Rocks, Mountains, Landscapes, and Gardens The Essence of East Asian Painting
The special exhibition Rocks, Mountains, Landscapes, and Gardens: The Essence of East Asian Painting will be on display at the Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Harvard University Art Museums, 485 Broadway, Cambridge, Massachusetts, from February 15 through September 14, 1997. A companion exhibition to Worlds Within Worlds: The Richard Rosenblum Collection of Chinese Scholars' Rocks - which will be shown at the Arthur M. Sackler Museum from May 10 through July 20, 1997 - this exhibition explores the place of rocks in the greater context of East Asian art. The exhibition includes paintings on loan from outside institutions as well as numerous works from private collections which are being displayed publicly for the first time. Rocks, Mountains, Landscapes, and Gardens is organized by Robert D. Mowry, curator of Chinese art, Harvard University Art Museums.
Chinese connoisseurs had recognized the special aesthetic and spiritual qualities of rocks at least by the Tang dynasty (618-907). Rocks appealed to the scholars' love of mountains and, when placed in a garden, brought the mountains into an urban setting. By Song times (960-1279), smaller, favored rocks were often taken into the scholar's study: some were used as brushrests or inkstones; others, in jade and soapstone, functioned as seals; but most served as vehicles for contemplation, appreciated more for their aesthetic merits than for their functional possibilities. Like a landscape painting, the rock represented a microcosm of the universe on which the scholar could meditate within the confines of garden or studio. More than anything else, however, it was the abstract, formal qualities of the rocks that appealed to the Chinese literati; in that light, the taste for rocks finds kinship in the taste for calligraphy. In fact, the Chinese taste for rocks might be compared to the modern Western interest in abstract sculpture and painting; although one can read meaning into both rocks and abstract works, each is ultimately appreciated for the beauty of its form and texture.
Although the majority of the works in Rocks, Mountains, Landscapes, and Gardens are paintings - which depict a variety of rocks, including ones for garden and studio alike - the exhibition also includes both a garden rock and a scholar's rock to forge a link between the paintings and the intimately related, three-dimensional objects. By showing rocks in varying settings - whether surrounded by growing plants or anchored in a basin for display on a desk - the paintings illuminate the little-studied genre of rock painting.
As their name implies, garden rocks are placed in gardens, where they are often grouped to suggest a series of mountain peaks, as revealed by the Harvard Art Museums' 1840 handscroll by Huang Jun (Chinese; Qing dynasty, 1775-1850) entitled Appreciating Paintings in the Spring Grass Studio. An especially large or handsome rock might be set against a whitewashed wall or positioned in the center of the garden to give it pride of place, however, as evinced by the short hanging scroll entitled Scholar at Leisure Admiring a Fantastic Rock in a Garden; lent anonymously, the scroll was painted in 1696 by Wen Guo (Chinese; Qing dynasty, active c. 1665-c. 1706). Typically of gray or off-white limestone, garden rocks are often relatively tall and are usually perforated; the best known examples come from Taihu (Lake Tai) in southern Jiangsu province and are thus called "Taihu rocks." Scholars' rocks, by contrast, are displayed indoors on a desk, table, or bookshelf; regarded as "stand alone" items, they are shown individually and are characteristically presented on a carved wooden stand - like a fine bronze or porcelain - to support the rock and to distinguish it from the mundane. Scholars' rocks thus tend to be much smaller than garden rocks; they range from miniature examples no more than an inch in height to large ones that may stand five feet tall. The most prized scholars' rocks are of black limestone from Lingbi (in Anhui province) and of slate-gray limestone from Yingde (in Guangdong province).
Appreciated in their own right as abstract works of art, rocks served as the basic building blocks of East Asian landscape paintings: magnified in scale, the rocks become mountains; embellished with rivers, trees, and winding paths, the mountains become complete landscapes. By the Song dynasty, the landscape had emerged as the preeminent subject matter of Chinese painting, a place it holds even today. Such landscape paintings typically feature towering mountains and rushing streams; indeed, the Chinese word for "landscape" is shanshui, which translates literally as "mountains and water." The interest in landscapes, whether real or painted, reflects the philosophical search for the principles that underlie the harmony of nature, a search that is closely linked to Daoism. The depiction of landscapes spread to Korea and Japan in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, soaring to popularity in Korea during the Choson dynasty (1392-1910) and in Japan during the Muromachi period (1392-1568).
On public display for the first time, a handscroll by Wu Bin (Chinese; Ming dynasty, c. 1583-1626), with inscriptions by Mi Wanzhong (1570-1628), ranks among the most important objects in the exhibition. Dated to 1610, the scroll, which is on loan from a private collection, is entitled Ten Views of a Fantastic Rock. Mi Wanzhong is remembered today as the foremost collector of rocks during the Ming dynasty (1368-1644). In fact, this painting is a "portrait" of a particularly fine scholar's rock in Mi's collection. The scroll pictures the rock through a three-hundred-sixty-degree rotation, showing its front, back, and sides, as well as its underside and three-quarter views; the "First View," which portrays the rock from the front, is displayed in this exhibition. Wu Bin did all ten of the paintings; Mi Wanzhong, the rock's owner, added the long inscription that precedes each painting. The inscriptions are not poems but detailed physical descriptions, including exact measurements, that record the rock's appearance as depicted in the accompanying painting. A long inscription by Mi Wanzhong follows the last view. The numerous colophons by famous connoisseurs of the Ming and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties that trail Mi's final inscription document the painting's history and provenance. Although the stone depicted in Ten Views of a Fantastic Rock is no longer extant, a related, smaller rock is featured in Worlds Within Worlds.
Since there are no artists' names associated with rocks, identification of the source of the stone has become a defining factor, as has determination of a rock's date of first appreciation as a work of art. Because contemporaneous paintings often reflect changing tastes in rock collecting, paintings on paper and silk can be used to determine a rock's date in some instances. A dynamic painting by Yuan Jiang (Chinese; Qing dynasty, active c. 1680-1740), dated to 1694, on loan from The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri, makes just such a point. Entitled Carts on a Winding Mountain Road, the painting depicts a mountain that boasts the same form and surface texture as a black Lingbi limestone censer in Worlds Within Worlds, indicating that the two works were created at approximately the same time and that rocks often do serve as the basic building blocks of mountain forms in East Asian paintings.
Other paintings assist in decoding the pictorial imagery and possible symbolism of particular rock shapes. For example, a second painting borrowed from The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art sheds light on the subject matter of several rocks in Worlds Within Worlds. Dated to 1699, the hanging scroll, which was painted by Wang Yun (Chinese; Qing dynasty, 1652-1735 or later) and is entitled The Fanghu Isle of the Immortals, represents Fanghu, one of the Isles of the Immortals, which are traditionally believed to rise in the Eastern Sea, across from the Jiangsu coast: Penglai, Yingzhou, and Fanghu. In the Ming and Qing periods - whether in paintings or in scholars' rocks - the Isles of the Immortals are typically represented as ballooning mountain forms; palaces in which the Immortals might find refuge often appear in the cloud-swept clefts that typically bisect such mountains.
The luminous, brightly colored rocks portrayed in the late eighteenth-century, Korean screen entitled Immortals Arriving at the Banquet Given by Sowangmo not only continue the association between rocks and Immortals, but indicate that the scene is set in a paradise. Newly acquired by the Harvard University Art Museums and shown publicly for the first time, this folding screen depicts the arrival of the Immortals at a banquet given by Xiwangmu, China's Queen Mother of the West, who is known in Korean as Sowangmo. In the screen's right half, Sowangmo and her consort, Tongwanggong (Royal Lord of the East), sit at festooned tables positioned before tall screens in a balustraded garden. In the screen's left half, the Immortals, borne by clouds or animals, travel over rolling waves to attend the banquet. In addition to rare delicacies, the guests are served peaches from Sowangmo's orchard; the peaches confer longevity on all who have the good fortune to taste them.
Lent by Ssu Isabel Weng and I-Hsueh Hugo Weng, the short hanging scroll by Lu Zhi (Chinese; Ming dynasty, 1496-1576) entitled Penjing with Rock and Acorus Grass represents a scholar's rock, embellished with tufts of spiky grass, set in a ceramic basin. The sculptural equivalent of a landscape painting, the penjing, or "basin scene," traces its origins at least as early as the Tang dynasty, as evinced by wall paintings excavated from dated tombs; such rock-in-basin arrangements remain popular to this day. Acorus grass, known as the "grass that grows on rocks alone" (shishang cao), was a favorite companion to the rock, the two often interpreted as male and female, yang and yin. Before carved wooden stands gained widespread popularity for supporting rocks in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, rocks were often presented in ceramic basins, anchored in place by pebbles on the basin's floor. (A related, thirteenth- or fourteenth-century basin of purple-splashed Jun ware is displayed near the painting.) In 1554, the artist's friend Peng Nian (1505-1566) inscribed the "Acorus Grass Song" at the top of this painting; the Tang poet Lu Tong (d. 835) must have composed the "Acorus Grass Song" for just such a penjing.
The exhibition Worlds Within Worlds and its accompanying catalogue shed light on other identifying characteristics of scholars' rocks. This is done through physical examination of the rocks, through meticulous study of descriptions in Chinese texts on rocks, and through scientific analysis of rock samples and comparisons of the results with data in the literature on the geology of China.
Pressed into service as a chaise longue in one painting and attracting a scholar's gaze as the focus of his meditations in another, the paintings in Rocks, Mountains, Landscapes, and Gardens reveal the full range of human interaction with collected rocks. In addition, they also demonstrates that interest in rocks was not limited to China, but spread to Korea and Japan, as well. In all these ways, this companion exhibition creates a context for the scholars' rocks featured in Worlds Within Worlds.
RELATED EVENTS
Gallery Talks
Gallery Talks are free with the price of admission. Admission is free
on Saturday mornings between 10:00 a.m. and 12:00 p.m. Hearing assists
are available at the front desk.
Saturday, March 8 -- with Anne Rose Kitagawa, assistant curator for Japanese art. Sackler, 11:30 a.m.
Saturday, April 5 -- with Melissa Moy, research assistant, Department of Asian Art. Sackler, 11:30 a.m.