Landscape Painting of China and Japan. Hugo Münsterberg

      1

      The Spirit of chinese Landscape Painting

      LONG before the emergence of Chinese landscape painting, the Chinese venerated the forces of nature. The earliest written documents, the inscribed oracle bones from the ancient Shang capital of An-yang, refer to the spirits of the mountains and rivers, to the deities of heaven and earth, and to the directions. China's oldest poetry, the Shih Ching, or Book of Song, dating from around 1000 B.C., not only shows a keen sense of the loveliness of nature but also relates man to it, as in the following verse:

      Gorgeous in their beauty

      Are the flowers of the cherry:

      Are they not magnificent in their dignity

      The carriages of the royal bride.

      Another song uses these images:

      How the cloth-plant spreads

       Across the midst of the valley!

       Thick grow its leaves,

       The oriole in its flight

       Perches on that copse,

       Its song is full of longing.¹

      Not only the priests and poets of ancient China but also the great philosophers of the Chou period, like Confucius and Lao-tzu, conceived of man as governed by the forces of heaven and earth. Confucius in one place says: "The wise find pleasure in water, the virtuous find pleasure in hills."² And Lao-tzu writes:

      Heaven is eternal, the Earth is everlasting.

      How come they to be so? It is because they do not foster their own lives,

      That is why they live so long.

      Therefore the Sage

      Puts himself in the background; but is also to the fore.

      Remains outside; but is always there.

      Is it not just because he does not strive for personal ends

      That all his personal ends are fulfilled.³

      Here in the words of the ancient sages one finds the very spirit which, centuries later, was to be perfectly expressed in the art of the landscape. In China alone, landscape painting has religious as well as philosophical significance, and for over a thousand years it was regarded as the most important subject matter for the artist. Chinese landscape painting in consequence is one of the great manifestations of the human spirit as well as the most remarkable creation of the Chinese artistic genius. The term "landscape," or shan shut in Chinese, combines the same two concepts which Confucius mentioned, for it consists of the characters for mountain and water. This in itself is deeply meaningful, suggesting as it does the very elements which were considered the most important in rendering nature. The sacred mountains of China have been worshipped from time immemorial, and the Five Sacred Peaks form one of the Shih-erh Chang, or Twelve Ancient Ornaments. Water also was of prime significance to an agricultural people like the Chinese, and it was worshipped in the form of rivers, clouds, mist, and rain, and symbolized by the dragon, one of the most ancient and popular of Chinese sacred animals. Lao-tzu, in yet another passage of his famous Tao Tê Ching, uses water as an illustration of the Supreme, the Tao, when he says:

      The highest good is like that of water. The goodness of water is that it benefits the ten thousand creatures, yet it does not scramble but is content with the places that all men disdain. It is this that makes water so near to the Way.⁴

      It is no pure chance that Taoist thought exerted such a profound influence on the landscape painters of China, for here was a philosophy which taught man to lose himself in the vastness of nature so that he might find himself, to identify his soul with the Spirit which pervades the cosmos, the Ultimate Essense, the Tao, in order to gain insight into the nature of reality. Taoist mysticism and the closely related Ch'an, or Zen, Buddhism, dedicated to a very similar type of mystic experience, were the primary intellectual and spiritual forces leading to the great florescence of landscape painting during the Sung period. Precisely at that time the merger of these tendencies took place, and it was then that they enjoyed their greatest popularity among the people of education and culture.⁵

      Besides mountains and rivers, trees constituted a third element considered indispensable to any true landscape. It is perhaps in representing these that the Chinese artist showed his greatest insight into the structure of nature, for while Western artists were usually content with an exterior likeness, the Chinese painter wished to portray the very essence of the tree. After absorbing their shape and manner of growth and trying to identify himself with their spirit, he was able to give his trees an individuality and expressiveness which no Western artist has achieved. To the painters of China, the tree (or the mountain or the rock) was as important as man himself, and thus it was rendered with equal if not greater care and with so much feeling that its very life is revealed, and even a Westerner, no matter how different his view of nature, will find that he looks at trees with a new understanding after studying Chinese landscape paintings.

      Among the trees painted, the pine is the most beloved, for the pine, with its "straight-stemmed trunk and gnarled and twisted branches, typifies the scholar-official who may be shaken by the wind of calumny and misfortune, but remains erect and steadfast, his character rooted in the unchanging principles of Confucian virtue."⁶ A great variety of pines and other evergreens are found in the landscapes, represented singly or in groups, silhouetted against the sky or seen on mountains. Next to the pine in popularity is the bamboo. In fact, a whole branch of Chinese painting is devoted to this beautiful tree. Like the pine, the bamboo has a symbolic meaning for the Chinese, standing "for lasting friendship and hardy age, but especially for chü-jên (a gentleman), for it bows to the storm but rises again when the storm has abated."⁷ These two trees, together with the blossoming plum tree, which was thought of as a harbinger of spring, are referred to as the three friends of the cold season. Other trees often represented are the willow, which is especially popular in Sung painting, the arborvitae, catalpa, oak, elm, mulberry, and a generalized type of tree which cannot be identified with any particular genus.

      Though mountains, water, and trees are the main elements of landscape painting, this does not mean that the artist restricted himself to these. Rocks also played an important role, and some of the early Ch'ing painters, such as Shih-t'ao, were famous for their wonderful rendering of picturesque stones. Besides these, many different kinds of grass, moss, bushes, and flowers are represented, and romantic waterfalls and gorges were much admired, emphasizing as they do the grandeur and wildness of nature. In the midst of these natural phenomena, the artist, especially in the Sung and Ming periods, placed a tiny hut and a sage or two lost in rapt admiration of the vastness and beauty of the landscape. The onlooker, in turn, was supposed to identify himself with the tiny figure, letting his spirit dwell in the imaginary scene so that he too might find peace in the contemplation of nature.

      The mentality of the gentleman-scholar who devoted himself to landscape painting is perhaps best expressed in Kuo Hsi's famous "Essay on Landscape Painting," which, although written in the eleventh century, served as a model and source of inspiration for all subsequent Chinese landscape painters. In it the author, himself a famous painter, says:

      Why does a virtuous man take delight in landscape? It is for these reasons: that in a rustic retreat he may nourish nature; that amid the carefree play of streams and rocks, he may take delight; that he may constantly meet in the country fishermen, woodcutters, and hermits, and see the soaring cranes, and hear the crying of the monkeys. The din of the dusty world and the locked-in-ness of human habitations are what human nature habitually abhors; while, on the contrary, haze, mist, and the haunting spirits of the mountains are what human nature seeks, and yet can rarely find. When, however, in the heyday of great peace and prosperity, the minds, both of man's sovereign and of his parents, are full of high expectations of