Page 40 - Studio International - May 1974

unfortunately unavailable for reproduction.
Two Moorish gentlemen recline in the
foreground to watch two goldfish swim, their
skin the same golden colour of the fish, their
attention indicated by their position in relation
to the fishbowl, for Matisse has painted no
facial details. As sinuous and flaxen as the
objects they observe, their movement suggests
the totemistic quality of identification so
clearly expressed in the pagan sanctification of
nature.)
Chinese toggles describe several fish motifs,
all dealing generally with the theme of
abundance. A ho pao chin yü or lotus-wrapped
golden fish would be suitable for a merchant
or trader. Cammon notes in his excellent study
of the fish toggles :
`The Chinese term for goldfish is a literal
description, chin yü, fish of gold, but the word
fish (yu) makes a pun on the word for
overflowing abundance so the whole expression,
chin yü, makes a rebus signifying "an abundance
of gold". This makes the goldfish an obvious
and very popular choice of a wealth symbol,
either used alone or shown with other punning
objects to make larger rebus combinations,
i.e. goldfish in a lotus. An especially frequent
rebus combination shows a goldfish carrying a
lotus flower by its stem. This device was
described in Chinese as chin yü t'ang ho which
makes a pun on "Harmony together with an
abundance of gold", two prime ingredients for
a happy marriage. As such, the fish with lotus
make an appropriate subject for a toggle
intended as a wedding present'.'
The twin goldfish (or carp) represented
among the eight Buddhist symbols for which
rebus examples date back to the Chou Dynasty,
are also a symbol of conjugal harmony. Fish
represented a husband or wife with an
abundance of wealth as well as of children, for
the many eggs of fish made them a subject for
fertility in general. Among the Buddhists the
symbol had yet another connotation, for it was
said 'The fish signifies freedom from all
restraints. As a fish moves easily in all directions,
so in the Buddha state the fully-emancipated
knows no restraints or obstructions'.8
In Hindu Indian lore there is a myth
fish had a Babylonian origin is difficult to The Chinese and the Indian fish (recorded in the Bhagavatapurana) in which
ascertain; its sacred character had clearly been One of the most beautiful interpretations of the Vishnu becomes a fisher god :
deleted from its meaning. The Romans were fish has been in Chinese and Indian folklore `It is Vishnu himself who reveals in the shape
also fond of mosaics of fish and ornamental where its golden colour has been dramatized. of a fish an esoteric doctrine concerning his own
fountains, the earliest representations of which The passion of the Chinese for goldfish was divinity and who brings back from the depth of
are from Hellenistic pavements at Pompeii. The remarkable. Like the Romans, they maintained the waters the Vedas, the source of all wisdom,
motifs which appear vary only slightly, decorative fish in pools, but bred them to be which had been stolen by a hostile demon. The
indicating that naturalistic details such as local visually interesting when seen from above following ceremony, described in the
flora had little to do with pictorial representation. rather than from the side. Regarded as signs of Varahapurana refers to this myth. On the
This suggests to Toynbee that the image of the abundance, the Chinese believed that to twelfth day of the first month of the Indian year
fish probably came from a pattern book and was materialize a symbol was to activate its concept; four golden vessels full of water, with wreaths
repeated throughout the Empire as a carp were bred to keep pools of water free of on them representing the four oceans of the
standardized stylistic device. In the second larvae, but as the average carp was world, are placed before the image of Vishnu;
century BC the varieties of fish can be uninteresting to look at, their breeding to a in the middle of the four vessels they place a
identified; by the third and fourth century they golden colour and unusual shape became an art bowl of gold, silver, copper or wood, also full of
have been so schematized in detail that eyes, in itself. (A golden fish in Western art is the water and put in it the god (Vishnu) in the shape
fins and tails are purely visual references which 1912-3 Moorish Cafe of Matisse, a picture now of a golden fish. Then the god is addressed with
no longer identify a specific species. in the Hermitage Museum in Leningrad and the words: "As thou 0 God in the shape of a

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