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FAN K’UAN C. 990-1030 AD
Conceptual Framework: Artwork
“Travelers on a Mountain Path”c. 1000 AD
Ink and Brush, Hanging Scroll Painting, on silk,
203 cm in length
In this landscape painting, Travelers on a Mountain Path, a monumental,
towering, mountain peak, crowned on the top by areas of low bush, rises
precipitously out of the mists. In front of it is a rocky cliff, with small
temples nestled among trees, the fir trees echoing the roof-lines of the
temples. The mountain peak is cut by the cascade of a waterfall to the right
and is balanced by a long cleft in the small mountain to the left. A stream
runs over rocks and alongside the stream, parallel to the bottom of the
picture plane, is a pathway on which can be seen a caravan of mules and
people, dwarfed in size by the grandeur and overpowering nature of the landscape.
In the extreme foreground of the painting is a line of huge, rugged rocks.
To the Chinese, landscape became their most important subject matter . This
artwork is an ink painting, on silk, in the form of a hanging scroll, 203
cm. in length and in a vertical format. The hanging scroll was usually a
painting on silk, mounted with paper backing and cloth facing, stored in
rolled-up form, and exhibited by suspension in unrolled form from a peg
some 210-240 cm. above the ground.
Conceptual Framework: Artwork
China is a vast country with its northern borders extending towards the
coldest regions of the inhabited world and its southern borders into the
sub-tropical heat and humidity. It has a number of vast rivers that carry
fertile silt down to enrich immense plains. The river gorges are spectacular
and have provided Chinese painters with inspiration for thousands of pictures.
The cultural achievements of China have been substantially original, as
China’s remoteness has meant that it was able to develop its own culture
and art patterns. China achieved political unification into a single empire
by the 3rd century BC, under the Ch’in dynasty, after which it is
named. By the end of the 2nd C. BC, the Chinese invention of calligraphic
writing, executed with the brush, had become the most fundamental art form.
The literature composed in this script, and its value for administration,
gave the Chinese a sense of cultural identity.
The two main streams of philosophy, which affect Chinese thought, culture
and art are Confucianism and the Tao. Confucianism, named after its founder
Confucius, b. 551 BC, is a humanistic system, rather pessimistic and traditional,
but essentially concerned with man and his place in nature, with the emphasis
on man. Taoism, (the way), on the other hand, is pantheistic and mystical.
It is more concerned with harmonizing man with nature and thus with finding
nature’s essential rhythm.
The Sung dynasty (960-1260 AD) is usually divided into two parts: the Northern
Sung and the Southern Sung, when the Emperors and court was driven south
by invading Tartars. The Sung dynasty maintained a group of painters who
worked for the court, producing ceremonial seasonal paintings and decorating
the vast palaces and pavilions around the capitals. During the Northern
Sung was developed one of the most important schools of landscape painting,
at a time when, in Europe, landscape was virtually unknown. The school of
Sung dynasty landscape painting produced artworks of the utmost complexity
and subtlety in its material, conceptual and philosophical approach to the
depiction of nature and the place of humankind within this concept of nature.
Conceptual Framework: Artist – The Role of the
artist
Little is known of the artist Fan K’uan, other than he worked at the
royal Northern Sung court under the patronage of the Emperor and that he
was one of the great masters of Monumental style of Northern Sung landscape
painting. The role of Fan K’uan as an artist was to act as a philosopher
about the landscape and its relationship to man and to act as a spokesperson
for his society about these cultural ideas about the place of man and nature.
To the Chinese, landscape was not merely a pretty picture or a scene; it
was something with major philosophical implications. There was already a
foundation in Taoism for interest in nature, and a foundation in Confucianism,
in the concept of natural law or principle. These ideas were synthesized
into a belief that the natural order found in trees and rocks, in water
and mountains, echoed, on a smaller scale, the order of the universe as
a whole and could teach humankind how to live in harmony with the universe.
Human beings were seen as a part of nature but only a small, interdependent
part. Another role of the artist was to communicate these philosophical
ideas about man and nature to his audience symbolically, encoding the artwork
with conventional and well-understood symbols, so his audience could read
the painting.
Artmaking Practice: Actions
The Chinese artist painted on silk using a brush and ink, the same implements
that were used for calligraphic writing. For this reason, colour was restricted
to the black of the ink and tonal variations, according to the dilution
of the ink with water. There was great emphasis placed on the skill of the
artist in rendering natural forms realistically with the brush. Stylistic
conventions developed for the rendering of different forms in nature e.g.
there were rules for showing different types of rocks, trees, water etc.
but individual artists were admired for how they used these conventions
and their brushwork in an individual way. Chinese artists sketched with
the brush directly from nature, but these were preliminary sketches, where
the artist gathered visual knowledge of the landscape. Fan K’uan did
not paint this artwork looking directly at a particular landscape, but based
it on images and ideas derived from his contemplation, as well as observation,
of many landscapes, so that what is produced here is a synthesized view
of the landscape. This is an ordered approach to the vastness of nature,
observed and realized in complex detail and careful organization.
Artmaking Practice: Ideas
The conceptual artmaking practice of Fan K’uan was based on the Chinese
philosophy of nature and man’s place in nature. In the Sung dynasty
this philosophy is called neo-Confucianism and Fan K’uan seems to
echo, in this artwork, the neo-Confucian position “nature is vast
and deep, high, intelligent, infinite, and eternal”. This attitude
attributes natural order, or principle, what the Chinese call li, to nature,
and therefore makes it a fit subject for the landscape painter, from both
a moral and rational standpoint. Fan K’uan illustrates these concepts
in his landscape painting: of the awesome greatness and beauty of nature
and of the insignificance of humankind in relation to nature and therefore,
the universe. The manifest greatness of nature is expressed in a rational
and ordered way.
Conceptual Framework: Audience
Sung dynasty landscape hanging scrolls were produced to be periodically
unrolled and displayed and meant for a limited audience of aristocratic
patrons who would, not only enjoy the artwork because of its aesthetic qualities,
but would use it as a tool of contemplation of the philosophical implications
of the landscape depicted.
VISUAL ARTS PRELIMINARY YEAR
Travelers on a Mountain Path Fan K’uan /6
ANALYSIS OF ARTWORK STRUCTURAL FRAME
Use of Symbols: Chinese artists had codified the images they used in landscape
paintings and these images had symbolic meaning. A10th C. landscape painter,
Ching Hao, explains
“…the pine trees of the forest are like the moral character
of virtuous men, which is like the breeze.” Confucius had written…wise
men find pleasure in water, the virtuous find pleasure in mountains.”
Every aspect of the landscape and how it was represented had symbolic value
for the Sung audience, including size, so that the monumental size of the
mountain is meant to physically overwhelm the ant-like size of the human
figures in the painting.
Colour: Chinese painting of the Sung dynasty was monochromatic. The artist
used the same dark coloured ink as for writing and tones of this ink, diluted
with water, on a creamy silk background. It was thought that colour could
distract from the observer’s contemplation of the painting and its
philosophical message.
Tone: Tonal qualities are important in this artwork. They render forms to
give them the illusion of weight and solidity and conform to the artist’s
concept of rationality being of the utmost importance. Tonal contrast is
used as emphasis e.g. the dark tones of the trees against the mist. Tone
is also used to show distance with the towering mountain much lighter than
the middle ground trees.
Line: Chinese artists believed calligraphy to be more important than painting
and therefore valued the calligraphic lines made by the brush as the highest
aesthetic mark. In this painting the lines formed with the brush are always
the dominant element. Calligraphic line is used to outline and to suggest
volume in most forms.
Composition: Fan K’uan used a symmetrical composition. The painting
is divided horizontally into three different spaces. In the foreground is
a row of jagged rocks, used as a barrier to the eyes of the audience. The
lighter area behind this rocky barrier is a mountain path, parallel to the
bottom of the picture plane, which runs beside a wandering stream. A caravan
of travelers and their mules are shown, ant-sized and in a darker tone,
against the lighter path. The travelers are completely overwhelmed in size
by the monumental landscape, reinforcing the artist’s
VISUAL ARTS PRELIMINARY YEAR
Travelers on a Mountain Path Fan K’uan /7philosophical position. In
the middle ground are more rocks, crowned with a forest, and a small temple,
nestling among the fir trees. Behind this is the background, dominated by
the towering mountain peaks. This background space is separated from the
middle ground by a curtain of light, soft mist, against which the forest
and temple is silhouetted.
The painting is also divided vertically. On the right side of the mountains,
a long, cascading waterfall cuts through a vertical hollow in the mountain
and this is balanced symmetrically on the left side by the cleft in the
small mountain. The overall symmetry of the painting reinforces the ideas
of the logic and symmetry of nature itself.
Research Websites
depts.washington.edu