In my last post I set out to describe the works I'd seen at the Met Museum's current exhibit Masterpieces of Chinese Painting but only got so far as the first two paintings I encountered. While it's not possible to discuss all the works on display, there are many more that definitely deserve mention.
Among the first of these was a painting by Ma Yuan, an artist I remembered very well from my college studies. He was one of the most highly regarded painters of the Southern Song dynasty which itself represents the high point of Chinese landscape painting. He is best known for having developed the "one corner" style of painting in which the subject is placed in a single corner of the painting while the rest of the "canvas" is left blank as though enshrouded in mist. Though it sounds simple enough, the technique is extremely evocative. Its use can be seen in the work in question, entitled Viewing plum blossoms by moonlight, done in ink and color on the back of a silk fan which was subsequently mounted in an album. A scholar sits on the edge of a cliff, his servant standing behind him, while lost in meditation he stares past the branches of the plum tree at the full moon shining beyond. Ink washes are used to create a sense of perspective as the more distant mountains in the background are shown in paler shades of grey. The work is very successful in recreating the contemplative mood the scholar must have experienced during his nocturnal musings.
Directly beside the Ma Yuan was another Southern Song landscape, this by Xia Gui, an ink on silk album leaf entitled Mountain Market, Clearing Mist. While the main subject is rendered in coarse swift strokes through the use of an ax-cut brush, these contrast strongly with the lightened ink wash that successfully creates the illusion of an evaporating mist that partly obscures the background trees and mountains. The blank upper left area of the painting reinforces this idea of a clearing mist. Combined, these two highly different techniques make the work a tour de force of landscape art.
There are many other landscapes on view at the exhibit and it was fascinating to be able to chart the development of this genre by moving from one gallery to the next. One of the most intriguing was Landscape in the style of Fan Kuan by an unknown artist. To me, this was the very epitome of Song dynasty art and I could not understand how it could ever have been misattributed, as the accompanying documentation states it was, to the much later Ming dynasty. Other landscapes worth noting were Cloudy Mountains by Fang Congyi, Rocky Landscape with Pines by Zhang Xun, Angling in the Autumn River by Sheng Zhu, Crooked Pine by Wu Zhen, Fragrant Snow at Broken Bridge by Wang Mian, Crows in Old Trees by Liu Zhichuan and Landscape after a poem by Wang Wei by Tang Di. All these latter paintings were done, though, during the Yuan dynasty, the Mongol empire created by Kublai Khan. They lack the sensitivity and evanescence of the earlier Song works and are in general much more literal minded. Where the Mongols excelled was in the depiction of horses. The Song's interaction with barbarian tribes can already be seen in the utterly realistic Stag Hunt which may have been painted early on in the period of the Jin-Song wars.
An interesting postscript to Chinese landscape paintings of the Song and Yuan dynasties can be found in the painting Drunken Immortal beneath an old tree by Chen Zihe, an artist of the Ming dynasty. Here the earlier landscape traditions are parodied for comic effect. The twisted pine leans so precipitously that it seems in its own way as drunken as the "immortal" who dozes beneath its branches. The earthy humor makes light of the tradition of Daoist sages but its Zen-like irreverence is not entirely out of place.
Though not technically landscapes, there are two other noteworthy depictions of nature at this exhibit. The first is Narcissus by the Southern Song artist Zhao Mengjian. This is an extremely long (over 12 feet) handscroll on the which the artist has painstakingly inked an entire row of these flowers. The point of view is from ground level and the degree of detail is astonishing. The second is entitled The Pleasures of Fishes and was created by the Yuan dynasty artist Zhou Dongqing. This is another exceptionally long (over 19 feet) handscroll along whose length a fantastic array of fish frolic in a stream. The fish and their movements are depicted so realistically that it seems the artist must have dived underwater to capture them. The title is derived from an anecdote by the Daoist sage Zhuangzi and it appears the artist himself must have been steeped in Daoist tradition to so well understand the joy the fish feel as they swim playfully about.
To be continued...
No comments:
Post a Comment