Fan Kuan《 "Journey to the Creek and Mountains"
Guo Xi 《Early Spring Map》
Li Tang "Wind Map of Ten Thousand Pines" ◎ Black Xuanming
Chinese have a genetic preference for mountains, although they may not be aware of it. In the Analects, it is said, "Benevolent Leshan", and this sentence is often quoted, but few people think about what this sentence means. The main reference here is to the "benevolent one", who should be like a mountain and not be easily deceived. This demand for the idealized personality of the literati doctor set the tone from the Spring and Autumn Period onwards. The scholar must "have a hill in his chest." But the acceptance of the mountain is not limited to the literati doctor. Mountains are safe and firm, and the Chinese people believe in feng shui, such as in the past, people always had to make a rockery in their homes, or hang up landscape paintings, in fact, this is not a vassal style, mainly because of the meaning of "having a backer", of course, it is very auspicious.
The spirit of the "Three Mountains"
In today's traditional Chinese culture is more and more valued, I believe that if you write a number of doctoral dissertations on the theme of "landscape culture", it is no problem, this article does not intend to expand on this aspect, but we can still explore a topic that is biased towards "elegance", that is, landscape painting, and should start from the most "head" landscape paintings, because without starting from here, we can not really understand where the height of Chinese art is, what is its significance to Chinese culture. And why we can produce the most thorough "cultural self-confidence" from this - of course, various cultures in the folklore sense, such as red lanterns, paper-cutting, etc. are also very good, but they should be recognized from a metaphysical height, and there is nothing more suitable than landscape painting.
Because of the overhaul in 2022, the National Palace Museum in Taipei held a "Town Courtyard National Treasure" exhibition at the end of the year, leading to three famous masterpieces of Northern Song Landscape Paintings, namely "Three Mountains": Fan Kuan's "Journey map of Xishan Mountain", Guo Xi's "Early Spring Map" and Li Tang's "Wind Map of Wanyuan Pine". These national treasures are usually reluctant to take out to dry, and it is even more rare to see three together on the same stage, but because of various restrictions such as the epidemic, this feast can only be enjoyed by the audience of treasure island, but I believe that I will see it in the future, otherwise it will completely deviate from the core ideas transmitted by these masterpieces.
As a major category of Chinese painting, landscape painting is usually given a higher "meaning" than flowers, birds and figures, because landscape objects in nature are most conducive to carrying humanistic spiritual ideals. From the five generations of Juran and Jinghao, masters have emerged, especially in the Northern Song Dynasty, and the level of literati painting has reached an unprecedented height, an important reason is the correspondence between authorship and the needs of the audience. If it is said that painters paint more to respond to the market, literati painters usually have more space to express metaphysical ideals, and the literati politics of the Northern Song Dynasty gives literati a larger space, and the literati carry out literary and artistic creations while becoming officials (Su Dongpo can be called the most typical representative).
In the literati-official social occasions (even in the city of Fenjing, that is, in Kaifeng), this kind of elite salon-style mutual appreciation is a benign impetus for literature and art, and landscape painting can best reflect the complementary spirit of Confucianism and Taoism - whether it is born or entered the world, it is the ideal carrier. In the residences of the literati, landscape painting was often a necessary decoration. The direct practice of the emperor himself pushed the level of painting in this period to the peak. This is a bit like the Renaissance depictions of humanistic ideals by artists driven by the court. Song Huizong's painting academy did not only train in painting techniques, but in his core curriculum, it was very important to grasp the ideological conception conveyed by pre-Qin classics such as the Book of Poetry. The essence of art lies in the pursuit of artistic ideals—an artistic author who has this active pursuit is markedly different from an author who claims to have created entirely by unconscious impulses. Among them, which has been handed down to this day, the most representative of its achievements is these "three mountains".
The influence of the "Three Great Mountains"
We know that Japanese fine art had a major impact on Western painting, especially Impressionist painting, and this influence was real, it could be said to be a hurricane-like effect, and it made the impression of Westerners on Japanese art frozen in the representative of East Asian art, that is, at the highest level. Of course, we know that although the level of Japanese art is not low, ukiyo-e art is actually closer to "arts and crafts", it is "unintentional willow insertion", along with Japan's opening to the West, as a product wrapping paper or a postcard for sightseeing tourism was discovered by the West. At that time, China's arts and crafts, such as the export of porcelain art, were more stylized, and high-level literati paintings were not included in the Western vision.
In 1961, the National Palace Museum in Taipei went to the United States with the authorities for an exchange, leading the "three mountains". Regardless of the purpose of the exchange, the result is that Westerners truly see the height of Chinese painting for the first time, and realize that Chinese painting is the "Zhengshuo" of East Asian art, and the Japanese art they worship is a Chinese student. It can be said that it makes them stunned. These paintings are all huge, the height of the painting is about two meters, only close and on-site observation, can be suddenly "captured" and "conquered" by art. People who really have a sense of art cannot but be moved in the face of such masterpieces no matter what. This is an effect that ordinary prints cannot achieve in any way.
It is also through this exchange that the elite of art students in Ivy League colleges and universities in the United States truly know the greatness of Chinese art, and know that the artistic appeal to people's minds after appealing to the Taoist ideals they worship is completely comparable to that of Western masters. In short, this appearance brought about a radical change in the Western elite's view of Chinese art, and a group of elite American students changed their ambitions to this end, regarding the study of Chinese art as a lifelong ideal. Among them, there are many Western masters who have studied Chinese painting in the future, such as Gao Juhan, Sullivan, Kruger and others. Their writings and viewpoints are like Shi Jingqian's historical works, which are indispensable to the world's understanding of Chinese civilization and the breaking of stereotypes.
So, what is so good about the "three mountains"?
Majestic and thick "travel landscape"
All three paintings belong to the "monumental" composition. Under such a huge scale, the main mountain body is facing each other, bringing people a strong visual impact, but also because of its calm color, it adds a sense of majesty and solemnity, which is very "masculine". Of course, we can also think that this is due to the lack of a female perspective. But the "three mountains" are all mountain systems in North China (Fan Kuan himself has lived in Zhongnan Mountain for a long time), and judging from the composition of the circle of Kaifeng scholars, the male authors and audiences, as well as the mountain landscape in the north, are a complete closed loop.
Judging from the expressive feelings, they belong to different categories. The landscape paintings of the literati of the Song Dynasty can be divided into two types: "Traveling Landscape" and "Zhizhi of Lin Quan". Fan Kuan's "Journey to the Creek and Mountains" belongs to the former. "Streams and mountains" are equally important as "travel", the former is nature, the latter is man, this is the encounter between man and nature. Different from the later ones, especially the exquisite brushwork of the Landscape Paintings of the Yuan, Ming, and Qing Dynasties, the "Journey to the Streams and Mountains" appears to be "clumsy", as if it were intentional, just like Surikov of the Russian Touring Exhibition School. Too clever, it lacks the natural strength and thickness. Fan Kuan is said to be very generous and open-minded, so we can also see this painting as a projection of his inner spiritual world. Travel comes from the behavior of people, who like guides to bring the audience into this nature.
In ancient times, when tourism was very underdeveloped, few people had the opportunity to travel to famous mountains and rivers. In addition to the shangjia, the literati doctor was an important witness to the landscape. Their examinations, appointments, fellow travelers, and various "circles" just happen to facilitate the closeness to nature in a situation where there are no cars or trains. Reading thousands of books and walking thousands of miles is not a verbal sentence. According to Mr. Shi Shouqian's research, the eunuch activities of the Song Dynasty were repeated entry and exit centered on Kaifeng, and if we examine the old topic of "poetry and painting", we will find that the landscape and Song painting in Song poetry are exactly matched. Therefore, civilian officials can be regarded as the most experienced "traveling" group.
The layout of the picture of "Xishan Travel Map" can be divided into front, middle and long-range, and the mountain body of the distant view occupies most of the main vision, no more, no less, just on the golden section. Although the traveler in the foreground is painted very small, the whole picture suddenly has the breath of life, and there is a delicate balance with the sublime (or oppressive) sense of the whole mountain. In addition to setting off the majesty of the mountain, it also expresses that people are like a drop in the ocean in nature, but people can experience and discover the mystery of nature. The mountain is endowed with divinity, because you can only see the pavilion, the clouds, but you can't find the way up the mountain, this kind of immortal mountain is the Taoist ideal ascension place, it can be said that it is not "realist", but the arrival of the travelers broke this mystery, but also brought the sound, we can hear the sound of cars and horses and footsteps, this slight sound in the empty mountain is very clear, it seems that nature is more profound and quiet, the empty mountain people speak, the traveler will only speak more softly in this situation, and will feel more empathy for "the great beauty of heaven and earth without saying a word".
The "Spirit of the Forest Springs" of Metaphorical Order
"The Zhi of Lin Quan" is a hidden ideal borrowed from Tao Yuanming by traditional Chinese literati doctors, although it sounds a bit twisted: if you love "returning to nature" so much, why do you suffer for the sake of being an official, and after becoming an official, you dismiss it as a "mundane affair"? Of course, we should look at this kind of landscape painting as a consolation for the spiritual ideals of the composer's doctor class. But landscape painting has another meaning here, that is, the expression of its political ideals.
Guo Xi's "Early Spring Map" is a stunning masterpiece depicting the breath of spring, and the feeling of spring in which the yang steaming, everything grows, and the ice and snow melt is depicted so accurately that it is not inferior to any famous painting about spring in the world, which can only be better than them. With the help of the swirling fog, the main vision of the mountain is processed as an S shape, the biggest advantage of this composition is to increase the sense of rhythm and movement, so that the whole painting is like a symphony, but also makes this painting itself very large (the center of the painting height of 158 cm) more magnificent, because visually the mountains and mountains are still extending, infinitely expanding the audience's field of vision. The author's cleverness and proficiency are amazing, he cleverly uses the contrast between thick and light dry and wet, so that the solid rock is integrated with liquid and gas, and creates a wonderful reflection effect of light and shadow, which is really higher than the Western painting with scientific evidence and perspective research as the core. Guo Xi himself is also a theorist, and in the "Collection of Lin Quan Gao Zhi", he explains how to describe the spring morning: "The sun is steaming, the morning light is moving, the mountains are like green, the smoke is green, the light is clear, the combination is suddenly separated, or it is cracked or scattered, and the perversion is uncertain." "This can be fully confirmed in the "Early Spring Map".
But this painting should perhaps pay more attention to the ideal order of the Northern Song Empire it embodies. Of course, when we transform the landscape into "Jiangshan", we know this meaning better. As Mr. Shi Shouqian has examined, the arrangement of natural scenes in the painting completely corresponds to the ideal political order. The two giant pines in the visual center regulate the size and position of the trees, rocks, and peaks around them, reflecting the recognition of the sense of spatial order. Then, this sense of order is the ideal of natural landscapes, which is the "Tao". This sense of order is embodied in a master-slave relationship. On the left and right of the boulder are two fishermen (the fisherman is also an ideal for forest springs), on the right is an old fisherman and a young fisherman who raises a net, and on the left is a fisherwoman returning home with three children and a puppy. The direction of their movements all points to the central axis of the giant pine, and the pine tree is a metaphor for the gentleman, which symbolizes the order of life of a grass-roots commoner under the administration of a gentleman and represented by the ideal of the fisherman. In the middle scene, we see monks, scholars, and ordinary travelers walking toward the depths of the mountain, apparently going to the pavilion of the main peak—which is obviously not a depiction of a house, but a place of monasticism. This direction of movement points to an action of the afterlife, and under the cover of light and shadow and mountains, it strengthens the sacred sense of this spiritual journey. In the distant view of the picture, we can only see the architectural complex in the void, which is where the "Son of Heaven" is located. This S-shaped composition is exactly a metaphor for "flying dragon in the sky". This is a depiction of a perfect imperial image – the embodiment of the political atmosphere of Song Shenzong's reform, and it is really vibrant (there are many paintings by Guo Xi in Shenzong's palace).
Similarly, the composition of Li Tang's "Wind Map of Ten Thousand Pines" also has this meaning, and those lush green pine trees can be regarded as a metaphor for the talents of the Song Huizong Dynasty. Li Tang was a painter who was highly valued by both Emperor Huizong of Song and Emperor Gaozong of Song, and this is also a masterpiece of "monumental style". On this painting, it can be seen that Li Tang is best at "axe splitting", which uses "small axe splitting" in a large area. This makes the mountain in the picture more steep and steep. Judging from the peeling cyan, it is likely that the color was relatively heavy at the beginning, but it will not be as gorgeous as "A Thousand Miles of Rivers and Mountains". Like the "Journey map of the stream and mountain" and the "map of early spring", it is full of solemn imagery. The difference is that the painting is more musical. Li Baishiyun, "Wave your hand for me, like listening to the pine of the Ten Thousand Valleys" - pine, in Chinese culture, has always been to "listen". Landscape painting is equivalent to the status of the guqin in Chinese music. In Li Tang's pen, the two mountain springs that flow down from the peak certainly bring the sound of babbling water, but even better is the sound of "wind into the pine"—just among the layers of layered, dark pine forests.