The Storytelling Images special exhibition is built around “story-paintings” or “narrative paintings” at its core. The exhibition hopes to give color to how images can surpass textual descriptions, providing visitors with a richer sense of their expressive potential and defining features.
How do we get a picture to tell a story?When a painter uses images to recreate or interpret a story, their primary goal is to ensure that the viewer can recognize the depicted content. Given the artwork’s various size and format constraints (i.e. handscroll, hanging scroll, or album), the painter needs to carefully select the key moments from the plot, compose an appropriate scene, and shape the figures, their appearances, and their actions. Only by doing so can they complete the task of telling a story.
Why paint this type of story? Which stories were selected to be turned into images? And when they were drawn, who were the intended audiences? By identifying and sorting through the themes of these paintings, we can try to deduce the artist’s ideas and mindset at the time of their creation. Perhaps what emerges is a cultural identity that spans generations—another intriguing way to appreciate these works.
How should we understand narrative paintings?The richer a viewer's knowledge of history and literature, the more likely they are to match the elements in a painting to the corresponding text. Those who lived in the same time period as the artist, sharing similar experiences and thoughts, would have found it easier to recognize the selection of the scene and its depiction. In contrast, how much can contemporary audiences identify? If the story portrayed in the work is difficult to identify, does that mean the opportunity for engaged viewing is lost?
Through this exhibition, not only can you appreciate how painters used images to engage with captivating stories, you can also measure your own visual literacy. See if you can travel through time to receive the vibrant messages that the artists intended to convey.