Travelers By Streams And Mountains

Fan Kuan. c. 1000 C.E. Ink and colors on silk.

Form:

- Unlike Brushstrokes describe dissimilar kinds of trees: coniferous, deciduous, etc.

- Seven-pes long painted hanging ringlet composition

- Takes reward of scale to increment grandeur & monumentality of the mount by decreasing the size of the people

- Monumental landscape painting style

- Painted things not as seen through man middle

- Single limerick w/ constantly shifting viewpoint

Role:

- Expresses catholic vision of man's harmonious existence in vast/orderly universe

- Shows the Neo-Confucian search for absolute truth in nature & cocky-cultivation

- Painting epitomizes early Northern Vocal monumental style of mural painting

Content:

- Boulders in foreground

- Rocky outcroppings covered by trees

- Two men driving donkeys w/ firewood

- Temple partially subconscious in wood

- Gritty rock confront takes upward ⅔ of motion-picture show

- In the background, central acme flanked by smaller peaks

- Waterfall pours from a crack near summit of the mountain and disappears into valley

- Mountains are modelled

- Contains immense detailing

- Additive images are non connective; comprehended separately Signature subconscious amidst leaves in lower right corner

- Long waterfall on right balanced by mount on left

- Waterfall accents the height of the mountain

- Not a pure mural: donkey w/ firewood driven by two men; small temple appears in forest; man seen as minor & insignificant in vast natural globe

- Mists created past ink washes silhouette the roofs of the temple

- Signature hidden in bushes on lower right

Context:

- Fan Kuan was unconventional man for his time

- Simply surviving piece of work by Fan Kuan

- Instance of Chinese landscape painting appear long before euros

- Mountains as sacred

- Painted during Vocal dynasty

- Lived as a recluse & was one of poet & artist disenchanted w/ human diplomacy

- Neo-Confucianism

- Reinterpretation of Chinese moral philosophy

- Thinkers rebuilt Confucian ideals using Buddhist & Daoist metaphysics

- Thought in complimentary opposites

- Yin & Yang

- Li

- Principles that underlie all phenomena

- Underlying pattern of reality

- Naught exists w/out it

- Qi

- Vital strength & substance of which human being & universe made

- Mural painting at top of bureaucracy of Chinese painting styles

- Associated due west/ refined scholarly sense of taste

- Linked w/ Daoism

- Emphasizes harmony w/ natural world

- Artists paint imaginary, idealized landscapes

- Chinese painting seen equally extension of calligraphy

- uses same brushstrokes

- colors restrained & subtle

- ink on paper w/ small-scale amount of water color

- mounted on sik

- painters & calligraphers generally scholars

- four Treasures of the Scholar's studio,Wenfang Sibao

- paper, brush, ink, ink stone

Cross-Cultural Comparisons:

-        Cole, The Oxbow

-        Breughel, Hunters in the Snow

-     Circumvolve of the Gonzalez Family, Screen with Hunting Scenes

Travelers By Streams And Mountains,

Source: https://sites.google.com/site/adairarthistory/viii-south-east-and-southeast-asia/201-travelers-among-mountains-and-streams-fan-kuan

Posted by: eppersonhisdon.blogspot.com

Share this post