Landscape Art, Chinese

China has long been associated with the production of landscape art, primarily in the form of painting, although apparently an interest in depicting the natural world was somewhat slow to emerge there. Although the archaeological record is incomplete, artifacts from the Neolithic period and early Bronze Age (c. fifth-first millennia все) rarely depict nature, and when nature is depicted it generally serves as a backdrop to human activities and not as the focus of the artist's attentions.

The Chinese term that is usually translated as "landscape" in English is made up of the words shan and shui, literally "mountains" and "rivers" (or "waters"); thus, unlike its English counterpart, landscape is a cosmologically (relating to the nature of the universe) loaded term in Chinese, its two elements forming a yin/yang pairing of complementary forces.

(Yin is the feminine, passive principle in nature that in Chinese cosmology is exhibited in darkness, cold, or wetness; yang is the masculine, active principle that is exhibited in light, heat, or dryness. When the two principles combine, they produce everything that exists.) In several important early philosophical texts, moreover, water is used as a metaphor for the dao, or "way" of nature, whereas mountains (and rocks) are associated with immortality and the primal energy (qi) that animates the universe.

Early Representations. In light of these early associations, it is not surprising that the first popular representations of mountains, dating to the Han dynasty (202 bce-220 ce), are generally found among tomb furnishings, where they frequently appear in the form of incense burners. Made from both clay and bronze and sometimes elaborately inlaid with metals and jewels, such burners usually contained perforations in the mountain-shaped conical lids so that when incense was burning the rising smoke would create the effect of misty peaks.

After the Han dynasty landscape elements begin to appear more frequently, especially in funerary art (such as the scenes depicted on the famous "Nelson sarcophagus"), in religious art (especially in the Buddhist murals at the Dunhuang caves), and in imperially sponsored secular art, such as the Tang dynasty (618-906) blue-and-green landscape tradition associated with the artist Li Zhaodao.

Birth of Monumental Landscape Art. Not until the tenth century, however, after the collapse of the Tang dynasty, did landscape painting finally emerge as an independent genre and the term shanshui begin to be used as a separate category in art-historical texts. This new mode of painting is often termed "monumental" both because of the physical size of the works and because of the vast panoramas they typically depict.

Although individual and regional styles of landscape painting developed, works in this monumental tradition shared many features in common, such as a preference for the use of ink and wash (rather than the mineral colors generally favored in earlier painting), a clear division and organization of space, the employment of multiple points of view within a single composition, and an emphasis on the use of line as an expressive element.

Traveling amid Mountains and Gorges by the artist Fan Kuan (c. 960-1030), one of the most frequently reproduced examples of early Chinese landscape painting, exemplifies all of these features. A hanging scroll more than 2 meters tall, the work is dominated by a massive granitic mountain in the distance that occupies about two-thirds of the pictorial surface; as the viewer looks more closely, it can be observed that this towering mountain dwarfs a mule team and several figures that occupy the lower-right corner of the foreground, while the outline of a temple roof in the middle distance is silhouetted against a misty gorge just above them. Traveling has been praised as a celebration of the raw (if idealized) power of the natural world, and it might be said to demonstrate in a literal sense the proposition that nature is big and humanity is small.

The early masters of monumental landscape art, such as Fan Kuan and his predecessor Li Cheng (c. 919-967), also had in common the fact that they were not associated with the imperial court as artists. That is, they were perceived as amateurs—as scholars who happened also to paint—rather than as professional artists who painted on demand and who were consigned to a much lower social status.

The term literati painting (wenren hua), often applied to this tradition (also referred to as "scholar/official's art"), calls attention to the fact that social and intellectual ideals were a large part of its definition. Some modern scholars, in fact, have gone so far as to suggest that literati painting should be understood primarily in terms of shared social class and values and only secondarily in terms of style or shared artistic aims.

The Song Court. If the early landscape masters operated outside of the boundaries of direct court patronage, by the late Northern Song (960-1127) period this kind of painting was also being practiced in imperial settings, where new layers of meaning often accrued. Early Spring (dated 1072) by the court artist Guo Xi, for example, stylistically extends the Li Cheng mode; however, in light of the circumstances of its patronage and display, the viewer is clearly encouraged to equate the majestic mountain around which all revolves with the emperor himself.

In the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries a more intimate mode of landscape developed in the painting academy at the Southern Song (1127-1279) court. Associated primarily with the artists MaYuan and Xia Gui, about whom little is known, these paintings tended to employ small formats, such as fans or album leaves, and to focus on scenes that could be taken in at a glance (unlike the complex monumental landscapes that needed to be pored over).

The academy also promoted the amalgamation of poetry and painting, and many academy works originally paired a poetic couplet with a painted image (as in Ma Lin's Reclining Scholar in the Cleveland Museum of Art).

The Yuan Revolution. The fall of China to the Mongols in 1279 naturally had a major impact on virtually every aspect of Chinese society. Although portions of the country had previously come under foreign control at various points, this marked the first time that all of China was ruled by alien invaders. One effect of this situation was that many scholars (and artists) were reluctant to serve at court for fear of being perceived as collaborators, preferring to withdraw from official life. Many of these retired scholars turned to painting, and especially to landscape painting, as a vehicle for expressing their feelings about the Mongol occupation.

For instance, during the Yuan period (1279-1368) Ni Zan (13061374) perfected a composition comprising a few trees, some rocks, and an empty hut in the foreground, with a range of mountains in the distance, all executed with a dry and spare technique and with little regard for pictorial illusionism. As one modern scholar writes of his work, "No concessions are made to the viewer; no figures, no boats or clouds enliven the scene, and nothing moves. The silence that pervades the picture is that which falls between friends who understand each other perfectly" (Sullivan 1999, 207).

Although made up of "mountains" and "rivers"— the literal elements of landscape—Ni Zan's paintings were seen by contemporaries (and later viewers) as the outward manifestation of the artist's inner state: the airless, uninhabited, and uninviting world they depict understood as representing the artist's own alienation. Other well-known scholar/artists of the fourteenth century, such as Huang Gongwang, Wu Chen, and Wang Meng, similarly developed individualized landscape styles that they, too, deployed in personally expressive ways.

This creation of a mode of landscape painting that emphasized the expression of ideas and personal feelings at the expense of realistic depiction of the external world of nature, a kind of landscape of the self, has often been described as a seminal turning point in the history of Chinese painting that would fundamentally alter the very conception of what a painting can be.

Evolution of Practice and Theory in the Ming Period. After the restoration of Chinese rule in 1368, landscape painting developed along several lines during the Ming period (1368-1644). Professional artists, such as Dai Jin (1388-1452), founder of the so-called Zhe school, revived the earlier court-academy style of the Song period, although on a more monumental scale, whereas scholar/amateur artists, such as Shen Zhou (14271509), founder of the Wu school, continued to explore the expressive possibilities first exploited in the Yuan period.

In this period, Ming paintings were also increasingly used to mark social occasions—an official's departure to take up a new post or an important anniversary or birthday, for example. At the same time, painting in general became increasingly self-conscious or "art- historical" as artists incorporated deliberate references to earlier styles.

Shen Zhou's famous Lofty Mt. Lu exemplifies several of these features and illustrates the way in which Ming artists were able to build multiple layers of meaning into a single work. The painting shows a towering mountain with a rushing waterfall cascading down its face, at the base of which stands the minute figure of a scholar, representing Shen Zhou himself, who gazes up at the peak. On one level, this is a painting about style because Shen Zhou deliberately paints here in the distinctively dense and restless mode associated with the Yuan artist Wang Meng.

This is also a painting about "place" in that Mount Lu was a well-known scenic site, famous for the precipitous "flying bridge," which Shen prominently depicts. The artist's inscription reveals that this painting was produced in honor of the birthday of Shen's teacher, thus making this a work with a specific social function as well. Moreover, after one understands the nature of the occasion that sparked the painting, one sees that Mt. Lu is also a landscape portrait of the "lofty" teacher and of his former student who still feels dwarfed by his presence.

In the late Ming period the practice of exploring earlier pictorial styles as a goal of painting was codified by the artist and theorist Dong Qichang (1555-1636). Dong divided previous artists into two main camps, primarily in terms of their status as either professionals or scholar/amateurs (the latter of which he considered the orthodox tradition). Presaging twentieth-century modernist views in the West, Dong Qichang asserted that the true subject of painting is painting itself, not the external world.

Landscape painting (shanshui), he claimed, ought to be a vehicle for exploring the formal wonders of brush and ink; for those more interested in the natural wonders of actual mountains (shan) and rivers (shui), Dong counseled a good hike.