Spectacle and Entertainment: The Four Beauties and Commercial Printing of Early Thirteenth-Century China

This paper examines an exceptional piece among these prints, the Four Beauties, in the cultural and artistic contexts of Pingyang (modern Linfen, Shanxi province), which was a thriving printing and theatre center during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. This print depicts four elegant beauties in Chinese history, whose tragic love stories developed into numerous dramas and fictions. The subject of this print is distinctive because it differs from earlier prints that mostly depict Buddhist deities or Confucian paragons. In fact, it is one of the earliest prints made for purely secular entertainment, aimed at satisfying viewers’ voyeurism of these historical beauties and their curiosity of these ladies’ touching stories. The composition and large size of this print suggests its use for display in private or public space, which constituted an integral part of the visual culture of the time. In addition, the fantastic display of these figures from different historical periods together in the same garden shows the possible impact of contemporary theatre, since actors representing characters across time and place often performed on the same stage. Most importantly, perhaps, it discloses to us a significant change that had occurred in Chinese print culture by the early thirteenth century. Under the influence of urban development and entertainment culture, more print workshops devoted their interests into the making of secular art and ordinary people increasingly demanded cultural and artistic commodities to meet their need for amusement and viewing pleasure of spectacle.