Unique characteristics of Chinese landscape painting and emotional attachment

This exhibition of Chinese landscape painting shows how art functioned as a means of escape, personal empowerment, and also subtle political subversion throughout several successive dynasties. Yet the prevailing theme is even more literal than that: a genuine appreciation of the transformative power of nature. Chinese landscape painters were self-conscious in their desire to capture nature and convey what is symbolizes to the viewer. Kuo Hsi’s writings on the importance of actually going into nature show that the approach landscape artists took was essentially Daoist, and at times even bordering on the mystical (Bush & Shih). These are works that subvert the striking humanism of Confucianism, offering a welcome contrast to the rigid social ordering that constrained personal and public affairs. Nature in its purest form is wild, free, and unfettered, flowing naturally and unable to be fully controlled by human beings. At the same time, nature also has its own order, which the artists capture.
“Travelers Among Mountain and Stream” shows the relationship between human being and nature in a realistic but dramatic way: nature subsumes the human being, dwarfing the travelers. Fan Kuan suggests that the position of human beings in the natural order of things is minute and ineffectual. The travelers delight in their being overwhelmed by nature, taking their rightful place in the world. A sense of peace permeates the monochrome painting. The Fan Kuan work also signifies the presumed “superiority” of monochrome paintings that were prevalent in the eleventh century (Bush & Shih, p. 143). Monochrome required deft restraint on the part of the artist, to not get too carried away by the esoteric longings that arise when traveling in nature. The monochrome also enables the emergence of chiaroscuro, inviting the viewer also to contemplate how the universal principles of yin and yang are eternally manifest.
The theme of traveling also runs through this exhibition, connecting traveling and the concept of escape to nature. It was not as if nature offered something purer compared to the affairs of men; in fact, there is an appreciation for nature’s disorderliness and chaos. For example, Wang Meng depicts in detail the texture of the “Forest Grotto at Juqu.” Unlike Fan Kuan’s monolith in “Travelers,” Wang Men here offers something quite different: an almost cluttered landscape painting and one that is not monochromatic, but which offers hints of red pigment. Human dwellings are hidden, interspersed among the trees in the grotto. Just as with “Travelers Among Mountain and Stream,” the world of the human is completely overcome by the world of nature. The human dwellings are nothing but birdhouses, blending right in with their natural surroundings. A return-to-nature theme does permeate eleventh and twelfth century Chinese landscape art, which gravitates towards the Daoist worldview. Also akin to Fan Kuan’s “Travelers” is the theme of searching for a deeper truth that cannot be penetrated via the intellect alone but must be directly perceived and experienced. The travelers in Fan Kuan’s monochrome achieve that goal; the viewer of “Forest Grotto” must take a more active role and is being invited into the complex array of textures. The effect of Wang Meng’s painting is almost sonic in its cacophonous array of shape, form, and color.
Finally, Ni Zan’s “Rongxi Studio” reflects the trend towards the scholar-artist. The studio is delicately set as if on a cloud, floating groundlessly and signifying the psychic disconnection between the artist and the mundane world of his compatriots whose lives are consumed with what he would have considered trivialities. Here, Ni Zan invites the viewer to glimpse an alternate way of seeing and of being. Clouds float gently overhead, windswept trees cling carefully to a cluster of rocks below, and in the middle of it all is the artist’s studio. Overall, the exhibition shows not only the careful craftsmanship of Chinese landscape painters but also their self-awareness, their self-conscious participation in the act of doing art for art’s sake.







References

Bush, S. & Shih, Hsio-yen. “The Landscape Texts.”
Fan Kuan. “Travelers Among Mountain and Stream.”
Li Tang “Whispering Pines in the Gorges.”
Ni Zan. “Rongxi Studio.”
Wang Meng. “Forest Grotto at Juqu”