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[Re]Viewing the Chinese Landscape: Imaging the Body [In]Visible in Shanshuihua 山水畫

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[Re]viewing the Chinese Landscape: Imaging the Body [In]visible in Shanshuihua 山水畫 Lim Chye Hong 林彩鳳 A thesis submitted to the University of New South Wales in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Chinese Studies School of Languages and Linguistics Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences The University of New South Wales Australia abstract This thesis, titled '[Re]viewing the Chinese Landscape: Imaging the Body [In]visible in Shanshuihua 山水畫,' examines shanshuihua as a 'theoretical object' through the intervention of the present. In doing so, the study uses the body as an emblem for going beyond the surface appearance of a shanshuihua. This new strategy for interpreting shanshuihua proposes a 'Chinese' way of situating bodily consciousness. Thus, this study is not about shanshuihua in a general sense. Instead, it focuses on the emergence and codification of shanshuihua in the tenth and eleventh centuries with particular emphasis on the cultural construction of landscape via the agency of the body. On one level the thesis is a comprehensive study of the ideas of the body in shanshuihua, and on another it is a review of shanshuihua through situating bodily consciousness. The approach is not an abstract search for meaning but, rather, is empirically anchored within a heuristic and phenomenological framework. This framework utilises primary and secondary sources on art history and theory, sinology, medical and intellectual history, ii Chinese philosophy, phenomenology, human geography, cultural studies, and selected landscape texts. This study argues that shanshuihua needs to be understood and read not just as an image but also as a creative transformative process that is inevitably bound up with the body. In addition, the thesis contends that the body is 'invisible' in shanshuihua not because it is absent or irrelevant, but rather because it had been 'naturalised' within the landscape as a palimpsest. Further, the thesis urges that the seemingly 'invisible' may be made visible through knowing how and what to see. In all, this study presents a different view of shanshuihua: as a theoretical object it 'theorises'; as a painting it 'transforms'; and as a process it 'embodies'. iii Acknow ledge ments Acknowledgements This dissertation has been a fascinating journey of learning and endurance, with considerable debt accrued to both people and institutions. I would like to first express my gratitude to the University of New South Wales for providing the financial support for my research in the early stages of my candidature. I would also like to thank Wang Yaoting, Lin Lina, and Qiu Shihhwa for their hospitality and help during my visit to the Palace Museum Taibei in 2005. My warmest thanks to Barbara Hendrischke for her firm but kind advice on addressing the issue of methodology, and John Clark for giving me the impetus to refine my ideas. My sincere gratitude goes to Larissa Heinrich for giving me the courage to address shanshuihua as a theoretical object, and Lynne Broad for insightful comments on the art of writing. Further, I would like to extend my appreciation to my teachers, friends, colleagues (from the Art Gallery of New South Wales), and kindred spirits. In particular, Esta Ungar, Jon Tarry, Jennifer Mok, Betty Pun, Cai Heng, Philip Francis, Lynette Ong, and Hisae Kobayashi. I would also like to acknowledge the important contribution of my family. Thank you to mom and dad, Cheng Pier, Annie, Edwin, Kieran, Lynne, and iv Robert for your love and support. Not to forget my better half Benjamin Broad, for his remarkable patience and love over the thesis years. Lastly, I thank my laoshi 老師, Jon Eugene von Kowallis. It has been a great pleasure and honour to have him as my mentor. His guidance, kindness, intelligence, and passion for teaching are infectious. I hope that this dissertation reflects, to some degree, the sensitivity and intelligence he brings to Chinese Studies and scholarly research. v For my dad, Lim Peck Kee 林璧基, my most valued critic and reader. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Volume One Abstract ii Acknowledgements iv Introduction 1 Chapter I SHANSHUIHUA 山水畫 IS NOT [JUST] AN IMAGE 21 1.1 Landscape Painting Vs Shanshuihua 山水畫 1.2 The Idea of Creativity 1.21 The Chinese Model of The World 1.22 Cheng 誠 As Creativity 1.3 Artistic Creativity As Process of Self-Cultivation 1.4 The Meaning Surpasses The Image Chapter II THE BODY IN QUESTION 75 2.1 The Body as Representation of the Universe 2.2 The Medical Body 2.3 Cultivating the Self and Body 2.4 Conclusion Chapter III SEEING IN QUESTION 129 3.1 Words For Seeing 3.2 Aspects of Realism Chapter IV VISIBLISING THE [IN]VISIBLE 176 4.1 Body Politics 4.2 Skin Deep 4.3 Inside Out 4.4 Conclusion Chapter V [RE]VIEWING LANDSCAPE (AND) TEXTS 201 5.1 A Question of Place 5.2 Shanshuihua as Representing Place 5.3 [Re]viewing Texts 5.31 Landscape Texts 5.311 Landscape Text I: Hua shanshui xu《畫山水序》 Preface to Painting Landscape 5.312 Landscape Text II: Bifaji《筆法記》 Record on [the Art of] the Brush 5.313 Landscape Text III: Shanshui xun〈山水訓〉 Advice on Landscape 5.32 Viewing Positions 5.321 Changshen 暢神 5.322 Tuzhen 圖真 5.323 Yi 意 5.4 Conclusion vii Chapter VI ANIMATING THE BODY 247 6.1 [Re]viewing Zaochuntu《早春圖》 6.2 Expressing the Dati 大體 and Xiaoti 小體 6.3 Quoting Shanshuihua Conclusion 279 Appendix I: Hua shanshui xu《畫山水序》 285 Appendix II: Bifaji《筆法記》 289 Appendix III: Shanshui xun〈山水訓〉 302 Bibliography 322 Chinese Character List 353 Volume Two List of Illustrations and Tables 365 Part I: Illustrations 371 Part II: Tables 411 viii intro duction This thesis is about the body in shanshuihua 山水畫. Shanshuihua literally means mountain [and] water painting. The term has been conventionally translated as landscape painting. In this thesis, I will employ the transliterated term shanshuihua rather than the translation because, although the translated term provides an idea of how shanshuihua may be perceived by a non-Chinese speaker, it nevertheless may misconstrue what shanshuihua actually is. (Chapter One of this thesis contains a discussion of this evolution.) In the fourth century C.E., shanshuihua began to evolve into a genre of its own in Chinese painting. However, it was not until the ninth century that a change in attitude provoked a major shift of interest from figure subjects to landscape.1 That shift was never reversed and by the eleventh century shanshuihua had emerged as the pre-eminent art form in Chinese 1 This shift is generally confined within the literati tradition. Figure painting remained a favourite subject for court painters and artisans. 1 culture.2 This presence and prominent status continued to be felt within the literati traditions until the turn of the twentieth century. Shanshuihua's endorsement of a seemingly 'natural' order appears perfectly sound at first glance. After all, 'to the Chinese, the theme of a painting is inseparable from its form, and both are the expression of an all-embracing philosophical attitude towards the visible world.'3 However, there is much more to shanshuihua than an expression of a seemingly 'natural' order. Recent studies of landscape painting in the West indicate that it ought to be considered as a cultural product.4 The idea of the landscape in painting as an ideologically charged representation of the world is particularly associated with the works of John Barrell, Daniel Cosgrove, and Ann Bermingham.5 Both 2 James Cahill, Chinese Painting: Treasures of Asia (Geneva: d'Art Albert Skira S.A, 1995), 25. 3 Michael Sullivan, Symbols of Eternity: The Art of Landscape Painting in China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1979), 1-2. 4 There has been a resurgence of interest in landscape within the last twenty years or so by the incursion of disciplines such as cultural geography, social anthropology, cultural studies, visual studies, film studies, gender studies, and architectural studies. This renewed interest in landscape has not only invigorated the academic study of landscape in art but has also had a radical effect on the way art historians think about landscape art. See, W.J.T. Mitchell, ed. Landscape and Power, Second edition (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2002); Nina Lübbren, "Re-viewing landscape," Art History 25, no. 2 (2002): 256; Steven Adams and Anna Gruetzner Robins, eds. Gendering Landscape Art (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), 6; Richard Muir, Approaches to Landscape (London: Macmillan Press, 1999), xiii; Ann Bermingham, Landscape and Ideology: The English Rustic tradition 1740–1860 (London: Thames and Hudson, 1987); and John Barrell, The Dark Side of Landscape: The Rural Poor in English Painting 1730-1840, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980). 5 Barrell, in The Dark Side of Landscape, argues that English landscape paintings of the period 1730-1840 as both an 'ideological expression' and a reflection of 'the actuality of eighteenth-century life.' Daniel Cosgrove in Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape traces the origin of the modern concept of landscape to a genre of painting patronised by the new mercantile class. Likewise, Ann Bermingham in writing Landscape and Ideology: The English Rustic Tradition 1740–1860, affirms the notion that landscape painting emerges as an ideological form, both of social relations and social prescriptions. In her study of the English rustic tradition in landscape painting, Bermingham argues that the 2 Barrell and Cosgrove conceive of landscape painting as a reflection of social conditions. Bermingham went a step further by demonstrating ways in which landscape 'presents an illusionary account of the real landscape.6 She locates the artifices and ideas landscapes embody within the 'larger semiotic field' as well as the social, political, and cultural structures that give them meaning.
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