The Metropolitan Museum of Art - Birds Amidst Blossoming Plum and Bamboo

Art Object

Peony Pavilion

Presented November 30, 2012

Tan Dun, director

With the aim of animating Metropolitan Museum galleries in new ways, Met Museum Presents offers one of five performances of the sixteenth-century Kunqu opera masterpiece The Peony Pavilion, in a seventy-minute version developed and directed by celebrated composer Tan Dun with choreography by Huang Doudou, one of China's most prominent dancers, in the Met's Astor Court, the courtyard modeled on a seventeenth-century garden.

The performance is organized in conjunction with the exhibition Chinese Gardens: Palace Pavilions, Scholars' Studios, Rustic Retreats, on view August 18, 2012–January 6, 2013, which explores the rich interactions between pictorial and garden arts in China across more than one thousand years, featuring more than seventy paintings and contemporary photographs as well as ceramics, carved bamboo, lacquerware, metalwork, and textiles drawn from the Museum's collections.

The Peony Pavilion is one of the most important works of classical Chinese opera. A sweeping love story with subplots involving feudalism, the work in its original form consisted of fifty-five acts that take more than twenty hours to perform. This version is directed by Zhang Jun, one of China's most respected Kunqu performers, and remains faithful to the core plot focusing on the love story between the heroine and hero—Du Liniang and Liu Mengmei—and the Peony Pavilion where their love began.

Video/Audio (3)

Cambodian Rattan: The Sculpture of Sopheap Pich
(00:02:07) 2305 views

Sunday at the Met: Cambodian Rattan Discussion
(00:57:05) 69 views

Sunday at the Met: Cambodian Rattan Performance
(00:28:04) 67 views

Birds Amidst Blossoming Plum and Bamboo

After Lin Liang (Chinese, ca. 1416–1480)

Period:: Ming dynasty (1368–1644)
Culture:: China
Medium:: Hanging scroll; ink and color on silk
Dimensions:: 40 15/16 x 18 11/16 in. (104 x 47.4 cm)
Classification:: Paintings
Credit Line:: Purchase, C. C. Wang Gift, 2002
Accession Number:: 2002.296

This artwork is not on display

Description

Identified by the white patch on their heads as "whitehaired
oldsters" (baitou weng), the birds in this painting are
auspicious symbols of longevity. Combined with the plum
and bamboo-symbols of moral virtue and renewal-the
painting would have made a fitting gift for a birthday or
anniversary celebration.
See also
Who
Lin Liang (8)
What
Silk (34,059)

Ink (28,399)

Paintings (12,465)

Scroll paintings (1,559)

Scrolls (1,349)

Hanging scrolls (1,251)
Where
Asia (68,271)

China (17,423)
In the Museum
Asian Art (35,226)
Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History
Ming Dynasty (1368–1644)

China, 1000–1400 A.D.

Central and North Asia, 1600–1800 A.D.

Central and North Asia, 1000–1400 A.D.

China, 1600–1800 A.D.

WHAT IS MYMET?

Peony Pavilion

Birds Amidst Blossoming Plum and Bamboo

After Lin Liang (Chinese, ca. 1416–1480)

Met Media

Met Kids

Met Store

WHAT IS MYMET?

Already have a mymet account? Sign in

Peony Pavilion

Related Content

Birds Amidst Blossoming Plum and Bamboo

After Lin Liang (Chinese, ca. 1416–1480)

Met Media

Met Kids

Met Store