Chinese Landscape Art Trees White Mountain in Backround Signed in Red Triangles
Fan Kuan, Travelers past Streams and Mountains, ink on silk hanging scroll, c. 1000, 206.three ten 103.3 cm. (National Palace Museum, Taipei)
Daoist mountain man, hermit, rustic, vino-lover—Fan Kuan has the reputation of having been truly unconventional. We know very lilliputian about this great artist, however he painted the well-nigh regal landscape painting of the early Vocal menstruation. Everything about Travelers by Streams and Mountains, which is possibly the only surviving piece of work by Fan Kuan, is an orderly statement reflecting the artist's worldview.
Landscape as a subject
Fan Kuan'due south masterpiece is an outstanding example of Chinese mural painting. Long earlier Western artists considered landscape annihilation more than a setting for figures, Chinese painters had elevated landscape as a subject in its own right. Divisional by mountain ranges and bisected by two great rivers—the Yellow and the Yangzi—China's natural landscape has played an important part in the shaping of the Chinese mind and character. From very early on times, the Chinese viewed mountains as sacred and imagined them equally the abode of immortals. The term for landscape painting (shanshui hua) in Chinese is translated as "mount h2o painting."
Afterwards a menstruation of upheaval
During the tumultuous Five Dynasties catamenia in the early 10th century (an era of political upheaval from 907–960 C.E., between the fall of the Tang Dynasty and the founding of the Song Dynasty, when five dynasties quickly succeeded 1 another in the north, and more than than twelve independent states were established, mainly in the southward), recluse scholars who fled to the mountains saw the alpine pino tree as representative of the virtuous homo. In the early Northern Song dynasty that followed, from the mid-10th to the mid-11th century, gnarled pino trees and other symbolic elements were transformed into a thou and imposing landscape way.
Gnarled pine copse (detail), Fan Kuan, Travelers by Streams and Mountains, c. 1000, ink on silk hanging roll, 206.3 ten 103.3 cm. (National Palace Museum, Taipei)
Fan Kuan painted a assuming and straightforward instance of Chinese mural painting. After the long catamenia of political disunity (the V Dynasties period), Fan Kuan lived as a recluse and was one of many poets and artists of the time who were disenchanted with human affairs. He turned away from the globe to seek spiritual enlightenment. Through his painting Travelers past Streams and Mountains, Fan Kuan expressed a cosmic vision of human's harmonious existence in a vast but orderly universe. The Neo-Confucian search for accented truth in nature likewise as self-cultivation reached its climax in the 11th century and is demonstrated in this work. Fan Kuan'south landscape epitomizes the early Northern Song monumental fashion of landscape painting. Virtually seven feet in meridian, the hanging scroll composition presents universal creation in its totality, and does so with the most economic of ways.
Temple in the woods (detail), Fan Kuan, Travelers by Streams and Mountains, c. yard, ink on silk hanging coil, 206.3 10 103.3 cm. (National Palace Museum, Taipei)
Immense boulders occupy the foreground and are presented to the viewer at eye level. Only beyond them one sees crisp, detailed brushwork describing rocky outcroppings, covered with trees. Looking closely, one sees two men driving a group of donkeys loaded with firewood and a temple partially hidden in the woods. In the background a central tiptop rises from a mist-filled chasm and is flanked past 2 smaller peaks. This solid screen of gritty stone takes up nearly ii-thirds of the motion picture. The sheer height of the central peak is accentuated by a waterfall plummeting from a crevice virtually the pinnacle and disappearing into the narrow valley.
Central peak (detail), Fan Kuan, Travelers past Streams and Mountains, c. one thousand, ink on silk hanging scroll, 206.3 10 103.3 cm. (National Palace Museum, Taipei)
The mountain course accurately captures the geological traits of southern Shaanxi and northwestern Henan provinces–thick vegetation grows only at the top of the bare steep-sided cliffs in thick layers of fine-grained soil known as loess. The mountains are triangular with deep crevices. In the painting they are conceived frontally and additively. To model the mountains, Fan Kuan used incisive thickening-and-thinning contour strokes, texture dots and ink wash. Strong, sharp brushstrokes describe the knotted trunks of the big trees. Find the detailed brushwork that delineates the leaf and the fir trees silhouetted forth the upper border of the ledge in the middle distance.
Monumental landscape (detail), Fan Kuan, Travelers by Streams and Mountains, c. 1000, ink on silk hanging roll, 206.three x 103.iii cm. (National Palace Museum, Taipei)
To convey the sheer size of the mural depicted in Travelers by Streams and Mountains, Fan Kuan relied on suggestion rather than description. The gaps between the three distances act as breaks between changing views. Annotation the boulders in the foreground, the tree-covered rock outcropping in the middle, and the soaring peaks in the groundwork. The condiment images practise not physically connect; they are comprehended separately. The viewer is invited to imagine himself roaming freely, still ane must mentally jump from one distance to the next.
The unsurpassed grandeur and monumentality of Fan Kuan's composition is expressed through the skillful use of calibration. Fan Kuan's landscape shows how the utilize of scale tin dramatically heighten the sense of vastness and infinite. Diminutive figures are fabricated visually even smaller in comparison to the enormous copse and soaring peaks. They are overwhelmed by their environment. Fan Kuan's signature is subconscious amongst the leaves of one of the copse in the lower correct corner.
Neo-Confucianism
The development of Monumental landscape painting coincided with that of Neo-Confucianism—a reinterpretation of Chinese moral philosophy. It was Buddhism that first introduced, from India, a system of metaphysics and a coherent worldview more advanced than anything known in Red china. With Buddhist thought, scholars in the fifth and 6th centuries engaged in philosophical discussions of truth and reality, existence and non-existence, substantiality and nonsubstantiality. Beginning in the belatedly Tang and early Northern Song (960-1127), Neo-Confucian thinkers rebuilt Confucian ethics using Buddhist and Daoist metaphysics. Chinese philosophers constitute it useful to think in terms of complimentary opposites, interacting polarities— inner and outer, substance and function, cognition and action. In their metaphysics they naturally employed the aboriginal yin and yang (Yin: feminine, dark, receptive, yielding, negative, and weak. Yang: masculine, bright, assertive, creative, positive, and stiff.) The interaction of these complementary poles was viewed as integral to the processes that generate natural order.
Central to understanding Neo-Confucian idea is the conceptual pair of li and qi. Li is usually translated as principles. It can be understood as principles that underlie all phenomena. Li constitutes the underlying pattern of reality. Nothing tin be if there is no li for information technology. This applies to human being acquit and to the physical earth. Qi can be characterized as the vital forcefulness and substance of which human and the universe are fabricated. Qi tin can also be conceived of as free energy, but energy which occupies space. In its most refined form it occurs as mysterious ether, but condensed it becomes solid metal or rock.
Non as the human being eye sees
The Neo-Confucian theory of observing things in the light of their own principles (li) conspicuously resonates in the immense splendor of Fan Kuan'south masterpiece. Northern Song mural painters did non paint as the human eye sees. By seeing things non through the human being eye, just in the light of their own principles (li), Fan Kuan was able to organize and nowadays dissimilar aspects of a landscape within a single limerick—he does this with a constantly shifting viewpoint. In his masterful balance of li and qi, Fan Kuan created a microcosmic image of a moral and orderly universe.
Fan Kuan looked to nature and carefully studied the world around him. He expressed his own response to nature. As Fan Kuan sought to describe the external truth of the universe visually, he discovered at the same fourth dimension an internal psychological truth. The assuming directness of Fan's painting style was thought to be a reflection of his open character and generous disposition. His grand image of the beauty and majesty of nature reflects Fan Kuan'due south humble awe and pride.
Note from author: With tremendous debt to my teacher Wen Fong.
Additional Resources
This landscape painting on the Google Art Projection
Mural Painting in Chinese Art on The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History
The National Palace Museum
Lecture notes on Northern Vocal Mural Painting past James Cahill
Source: https://smarthistory.org/neo-confucianism-fan-kuan-travelers-by-streams-and-mountains/
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