One Hundred Accumulations of Immortal Garments (百曡僊衣 Bǎidié Xiānyī)

This long scroll invites viewers on a surreal drift through butterflies and flowers that seem to hover in space or emerge from mist. Only a section of the scroll is open here, and it attests to the artist’s skill and painstaking observation of nature.

The title, One Hundred Accumulations of Immortal Garments (百曡僊衣 Bǎidié Xiānyī ), is both poetic and rooted in the traditional Chinese vocabulary of auspicious visual puns. In the word for butterfly, húdié 蝴蝶, the first character sounds like blessings (fú 福) and riches (fù 富), and the second character sounds like both accumulation (dié 曡) and the age of seventy to eighty (dié 耋), implying a wish for longevity. The title therefore plays on the idea that the colors of the flowers and butterfly wings are as resplendent as the clothing of the Chinese deities called immortals (xiān 僊 or 仙); however, because of the pun on the words accumulation and butterfly, the title also suggests 100 butterflies.