Travelers among Mountains and Streams
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.
- 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.
- During the tumultuous Five Dynasties period in the early 10th century; recluse scholars who fled to the mountains saw the tall pine tree as representative of the virtuous man
- gnarled pine trees and other symbolic elements were transformed into a grand and imposing landscape style.
- Fan Kuan painted a bold and straightforward example of Chinese landscape painting.
- Nearly seven feet in height, the hanging scroll composition presents universal creation in its totality, and does so with the most economic of means.
- Immense boulders occupy the foreground and are presented to the viewer at eye level. Just beyond them one sees crisp, detailed brushwork describing rocky outcroppings, covered with trees. Looking closely, one sees two men driving a group of donkeys loaded with firewood and a temple partially hidden in the forest. In the background a central peak rises from a mist-filled chasm and is flanked by two smaller peaks.
- detailed brushwork that delineates the foliage and the fir trees silhouetted along the upper edge of the ledge in the middle distance.
- To convey the sheer size of the landscape depicted, Fan Kuan relied on suggestion rather than description.
- boulders in the foreground, the tree-covered rock outcropping in the middle, and the soaring peaks in the background.
- Fan Kuan’s landscape shows how the use of scale can dramatically heighten the sense of vastness and space.
- Diminutive figures are made visually even smaller in comparison to the enormous trees and soaring peaks. They are overwhelmed by their surroundings.
- The development of Monumental landscape painting coincided with that of Neo-Confucianism—a reinterpretation of Chinese moral philosophy.
- With Buddhist thought, scholars in the 5th and 6th centuries engaged in philosophical discussions of truth and reality, being and non-being, substantiality and nonsubstantiality.
- Chinese philosophers found it useful to think in terms of complimentary opposites, interacting polarities— inner and outer, substance and function, knowledge and action.
- In their metaphysics they naturally employed the ancient yin and yang (Yin: feminine, dark, receptive, yielding, negative, and weak. Yang: masculine, bright, assertive, creative, positive, and strong.) The interaction of these complementary poles was viewed as integral to the processes that generate natural order.
- Central to understanding Neo-Confucian thought is the conceptual pair of li and qi.
- In his masterful balance of li and qi, Fan Kuan created a microcosmic image of a moral and orderly universe.
- Fan Kuan looked to nature and carefully studied the world around him. He expressed his own response to nature. As Fan Kuan sought to describe the external truth of the universe visually, he discovered at the same time an internal psychological truth. The bold directness of Fan’s painting style was thought to be a reflection of his open character and generous disposition.