Exhibitions 31


STREAMS AND MOUNTAINS WITHOUT END


Landscape Traditions of China


ASIAN ART Tuesday 5 December


Palaces of the Immortals by Xu Yang, Chinese, active 1750/after 1776, China,


Qing dynasty (1644-1911), Qianlong period (1736-95), dated 1753, folding fan mounted as an album leaf, ink, colour, and gold on paper, 15.9 x 47 cm. Courtesy Te Metropolitan Museum of Art


BUT WHEN IT COMES TO THE WONDERS OF BRUSH AND INK, [REAL] LANDSCAPE IS NO MATCH FOR PAINTING! Dong Qichang (1555-1636)


IN WHAT DOES A GENTLEMAN’S LOVE OF LANDSCAPE CONSIST? Guo Xi (circa 1020-1090)


THE WISE TAKE PLEASURE IN RIVERS AND LAKES, THE VIRTUOUS IN MOUNTAINS Confucius, Analects


Tese are three highly profound postulations and they relate directly to the philosophy of this remarkable,


three-stage exhibition at Te


Metropolitan Museum of Art. Symbolism and meaning are slightly different, but they both are an indirect suggestion to communicate or allude to something that is not directly expressed. In the case of this series of exhibitions, symbolism uses works of art that depict three of the Five Elements, water, air and earth. Te premise is simply that what one actually sees is not necessarily what it actually means. Because there is so much to see from the vast collections of the Met, this is only the first of three rotations, all made possible by the Joseph Hotung Fund. Te curators have chosen works of art of a number of types – paintings, ceramics, textiles, bamboo, hardstone carvings, illustrated books, metal,


furniture, scholar’s rocks and


contemporary art from both the Met’s collection and those of private lenders. Mountains, together with and water, are two major components of Daoism and entered the Chinese Buddhist consciousness during the Western Han dynasty (206 BC-AD 9), mainly because of its theory of immortality and the location of the Land of the Immortals beyond the mountains of far western China, themselves sacred. Tese mountains appear in art of the Western Han dynasty, principally as bronze stands in the shape of mountains as supports for bronze jue tripod ritual vessels and this combination even appears in Qing-dynasty porcelains.


Te fan painting by Xu Yang (active circa


1750/after 1776), Palaces of the Immortals, depicts an ethereal scale of palatial structures nestled amidst lofty mountains, again a devotion to the concept of Daoist immortality. Te Isles of the Immortals are important as well and are frequently depicted on the hems of imperial robes as jagged mountains surrounded by waves and the elaborately embroidered Daoist robe in the exhibition is one such example. Mountains appear throughout the landscapes


here, both in paintings by Chinese artists and one by the American-born Chinese, Arnold Chang, but can also take the smaller form of the several scholar’s rocks in Lingbi, Ying and Taihu limestones.


It is in the paintings where the mountains


really do display their symbolic power as a cosmic view of the world and man as an inseparable part of the universe, very much as the scholar’s rocks do, and to create an inner calm where the workings of the universe can be achieved, man’s ultimate goal.


Of the number of fine paintings in the exhibition,


several are worth a long look:


Fantastic Scenery in the Human Realm by the 16th-century artist, Wen Boren; a Song-dynasty literati handscroll, Two Landscapes Inspired by the Poetry of Du Fu, presently attributed to Sima Huai (circa 1131-62); and a 1770 handscroll by Xu Yang, Te Qianlong Emperor’s


Southern


Inspection Tour, number four, a grand traditional imperial event begun by Kangxi and continued thereafter. It depicts in slightly arranged terms, views of mountains, rivers and famous places along the way in a marriage of landscape and imperial splendour. Water, shui, is one of the Five Elements and is considered to be feminine, soft and pliant and Laozi considered water to be the best example of good behaviour because his belief that ‘soft’ would and would overcome ‘strong’. Water abounds here, whether falling or flowing and it is always integral with the ‘balance’ of a composition. Besides the paintings and the scholar’s rocks, the exhibition is complete with illustrated books of landscape designs, mainly from the 17th century, and landscape-design porcelain vases from the late Ming through the early/middle Qing. Te overriding message of this three-part exhibition is that ‘Man and Nature’


are


Until 6 January 2018 (first rotation), at Te Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, metmuseum.org Tere is an exhibition tour/talk on 8 November, starting 10.30 am; Rotation 2: 19 January-5 August, 2018 and Rotation 3: 18 August-6 January 2019


cosmically joined. A perfect example of this symbiotic relationship lies just behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the great Central Park, designed by Frederick Law Olmstead. Just as Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown did in 18th- century England, Olmstead had created in the mid-19th century a living display of how Man and Nature do not just coexist, but merge as one. Martin Barnes Lorber


FROM THE STANDPOINT OF SPLENDID SCENERY, PAINTING CANNOT EQUAL [REAL] LANDSCAPE.


A rare Chinese porcelain double gourd-shaped vase, Qing dynasty, 18th century £43,000, June 2017


+44 (0)20 8761 2522 70/76 Knights Hill, London SE27 0JD www.roseberys.co.uk


For further information or a complimentary valuation please contact Bill Forrest billforrest@roseberys.co.uk


A Chinese Artist in Britain


FREE ADMISSION 7 Nov 2017–15 Apr 2018 www.ashmolean.org


OCTOBER 2017 ASIAN ART


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