dc.description.abstract | This thesis aims to explore the establishment and transformation of the gauze embroidery Nine Goats Commencing the New Year at the National Palace Museum in Taiwan. The scope of this thesis is unprecedented because it has created a new framework of applying the “pictorial mode” of the “picture of fortune”(Kai Tai Tu) as the main approach, different from other traditional methodologies such as studying “auspicious pictures” with regard to a series of illustrated transpositions or in the context of vulgar culture. The first and second chapters illustrate how the Tai hexagram from the Chinese Classic of Changes (Yi Jing) has combined with the concept of “seasons” and become auspicious greetings, which have given rise to “pictures” embodying these auspicious expressions. The same chapters also clarify the formal differences of “counting the-nine pictures,” “dispersing-the-cold poetry pictures” and “picture of fortune.” In this vein, it is discovered that the two gauze embroideries, Nine Goats Commencing the New Year and the Welcoming Spring (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) are complementary, dating back to Yuan Dynasty in the first half of the 14th century. This artwork is the earliest representative work on the tradition of the “picture of fortune.” In the third, fourth and fifth chapters, this thesis investigates the establishment, inheritance, and transformation of the “picture of fortune.” This thesis argues that the Nine Goats Commencing the New Year and the Welcoming Spring are the combination of the two traditional pictorial modes: “playing children paintings” and “herding paintings.” The pictorial mode of the “picture of fortune” was rendered on the hanging scrolls or textiles in the Ming court. The traditional pictorial mode of the “picture of fortune” include “children in Mongolian clothing,” “goats,” “winter objective views” (such as pine, bamboo, plum, camellias), and is formed as “figures under the tree.” The pictorial mode manifests two distinct characteristics: the correspondence of pictures and texts in the “auspicious pictures” and the strong sense of seasons. Moreover, the “picture of fortune” also show changes in itself in the Yuan and Ming Dynasty. In the Yuan Dynasty, gardens and fields in the “picture of fortune” were merged into one framework, showing its diversity, while in the Ming Dynasty, gardens and fields were separately juxtaposed on the hanging scrolls. Such a pictorial mode is found similar in the two dynasties, but the way of its combination is contrary. In the Qing Dynasty, the Qianlong Emperor ordered that the Suzhou Textile Manufactory make facsimilies of the Nine Goats Commencing the New Year. This embodies how the Qianlong Emperor aspired to pursue rationality and reality. In conclusion, we should not merely consider the “picture of fortune” as a means of giving auspicious greetings during the Chinese New Year. Instead, the prevalence of the pictorial mode from Yuan to mid-Qing dynasty demonstrates how the forms and patterns of the images in pictures are adapted, unveiling the changes of Huayi (Picture-Idea) in pictures. | en |