When the two essences of nature are bright and clear

A scholar playing the guqin, Ming Dynasty

Reproduced in R. H. van Gulik's The Lore of the Chinese Lute

I have written here about guqin music twice before: once in relation to two compositions of the Song Dynasty by Kuo Mien (Guo Mian) and more recently in a post about the Japanese guqin player, Uragami Gyokudō.  Here I am adding some more information on landscape and the art of the guqin via some quotations from the seminal Western book on the subject, R. H. van Gulik's The Lore of the Chinese Lute, first published in 1940.  This essay explains the evolution of the instrument into one of the scholar's most important possessions.  Artists and writers often depicted the poet wandering through mountains, accompanied by his lute, usually carried by a servant boy, so that he could play when moved by the beauty of the scenery.  Even when indoors, the lute player's 'mind should dwell with forests and streams'.  But ideally he would be outside, 'near an old pine tree, admiring its gnarled, antique appearance. In the shade of the pines some cranes should be stalking, and the lute player should admire their graceful movements, modelling on them his finger technique.' 

Here is a lovely sixteenth century description of the place of the lute in scholarly life.  Its subject is Ni Tsan (Ni Zan, 1301-74), the great Chinese landscape painter who I have referred to several times on this blog. 

'Where Ni Tsan dwelt there was the Ching-pi pavilion, breathing an atmosphere of profundity and remoteness from earthly things.  There he had assembled several thousand books, all of which he had corrected with his own hand.  On all sides there were arranged antique sacrificial vessels and famous lutes, and the abode was surrounded by pine trees, cinnamon trees, orchids, bamboos, etc.  It was fenced off by a high paling of poles and bamboo, suggesting aloofness and refined delicacy.  Every time the rain had stopped and the wind had abated, Ni Tsan used to take his staff and wander about, just going where his steps led him. When his eye met with something which particularly struck him, he played his lute, thus finding aesthetic satisfaction. Those who saw him then knew that he was a man who dwelt outside this world.'

An enviable life - I particularly like the way he 'corrected' the books in his library!  Playing the lute was seen as an almost priestly ritual: it could only be undertaken under the right circumstances.  The Lore of the Chinese Lute quotes a list from the Ming period in which over half of the fourteen rules relate to making music outdoors.  The lute may be played:

1. When meeting someone who understands music.
2. On meeting a suitable person.
3. For a Taoist recluse
4. In a high hall.
5. Having ascended a storied pavilion.
6. In a Taoist cloister.
7. Sitting on a stone.
8. Having climbed a mountain.
9. Resting in a valley.
10. Roaming along the waterside.
11. In a boat.
12. Resting in the shadow of a forest.
13. When the two essences of nature are bright and clear.
14. In a cool breeze and when there is a bright moon.

Finally here, I will highlight van Gulik's subdivision of the lute repertoire into five thematic groups: (1) The Mystic Journey; (2) Tunes of a Semi-Historical Character; (3) Musical Versions of Literary Products (e.g. poems from the ancient Book of Odes); (4) Tunes Descriptive of Nature; (5) Tunes Descriptive of Literary Life.  Elements of landscape may be evoked in any of these categories, but it is the fourth group that is of most interest here.  One such composition is the Song Dynasty tune I described here previously, 'Clouds over the Hsiao and Hsiang Rivers'.  Another is 'High Mountains and Flowing Waters' (for the story of Po Ya, to whom it was ascribed, see my earlier post).  This exists as two separate pieces, one of which, 'Flowing Waters', is now the best known qin composition  - a version was sent into space on the Voyager golden record (see clip above and, for more information, John Thompson's incredibly informative qin site). 

The third example of nature description van Gulik gives is by Ts'ai Yung (Cai Yong 133-92), a polymath of the Eastern Han period whose daughter also became a renowned poet and musician.  It is a tune which evokes in nine sections the end of winter and the coming of spring. A Ming Dynasty lute handbook says of this that 'it takes its inspiration from the snow, describes snow's purity and freedom from all earthly stains, and expresses contempt for the world and elevation to empty clearness'.

1. Heaven and earth breathe purity.
2. A clear, snowy morning.
3. Snow and sleet fall together.
4. Mountains and water merge in each other.
5. The brilliant sun in the sky.
6. The wind blows through the luxuriant forest.
7. River and mountain are like a picture.
8. The snow melts on cliffs and in vales.
9. Spring returns to the world.

Autumn colours on the Qiao and Hua mountains

Last year I wrote about one of James Elkins' Art Seminar Series, Landscape Theory, and I'm turning now to one of his other recent books, Chinese Landscape Painting as Western Art History (2010).  I say recent, but the first version of the book was actually completed twenty years ago and he has had a great deal of trouble getting this controversial text accepted for publication.  Hong Kong University Press have issued it with a foreword by Jennifer Purtle which partially deals with the potential objections of skeptical readers affronted at the idea of a non-Chinese reading art theorist asserting that the history of Chinese landscape painting can only be written about in ways that have been developed by Western art historians.  She says Elkins' book is 'brilliant, except for the places where it is dead wrong' (regrettably she leaves the reader none the wiser as to what these places are).  It would be fascinating to read an in depth Art Seminar-style dialogue based on this book (although there is already one called  Is Art History Global?).  I'm not going to address his argument about the inherently Western form of art history here, but will focus instead on the book's other main theme: cross-cultural comparisons.

Elkins' book begins by problematizing the way early writers on Chinese landscape painting in the West drew comparisons, e.g. between Friedrich's Two Men in Contemplation of the Moon (upside down in the book cover above) and Ma Yuan's Sage Contemplating the Moon.  Jennifer Purtle emphasises these difficulties with reference to contemporary artist Zhang Hongtu's Shan Sui series, where Chinese landscapes are re-painted in the style of Western artists.  If you look at Shitao-Van Gogh (1998) without familiarity with the Shitao composition you will only see a kind of Van Gogh painting. (Incidentally, Zhang Hongtu has more recently been re-painting Chinese landscapes as damaged environments in his pollution series. "Where those masters saw raging waters, I see dry riverbeds. Where they painted clean water, now I am painting the polluted water".)  Elkins is less interested in specific comparisons than in tracing the 'development' of  Chinese landscape painting and mapping it onto Western periods, in part to reveal hidden assumptions in the way art history is constructed.  I've summarised this briefly below because I think it's interesting, but should emphasise that Elkins is aware of how open to criticism this is: 'at one moment it looks as if Chinese art after a certain point is definitely like modernism; and at the next moment it is transparently obvious that such a judgement is projection of Western understanding.'

Zhao Mengfu, Autumn colours on the Qiao and Hua mountains, 1295

The Renaissance: Elkins compares the new art historical consciousness of Italian Renaissance artists with that of early Yuan Dynasty landscape painters, both of whom were working with only limited direct knowledge of their famous classical predecessors. Zhao Mengfu (1254-1322) crystallised past styles in an analogous way to Alberti, Brunelleschi and Masaccio.  As I explained in an earlier post, Zhao's scroll, The Mind Landscape of Xie Youyu, was based on a much earlier painting, a historical gesture equivalent to the revival of Roman architecture.

Mannerism: Moving forward to the Four Great Masters of the Yuan, Elkins identifies elements of what 'the twentieth century recognised as mannerism, meaning, in this context, a historical moment that has become conscious and disdainful of recent perfection.'  I have previously contrasted here the 'bland' landscapes of Ni Zan (1301-74), with the 'saturated' spaces of Wang Meng (1308-85).  Ni Zan's 'concept of monotonous restatement' might be seen as a form of mannerism and Wang's 'crowding of tumultuous forms is another mannerist trait.'

Classicism: By the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, Chinese landscape painters like Shen Zhou (1427-1509) and Wen Zhengming (1470-1559) were working at a distance from both the motif itself and antique models of landscape painting, a kind of 'engaged detachment' that Elkins identifies with Poussin.  But as time went on there were more and more schools of art and historical styles, prompting 'a moment of extreme radicalism and unexpectedly strong judgement...'

Modernism: The landscapes of Dong Qichang (1555-1636) employ distortions and abstractions that might be compared to Cubism.  In his early work Picasso worked through a huge range styles before focusing on Cézanne and Rousseau, and Dong similarly left behind the influence of earlier artists like Ni Zan and Wang Meng before fixing on two: Wang Wei (the great Tang dynasty artist-poet) and Huang Gongwang (oldest of the Four Great Masters, whose role Elkins likens to Cézanne).   

Dong Qichang, Wanluan Thatched Hall, 1597

Postmodernism: Many Western historians of Chinese art have treated the landscape painters of the Qing dynasty (1644-1911) in a more cursory way than their predecessors.  Schools of art became increasingly short lived and individualists and 'eccentrics' proliferate - artists like Gao Qipei (1660-1734) who painted with his fingernails.  Elkins likens their extreme and narrow strategies to those of Western postmodern artists - Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, Wolfgang Laib.  To the extent that Chinese landscape painting ceased to develop radically after the seventeenth century, it may be seen as a precursor of what postmodernism will become, a period 'that arrives when the sequence of historical periods has played itself out.' 

Where flowers drop and waters flow

Shen Fu's memoir, Six Records of a Floating Life (1809), describes his life as an undistinguished civil servant and art enthusiast, with an account of some of the famous landscapes seen on his travels.  The book's popularity has rested on the poignant account Shen Fu gives of his marriage to Yün, with their shared interests and misfortunes from the age of thirteen, when their marriage was arranged, to Yün's death at the age of forty.  Here is an incident from a section on 'The Pleasures of Leisure' in which the two of them make a a miniature landscape in a rectangular pot:

'The mountain was on the left, with another small mound on the right.  Along the mountain we made horizontal patterns, similar to those on the mountain paintings by Yün-lin.  The cliffs were irregular, like those along a river bank.  We filled an empty corner of the pot with river mud and planted duckweed, white with many petals.  On top of the stones we planted morning glories, which are usually called cloud pines.  It took us several days to complete.  By the deep autumn the morning glories had grown all over the mountain, covering it like wisteria hanging from a rock face, and when their flowers bloomed they were a deep red.  The white duckweed also bloomed, and letting one's spirit wander among the red and white was like a visit to Peng Island.  We put the pot under the eaves and discussed it in detail: here we would build a pavilion on the water, there a thatched arbour; here we should inscribe a stone with the characters 'Where flowers drop and waters flow'.  We could live here, we could fish there, from this other place we could gaze off into the distance.  We were as excited about it as if we were actually going to move those imaginary hills and vales.  But one night some miserable cats fighting over something to eat fell from the eaves, smashing the pot in an instant.' (Trans. Leonard Pratt and Chiang Su-hui)

Ni Zan (also known as Yün-lin),  
Woods and Valleys of Mount Yu, 1372

The landscape of the bland

Ni Zan, Landscape, 1372

National Museum of Taipei (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

 

'Trees on the riverbank, an expanse of water, some nebulous hills, a deserted shelter.  The artist, Ni Zan (fourteenth century), painted virtually the same landscape throughout his life.  He did this not, it seems, because of any particular attachment to these motifs but, on the contrary, to better express his inner detachment regarding all particular motifs and all possible motivations.  His is the monotonous, monochromatic landscape that encompasses all landscapes - where all landscapes blend together and assimilate each other.'

This interesting description of the Ni Zan painting shown here is by François Jullien and comes from his book In Praise of Blandness: Proceeding from Chinese Thought and Aesthetics.  'Bland' is translator Paula M. Varsaro's rendering of the French word 'fadeur', which in turn is Jullien's approximation to the Chinese term dan.  Varsaro notes that readers familiar with Chinese literature will recognise in the book the Song dynasty ideal of pingdan (the 'plain and bland'), but will 'see their understanding recast in  broader and more significant framework, as Jullien demonstrates the philosophical udnerpinnings of the label'.  It is impossible to summarise Julien's book briefly, but the following sentences from his fourth chapter may give you a flavour...
 
'While flavor establishes opposition and separation, the bland links the various aspects of the real, opening each to the other, putting all of them in comunication.  The bland renders perceptible their shared character and, through this, their primordial nature.  Blandness is  the color of the whole, as it appears to the eyes who look farthest into the distance; it makes us experience the world and existence itself beyond the narrow confines of the individual's point of view - in their true dimension.'

The first great poet of the bland was the subject of my previous post, Tao Yuanming (apologies for my perennial inconsistency in the Chinese translation conventions but I tend to go with whichever writer I'm currently quoting, so here it's the Pinyin system).  In the Tang dynasty, the 'canonical' bland poets were Wang Wei, Wei Yingwu and Liu Zongyuan.  Poetic blandness involves a balancing of the senses, with nothing overwhelming our attention.  Language resembles what happens when, 'in the Azure Fields beneath the warmth of the sun, a hidden piece of jade emanates a vapor: one can contemplate it, but one cannot fix it precisely with one's gaze.'

At the end of the book Jullien returns to Ni Zan, reproducing another of his 'bland' landscapes and, by way of complete contrast, the painting by Wang Meng shown below.  In the latter, 'topography reveals itself convulsively before our eyes like some mountainous mass in the process of solidifying.  Matter is at work everywhere: twists and folds push at each other; everything pierces through and retracts.  The space is saturated; the turmoil of the scene has reached an extreme.'  Despite the vast difference in their attitude to landscape, the two artists were friends and Ni Zan praised the vitality of Wang Meng's style.  During the upheavals at the end of the Mongolian occuption, Wang Meng remained involved in politics and died in prison. Ni Zan, artist of the 'bland', gave up his estates and freed himself from worldly concerns.

Wang Meng, Lin-wu Grotto at Chu-ch'u, 1378
National Museum of Taipei (Source: Wikimedia Commons)