A Brief Analysis of the Composition and Connotation of the

Skeletons' Illusory Performance

Haoyu Wu

Culture, Creativity and Management, Beijing Normal University &

Hong Kong Baptist University United International College, Guangdong, China

Keywords: South Song Dynasty, Traditional Chinese Painting, The Skeletons' Illusory, Performance, Genre Painting.

Abstract: The Skeletons' Illusory Performance, is a genre painting by court painter Li Song of Southern Song Dynasty.

Since this painting contains the image of skull, which is not a common figure in traditional Chinese paintings,

scholars have studied this painting for hundreds of years since its creation, but there is no consensus on why

Li Song painted such a image in this painting. This study will utilize interdisciplinary research approaches of

Historical-contextual Analysis, Formal Analysis Method and Iconographic Analysis Method to analyze

multiple areas of history, art history and religions, including the painting's inscriptions, the background of the

creation period, Buddhist and Taoist thoughts, etc., to explores the composition and connotation of the

Skeletons' Illusory Performance. The painting of Skeletons' Illusory Performance is not a simple satire of

reality, but a reflection of painter Li Song's view of life and death influenced by Buddhism and Taoism.

1 INTRODUCTION

This study focuses on the image of skeletons in the

Skeletons' Illusory Performance, which is not

common in traditional Chinese paintings. This study

is very meaningful to the historical culture and the

concept of life and death in the Southern Song

Dynasty. First, this paper uses the literature analysis

method to search and read relevant materials and

documents. The advantage of this method is that it

can well analyze the creation background of the

Skeletons' Illusory Performance and the research

results of scholars of all generations, which is

conducive to the research. In addition, to achieve the

goal, this study utilizes interdisciplinary research

approaches, including Historical-Contextual Analysis

(He, 2023) to analyze whether the Skeletons' Illusory

Performance is related to historical events or social

change like Kaixi Northern Expedition or whether the

painter Li Song was influenced by a particular school

of thought; Formal Analysis Method (Sar, 2023) to

analyze how Li Song used color and composition to

express his views on life and death in the Skeletons'

Illusory Performance; Iconographic Analysis Method

(Jaskot, 2020) to analyze the meaning of the skull

images in the Skeletons' Illusory Performance.

Ultimately, the research goal is to analyze the

composition and connotation of the Skeletons'

Illusory Performance to find out what the painter Li

Song wanted to express through this painting.

2 LITERATURE REVIEW

As the painting contains the image, which is rare in

traditional Chinese paintings, scholars have studied it

for hundreds of years since Skeletons' Illusory

Performance was created. Wu Qizhen, a scholar of

the Qing Dynasty, mentioned in his book that: "Li

Song's "Skull Picture"...don't know what the meaning

is." (Li, n.d.). Nowadays, many studies believe that

the Skeletons' Illusory Performance reflects the hard

life of the people in the Southern Song Dynasty. Xiao

(2019) listed some historical materials about war and

famine in the Song Dynasty (960AD - 1279AD) to

prove that war and famine occurred frequently at that

time. The death and famine caused by war made

people were difficult to pay for the high-price food,

the death rate was high and cannibalism often

occurred and the people were familiar with the image

of skulls. The paper finally concluded that Li Song

sympathized with and worried about the living

conditions of the people, he used the Skeletons'

Wu, H.

A Brief Analysis of the Composition and Connotation of the Skeletons’ Illusory Performance.

DOI: 10.5220/0013982300004912

Paper published under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Innovative Education and Social Development (IESD 2025), pages 259-265

ISBN: 978-989-758-779-5

259

Illusory Performance to expose the miserable life of

the people in the Southern Song Dynasty.

Although previous studies have analyzed the social

context and the meaning that Li Song wanted to

express through this painting in detail, there still has

research gap that didn’t analyze the composition of

the painting and the connotation of the skull image,

which will be the focus of this paper.

3 CREATION BACKGROUND

With the further prosperity of the urban commodity

economy in the Song Dynasty (960AD - 1279AD) in

China, the new citizen class emerged and continued

to grow. In order to meet the aesthetic needs of the

growing citizen class, the range of painting themes

became wider and wider, then the genre paintings

with the theme of the lives of ordinary urban and rural

people also appeared (Song, 2022). The creation of

genre paintings in the Northern Song Dynasty

(960AD - 1127AD) had gradually become

systematized and had basically matured by the

Southern Song Dynasty (1127AD - 1279AD),

reaching a deeper level in creative conception and

connotation (Zhang, 2024).

The court painter Li Song (1166AD -1243AD) is a

painter born in Qiantang (today’s Hangzhou,

Zhejiang), Southern Song Dynasty. He worked as a

carpenter when he was young and later followed his

stepfather, Li Congxun, a royal painter, into the Royal

Painting Institution of South Song Dynasty. Born in

poverty, Li Song had a deep understanding of the

daily life of ordinary people, he also became a royal

painter later and created many genre paintings

depicting the lives of ordinary people (Han, 2019). As

a representative of genre painting painters in the

South Song Dynasty, Li has more than 50 works

handed down, most of which are genre paintings

depicting the life of the lower-class citizens and the

labor life of farmers, including the painting of

Skeletons' Illusory Performance (Can be seen in

Figure 1), which was created by Li Song during the

Jiading period (1208AD - 1224AD). The main

content of the painting is a skeleton puppeteer

manipulating a small skeleton puppet to tease a

curious infant.

Figure 1: The painting of Skeletons' Illusory Performance.

Source: Palace Museum. https://digicol.dpm.org.cn/ cul-

tural/details?id=187317.

4 HISTORICAL ANALYSIS

The Skeletons' Illusory Performance was created

during the Jiading period (1208AD - 1224AD), South

Song Dynasty. More specifically, it was created

before the tenth year of Jiading (1208AD - 1218AD).

During the Kaixi Period (1205AD - 1207AD)

before the Jiading period, the Prime Minister Han

Tuozhou (1152AD - 1207AD), who was eager to

make a name for himself in history, advocating

resistance against the Jin Dynasty. In the second year

of Kaixi (1206AD), Han rashly launched the Kaixi

Northern Expedition without making adequate

preparations (Zou, 2019). Finally, the expedition

failed due to the army of Southern Song Dynasty

failed in most of the attacks and the obstruction by the

peace faction in the court. The peace faction then

murdered Han and sent his head to the Jin Dynasty

(1115AD - 1234AD) (Zou, 2019) as a sign of

sincerity, then the Southern Song Dynasty and Jin

Dynasty signed a ceasefire agreement ---- Jiading

Peace Agreement in the first year of Jiading

(1208AD), marking the failure of the Kaixi Northern

Expedition. With this agreement, the Southern Song

Dynasty and Jin Dynasty maintained a brief peace for

ten years, which was exactly the period when the

Skeletons' Illusory Performance was created, until a

new war broke out in the tenth year of Jiading

(1218AD).

Although the people of the Southern Song Dynasty

in this period still had some sufferings, their lives

were much better than during the war. It is illogical

for Li Song to deliberately paint a picture that simply

reflects the miserable lives of the people during

peacetime rather than wartime.

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260

5 ANALYSIS OF THE

INSCRIPTION

The viewpoint that the Skeleton Illusory Performance

reflects the miserable life of the people in the

Southern Song Dynasty is originated from the

inscription of Zui Zhong Tian (Can be seen in Figure

2) attached to the painting by Huang Gongwang

(1269AD - 1354AD) in Yuan Dynasty (1271AD -

1368AD).

Huang Gongwang is a painter who was born in the

late Southern Song Dynasty, his family was poor and

he lost both his parents when he was young (Lu,

2024). Besides, the Yuan Dynasty Huang lived in set

up a four-class system. The social status from high to

low is: Mongolians; Semites: minorities groups in the

Western Regions; Han People: people under the rule

of the former Jin Dynasty and people in the Southern

Song Dynasty areas occupied by Mongolia in the

early stage, such as Sichuan; Southerners: other

people under the rule of the former Southern Song

Dynasty (Ma, 2024). As the lowest class, Southerners

like Huang Gongwang had almost no political rights

and it was difficult for them to become government

officials, while most of the Han intellectuals in

ancient China had the ideal of governing the country

and bringing peace to the world. Becoming an

government official is the best way to realize their

ambitions, Huang was no exception. Huang served as

an official twice, however, he was imprisoned

unfortunately during his hard-won official career and

ruined his political future. After being released from

prison, Huang gave up the secular world and turned

to the Taoism (lu, 2024).

The inscription, which is the closest analysis to the

time when the Skeleton Illusory Performance was

painted, writes: “Without any skin or flesh, there is

only a burden of pain and sorrow. The puppet also

pulled out the silk thread, trying to find a small shape

to amuse its enemy...”. Huang Gongwang's use of

negative words of "bitter", "sorrow" and "enemy"

(Can be seen in Figure 2) shows his pessimistic view

of the connotation of the Skeleton Illusory

Performance.

Huang Gongwang's negative view on the

connotation of the Skeleton Illusory Performance is

more due to the oppression of his own living

environment oppressing Han intellectuals like him,

he's own difficult life experience made him a more

pessimistic person. It wass inevitable for him to have

a negative view on the connotation of a painting

contains skull images representing death and took the

opportunity of writing the inscription for the Skeleton

Illusory Performance and used the past (Southern

Song Dynasty) to satirize the present (Yuan Dynasty).

As a Han intellectual born in the Southern Song

Dynasty, Huang Gongwang was more likely to be

longing for life in the Southern Song Dynasty rather

than considering the people in the Southern Song

Dynasty lived a miserable life.

Figure 2: The inscription of Zui Zhong Tian attached to the

Skeleton Illusory Performance. Source: Palace Museum.

https://digicol.dpm.org.cn/cultural/details?id=187317

6 ANALYSIS OF THE

COMPOSITION

6.1 Method of Chiaroscuro

Starting from the Tang Dynasty, the use of

Chiaroscuro in Chinese painting became increasingly

common, paintings of the Song Dynasty were

increasingly focused on the expression of chiaroscuro

as well as vividness (Lin & Zhang, 2024). Li Song

also utilized the Chiaroscuro to show the superficial

relationship between life and death in the Skeletons'

Illusory Performance. He divided the painting into

two parts, on the left, Li used plenty of lines and dark

ink to draw the brick milestone and the shoulder pole

loaded with living utensils, making them as mediums

to set off the death atmosphere of the skeleton peddler

fiddling with the skeleton puppet; while on the right

side, a large area of blank background as well as

empty ground is used to set off the curious infant,

which represents the life (Can be seen in Figure 3).

The contrastion of the dark left half and the bright

right half contrasted by Chiaroscuro reflects the clear

divided and distinct relationship between life and

death.

A Brief Analysis of the Composition and Connotation of the Skeletons’ Illusory Performance

261

Figure 3: Composition Analysis Diagrm of the Skeletons' Illusory Performance. (Picture credit: Original).

6.2 Picture in Picture

The Skeletons' Illusory Performance contents a

picture in picture that the skeleton puppeteer using the

skull puppet to tease the infant, which is the core part

of the painting (Can be seen in Figure 4). The skeleton

symbolizing death teases the child symbolizing new-

born life to crawl to the left and reach out to grab the

skeleton puppet. This is Li Song's mockery of the

impermanence of life, although the relationship

between life and death is distinct and clearly divided,

they are also mutually attractive. Death is always

accompanied by life, even if it is just a newborn

infant.

Figure 4: The picture in picture of the Skeletons' Illusory

Performance. Source: Palace Museum. https://digicol.dpm.

org.cn/cultural/details?id=187317

6.3 Triple Illusion Structure

The composition of the Skeletons' Illusory

Performance also contains a triple illusion structure.

The first illusion is the picture in picture of the

skeleton puppeteer manipulates the small skull

puppet to tease the infant, which "offers a chilling

contrast between the toddler's innocent facial

expression and the enticing posture of the skeleton

marionette" (Hong, 2011). Then, as a skeleton

representing death, the puppeteer cannot move on his

own, but is manipulated by an invisible hand, the

painter Li Song, to manipulate the small skeleton

puppet, which is the second illusion. Finally, although

the audience can see the first two illusions from the

perspective of a bystander when watching the

Skeletons' Illusory Performance, the illusion structure

that arises from each other makes the viewer

unconsciously fall into it. While watching and

thinking about this painting, the audience also

constitutes the third illusion together with the

Skeletons' Illusory Performance. Through the nested

triple illusion structure, the Skeletons' Illusory

Performance not only reveals Li Song's view of life

and death, but also forms a relationship of mutual

interweaving and reflection with the audience. In the

interaction with this painting, the audience is no

longer just an external observer, but gradually

becomes a part of the illusion, and together with the

skeleton and the manipulator behind it, they fall into

the puzzle of death and life, reality and illusion.

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7 RELIGIOUS INFLUENCES

7.1 Overview

Traditionally, the dominant thought in ancient

Chinese society ---- Confucianism's attitude towards

ghosts and gods is to keep a distance from them

(Tang, 2022), this can explain why it is not normal to

see skull images in traditional Chinese painting.

However, just a short period before the creating of the

Skeleton Illusory Performance, the Neo-

Confucianism was accused of hypocrisy and being

denounced as a pseudo-doctrine (Kong, 2010). In

order to suppress the peace faction in the court and

launch the Kaixi Northern Expedition, the Prime

Minister Han Tuozhou accused Neo-Confucianism, a

branch of Confucianism popular during the Song

dynasties, of being hypocritical and listed it as a

pseudo-doctrine, as almost all the officials who

advocated peace were disciples of Neo-Confucianism

(He, 2008). This crackdown not only strengthened the

power of the emperor and made political preparations

for the Kaixi Northern Expedition, but also provided

space for the development and spread of Taoist and

Buddhist thoughts. In addition, the Taoism and

Buddhism also gently became secularized during the

Song Dynasty (Dong, 2024). As the skull image is

quiet common in Taoism and Buddhism, Li Song's

depiction of skull elements in the Skeleton Illusory

Performance is probably influenced by Buddhist and

Taoist thoughts.

7.2 Skeletons in Buddhism

There are many spells and images related to skulls in

Buddhism, the meaning of which is positive,

symbolizing the wisdom and breaking away from

worldly obsessions.

7.2.1 The Skeleton Meditation

The Skeleton Meditation is one of the five Buddhist

meditation methods. It allows ascetics to abandon

their greed for the body and lust through meditation

(Han, 2019), curing the greed and attachment to

worldly things through the contemplation of human

bones. People who practice the Skeleton Meditation

successfully will eventually see through the manday

world, losing their muscles and turn into a pure white

skeleton. When they look at other people, they will

also put aside distracting thoughts and see others as

white bones.

7.2.2 Chitipati

The Tantric Buddhism, which is a branch of

Buddhism developed rapidly in the Song Dynasty,

has a image of the crematory guard ---- Chitipati. It

arises from the Secret Essence Wheel Tantra and

primarily employed as a wealth practice. With

emphasis on protecting from thieves, Chitipati also

serves as the special protector for the Vajrayogini

'Naro Khechari' practice. It is common in all the

Sarma (New) Schools of Himalayan and Tibetan

influenced Buddhism, including the Tantric

Buddhism, whose image is a pair of skeletons of a

couple (Han, 2019).

7.3 Skeletons in Taoism

Taoism also has a deep relationship with the skull

image. The skull image in Taoism actually represents

happy life and carefree rather than simply death.

7.3.1 Zhuangzi Sighed Over the Skull

Before Taoism was formed, there was already an

allusion to the Taoist representative Zhuangzi

(369BCE - 286BCE) Sighed Over The Skull, an

ancient Taoist story from Zhuangzi

Zhile that,

Zhuangzi saw a skull on his journey and asked it

whether it died because it lost the truth in pursuit of

life, or died of shame for bad behavior, or died of cold

and hunger, etc. He used the skull as a pillow and fell

asleep, then the skull told Zhuangzi in the dream that

what he said was all the burdens of the living. After

death, there is no monarch to rule, no officials to

govern and no toil in the four seasons. Even the

happiness of being a king cannot exceed that. The

story conveyed the idea of “Life is labor, death is rest”

(Dong, 2024).

7.3.2 Quanzhen Sect

Quanzhen Sect is a Taoist sect founded by Wang

Chongyang (1112AD - 1170AD) in the Jin Dynasty,

which was the same period as the Southern Song

Dynasty, preaching that "only after death can people

realize the meaning of life". Wang created many

painting about skeletons and Quanzhen Sect also

frequently used skull images to persuade its disciples

to get rid of their obsessions, not be greedy for lust,

fame and wealth, so as to achieve true open-

mindedness and freedom (Han, 2019). Besides, the

Taoist sect that Huang Gongwang joined after he was

released from prison was exactly the Quanzhen Sect.

A Brief Analysis of the Composition and Connotation of the Skeletons’ Illusory Performance

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7.4 Influence of Buddhism and Taoism

The period when Li Song painted the Skeleton

Illusory Performance happened to be a period of

rapid development of Buddhism and Taoism, while

the skull image in them is more a positive image

rather than just simply represents death. It conveys

the idea that human beings are constantly facing the

threat of death and born to die, only by eliminating

inner desires can one free from the sufferings of life,

which is consistent with the composition of the

painting. In the Skeleton Illusory Performance, the

skeleton puppeteer who controls the skeleton puppet,

is also a symbol of purity and nobility as well as

detaching from the secular world. Under the influence

of Buddhist and Taoist thoughts, Li Song created such

a complex and contradictory image to tease the infant

who represent the livings or real-life people, with the

skeleton puppet to persuade audiences to abandon

worldly distractions and achieve true freedom and

happiness.

8 DISCUSSION

This study mainly focuses on analyzing the picture in

picture of the skeleton puppeteer teasing the infant

with a small skeleton puppet, which is the core part of

the painting of Skeleton Illusory Performance, the

history background of creation and the inscription

attached to the painting. In addition, this research also

analyzes the figure of milestone, carrying pole and the

large blank background in shaping the composition

and connotation of the painting. However, this study

does not analyze the secondary characters in the

picture, to be specific, the woman behind the skeleton

puppeteer who is breastfeeding and watching what is

happening as well as the woman on the left side of the

picture who is stretching out her hands to stop the

infant from approaching the skeleton puppet.

Likewise, the scholars also have not reached a

consensus on their identities and why Li Song paint

these two figures that seem unrelated to the theme of

the painting. This means that future research can

focus on the identities and connotations of the

secondary characters in this painting, which may

further contribute to the connotation of the entire

painting of Skeleton Illusory Performance.

9 CONCLUSION

The result of this study is that, the Skeleton Illusory

Performance was created under the influence of

Buddhism and Taoism thoughts to showcase Li

Song’s point of view on life and death. Further

concluded that, it is not simply a genre painting

reflects the difficult life of the people in the Southern

Song Dynasty, but more importantly, a reflection of

painter Li Song's point of view on life and death.

Through the method of Chiaroscuro and the illusory

composition, Li Song showed the contradictory and

absurd relationships between life and death. Although

life and death looks distinct, they are also mutually

attractive. By using the skull images of skeleton

puppeteer to tease the infant represents life, he

exhorted people to let go of the worldly obsessions,

then they can get free from the secular life as well as

gain true freedom, detachment and happiness. To sum

up, this study provides a lot of valuable references for

future research on the history of the Southern Song

Dynasty, genre painting, and the concept of life and

death. Although this research utilized the method of

interdisciplinary analysis to analyze the chiaroscuro

method used by Li Song and the triple illusion he

constructed in constructing the composition of the

painting, it did not involve the analysis of other art-

related aspects like Li Song's painting brush and ink

techniques, and whether these have any connection

with or influences on the connotation of the painting

of Skeletons' Illusory Performance. This means that

more in-depth researches need to be done in the

future.

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