ave NW*Enter and exit from 7th Street, Constitution Avenue, or Madison Drive.*

We are closed on December 25 and January 1.

*The National Gallery of Art serves the nation by welcoming all people to explore and experience art, creativity, and our shared humanity.*

          -  Twitter 
          -  Facebook 
          -  Instagram 
          -  Pinterest 
          -  YouTube 

© 2024 National Gallery of Art   Notices   Terms of Use   Privacy Policy