Travelers among Mountains and Streams
Fan Kuan. c. 1000 C.E. Ink and colors on silk
Fan Kuan's masterpiece is an outstanding example of Chinese landscape painting. Long before Western artists considered landscape anything more than a setting for figures, Chinese painters had elevated landscape as a subject in its own right. Bounded by mountain ranges and bisected by two great rivers—the Yellow and the Yangzi—China's natural landscape has played an important role in the shaping of the Chinese mind and character. From very early times, the Chinese viewed mountains as sacred and imagined them as the abode of immortals. The term for landscape painting in Chinese is translated as "mountain water painting."
Form: - Different Brushstrokes describe different kinds of trees: coniferous, deciduous, etc. - Seven-foot long painted hanging scroll composition - Takes advantage of scale to increase grandeur & monumentality of the mountain by decreasing the size of the people - Monumental landscape painting style - Painted things not as seen through human eye - Single composition w/ constantly shifting viewpoint Function: - Expresses cosmic vision of man’s harmonious existence in vast/orderly universe - Shows the Neo-Confucian search for absolute truth in nature & self-cultivation - Painting epitomizes early Northern Song monumental style of landscape painting Content: - Boulders in foreground - Rocky outcroppings covered by trees - Two men driving donkeys w/ firewood - Temple partially hidden in forest - Gritty rock face takes up ⅔ of picture - In the background, central peak flanked by smaller peaks - Waterfall pours from a crevice near summit of the mountain and disappears into valley - Mountains are modelled - Contains immense detailing - Additive images are not connective; comprehended separatelySignature hidden among leaves in lower right corner - Long waterfall on right balanced by mountain on left - Waterfall accents the height of the mountain - Not a pure landscape: donkey w/ firewood driven by two men; small temple appears in forest; man seen as small & insignificant in vast natural world - Mists created by ink washes silhouette the roofs of the temple - Signature hidden in bushes on lower right Context: - Fan Kuan was unconventional man for his time - Only surviving work by Fan Kuan - Example of Chinese landscape painting appear long before euros - Mountains as sacred - Painted during Song dynasty - Lived as a recluse & was one of poet & artist disenchanted w/ human affairs - Neo-Confucianism - Reinterpretation of Chinese moral philosophy - Thinkers rebuilt Confucian ethics using Buddhist & Daoist metaphysics - Thought in complimentary opposites - Yin & Yang - Li - Principles that underlie all phenomena - Underlying pattern of reality - Nothing exists w/out it - Qi - Vital force & substance of which man & universe made - Landscape painting at top of hierarchy of Chinese painting styles - Associated w/ refined scholarly taste - Linked w/ Daoism - Emphasizes harmony w/ natural world - Artists paint imaginary, idealized landscapes - Chinese painting seen as extension of calligraphy - uses same brushstrokes - colors restrained & subtle - ink on paper w/ small amount of water color - mounted on sik - painters & calligraphers generally scholars - four Treasures of the Scholar’s studio, Wenfang Sibao - paper, brush, ink, ink stone Cross-Cultural Comparisons: - Cole, The Oxbow - Breughel, Hunters in the Snow - Circle of the Gonzalez Family, Screen with Hunting Scenes |
