I had gone to the Met Museum in December to view the first rotation of the mammoth centennial exhibit, Masterpieces of Chinese Painting; I recently returned to see what was on display in the second rotation. Once again a huge number of works from all periods of Chinese art had been hung, but somehow the effect was not quite as impressive as it had been the first time around. Still, the extent of the Met's collection of Chinese painting only becomes evident when viewing a show this size, and the effect of seeing so many works together is ultimately overwhelming.
Surprisingly, the painting that most attracted my interest was not from the Sung Dynasty, when landscape painting reached its apogee in China, but from the much later Ming Dynasty. This was Zhong Li's Scholar looking at a waterfall, a huge hanging scroll (approx. 126" x 53" mounted) in the style of Ma Yuan, the Sung painter who originated the famous "one corner" style. Strangely, the museum's website states that Zhong Li painted in an "almost contemptuous manner" but I didn't see any evidence of that myself. Instead, the painting was filled with a sense of serenity as it depicted the scholar's reverence for nature as shown in the waterfall tumbling majestically from stylized mountains to the twisted pines below.
A more modest work, at least in format, was Old Trees, Level Distance, a handscroll painted by Guo Xi in the eleventh century. What was most interesting was the tortured shape of the trees that reminded this viewer of the artist's more famous Early Spring (not part of this exhibit). Ink washes were expertly used to give a sense of a distant perspective fading away in the mist.
One of the most delightful, and unexpected, subjects in Chinese art is that of fish frolicking in the water. In this regard, Fish at play, attributed to Sung artist Zhao Kexiong, was noteworthy for the naturalism with which the fish were portrayed. Another excellent example was the much later Flowers, fish and crabs by Ming artist Liu Jie in which the transition from land to water was never clearly defined so that the flowers and fish appeared to exist together in the same dreamlike environment.
Most often in Chinese paintings travelers in a landscape are shown as tiny figures dwarfed by the mountains about them. In such paintings as Travelers in a Wintry Forest, though, attributed to Li Cheng of the Song era, the figure becomes central to the painting. Figure painting also features prominently in Buddhist art as shown in an anonymous monk's imaginary portrait from the Yuan Dynasty of a Luohan, one of those assigned by the Buddha to be a Keeper of the Law.
The pine tree is one of the most fundamental elements of Chinese landscape painting but nowhere is it depicted in such monumental fashion as in Dragon Pine by Ming artist Wu Boli, another large hanging scroll (approx. 100" x 18.5" mounted). The museum's website notes of this piece:
"This animated pine recalls an account by the tenth-century hermit-painter Jing Hao that describes 'a gigantic pine tree, its aged bark overgrown with lichen, its winged scales seeming to ride in the air. Its stature is like that of a coiling dragon trying to reach the Milky Way.' For Jing Hao, as for later artists, the pine signified 'the moral character of the virtuous man.' Here, the tree may also represent the Daoist sage, or 'perfected being.'"
The exhibit continues through October 11, 2016.
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