Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
The Progress of Village Wen
Yun-Fei Ji Chinese
Not on view
The scroll depicts the forced migration of villagers from their rural homes to the city due to a governmental land policy in contemporary China. At once literal and symbolic, the composition evolves from mundane drudgery to hallucinatory chaos, suggesting that mental disintegration follows the physical dislocation. The title of the painting has an air of irony.
As the people leave their ancestral land, village ghosts move alongside the living. The ominous supernatural imagery foreshadows what awaits the villagers in the city. In adapting to urban life, many of them lose their sense of identity and purpose, which was rooted in an agrarian community. The collapsing scaffolding at the end reflects both an inner and an outer reality.
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