Jagged peaks surrounded by swirling mists, pavilions perched precariously on cliffs, wise old men walking along winding, narrow paths: such motifs may conjure the stereotypical image of a traditional Chinese painting for many contemporary viewers. Indeed, many of the fifty-odd works displayed in The Artful Recluse: Painting, Poetry, and Politics in 17th-Century China fit this bill. Yet the curators of this exhibition—Peter Sturman, Professor of Art History at the University of California, Santa Barbara; and Susan Tai, Elizabeth Atkins Curator of Asian Art at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art—successfully narrate the politics and human emotions invested in such landscapes from the seventeenth century. By focusing on this tumultuous period of Chinese history, they have designed a show that is simultaneously intimate and grand, private and public, as well as resonant for a variety of audience members.

As the helpful wall labels clarify, the seventeenth century was a time of transition that some Chinese artists navigated better than others. Most artists, affiliated with the Ming dynasty, chose to retreat from worldly affairs rather than collaborate with the new Qing regime. Reclusion did not mean, however, a severing of all ties to society. The inscriptions on many of the pieces show an intense exchange of ideas, art, and poems within this diasporic community, highlighting how the idea of reclusion itself offered an identity that was more of a lifestyle and a state of mind rather than a physical withdrawal. As Sturman observes in the exhibition catalogue: “For the artist, reclusion represented a private space, a chamber within the mind, but it was a private space that was always intended to be shared” (15).

The work that opens the show provides a case in point. With a frontispiece by arguably the most renowned painter of the late Ming, Dong Qichang (1555–1636), the scroll by Xiang Shengmo (1597–1658) beckons the viewer into a fantastic landscape of crags, dense groves, and mountain hermitages. The vistas are majestic, yet the format is intimate. Ten and a half inches in height, the handscroll could have been viewed anywhere, anytime. It offers a fantastic voyage into an imagined landscape, a quality underlined by the iPads that were made available at the end of the exhibition. There, as one scrolled through each frame in a virtual format, one could come close to experiencing the contradictory nature of the path that the artist delineated—narrow, sometimes claustrophobic, yet open to vast, mystical panoramas constructed in the viewer’s mind.

Xiang’s oeuvre is represented by another notable painting, Self-Portrait in Red Landscape. Unique in its depiction of a monochrome figure seated in a red landscape, the work demonstrates the paradox inherent in the notion of reclusion; the exhibition seeks to capture this spirit. The defiant proclamation of loyalty to the defeated Ming dynasty is vividly underscored by the vermillion landscape that puns on zhu, the color as well as the imperial family’s name. According to the twentieth-century inscriptions on the mounting, the painting survived the centuries of Qing rule because it was kept hidden in the family temple. Still, as the inscription by Tan Zhenmo (1590–1665) shows, the work was seen by others. After all, artists created these works not only for themselves in isolation, but also to communicate their shared trauma and their own ways of coping, in dialogue with past, contemporaneous, and future artistic figures. Like many creators of the works in this exhibition, Xiang Shengmo relied on conventional tropes and past models, while constructing his own idiosyncratic expression for posterity.

The curators succeed in deftly unraveling the complex discourse of reclusion for a general audience. Wall labels are kept concise, offering critical observations that allow each work to be tied to the theme. Yet for those who want further translations of the calligraphy or other, undisplayed parts of the artworks, the iPads allow for deeper exploration of about two dozen works. For the other pieces, the exhibition catalogue provides complete, meticulous translations. The exhibition is compact, divided into three sections: “Summoning the Recluse: Landscape as Refuge,” “1644: A Landscape Transformed,” and “Returning Home: Stability and Normalcy.” The first concentrates on the late Ming, the second on the early Qing, and the third on the late seventeenth century as the Qing dynasty became entrenched. There are subsections on notable painters such as Chen Jiru (1558–1639), Chen Hongshou (1599–1652), and Bada Shanren (1626–1705). The eight pieces by Bada form a remarkable cluster that feature works held in private collections. Indeed, though accessible for a general audience, this exhibition offers much for the specialist. Many of the works are being displayed for the first time in the United States. Drawn from seven private collections and six public institutions, the works maintain a consistently high quality and their condition is pristine.

Several features suggest that the exhibition may be of greater interest to specialists. The emphasis on the seventeenth century and on paintings serves to make the message cogent, but it reduces the possibility of variations in pace. Two works of ceramics and a brushrest are included, but offer limited diversity. In fact, as those pieces prove, there are pictorial representations of reclusion in other genres, and accoutrements of the eremitic life abound. More of such pieces could have brought to life not only the interior world of reclusion, but also its enactment in quotidian life. The array of works thus lacked a degree of flair that could have served to engage less patient viewers who might not be as willing to study the paintings’ subtle, variegated brushwork.

As for the installation, the walls were a neutral off-white, apart from the opening section in light purple and the pale green division between sections one and two. The green did not accord well with the works and seemed incongruous to the exhibition’s mood. At the Asia Society venue, which this reviewer visited, some of the larger, tall hanging scrolls were placed too low, forcing the viewer to read the paintings from a higher point than ideal. While the exhibition space never felt cluttered, one of the major works—Plants of Virtue and Rocks by Water (1693–94) by Shitao (1642–1707)—was unfortunately not on display at the Asia Society, perhaps because of a lack of space. While the concision of the wall labels was laudable for maintaining clarity, some handouts or other ways of accessing more translations of certain poems would have been helpful. (One had to step outside the exhibition space to consult the catalogue, or use the iPads at the end.)

Still, as the first exhibition outside of Asia to concentrate on the significant theme of reclusion, this compact yet ambitious exhibition breaks new ground and allows viewers to engage with the paintings in a contemporary setting. As the curators note in the catalogue, the last major exhibitions to concentrate on any artist from this group date to 1991, when the works of Dong Qichang and Bada Shanren were featured in exhibitions at the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art and the Yale University Art Gallery, respectively. Meanwhile, in the past two decades, virtual worlds have proliferated and opened new possibilities for the disengagement from real life and the retreat into imaginary ones. Yet, as demonstrated by this exhibition, questions of how to negotiate the hostile, often seemingly futile political realm were already being addressed eloquently by Chinese artists of the seventeenth century. In clarifying the artists’ manipulations of the environment, poetry, and symbols, the curators evoke the contemporary resonances of these works and the dilemma their artists faced. Like them, we may feel alone in our room, but we simultaneously navigate our social networks, crafting an artful identity through favored codes and images.