Analysis Of Auspicious Cranes By Peter Sturman

The “Auspicious Cranes” hand scroll depicts a historical event occurring on February 26, 1112, in which 20 Manchurian cranes descend upon the cloud enveloped gates of the imperial palace at Kaifeng during the Lantern Festival. In his article, “Cranes Above Kaifeng: The Auspicious Image at the Court of Huizong,” Peter Sturman, an art history professor at UC Santa Barbara, examines the story behind the painting. His evidence reveals that the image and description shown on the hand scroll do not support a sense of objective realism that it makes claim to. Rather, the painting is what Sturman describes as an “appropriation of reality” (34). Individual elements of the painting are parts of a well-planned spectacle to serve as political propaganda.

Ruiying, according to Sturman, earn credibility through imperial sponsorship. As long as the auspicious event had the support of the court, then the created fiction would become fact in the eyes of the beholder. The issue of pictorial representation is central to fabricating truth out of the imaginary. “Nothing convinces like a picture, and Huizong saw it that pictorial records too were made to concretize these fragile truths” (36). Sturman uses Emperor Huizong’s fixation on ruiying sightings as evidence to discrediting the painting being realistic. The pictures capturing these auspicious events were meant to serve a similar function as a photograph documenting what it sees objectively. Sturman points out that there must have been a lapse of time between this auspicious event and the creation of the painting. “Despite the objective view implied by the paintings’ naturalistic style, these images, in their final form have been refracted through any number of interpretive prisms” (37) “Auspicious Cranes” is part of a series of documented ruiying deliberately acting as evidence of Heaven’s blessing the emperor. The painting is disconnected from what we perceive as reality, since it also serves its purpose as political propaganda in the most poetic and discrete