Chinese beauty painting has an inferior importance for research in comparison with Chinese landscape or portrait. Female characters are seldom the protagonist of a Chinese painting after the Tang dynasty. They are often used as an accessory to a painting or a subject to the ‘male gaze’. Even if the concept of male gaze is created by western art historians to describe western art works, a similar concept also appears in the book History of Painting written by 米芾 in Song dynasty. In the book, the author explains Beauty painting as the subject of the aristocracy and male gaze. Also, RuoXu Guo, a famous art critic in Song dynasty, described Beauty painting as a decadent theme in his book. As such the importance of Beauty painting is impaired significantly. The beauty painting, in Chinese is Shi Nü painting, which is an abstract concept that literati in Song dynasty initiated to denote the specific female figure depicted by the artist. It does not generalize into every depicted female, but a specific group of people. Before Song dynasty, Beauty painting was not defined as a distinct genre. Female figures were simply put into the context of drawing, and art critics did not view it as if it breached out from ordinary drawing. But stepping into the Song dynasty, Beauty painting was viewed as an independent genre. This genre is depreciated for quite a long time in Chinese culture, since it does not conform to Chinese artistic philosophy that applied well in landscape painting. The groundbreaking works of Ellen J. Laing and James Cahill brought significant amount of interest to Chinese female characters in western world. They discovered many crucial elements in understanding Beauty paintings, for example the connection between poetic comments on the canvas and the figures. Then in 70s and 80s, the diffusion of western world and western ideas prompted the research of female characters and Beauty paintings in China. Two main factors that contribute the most are ‘new history’ and ‘gender studies’. These two trends urged Chinese scholars to expand their field of interest and starting to note the importance of Beauty painting.
Wu Hung’s ambitious book ‘Feminine Space’ not only contributes to this expanded field of interest for female figures, but also offers a new method of approaching this issue in a non-chronological way. Normally, the research of Beauty painting is to extricate the figure from the painting and develop a theory about the history of development of female figures. Instead, in this book, Wu Hung proposed to research the figure with the spatial relationship of other elements on the canvas. The Feminine Space is related to the architecture, the mountain, the male figure, etc in the interior world of a painting. As such, the author investigates the world that these figures reside in to make a more complex and inclusive theory of these figures. In their monographs and articles on Chinese Beauty paintings, modern art history researchers have tended to encompass a wide range of works depicting the female figure in general terms, such as narrative painting, folklore painting, portraiture, and so on. This generalization inevitably and unwittingly redefined the nature of the original paintings. For example, Gu Kai zhi’s 女史箴图 promotes Confucian ethics, including several characters in each scene, either depicting historical stories or preaching moral principle, and the poems written to the right of each section interact with the image in complex ways. However, once this work is classified as a masterpiece of Beauty painting, the researcher’s attention naturally shifts to the individual female figures. Eventually, the study might changes into an investigation of female garment. Other important elements of the painting, such as the complex spatial composition, the subtle relationship between men and women, and the interaction between text and image on multiple levels, quietly recede into the background of interpretation. Thus, the author dedicates this book to address an alternative way of unveiling the female figures by connecting the usually neglected elements in a painting with the female figures. The book is divided into ten chapters, and each revolves around a theme, such as the Weave in chapter six. Even though the author puts his focus mainly on theme, the underlying progression of the book still follows the chronological order of Chinese dynasties. But this time, the chronology is not a dominating factor in drawing conclusion, contrarily the space that these figures dominate is. In each part, Wu Hung utilizes an enormous range of sources, including paintings with various medium and historical documents. The presentment of vast amount of images enhance the understanding of his points.
Wu Hung’s search of the relationship between female figure and architectonic environment is most clearly displayed in chapter seven, which discusses the figure of geisha and brothel. Similar topic has been investigated by Li Kai in his essay Study on the Multiple Meanings of Tang Yin’s Ladies Painting, in which the author illuminates the importance of geisha to literati and symbolic meaning in Beauty paintings by narrating the personal anecdote of the painter. Contrarily, Wu Hung focuses on the painting to reflect the status of geisha. He uses numerous paintings to back up his argument. To explain the point of condescending of geisha, he uses two versions of 李端端图 by Tang Yin as visual evidence. Spatially, the geisha stands in front of the literati in the picture, which denotes the condescending status of geisha. In addition, Wu Hung also analyzes two versions of 陶谷赠词图 to prove the condescending spatial relationship that the painter wants to transmit. In Ming dynasty, brothel culture flourished, and an unprecedented connection between literati and geisha appears. Previously, geisha is always the subject of male gaze, and painting of brothel is filled with one geisha and multiple literati. However, in Ming dynasty geisha is frequently transformed into an equal status with the literati, since their artistic creativity is often shown in the painting. Their role shifts from providing joy for the customers to a group of people with equally matched artistic sentiment as literati. Wu Hung demonstrates this point again through images such as 南平雅集图. In the conclusion, Wu Hung again points to the new spatial representation initiated by these figures, which the author repeatedly mentions throughout the book.
The search of Chinese female characters was already started in 19th century, which Shuyu Tang（1801-1830) composed the book 玉台画史 discussing similar topic. Scholars back then utilizes mostly literal documents, such as diary or letters. However, it is not enough to draw conclusion without analyzing the painting. The unique space created from Beauty painting is proven more conducive in understanding the actual status of female. Heeding the objects involved in this space, such as a fan or the cosmetics, is useful for the interpretation and understanding of the position of female inside the canvas. For example, a red candle in a portrait of a female character insinuates the recent romantic affair that she is having. Thus, the research of a type of figures such as female figure should further from literal examination to visual analysis. The particular environment inside the canvas is more resourceful than text, since people can investigate the interaction between female figures and other figures, or the hidden symbolism hidden inside this space. Wu Hung’s book is an eminent representative of such method.
Wu Hung’s book Feminine Space represents the serious investigation of female figures in Chinese painting by Chinese scholars. His work breaks away from the traditional exploration of individual female figures and extends it into an argument about the Interior Space and feminine character. Amidst the trend of gender study and contemporary art history, Wu Hung produces a work that justly conforms to the new direction of academic world. But more profoundly, he combines the new trend with traditional Chinese cultural investigation that provides a guideline for later artist and art historian when tackling a similar topic.