Stephen Little points to a craggy, dark gray rock that’s about two feet tall. “Look at this one,” he says. “Its bizarre, dynamic, abstract shape is typical of the sort prized by collectors past and present. For the Chinese, it embodies the qi, pure primordial energy.” The rock stands in a display case, part of “Spirit Stones of China,” the Art Institute’s exhibit of unusually shaped stones revered by the Chinese for their eerie beauty and their role in Taoist cosmology as mediators between heaven and earth.
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“The earliest written record of strange stones–that’s the translation of the Chinese term–dates back to the third century BC, in a historical text that notes weirdly shaped stones as part of a tribute to a mythical emperor,” says Little, the museum’s curator of Asian art. The educated class and merchants started collecting the rocks in earnest during the Tang dynasty in the eighth century, when a literature singing their praises first arose. The mania reached its peak 900 years later. “During the late Ming, a period of social and political turmoil, the cultivation of the arts reached a new height,” says Little. “Some of China’s most important dramas, poems, and paintings were produced then by men of exquisite refinement and encyclopedic knowledge. Many of them had worked as bureaucrats but retreated from politics. They sought to transcend the problems of the world through the arts.” Those with money became avid stone collectors, competing with a burgeoning class of merchants whose wealth derived from trading salt, silk, and furniture. “They were a status symbol, to be sure, ranked just below calligraphy, painting, and maybe jade,” says Little. “In a way, the stones raised some of the issues prompted by modern art: Are these found objects really works of art? Are they worthy of systematic collection? Even now, do they belong in this museum, or would they be more appropriate for the Field Museum?”
One of the most unusual stones in Wilson’s collection is also his favorite. A whitish, tilting, porous-looking rock about ten inches long, it lies in a sandalwood box bearing the inscription of a merchant owner from the late 18th century. In keeping with the late Ming custom of having a stone painted from different angles, Wilson asked a Chinese painter to do the same. The resulting album shows twelve perspectives in the classical style, each with a title such as “Layered Clouds” and “Peak of Myriad Changes,” echoing the poetic turns of phrase favored by Ming connoisseurs. “This way, I not only honor the past but also add another layer of appreciation for future collectors,” Wilson says.
